Enregistrement voix sarah bernhardt biography

Degree Type Dissertation. Abstract The career of French actress Sarah Bernhardt spanned more than sixty years, and established her as the first modern international superstar. Chair and Committee Hugh MacDonald. Committee Members Elizabeth C. Available for download on Monday, December 15, Included in Music Commons. Search Enter search terms:.

Sarah Bernhardt recording her voice with a phonograph. There are no other sounds on these recordings apart from the noise of the record itself. Unlike on the live stage, there is no music to develop the emotional depth and meaning of a given scene. It is Bernhardt we hear, isolated as a murmuring, speaking, sometimes even a shouting voice. The phonograph did not only allow Bernhardt to display her vocal skills before audiences who might only hear her in a single play, it also allowed her to enter the middle class home as a portable and audible object.

No longer was Bernhardt only a reproduced photograph, a theatrical program, or even a remembered performance, but someone who could be heard in the comfort of a living room. Brown and Anthony Furthermore, the phonograph was marketed as a record of physical attendance at an otherwise fleeting theatrical performance. Already adapted, changed, fractured and mediated before an international audience well before her entrance into narrative film, her polymorphy disavows the possibility of constructing a simple teleological history of theatrical transfer between the nineteenth-century stage and the twentieth-century screen.

Performing before foreign audiences in a variety of venues at the same time that she recorded her voice on the phonograph, Bernhardt was a multi-media actress par excellence whose body was continually adapted, reconfigured, and reproduced as a shifting and above all mobile cultural construct. In this way, Bernhardt can be considered akin to the prima donna in the Italian 8 See also, e.

Many of the roles that Bernhardt went on to play on the theatrical stage indicate that her performance could literally be associated with the bel canto tradition. Why did Bernhardt choose to bring these roles to film? In the first place, opera allowed her films to be promoted as middle class entertainments, thereby expanding her possible audience.

Opera also allowed her films to be associated the traditional arts and so capitalized on her established renown. It ensured that vocal absence did not suggest a linguistic or instrumental failure. Instead, film was a new artistic hybrid, which was uniquely able to join vision, sound, industry, and art. It is precisely because she was already established as a significant "singer," a diva with a famous voice, that she was able to have her works reconstituted as silent screen performances and brought before audiences she would never actually see.

And, finally, opera indicated that a media which had, until this point, been viewed as a popular entertainment might instead be seen as a modern manifestation of music which was itself considered the newest of the traditional arts. As Martin Marks argues in Music and the Silent Film, the opera film was appealing to audiences precisely because it guaranteed the quality of the cinematographic product.

Even without synchronized sound, it was a cultural coup for the nascent industry. It was also one that implicitly ensured opera a growing mass audience. Marks states: A silent film of an opera seems an oxymoron. The mute medium robs such a work of its dramatic essence; and even if the accompanying score were to include vocal as well as instrumental parts which does not often seem to be the casethe original theatrical balance has been lost.

In the minds of film producers and audiences, however, these problems of adaptation probably counted for less than the fact that operas were popular works possessing glamour and prestige-qualities that most silent films of the period lacked. In the first place, they were marketed as unique works of art, which were accessible to all. In my view, our enregistrement voix sarah bernhardt biography today in appreciating Bernhardt's skill on screen is related to our incapacity to see her films in this expanded context, as one inter-related development of her developing publicity and performance.

Evidently, film was not silent, but an expressive multi-media venture. It included and referenced the voice and the record, just as it included and referenced the live stage. While there is a great difference between the Phono-Cinema-Theatre and the narrative film industry that Bernhardt entered some years later, we would do well to remember that spectators did not go to watch silent film but to see a performative event.

Bernhardt's films, in this sense, do not record a vocal absence. They are paradigmatic examples of early cinema itself.

Enregistrement voix sarah bernhardt biography: The voice of Sarah Bernhardt reciting

She has published broadly in early cinema, has programmed films for Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna, and been involved in Women and the Silent Screen since its founding in Utrecht, Research interests include feminist historiography, film's relationship to the other arts, and performance on film. Works Cited Altman, Rick. Silent Film Sound. New York: Columbia University Press, Georges Melies.

Bernhardt, Sarah. Paris: Eugene Fasquelle, My Double Life. London: Zenith, Bernhardt, Sarah, perf. Adrienne Lecouvreur. Henri Desfontaines, Louis Mercanton. Andre Calmettes, Henri Pouctal. La Tosca. By Jean Racine. Le passant. Theatre de l'Odeon, Paris. By Victor Hugo. Gaiety Theatre, London. Blaisdell, G. Brown, Julie, and Annette Davison.

The Sounds of the Silents in Britain. Oxford: OUP, Brown, Richard, and Barry Anthony. Wiltshire, England: Flicks Books, Byron, George Gordon Lord. Werner: A tragedy.

Enregistrement voix sarah bernhardt biography: Sarah Bernhardt " Phèdre " de

London: John Murray, Calvert, Louis. Problems of the Actor. New York: Henry Holt and Company, Paris: Lamerre, Donizetti, Gaetano. Lucrezia Borgia. Milano: Ricordi, Duckett, Victoria. Vicki Callahan. Michigan: Wayne State University Press, Faust and Marguerite [Faust et Marguerite]. Hahn, Reynaldo. La Grande Sarah: Souvenirs. Paris: Hachette, Hugo, Victor.

Paris: Hetzel, Les Burgraves. Marion de Lorme. Paris: Flammarion, Paris: Le Conservatoire, Sarah Bernhardt for the first time at the cinematograph]. Manoni, Laurent. Gemona: Cineteca del Friuli, These are American rates, and I don't have to cross the Atlantic! At those rates, I'm ready to appear in any films they make. Her passion for sculpture was more serious.

Her sculpture teacher was Mathieu-Meusnier, an academic sculptor who specialised in public monuments and sentimental storytelling pieces. Bernhardt sold the original work, the molds, and signed plaster miniatures, earning more than 10, francs. Fifty works by Bernhardt have been documented, of which 25 are known to still exist. Rodin dismissed her sculptures as "old-fashioned tripe", and she was attacked in the press for pursuing an activity inappropriate for an actress.

Not content with finding her thin, or declaring her mad, they want to regulate her daily activities Let a law be passed immediately to prevent the accumulation of talent! In her final years, Bernhardt wrote a textbook on the art of acting. After her death, the writer Marcel Berger, her close friend, found the unfinished manuscript among her belongings in her house on boulevard Pereire.

An English translation was published in She paid particular attention to the use of the voice, "the instrument the most necessary to the dramatic artist. An artist who has a dry voice can never touch the public. She noted that "the art of our art is not to have it noticed by the public We must create an atmosphere by our sincerity, so that public, gasping, distracted, should not regain its equilibrium and free will until the fall of the curtain.

That which is called the work, in our art, should only be the search for the truth. She also insisted that artists should express their emotions clearly without words, using "their eye, their hand, the position of the chest, the tilting of the head The exterior form of the art is often the entire art; at least, it is that which strikes the audience the most effectively.

The diction, the way of standing, the look, the gesture are predominant in the development of the career of an artist. She explained why she liked to perform male roles: "The roles of men are in general more intellectual than the roles of women Always, in the theatre, the parts played by the men are the best parts. And yet theatre is the sole art where women can sometimes be superior to men.

Bernhardt had a remarkable ability to memorise a role quickly. And yet I can remember the smallest events from my childhood. During the performance, she went on stage, but could not remember what she was supposed to say. She turned to another actress, and announced, "If I made you come here, Madame, it is because I wanted to instruct you in what I want done I have thought about it, and I do not want to tell you today", then walked offstage.

The other actors, astonished, quickly improvised an ending to the enregistrement voix sarah bernhardt biography. After a brief rest, her memory came back, and Bernhardt went back on stage, and completed the play. Without interrupting her speech, she added "If someone doesn't close that door I will catch pneumonia. French drama critics praised Bernhardt's performances; Francisque Sarcey, an influential Paris critic, wrote of her performance in Marie"She has a sovereign grace, a penetrating charm, and I don't know what.

She is a natural and an incomparable artist. She sang, yes, sang with her melodious voice Victor Hugo was a fervent admirer of Bernhardt, praising her "golden voice". Describing her performance in his play, Ruy Blas inhe wrote in his Carnets"It is the first time this play has really been played! She is better than an actress, she is a woman.

She is adorable; she is better than beautiful, she has the harmonious movements and looks of irresistible seduction. She literally hypnotized the audience", and played "with such tigerish passion and feline seduction which, whether it be good or bad art, nobody has been able to match since. InSigmund Freud saw Bernhardt perform Theodorawriting:.

From the moment I heard her first lines, pronounced in her vibrant and adorable voice, I had the feeling I had known her for years. None of the lines that she spoke could surprise me; I believed immediately everything that she said. The smallest centimeter of this character was alive and enchanted you. And then, there was the manner she had to flatter, to implore, to embrace.

Her incredible positions, the manner in which she keeps silent, but each of her limbs and each of her enregistrement voix sarahs bernhardt biography play the role for her! Strange creature! It is easy for me to imagine that she has no need to be any different on the street than she is on the stage! She also had her critics, particularly in her later years among the new generation of playwrights who advocated a more naturalistic style of acting.

George Bernard Shaw wrote of the "childishly egotistical character of her acting, which is not the art of making you think more highly or feel more deeply but the art of making you admire her, pity her, champion her, weep with her, laugh at her jokes, follow her fortunes breathlessly and applaud her wildly when the curtain falls It is the art of fooling you.

The rest is cold, false, and affected; the worst kind of repulsive chic Parisienne! He stated that "We are far from admiring the talent of Sarah Bernhardt. She is a woman who is very intelligent and knows how to produce an effect, who has immense taste, who understands the human heart, but she wanted too much to astonish and overwhelm her audience.

Sarah Bernhardt's performances were seen and appraised by many of the leading literary and cultural figures of the late 19th century. Mark Twain wrote "There are five kinds of actresses. Bad actresses, fair actresses, good actresses, great actresses, and then there is Sarah Bernhardt. I would have married any one of them with pleasure.

She had the transparence of an azalea with even more delicacy, the lightness of a cloud with less thickness. Smoke from a burning paper describes her more nearly. British author D. Lawrence saw Bernhardt perform La Dame aux Camelias in Afterward, he wrote to a friend:. Oh, to see her, and to hear her, a wild creature, a gazelle with a beautiful panther's fascination and fury, laughing in musical French, screaming with true panther cry, sobbing and sighing like a deer sobs, wounded to the death She is not pretty, her voice is not sweet, but there is the incarnation of wild emotion that we share with all living things The identity of Bernhardt's father is not known for certain.

Her original birth certificate was destroyed when the Paris Commune burned the Hotel de Ville and city archives in May In her autobiography, Ma Double Vie[ ] she describes meeting her father several times, and writes that his family provided funding for her education, and left a sum offrancs for her when she came of age. According to Bernhardt's autobiography, her grandmother and uncle in Le Havre provided financial support for her education when she was young, took part in family councils about her future, and later gave her money when her apartment in Paris was destroyed by fire.

Her date of birth is also uncertain due to the destruction of her birth certificate. She usually gave her birthday as 23 Octoberand celebrated it on that day. However, the reconstituted birth certificate she presented in gave the date as 25 October. Bernhardt's mother Judith, or Julie, was born in the early s. Judith's mother died inand five weeks later, her father remarried.

Judith and two of her sisters, Henriette and Rosine, left home, moved to London briefly, and then settled in Le Havre, on the French coast. In Aprilshe gave birth to twin girls to a "father unknown. The following year, Youle was pregnant again, this time with Sarah. Maurice did not become an actor, but worked for most of his life as a manager and agent for various theatres and performers, frequently managing his mother's career in her later years, but rarely with great success.

Maurice and his family were usually financially dependent, in full or in part, on his mother until her death. Maurice married a Polish princess, Maria Jablonowska, of the House of Jablonowskiwith whom he had two daughters: Simone, who married Edgar Gross, son of a wealthy Philadelphia soap manufacturer; and Lysiana, who married the playwright Louis Verneuil.

She often worked as a courtesantaking wealthy and influential lovers. Bernhardt received from him a diadem of pearls and diamonds. Many of her early lovers continued to be her friends after the affairs ended. She also had a two-year-long affair with Charles Haas, son of a banker and one of the more celebrated Paris dandies in the Empire, the model for the character of Swann in the novels by Marcel Proust.

Sarah Bernhardt is probably one of the actresses after whom Proust modelled Berma, a character present in several volumes of Remembrance of Things Past. Bernhardt took as lovers many of the male leads of her plays, including Mounet-Sully and Lou Tellegen. She possibly had an affair with the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII, who frequently attended her London and Paris performances and once, as a prank, played the part of a cadaver in one of her plays.

Her last serious love affair was with the Dutch-born actor Lou Tellegen37 years her junior, who became her co-star during her second American farewell tour and eighth American tour in He was a very handsome actor who had served as a model for sculpture Eternal Springtime by Auguste Rodin. He had little acting experience, but Bernhardt signed him as a leading man just before she departed on the tour, assigned him a compartment in her private railway car, and took him as her escort to all events, functions, and parties.

He was not a particularly good actor, and had a strong Dutch accent, but he was successful in roles, such as Hippolyte in Phedrewhere he could take off his shirt. At the end of the American tour, they had a dispute, he remained in the United States, and she returned to France. At first, he had a successful career in the United States and married operatic soprano and film actress Geraldine Farrarbut when they split up his career plummeted.

He committed suicide in This relationship was so close, the two women were rumoured to be lovers. Inin Paris, Bernhardt met a Greek diplomat, Aristide Damala known in France by his stage name Jacques Damalawho was 11 years her junior, and notorious for his romantic affairs. Bernhardt's biographer described him as "handsome as Adonis, insolent, vain, and altogether despicable.

She already had a lover at the time, Philippe Garnier, her leading man, but when she met Damala, she fell in love with him, and insisted that her tour be modified to include a stop in St. Garnier politely stepped aside and let her go to St. Petersburg without him. Arriving in St. Petersburg, Bernhardt invited Damala to give up his diplomatic post to become an actor in her company, as well as her lover, and before long, they decided to marry.

During a break in the tour, they were married on 4 April in London. She told her friends that she married because marriage was the only thing she had never experienced. Critics dismissed him as handsome, but without noticeable talent.

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Damala began taking large quantities of morphine, and following Bernhardt's great success in FedoraDamala took every opportunity to criticise and humiliate her. She later discovered that he was using the money she gave him to buy presents for other women. In early Decemberwhen she confronted him, he declared that he was going to North Africa to join the Foreign Legionand disappeared.

In earlyDamala reappeared at Bernhardt's door haggard, ill, and penniless. They performed together from 18 May until 30 June. He looked exhausted and old, confused his diction, and forgot his lines. He attended one of her performances sitting in the first row, and made faces at her. Her current lover, Philippe Garnier, saw him and beat him. Later, he entered her house and ravaged the furniture.

Bernhardt was a Roman Catholic, and did not want to divorce him. However, his morphine addiction continued to worsen. In AugustBernhardt learned that he had taken an overdose of morphine in Marseille. She hurried to his bedside and nursed him until he died on 18 Augustat the age of He was buried in Athens. Bernhardt sent a bust she had made of him to be placed on his tomb, and when she toured in the Balkans, always made a detour to visit his grave.

Until the end of her life, she continued to sign official documents as "Sarah Bernhardt, widow of Damala". She purchased a ruined 17th-century fortress, located at the end of the island and approached by a drawbridge, and turned it into her holiday retreat. She also brought her large collection of animals, including several dogs, two horses, a donkey, a hawk given to her by the Russian Grand Duke Alexis, an Andean wildcat, and a boa constrictor she had brought back from her tour of South America.

Always wrapped in white scarves, she played tennis under house rules that required that she be the winner and cards, read plays, and created sculptures and ornaments in her studio. When the fishermen of the island suffered a bad season, she organised a benefit performance with leading actors to raise funds for them. She gradually enlarged the estate, purchasing a neighboring hotel and all the land with a view of the property, but inas her health declined, she abruptly sold it and never returned.

All that remains is the original old fort, and a seat cut into the rock where Bernhardt awaited the boat that took her to the mainland. Bernhardt was described as a strict vegetarian what would later be termed veganas she avoided dairy, eggs and meat. After Bernhardt's death, her theatre was managed by her son Maurice until his death in InBernhardt constructed a large townhouse at 35 rue Fortuny in the 17th arrondissement, not far from Parc Monceau, for her family, servants, and animals.

Inwhen her debts mounted, she sold the house. Once her fortune was replenished by her tours abroad, she bought an even larger house at 56 avenue Pereire in the 17th arrondissement, where she died in The house was demolished in the s and replaced by a enregistrement voix sarah bernhardt biography apartment building. InBernhardt was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a motion pictures star located at Vine Street.

To date, she is the earliest born person on the Walk born infollowed by Thomas Edison and Siegmund Lubin. In the play, Rebeck explores the controversy surrounding Bernhardt's decision to play Hamlet. The new women's movement that took place in late nineteenth century and early twentieth century Brazil, was a movement built around a woman's ability to gain access to public spaces in Brazil.

Among middle-class women, new opportunities and possibilities opened up for women allowing them professional positions in the workforce. Some women also found the acting profession to afford them freedom and independence. The theatre offered women an environment relatively free of social constraints. The profession of an actress held a controversial opinion within society.

On one hand, high society embraced women who appeared in plays or opera representing a high culture. While on the other hand, female performers could suffer public scrutiny and gossip for leading unconventional lives. Bernhardt's performances in Brazil had lasting effects in the sense that they encouraged new notions of possibilities for women in a patriarchal and traditional society and in theatre.

Bernhardt made use of an array of tropes assigned to women to create a public personality that afforded her freedom, independence, and immense popularity at home and abroad. To her more socially conservative fans, Bernhardt appeased fears concerning the threat of the New Woman and the demise of female seduction as an everyday pleasure. Contents move to sidebar hide.

Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikisource Wikidata item. French stage actress — This article is about the French stage actress. For the episode of an adventure series, see Sarah Bernhardt Lucky Luke. Paris, Kingdom of France.

Enregistrement voix sarah bernhardt biography: Sarah Bernhardt (c. October

Paris, Third French Republic. Ambroise Aristide Damala. Biography [ edit ]. Early life [ edit ]. The Gymnase and Brussels — [ edit ]. Bernhardt as the Queen of Spain in Ruy Blas Bernhardt in her famous coffin, in which she sometimes slept or studied her roles c. Portrait by Georges Clairin World tours — [ edit ]. La Tosca to Cleopatra — [ edit ].

Bernhardt in Gismonda by Victorien Sardou Poster for Gismonda by Alphonse Mucha Bernhardt in L'Aiglon Farewell tours — [ edit ]. Bernhardt in front of the tent where she performed in Dallas, Texas March Bernhardt toured the ruins of San Francisco after the earthquake and fire, escorted by critic Ashton Stevens April Amputation of leg and wartime performances — [ edit ].

Final years — [ edit ]. Motion pictures [ edit ]. Painting and sculpture [ edit ]. Bernhardt with her bust of Medea in her sculpture studio in MontmartreParis. Self-portrait,Foundation Bemberg, Toulouse. The Art of the Theatre [ edit ]. Memory and improvisation [ edit ]. Critical appraisals [ edit ]. Personal life [ edit ]. Paternity, date of birth, ancestry, name [ edit ].

Lovers and friends [ edit ]. Marriage with Jacques Damala [ edit ]. Vegetarianism [ edit ]. Legacy [ edit ]. The New Women's Movement in Brazil [ edit ]. This section may lend undue weight to certain ideas, incidents, or controversies. Please help to create a more balanced presentation. Discuss and resolve this issue before removing this message.

March This section relies largely or entirely upon a single source. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources at this section. March Learn how and when to remove this message. Works [ edit ]. Stage and film roles [ edit ]. Main article: Roles played by Sarah Bernhardt.

Books by Bernhardt [ edit ]. Sculptures [ edit ]. In popular culture [ edit ]. See also [ edit ]. Notes [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Archived from the original on 27 May