It was the queen of Spain, Fedra, the Lady of the Camellias and Prince Hamlet. “There are five types of actresses: the bad, the acceptable, the good, the great, and then there is Sarah Bernhardt,” Mark Twain wrote about her. Victor Hugo called her “the golden voice” of the French theater, and Jean Cocteau, “sacred monster”. The Cuban José Martí, who saw her in Paris at the end of 1879, left us a value judgment formulated at the age of 26: “Sarah is flexible, fine, slender. When she’s not shaken by the demon of tragedy, her body is full of grace and abandon; when the devil seizes him, she is full of strength and nobility […] Where does it come from? Of poverty! Where is he going? To glory!”
He was not mistaken: he was, indeed, to glory. Revisiting her figure is like attending the birth of the word “diva”. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Bernhardt dominated the acting world with leading roles in acclaimed plays. And luckily, her work in her movies kept her from turning to dust in the wind.
Yo
Born in Paris as Henriette-Rosine Bernard on October 22, 1844, Sarah Bernhardt walked the stage for more than sixty years. The daughter of a Dutch courtesan specializing in wealthy clients, she was sent to a boarding school at age 7. She there she went on stage for the first time, in the role of the Queen of the Fairies in Clotilde.
But power was not alien to his career. The mother of the future actress began to relate to the Duke of Morny, half brother of Napoleon III. Morny would play a key role in the development of her acting career, in which she was not alone. Together with her friend, the writer Alexandre Dumas, they took the young lady to a test at the Comédie-Française. They say that when he saw her act, Dumas called her “my little star”. And that the duke said: “That girl is destined to act.”
In 1860 they managed to appear for an audition at the more than prestigious Paris Conservatoire. Trained by Dumas himself, he recited the fable The two pigeons of LaFontaine. In 1862, after two years of study at the Conservatoire, he made his debut in Iphigénie of Racine at the Comédie-Francaise. She then suffered from stage fright, but she prevailed and continued acting. Once, with a Moliere character, she failed to impress the critics or the public. It was the first and only setback in her life, but not before slapping another actress. Then they gently invited her to leave the theater.
Power crept back into her life in 1864, when she became involved with a Belgian prince who would be the father of her only child. To support herself and her child, she had to accept minor roles in a third-rate theater. She until she was hired by the director of the Théâtre de l’Ódéon, where she would spend around six years developing a solid reputation as a leading actress.
In 1868, for his performance in a Dumas play, he received a standing ovation: they say that his salary was instantly raised. Here she broke epochal molds by playing a man for the first time in Le Passant by François Coppée. “The best woman in the flesh of a man,” they said. She was already the actress of all the French.
Back at the Comédie-Française, in 1872 he starred in some of the most demanding roles of the day, notably in Zaire of Voltaire and Phédre from Racine. In 1880 he accepted an offer to tour the United States, the first of many. tours international theatrical performances he did during his career. After two years, she returned to Paris and bought the Théâtre de la Renaissance, where she served as artistic director and leading actress until 1899.
At the turn of the century, she was one of the first actresses to star in silent films. After acting in the film Le Duel d’Hamlet (1900), in which he once again played the role of a man—the tormented Prince of Ireland, no less—, ensued his performances in rough (1908) and in The Lady of the Camellias (1912). However, her interpretation of Elizabeth I in The love of Queen Elizabeth (1912) was what really made him achieve greater international recognition. With that he reinforced his status as what today we would call “a globalized celebrity”. The cinema had from the beginning that special power.
II
Bernhardt had a peculiar relationship with the Cubans. On January 8, 1887, she disembarked with her company in Havana, she stayed at the Hotel Trotcha, in the then emerging neighborhood of El Vedado recreated by Renée Méndez Capote in her Memories of a Cuban girl who was born with the century, and performed at the famous Tacón theater, on the Paseo del Prado.
They hired her for fifteen performances. She was admired, adored and revered, especially for her performance in Phaedra. But an incident spoiled everything.
They say that from the tables the Frenchwoman heard the yawn of a person from the public, no less than in the scene of the death of Margarita Gautier in The Lady of the Camellias. In addition, an American newspaper had said that the Cuban public had failed to appreciate his art because she turned her back on the stage and spoke loudly during the performance of the play.
It is the origin of the famous phrase that he addressed to the Cubans: “indios con levita”, from which he did not retract, displaying a corrosive humor: it is known that he said to a young playwright from the island: “Did I say that? Well, I really don’t remember. It is possible that feeling unfairly blamed for a mistake I did not commit, I came to think that there were still Indians in Cuba, but the thing about the frock coat, I am sure I did not say. In any case, I withdraw this last part.
She was, on the other hand, a seven-sole liberal who made noise in that thick colonial atmosphere. In Havana she had erotic relations with the famous Spanish bullfighter Luis Mazzantini, who shortly before had arrived in the Tropics for a series of performances in the Havana bullring, near Infanta and Carlos III.
Several ladies from high society had organized a tribute to the actress in an exclusive club, but she went with her bullfighter elsewhere: to see a “private bullfight.” A sexual metaphor that, without a doubt, did not fall on deaf ears.
II
At the beginning of the new century, the Bernhardt made a series of farewell tours around the world, including Canada, Brazil, Russia and Ireland. In 1915, after suffering a knee problem, she developed an infection related to that injury and her leg eventually had to be amputated. She refused to wear a prosthetic, and she continued to perform.
He returned to Cuba in 1918 during the hustle and bustle of World War I. He was 74 years old, but he had the same charisma and the same temper. They say that all his presentations were to a full theater.
In 1921 he made his last tour of France. During the general rehearsal of the play a roman bra, by Sacha Guitry, the actress collapsed and fell into a coma. She spent months recovering, but on March 21, 1923, she died of kidney failure.
He had a rather eccentric life that the press at the time knew how to exploit, especially to sell his serialized literature and penny press: he lived with wolves, leopards, chameleons, monkeys, a snake and even a crocodile to which, they say, he gave champagne. He took them on his tours. He eventually slept in a coffin.
But the diva will always remain. Therein lies the real importance of being called Sarah Bernhardt a hundred years after her death.
