Rachel (actress)
Rachel , also Mademoiselle Rachel , actually Élisa Rachel Félix or Elizabeth-Rachel Félix (born February 21, 1821 in Mumpf , Canton Aargau , Switzerland ; † January 3, 1858 in Le Cannet in southern France ), was a French - Jewish actress and was considered one of the greatest tragic women of her time.
youth
Rachel was born in Switzerland, but was not Swiss: Her parents were wandering Jewish small artists and traders. She was born as the second eldest daughter on her way from Germany to France in an inn. The family originally came from Alsace and spoke German as well as French .
In 1827 the family settled in Lyon , where they ran a small business. To supplement the household budget, Rachel and her older sister Sarah had to sing songs and recite fables on the street and later in music cafes . Soon the girl, described as very small and petite, was noticed by her unusually expressive and clear voice. Alexandre-Étienne Choron , director of a Paris singing school, discovered her and brought her and her family to the French capital, where they moved to a Jewish quarter. With the help of donors , Rachel was able to attend an acting school and learn to read and write in addition to the art of declamation (at Pagnon Saint Aulaire).
Acting career
From 1837 she first played insignificant roles in the Théâtre du Gymnase Marie Bell , a vaudeville theater for an annual fee of 4,000 francs, but the theater critics noticed her talent. It was there that she met her lifelong friend and sponsor, the actress and salon lady Juliette Récamier . In 1838 Rachel made her debut at the famous Comédie-Française (Théâtre Français) in a leading role, a professional accolade for every French actor. Her brilliant and self-confident interpretation of Camille in Pierre Corneille's tragedy Horace made her the new star in the Parisian theater sky overnight.
She only appeared as Rachel or Mademoiselle Rachel and became famous across Europe under this name. From then on she appeared on stage in all pieces of classical French theater and won over audiences and critics, especially in tragedies by Corneille and Jean Racine . Critics particularly praised her straightforward, almost strict style and the clear diction of her powerful voice, which, in connection with her very slim and small appearance and large dark eyes, must have exerted a strange attraction on the audience. Contemporary poets such as Alfred de Musset praised it as a “genius”, Stendhal said that Rachel had virtually “invented” tragedy, and for the German revolutionary Carl Schurz , its performance in Berlin in 1850, which he described enthusiastically in his memoirs, left a “ the most overwhelming impressions of my life ”. The Swiss poet Gottfried Keller saw her at the same time and wrote to a friend: "She has a lot of manner, but is still a great person and who, or rather the greatest artist I know". At the age of 20, the young tragedy became a permanent member of the Théatre Français and celebrated the greatest triumph of her career in 1842 with her interpretation of Racine's Phaedra ; King Louis-Philippe congratulated her personally. Her performances during the Revolution of 1848, when she sang the Marseillaise night after night in the overcrowded Comédie-Française, now renamed “Théâtre de la République”, are also legendary .
Rachel toured all over Europe and was enthusiastically celebrated everywhere. She was received by the emperor in Vienna and by the tsar in Saint Petersburg, Russia . Her appearance in London in front of the royal family in 1841 was a major social event. In 1852, on the occasion of her guest performance there, the Prussian king had a statue erected for her in front of the Prussian court and the Russian tsar on Pfaueninsel in southwest Berlin; Casts of her bust were sold as souvenirs, and perfumes were even named after her in the Tsarist empire, which was particularly enthusiastic about Rachel. Even a knitting machine , the so-called " Rachel machine ", bears her name. Rachel was a star and frequented the first circles of society, she was friends with aristocrats, politicians and artists and ran her own salon . Her siblings also became actors and achieved some success, not least with the help of their sister. Her father remained her impresario until her untimely death , negotiating the well-endowed contracts (but sometimes overdoing it with his demands in such a way that Rachel was received icily everywhere except by the audience).
Private life
At least as turbulent as her professional life was Rachel's private life, which repeatedly made headlines in the tabloids . She is said to have had countless affairs with men from all walks of life, from one-night stands with strangers to long-term relationships with celebrities. She had two sons, in 1844 Alexandre by Napoléon Bonaparte's illegitimate son Alexandre Colonna-Walewski , and in 1848 Gabriel-Victor (called "Zozo") by a grandson of General Henri-Gratien Bertrand . She never married, her only lifelong ties were family and friendships, personal independence meant everything to her. To Walewski, who complained about her promiscuity , she wrote: "I am who I am: I love the tenants, but not the homeowners."
Sickness and death
Rachel, who was physically delicate, gradually ruined her health through long, strenuous tours through Russia in 1853/54. By the time she went on a tour to the United States in 1855 , she was already suffering from lung disease . The tour turned out to be the first failure of her career, as the American audience mostly had nothing to do with her lecture. Already suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis , she returned to Europe and traveled to Egypt in 1856 . She spent her last life with friends in Le Cannet in the south of France, where she died in 1858. With great sympathy among the population, she was buried in a mausoleum in the Jewish section of the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris .
Aftermath
Rachel is known in the history of theater as a great reformer of the performing arts , who freed the art of acting from the exaggerated pathos of its predecessors and brought the French classics back to their roots. The writer Charlotte Brontë , who had seen Rachel on stage in London in 1841, created the character of Vashti after the actress in her novel Villette (1853) .
Ludwig August Frankl dedicated his romantic poem Rachel , published in 1842 to “The First Actress in France” , which is preceded by an eight-verse dedicatory poem:
“What poets tragically deeply designed,
it sounds enthusiastically according to your tone,
shocking, like the hundred harps
on the Waidenbaum in front of Babilon.
[...]
And sacrificing you teht at the altar,
With a bright whine and cheeky mind -
I greet you [,] You wonderful,
you flamed priestess! "
.
Rachel Felix became the main character in Rahel Meyer's biographical novella Rachel (1859), which is about adhering to the Jewish faith in the face of temptations in society.
In 2004 the Museum of Art and History of Judaism in Paris dedicated an exhibition to her.
family
Rachel Felix's sisters Sarah, Rebekka , Dina and Lea also became actresses, as did a more distant relative, Judith Bernat .
literature
Non-fiction
- Auguste Bolot: Mademoiselle Rachel et l'avenir du théâtre français. Rousseau, Paris 1839. ( Google books )
- Michael R. Booth et al. a .: Three tragic actresses. Siddons , Rachel, Ristori . UP, Cambridge 1996, ISBN 0-521-41115-7 .
- Jules Chéry: Mademoiselle Rachel en Amérique (1855-1856). Mercure de Frane, Paris 2008, ISBN 978-2-7152-2807-8 .
- Sylvie Chevalley: Rachel. "J'ai porté mon nom aussi loin que j'ai pu". Calmann-Lévy, Paris 1989, ISBN 2-7021-1754-6 .
- Anne H. Hoog et al. a. (Ed.): Rachel. Une vie pour le théâtre (1821-1858). Soc. Nouvelle, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-87660-389-6 . (Book accompanying the exhibition of the same name.)
- Martial Piéchaud: La vie privée de Rachel. Hachette, Paris 1954.
- Eduard Schmidt-Weissenfels: Rachel. In: Eduard Schmidt-Weissenfels: Biographical sketches and character novels. Second volume. Janke, Berlin 1862, p. 127ff. ( Google books )
- Heidrun Thiede: Another time. Fanny Lewald , Sara Levy , Rachel. Zy-Presse, Berlin 2004.
- Eugen Zabel : Rachel. In: Eugen Zabel: Theater walks. Hofmann, Berlin 1908.
Fiction
- Rahel Meyer : Rachel: a biographical novella . Berlin, 1859
- Ulrike M. Wilhelm: The theater princess. Novel. BLT, Bergisch Gladbach 2007, ISBN 978-3-404-92244-4 .
- Parisian Pictures and Stories - Mademoiselle Rachel . In: The Gazebo . Issue 47, 1854 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).
Web links
- Literature by and about Rachel in the catalog of the German National Library
- Rachel (1821-1858). Une vie pour le theater . (French)
Individual evidence
- ^ Ludwig August Frankl: Rachel. A romantic poem Vienna 1842 ( digitized version )
- ↑ Florian Krobb: The beautiful Jüdin: Jüdische Frauengestalten in the German-language narrative literature from the 17th century to the First World War (= Conditio Judaica . Volume 4 ). Walter de Gruyter, Tübingen 1993, ISBN 3-11-094350-6 , p. 112 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ↑ Nahida Ruth Lazarus: The Jewish Woman . Leipzig 1892, p. 262 ff., Textarchiv - Internet Archive
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Rachel |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Rachel, Mademoiselle (full name); Félix, Élisa Rachel (real name); Félix, Elizabeth-Rachel (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French-Jewish actress |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 21, 1821 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Mumpf , Canton Aargau, Switzerland |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 3, 1858 |
| Place of death | Le Cannet , South of France |