Une Mille et Une Nuits (A Thousand and One Nights)

For centuries the West has dreamed of the mirages of the East.
The stories of the Crusaders, travellers and merchants, the policy of the kings of France, the alliance of the Lys and the Crescent first, the relations forged by Louis XIV with the Sublime Porte, the embassies that have come to Versailles for distant countries, find literary fulfilment with the first translation by Antoine Galland of the tales of the “One Thousand and One Nights” in 1704.

If in France everything ends with songs, everything also happens, sooner or later, on the theatre. On all the stages, both on the trestles of fairground shows and on the stages of the very official theatres of the Royal Academy of Music and the Comédie-Française, sultanas and viziers enchant the public.
Rameau’s operas, plays by Molière or Racine, while waiting for Voltaire’s tragedies, abound in Turkish works, staged with the greatest care. Decors and costumes evoke a dream Orient, made of luxury, colours, perfumes, precious fabrics, damascened weapons, both cruel and sensual.

In the 19th century, Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign, the Eastern question, the conquest of Algeria inspired painting, literature, poetry…and fashion.
The journey to the Orient of romantic artists is an escape to paradise. Abandoning for a time the cities which are becoming industrialized and merge into the gray of the landscapes and the clothes, thirsty for local colour, the artists dream of freeing themselves from the corset of social conventions and curing their nostalgia by crossing the Mediterranean. Other conventions will arise, any ballet worthy of the name will distribute bayadères, almées and peris in a joyful mix offering all the treasures of exoticism.

Audiences never seem to tire of these celestial visions.
However, little by little, during the second half of the 19th century, the Orient became commonplace. The irruption of the Ballets Russes will awaken an exhausted West, once again the theatre will vibrate with the colours of Léon Bakst, will wildly applaud Nijinsky in the role of the golden slave in “Scheherazade”. Paul Poiret will transform women into sultanas, and a new translation of the tales of the “One Thousand and One Nights”, due to Doctor Mardrus, will be amply illustrated, declined, watered down, in particular in the form of children’s books.

The 20th century, travel and speed, will push the limits of the known world. However, a whole youth will make Kathmandu its distant dream, while fashion, taking advantage of “the” modes, will find the trace of caftans and turbans. Even if nowadays globalization reigns, the charms of this Orient of the “One Thousand and One Nights” are still very powerful on the stages, as evidenced by the splendours of “La Bayadère” or “Schéhérazade”. Drawings of sets and costumes creating on the stages an Orient of the “country of Opera”, animate the scenography which presents scenes taken from works taken from the Thousand and One Nights or their adaptation to the theater, the harem of Scheherazade, the Marouf shop, Cairo cobbler, the Sultana’s garden, Ali Baba’s cave, the Sultan’s lounge, Sindbad the Sailor’s embarkation port, the caravan stop, the “Bourgeois Gentleman” Turkish house.

The exhibition illustrates passages from the tales of the Thousand and One Nights which have directly or indirectly inspired various stage works. The costumes presented come either from productions of these works, or from productions of emblematic works such as “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme” and its Turkish scene, or from productions that appealed to oriental taste.