Folies Bergère
The Folies Bergère is a Paris music hall founded in 1869, known for elaborate revues combining music, dance, comedy, and spectacle.
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère: Édouard Manet’s 1882 painting depicts a barmaid in the Folies-Bergère amid a crowded hall. Manet made the venue’s bar and reflective spectacle the setting for a landmark modern painting.
Music hall: A theatrical venue and entertainment form presenting varied popular acts, often including songs, dance, comedy, and acrobatics. The Folies Bergère belongs to the Paris music-hall tradition.
Revue: A theatrical entertainment made of loosely connected songs, sketches, dances, and visual numbers. This format organized the Folies Bergère’s succession of unrelated stage attractions.
Belle Époque: A period of relative peace and prosperity in Western Europe from the late nineteenth century to 1914. The Folies Bergère is widely associated with Belle Époque urban glamour.
La Revue nègre: A 1925 Paris revue featuring Black American performers, including Josephine Baker, with jazz and dance. The Folies Bergère later staged a revue that made Baker an international star.
Parisian Belle Époque: The period of relative peace and cultural flowering in Paris from the late nineteenth century to 1914. The venue’s spectacular revues became part of the era’s urban leisure culture.
Proscenium: The architectural frame separating a stage from the auditorium in a theater. The framed stage made large scenic reveals and visual tableaux legible to the hall.
Orientalism: The representation of Eastern societies through Western cultural ideas that often exoticize and stereotype them. Some revue imagery drew on exoticizing conventions that shaped European stage spectacle.
Josephine Baker: An American-born French entertainer, dancer, and singer who became a major star in 1920s Paris. Her performances at the venue became emblematic of its interwar revue culture.
Alphonse Chéret: A French painter and lithographer whose colorful posters helped establish modern advertising poster art. His posters promoted Parisian entertainments, including music-hall spectacles.