Sarah Bernhardt back on stage
Paris, February 19, 1872. The crowd of premieres flocks to the Théâtre de l’Odéon to celebrate the return on stage of a play by Victor Hugo, the first since the writer returned to France after nineteen years of political exile. Censored under the Second Empire, the venerable master was praised by the Third Republic. His admirers impatiently waited to hear his committed verses again. It is with Ruy Blas let him break the silence. Another name livens up the conversations: Sarah Bernhardt. The actress, chosen by Hugo for the main role, had attracted critical attention before the war of 1870. What became of her? She was amazing in The Passerby by François Coppée, in 1869, but will she be up to the task this evening? Her circle of fans, where artists and students dominate, has no doubt: she will inevitably excel as the Queen of Spain in love with a valet!
Of all the fights
At 27, the redhead with golden-green eyes is struggling to make herself known to the general public. Everything started very well though. Leaving the Conservatory at 18, she immediately joined the prestigious Comédie-Française, where a clear-cut career awaited her. This was without taking into account his fiery temperament which first earned him the distrust of directors, then his first scandals. In 1864, at the age of 20, she gave birth to her only child, Maurice, the fruit of her love affair with a Belgian prince, Henri de Ligne, whose family opposed their marriage. No matter, she already adores this child more than anything and accepts her status as a single mother. Two years later, she got noticed again by slapping a French actress who had just unfairly molested her little sister who had come to see her backstage. The Institution does not like scandals, it is fired. Should she stop everything? No, she will join the Odéon troupe and triumph even more! Isn’t his motto “all the same”? Two words that she has not finished replying to those who try to oppose her determination.
The war of 1870 interrupted his career
It will take him two more years to reach the top of the bill and have his talent recognized in The Passerby. His rise would probably have been meteoric if the war against Prussia, then the Paris Commune, had not interrupted his career. Did she become bitter about it? No, she was going to live intensely “all the same”! She even revealed one of her lesser known facets by devoting herself body and soul to setting up a makeshift hospital in the Théâtre de l’Odéon. His empathy and dedication will always go to the most vulnerable and the oppressed. Sensitive to the democratic demands of the Communards, Sarah Bernhardt will also form a lasting friendship with Louise Michel. She will have many other progressive commitments, notably alongside Émile Zola, in favor of Dreyfus, whose suffering she will understand all the better as she was also the target of anti-Semites. A feminist, she also became very close to the libertarian journalist Séverine. During her tours across the Atlantic, discovering the situation of Native Americans, she defended them by rebelling against colonialism. This conscience, both moral and political, also led to choices of explicitly militant roles, including Jeanne Doré, a plea against the death penalty (“a crime against humanity”, she believes), written for her by Tristan Bernard, which she mounted in 1913, on the eve of the First World War.
What revenge on destiny!
At the end of 1871, when the rehearsals of Ruy Blas can finally begin, Sarah Bernhardt is eager to prove her worth. On the evening of the premiere, overcoming stage fright that will never leave her, she appears radiant in the aura of her white dress laminated with silver. “All his movements are both noble and harmonious,” wrote Francisque Sarcey in his review. Conquered, he cites her “poetic grace”, her “languid and tender” voice, praises her “diction with a rhythm so accurate and such perfect clarity that one never loses a syllable” and is enthusiastic about her “fine and penetrating intonations”. Her article perfectly summarizes the qualities that will make Sarah Bernhardt the first international star: charisma of movements, clarity of declamation and accuracy of incarnation.
The public will not need to read this report to form an opinion: the cheers make the room shake. Victor Hugo, also carried in triumph, does not hide his admiration when, kneeling down in front of his interpreter, he kisses her hands and thanks her. This evening “tore the light veil which still clouded my future, and I felt that I was destined for fame. I had remained, until that day, the little fairy of the students: I became the Chosen of the public” , she wrote lucidly, thirty-five years later, in her memoirs*. This “celebrity” will give him the means for a breathtaking and joyful revenge on destiny. His jubilant freedom and his inexhaustible appetite for experiences will be the measure of the sorrows endured in his youth. Because before Jean Cocteau invented the expression “sacred monster” for her or Victor Hugo nicknamed her “the golden voice”, Sarah Bernhardt several times despaired of existence, cursing a mother who never truly knew how to love him.
Rosine-Sarah was born on October 23, 1844, in Paris where her mother, Julie Bernhardt, known as “Youle”, a fashionable courtesan, navigated social and artistic circles. Her father, whose true identity she hid for a long time to invent romantic ancestry, is a notable from Le Havre who will take little interest in her. This baby who is burdening Youle is quickly sent to foster care in Quimperlé, where she seems to have been forgotten for seven years. In 1851, when she entered a boarding school in Auteuil near Paris, little Sarah only spoke Breton. Two years later, the urgency of educating this illiterate little girl was such that her mother placed her at Notre-Dame du Grandchamp, in Versailles, where she remained from 9 to 15 years old. Quickly baptized, she never denied her Jewish ancestry.
Entering the theater… as one enters religion
It is in this convent that she will finally feel surrounded and stimulated. There also that she declaims her first verses, replacing at short notice the comrade who was to play the archangel Gabriel in a play given in honor of the Bishop of Paris. Is this the revealer of his vocation? In a way since she dreams of… entering the orders! Her mysticism perhaps consoles her a little for the indifference of her mother who rarely visits her and who too often “forgets” to invite her to spend the holidays with the family.
In 1860, at age 16, Sarah left the convent and once again became a burden for her mother who called a family council to decide her future. One of Youle’s most influential lovers is invited: the Duke of Morny, half-brother of Napoleon III. His intercession will be decisive. Asked by her mother to choose between courting and marriage, Sarah perseveres in her desire to become a nun. Too expensive for household income, counters Youle. The Duke of Morny, well established in the theatrical world, offered to recommend her for entry to the Conservatory. To convince her, she is dragged the next day to a performance of Britannicus by Racine. She emerges transfigured after having vibrated with her entire being. Well, she will be an actress! Twelve years later, this choice will finally be rewarded. After his triumph in Ruy Blaseverything speeds up. The Comédie-Française begs her to come back, she accepts. The opportunity for her to have a nice snub but above all to find the divine Mounet-Sully, one of the greatest actors of the 19th century, who becomes her almost exclusive partner and her most passionate affair. She will also land some of her legendary roles including Phaedra (1873) which made Oscar Wilde say that it was by hearing it that he “absolutely realized the sweetness of Racine’s music”, then Dona Sol in to Hernani (1877) which moved Hugo so much that he gave him a diamond in the shape of a teardrop.
The queen of firsts
In 1880, at the age of 36, after a tour of England with the Comédie-Française, Sarah Bernhardt decided to regain her freedom. She wants to create her company and direct her own theater. Her first choice as an independent artist, La Dame aux camélias by Dumas fils, would become her cult role. Her projects costing a lot of money, she decided to accept requests from all over the world and began the first of her long, lucrative tours outside Europe. The first international star, she will be acclaimed on five continents. Between two trips, she created new female and male roles, which also became legendary: Cleopatra by Victorien Sardou (1890), Lorenzaccio by Alfred de Musset (1896), Médée by Catulle Mendès (1898), L’Aiglon d ‘Edmond Rostand (1900)…
She becomes the very first actress to make a spectacle of her own lifestaging her extravagances and accepting no morality other than her own: she lives in the middle of a veritable menagerie, assumes responsibility for her multiple lovers of both sexes, robs deputies by monetizing her favors, plays with her image in advertisements, takes a nap in a coffin, creates a sumptuous estate in Belle-Île… Gifted in many fields, including painting, sculpture and writing, she draws into her creative whirlwind the most talented minds of his time: it thus reveals the Art Nouveau painter Alfons Mucha by commissioning him to create posters for all his shows from 1895; launches René Lalique by entrusting him with the creation of his stage jewelry; became the muse of painters like Louise Abbéma and Georges Clairin who created her most beautiful portraits.
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Tireless pioneer, Sarah Bernhardt is the first artist to have her voice recorded by Thomas Edison himself. She will also, despite the pain inflicted by bone tuberculosis which will cause the amputation of her right leg in 1915, appear in eleven films from 1900 to her death. Tireless but not immortal, she died on March 26, 1923, at the age of 79, while she was filming The Clairvoyant of Sacha Guitry, a long-time friend whose father she had once loved, the great actor Lucien Guitry. Her funeral procession, followed by hundreds of thousands of people, made a long stop at Place du Châtelet, in front of the theater that she had named after her when renting it from 1899. Since becoming the Théâtre de la Ville, it also displays, since 2023, the name of the one who gave it her soul.
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Sarah Bernhardt, La Divine, film portrait of Guillaume Nicloux
In 1915, in her hospital room after the amputation of her right leg, Sarah Bernhardt plunges into her memories and takes us with her through the twists and turns of her stormy affair with Lucien Guitry, one of her famous theater partners. … Guillaume Nicloux’s film, in theaters on December 18, gives a superb setting to Sandrine Kiberlain who embodies as a virtuoso the most legendary French actress. The settings are sumptuous and all the actors are excellent in a lively and rhythmic story. It’s a shame that the scenario took liberties with the facts, in particular by oversizing his love for Lucien Guitry.
Sarah Bernhardt, La Divinewith Sandrine Kiberlain, Laurent Lafitte, Amira Casar, Laurent Stocker…
Sources
* My double lifeautobiography by Sarah Bernhardt published in 1907 (republished in 2000, ed. Phébus).
Other sources:
Sarah Bernhardtby Sophie-Aude Picon (ed. Folio Biographies, 2010).
Sarah Bernhardt. And the woman created the starcatalog of the eponymous exhibition, presented at the Petit Palais, in Paris, from April to August 2023 (ed. Paris-Musées).
Photo captions:
Left: Sarah Bernhardt, W&D Downey, @Adobe-Stock
Right: the actress in Gismonda by Théobald Chartran (1849-1907), made in New York in 1896 @Adobe-Stock
