A Day in the Life of a 19th Century Petite Rat

A brief look into the day of Petite Rats as written by Camille Laurens and Theophile Gauntier

Early Mornings, Late Nights

The petite rat arrived at the Opera early in the morning. Often, she would spend 10-12 hours a week there for six days out of the week. She was "forbidden to complain, to speak, to laugh, to cry." The rat was a slave to her art. If the rat were to speak, there was swift and prompt punishments. In his lesser known text, The Rat, Theophile Gauntier wrote this of the petite rats. "They spend their morning rehearsing in a twilight twilight, with the red gleams of a few smoky lights, only understanding that it is daylight through the disconcerted streaks of light which slip through the trellises of the attic and the doors of the boxes." The rat will leave around 2 or 3 in the afternoon after long, strenuous work done not out of love for the art, but out of necessity.