In January 1770, the Académie Royale de Musique—more colloquially known as the Paris Opéra—inaugurated its theatre, having lost its original home to a fire in 1762. This new theatre, the first in Paris built specifically for operatic productions, would also meet a fiery end just over a decade later, in June 1781. The lifespan of this theatre frames one of the most tumultuous periods in French operatic history. This decade saw six different administrations, ranging from an authoritarian entrepreneur to self-governance by the performers themselves, each of which employed various tactics to achieve their artistic goals. Under the guidance of these administrations, the Opéra underwent a radical shift in its repertoire and programming. Long considered old-fashioned in its maintenance of operas up to a century old, by decade’s end the Opéra had largely abandoned its ancient works and embraced newly composed operas. The Opéra also shifted its programming from repeated performances of a single opera to near-daily variety, with the number of different works performed over the course of a single season trebled by the end of the decade. These quite radical shifts in French operatic culture have gone largely overlooked due to their convergence with the arrival of Christoph Gluck in 1774. While Gluck plays an important part in the history of this period—his arrival in Paris signaled the end of the Paris Opéra’s isolation from mainstream European operatic practice—his works have dominated the discourse, obfuscating both the contributions of other composers and the context of the institution itself. Combatting the notion that Gluck was the driving force behind these systemic shifts in late eighteenth-century French opera, this dissertation approaches the period from an institutional perspective. I examine the goals and limitations of each administration and argue that the directors, far more than individual composers, had a direct impact on the works that appeared on stage, how they were presented to the audience, and what constituted a “French” opera. I approach the repertoire of the Opéra on a quotidian basis, focusing on the interplay of operas over the course of a season rather than the theatre’s most celebrated works. This approach sheds light on relatively unknown composers and operas that are deserving of more in-depth study and draws attention to genres beyond the tragédie lyrique that have received limited attention. It is only through examining the institutional operations and comprehensive repertoire of the Opéra that we can understand how it functioned, both as a for-profit artistic venture that needed to please its paying audience, as well as a site of national identity.