Rome sauvée ou Catilina
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| Title: | Rome sauvée ou Catilina |
| Genus: | tragedy |
| Original language: | French |
| Author: | Voltaire |
| Publishing year: | 1753 |
| Premiere: | February 24, 1752 |
| Place of premiere: | Paris |
| Place and time of the action: | Comédie-Française |
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Rome sauvée ou Catilina is a tragedy in five acts by Voltaire . The Saved Rome, or Catiline , premiered with moderate success on February 24, 1752 in the Comédie-Française .
action
The action takes place between the Palace of Aurélie and the Temple of Tellus , which are connected by a gallery at ground level. Aurélie, a fictional character, is the secretly wedded wife of Catiline . After she cannot dissuade Catiline from his plan to usurp power, she reports a conspiracy to the Senate. Catiline then murders her father-in-law, whom he portrays as the instigator of the plot. Aurélie kills herself. The powerful Rome depicted psychologically with references to contemporaries expose Catiline and solve the political crisis according to their interests. Cicéron's ( Cicero ) conceit against Catiline, who came from an Oscar-nominee background, is interpreted as a reprise of Voltaire's disparagement in 1726 by the Chevalier Guy-Auguste de Rohan-Chabot .
Literary source and biographical references
As early as 1748, the writer and later censor Prosper Jolyot Crébillon had used the material handed down through Roman historiography and the speeches of Cicero with great success into the tragedy of Catiline . The literary interested Duchess of Maine Louise Bénédicte de Bourbon disliked the monstrous farce Catilina of Crébillon . Voltaire, who prepared a total of five new versions of the tragedies of his rival and censor Crébillon, was not long asked. According to a letter to Jean François Hénault dated August 14, 1749, he claims to have completed his first version within a week that same summer. Rome sauvée ou Catilina was, however, heavily revised by Voltaire in Berlin in 1752 .
Performances and contemporary reception
First there were private performances, such as in Paris in 1750 in front of the united friends and colleagues Denis Diderot , Jean-François Marmontel , Jean François Hénault, Guillaume Thomas François Raynal and Claude-Henri de Fusée de Voisenon . After a performance in Sceaux on June 22, 1750, Voltaire informed the Duchess of Maine that he would be moving to Berlin the next morning. Voltaire also organized private performances of the play in Berlin, for example in the apartments of Princess Amalia , in which he again took on the role of Cicero. The first public performance at the Comédie-Française followed on February 24, 1752. Rome sauvée ou Catilina was removed from the program after twelve performances. The criticism was restrained, with Voltaire himself asserting that he had written the play primarily as literature for those who know history.
Going to press
A first unauthorized edition of Rome sauvée ou Catilina took place at the end of May 1752 in Paris with the wrong imprint Ètienne Bordeaux, Berlin. The first publication authorized by Voltaire followed in 1753 in a supplement volume on Siècle de Louis XIV by Conrad Walther in Dresden.
Addition
Voltaire added a brief explanatory preface to Rome sauvée ou Catilina , in which he emphasized the historical and literary references.
First editions
- Rome sauvée, tragédie de M. de Voltaire, représentée pour la prèmiere fois à Paris par les Comédiens français ordinaires du Roy , Étienne de Bordeaux, Berin (recte: anonymous probably Paris), 1752, 106 pp.
- Rome sauvée ou Catilina et autres Pièces du même Auteur , in: Supplement au Siècle de Louis XIV. Walther, Dresden, 1753.
Web links
literature
- Theodore Besterman : Preussen: Willkommen und Abschied (1750–1753), in: Voltaire, Winkler, Munich, 1971, pp. 259, 264.
- Manuel Couvreur: Rome sauvée ou Catilina, in: Dictionnaire Voltaire, Hachette Livre, 1994, p. 202.
- Siegfried Detemple: Voltaire: Die Werke, catalog for the 300th birthday, Berlin, 1994, p. 96f.