Backstage at the Revolution
How the Royal Paris Opera Survived the End of the Old Regime
- Contents
- Review Quotes

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 The Past in the Present
Foundings
Trajectories
2 The Storming of the Opera
On the Eve of Revolution
The Struggle for the Opera
3 The Perpetuation of Privilege
The City and the Theaters
The Victory of Privilege
4 Orpheus on the Seine
Opening Night at the Palais-Royal
The Founding of the Paris Opera
5 An Academy for Opera
Why an Academy?The Hybrid Opera
6 Opera de Luxe
The Second Coming of the Paris Opera
Luxurious Lully
7 The Phantom Founders
Luxury and Privilege at the Opera after Perrin and Lully
The War of Luxury and Simplicity
Conclusion: Surviving Revolution
Postscript
Notes
Bibliography
Index
“Backstage at the Revolution is one of those rare books masterfully combining historical detail with an engrossing theoretical narrative. Victoria Johnson has unearthed a prodigious amount of evidence about why the Paris Opera survived a revolution meant to eliminate any vestiges of privilege and grandeur. In terse prose, she demonstrates the power of sociology when it comes to explaining institutional persistence. A soaring achievement, one that will likely spur a new wave of historical research in organizational sociology and beyond.”
“In her compelling and beautifully illustrated Backstage at the Revolution Victoria Johnson updates classical institutional theories of organization to answer the question: Why did revolutionaries intent on destroying realms of privilege spare the royal Paris Opera? Its founders had imprinted the opera with the mark of a national treasure. For some revolutionaries it was a unique French accomplishment to be sustained, a hybrid of royal academy and public theater that was the height of artistic achievement, rather than a symbol of the Old Regime to be destroyed. This meticulously researched and colorfully presented study challenges the old regimes in organizational analysis and political studies to see their domains differently.”--Frank Dobbin, Harvard University
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