Comédie Française at Odéon. The theater at the Place de l'Odéon, built to house the Comédie Française, opened in 1783. The new hall held about 200 more spectators than the Thuileries theater, where the royal actors had preformed for most of the century; more importantly, considerably more of the seats were in loges. This hand-colored engraving, by Jean-François Janninet from a drawing by Jean-Nicolas Louis Durand from the 1780s, is reproduced here from the BCF.

From A field of honor: writers, court culture and public theater in French literary life from Racine to the Revolution by Gregory S. Brown