Adrienne Lecouvreur
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Adrienne Lecouvreur
Lecouvreur, Adrienne (1692-1730). Notable French tragic actress. After her death in mysterious circumstances she was refused church burial because of her profession. Her friend Voltaire stigmatized this act of intolerance in his Lettres philosophiques.
Lecouvreur, Adrienne (ädrēĕn' ləkūvrör'), 1692-1730, French actress. With Michel Baron she helped change the traditional acting techniques of the French stage to a simpler, more natural style. She was extremely popular from her debut at the Comédie Française in 1717. Her love for Maurice de Saxe ended in tragedy; her mysterious death was ascribed to poisoning by her rival, the duchesse de Bouillon. The Church's refusal to grant Lecouvreur a Christian burial resulted in a bitter poem by her friend Voltaire. She is the subject of a play by Scribe and Legouvé and of the opera Adriana Lecouvreur by Francesco Cilea.
Bibliography
See biography by J. Richtman (1971).
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Adrienne Lecouvreur
Adrienne Lecouvreur (5 April 1692 – 20 March 1730) was a French actress.
Born in Damery, she first appeared professionally on the stage in Lille. After her Paris debut at the Comédie-Française in 1717, she was immensely popular with the public, until her mysterious death.[1]
She was credited with having developed a more natural, less stylized, type of acting[citation needed].
She had a romance with Maurice de Saxe, which ended in tragedy when she was apparently poisoned by her rival, Maria Karolina Sobieska, Duchess of Bouillon. The refusal of the Catholic Church to give her a Christian burial moved her friend Voltaire to write a bitter poem on the subject.
Legagy
Her life became the inspiration for a tragic 1849 drama Adrienne Lecouvreur by Scribe and Legouvé on which Francesco Cilea's opera Adriana Lecouvreur and the operetta Adrienne (1926) by Walter Goetze[2] are based. Before them, however, in 1856, Edoardo Vera premiered his "dramma lirico" Adriana Lecouvreur e la duchessa di Bouillon.[3] In 1913 Sarah Bernhardt played her in the silent movie Adrienne Lecouvreur.[4] In 1928, MGM Studios filmed Dream of Love, based on the Scribe and Legouvé play, Adrienne Lecouvreur, starring Joan Crawford and Nils Asther. At least six further films were made based on her life including Adrienne Lecouvreur (1938).[5]
References
- ^ Probably from poison which was used almost in epidemic proportions during her era. See the chapter on the "Slow Poisoners" within Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay (pp. 565-592).
- ^ Goebel, Wilfried. "Adrienne, von Goetze" (in German). operone. http://www.operone.de/opern/adrienne.html. Retrieved 2007-10-28.
- ^ Gherardo Cassaglia almanac.
- ^ Adrienne Lecouvreur (1913) at the Internet Movie Database
- ^ Search IMDB for Adrienne Lecouvreur
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Oxford Companion to French Literature
The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
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Columbia Encyclopedia
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/.
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Mentioned in
Dream of Love
(1928 Film)
Michel Baron
(French actor)
Adrienne Lecouvreur
(1938 Comedy Drama Film)
Helena Modjeska
(Polish-American actress)
Augustin Eugène Scribe
(French dramatist & composer)
» More