30-741: Fédora is a play by the French author Victorien Sardou . It opened at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris on 11 December 1882, and ran for 135 performances. The first production starred Sarah Bernhardt . She wore a soft felt hat in that role which was soon a popular fashion for women; the hat became known as a fedora . The premiere was headline news in Paris. Le Figaro devoted its whole front page to it in addition to further coverage inside. The Paris correspondent of The Era called Bernhardt's performance as Princess Fédora Romazoff "magnificent throughout …
60-507: A stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Victorien Sardou Victorien Sardou ( / s ɑːr ˈ d uː / sar- DOO , French: [viktɔʁjɛ̃ saʁdu] ; 5 September 1831 – 8 November 1908) was a French dramatist . He is best remembered today for his development, along with Eugène Scribe , of the well-made play . He also wrote several plays that were made into popular 19th-century operas such as La Tosca (1887) on which Giacomo Puccini 's opera Tosca (1900)
90-463: A letter to St Petersburg incriminating Loris's brother in Vladimir's murder. After she has sent it, Loris explains that the killing was not a political assassination but the punishment of a moral outrage: Vladimir was having an affair with Loris's wife. He caught them together and shot Vladimir; the wife escaped but died of pneumonia within days. Fedora now sees that Loris has saved her from marrying
120-569: A livelihood, and when he retired to his native country, Victorien was left on his own resources. He had begun studying medicine, but had to desist for want of funds. He taught French to foreign pupils: he also gave lessons in Latin, history and mathematics to students, and wrote articles for cheap encyclopaedias. At the same time, he was trying to make headway in the literary world. His talents had been encouraged by an old bas-bleu , Mme de Bawl, who had published novels and enjoyed some reputation in
150-714: A second time, to Mlle Soulié on 17 June 1872, the daughter of the erudite Eudore Soulié , who for many years superintended the Musée de Versailles . He was elected to the Académie française in the room of the poet Joseph Autran (1813–1877), and took his seat on 22 May 1878. He lived at Château de Marly for some time. He was a fervent book collector who assembled an immense collection of 80,000 books. The rooms at his home in Marly were devoted to housing his book and print collections. After his death his books were sold as described in
180-678: A splendid run. Garat and Gervais were done at Theatre des Varlétés and in English at Criterion Theatre in London. Les Pattes de mouche (1860, afterwards anglicized as A Scrap of Paper ) obtained a similar success at the Gymnase. Fédora (1882), a work that popularized the fedora hat as well, was written expressly for Sarah Bernhardt , as were many of his later plays. This was later adapted by Umberto Giordano , and he made an opera entitled Fedora . The play dealt with nihilism , which
210-535: A village near Cannes , where they owned an estate, planted with olive trees. A night's frost killed all the trees and the family was ruined. Victorien's father, Antoine Léandre Sardou, came to Paris in search of employment. He was in succession a book-keeper at a commercial establishment, a professor of book-keeping, the head of a provincial school, then a private tutor and a schoolmaster in Paris, besides editing grammars, dictionaries and treatises on various subjects. With all these occupations, he hardly succeeded in making
240-449: A villain. She realised that she loves Loris and he loves her. Fedora's letter has meanwhile arrived in St. Petersburg, leading to the arrest and death in prison of Loris's brother. His mother has died of a broken heart. Fédora confesses to Loris that it was she who incriminated his brother. He renounces her; she takes poison and dies in his arms. This article on a play from the 1880s is
270-631: Is a commune of the Alpes-Maritimes department in southeastern France . Le Cannet was part of Cannes until 1778, when it was made a separate commune. Le Cannet is located in the north of Cannes, on the French Riviera , approximately 2 kilometers from the Mediterranean Sea. The two cities form a single urban area. It has a typical Mediterranean climate. Being well located, protected by numerous pine covered hills allows
300-450: Is based, and Fédora (1882) and Madame Sans-Gêne (1893) that provided the subjects for the lyrical dramas Fedora (1898) and Madame Sans-Gêne (1915) by Umberto Giordano . His play Gismonda , from 1894, was also adapted into an opera of the same name by Henry Février. Victorien Sardou was born at 16 rue Beautreillis ( pronounced [ʁy bo.tʁɛ.ji] ), Paris on 5 September 1831. The Sardous were settled at Le Cannet ,
330-535: Is founded on the rising of the Dutch Geuzen at the end of the 16th century, and was made into a popular opera by Emile Paladilhe in 1886. The scene of La Sorcière (1904) was laid in Spain in the 16th century. The French Revolution furnished him three plays, Les Merveilleuses , Thermidor (1891) and Robespierre (1899). His play Gismonda (1894) was adapted into an opera by Henry Février . The last named
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#1732783729677360-687: The Catalogue de la bibliothèque de feu M. Victorien Sardou He obtained the Légion d'honneur in 1863 and was elected a member of the Académie française in 1877. Sardou died on 8 November 1908 in Paris. He had been ill for a long time. Official cause of death was pulmonary congestion . Sardou modelled his work after Eugène Scribe . It was reported in Stephen Sadler Stanton's intro to Camille and Other Plays that Sardou would read
390-487: The Poisons (1907). In many of these plays, however, it was too obvious that a thin varnish of historic learning, acquired for the purpose, had been artificially laid on to cover modern thoughts and feelings. But a few – Patrie! and La Haine (1874), for instance – exhibit a true insight into the strong passions of past ages. L'Affaire des Poisons (1907) was running at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin and
420-548: The actor; and when the play was successfully produced, the nominal authorship, by some unfortunate arrangement, had been transferred to other men. Sardou submitted to Adolphe Lemoine , manager of the Gymnase , a play entitled Paris à l'envers , which contained the love scene, afterwards so famous, in Nos Intimes . Lemoine thought fit to consult Eugène Scribe , who was revolted by the scene in question. In 1857, Sardou felt
450-554: The days of the Restoration , but she could do little for her protégé. Victorien Sardou made efforts to attract the attention of Mlle Rachel , and to win her support by submitting to her a drama, La Reine Ulfra , founded on an old Swedish chronicle. A play of his, La Taverne des étudiants , was produced at the Odéon on 1 April 1854, but met a stormy reception, owing to a rumour that the débutant had been instructed and commissioned by
480-422: The dismissive term " Sardoodledom " in a review of Sardou plays ( The Saturday Review , 1 June 1895). Shaw believed that Sardou's contrived dramatic machinery was creaky and that his plays were empty of ideas. After producer Sir Squire Bancroft saw the dress rehearsal for Fedora , he said in his memoirs "In five minutes the audience was under a spell which did not once abate throughout the whole four acts. Never
510-539: The distinguished corpse. Albert Edward, Prince of Wales took a turn, delighting the city. In July 1883 Bernhardt led her company in Fédora as the final production in a series of French plays given at the Gaiety Theatre , London. Berton again played Loris. The play was turned into an opera, Fedora , by Umberto Giordano in 1898. Princess Fédora Romazoff is secretly engaged to marry Count Vladimir Yariskin,
540-571: The famous old restaurant Antoine's , invented a dish called Eggs Sardou in honor of the playwright's visit to the city. The Rue Victorien Sardou and Square Victorien Sardou near the Parc Sainte-Périne in Paris are named after him. There are also streets named rue Victorien Sardou in Lyon and Saint-Omer . Le Cannet Le Cannet ( French pronunciation: [lə kanɛ] ; Occitan : Lo Canet ; older Italian : Canneto )
570-465: The first act of one of Scribe's plays, rewrite the rest, and then compare the two. One of his first goals when writing was to devise a central conflict followed by a powerful climax. From there, he would work backwards to establish the action leading up to it. He believed conflict was the key to drama. He was ranked with the two undisputed leaders of dramatic art at that time, Augier and Dumas . He adhered to Scribe's constructive methods, which combined
600-477: The government to insult the students. La Taverne was withdrawn after five nights. Another drama by Sardou, Bernard Palissy , was accepted at the same theatre, but the arrangement was cancelled in consequence of a change in the management. A Canadian play, Fleur de Liane , would have been produced at the Ambigu but for the death of the manager. Le Bossu , which he wrote for Charles Albert Fechter , did not satisfy
630-546: The most brilliant of her remarkable career". Pierre Berton played Loris Ipanoff, the only other major role, and was highly praised. The Era commented, "The other rôles are less than subsidiary. They are filled faultlessly by MM. Colombey, Tchileff; Vois, the Attaché; Boisselot, Michel; Mdlles. De Cléry and Depoix". In one scene Fédora weeps over the body of her murdered lover. The deceased needed only to lie still, and Parisian men of fashion took to spending one evening each as
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#1732783729677660-413: The pangs of actual want, and his misfortunes culminated in an attack of typhoid fever. He was living in poverty and was dying in his garret , surrounded by his rejected manuscripts. A lady who was living in the same house unexpectedly came to his assistance. Her name was Mlle de Brécourt . She had theatrical connections and was a special favourite of Mlle Déjazet . She nursed him, cured him, and, when he
690-702: The rural element in Nos Bons Villageois (1866), old-fashioned customs and antiquated political beliefs in Les Ganaches (1862), the revolutionary spirit and those who thrive on it in Rabagas (1872) and Le Roi Carotte (1872), the then threatened divorce laws in Divorçons (1880). Irish playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw said of La Tosca : "Such an empty-headed ghost of a shocker... Oh, if it had but been an opera!" He also came up with
720-472: The son of the St Petersburg police chief. Vladimir is found mortally wounded, presumably in an anarchist attack, and Fédora vows vengeance on the known perpetrator, Count Loris Ipanoff. Loris has fled to Paris, where Fédora seeks him out. Not knowing that she was engaged to the dead man he admits to killing Vladimir, but calls it "the execution of a sentence". He refuses to explain further. Fédora sends
750-536: The three old kinds of comedy —the comedy of character, of manners and of intrigue— with the drame bourgeois , and blended the heterogeneous elements into a compact body. He opened a wider field to social satire: He ridiculed the vulgar and selfish middle-class person in Nos Intimes (1861: anglicized as Peril ), the gay old bachelors in Les Vieux Garçons (1865), the modern Tartufes in Seraphine (1868),
780-406: Was coined from Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev . He struck a new vein by introducing a strong historic element in some of his dramatic romances. Thus he borrowed Théodora (1884) from Byzantine annals (which was also adapted into an opera by Xavier Leroux ), La Haine (1874) from Italian chronicles, La Duchesse d'Athénes from the forgotten records of medieval Greece. Patrie! (1869)
810-473: Was treatment of a strange and dangerous subject more masterly, never was acting more superb than Sarah showed that day." William Winter said of Fedora that "the distinguishing characteristic of this drama is carnality." Sardou is mentioned in part two, chapter two of Proust 's The Guermantes Way , the third volume of In Search of Lost Time . In New Orleans, during the period when much of its upper class still spoke French, Antoine Alciatore, founder of
840-462: Was very successful at the time of his death. The play involved the poisoning camarilla under Louis XIV of France . Toward the end of his life, Sardou made several recordings of himself reading passages from his works, including a scene from Patrie! Sardou married his benefactress, Mlle de Brécourt, but eight years later he became a widower, and soon after the Revolution of 1870 was married
870-422: Was well again, introduced him to her friend. Déjazet had just established the theatre named after her, and every show after La Taverne was put on at this theatre. Fortune began to smile on the author. It is true that Candide , the first play he wrote for Mlle Déjazet, was stopped by the censor, but Les Premières Armes de Figaro , Monsieur Garat , and Les Prés Saint Gervais , produced almost in succession, had
900-626: Was written expressly for Sir Henry Irving , and produced at the Lyceum theatre in London, as was Dante (1903). The Napoleonic era was revived in La Tosca (1887). Madame Sans-Gêne (1893) was written specifically for Gabrielle Réjane as the unreserved, good-hearted wife of Marshal Lefevre. It was translated into English and starred Irving and Ellen Terry at the Lyceum Theatre. Later plays were La Pisie (1905) and The Affair of
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