From the moment it moved to Rue de Laval in 1886 until it closed down in 1897, the Chat Noir cabaret programmed shadow plays. Its repertoire could be said to include two types of plays: sung plays, often epic and lyrical, and commented plays, whose tone was more satirical and comical. Like other Parisian cabarets, café-concerts, and music-halls, the Chat Noir therefore offered eclectic events, staging plays of various tones and shapes.

Le Sphinx (The Sphinx) is an epic sung from beginning to end; it was put on during the last year of the cabaret. It exploits the themes and techniques which made the Chat Noir shadow theatre successful: military tableaux reminiscent of Caran d’Ache’s work, biblical motifs dear to Georges Fragerolle and Henri Rivière, scenes with crowds and processions, and cinematic transitions between the tableaux. Le Sphinx brings together various historical times, from early antiquity to the 19th century. In commented plays, this technique is often used as a means of parody; here, however, it is used to make a dreamy eulogy of a fanciful ancient Eastern world, whose image was rekindled by recent archaeological excavations and discoveries.

To laud the Sphinx of Egypt, the narrator dedicates his entire song to him and mentions a legend (which is in fact used as a pretext to go far back in time). According to this legend, the Sphinx sees every people in the history of the Levant pass before him every night. From tableau to tableau, the narrator describes these nightly apparitions, thus crossing centuries, from the days of the Pharaohs to Napoleon’s empire, showing the Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs Christians, etc. The legend is followed by regrets. The narrator mourns these great and epic peoples, then ventures into eschatological considerations, predicting that the Sphinx will survive the Apocalypse…