Émile Fabre

Émile Fabre (24 March 1869 in Metz, France – 25 September 1955 in Paris)[1] was a French playwright and general administrator of the Comédie-Française from 1915 to

Émile Fabre
Émile Fabre in 1917
Born	24 March 1869 Metz, France
Died	25 September 1955 Paris, France

1936.[2]^:227 He was greatly influenced by Balzac as a young man, and most of his best-known plays deal with the sacrifice of personal happiness to the pursuit of wealth.[3] He also wrote the libretto for Xavier Leroux's opera Les cadeaux de Noël (The Christmas Gifts) which was a great success when it premiered in Paris in 1915.[4]

Career at the Comédie-Française

Fabre was appointed general administrator of the Comédie-Française on 2 December 1915.[2]^:227 According to Susan McCready,

During Fabre's tenure, the Comédie-Française moved from the center of the theatre scene, where theatrical creation and innovation are paramount, to its periphery, where [ . . . ] its role was increasingly limited to the preservation of the past.[2]^:2

In 1922 he organised the Cycle Moliere, in which all of Moliere's plays were performed in chronological order.[2]^:231

The success of this event, encouraged him to organise the Centennial of Romanticism in 1927, the 100-year anniversary of Victor Hugo's Preface de Cromwell (Qe Waleffe).[2]^:232 Over the course of the Centennial the theatre staged twenty-one Romantic plays.

He resigned from the position 15 October 1936.[2]^:227

Plays

Fabre's plays include:[3]

• L'Argent (Money), 1895
• La Vie publique (Public Life), 1901
• Les Ventres dorés (Gilded Stomachs), 1905
• Les Sauterelles (The Locusts), 1911

References

1. "Émile Fabre | French dramatist | Britannica". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 December 2021.
2. McCready, Susan (2003). "The Compromise of Commemoration: The 1927 Centennial of Romanticism at the Comédie-Française". Modern Drama. 46 (2): 227–240. doi:10.1353/mdr.2003.0058. ISSN 1712-5286. S2CID 201757099.
3. Garreau, Joseph E. (1984). "Fabre, Émile" in Stanley Hochman (ed.) McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama, Vol. 1, p. 136. ISBN 0070791694
4. Le Figaro (13 April 1917). "Courrier des Théâtres", p. 4 (in French)