Triumph at Trianon

Considered one of the most beautiful historic theaters in Europe, le Théâtre de la Reine at Versailles was built between 1778 and 1779 by the architect Richard Mique at the request of Marie-Antoinette. A pupil of Christoph Willibald von Gluck in Vienna, Marie-Antoinette was fond of music, opera, and the theater, commissioning works from the poet Michel-Jean Sedaine and comic-opera composer André Grétry. In addition to the many command performances held in her private theater, plays were put on in which the queen herself took part. Appointed in rich, Louis XVIstyle, the diminuitive theater is part of the Triumph at Trianon the curtain rises on Marie-Antoinette’s theater at Versailles after a major restoration Petit Trianon Estate, which is dominated by a small mansion built between 1762 and 1768 by Ange-Jacques Gabriel for Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour. Given to Marie-Antoinette by Louis XVI, le Petit Trianon soon became the queen’s favorite residence. She expanded the estate, adding the Anglo-Chinese Gardens and Le Hameau (the Hamlet), a model farm, mill, and dairy, where she and her fellow court companions could pretend they were peasants. In time the suite of buildings would become inextricably linked with the events of the French Revolution. The queen was at Trianon in October 1789, when she was informed that an angry crowd from Paris was approaching the palace gates.