Une scénographie de Servandoni conservée pour les spectacles de l'Opéra à Paris: le décor de la ville de Thèbes du Triomphe de l'harmonie (1737)

Until now, the work of Jean‐Nicolas Servandoni for the lyric stages of Paris has only been known through archival papers, descriptions published in the Mercure de France and a handful of stage plans and sections. However, a drawing held in the Musée des arts décoratifs in Lyon allows us to see for the first time what one of his set designs for the stage of the Opéra may actually have looked like. Thanks to manuscript notes penned on the drawing in the eighteenth century, it is possible to accurately identify and attribute the drawing, of which no detailed examination has previously been undertaken. Although it does not show the stage picture in its entirety, the design – conceived in 1737 for the third entrée of Grenet and Lefranc de Pompignan's opéra‐ballet , Le triomphe de l'harmonie – carries an overlay, showing how a key moment in the drama was staged. It illustrates the moment at which Amphion, to protect the city of Thebes from attack by savages, magically causes new walls to rise into place ‘par le charme de sa voix’. Unpublished sources offer evidence of this scene's success, which was due in no small part to Servandoni, and to his involvement in the production just before he left the Opéra to create some even more spectacular settings at the Salle des Machines in the Tuileries Palace.