Chapter author : Isabelle Schwartz-Gastine

Publisher : Cambridge University Press

FRENCH ROMANTICISM ON STAGE was prompted by several performances given by a company of English F actors at the Théâtre de l’Odéon in September 1827. Among other things, they played Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, in which the very young actress who took on the female parts was Harriet Smithson. Smithson became famous overnight and was hailed by enthusiastic crowds of young artists as the representative of modernity over classicism. Hector Berlioz, young and still unknown, was mesmerized by her, particularly by her part in Hamlet, and called Smithson « his Ophelia. » She became his source of inspiration and, later, his unhappy wife.

Updated on 01/01/2016