[2] Less than two months after its inauguration, the Théâtre hosted the world premiere of the Ballets Russes' Rite of Spring, which provoked one of the most famous classical music riots.

The theatre is built of reinforced concrete and features rectangular forms, straight lines, and decoration attached to the outside on plaques of marble and stucco, which was a radical departure from the Art Nouveau style,[5][6][7] and, at the time, shockingly plain in appearance.

[8] The building includes an exterior bas relief by Antoine Bourdelle, a dome by Maurice Denis, paintings by Édouard Vuillard and Jacqueline Marval, and a stage curtain by Ker-Xavier Roussel.

[10] Gabriel Astruc was the first director of the theatre, and programmed contemporary music, dance and opera, including works by Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky.

This was followed the next day with a performance of Hector Berlioz's opera Benvenuto Cellini conducted by Felix Weingartner which included a "dance spectacular" by Anna Pavlova.

Later there was a series of concerts devoted to Beethoven conducted by Weingartner and featuring the pianists Alfred Cortot and Louis Diémer, and the soprano Lilli Lehmann.

The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam conducted by Willem Mengelberg gave two concerts: Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and the Paris premiere of Fauré's opera Pénélope (10 May).

[12] Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes presented the company's fifth season, although their first in the new theatre, opening on 15 May with Igor Stravinsky's The Firebird, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade (as choreographed by Michel Fokine), and the world premiere of Debussy's Jeux (with choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky and designs by Léon Bakst).

Some in the audiences had been offended by the depiction on stage of a tennis game in Jeux, but this was nothing compared to the reaction to the ritual sacrifice in Stravinsky's Rite of Spring on 29 May.

[12] Carl Van Vechten described the scene: A certain part of the audience was thrilled by what it considered to be a blasphemous attempt to destroy music as an art, and, swept away with wrath, began very soon after the rise of the curtain, to make cat-calls and to offer audible suggestions as to how the performance should proceed.

It appeared in Jan Kounen's 2009 film Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, starring Mads Mikkelsen and Anna Mougalis in the title roles.

The theater was the main venue for the 2006 romantic comedy Fauteuils d'orchestre (Orchestra Seats), starring Cécile de France and directed by Danièle Thompson.