Hortense Schneider

Biography

It was the girl of a tailor of Strasbourg, who had settled in Bordeaux, and was deceased following drink abuses. Hortense starts to sing as of the three years age, goes up on scene to twelve, while taking lessons of song, then joint with a small troop of province.

It “goes up” to Paris in 1855 and becomes the mistress of the singer Jean Berthelier. This one presents it to Jacques Offenbach which immediately engages it with the Puff out-Parisian , which had just opened on July 5th of this year. It begins in the Fiddler , sentimental work based on a Breton legend, and it is rented at once by Le Figaro for its grace and its elegance. It creates there then Tromb-Al-cazar and the Rose of Saint-Flour , before being engaged with the Variétés then with the Palais Royal.

She finds there Offenbach for Brazilian the , the first collaboration of the musician with Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. She becomes the MUSE of the trio and their greater successes with the Varieties will inspire to them. In 1864, it holds the main role in the Beautiful Helene . During the creation of this part, a competition opposes it to the actress Lea Silly, so much so that she refuses that this one is delivered to least imagination when they were units on scene. Bore-Blue is created in 1866, and in 1867 the Large-Duchess of Gérolstein is written for the World Fair. Hortense Schneider obtains a triumph there, and all the crowned heads of the world is had a presentiment of in its cabin; the beauty and the talent of the actress make to the Large-Duchess of Gerolstein the nail of the exposure. It meets on this occasion the khedive of Egypt Ismaïl Pasha, with which it will maintain a connection and which invites it to spend a few months in Egypt the following year.

With the fall of the empire, its career declines in France. Always appreciated abroad, it is invited by the courses of Europe which spend of fortunes to make it come. She still collaborates with Herve for the Widow of the Hefty fellow (1873) and the Beautiful Hen (1875) then is withdrawn definitively after the death of Offenbach in 1880, to devote itself to the crippled son whom she had with the duke of Gramont-Caderousse in 1858. This last had bequeathed to him part of its fortune to its death in 1865, and after a long lawsuit. In 1881, it Marie with an Italian who says " count de Bionne" but which for no reason and which is undoubtedly justified more by the fortune of the actress only by the love. Separation takes place very little time after the marriage.

She dies in Paris in 1920. She is buried with the protesting cemetery of Bordeaux.

“ Hortense Schneider was triumphing Second Empire. Its court was as followed as that of Tileries… and more amusing. The sovereigns, in visit in Paris, hastened to run there, at once the paid official homages and came to search, of open air, a smile… and the remainder. However, as the heart was as hospital as the house, “one” Silly, his rival had called it pleasantly “the Passage of the Princes” ” (Paulus, 30 years of café concert , 1908)

Principal roles

the Beautiful Helene (1864)

Bore-Blue (1866)

the Large-Duchess of Gérolstein (1867)

Périchole (1868)

the Diva (1869)