Théâtres romantiques à Paris — Collections du musée Carnavalet — Musée de la Vie Romantique — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: March 13 → July 15, 2012

In the first half of the 19th century, Paris was the international capital for theatre; all genres, from Vaudeville to opera seria and from melodrama to pantomime flourished in the highest concentration of theatres in Europe at the time: Comédie-Française, Ambigu, Porte Saint-Martin, Théâtre-Italien, and also Funambules, Gaîté, Variétés and Gymnase…

While the most literary influences, from Shakespeare to Goethe and from Byron to Victor Hugo were creating new styles there, an astonishing intellectual upheaval brought together the greatest theatrical actors — Talma, Mlle Mars, Mlle Rachel -, the most famous opera composers — Rossini, Bellini, Meyerbeer —, the most admired divas — Maria Malibran, Pauline Viardot, Marietta Alboni,– and the most adulated stars of ballet– Marie Taglioni, Fanny Elssler and Carlotta Grisi —, not forgetting the mime artist par excellence, Gaspard Deburau.

Over one hundred works from the Musée Carnavalet–paintings, water colours, drawings, decors, costume designs, memorabilia–focus on this creativity and evoke the greatest figures of the time.

In the poetic, premices of “enclos Chaptal" (Chaptal Enclosure), where the painter Ary Scheffer used to gather celebrities from the actors scene with his neighbours from the Nouvelle Athènes district, including writers (George Sand, Ivan Turgenev, Charles Dickens), divas (La Malibran and her sister, Pauline Viardot) and musicians (Frederic Chopin, Gioachino Rossini before Charles Gounod), the Musée de la Vie Romantique is the ideal showcase for presenting such an exhibition.