Rachel Félix

Rachel, Mademoiselle Rachel, Rachel Félix actually Élisa or Elizabeth - Rachel Félix ( born February 21, 1821 in Obermumpf, Canton Aargau, Switzerland, † January 3, 1858 in Le Cannet in the south of France ), was a French Jewish actress and was considered one of the largest tragediennes their time.

Youth

Rachel was born in Switzerland, but was not a Swiss woman: Her parents were itinerant Jewish cabaret artists and dealers. She came as the second oldest daughter in transit from Germany to France in an inn to the world. Originally the family came from Alsace and spoke alongside French and German.

1827 settled the family in Lyon, where she ran a small business. To supplement the family budget, Rachel had with her older sister Sarah on the road, and later in music cafes, sing songs and recite fables. Soon the described as very small and petite girl fell to its unusually expressive and clear voice. Alexandre- Étienne Choron, head of a Parisian school of singing, she discovered and brought them together with her family in the French capital, where they moved into a Jewish neighborhood. With the help of donors, Rachel was able to attend a drama school and learn reading and writing there next to the art of declamation ( in Pagnon Saint Aulaire ).

Acting Career

In 1837 they first played at the Théâtre du Gymnase Marie Bell, a vaudeville theater for an annual salary of 4,000 francs insignificant roles, but fell to the theater critics by their talent on. There, she met her lifelong friend and supporter, the actress and Salon Lady Juliette Recamier know. 1838 Rachel debuted at the famous Comédie Française ( Théâtre Français) in a leading role, a professional accolade for any French actor. Your brilliant and confident interpretation of Camille in Pierre Corneille's tragedy Horace made ​​her an overnight star in the new theater in Paris sky.

They only appeared as Rachel and Mademoiselle Rachel in appearance and was under this name famous all over Europe. From then on she was in all the pieces of the classical French theater on the stage and impressed audiences and critics, especially in the tragedies of Corneille and Jean Racine. Critics particularly praised her unfussy, almost austere style and the clear diction of their powerful voice, which must have exercised in connection with its ultra-slim and small appearance and the large dark eyes a peculiar charm to the audience. Contemporary poets such as Alfred de Musset they touted as " genius," Stendhal said that Rachel had the tragedy almost " invented ", and for the German revolutionary Carl Schurz left its performance in 1850 in Berlin, which he describes in his memoirs, full of enthusiasm, a " of the most stunning impressions of my life. " The Swiss poet Gottfried Keller saw her at the same time and wrote to a friend: "She has a lot of style, but is still a great person and or rather the greatest artist I know ." At 20, the young tragedian was a permanent member of the Théâtre Français and celebrated in 1842 with their interpretation of Racine's Phaedra (according to Jewish Encyclopedia " to apocalypse of human agony not to be forgotten by any one who ever Witnessed it" ) the greatest triumph of her career; King Louis- Philippe congratulated her personally. Also legendary are their performances during the 1848 revolution, when she. Every night in the crowded Comédie Française, now renamed " Théâtre de la République ", who sang the Marseillaise

Rachel went on tours throughout Europe and was celebrated all excited. In Vienna it was received by the emperor, in St. Petersburg, Russia by the Tsar. Their appearance in London before the royal family in 1841 was a major social event. 1852 gave her the Prussian king on the occasion of their local guest appearance before the court of Prussia and the Russian Tsar a statue on the peacock island near Potsdam build ( existed until 1935, destroyed by the Nazis ); Casts her bust were sold as souvenirs, in particular Rachel enthusiastic Zarenreich even perfumes were named after her. Even a knitting machine, called " Rachel machine", bears her name. Rachel was a star and wrong in the first circles of society, she was a friend of aristocrats, politicians and artists, and led a private salon. Her siblings were actors, and brought them, not least with the help of sister to some success. The father remained until her untimely death, her impresario, who negotiated the well-paid contracts (but also sometimes with his demands plated so that Rachel - was everywhere received icy - except the audience ).

Private life

At least as turbulent as her career was Rachel's private life, which has repeatedly hit the headlines in the tabloids. You should have had countless affairs with men from all walks of life, from the one-night stand with strangers to longer relationships with celebrities. They had two sons, Alexandre 1844 by Napoléon Bonaparte 's illegitimate son Alexandre Colonna Walewski -, and 1848 Gabriel -Victor (called " Zozo " ) by a grandson of General Henri- Gratien Bertrand. Married she has never, their only lifelong bonds remained the family and friendships, personal independence you meant everything. At Walewski, who complained about her promiscuity, she wrote: "I am the way I am. , I love the tenant, not the homeowner "

Illness and death

The long, exhausting tours, so in the years 1853/54 through Russia, the delicately built Rachel gradually ruined their health. When she left in 1855 to tour the United States, she was already a lung disease. The tour is the first failure in their careers: The American public could do with their style of presentation, not least because they only had insufficient knowledge of English. Already suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis, she returned to Europe in 1856 and traveled to Egypt. Your last life time she spent in the south of France, Le Cannet with friends, where she died in 1858. With great sympathy of the population it was buried in the Jewish section of the cemetery Père Lachaise in Paris in a mausoleum.

Aftereffect

Rachel applies in theater history as a great reformer of the performing arts, which freed the drama of exaggerated pathos of its predecessors and attributed the French classics to their roots. The writer Charlotte Brontë that Rachel had seen in 1841 in London on the stage, designed in her novel Villette the character of Vashti according to the actress.

Rachel Felix was the principal figure in Rachel Meyers biographical novella Rachel, in which it comes to adherence to the Jewish faith in the face of the temptations in society.

2004, the Museum of Art and History of Judaism in Paris her an exhibition.

Family

Even Rachel Felix's sisters Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Dina were actresses, as well as a more distant relatives, Judith Bernat. In his anti-Semitic work The Secret bustle writes Hermann Scharff of Scharffenstein, Rachel Felix had imagined her son from Walewsky as Thronprätendenden France until the police had forbidden her so. Scharff of Scharffenstein also claimed that she was " out of anger and rage about it," Walewsky that they did not want to get married, ill and eventually fell in front of " envy " on her rival Adelaide Ristori on June 7, 1855 in convulsions. It indicates the place of death as Egypt, while Nahida Ruth Lazarus claims that Rachel spent her last years in a country house in Cadet and also died there.