First published 2009
On July 14, 1789, angry French citizens stormed through Paris toward the Bastille. They broke into the Opera house and seized weapons from its stores. Yet somehow this symbol of royal excess escaped destruction during the Terror that followed. Victoria Johnson traces how the Paris Opera weathered the most violent political transformation in European history. She moves between two critical periods: the Opera's founding under Louis XIV in the 1660s and its survival during the Revolution a century later. Johnson examines royal documents, personal correspondence, and government records to reveal why Revolutionary leaders chose to protect rather than destroy this institution. The story involves singers and dancers, court ministers and entrepreneurs, corrupt managers and the Sun King himself. All played roles in creating and preserving what became one of the world's most famous cultural landmarks. Johnson shows how the Opera's unique status as a privileged symbol of French identity, established at its birth, became the key to its survival when that very identity came under deadly attack.
Genres: history, 20th-century, 19th-century, academic
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: historical-drama, institutional-survival
Setting: Paris, Bastille, France
Period: 1660s, 1789, 18th-century
281 pages · Hardcover · University of Chicago Press