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Located at 8 rue Saulnier, in the 9th Arondissement, it was built as an opera house by the architect Plumeret. It opened 2 May, 1869 as the Folies Trévise, with fare including operettas, comic opera, popular song, and gymnastics. It was renamed the Folies Bergères on 13 September 1872.
Josephine Baker, a black American expatriate became an "overnight sensation" at the Folies Bergères in 1926 with her suggestive "banana dance."
Edouard Manet's 1882 well-known painting A Bar at the Folies-Bergere depicts a bar-girl, one of the demimondaine, standing before a mirror.