Marie Dorval: France's Theatrical Wonder. A Book for Actors (Chiasma 21)

235 Pages·2006·0.62 MB·English

by  Bettina Knapp

Marie Dorval:
France’s Theatrical Wonder
Chiasma 21
General Editor
Michael Bishop
Editorial Committee
Adelaide Russo, Michael Sheringham,
Steven Winspur, Sonya Stephens,
Michael Brophy, Anja Pearre
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007
Marie Dorval:
France’s Theatrical Wonder
A Book for Actors
Bettina Knapp
Cover illustration: engraving by Vigneron, 1829.
Cover design: Pier Post
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of
‘ISO 9706: 1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence’.
Le papier sur lequel le présent ouvrage est imprimé remplit les prescriptions
de "ISO 9706:1994, Information et documentation - Papier pour documents -
Prescriptions pour la permanence".
ISBN-10: 90-420-2132-2
ISBN-13: 978-90-420-2132-7
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007
Printed in The Netherlands
EDITOR’S PREFACE

Chiasma seeks to foster urgent critical assessments focusing
upon joinings and criss-crossings, single, triangular, multiple, in the
realm of modern French literature. Studies may be of an
interdisciplinary nature, developing connections with art, philosophy,
linguistics and beyond, or display intertextual or other plurivocal
concerns of varying order.

*

To trace the life of Marie Dorval through the turbulences and
exhilarations of her epoch is to engage not just with the genesis and
the full flowering of a rare theatrical genius but also with the teeming
literary, emotional, economic and material dramas in which such a
genius is implacably embroiled. Dumas, Vigny, Hugo, Sand, Gautier
and many others mingle their creative and affective energies with
Dorval’s in a ceaseless dynamic interplay. But to read Bettina
Knapp’s exceptional story is to realize too the so easily overlooked
backcloth to life in Marie Dorval’s times: poverty, the need to will
one’s survival, unimaginably trying circumstances in which theatre is
performed, whether in the provinces or in Paris. And the account that
follows further seeks, upon this at once intimate and societal canvas,
to give us some real insight into the uniqueness of Dorval’s acting
techniques, simultaneously instinctive, viscerally natural, and learned,
studied, though more from life than instruction. A book for actors,
indeed; but a book, too, for lovers of the theatre and, beyond that, of
the sheer improbable drama of existence.

Michael Bishop
and
Anja Pearre
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Canada
June 2006
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CONTENTS

Editors Preface ..............................................................................5
Contents .........................................................................................7
Foreword .......................................................................................9
Chapter 1 .......................................................................................11
Chapter 2 .......................................................................................27
Chaper 3 ........................................................................................51
Chapter 4 .......................................................................................83
Chapter 5 .......................................................................................93
Chapter 6 .......................................................................................123
Chapter 7 .......................................................................................149
Chapter 8 .......................................................................................169
Chapter 9 .......................................................................................191
Chapter 10 .....................................................................................209
Chapter 11 .....................................................................................215
Chapter 12 .....................................................................................225
Bibliography ..................................................................................231
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FOREWORD

Illusion has always been implicit in the human lot. It was and
is a way of life. Instrumental in war and in peace, it is crucial to the
arts and to the sciences as well. It drives people to achieve and to
sorrow, to dream and to create, to love and to hate. It is the byword of
the actor, the dramatist, and the audience!
Paris: 1820. Melodrama is the rage. While official theaters
remain virtually empty, crowds flood Paris’ left bank Théâtre de
L’Ambigu and Théâtre Porte Saint-Martin, where blood-curdling
melodramas, replete with comedy farce, mime, burlesque, opera, as
well as unidentifiable extravaganzas, assuage the appetites of the
famished.
Paris: 1945. The film director Marcel Carné creates one of
France’s screen greats, The Children of Paradise, featuring such
outstanding actors as Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault, Pierre Brasseur,
Maria Casarès, and Pierre Renoir. Arletty plays the role of the
seductive and brilliant actress, Garance, whose wiles, be they on or
off stage, magnetize those around her. This mysterious stage
personality was none other than Marie Dorval, whose real life dramas
we are about to unravel.