Trois Actrices de la Belle Époque

 

 Paris!
La Ville Lumière
'The City of Light'

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the beautiful era
before the Great War of 1914–18
it was the center of French culture.
A focal point for literature, art, music,
fashion, theatre, and dance.

 

 

 It was a time
when artists of every kind
sought critical acclaim and public fame.
 

 

Today I present postcards
of three beautiful women
who were leading ladies
of the Parisian theatre world in 1901.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this first postcard a vivacious young woman seems to burst through a theatre poster in a fantastic trompe-l'œil effect that makes the photo look 3-dimensional. The playbill is for the Bouffes-Parisiens, a theatre established for the performance of light operetta and opéra bouffe, i.e. comic opera. It is dated Lundi (Monday) 23 December 1901 and the headline name above the woman reads Mme. Simon-Girard. The production title is obliterated by this woman coming through the paper but enough letters remain to identify it as "Madame L'Archiduc", a comic opera by the celebrated composer Jacques Offenbach (1819–1880) who also founded the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens in 1855. Offenbach wrote 62 operettas and this one, which premiered in 1874, was his 74th out of over 98 works he composed.

 

This production was a revival and starred Juliette Simon-Girard (1859–1954), a French soprano who was born in Paris. Her father was an actor at the Comédie Française and her mother was a noted mezzo-soprano at the Opéra-Comique. Juliette made her debut in Offenbach's "La foire Saint-Laurent" in 1877 when she was just 17. Shortly afterward she married a well-known tenor, Simon-Max, becoming Mme Simon-Girard.

 

 

This postcard  has a postmark from Epinal, a commune in northeastern France, south of Nancy on  the river Moselle and in the prefecture of the Vosges department. The full date is not clear but the year is 1902.

 

 

 

Juliette quickly became a sensation with Parisians and took on several title roles in Offenbach's operettas as well as those of other French composers. By 1901 she was considered one of the leading ladies of Parisian musical theatres.

 

 

 

In 1903 at the height of her career, Juliette Simon-Girard made several recordings. Here she is singing a song, "C'est la fille a ma tante, Ca fait toujours plaisir" from the operetta La Femme de Narcisse by Louis Varney (1844–1908). Varney composed 40 operettas and was a conductor at the Bouffes-Parisiens.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

In this next poster explosion, a very fetching young woman gazes seriously from inside another theatre playbill as if awaiting a hotel doorman to hail a taxi. She wears a fantastic hat made of layers of feathers and a heavy velvet jacket with high collar. Its winter-weight may be appropriate as this theatre notice, like the previous one, is also dated Lundi (Monday) 23 December 1901. It comes from the Théâtre du Gymnase or Théâtre du Gymnase Marie Bell in Paris, established in 1820 as a training-theatre for students of the conservatoire. By 1901 its stage presented more sentimental works and melodramas by authors like Balzac, Émile Augier, Georges Sand, Edmond About, Victorien Sardou, Octave Feuillet, Meilhac and Halévy, and Alexandre Dumas (both father and son).

 

There are two names above the woman, M. Felix Huguenet, a noted French comic actor, and Mlle. Jeanne Rolly (1870-1929) an actress known for her beauty and comic charm. The remaining letters around the torn paper are just enough to deduce the name of the play Jeanne Rolly was in. It was “La Bascule” by Maurice Donnay (1859–1945), a French dramatist, whose comedy drama first opened in 1901.    

Jeanne Rolly, Le Théâtre
November 1901

For the November issue of Le Théâtre, one of the many French magazines on Paris theater life, Jeanne Rolly made the cover in her role in “La Bascule”. It was a comedy in four acts, involving a philandering husband who loves another woman as well as his wife. One critic felt the story could have been told better in half as many acts. By coincidence the Rolly's leading man, Felix Huguenet was the second husband of Juliette Simon-Girard whom she married in 1894.

 

This postcard is dated from the following year, 12 May 1902, and sent from Trouville-sur-Mer  a city in the Calvados department in the Normandy region of northwestern France.

 

 

 

 

 

Jeanne Rolly (1870–1929)
by photographer, Reutlinger
Source: Wikimedia

The image used on the postcard of Jeanne Rolly came from the Reutlinger studio, one of the more successful photography studios in Paris that specialized in celebrity portraits. Though photos like this were produced for promotional use or sold as souvenirs most were taken for publication in theater magazines which every month printed dozens of images of actors in costume and dramatic stage scenes.

 

 

Jeanne Rolly (1870–1929)
by photographer, Reutlinger
Source: Wikimedia

 

This wonderful portrait of Jeanne Rolly dates from 1903 and shows her in her role in "Le Secret de Polichinelle" (The Open Secret) by French writer Pierre Wolff. I found a large number of photos of Rolly but was unable to find any biography of her. Based on other brief citations I believe she died in 1929, but I don't have a good confirmation of that. 

 

 

 * * *

 

 

My third postcard shows a woman gazing up through a window torn in another theatre poster, She appears to be older than the other women, maybe 30+ or early 40s. She wears a shoulder-less strap gown with intricate lace embroidery. The playbill comes from the Théâtre des Variétés and has the same date as the other two postcards, Lundi (Monday) 23 December 1901. Is there a pattern here?

The Théâtre des Variétés is the oldest theatre of this series and, like the others, it continues as a functioning playhouse preserving the heritage of Parisian theater. This quote comes from its website homepage:

 

On June 24, 1807, for the first time, Parisians crossed the threshold of a new theatre, built in five months between Paris and Montmartre. On the lintel of the portico one could read as today "Théâtre des Variétés" engraved in the stone. This charming theater which was to have so many evenings of glory was the work of an extraordinary woman, a real fairy of the show that some called a witch, Marguerite Brunet, La Montansier. More than 250 years have passed and the Théâtre des Variétés, based on the Grands Boulevards of Paris and specialist in boulevard comedies, continues to live and welcome ever more surprising headliners.

 

There are several names on the postcard but only two are of women, Mlle. Méaly and Mlle. Lavallière, and the title of the production is almost completely destroyed except for the letters V and S and the word LA. This riddle proved the most challenging to solve, but knowing the date, the theatre, and the names of the cast helped me figure it out. 

 

The woman is Juliette Méaly (1861–1952) a French actress and singer. Born in Lyon she began her Paris stage career in 1887 and sang several roles in Offenbach's operettas. In fact this playbill is advertising one of his most famous operettas though the title is different. Using the names and date I found reviews of the show in a January 1902 edition of Le Théâtre that put Juliette Méaly on its front cover.

Juliette Méaly , Le Théâtre
January 1902

Mme. Méaly is portraying Eurydice from Offenbach's operetta from 1858, "Orphée aux Enfers", also known by its English title, "Orpheus in the Underworld", (or "Old Fred in his Underwear" to some musicians I know.) Offenbach wrote it as a comical lampoon of early French operas that had a fixation on stories with Greek mythical heroes and gods which he considered boring and stale. First staged in 1858 at the Bouffes-Parisiens as a two act operetta, Offenbach revised it in 1874, doubling the show to four acts with additional ballet numbers for a total of 22 scenes. The operetta ran for a record-breaking 290 performances in 1874.

 

However the caption on Mme. Méaly's magazine cover gives a title used at the Théâtre des Variétés: "La Revue des Variétés", which neatly fits the missing words on the postcard. For further corroboration, the magazine also published several photos of the other cast members whose names are on the postcard's playbill. 

The postcard was mailed from Boulogne, a port city on the north coast of France in 1904, however the month and day are unclear.

 

 

 

 

Juliette Méaly (1861–1952)
in Le Talisman, opérette by Robert Planquette, 1893
Source: Wikipedia

 

In this portrait Juliette Méaly takes the same upward gaze as on her breakout postcard. It's one that she must have used often to entrance people sitting in the balcony boxes of small Parisian theatres. Her costume is for a role in "Le Talisman", an 1893 operetta by Robert Planquette.

 

 

 

London American Register
21 December 1901

 

A London newspaper for American tourists regularly ran reports and listings for Paris too. In late December 1901, The American Register published a short list called Parisian Attractions. It includes shows at all three theatres on my postcards as well as at other theatres, music halls, circuses, ballrooms, and cabarets. Only "La Bascule" at the Gymnase matches the titles on the postcards, but I think this list probably lost something in translation as I confirmed that all three women were in the shows named on the postcard playbills in December 1901. 

What I don't understand is why the playbills share the same date of 23 December 1901. Perhaps it was a special promotion for a Christmas benefit performance. Theatres often promoted charities for disabled artists or for the families of deceased entertainers. It's a curious clue that still needs an answer.

 

 

 

 

 

London The Music Hall and Theatre Review
15 March 1901

In 1901 at the height of the Belle Époque, Paris had over 81 theatres and music-halls employing thousands of singers, actors, dancers, musicians and countless backstage workers who daily performed shows for the public's entertainment. By chance I came across a short report on the gross receipts of Parisian theatres in the March 1901 edition of The Music Hall and Theatre Review. It listed £58,567 for the Théâtre des Variétés  and £22,248 for the Theatre Gymnase. Altogether the total for all of Paris's theatres and music-halls was £1,830,609, a huge sum that did not include receipts from entertainments at the recent 1900 Paris Exhibition which amounted to £486,336. When these numbers are put into online calculators that compare historic currency using annual inflation rates, the 1901 receipts equal about £210,700,000 in today's money, but its full economic impact as an industry in 1901 might correspond to an astronomical equivalent of £2,250,000,000 in 2023.

In 1901 Paris was the envy of the world and its entertainment industry surely surpassed the show business receipts of every other major city in Europe and America. I expect that Juliette Simon-Girard, Jeanne Rolly, and Juliette Méaly were easily recognized wherever they went in Paris. It's easy to see how their souvenir postcards and publicity photos helped them gain a stage-starlet reputation. 

 

But entertainers of the Belle Époque came before the age of recordings and film. Their fans only knew them from live performances which created a bond that I think is very different from how modern celebrities interact with the public. Any true admirer of these actors had to go a theatre to actually hear them in their stage characters. To learn a favorite song or remember a witty double entendre line from their plays they had to return to the theatre several more times. In 1901 with shows repeated twice or even three times daily, this was not especially too hard to do. And by today's standards the ticket prices in 1901 were very cheap. That personal connection is different from how modern media creates showbiz stars.

 

More amazing is that Parisian theatres produced dozens of new productions every season giving actors and singers new roles and new music. Compared to our modern theater world it just seems exhausting. How did they do it? With talent and determination, I suppose. Sadly almost all the French operettas, melodramas, and comedies from la Belle Époque have faded from collective memory. But once upon a time Le Théâtre was the heart of Parisian culture. 

 

 

Poster for Frou-Frou by Henri Chatau
with Juliette Méaly, 1897
Source: Wikipedia

During her career Juliette Méaly sang many operetta roles and established herself as a popular comic character. In 1897 she starred in a revue produced by Hector Monréal and Henri Blondeau, with music by Henri Chatau. One of her songs, entitled Frou-Frou, became such a big hit with the public that it has endured for generations even though most Parisians today probably don't know Juliette Méaly's premiere connection to it. The lyrics tell a story about how a woman's feminine power does not come from wearing men's trousers (culottes) but from her Frou-Frou, her fancy petticoats.

 

 

 Here is a YouTube video of Juliette Méaly's signature song, Frou-Frou
sung by the French singer Berthe Sylva (1885–1941)
on a recording made in 1927.
I think Bertha's vocal style probably
was a good match for Juliette's voice.

 

 

 

 

 

If there is one piece of operetta music
that defines Paris of la Belle Époque
it is Le Galop Infernal
from Offenbach's Orphée aux Enfers.

I think everyone everywhere
will instantly recognize this infamous crazy dance,
and I guarantee this tune will continue
to ring in your ears for days.
After all, it is about Hades.
This production was performed in 1998
at de l'Opéra de Lyon, France.
Don't get fooled by the bows in the middle,
there's an encore.

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where every song is a hit.