Victorien Sardou

Victorien Sardou is a dramatic author born with Paris the September 5th 1831 and died in Paris the November 8th 1908.

Biography

Victorien Sardou is resulting from a family of Provence which had an olive grove with the Cannet, close to Cannes. At the time one particularly rigorous winter, freezing killed all the olive-trees and ruined the family. The father of Victorien, Antoine Léandre Sardou, settled in Paris where he was successively accountant, professor of accountancy, principal and tutor, while publishing handbooks of grammar, dictionaries and treaties on various subjects. As it earned its living very insufficiently, Victorien had to only manage and was constrained, for lack of money, to stop the studies of medicine which it had undertaken.

He survived by teaching French foreign pupils, by giving lessons of Latin, history and mathematics and by writing articles for popular encyclopedias. In same time, he endeavoured to bore in the letters. Its first tests had been encouraged by an old bluestocking, Mrs. de Bawl, which had had some credit under the Restoration. He endeavoured to draw the attention of Rachel by subjecting a drama to him, the Queen Ulfra , based on an old Swedish chronicle.

Its beginnings were particularly difficult. Its part the Tavern of the students was represented with the Odéon on April 1st 1854, but accepted a stormy reception because the rumor had run that the author had been engaged by the Government to cause the students. The part was withdrawn after five representations. Another drama, Bernard Palissy , was accepted in Odéon but a change of management made reconsider engagement. A part on Canadian subject, Fleur de Liane , failed to be played Ambiguous the but the death of the director of this theater ruined the project. Uneven the , written for Charles Albert Fechter, did not rain with the actor and when the part was, ultimately, represented successfully, it was, in consequence of an error, under the name of someone else. Paris with back , subjected to Adolphe Lemoine says Montigny, director of the Gymnase, was rejected by this one, on the council of Eugene Scribe which found revolting the scene of love, which was to become extremely famous in Our Close friends .

Sardou was plunged in blackest misery, and its misfortunes culminated with an attack of typhoid fever which failed to carry it. He died in his galetas, surrounded by his rejected manuscripts, when a person who lived in the same house carried him help. It was called Miss de Brécourt and had relations in the theater world, in particular celebrates it actress Virginia Déjazet, of which it was intimate. When it was restored, it presented it to her friend, who enticha of the young author.

For him, the actress, already old, bought in 1859 a theater, the Madnesses Déjazet, 41 Boulevard of the Temple, soon renamed Théâtre Déjazet. To support the operating costs of them, it went until taking again its rounds through Europe. Ingenuous , the first part written for Virginia Déjazet, was prohibited by the censure, but the three following parts, written almost back-to-back - the First Weapons of Barber , Mr Garat , the Meadows Saint-Gervais - had a great success. The same applied with the Spidery scrawl (1860), which was given to the Gymnasium.

Victorien Sardou quickly made good match with the two Masters of the theater of then, Emile Augier and Alexandre Dumas wire. If it did not have the direction of the comic one, the eloquence and the moral fiber of the first, the impassioned conviction and the spirit pricking of the second, he was a Master of the dialog. The counterparts were connected with spirit. It applied the constructive principles of Scribe, combining the three traditional kinds - comedy of character, manners or intrigue - with the middle-class drama. It showed as much skill than its Master to assemble these elements in parts solid and well done, while turning them more largely towards the social satire. He made fun the middle-class egoistic and vulgar in Our close friends (1861), old single people in the Old Boys (1865), modern Sanctimonious hypocrites in Séraphine (1868), peasants in Our Good Villagers (1866), old habits and obsolete political principles in the Fools (1862), the revolutionary spirit and those which live about it in Rabagas (1872) and the King Carotte (1872), laws on the divorce in Divorçons! (1880). Fédora (1882) was written especially for Sarah Bernhardt, following the example number of the later parts. It was renewed by introducing into its parts a historical element, generally surface: it borrowed Théodora (1884) from the Byzantine chronicles and Hatred (1874) with the Italian chronicles, while it located the Duchess of Athens in medieval Greece. Patrie (1869) evokes the rising of the Dutch peasants at the end of the 16th century while the Witch (1904) is held in Spain at the 16th century. The French revolution is used as framework with three parts: Marvellous the , Thermidor (1891) and Robespierre (1902), written especially for Sir Henry Irving. The imperial epopee revives in Tosca (1887) and the very famous Mrs Without Embarrassment (1893). It also gave Dante (1903), Pisie (1905) and the Drama of the poisons (1907).

Victorien Sardou married initially Laurentine Eléonore Désirée of Harvest of Brécourt, which died eight years later. It remaria in 1872 with Marie Anne Corneille Soulié (1845-1923), girl of the scholar Eudore Augustin Soulié and of Marie Catherine Joséphine Villa. His/her daughter will marry the dramatic author Robert de Flers.

Victorien Sardou was elected with the French Academy in 1877.

External bonds

biographical Card on the site of the French Academy
'' Tosca '' (1887)
'' the black pearl '' (1862).
'' the hour of the spectacle '' (1878).

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