19th August 2024: digital purchasing is currently unavailable on Cambridge Core. Due to recent technical disruption affecting our publishing operation, we are experiencing some delays to publication. We are working hard to restore services as soon as possible and apologise for the inconvenience. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/universitypress/about-us/news-and-blogs/cambridge-university-press-publishing-update-following-technical-disruption
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2009
The ‘notice préliminaire’ to L.-H. Lecomte's unfinished Histoire des théâtres de Paris includes a list of eighteen major fires occurring between 1789 and 1900, each of which resulted in the total destruction of a theatre. The date of each disaster is given, as also the date at which the theatre was rebuilt, either on the same site or in a new location. But beyond these brief particulars, Lecomte gives little information on the circumstances and none at all on the probable causes of each catastrophe and the precautions taken subsequently to avert a recurrence. It is the purpose of this paper to flesh out the bare bones of Lecomte's statistics, and to extend the picture to embrace similar disasters befalling provincial playhouses in France over the same period. There had of course been spectacular fires before the Revolution at Paris theatres, notably that which destroyed the opera house located in the Palais-Royal on 6 April 1763 (incidentally severely damaging the palace itself), although, since it occurred during the Easter break, the theatre was fortunately empty at the time. The Opera was eventually rehoused on the same site, but on 8 June 1781 the building once more went up in flames and was reduced to a pile of smouldering rubble. Again there were no victims among the spectators, since it was only when they had left after the evening's performance that the fire broke out; but many of the dancers were still changing into their outdoor clothes at the time and two of them failed to follow the example of the others and make their escape across the roof and down to the street. A total of a dozen or fifteen people perished as a result of this fire, including one elderly woman living in the Cour des Fontaines who died of shock at witnessing the fearsome spectacle.
1. Paris: Daragon, 1905–1910. 8 vols.Google Scholar
2. See Demuth, Norman, French Opera: its development to the Revolution (Horsham, Sussex: Artemis Press, 1963), p. 239.Google Scholar
3. Métra, , Correspondence secrète, politique et littéraire (London: John Adamson, 1787–1790), IX, 401.Google Scholar
4. Sélis, Nicolas-Joseph, Lettre à un père de famille sur les petits spectacles de Paris (Paris: Garnéry, 1789), pp. 6–7.Google Scholar
5. Brazier, Nicolas, Chroniques des petits théâtres de Paris. Réimprimées avec […] notes par Georges d'Heylli (Paris: Rouveyre et Bloud, 1883), I, 46–7.Google Scholar
6. See Destranges, Etienne, Le Théâtre à Nantes depuis ses origines jusqu'à nos jours (Paris, Fischbacher, 1893), pp. 114–15, 122.Google Scholar
7. de Grimm, F.-M., Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique … 1770–82 (Paris: Buisson, 1812–1813), II, 385.Google Scholar
8. La Harpe, J.-F., Correspondance littéraire […] depuis 1774 jusqu'à 1789 (Paris: Dupont, 1801), III, 244–5.Google Scholar
9. Bachaumont, , Mémoires secrets (London: John Adamson, 1763–1789), I, 64.Google Scholar
10. Favart, Ch.-S., Mémoires et Correspondance littéraires … (Paris, Collin, 1808), II, 237.Google Scholar
11. Jauffret, Eugène, Le Théâtre révolutionnaire (Paris: Furne, 1869), pp. 417–8.Google Scholar
12. Brazier, , op.cit., II, 474.Google Scholar
13. Magnier, Pierre, Soixante arts de théâtre (Paris: Nicéa, 1956), p. 112.Google Scholar The incident occurred shortly after the shocking fire at the Bazar de la Charité (1897) when one of the primitive cinema shows went up in flames, resulting in considerable loss of life.
14. Rapport du Bureau central, 4 nivâse an VIII [24 December 1799]: see Léon de Lanzac de Laborie, Paris sous Napoléon. VIII. Spectacles et musées (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1913), p. 3.Google Scholar
15. Lemaître, Jules, Impressions de théâtre (Paris: Boivin, 1888–1918), I, 13–14.Google Scholar
16. Lemaître, Frédérick, Souvenirs publiés par son fils (Paris: Ollendorf, 1880), pp. 275–6.Google Scholar
17. Combarnous, Victor, Histoire du Grand-Théâtre de Marseille (Marseille: Imprimerie Méri-dionale), 1927, p. 80.Google Scholar
18. Carvé, , Souvenirs de théâtre, réunis […] par Robert Favart (Paris: Plon, 1950), p. 77.Google Scholar
19. Dumas, , Souvenirs dramatiques (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, n.d.), I, 244.Google Scholar
20. Giffard, , Nos moeurs. La Vie au théâtre (Paris: Librairie Illustrée), 1888, p. 234.Google Scholar
21. Magnier, , op.cit., pp. 41–2.Google Scholar
22. The lower figure is that given by Soubies, A. & Malherbe, Ch., Histoire de l'Opéra-Comique (Paris: Marpon et Flammarion, 1892–1893), II, 433–4Google Scholar; the higher by Genest, Emile, L'Opéra-Comique connu et inconnu (Paris: Fischbacher, 1925), p. 105.Google Scholar
23. The report was reprinted in extenso by Deschaumes, Edmond, Le Mal du théâtre (Paris: Dentu, 1888), pp. 268–74.Google Scholar
24. See ibid., pp. 274–5.
25. Germont, Louis, Loges d'artistes (Paris: Dentu, 1889), p. 165.Google Scholar
26. Lemaître, , op. cit., p. 13.Google Scholar
27. Cf. Guiches, Gustave's eye-witness account: ‘En plein coeur de la Maison, un cratère s'est ouvert et sans arrêt, il vomit les uns sur les autres des blocs de fumée rougeoyants comme d'énormes globes de feu enroulés par des spirales de flammes, criblés par des gerbes d'étincelles, tandis que des explosions sourdes et des éclatements font croire, à chaque instant, que la toiture va sauter en l'air ou que tout va s'écrouler et s'anéantir dans le brasier intérieur’ (Le Spectacle: trots étapes du théâtre et de la vie parisienne de 1887 à 1914 (Paris: Spès, 1932), p. 170).Google Scholar
28. Letter to André Bernheim, quoted in the latter's Trente arts de théâtre (Paris: Lemerre, 1908), IV, 335.Google Scholar
29. Antoine, , Le Théâtre (Paris: Editions de France, 1932), I, 199.Google Scholar
30. Id., Mes Souvenirs sur le Théâtre-Libre (Paris: Fayard, 1921), p. 156.Google Scholar
