Feydeau georges biography sampler youtube

His father, officially at least, was the writer and scholar Ernst-Aime Feydeau; rumour had it at the time that he was in fact the natural son of the duc de Morny, statesman, art collector, failed playwright, and half-brother to Napoleon III. Feydeau himself would later claim that his mother, the beautiful Polish socialite Lodzia Bogaslawa Zeleweska, told him he was actually the son of the Emperor himself.

Are you seeking to develop your creative practice?

Whatever the truth of this, uncertain conception was followed by a comfortable and bohemian childhood. Through Ernst-Aime he was introduced to the leading figures of the burgeoning realist movement — art critic Theophile Gautier, the Goncourt brothers and the novelist Gustave Flaubert — and, encouraged by his father, the young Georges neglected his studies to concentrate on the stage at a time when Paris was the intellectual and artistic capital of Europe.

When his father died hemiplegic in , Feydeau founded a theatre company, Le Cercle des Castagnettes, hoping to make his name performing monologues in Paris salons, but the attempt ended in failure after just a few years. The following decade was to prove equally frustrating.

Calling creators, researchers, and culture professionals: Villa Albertine is accepting applications for its residency program!

After briefly serving in the military, the Feydeau saw his first one-act play Par la fenetre Through the Window performed professionally in , but its two successors, Amour et piano Love and Piano and Gibier de potence Jailbird , met with only critical approval. Then at the age of 24, his three-act farce Tailleur pour Dames A Gown for His Mistress premiered at the Theatre de la Renaissance, where Feydeau had been working as a general secretary, and became his first big success.

But this was to be followed by another six lean professional years during which he made a precarious living as a theatre correspondent on a paper founded by his step-father Henry Fouquier, who had married his mother in On 14 October he married Marie-Anne Carolus-Duran, daughter of the successful society painter, and under the influence of his new father-in-law Feydeau became a fan and enthusiastic collector of works by the new French school, Impressionism.

The marriage — never a good one, although it produced a daughter and three sons — proved a lucrative connection for Feydeau. He had taken the popular old format to a higher level with keener satire and a more unsentimental treatment of his puppets, forcing them to face up to and act upon the unseemly urges that seethed beneath their bright and brittle facade of manners.

A solitary man who nevertheless craved company, Feydeau was highly regarded by his peers and adored by his public. He took cocaine to keep the creative juices flowing and cheated on his wife with, it is said, both sexes. But even his outrageous success could not keep pace with this even more outrageous lifestyle and shortly into the new century he had to auction off a large part of his art collection to meet his mounting debts.

It was only the first of such crises.