Charles Albert Fechter
Charles Albert Fechter (born October 23, 1824 in London , according to other sources in Belleville (Paris) , † August 5, 1879 in Rockland Center near Quakertown , Bucks County , Pennsylvania) was a French-English actor. His Hamlet interpretations of the 1860s and 1870s in particular had a major influence on the performance practice of the piece.
Life
Charles Albert Fechter was the son of a French exile family and spent his childhood with a short break in Paris in the revolutionary year of 1830 in England. It was not until 1836 that the family settled permanently in France again. Fechter's parents had both distinguished themselves as sculptors, and at first he pursued this career too, but then switched to the theater stage.
In 1840 he made his debut in an adaptation of Dumas ' Le mari de la veuve in the Salle Molière, a small Parisian amateur stage. The following year he joined a traveling theater company and completed a disastrous tour of Italy with them. Back in Paris he took acting lessons at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, but at the same time devoted himself to sculpture again. On the same day in 1844 he received a medal from the Académie for one of his sculptures and then an engagement at the Comédie-Française , where he could be seen in smaller roles over the next two years, including silk in Voltaire's Mahomet and Valère in Molière 's Tartuffe .
Unsatisfied with small roles, he quit his job in 1846 and went to Berlin, where he was able to celebrate his first major successes in the character field at the French Theater . In 1847 he was successful at the Vaudeville Théâtre in Paris and gave a guest appearance at St. James's Theater in London; on November 29th of that year he married the actress Eléonore Rabut in Paris, with whom he was to have a son and a daughter. In the next few years he worked at various Parisian houses as an actor, but also as a director and artistic director, and during this time he became one of the most famous actors in France. His greatest success was the role of Armand Duval in an adaptation of The Lady of the Camellias in the 1852 season of vaudeville. From 1857–58 he produced various pieces of French classical music at the Odéon , including Tartuffe .
In 1860 he went to England, where he enjoyed great success at the Princess Theater with great success in Shakespeare's leading roles. In particular, his performance as Hamlet was a milestone in the performance history of this piece. Fechter was ignorant of the traditions and conventions with which the established English actors used to perform the Danish Prince, and instead played the character with an unheard-of passion. Charles Dickens wrote that “perhaps no artistic innovation would be so celebrated by so many intellectuals” as Fechter's Hamlet. In 1863 he took over the management of the London Lyceum, where he put on more recent English dramas, and in the next few years also made stage adaptations of works by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins .
In 1870 he visited the United States, where he was to remain for the rest of his life. He played with great success in all major cities of the United States, the last time in October 1878 in Boston. In 1875 he bought the Rockland Center farm near Quakertown, Pennsylvania , where he spent the last years of his life in seclusion and where he died in 1878.
literature
- Kate Field: Charles Albert Fechter . James R. Osgood & Co., Boston 1882.
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Fencer, Charles Albert |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Fencer, Charles |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French-English actor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 23, 1824 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | London or Belleville (Paris) |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 5, 1879 |
| Place of death | Rockland Center at Quakertown |