Stage scenery for Les Danaïdes and the architectural language

At a time when the tragédie lyrique was becoming closer to the tragédie classique, especially with its themes and subjects being taken up at the Opéra, that institution was provoking complaints from the Comédiens-Français who, in a letter sent to the minister of the Maison du Roi, the Baron de Breteuil, dated March 2, 1784, denounced these ‘usurpations’. In it they highlighted the fact that at the Opéra, the music had the advantage of being able to enhance and beautify the plots. In fact, the Opéra possessed all the apparatus of the spectacle and of the ‘decorations’ (the French period term for scenery), allowing it to appeal to an audience hungry for emotions and sensations. What follows here primarily concerns the ‘decorations’ for Les Danaïdes, of which three executed designs, belonging to the collection of the architect and designer Pierre-Adrien Pâris (today kept in the Bibliothèque of Besançon) and brought together here for the first time, provide a visual testimony.