Historic Historic of an unfinished theatre | The rehabitation | Theatre Français de la Musique  In 1866, the Emperor Napoleon III decides the construction of a new theatre. It's a question of diverting the Court which accompanies the sovereign to his stays in Compiègne. The Emperor chooses a place by the palace where was the carmelites convent, immortalized by Georges Bernanos and the opera by Francis Poulenc. The works begun the year after, during the universal exhibition.  The architect was called Auguste-Gabriel Ancelet (1829-1895). First, pupil of Baltard, he was resident in the Villa Medicis. Some of his realisations are:  the front of the entrance of the Château de Pau and the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. Professor in the Ecole des Beaux Arts, architect of the Second Empire governement, Ancelet had the mission to take care about the Château de Compiègne. He is naturally choosed to edify the Theatre Impérial. A sum of 1.371.000 gold-francs is released. The building comes out of the earth.  The painter Elie Delaunay realizes a setting destinated to decorate the circular roof of the hall. That will naver take place. The 19th of July 1870, the war between France and Prussia breaks out. The Theatre Impérial becomes a building side and after the disaster of Sedan, the chances to see the hall open die away and for ever. The Second Empire took its ostentation and its entertain away.  Consequantly, the work of Ancelet stayed unfinished.Ancelet choosed an audacious system of metalic constractions for the superior parts of the edifice. Even if it represents particulary the Second empire, the Theatre Impérial architecture can not hide the similarity with the Teatro Olimpico in Vicinza, the theatre of Margavine in Bayreuth, the realizations by Gabriel  or Nicolas Ledoux. Finaly, the Theatre Impérial is exceptional by its accoustic qualities. All the personalities of the world of music who visited it have been admirative and amazed, as the famous conductor Carlo-Maria Giulini who considers the hall auditorium "as one of the most perfect in the world, more achieved than this one of Musikverein in Viena, still the reference in the world."

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