ABSTRACT
What most impressed Nicolas Karamzin when he arrived at the Paris Opera during his Grand Tour of the West was the beautiful blond stranger in his box who was wearing red roses. Of course the Opera was a still a prime spot to see and be seen—a habit Grimm sadly termed a “sickness without a cure”—but the high nobility’s dispersal throughout the theater pointed to a contrary urge. The fires occasioned near-continuous discussion in royal memoirs, pamphlets, and newspapers concerning theater layout and design. In his 1782 Essai sur l’architecture théâtrale, Pierre Patte summarized the position of many over the previous twenty years when he wrote that theaters must meet the demands “of seeing well and hearing well.” As with the increasingly heterogeneous placement of the spectators, the architecture of the theaters in the 1770s and 1780s showed signs of growing independence from the customs and hierarchies of the court, still a strong presence at mid-century.
