Théâtre des Variétés, on boulevard Montmartre since 1807

The Théâtre des Variétés on boulevard Montmartre was inaugurated on 24 June 1807 by Mademoiselle Montansier, evicted from the Palais-Royal by decree. At 77 she won Napoleon’s help and had Jacques Cellerier and Jean-Antoine Alavoine build a hall beside the passage des Panoramas, which opened with Désaugiers’s Le Panorama de Momus.

Alexandre Dumas premiered Kean there in 1836. From 1864 Jacques Offenbach gave it his greatest successes, to librettos by Meilhac and Halévy: La Belle Hélène, Barbe-Bleue, La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, La Périchole and Les Brigands. Zola made it the scene of his heroine’s triumph in Nana, and Marguerite Gautier, the Lady of the Camellias, kept a box there.

During the siege of 1870 the hall served as a field hospital. On 20 June 1907 it screened Michel Carré’s L’Enfant prodigue, the first feature film produced in Europe. Robert de Flers and Gaston de Caillavet staged their comedies there, Reynaldo Hahn premiered Ciboulette in 1923 and Marcel Pagnol Topaze in 1928.

Its façade and vestibule have been listed historic monuments since 1974, the auditorium registered the same year. On boulevard Montmartre, in the 2nd arrondissement, it remains a private theatre devoted to comedy, a member of the Théâtres parisiens associés.