
Kings & Pawns:
The Bloodlines of Bourbon-Orléans
BY LAURA KUHN
2015
FOREWORD
The illustrious city of New Orleans is indeed an enigma with many a tale to be told.
Her history is a poem written by time and regaled by those who choose to remember.
Kings & Pawns is a storybook about her legends of rulers, leaders, countrymen, and fools.
PART ONE:
Théâtre d’Orléans (The Orleans Theatre)

In the heart of Vieux Carré, when the French colony of La Nouvelle-Orléans was in its infancy, a broad avenue stretched itself in the center of town. This avenue bore the name Orleans and continues to remain the threaded needle sewing the city into one wholehearted metropolis. It is here, in the blessed shadow of St. Louis Cathedral, that history lives in an edifice of controversy, sacrament, and culture.
During a time rich in all poetic growths of population and customs, New Orleans obtained its picturesque features through a vibrant history of diversity, resilience, and romance. As a repository of cultures reigning from African and Native American to the French and Spanish, the site of the original city, which is now known as the French Quarter, crafted itself as a quintessential mistress of the South.
Three hundred years ago, in days of the New World, blank pages of the map were being filled with streets and rues for immigrants, peasants, and aristocrats. The cultural blend of ethnicities generated a new civilization in a semitropical landscape built from the swamp and defined by urbanity. This anthropological mix of French, African, and Spanish is often referred to as Creole, a term used in many cultural, culinary, linguistic, and architectural variations, distinguishing itself from American culture. It is this Creole society that built the backbone of a city whose eccentric authenticity can never be imitated or replaced.
Thriving on the heartbeats of esoteric grandeur and charm, the rhythms on the city streets capture the spirit of festivity. Here, sensory pleasure is a lifestyle, and even during the early days of New Orleans, dramatic performance was in high demand. The Creoles sought entertainment, craving European opera and ballet. From this wild intrigue, a small theater was constructed of native lumber on St. Peter Street in 1792. Théâtre de St. Pierre held its first operatic performance in 1796 with André Grétry’s comedic aria, Silvain, introducing French opera to New Orleans.
When Théâtre de St. Pierre closed twelve years later due to poor construction, the theater manager Louis Tabary envisioned a new theater one block away with a French name Théâtre d’Orléans, known in English as the Orleans Theatre. Laying brick on Orleans Avenue between Rue Royal and Bourbon Street, Tabary began constructing a grand new hall. Meanwhile, Théâtre de St. Philippe, also known as the Washington Ballroom, opened in January 1808 with the premiere performance of Etienne Méhul’s one-act opera, Une Folie (The Madness).
By 1809, an actual opera season was regularly scheduled at Théâtre de St. Philippe, and Tabary was anxious to complete his future Théâtre d’Orléans. Construction was delayed until 1815 when the Orleans Theatre finally opened its doors for Creole society. The French-provincial building rivaled in grandeur and luxury like the old theaters of Europe, but arson brought its glory to ash one year after its debut.
After the devastating fire, the Orleans property was too valuable to sit in burned remains for long. John Davis, a New Orleans entrepreneur who came from France via Saint-Domingue, quickly gained control over the lot. He rebuilt Théâtre d’Orléans and added a grand ballroom known as Salle d’Orléans, or the Orleans Ballroom.
Davis hired British-born American neoclassical architect Henry Latrobe, who designed the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., to build this new ballroom and theater in the hopes of outshining any competition with theatricals, concerts, and balls.
Directly from France to Louisiana, in November 1819, multiple dramatic corps traveled to Théâtre d’Orléans for its reopening. The theater was a masterpiece of classic architecture with its lower story of Roman Doric order and upper columns fashioned with ornate Corinthian flutes and elaborate capitals.
Housing an interior of excellent scenic arrangements, whether pit or parquette, the theater offered elevated and spacious seating. One gallery and two tiers of boxes shaped a theatrical experience to afford satisfaction for spectators throughout the hall. A unique feature of the Orleans Theatre included lattice-grated boxes at each side which allowed a person in mourning to enjoy the performance without being seen by the public crowd.
Like film and television today, theater in that era offered a source of unlimited amusement. Great interest sparked New Orleans society, mystifying audiences with imported companies of singers, musicians, and actors from Europe each season. In autumn, as a pleasant winter’s night hushed the Southern city, Théâtre d’Orléans reigned supreme as New Orleans’ most important venue for regular operatic performances in the period prior to the Civil War.
During those years, Davis introduced Orleanian audiences to a number of important scores, including Ferdinand Hérold’s Zampa, a popular favorite in the 19th century. Four operas by Gioachino Rossini – La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie), La Donna del Lago (The Lady of the Lake), Le Comte Ory (The Count Ory), and L’Italiana in Algeri (The Italian Girl in Algiers) – received their United States premieres at Théâtre d’Orléans. Popularity of Rossini’s Le Comte Ory became all the rage, even naming the coffeehouse beside the theater “Café Le Comte Ory” in an ode to the opera.
With decorum and brilliant dress, the circles of Creole society flocked to Théâtre d’Orléans for the next forty years. Ladies in full evening costume and men of taste enjoyed performances in the French language, each stock company respectable and each orchestra excellent. It pleased the city to have such manner and strict adherence to nature and history, lending itself to the dawn of a great civilization.
Seating approximately thirteen-hundred persons, the theater was an unpretentious yet splendid achievement. From music stands to orchestral chairs, from ticket window to wardrobe, John Davis had spared nothing, making enormous sacrifices in a long journey that had at last succeeded. New Orleans was dubbed “The Opera Capital of North America” throughout the 1800s as numerous operas by great European master composers premiered for Orleanian onlookers.
By this time, New Orleans was a part of the United States, having been sold from France to America during the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. The Americans had not yet acquired a taste for the French opera, and a man named James Caldwell opened a theater on Camp Street offering English operas in 1823. Caldwell was the previous manager of Théâtre de St. Philippe and worked as an actor at Théâtre d’Orléans. His ruthless competitiveness has become legend as he practiced a crushing system of an all-or-nothing approach, almost putting himself in financial ruin while trying to drive his business enemies into the ground.
Caldwell produced somewhat diluted versions of opera at the Camp Street Theatre, including Weber’s Der Freischütz (The Marksman) and Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro). Meanwhile, Davis continued stunning audiences with Boieldieu’s La Dame Blanche (The White Lady) and Gasparo Spontini’s La Vestale (The Vestal Virgin) at the Orleans Theatre. But in 1835, both theaters vied for the honor of the first New Orleans staging of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable (Robert the Devil). While the Camp’s version was performed first in March, it was generally conceded that the version heard in May at Théâtre d’Orléans came closer to both the singing and the staging demands of true opera.
Later that year, Caldwell closed his Camp Street Theatre and opened the first St. Charles Theatre, hiring opera companies from Havana to perform Italian opera. The rivalry between Davis and Caldwell intensified greatly. The newly opulent St. Charles Theatre had a seating capacity of forty-one hundred, while further enriching the local repertoire by staging operas never before seen in America, such as Vincenzo Bellini (Norma, 1836), Gaetano Donizetti (Parisina, 1837), and Rossini (Semiramide, 1837).
John Davis needed a new edge. His Orleans Theatre continued to offer the operas of Jacques Halévy, Adolph Adam, Daniel Auber, and Giacomo Meyerbeer, relying on the Creole population’s love of all things French. Inspired by his own love of gambling, Davis set up an elegant gaming parlor. Card games and gambling had, up to that point, been a socially unacceptable private pleasure usually played in riverfront dives or dens of iniquity. But Davis made gambling chic and sophisticated with games of écarté, brag, faro and vingt-et-un (blackjack). He served fine wine and exquisite fare, and soon the wealthy Orleanians hungrily flocked to his chambers to indulge in game and chance.
While Davis’ luck flourished, an ill-fated fire destroyed the St. Charles Theatre in 1842. During these antebellum years, structures like a public theater were vulnerable to fires due to open gas and candle flames, flammable scenery and costumes, and theatergoers who smoked during performances. Caldwell rebuilt the St. Charles Theatre, only to lose it to another blaze at the end of the century.
Théâtre d’Orléans experienced its golden age during those years. The gaming parlor and ballroom brimmed with worldly patrons who loved the drama, the dancing, the dice, and the dealers.
Yet all good things must come to an end. By the end of the 1850s, the structure of the Orleans Theatre had deteriorated badly and John Davis had met his own demise. The death of John Davis was felt by the entire city as he was not only a great entrepreneur but a veteran of the Battle of New Orleans. His funeral was one of the largest the city had ever seen, paying last tribute to a man whose long and useful career always retained society’s esteem and great regard. Not long after his memorial service at the old Cathedral, a terrible conflagration took hold of Théâtre d’Orléans, destroying it henceforth.
While Théâtre d’Orléans was never revived after the 1866 fire, the block of Orleans Avenue did not see the end of entertainment in its midst. In 1883, a man named Frederick William Stempel came to New Orleans with a borrowed tent, borrowed money, and a pseudonym for his contortionist act. He called himself Signor Faranta, and with just eight Mexican dollars in his pocket, he used ingenuity and showmanship to become proprietor of the most successful variety theater in the city.
Signor Faranta’s Iron Theatre opened that year on the corner of Orleans and Bourbon Street, becoming home to vaudeville entertainments for the following six years. Signor Faranta performed the best “bending act” in the business, contorting his body into unique positions and shapes. His Iron Building in the Quarter seated an audience of five thousand to view tricks and illusions by performers in the foot-lights of a tented show. With admiration and praise by various strata of society, the mystery of studied performance art kept New Orleans in awe of prominent actors and actresses in their abounding anecdotes.
Today no trace of the Iron Theatre can be found, and while Signor Faranta’s legend may have simmered to a mere whisper of the past, history embraces the theatrical and circus life from Shakespeare’s time to the present day with its secrets from legitimate stage to sawdust arena.