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7 unusual facts about Comédie!


Beatrice Wood

Eventually her parents agreed to let her study painting and because she was fluent in French, they sent her to Paris where she studied acting at the Comédie-Française and art at the prestigious Académie Julian.

Charles Bodinier

After working for the Comédie-Française he became director of the Théatre d'Application and then of the Théatre La Bodinière.

Comédie-Parisienne

Théâtre de l'Athénée, a theatre in Paris which had the name from 1893–1896

Giuseppina Strepponi

She came out of her stage retirement briefly for one last opera appearance at the Comédie-Italienne which was not well received.

Hans von Rokitansky

The following year he made his first appearance on the operatic stage as Oroveso in Bellini's Notma at the Théâtre Italien in Paris.

Les Spectacles de Paris

In it is to be found an annual run-down of the troupes of the Académie royale de musique, of the Comédie-Française, of the Comédie-Italienne, of the Opéra-Comique, of the Foires Saint-Germain et Saint-Laurent and of the Concert Spirituel.

Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin

In 1960 he travelled to Europe to study experimental drama at the Royal Court Theatre in London and the Comédie-Française in Paris.


1670 in music

October 14 – First performance of Molière's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, a five-act comédie-ballet – a play intermingled with music, dance and singing – at the court of King Louis XIV of France.

Armand de Bourbon, Prince of Conti

At Clermont, Conti had been a fellow student of Molière's for whom he secured an introduction to the court of Louis XIV, but afterwards, when writing a treatise against the stage entitled Traité de la comédie et des spectacles selon les traditions de l'Église (Paris, 1667), he charged the dramatist with keeping a school of atheism.

Armorial de la Comédie Humaine

Armorial de la Comédie Humaine is an armorial describing the coats of arms of the fictional characters in the literary works collectivelly called La Comédie humaine, written by Honoré de Balzac.

Ceol an Ghrá

At the Contest, it was performed third on the night, following France's Betty Mars with "Comé-comédie" and preceding Spain's Jaime Morey with "Amanece".

Charles de Wailly

Noticed by the Marquis de Marigny, brother of Mme de Pompadour and general director of the Bâtiments du Roi, de Wailly worked in the park of Marigny's Château de Menars and, thanks to his support, managed to obtain the commission of a new theatre for the Comédie-Française.

Charles Fechter

Late in 1844 he won the grand medal of the Académie des Beaux-Arts with a piece of sculpture, and made his debut at the Comédie-Française as Seide in Voltaire's Mahomet and Valère in Molière's Tartuffe.

Comédie larmoyante

There are many examples of 'comédie larmoyante' in both French and Italian opera where it gave birth to the genre of opera semiseria: André Grétry's Lucile, Nicolas Dalayrac's Nina, ou La folle par amour, Pasquale Anfossi's La vera costanza (1776) and Joseph Haydn's work of the same name (1779).

Dominique Probst

The son of a noted playwright, Gisèle Casadesus, and an actor and director with the Comédie-Française, Lucien Probst, Dominique Probst won the First Prize for Percussion with the National Music Conservatory, Paris, in 1978.

Hyacinthe Klosé

Klosé was second clarinet at the Théâtre Italien to Frédéric Berr beginning in 1836, then to Iwan Müller following Berr's death in 1838, finally becoming solo clarinet when Müller left in 1841.

Jeanne Quinault

The other Lazzistes included Jeanne's sister-in-law, formerly Mlle de Seine; her cousin Mlle Balicourt, who had joined the Comédie-Française in 1727; the poet and playwright Alexis Piron; the Comte de Caylus; Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, Count of Maurepas; and Charles-Alexandre Salley.

Joyce Redman

Her most successful appearances on the stage were during the 1940s, in Shadow and Substance, Claudia, and Lady Precious Stream, and she appeared at the Comédie-Française as well as The Old Vic.

Jurriaan Andriessen

In 1954 the Haagse Comedie (now the Nationaal Toneel, or "National Theatre") appointed him resident composer, where he wrote scores for Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, among numerous others.

L'amour masqué

L’amour masqué is a comédie musicale in three acts with music by André Messager and a French libretto by Sacha Guitry, based on the work by Ivan Caryll.

La Bourse

Balzac also portrays in this short novel a social category to which he often returns in La Comédie humaine: the forgotten victims of Napoleon.

La Périchole

Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy wrote the French-language libretto based on the 1829 one act play Le carrosse du Saint-Sacrement by Prosper Mérimée, which was revived on 13 March 1850 at the Théâtre-Français.

La petite fonctionnaire

La petite fonctionnaire is a comédie musicale in three acts of 1921, with music by André Messager and a French libretto by Alfred Capus and Xavier Roux, based on a play by Capus.

Louis Baron, son

Louis Bouchêne, known as Louis Baron, fils (born Paris 24 December 1870, died Dieppe 30 November 1939), was an actor and singer, who took part in many operettas and comédie-musicales, and was in 30 films between 1929 et 1938.

Marie Dumesnil

She was born in Paris, daughter of a poor nobleman, and began her stage career in the provinces, whence she was summoned in 1737 to make her debut at the Comédie-Française as Clytemnestre in Racine's Iphigénie en Aulide.

Mathilda Enequist

Born in Visby, Sweden, the daughter of a vicar, Johan Enequist, she was educated in Stockholm, Leipzig, and then in Paris, where she was instructed by Masset and Levasseur before she was employed in the Comédie-Italienne under the stage name Biondini (The Blonde), but soon moved to London, where she was a concert singer and singing instructor.

Maurice de Féraudy

Maurice de Féraudy (born in Joinville-le-Pont on December 3, 1859 - died in Paris May 12, 1932) was a French songwriter and actor at the Comédie-Française.

Max Boublil

He also tool part in TV emissions like One Man Sauvage and did comedy in Max les veut toutes, a F2H production broadcast on Comédie! and NRJ 12 and in May and June 2010, in the television reality show Dilemme on W9 where he presented Le Mag de Max.

Old Fortunatus

The Pleasant Comedie of Old Fortunatus (1599) is a play in a mixture of prose and verse by Thomas Dekker, based on the German legend of Fortunatus and his magic inexhaustible purse.

Opera in English

In 1673, Thomas Shadwell's Psyche, patterned on the 1671 'comédie-ballet' of the same name produced by Molière and Jean-Baptiste Lully.

Paris Opera Ballet

Of particular importance were the series of comédies-ballets created by Molière with, among others, the choreographers and composers Pierre Beauchamps and Jean-Baptiste Lully.

Sean Kane

Sean was one of the first Scottish actors to perform with Romanian actors at the Teatrul De Comedie in Bucharest Romania in their production entitled 'Home'.

The Brit Pop Blur Box

It contains the five CD singles Blur released in 1994 (Girls & Boys, End Of A Century, To The End, Parklife and To The End (La Comedie) with Françoise Hardy) in a 5"x5"x5" plastic cube box.

The Great Garrick

Based on the play Ladies and Gentlemen by Ernest Vajda, the film is about the famous eighteenth century British actor David Garrick, who travels to France for a guest appearance at the Comédie Française.

Theresia Singer

In 1876 she joined the Théâtre-Italien in Paris, and in 1877 she sang at the Theater of Graz.

Tragicomedy

These were the features Philip Sidney deplored in his complaint against the "mungrell Tragy-comedie" of the 1580s, and of which Shakespeare's Polonius offers famous testimony: "The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men."


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