Projets d’un grand théâtre à Toulouse au XIXe siècle

Abstract

Nineteenth-century projects for a large theatre in Toulouse. At the end of the eighteenth century Toulouse, unlike Paris and other provincial capitals, boasted no monumental theatre, but only multi-purpose halls, the most important of these being located, from 1736, in one of the wings of the Capitole, the town hall of Toulouse. In 1808 Jacques-Pascal Virebent, the town architect, drew up a project for a new theatre, but the imperial authorities prefered to undertake the restoration of an existing one. The new theatre hall which still exists in the Capitole was designed by Jacques Cellerier and finished by Guy de Gisors between 1816 and 1818, but only as a temporary solution. In 1844 the local authorities organized a competition, won by the architect Esquié, but this project for a new theatre was not pursued. It was only in 1876 that a new project, linked with the completion of the Capitole, was undertaken by Auguste Dieulafoy. This theatre was opened in 1880, but it burned down in 1917. The paradoxical conclusion of this chronicle : the provisional solution lasted longer than the permanent one.