Salle Wagram, Historical performing arts center in 17th arrondissement, Paris, France.
Salle Wagram is a performing arts venue in Paris featuring a grand ballroom structure from the 19th century. The building showcases elaborately painted ceilings and historical railings that reveal its classical design.
Dourlans, a veteran of the Imperial Guard, opened a guinguette on this spot in 1812, outside the Fermiers généraux wall so Suresnes wine escaped the octroi. After Waterloo he turned it into the Bal Dourlans, with garden, dance floor and a first winter hall. Under the Second Empire the architect Adrien Fleuret, author of the Théâtre Marigny, designed the present hall, inaugurated in 1865; its painted ceiling was listed in 1981.
The name comes from the avenue, but the hall began as the Bal Dourlans, a guinguette opened by a veteran of the Imperial Guard. Its white marble counter, carved for the church of Petit Val at Sucy-en-Brie and looted during the Revolution, vanished after 1871. From 1945 American soldiers helped make it a jazz venue, and in the 1960s Spanish immigrants danced here at weekend bals.
The hall sits between Avenue de Wagram and Rue de Montenotte, a few hundred metres from the Arc de Triomphe; the official entrance at no. 39 Avenue de Wagram leads through a corridor of nearly 100 metres beneath the former Théâtre de l'Empire. Two stacked rooms are used: Salle Wagram (800 m²) upstairs and Salle Montenotte (600 m²) at street level. Since 2016 the hall has been equipped for 800 spectators for orchestral concerts.
The hall's excellent acoustics made it a classical recording venue from the 1950s: Carl Schuricht recorded a Beethoven symphony cycle with the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra, Pierre Monteux conducted Stravinsky ballets, and Maria Callas and Nicolai Gedda recorded the complete Carmen. In August 2000, La Traviata from Paris placed the orchestra under Zubin Mehta in the hall while the singers performed on location around the city.
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