This will not be the end of Le Bataclan’s 151 year-long history, according to venue co-manager Dominique Revert.
When French media company Lagardère took over Le Bataclan in September, all they knew was that they were purchasing a piece of Parisian musical history. Built in 1864 and designed in chinoiserie style by Charles Duval, the 1,500-seat venue has hosted everything from vaudeville to American folk hero “Buffalo Bill” Cody, was a movie palace in the mid-1900s, and has hosted musical acts as disparate as Jerry Lee Lewis, Snoop Dogg, Prince, the Backstreet Boys, Metallica, and Emmylou Harris.
Lagardère must’ve known that the people they were buying Le Bataclan from, Joel and Pascal Laloux, who had received threats on the venue from a group called the Army Of Islam—now one of the largest rebel groups in Syria—for their pro-Israel events at Le Bataclan. They could not have known that the venue was still being targeted by jihadists, nor could they have imagined events as staggering and surreal as those of last week happening mere months after taking control of the venue.
In the change in ownership, two long-time managers of the venue, Jules Frotos and Olivier Poubelle, were able to acquire small stakes in the business first opened as Le Grande Café Chinois-Théâtre Bataclan.
“The place is like family,” Maxime de Abreu, a writer for Les Inrockuptibles, told Billboard. “Everyone in France is hurt by this.”
But one of Le Bataclan’s co-managers doesn’t see any ending for the concert hall. “It will reopen, no question about it,” Dominque Revert said. “Hearts will be heavy for a few months, a few years. But we will reopen. We will not surrender.”
