Our thesis discusses the process and consequences of the attribution, by the State, of a national label to five regional opera houses in France between 1996 and 2006. Through this event, we look closely at the current changes in the opera house as an organization which has traditionally been under municipal governance and is with this label repositioned under a governing body which includes the Region and the central State and its demands for greater visibility. Our objective is to understand the strategic renewal of opera houses outside Paris in a centralized political system where the State is said to guaranty cultural access and artistic quality. We do so by using the attribution of the national label as a marker and as a device that participates in the instrumentation of opera houses in a restricted market and a changing normative frame within which opera houses are brought to secure their own continuity. With a brief overlook at how opera houses have been transformed into a venue meant to entertain citizens and magnify cities, we give the reader an understanding of opera houses as conventional and regimented organizations forever bond to politics and the market. The particular organization of an opera house in France, the reasons behind the choices made and the applied methodology are then presented. Our inductive and multidisciplinary approach, supported by the critical posture adopted, leads us to the elaboration of a study where undetermined connections and human beings evolve within moderate constructivist ontology. We then suggest that the label, which gives rise to a perpetual strategic "remplissement" (Foucault), is inevitably remobilized to manage the side effects brought by its very existence. Power and legitimacy occupy in this dynamic a central place that we exemplify and discuss thoroughly. Our research presents an original way to understand the recent transformation of the French regional operas houses as expressed, and apprehended, by the attribution by the ministry of Culture and Communication of a "quality" label that enables them to gradually enter the growing mediated spheres already endorsed by cultural industries.

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   |texte=   At the feet of the great staircase : when the French State labels regional opera houses in the name or for the sake of quality
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