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Updated: June 4, 2025
Yet, even so, Adrienne held the first place in his heart, and her rival knew it. Therefore she resolved to humiliate Adrienne, and to do so in the place where the actress had always reigned supreme. There was to be a gala performance of Racine's great tragedy, "Phedre," with Adrienne, of course, in the title-role.
But from that time forth fear took possession of me, and stage fright martyrised me. It was under these conditions that I prepared for the second act of Phedre, in which I was to appear for the first time before the English public. Three times over I put rouge on my cheeks, blackened my eyes, and three times over I took it all off again with a sponge.
They also talk a vast deal about the little essays of criticism. In yesterday's Journal des Debats, after a flaming panegyric on Buonaparte, "Et apres avoir parle de l'univers de qui peut-on parler? Des plus grandes des Poetes de Racine": then follows a criticism on Phedre.
Her Phèdre is pronounced by excellent judges equal to that of Rachel. Signora Sedowsky was born at Naples, and is the proprietress of three large theatres in that city. She is the wife of a wealthy nobleman. Notwithstanding her rank, she still keeps on the stage, but is received with honor in the first society. She has never acted out of Italy, and very rarely beyond the walls of Naples.
Two artistes having missed the train, we could not play Adrienne Lecouvreur, and I had to replace it by Phedre, the only piece in which the absentees could be replaced. The receipts averaged twenty thousand francs for the seven performances given in six days.
At that time he was fifty-one; he had just published L'Antichrist, the most brilliant of all the volumes of the "Origines"; and he was not yet a member of the French Academy. I turn to a few other impressions from that distant time. One night we were in the Theatre Francais, and Racine's "Phedre" was to be given.
It was remarkable how perfectly the genius which had, the evening before, adequately represented Phedre, could impersonate the ablest finesse of Italian subtilty. The old Italian romances were made real in a moment.
Although deeply moved by what had occurred, I paid great attention to the magnificent part of Phedre, which often excited my admiration and profound pity. At some passages, which every one knows by heart, two or three insolent persons abandoned themselves to a petty war of allusions, and accenting these aggressive phrases with their applause, succeeded in directing general attention to me.
Yet, even so, Adrienne held the first place in his heart, and her rival knew it. Therefore she resolved to humiliate Adrienne, and to do so in the place where the actress had always reigned supreme. There was to be a gala performance of Racine's great tragedy, "Phedre," with Adrienne, of course, in the title-role.
Besides this, he was an assiduous courtier, and he also found the time, among these various avocations, for carrying on at least two passionate love-affairs. At the age of thirty-eight, after two years' labour, he completed the work in which his genius shows itself in its consummate form the great tragedy of Phèdre.
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