98-539: Georges-Léon-Jules-Marie Feydeau ( French: [ʒɔʁʒ fɛ.do] ; 8 December 1862 – 5 June 1921) was a French playwright of the Belle Époque era, remembered for his farces , written between 1886 and 1914. Feydeau was born in Paris to middle-class parents and raised in an artistic and literary environment. From an early age he was fascinated by the theatre, and as a child he wrote plays and organised his schoolfellows into
196-423: A passport and even reside abroad with minimal bureaucratic regulation. World War I, mass transportation, the spread of literacy, and various citizenship concerns changed this. The Belle Époque featured a class structure that ensured cheap labour. The Paris Métro underground railway system joined the omnibus and streetcar in transporting the working population, including those servants who did not live in
294-462: A sanatorium at Rueil (now Rueil-Malmaison), near Paris. He died there in 1921 at the age of fifty-eight. Feydeau was born at his parents' house in the Rue de Clichy, Paris, on 8 December 1862. His father, Ernest-Aimé Feydeau (1821–1873), was a financier and a moderately well-known writer, whose first novel Fanny (1858) was a succès de scandale and earned him some notoriety. It was condemned from
392-512: A Paris theatre – "I could return to it again and again with pleasure". He predicted that the piece "will have an interminable run", and it ran far into the following year for a total of 434 performances. An English version of the play, called The Other Fellow opened in London in September 1893 and ran for three months. Feydeau's next play, Le Système Ribadier (The Ribadier System, 1892), had
490-699: A cafe patron and wounded several others. France enjoyed relative political stability at home during the Belle Époque. The sudden death of President Félix Faure while in office took the country by surprise, but had no destabilising effect on the government. The most serious political issue to face the country during this period was the Dreyfus affair . Captain Alfred Dreyfus was wrongly convicted of treason, with fabricated evidence from French government officials. Antisemitism directed at Dreyfus, and tolerated by
588-551: A co-author, and not all were farcical; Le Ruban (The ribbon, 1894, in collaboration with Maurice Desvallières ), is a comedy about a man's strenuous efforts to gain a state honour, and Le Bourgeon (The bud) is a comedy of manners with serious moments. The latter had a respectable run of 92 performances, but Feydeau's greatest successes were in farce. He said that he made so much money from La Dame de chez Maxim that he could afford to take two years' break from writing and devote himself instead to his hobby, painting. That play remains
686-694: A co-author, he wrote seventeen full-length plays between 1892 and 1914, many of which have become staples of the theatrical repertoire in France and abroad. They include L'Hôtel du libre échange ( ' The Free Exchange Hotel ' , 1894), La Dame de chez Maxim ( ' The lady from Maxim's ' , 1899), La Puce à l'oreille ( ' A flea in her ear ' , 1907) and Occupe-toi d'Amélie! ( ' Look after Amélie ' , 1908). The plays of Feydeau are marked by closely observed characters, with whom his audiences could identify, plunged into fast-moving comic plots of mistaken identity, attempted adultery, split-second timing and
784-616: A coma and died in the sanatorium at Rueil on 5 June 1921, aged fifty-eight. After a funeral at Sainte-Trinité, Paris , he was buried in the Montmartre Cemetery . Feydeau wrote more than twenty comic monologues , and provided librettos for the composers Gaston Serpette , Alfred Kaiser and Louis Varney , but his reputation rests on those of his plays known in English as farces . He did not use that term for any of his works: he called them vaudevilles or comédies. The vaudeville,
882-454: A comic angle, but they must never be allowed to say or do anything which is not strictly demanded, first by their character and secondly by the plot". Although in private life he was known for his wit, he carefully avoided it in his plays, holding that witty theatrical dialogue interrupted the action. The critic W. D. Howarth sums up Feydeau's typical dramatic template as "a nightmare sequence of events in otherwise unremarkable lives". In general
980-595: A damn'", 1916) "astringently funny … Feydeau's last dazzling gasp". Feydeau had long been subject to depression, but in mid-1919 his family, alarmed at signs of a severe deterioration in his mental condition, called in medical experts; the diagnosis was dementia caused by tertiary syphilis . The condition was incurable, and Feydeau's sons arranged for him to be admitted to a leading sanatorium at Rueil (now Rueil-Malmaison). He spent his last two years there, imagining himself to be Napoleon III appointing ministers and issuing invitations to his coronation. Feydeau sank into
1078-560: A different glamour, pursued in the cabarets of Montmartre . Large public buildings such as the Opéra Garnier devoted enormous spaces to interior designs as Art Nouveau show places. After the mid-19th century, railways linked all the major cities of Europe to spa towns like Biarritz , Deauville , Vichy , Arcachon and the French Riviera . Their carriages were rigorously divided into first-class and second-class, but
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#17327831603511176-511: A drama group. In his teens he wrote comic monologues and moved on to writing longer plays. His first full-length comedy, Tailleur pour dames [ fr ] ( ' Ladies' tailor ' ), was well received, but was followed by a string of comparative failures. He gave up writing for a time in the early 1890s and studied the methods of earlier masters of French comedy, particularly Eugène Labiche , Alfred Hennequin and Henri Meilhac . With his technique honed, and sometimes in collaboration with
1274-517: A fair run in Paris and was successfully produced in Berlin, and subsequently (under the title His Little Dodge ) in London and New York. In 1894 Feydeau collaborated with Desvallières on Le Ruban (The ribbon), a comedy about a man desperately manoeuvring for appointment to the Légion d'honneur . At the same time, after a certain amount of similar manoeuvring on his own account, Feydeau was appointed to
1372-507: A far-reaching impact on European writers, and ran editions in London, Paris, Saint Petersburg, and Berlin. Paris's popular bourgeois theatre was dominated by the light farces of Georges Feydeau and cabaret performances. Theatre adopted new modern methods, including Expressionism, and many playwrights wrote plays that shocked contemporary audiences either with their frank depictions of everyday life and sexuality or with unusual artistic elements. Cabaret theatre also became popular. Musically,
1470-522: A favourite with French audiences; in English-speaking countries A Flea in Her Ear became the most popular. The critic S. Beynon John contrasts Feydeau's farce with that of the English theatre of the same period – the latter "cosy and genial", and Feydeau's "sharply subversive". John also contrasts Feydeau with the earlier French farceur, Eugène Labiche: "Labiche's world, though fantasticated,
1568-712: A genre that originated in the middle ages as a satirical song, evolved into a play in verse with music, and by Feydeau's time had split into two branches: opérettes , such as those by Offenbach , and, in the words of the writer Peter Meyer, "the vaudeville itself ... akin to what we would call slapstick farce, where movement was more important than character". Reviewers in the French press in Feydeau's time used both terms –"vaudeville" and "farce" – to label his plays. Between 1878 and 1916 Feydeau completed twenty full-length and nineteen one-act plays. Eleven of them were written with
1666-562: A lasting impact on modern society. After the telephone joined the telegraph as a vehicle for rapid communication, French inventor Édouard Belin developed the Belinograph, or Wirephoto , to transmit photos by telephone. The electric light began to supersede gas lighting , and neon lights were invented in France. France was a leader of early cinema technology. The cinématographe was invented in France by Léon Bouly and put to use by Auguste and Louis Lumière , brothers who held
1764-755: A particularly acrimonious quarrel, Feydeau left home and moved into the Hotel Terminus in the Rue Saint-Lazare . He lived there, surrounded by his paintings and books, until 1919. He and Marie-Anne were divorced in 1916 and in 1918, now aged fifty-five, he embarked on an affair with a young dancer, Odette Darthys, whom he cast in the lead in revivals of his plays. Occupe-toi d'Amélie! was the last full-length play Feydeau wrote on his own. Le Circuit (The road race, 1909) with Francis de Croisset made little impact. Je ne trompe pas mon mari (I don't cheat on my husband, 1914) with René Peter did well at
1862-581: A playwright, once he found he could escape lessons by writing plays. He sought out Henri Meilhac , one of the leading dramatists in Paris, and showed him his latest effort. He recalled Meilhac as saying, "My boy, your play is stupid, but it is theatrical. You will be a man of the theatre". After the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 the family left Paris for Boulogne-sur-Mer . They returned briefly to Paris in March 1871 and then moved to
1960-541: A precariously happy ending. After the great success they enjoyed in his lifetime they were neglected after his death, until the 1940s and 1950s, when productions by Jean-Louis Barrault and the Comédie-Française led a revival of interest in his works, at first in Paris and subsequently worldwide. Feydeau's personal life was marred by depression, unsuccessful gambling and divorce. In 1919 his mental condition deteriorated sharply and he spent his final two years in
2058-516: A quadruple bill of one-act plays and a monologue ( Amour et Piano , Un monsieur qui n'aime pas les monologues , Fiancés en herbe and Feu la mère de madame , 2009, Gian Manuel Rau), Le Cercle des castagnettes (monologues, 2012, Alain Françon), Le Système Ribadier (2013, Zabou Breitman ), L'Hôtel du libre-échange (2017, Isabelle Nanty ) and La Puce à l'oreille (2019, Lilo Baur). The Internet Broadway Database records no Feydeau productions in
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#17327831603512156-654: A series of diplomatic conferences managed to mediate disputes that threatened the general peace: the Congress of Berlin in 1878, the Berlin Congo Conference in 1884, and the Algeciras Conference in 1906. Indeed, for many Europeans during the Belle Époque, transnational, class-based affiliations were as important as national identities, particularly among aristocrats. An upper-class gentleman could travel through much of Western Europe without
2254-512: A sort, and the play was enthusiastically received. The typical Feydeau characters and plot were already in evidence: a shy husband, a domineering wife, mistaken identities, confusion and a happy ending. The first professional presentation of a Feydeau play was in January 1883, when Amour et piano was staged at the Théâtre de l'Athénée . It depicts the confusion arising when a young lady receives
2352-522: A study of the works of the leading comic playwrights, particularly Eugène Labiche , Alfred Hennequin and Meilhac. He benefited from his study, and in 1891 wrote two plays that restored his reputation and fortune. He submitted them both to the management of the Théâtre du Palais-Royal . They agreed to stage one of them, Monsieur chasse! , but turned down the second, Champignol malgré lui (another collaboration with Desvallières) as too unbelievable for an audience to accept. After receiving this news from
2450-499: A young Pablo Picasso . More modern forms in sculpture also began to dominate as in the works of Paris-native Auguste Rodin . Although Impressionism in painting began well before the Belle Époque, it had initially been met with scepticism if not outright scorn by a public accustomed to the realist and representational art approved by the Academy. In 1890, Monet started his series Haystacks . Impressionism, which had been considered
2548-456: A young gentleman who she thinks is her new piano teacher; he has come to the wrong house and believes he is calling on a glamorous cocotte . Le Figaro called it "a very witty fantasy, very agreeably interpreted". After completing his compulsory military service (1883–84) Feydeau was appointed secrétaire général to the Théâtre de la Renaissance , under the management of his friend Fernand Samuel . In that capacity he successfully pressed for
2646-579: Is a Paris landmark still open for business today. The Folies Bergère was another landmark venue. Burlesque performance styles were more mainstream in Belle Époque Paris than in more staid cities of Europe and America. Liane de Pougy , dancer , socialite and courtesan , was well known in Paris as a headline performer at top cabarets. Belle Époque dancers and singers such as Polaire , Mistinguett , Paulus , Eugénie Fougère , La Goulue and Jane Avril were Paris celebrities, some of whom modelled for Toulouse-Lautrec 's iconic poster art. The Can-can dance
2744-437: Is rooted in ordinary life; Feydeau's is cruel, claustrophobic, and smacks of mania". Discussing his technique, Feydeau said, "When I sit down to write a play I identify those characters who have every reason to avoid each other; and I make it my business to bring them together as soon, and as often, as I can." He also said that to make people laugh "you have to place ordinary people in a dramatic situation and then observe them from
2842-402: The 1889 World's Fair in Paris, launched an era of optimism and affluence. French imperialism was in its prime. It was a cultural center of global influence, its educational , scientific and medical institutions were at the leading edge of Europe. It was not entirely the reality of life in Paris or in France, however. France had a large economic underclass who never experienced much of
2940-643: The Barbizon school plein-air painters. These painters were associates of the Pre-Raphaelites, who inspired a generation of aesthetic-minded " Souls ". Many successful examples of Art Nouveau, with notable regional variations, were built in France, Germany , Belgium , Spain , Austria (the Vienna Secession ), Hungary , Bohemia , Serbia , and Latvia . It soon spread around the world, including Peru , Brazil , Argentina , Mexico , and
3038-703: The First Moroccan Crisis (1905–1906), and the Second Moroccan Crisis (1911). The Belle Époque was an era of great scientific and technological advancement in Europe and the world in general. Inventions of the Second Industrial Revolution that became generally common in this era include the perfection of lightly sprung, noiseless carriages in a multitude of new fashionable forms, which were superseded towards
Georges Feydeau - Misplaced Pages Continue
3136-542: The Folies Bergère , and took her eclectic performance style abroad as well. Sergei Diaghilev 's Ballets Russes brought fame to Vaslav Nijinsky and established modern ballet technique. The Ballets Russes launched several ballet masterpieces, including The Firebird and The Rite of Spring (sometimes causing audience riots at the same time). Henri Meilhac Henri Meilhac ( French pronunciation: [ɑ̃ʁi mɛjak] ; 23 February 1830 – 6 July 1897)
3234-559: The Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and continued until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Occurring during the era of the French Third Republic , it was a period characterised by optimism , enlightenment, regional peace, economic prosperity, nationalism , colonial expansion , and technological , scientific, and cultural innovations. In this era of France's cultural and artistic climate (particularly in Paris of that time ),
3332-688: The Italo-Turkish War (1911–1912). The First Balkan War (1912–1913) and the Second Balkan War (1913) are considered prologues to the First World War (1914–1918), whose level of material and human destruction at the industrial level marks the end of the Belle Époque . There were also notable diplomatic conflicts that could provoke world wars such as the 1890 British Ultimatum , the Fashoda Incident (1898),
3430-862: The National Theatre (1966). Charon followed this with Mortimer's version of Un Fil à la patte ( Cat Among the Pigeons ) in the West End (1969). In the 1970s the Comédie-Française added two more Feydeau plays to its repertoire: Mais n'te promène donc pas toute nue! (1971) and La Puce à l'oreille (1978), both directed by Jean-Laurent Cochet . In New York there were productions of Le Dindon (1972 as There's One in Every Marriage ), La Main passe (1973 as Chemin de fer ), and Monsieur chasse! (1978, as 13 rue de l'amour ). In London
3528-481: The Second Empire reforms to the city's architecture and public amenities. Haussmann's renovation of Paris changed its housing, street layouts, and green spaces. The walkable neighbourhoods were well-established by the Belle Époque. Cheap coal and cheap labour contributed to the cult of the orchid and made possible the perfection of fruits grown under glass , as the apparatus of state dinners extended to
3626-490: The United States . European literature underwent a major transformation during the Belle Époque. Literary realism and naturalism achieved new heights. Among the most famous French realist or naturalist authors are Guy de Maupassant and Émile Zola . Realism gradually developed into modernism , which emerged in the 1890s and came to dominate European literature during the Belle Époque's final years and throughout
3724-476: The interwar years . The Modernist classic In Search of Lost Time was begun by Marcel Proust in 1909, to be published after World War I. The works of German Thomas Mann had a huge impact in France as well, such as Death in Venice , published in 1912. Colette shocked France with the publication of the sexually frank Claudine novel series, and other works. Joris-Karl Huysmans , who came to prominence in
3822-536: The spa town of Bad Homburg so that Ernest, whose health was failing, could take the cure. Soon after their return to Paris in October 1871 the nine-year-old Feydeau, who had so far received only private tuition, was sent to a boarding school. As a pupil he was generally indolent, but devoted time and energy to organising an amateur dramatic group and performing. In October 1873 Ernest died and in 1876 Léocadie remarried. Her second husband, nearer her own age than Ernest,
3920-465: The super-rich now began to commission private railway coaches , as exclusivity as well as display was a hallmark of opulent luxury. The years between the Franco-Prussian War and World War I were characterised by unusual political stability in Western and Central Europe . Although tensions between France and Germany persisted as a result of the French loss of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany in 1871,
4018-442: The École des Beaux-Arts , held an exhibition of Japanese printmaking that changed approaches to graphic design, particular posters and book illustration ( Aubrey Beardsley was influenced by a similar exhibit when he visited Paris during the 1890s). Exhibits of African tribal art also captured the imagination of Parisian artists at the turn of the 20th century. Art Nouveau is the most popularly recognised art movement to emerge from
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4116-400: The 1850s, it exerted a strong influence on the next generation of poets and artists. The Decadent movement fascinated Parisians, intrigued by Paul Verlaine and above all Arthur Rimbaud , who became the archetypal enfant terrible of France. Rimbaud's Illuminations was published in 1886, and subsequently his other works were also published, influencing Surrealists and Modernists during
4214-580: The 1950s new versions began to appear, including Peter Glenville 's Hotel Paradiso (1956, from L'Hôtel du libre échange ) and Noël Coward 's Look After Lulu! (1959, from Occupe-toi d'Amélie! ); both were seen in the West End and on Broadway. The 1960s saw two celebrated productions by Jacques Charon . The first was Un Fil à la patte (1961) for the Comédie-Française, which the company took to London in 1964. This led to an invitation from Laurence Olivier to Charon to direct John Mortimer 's adaptation of La Puce à l'oreille as A Flea in Her Ear for
4312-552: The 21st century. Among British productions were Frei's 2003 version of Le Système Rebadier (as Where There's a Will ) directed by Hall and Mortimer's A Flea in Her Ear , revived at the Old Vic in 2010, directed by Richard Eyre . Several of Feydeau's plays have been adapted for the cinema and television. Although he was active well into the early years of film he never wrote for the medium, but within two years of his death in 1921 other writers and directors began to take his plays as
4410-469: The Belle Époque and after. Rimbaud's poems were the first works of free verse seen by the French public. Free verse and typographic experimentation also emerged in Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard by Stéphane Mallarmé , anticipating Dada and concrete poetry . Guillaume Apollinaire 's poetry introduced themes and imagery from modern life to readers. Cosmopolis: An International Monthly Review had
4508-542: The Belle Époque appear to be a time of joie de vivre (joy of living) in contrast to 19th century hardships. It was also a period of stability that France enjoyed after the tumult of the early years of the Third Republic , featuring defeat in the Franco-Prussian War , the uprising of the Paris Commune , and the fall of General Georges Ernest Boulanger . The defeat of Boulanger, and the celebrations tied to
4606-466: The Belle Époque was characterised by salon music . This was not considered serious music but, rather, short pieces considered accessible to a general audience. In addition to works for piano solo or violin and piano, the Belle Époque was famous for its large repertory of songs (mélodies, romanze, etc.). The Italians were the greatest proponents of this type of song, its greatest champion being Francesco Paolo Tosti . Though Tosti's songs never completely left
4704-580: The Belle Époque's wonders and entertainments. Poverty remained endemic in Paris's urban slums and rural peasantry for decades after the Belle Époque ended. Conflicts between the government and the Roman Catholic Church were regular during the period. Some of the artistic elite saw the Fin de siècle in a pessimistic light. Those who were able to benefit from the prosperity of the era were drawn towards new forms of light entertainment during
4802-558: The Belle Époque, and the Parisian bourgeoisie, or the successful industrialists called the nouveaux riches , became increasingly influenced by the habits and fads of the city's elite social class, known popularly as Tout-Paris ("all of Paris", or "everyone in Paris"). The Casino de Paris opened in 1890. For Paris's less affluent public, entertainment was provided by cabarets , bistros and music halls . The Moulin Rouge cabaret
4900-615: The Belle Époque. Among the post-Impressionist movements in Paris were the Nabis , the Salon de la Rose + Croix , the Symbolist movement (also in poetry, music, and visual art), Fauvism , and early Modernism . Between 1900 and 1914, Expressionism took hold of many artists in Paris and Vienna. Early works of Cubism and Abstraction were exhibited. Foreign influences were being strongly felt in Paris as well. The official art school in Paris,
4998-683: The National Theatre presented Mortimer's adaptation of L'Hôtel du libre-échange (1984, as A Little Hotel on the Side ), which was later played on Broadway. Other English adaptations included Peter Hall and Nicki Frei's versions of Le Dindon (1994, as An Absolute Turkey ) and Occupe-toi d'Amélie! (1996, as Mind Millie for Me ). During the first two decades of the 21st century, the Comédie-Française presented seven Feydeau productions: Le Dindon (2002, directed by Lukas Hemleb ), Un Fil à la patte (2010 Jérôme Deschamps ), Quatre pièces –
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#17327831603515096-729: The National Theatre presented a second Mortimer adaptation, The Lady from Maxim's (1977). During the last two decades of the twentieth century interest in Feydeau continued. The Comédie-Française presented four more of his plays: La Dame de chez Maxim (1981) directed by Jean-Paul Roussillon , Léonie est en avance (1985) directed by Stuart Seide, Occupe-toi d'Amélie! (1995) directed by Roger Planchon , and Chat en poche (1998) directed by Muriel Mayette . There were numerous Feydeau revivals in theatres in Paris, cities across France, and Brussels, including seven productions of Le Système Ribadier three of Monsieur chasse! , five of La Dame de chez Maxim , and four of La Puce à l'oreille . In London
5194-566: The Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903, and the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1911. Physicist Gabriel Lippmann invented integral imaging , still in use today. In 1890, Vincent van Gogh died. It was during the 1890s that his paintings achieved the admiration denied them during his life; first among other artists, then gradually among the public. Reactions against the ideals of the Impressionists characterised visual arts in Paris during
5292-548: The Palais-Royal, Feydeau met an old friend, Henri Micheau, the owner of the Théâtre des Nouveautés , who insisted on seeing the rejected script and immediately recognised it as a potential winner. Meyer writes, "He was right. Monsieur chasse! was a success, but Champignol was a triumph". When the play opened in November 1892 one critic wrote of: Another critic said that it had been years since he heard such laughter in
5390-762: The Palais-Royale in 1896–97, and at the end of the decade Feydeau had the best run of his career with La Dame de chez Maxim , which played at the Nouveautés from January 1899 to November 1900, a total of 579 performances. The author was used to working with and writing for established farceurs such as Alexandre Germain , who starred in many of his plays from Champignol malgré lui (1892) to On purge bébé! (1910); for La Dame de chez Maxim Feydeau discovered Armande Cassive , whom he moulded into his ideal leading lady for his later works. The Feydeaus' marriage, happy for its first decade or so, had begun to go wrong by
5488-601: The art of writing polished dialogue, sounding elegant but natural. From these three influences, Feydeau fashioned what Pronko calls "the last great masterpieces of the vaudeville form". Contemporary opinions of Feydeau covered a wide range. Catulle Mendès wrote, "I continue to deplore the fact that M. Georges Feydeau uses his truly remarkable talent on plays that will be performed four or five hundred times but that will never be read". For some, his late one-act plays are misogynistic; for others, they were his finest achievements, comparable with Strindberg in their naturalism; Feydeau
5586-552: The artistic avant-garde in the 1860s, did not gain widespread acceptance until after World War I. The academic painting style, associated with the Academy of Art in Paris, remained the most respected style among the public in Paris. Artists who appealed to the Belle Époque public include William-Adolphe Bouguereau , the English Pre-Raphaelite 's John William Waterhouse , and Lord Leighton and his depictions of idyllic Roman scenes. More progressive tastes patronised
5684-661: The arts markedly flourished, and numerous masterpieces of literature, music, theatre and visual art gained extensive recognition. The Belle Époque was so named in retrospect, when it began to be considered a continental European " Golden Age " in contrast to the horrors of the Napoleonic Wars and World War I. The Belle Époque was a period in which, according to historian R. R. Palmer , " European civilisation achieved its greatest power in global politics, and also exerted its maximum influence upon peoples outside Europe." Two devastating world wars and their aftermath made
5782-401: The basis for films, of which more than twenty have been made, in several countries and languages. At least fourteen of his plays have been adapted for television. Belle %C3%89poque The Belle Époque ( French pronunciation: [bɛlepɔk] ) or La Belle Époque ( French for 'The Beautiful Era') was a period of French and European history that began after the end of
5880-445: The box office, with 200 performances, but in the view of Feydeau's biographer Leonard Pronko it has signs that "the dramatist had almost reached the end of his brilliant inventiveness". From 1908 Feydeau focused chiefly on a series of one-act plays, which he envisaged as a set to be called Du mariage au divorce (From marriage to divorce). Pronko describes the last of these, Hortense a dit: "je m'en fous!" ("Hortense says 'I don't give
5978-417: The early years of the 20th century. Feydeau gambled and lost large sums and in 1901 had to sell some of his valuable art collection; his wife was said to have become bitter and spendthrift. Finance became a continual problem. Feydeau never regained the success he had enjoyed with La Dame de chez Maxim . A collaboration in 1902 with the composer Alfred Kaiser on a serious romantic opera, Le Billet de Joséphine ,
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#17327831603516076-429: The end of the era by the automobile , which was for its first decade a luxurious experiment for the well-heeled. French automobile manufacturers such as Peugeot were already pioneers in carriage manufacturing. Edouard Michelin invented removable pneumatic tires for bicycles and automobiles in the 1890s. The scooter and moped are also Belle Époque inventions. A number of French inventors patented products with
6174-519: The favoured composer of the Belle Époque was Edvard Grieg , who enjoyed the height of his popularity in both Parisian concert and salon life (despite his stance on the accused in the Dreyfus affair). Ravel and Frederick Delius agreed that French music of this time was simply "Edvard Grieg plus the third act of Tristan ". Modern dance began to emerge as a powerful artistic development in theatre. Dancer Loie Fuller appeared at popular venues such as
6272-489: The first film screenings in the world. The Lumière brothers made many other innovations in cinematography . It was during this era that the motion pictures were developed, though these did not become common until after World War I. Although the aeroplane remained a fascinating experiment, France was a leader in aviation . France established the world's first national air force in 1910. Two French inventors, Louis Breguet and Paul Cornu , made independent experiments with
6370-407: The first flying helicopters in 1907. Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity in 1896 while working with phosphorescent materials. His work confirmed and explained earlier observations regarding uranium salts by Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor in 1857. It was during this era that biologists and physicians finally came to understand the germ theory of disease , and the field of bacteriology
6468-598: The first production of Occupe-toi d'Amélie! since Feydeau's 1908 original, with the company she co-founded with Jean-Louis Barrault . They took the production to Broadway in 1952, and the West End in 1956, playing in the original French and gaining enthusiastic reviews from the New York and London critics. In the meanwhile the Comédie-Française staged its first full-length Feydeau production, Le Dindon (1951). English adaptations had been familiar in Feydeau's day, and in
6566-719: The forefront. About 1860, Meilhac met Ludovic Halévy , and their collaboration for the stage lasted twenty years. Their most famous collaboration is the libretto for Georges Bizet 's Carmen . However, Meilhac's work is most closely tied to the music of Jacques Offenbach , for whom he wrote over a dozen librettos, most of them together with Halévy. The most successful collaborations with Offenbach are La belle Hélène (1864), Barbe-bleue (1866), La Vie parisienne (1866), La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867), and La Périchole (1868). Other librettos by Meilhac include Jules Massenet 's Manon (with Philippe Gille ) (1884), Hervé 's Mam'zelle Nitouche (1883), and Rip ,
6664-581: The general French public in everyday society, was a central issue in the controversy and the court trials that followed. Public debate surrounding the Dreyfus Affair grew to an uproar after the publication of J'Accuse…! , an open letter sent to newspapers by prominent novelist Émile Zola , condemning government corruption and French antisemitism. The Dreyfus affair consumed the interest of the French for several years and it received heavy newspaper coverage. European politics saw very few regime changes,
6762-774: The immediate prewar years were marked by a general armaments competition in Europe. Additionally, this era was one of massive overseas colonialism , known as the New Imperialism . The most famous portion of this imperial expansion was the Scramble for Africa . Most of the great powers (and some minor ones such as Belgium, the Netherlands, or Denmark) became involved in imperialism , building their own overseas empires especially in Africa and Asia. Although there were numerous revolutions, civil wars and colonial insurrections,
6860-408: The late 1880s with La Lycéenne (a " vaudeville - opérette " with music by Gaston Serpette , 1887), Chat en poche (1888), Les Fiancés de Loches (1888 co-written with Maurice Desvallières ), and L'Affaire Edouard (1889). In 1889 Feydeau married Marie-Anne, the daughter of Carolus-Duran , a prosperous portrait painter. The couple had four children, born between 1890 and 1903. The marriage
6958-426: The laughter reverberated inside and out of the auditorium, said that a reviewer could only laugh and applaud rather than criticise. Another critic, predicting a long run, wrote that he and his colleagues would not be needed at the Nouveautés in their professional capacities for a year or so, but would know where to come if they wanted to laugh. The play ran for 371 performances. An English adaptation, The Gay Parisians ,
7056-438: The legion, at the early age of thirty-two, joining a small élite of French playwrights to receive the honour, including Dumas, Meilhac, Ludovic Halévy , Victorien Sardou and Becque. Le Ruban ran at the Théâtre de l'Odéon for 45 performances. Feydeau and Desvallières returned to winning form in the same year with L'Hôtel du libre échange (The Free Exchange Hotel). The Annales du théâtre et de la musique , noting that
7154-473: The major exception being Portugal , which experienced a republican revolution in 1910. However, tensions between working-class socialist parties, bourgeois liberal parties and landed or aristocratic conservative parties did increase in many countries, and it has been claimed that profound political instability belied the calm surface of European politics in the era. In fact, militarism and international tensions grew considerably between 1897 and 1914, and
7252-579: The mid-1880s, continued experimenting with themes and styles that would be associated with Symbolism and the Decadent movement , mostly in his book à rebours . André Gide , Anatole France , Alain-Fournier , and Paul Bourget are among France's most popular fiction writers of the era. Among poets, the Symbolists such as Charles Baudelaire remained at the forefront. Although Baudelaire's poetry collection Les Fleurs du mal had been published in
7350-1017: The most notable are: the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), the War of the Pacific (1879–1884), two Boer Wars (1880–1881 and 1899–1902), the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), the First Italo-Ethiopian War (1895–1896), the Greco-Turkish War (1897), the Spanish-American War (1898), the Philippine-American War (1899–1902), the Russo-Japanese War (1905), and
7448-411: The most outright success one could wish to a beginner!" The critic of Le Figaro said that the piece was not a comedy at all in the conventional sense of the word: The critic Jules Prével correctly predicted that the young author would struggle to repeat this early triumph: it was not until 1892 that Feydeau had another success to match Tailleur pour dames . He had a series of poor or mediocre runs in
7546-717: The period. This largely decorative style ( Jugendstil in central Europe), characterised by its curvilinear forms, and nature-inspired motifs became prominent from the mid-1890s and dominated progressive design throughout much of Europe. Its use in public art in Paris, such as Hector Guimard 's Paris Métro stations, has made it synonymous with the city. Prominent artists in Paris during the Belle Époque included post-Impressionists such as Odilon Redon , Gustave Moreau , Maurice Denis , Pierre Bonnard , Édouard Vuillard , Paul Gauguin , Henri Matisse , Émile Bernard , Henri Rousseau , Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (whose reputation improved substantially after his death), Giuseppe Amisani , and
7644-561: The play was withdrawn; it was not seen again in Paris until 1952. In 1908 Occupe-toi d'Amélie! (Look after Amélie) opened at the Nouveautés. The reviewers were enthusiastic; in Le Figaro , Emmanuel Arène said: In Les Annales du théâtre et de la musique Edmond Stoullig wrote: The piece ran for 288 performances at the Nouveautés during 1908–09, and at the Théâtre Antoine for 96 performances later in 1909. In 1909, after
7742-594: The premiere of Henry Becque 's La Parisienne (1885), later recognised as one of the masterpieces of French naturalist theatre. In December 1886 the Renaissance presented a three-act comédie by Feydeau, Tailleur pour dames (Ladies' tailor). Les Annales du théâtre et de la musique thought the play insubstantial, but, it enthused, "what gaiety in the dialogue, what good humour, what pleasing words, what fun in this childishness, what unforeseen things in this madness, what comic invention in this imbroglio, which obtained
7840-463: The pulpit by the Archbishop of Paris , and consequently sold in large numbers and had to be reprinted; Ernest dedicated the new edition to the archbishop. Feydeau's mother was Lodzia Bogaslawa, née Zelewska (1838–1924) known as "Léocadie". When she married Ernest Feydeau in 1861, he was a forty-year-old childless widower and she was twenty-two. She was a famous beauty, and rumours spread that she
7938-596: The repertoire, salon music generally fell into a period of obscurity. Even as encores, singers were afraid to sing them at serious recitals. In that period, waltzes also flourished. Operettas were also at the peak of their popularity, with composers such as Johann Strauss III , Emmerich Kálmán , and Franz Lehár . Many Belle Époque composers working in Paris are still popular today: Igor Stravinsky , Erik Satie , Claude Debussy , Lili Boulanger , Jules Massenet , César Franck , Camille Saint-Saëns , Gabriel Fauré and his pupil, Maurice Ravel . According to Fauré and Ravel,
8036-435: The upper classes. Exotic feathers and furs were more prominently featured in fashion than ever before, as haute couture was invented in Paris, the center of the Belle Époque, where fashion began to move in a yearly cycle. In Paris, restaurants such as Maxim's Paris achieved a new splendor and cachet as places for the rich to parade. Maxim's Paris was arguably the city's most exclusive restaurant. Bohemian lifestyles gained
8134-471: The vaudeville or farcical events are confined to the second of three acts: Howarth observes that "The nightmare quality of Feydeau's middle acts" depends not only on "frenzied comings and goings", but also on mechanical stage accessories such as the revolving bed in La Puce à l'oreille , which conveys its occupants into the adjoining room, seemingly at random. When Feydeau took a break from writing to study
8232-415: The wealthy centers of cities. One result of this commuting was suburbanisation allowing working-class and upper-class neighbourhoods to be separated by large distances. Meanwhile, the international workers' movement also reorganised itself and reinforced pan-European, class-based identities among the classes whose labour supported the Belle Époque. The most notable transnational socialist organisation
8330-529: The works of his most successful predecessors, he focused in particular on three playwrights: Labiche, Hennequin and Meilhac. From Labiche he learned the importance of close observation of real-life characters, lending verisimilitude to the most chaotic situations. From Hennequin – who had started as an engineer – Feydeau drew the intricate plotting, described by Pronko as "endless mazes of crisscrossing couples, scurrying from door to door, room to room in every possible and impossible combination". From Meilhac he learned
8428-445: Was a French dramatist and opera librettist , best known for his collaborations with Ludovic Halévy on Georges Bizet 's Carmen and on the works of Jacques Offenbach , as well as Jules Massenet 's Manon . Meilhac was born in the 1st arrondissement of Paris in 1830. As a young man, he began writing fanciful articles for Parisian newspapers and comédies en vaudevilles, in a vivacious boulevardier spirit which brought him to
8526-405: Was a friend of Gustave Flaubert , Théophile Gautier and Alexandre Dumas fils , and Feydeau grew up in a literary and artistic environment. After being taken to the theatre at the age of six or seven he was so enthusiastic that he started to write a play of his own. His father, impressed, told the family's governess to let the boy off tuition that day. Feydeau later said that laziness made him
8624-562: Was a popular 19th-century cabaret style that appears in Toulouse-Lautrec's posters from the era. The Eiffel Tower , built to serve as the grand entrance to the 1889 World's Fair held in Paris, became the accustomed symbol of the city, to its inhabitants and to visitors from around the world. Paris hosted another successful World's Fair in 1900, the Exposition Universelle . Paris had been profoundly changed by
8722-539: Was a prominent liberal journalist, Henry Fouquier (1838–1901), with whom Feydeau got on well. In 1879 Feydeau completed his formal education at the Lycée Saint-Louis , and was engaged as a clerk in a law firm. Still stage-struck, he began writing again. Comic monologues were fashionable in society, and he wrote La Petite révoltée (The rebellious young lady), a humorous monologue in verse, of about seven minutes' duration, which attracted favourable attention and
8820-404: Was established. Louis Pasteur was perhaps the most famous scientist in France during this time. Pasteur developed pasteurisation and a rabies vaccine . Mathematician and physicist Henri Poincaré made important contributions to pure and applied mathematics, and also published books for the general public on mathematical and scientific subjects. Marie Skłodowska-Curie worked in France, winning
8918-401: Was ideal to Feydeau in several ways. It was a genuine love-match (though it later went awry); he was an ardent amateur painter, and his father-in-law gave him lessons; and marriage into a well-to-do family relieved Feydeau of some of the financial problems arising from his succession of theatrical failures and heavy losses on the stock exchange. In 1890 Feydeau took a break from writing and made
9016-404: Was not a success, closing after 16 performances. Of his first four plays of the 1900s, only La Main passe! (1904) had a substantial run. La Puce à l'oreille (A flea in her ear) (1907) won glowing reviews, and seemed set to become one of the author's biggest box-office successes, but after 86 performances a leading member of the cast, the much loved comic actor Joseph Torin , died suddenly and
9114-496: Was not until the 1940s that major revivals were staged in Paris, after which Feydeau gradually became a staple of the repertory in France and abroad. The Comédie-Française admitted a Feydeau work to its repertoire for the first time in 1941, with a production of the one-act Feu la mère de Madame , directed by Fernand Ledoux , starring Madeleine Renaud and Pierre Bertin . At the Théâtre Marigny in 1948 Renaud starred in
9212-453: Was seen here as a moralist as well as an entertainer. For the authors of Les Annales du théâtre et de la musique , and critics in Le Figaro his farces were what made Feydeau incomparable. Later critics including Gidel, Pronko, Marcel Achard and Kenneth Tynan have judged that in his farces Feydeau was second only to Molière as France's great comic dramatist. After his death Feydeau's plays were neglected for many years. It
9310-462: Was staged in New York in September 1895, and ran for nearly 150 performances; a London version, A Night in Paris , opened in April 1896 and outran the Parisian original, with a total of 531 performances. During the rest of the 1890s there were two more Feydeau plays, both highly successful. Le Dindon (literally "Turkey" but in French usage signifying "Dupe" or "Fall guy") ran for 275 performances at
9408-511: Was taken up by the publisher Ollendorff. The first of Feydeau's plays to be staged was a one-act two-hander called Par la fenêtre (Through the window) presented by the Cercle des arts intimes , an amateur society, in June 1882. In his biography of Feydeau Henry Gidel comments that it was not a representative audience, being composed of friends of society members, but it was nonetheless a test of
9506-710: Was the Second International . Anarchists of different affiliations were active during the period leading up to World War I. Political assassinations and assassination attempts were still rare in France (unlike in Russia) but there were some notable exceptions, including the killing of President Marie François Sadi Carnot in 1894. A bomb was detonated in the Chamber of Deputies of France in 1893, causing injuries but no deaths. Terrorism against civilians also occurred in 1894, perpetrated by Émile Henry , who killed
9604-563: Was the mistress of the Duc de Morny or even the Emperor Napoleon III and that one of them was the father of Georges, her first child. In later life Léocadie commented, "How can anyone be stupid enough to believe that a boy as intelligent as Georges is the son of that idiotic emperor!" She was more equivocal about her relationship with the duke, and Georges later said that people could think Morny his father if they wanted to. Ernest
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