La guerre des théâtres : concurrence et inventivité à la Foire Saint-Germain (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles)

The Saint-Germain Fair was the oldest and most prosperous seasonal fair in Paris. Located near the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, it lasted about two months, from Carnival until Palm Sunday. It was divided into quarters, alleys and courtyards, and hosted various categories of artists and craftsmen: jewelers, goldsmiths or dealers in prints and paintings. A place of license and pleasure, its true appeal for Parisians came less from the commercial activity taking place there than from the few theatres that, since 1678, set its rhythm.

Thus, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Saint-Germain Fair was a key venue of theatrical life. Faced with bans imposed by the Opéra and the Comédie-Française, fairground show entrepreneurs doubled their creativity and developed monologues, plays with placards, puppets, comic operas and pantomimes in halls that had nothing to envy Paris's major institutions.

This lecture will be given by Françoise Rubellin, professor at the University of Nantes, director of the CETHEFI (Centre d’étude des théâtres de la foire et de la comédie Italienne), and Paul François, research engineer at the CNRS (Laboratoire d’archéologie médiévale et moderne en Méditerranée).