René Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt

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René Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt, 1841

René Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt (born January 22, 1773 in Nancy , Département Meurthe-et-Moselle , † July 27, 1844 ibid) was a French playwright and director . He was the founder of modern melodrama .

Life

Pixérécourt's father was of the lower nobility and, after studying law, involved his son in the French Revolution , where at the age of 17 he had to fight on the side of the royalists in the emigrant army . Already during the military service he wrote plays. After years of effort, he succeeded in 1797 for the first time to bring a play to the Parisian Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique . In the same year, the great success Victor ou l'enfant de la forêt (Victor or the child of the forest) followed , a piece that is inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Pygmalion (1770). Cœlina (1800) became his most successful piece. Pixérécourt then dominated the great Parisian melodrama stages for 30 years. In 1827 he was director of the Opéra-Comique for a year . From 1825 to 1835 he was director of the Théâtre de la Gaîté until it was destroyed by fire, which took away his fortune. He retired to Nancy and dealt with the edition of his works.

The melodrama

The Théâtre de la Porte St. Martin, where many pieces by Pixérécourt were performed.

After the French Revolution, aristocratic tragedy with its ancient fabrics was no longer interesting. The tragic should no longer be a privilege of the high-ranking figures. The melodrama, as a mostly serious genre intended for a mass audience, took its place. The tremors of contemporary history created a strong need for orientation. In the opinion of many people, right and wrong, morality and immorality should become distinguishable again.

As Alexis Pitou has pointed out, the melodrama in some ways continues the pantomime of the later 18th century. Pixérécourt's pieces have been performed on Paris' Boulevard du Temple , mainly at the Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique , the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin and the Théâtre de la Gaîeté .

The crime stories, which made up an essential part of the repertoire, gave rise to the nickname of this boulevard as "Boulevard du crime" (Boulevard of crime). The derogatory term “ boulevard theater” is also associated with Pixérécourt's melodramas. Its audience came from the lower middle class. Many couldn't read. The fascinating deciphering of characters has been one of the stylistic devices of the melodramatic ever since. Film genres such as the coat-and-sword film , the adventure film , the crime film , the horror film appear predetermined in Pixérécourt's melodramas.

effect

Despite numerous hostilities, Pixérécourt was one of the most influential theater writers at the beginning of the 19th century and had a considerable influence on literature, art and drama of the following generation, such as Victor Hugo , Honoré de Balzac , Alexandre Dumas the Elder , Eugène Scribe or the opera composers Daniel François Esprit Auber and Giacomo Meyerbeer . Numerous German-speaking authors such as August von Kotzebue or Ignaz Franz Castelli translated his pieces or used them as a basis for their own works. Pixérécourts The Aubry's Dog (1814), in which a dog identifies its master's murderer, was performed with a trained poodle and caused a worldwide sensation. Johann Wolfgang Goethe put 1817 his directorship at Weimar Lower Court Theater when he was unable to prevent a performance. Goethe immortalized the poodle ("the core of the poodle") in Faust I.

Pixérécourt's work as a director, who placed great emphasis on realistic décor, had a significant influence on the history of theater in the 19th century. The actor and writer Thomas Holcroft translated Pixérécourt's melodramas for the London stages, where melodrama developed its own tradition.

In addition to his around 60 melodramas, Pixérécourt wrote a number of comedies and texts for the music-theatrical genres Opéra-comique , Vaudeville and Féerie . He wrote two theoretical texts in which he justified his theatrical genre: Guerre au mélodrame! (1818) and Le Mélodrame (1832).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alexis Pitou, "Les Origines du mélodrame français à la fin du XVIIIe siècle", in: Revue d'Histoire littéraire de la France , vol. 18, Paris: Colin 1911, pp. 256-296
  2. ↑ cf. Gabrielle Hyslop: "Pixérécourt and the French melodrama debate: instructing boulevard theater audiences", in: James Redmond (ed.): Melodrama. Cambridge: University Press 1992, pp. 61-85

Selection of works

  • Victor ou l'enfant de la forêt, 1797
  • Cœlina ou l'enfant du mystère, 1800
  • Robinson Crusoé, 1812
  • Le Chien de Montargis (The Dog of Aubry), 1814
  • Christophe Colomb ou la découverte du Nouveau monde (Columbus or the discovery of the New World), 1815
  • La Chapelle des bois, ou le témoin invisible, 1819
  • Latude ou 35 ans de captivité, 1834

literature

  • Paul J. Marcoux: Guilbert De Pixérécourt. French Melodrama in the Early Nineteenth Century. New York: Lang 1992. ISBN 0820419052
  • Marvin Carlson, Daniel C. Gerould (eds.): Pixérécourt. Four Melodramas, New York: Segal 2002. ISBN 0966615247
  • McCormick, John: Popular Theaters on Nineteenth-Century France, London / New York: Routledge 1993.

Web links

Commons : René-Charles Guilbert de Pixerécourt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Pixérécourt, René Charles Guilbert de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French playwright, founder of modern melodrama
DATE OF BIRTH January 22, 1773
PLACE OF BIRTH Nancy
DATE OF DEATH July 27, 1844
Place of death Nancy