«Il est vraiment inconcevable qu'elles soient encore si riches»: Les archives de l'Académie Royale de musique, entre Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra de Paris et archives nationales

From its founding in the mid-18th century, the archive collection at the Bibliothèque musicale de l'Opéra de Paris, divided between the Archives nationales and the Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra, suffered from neglect and poor preservation until the fortunate arrival in the 1870s of the librarian Théodore de Lajarte. He put the collection in order, created a catalogue, and gave us the archive we now have today. This article gives a detailed history of the archives, draws the portrait of some of the important characters who played a role in the history of cultural institutions in Paris in the 19 ^th century, and describes relevant parts of the archive collection.