Madame Saqui
Marguerite-Antoinette-Sévère Lalanne , known as Madame Saqui (born February 26, 1786 in Agde , † January 21, 1866 in Neuilly-sur-Seine ), was a French tightrope walker, acrobat and theater director.
biography
Saqui's father was an acrobat and was recognized for his performance by Louis XVI. awarded the honorary title of grand sauteur du roi . Along with this was the freedom of movement that he could leave Paris at will to perform throughout the country. So her father, who was nicknamed beau Béarnais , traveled the country with his troupe, which then also bore that name.
As a child, Saqui was introduced to the secrets of the tightrope profession at an early age and so she soon performed as a tightrope walker. When their troupe was making a guest appearance in Tours, there was another acrobatic troupe in town. The tightrope walker of the competition, a young Spaniard, outstripped the young Saqui and so the guest performance turned into a fiasco, which led to the fact that the troupe suddenly set off for Nantes , where a more grateful audience awaited them.
However, this matter aroused the ambition of the young Saqui and she tried to emulate the Spaniard. That's why she practiced two more hours a day and also tried her hand at the high rope, first with and later without a balance pole. So she made her debut, against the wishes of her parents, as a guest number with another acrobatic troupe, again in Tours. Success inspired her and by the age of 15 she had developed a number in which she dared to leap over the mounted bayonets of 24 soldiers.
In this way she had already earned a good reputation and finally came to Paris at the age of 19, where she married Jean-Julien-Pierre Saqui a short time later. This then took over the task of her manager and brought her into the Tivoli . There she shone first with her tightrope act. She performed her second number on the vertical rope, where fireworks were launched.
Saqui became a permanent fixture in the Parisian entertainment industry and so it came about that she was part of the supporting program for the marriage of Napoléon I to Marie-Louise with her number. Some time later, Saqui was still in Tivoli, Napoleon Bonaparte organized a festival for the Garde impériale at which Saqui also appeared as one of the main events.
Saqui was a crowd favorite, but due to the great competition her star was starting to fade. So she toured the province until she landed in Brussels in 1814. After Napoleon's fall, Louis XVIII came. to power. Saqui's father, beau Béarnais , was not yet forgotten as a highly esteemed artist and so she enjoyed the royal favor. Saqui was allowed to open a theater on the Boulevard du Temple and returned to Paris in 1816. It was the house of the Théâtre des Délassements-Comiques , which, however, now operated as Spectacles des Acrobats de Madame Saqui , or Théâtre Saqui for short . Despite some difficulties, she ran the house until 1830, when she sold it.
After only a few months in Spain, Saqui returned to France, almost penniless. After successful guest appearances in Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona, she was the victim of a stagecoach robbery and, although she fought with a pistol disguised as a walking stick, she lost all of the fortune she had carried.
Saqui then got an engagement at the Hippodrome when she returned to Paris. In 1832 she took on two children who, because their parents did not care, were subordinate to the court. She would have loved to train them, but the father then changed his mind and brought the children to him. Saqui took legal action against it, but was unsuccessful.
She performed in the Hippodrome until 1861 at the age of 75.
Trivia
In her theater she herself took care of order when a disturber made a noise and she, with a fur thrown over her costume, personally carried him out with her own muscular strength.
At the celebration of Napoleon in Tivoli, at the time of the Napoleonic Wars on the Iberian Peninsula , the weather had worsened, so that Napoleon feared for the tightrope walker. He ordered Maréschal Lannes to prevent Saqui from getting on the rope. Saqui is then said to have said to the emperor: Monseigneur, commandez à vous soladts, mais ne venez pas commander ici à une femme (Sir, command your soladata, but don't come here to give commands to a woman). Spoke, climbed the rope and showed all her skills, despite the bad weather. As a result, Napoleon had to laugh a lot and gave her a snuffbox and a ring in recognition .
During a guest performance that Saqui gave in London in 1818, there was a storm of indignation. She wore her same stage costume, as always, a short tunic and a flesh-colored, tight leotard that traced her figure. So her name was a fellow artist in costumes who was the right size to take off his culottes , which she put on herself and continued her performance.
Others
Paul Ginsty published the book Mémoires d'une danseuse de corde: Madame Saqui in 1907 , in which he, from the Saquis estate, anecdotes and other incidents, wrote by Saqui himself and also from other sources, such as love letters.
literature
- Frédéric Faber: Histoire du théâtre français en Belgique, Brussels: Fr. J. Olivier, Editeur, 1879, p. 8, digitized
- Léon Paillet : Biographie de Madame Saqui, in Le Nouvelliste - Journal de Paris, edition of June 4, 1852, pp. 1f., Digitized
Web links
- Information on Madame Saqui in the database of the Bibliothèque nationale de France .
- Literature by and about Madame Saqui in the WorldCat bibliographic database
Individual evidence
- ↑ Le Courrier, edition of August 24, 1832, p. 4, digitized version , accessed on July 16, 2019
- ↑ Le Yacht: journal de la navigation de plaisance, edition of October 15, 1861, p. 4, digitized , accessed on July 16, 2019
- ^ Souvenirs du prince Charles de Clary-et-Aldringen, Paris: Oskar Mitis Editeur, 1914, p. 311, digitized , accessed on July 16, 2019
- ↑ Paul Ginsty: Memoires d'une danseuse de corde: Madame Saqui (1786-1866). E. Fasquelle (Paris), 1907. ( digitized version )
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Saqui, madame |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Lalanne, Marguerite-Antoinette-Sévère (real name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French acrobat, tightrope walker and theater director |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 26, 1786 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Agde |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 21, 1866 |
| Place of death | Neuilly-sur-Seine |