The Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin is a venerable theatre and opera house at 18, Boulevard Saint-Martin in the 10th arrondissement of Paris. It was first built very rapidly in 1781 under the direction of Nicolas Lenoir (1726-1810) to house the Paris Opéra, whose previous home, the second Salle du Palais-Royal, had burned down on 8 June 1781.
- Venue
- Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin
- Town
- Paris, FR
- Capacity
- 2,000
The Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin is a venerable theatre and opera house at 18, Boulevard Saint-Martin in the 10th arrondissement of Paris. It was first built very rapidly in 1781 under the direction of Nicolas Lenoir (1726-1810) to house the Paris Opéra, whose previous home, the second Salle du Palais-Royal, had burned down on 8 June 1781. The new theatre had a capacity of about 2,000 spectators and included a parterre with the lowest-priced tickets sold only to males who stood throughout the performances, an amphitheatre, and four rows of boxes. The Opéra used the theatre from 27 October 1781 until August 1794. The theatre was destroyed by fire during the Paris Commune of 1871 and replaced in 1873 with a building designed by the architect Oscar de la Chardonnière (d. 1881), who enlisted the aid of the sculptor Jacques-Hyacinthe Chevalier (1825-1895) in the design of the new facade. The new interior was designed by H. Chevalier. With relatively brief interruptions, the theatre has been in continuous operation since. 1783: La caravane du Caire, opéra-ballet in three acts by André Grétry 1806: Ramire, ou le fils naturel, melodrama in 3 acts by Philippe Jacques de La Roche, music by Francesco Bianchi. 1818: Les Deux Colons, a one-act play interspersed with verses by Joseph Aude and James Harvey D'Egville 1849: Le Postillon de Saint-Valéry, opéra-comique by Auguste Pilati 1849: Le pasteur, ou l’evangile et le foyer, a play by Émile Souvestre and Eugène Bourgeois 1874: a stage version of Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, adapted by Verne and Adolphe d'Ennery, which ran 415 performances (before its subsequent very long run at the Théâtre du Châtelet) 1880: L'Arbre de Noël, operetta by Alexandre Charles Lecocq and Georges Jacobi 1887: La Tosca, written by Victorien Sardou for Sarah Bernhardt, with a hugely successful first run of 200 performances 1897: the original Cyrano de Bergerac, the best-known work of Edmond Rostand, with Benoît-Constant Coquelin in