Backstage at the Paris Opéra in the 1830s

Abstract

As a young graduate student combing through inventory lists at the Archives Nationales in Paris many years ago, I frequently encountered the name of Louis Gentil, contrdleur of materials at the Paris Opera during the period of the Romantic ballet. His signature was affixed with a particularly lively flourish-a hint of his flamboyant personality-to the last page of each long, painstakingly compiled list of materials allocated for new productions at the Opera (items like taffeta ribbon, masks, heron feathers, artificial flowers, gold and silver dragons). And I noted, with a bit of affection and wistfulness, that as Monsieur Gentil grew older, his proud signature grew a bit shaky. Finally it disappeared altogether, and these long inventories were compiled and signed by a new contr6leur. Little did I know that Gentil was also the author of an altogether different sort of manuscript I was poring over a few miles away at another Parisian library, the Bibliotheque de l'Opera: Les Cancans de l'Opera, a fascinating multivolume collection of more than three hundred short essays about backstage life at the Opera during the mid-1830s