The Theatrephone, the telephone, the phonograph and the gramophone, all of them technologies based on the principle of blind listening, have each been used variously by radio, theatre, as well as cinema. Such amplified sounds are disincarnate, spectral presences. This form of listening is still found in contemporary plays when voices get severed from bodies and noises unhinged from objects. One finds it in the plays of Maurice Maeterlinck (The Blind, Intruder, Interior, The Death of the Tintagiles), Samuel Beckett (The Last Tape, Eh Joe, Not I, Rockaby, Embers), Carlo Emilio Gadda (Eros e Priapo, San Giorgio in Casa Brocchi), Ibsen (En Folkefiende, Gengangere, Bygmester Solness, Når vi døde vågner), Jean Tardieu (Une voix sans personne), Marguerite Duras (L’Amante anglaise, India Song, Savannah Bay) and several others. This article offers suggestions for developing an archaeology of mise-en-scene regarding this form of listening by examining a few devices in use at the end of the 19th century, a period rich in technological innovations.