di Christophe Charle
in Memoria e Ricerca n.s. 29 (2008), p. 11
Analyzing the transformations of theatrical audiences in France, and particularly in Paris, during the XIXth century, the essay try to overcome the discourse produced by contemporaries about the public to explain his relevant changements. Many different, direct and indirect evidences allow us to draw a more complicated and multiform image of XIXth century audiences, that is defined not only by the new economic and commercial conditions of mass frequency, but by the new modes of perception and the new spectacular strategies of a growing entertainement business. The emotive and turbulent public that we can see at the beginning of the century is gradually transformed in a fascinated crowd at his end.