The three knocks are struck, the curtain rises and the show begins with the feeling, for the spectator, of a gift which opens with a surprise to come.
Surprises, this twelfth issue of our Heritage & Walks collection, has a few in store for you.
To browse this special issue on newsstands this Monday is to discover the theaters and performance halls, cabarets and the opera in Paris.
Not all, of course, the capital has more than 130, but a subjective selection that does not lack spice.
The Odeon or the Comédie-Française, the Treviso or the Folies Bergère, Marigny or the European, Mogador again, the Olympia… These are temples of classical or comedy, song and humor, night establishments where you can get hungry ... We know their scene, their facades, sometimes richly decorated.
For many, they are classified or registered as historical monuments.
In the footsteps of Molière and Joséphine Baker
Throughout the pages, we visit them from below to the hangers under the roofs, passing through the boxes and backstage.
Tales of places and men, stars and directors, leaders and monarchs too can be read there.
Very often, the little stories of these places intersect with the great national history, its turning points and its torments.
Thus, the theater of the Porte Saint-Martin built in two months at the request of Marie-Antoinette and destroyed during the Commune. That of the Atelier, partly built thanks to the well-kept secret of the location of the remains of Louis XVI and this same Marie-Antoinette. Or Déjazet, the last survivor of the 51 theaters on Boulevard du Crime decimated by the work of Baron Haussmann.
These are artistic meetings, obviously, big names have left their mark there. At the Odeon, then a new French theater, “the Marriage of Figaro” by avant-garde Caron de Beaumarchais was all the rage. At the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the young Joséphine Baker began with the fate that we know her. At Les Bouffes Parisiens, it was Offenbach who took off when Jean-Claude Brialy made his nest. At the Athénée, it is said that the ghost of Louis Jouvet, he still watches over the scene.
In the Richelieu room, seat of the Comédie-Française, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin is celebrated every January 15.
The French troop is the result of the merger of those of Burgundy and Molière ordered by Louis XIV at the end of the 17th century.
The late Molière, the patron whose 400th birthday we are celebrating in 2022 and on whose trail we set off through the streets and monuments of the capital.
Paris, city of light, which also shines with a thousand lights from these ramps which dazzle artists and amaze a varied public in search of escape and emotions, of reflection.
The boards are still burning there with the sacred fire of the spectacle.
Behind each curtain, a surprise.
“The Secrets of Parisian Theaters”
, 124 pages, 6.20 euros.
On sale at all Ile-de-France and Oise newsagents from Monday, December 6.