On January 2nd 1773 the abbé Galiani wrote to his friend in Paris, Mme d'Epinay: ‘Qu'on voie Paris et Naples, on verra une légère esquisse du tout et du néant.’ He is referring to the dearth of interesting people and events he found on returning to his native Naples, in contrast to the flourishing social and cultural life which he had enjoyed with his many friends in Paris. Forced to leave the post he had held for ten years as secretary to the ambassador of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies because of a diplomatic blunder, Galiani dreaded his return to Naples, and his letters constantly complain of the intolerable conditions of what he termed his ‘exile’. While prone to a certain amount of exaggeration in his letters – thereby hoping to provoke sympathy amongst his Parisian correspondents – Galiani nevertheless had cause to complain of the intellectual ‘desert’ in which he now found himself. This is how he expressed it to Mme d'Epinay, his closest and most faithful correspondent:

Si vous ne me rendez pas ma gaîté, je n'écrirai plus à personne; car ici je n'ai rien qui me tourmente, si ce n'est que je n'ai ni d'amusements, ni de plaisirs, ni d'amis, ni d'écoliers, ni de dîners, ni de soupers, ni d'argent, ni de vanité, ni de gaîté, ni d'affaires agréables, ni d'amours. (I, 50–1)

It is therefore not surprising that an unusual theatrical event in Naples shook him out of the apathy into which he had retreated, and temporarily at least filled the Neapolitan ‘néant’ of which he complained. This was the arrival of a French theatre company; and for approximately two and a half months, from early January to mid-March 1773, Galiani's letters to Mme d'Epinay were almost entirely devoted to what he enthusiastically called his ‘Gazette des Spectacles’. The event could not fail to capture his undivided attention. The company, directed by Sennepart, was to perform seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French plays at the Teatro dei Fiorentini. Apart from delighting Galiani, this brief episode of theatrical history provides us with some interesting insights into the taste in drama, both French and Italian, at the mid-way point of the second half of the eighteenth century. In this article we propose to examine the choice of plays, and the reactions of the Neapolitan audiences, as reported by Galiani who, with his thorough and up-to-date knowledge of the French theatre and of the milieu which had inspired it, frequently amazes (and amuses) us with the perspicacity of the comments in his ‘Gazette’.