Berlioz in Paris
Théâtre des Nouveautés
The Théâtre des Nouveautés, on the rue Vivienne opposite the Paris Bourse, was completed in 1826 and eventually inaugurated as a new vaudeville theatre on 1st March 1827. In the autumn of 1826, Berlioz, short of money and deprived of his allowance by his father, was forced to enlist as a chorister in the new theatre; the story of his successful audition for the post is told at length in the Memoirs (chapter 12). He was glad to be able to give up this humiliating source of income in the autumn of 1827, when his father eventually relented and restored his allowance: "the stupidity of the music I had to put up with in these little operas which were like vaudevilles, and in these great vaudevilles which pretended to be operas, would in the end have given me cholera or reduced me to a state of stupefaction" (Memoirs chapter 14).
The company closed a few years later, in February 1832, and for the next eight
years the theatre was used by the Opéra Comique. The building is no longer extant. The first photo shows the site of the theatre
as it is now; the second reproduces a contemporary engraving of 1829 from our
own collection.
© 2000-2006 (unless otherwise stated) Michel Austin and Monir Tayeb for all the photos, engravings and information on this and other Berlioz in Paris pages
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