Archives of the Dance: The Library and the Archives of the Paris Opera: The Opera Preserved

Abstract

My own memories of the Library and the Museum of the Paris Opera, and the archives of the theatre that are now housed in the Archives Nationales, go back nearly 40 years. To enter the Library, in the western pavilion of the Opera one passes through a little iron gate, ascends a ramp that sweeps up to the elaborate portal crowned by the Napoleonic eagle, and makes one's way up a wide staircase to the beautiful circular reading-room. It is the most congenial place to read and ruminate, and at the same time grander surroundings can hardly be imagined. For this the research student has to thank the course of history that predestined the fall of the Second Empire while the theatre was being built. For this corner of the Opera was originally designed as the grand ceremonial entrance for the Emperor of the French, an intention that was frustrated when Napoleon III was captured at Sedan in 1870 and deposed. This is the explanation of the Napoleonic eagle, and of the ciphers 'N E' that decorate the lamp standards on the