2023-06-05 06:02:25
Long before Beyoncé’s billboard dominance, Lady Gaga’s outrageous outfits, Madona’s stage daring, Marilyn Monroe’s explicit sensuality or Michael Jackson’s eccentricities, there was a woman who created the road map for future celebrities.
Legendary French actress Sarah Bernhardt, known in her day as “La Divina”.
Bernhardt, who died in Paris in 1923, She was one of the most famous women in the world of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. and is regarded as the global “first celebrity”.
He starred in many of the most popular French and classical plays, selling out theaters, moving in the most exclusive circles and grabbing headlines across Europe, the UK, the US and even Latin America.
But her status was due not only to her stage skills but to her revolutionary instinct to promote her image and use the press to create a distinctive brand.
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of her death, the Petit Palais museum in Paris has just inaugurated an exhibition entitled “Sara Bernhardt: And the Woman Created the Star”.
The exhibition highlights his visionary talent as an actress, director, businesswoman, sculptor, fashion icon in addition to her past as a courtesan and her challenge against masculine barriers, gender roles and contemporary morality.
From courtesan to “modern woman”
Sarah Bernhardt was born in 1844, the daughter of a Dutch courtesan of Jewish origin and her long-hidden lover Edouard Bernard.
Sickly and temperamental, as a child she went to live with an aunt and attended an exclusive Catholic school in Versailles, before entering the Conservatory of Music and Drama at the age of 16, under the auspices of one of his mother’s lovers.
in 1862 was a member of the prestigious theater institution Comédie Française, with whom he had disagreements and only lasted a year after receiving unfavorable reviews for his performance. She abruptly left the stage for a life as a courtesan, establishing love affairs with various members of the European aristocracy. With one of them she had an illegitimate child at the age of 20.
She returned to acting in order to support her son, and found a more favorable environment for her character at the Odéon Theater, a less rigid company, with modern and daring productions.
There she began to be recognized for her “golden voice” and the intensity of interpretation in classic and romantic roles.. Her last role at the Odéon was that of the queen of Spain in “Ruy Blas”, by Víctor Hugo, a premiere that the author himself attended, who after the performance knelt down and kissed her hand.
Already established as one of France’s leading dramatic actresses, the Comédie Française recruited her again with a juicier contract. She returned in 1872 and was with the company for another eight years until she decided to take control of its professional affairs.
The rise of the actress coincided with a new movement among women of the 19th century, who began to demand a greater participation in the public sphere, moving away from the old stereotypes such as the “weaker sex”.
The theater offered that space where they could interpret traditional roles in a subversive and Bernhardt had great success starring in male characters as the troubadour Zanetto in Coppée’s “Le Passant”, Napoleon II in Rostand’s “The Eagle” and, famously, Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
He had the critics and the French audience at his feet. She successfully fabricated and promoted an image of herself as an eccentric, independent, business-savvy, and sexually liberated woman.
He harnessed his mysterious origins, ethnicity, and unusual upbringing to build the personality that would typify the “new woman” of the end of the century.
His personal motto “Quand Même” (“despite everything”), woven into his bedding, printed on his business cards and elaborately embossed on a revolver, was a demonstration of his combative attitude towards every aspect of his life. .
The first global star
As modern pop stars do, Bernhardt carefully shaped her image as a mythical figure.
In an age without social media, she constantly looking for ways to appear in the press to promote themselves, whether through dramatic photos or nude, outlandish behavior like riding a bike or flying in a hot air balloon.
He kept ocelots and other wild animals as pets and claimed that he used to lie on a coffin where he would relax and study his scripts.
She led a lavish life, which frequently left her near bankruptcy.. So, during the theatrical low season in France, she resolved to tour internationally in Europe, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States and Latin America.
His success in London was spectacular. Although she performed in French, the English-speaking audience was captivated by her voice and her gestures.
He gave private recitals in the mansions of the aristocracy, exhibited his sculptures and paintings publicly, and rubbed shoulders with senior members of royalty, politics, and intellectual and artistic circles.
Playwright Oscar Wilde once greeted her with lilies and called her “The Divine” and “the incomparable”. He also wrote a French-language play specifically for Bernhardt: “Salome,” which was censored for its lurid subject matter.
But it was on her tours to the American continent, beginning in 1880, particularly through the United States again and again, that Sarah Bernhardt established herself as the first global star.
Thousands packed into New York Harbor anticipating the arrival of the ship L’Amérique that the diva had hired to take her troupe of actors across the Atlantic. An escort boat hoisted the French tricolor and a band sang the Marseillaise.
Such was the crowd that threatened to overwhelm her that the star he had to take refuge in his cabin.
Once installed in her suite at the luxurious Abermarle Hotel, she received the horde of journalists dressed in a white coat and a wide turquoise and gold belt. Meanwhile, the tickets for her performances, at an exorbitant price for the time, had sold out.
On this trip, Bernhardt premiered “The Lady of the Camellias”by Alexandre Dumas, whose interpretation became one of the most distinctive in his repertoire and which he performed more than 3,000 times.
It is said that from the moment he uttered the first words, the audience was mesmerized. “There was more to Sarah Bernhardt’s voice than gold,” commented one reviewer, “there was thunder and lightning, heaven and hell.”
When he brought the show to Boston, the local newspaper declared, “In the presence of such perfection, analysis is impossible.”
On that tour of 1880-81, which lasted seven months, Bernhardt made 156 presentations in 51 cities. Six years later he would be back, crossing the country -as he always would- in a special train of one locomotive and three cars that the company occupied.
He went so far as to organize the installation of a large circus tent for his performances in places where there was no theater available.
Tragedy during a Latin American tour
The 1887 tour was extensive and included Latin America, a region he would visit several times. Throughout his career, the star It was presented in Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil.
In particular, she visited Brazil on three occasions, where she was greeted with adoration by the expatriate French community and French-speaking elites.
However, on his last Brazilian tour in 1905, a tragic event happened, according to his biographers.
In the final presentation of La Tosca in Rio de Janeiro, the protagonist had to jump to her death from a parapet. Some hidden mattresses cushioned the actress’s fall, but for some reason they were not in her place this time and sustained a serious leg injury.
The diva had already been accusing a problem in her right knee for a few years and often walked with a cane.
The injury he suffered on stage in Rio caused him severe swelling and he was unable to come out to receive the applause. But he also did not postpone his imminent return to New York by ship and consequently he spent three weeks without medical attention.
Despite chronic pain and limited mobility, Bernhardt continued his intense touring schedule and organized several of what he called “farewell tours,” four in all.
Finally, with one knee getting worse and worse, in 1915 he had to undergo a leg amputation almost at the height of the pelvis. But her medical bills, his constant philanthropic gestures, and her wastefulness had left her sorely short of funds, so leg or no leg, she would have to keep acting.
However, his vanity did not allow him to use a prosthesis or a crutch during his performances. She designed a kind of sedan chair in which she entered the scene loaded and recited her famous monologues lying on a couch or leaning on some piece of stage props.
Although disabled and over the years and kilos, the spectators did not stop being captivated by her magic and mystique, and to applaud her passionately.
He continued to work until the end. In March 1923, she was contracted to act in a new film called “La Voyante” and because she was so weak, one of the rooms in her house was converted into a studio, complete with scenery, lights and cameras.
But he collapsed and died of uremia on the 26th of that month.
After a funeral mass in Paris, 30,000 people followed his funeral procession to the Pere Lachaise cemeterywhere some of the most notable figures of world art rest.
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