This project stands between the history of the stage and theatre techniques and includes the mindsets and anthropological values attached to the Night. It incorporates political, cultural, dramaturgical, aesthetic and musicological factors which transcend the simple issue of the ‘night scene’.  

The interface between the visual and acoustic paradigm (dependent on stage lighting technology) takes form in line with the scene or genre, its night scenes based on the subtle dialectics of what is seen and what is heard. There are paradoxical affinities between the Night and the theatre and elective affinities between the Night and a singer’s voice. This is what we propose to test with night scenes from allegories in the court ballet and tragédie en musique through to the opéra comique in the Age of Enlightenment.