Lekain

Henri-Louis Caïn , known as Lekain or Kain , born the March 31st 1729 with Paris where he died the February 8th 1778, is a tragic actor French.

Lekain started, with leaving the college Mazarin, playing the comedy, in company with some young people. Voltaire, which heard it. its talent guessed, gave him councils, made it appear on the theater of the duchess of Maine with Sceaux, and obtained to him, in 1750, an order of beginning to the Th3e4atre Fran1cais. In hillock with the opposition of the actors because of his small size, its heavy step, its vulgar features and its deaf voice, Lekain were not allowed that the February 24th 1752, after seventeen months of waiting and on a decision express of the king.

An obstinate work triumphed over its natural defects: it softens its voice, managed to give him in turn pathetic accents and terrible glares; it ennoblit its gestures and made its aspect so expressive that, in the moments of passion, it produced an illusion of beauty. It was one of the first models in the way in which an actor must listen to and follow by the Pantomime the words of his interlocutor; it folded its diction with the nuances varied of the thought and the Towards; it looked after the costume and links with the Bugle to modify it, as far as the prejudices of its time allowed it. It finally often reached sublimates it of its art and made forget the Baron and the Dufresne.

Regarded as one of largest the Tragedy NS of the 18th century, he excelled especially in Orosmane ; but it was not lower than itself in any of its roles, and Tancrède , Mahomet , Gengis , Zamore , Rhadamiste , Nicomède , Oreste , Néron , Manlius , Vendôme , was for him as many triumphs. One day that he had played court in front of Louis XV, the king called after the part: This man made me cry, me which never cries. Become member of the Comédie-Française, it left only little there before its death. He was the Master of Talma.

One has of Lekain of the Mémoires (Paris, 1801, in-8°) where it extends mainly on its beginnings in the theatrical career and on its first relations with Voltaire, which were reprinted, with Réflexions by Talma (Paris, 1825, in-8°; nouv. edict., 1874, small in-12).

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