Le coup d'œil du spectateur: Spectatorial function and stage space in French theatre design, 1760-1784

The sightlines which architects such as Oppenord and Roubo the Younger drew on their theatre plans demonstrate an attempt to align stage spaces and optical fields. Indeed, the reform-minded architects of the period 1748 to 1784 applied geometrical forms to their plans, and adopted a terminology borrowed from optics, the science of light and vision. In focusing specifically on the theoretical texts and architectural drawings published between 1765 and 1784, we argue that this use of optical space indicates a dislocation between, on the one hand, the spatial representation which the French reformers promoted in their drawings and, on the other, stage perspective, which had, since the previous century, been associated with the influence of the Italian Baroque. In the 1780s, architects gradually abandoned the use of stage perspective, preferring instead a theatrical space modelled after an ostensibly natural optical encounter.