Research Trip to Paris, January 2019

After the success of Hofmannsthal’s Elektra directed by Max Reinhardt with Gertrud Eysoldt in the lead (Berlin, 1903), the play draws attention both of outstanding directors and outstanding actresses of the period. Thus, for example, Edward Gordon Craig negotiates with Eleonora Duse (with the mediation of Harry Kessler)… Craig, quite naturally, thinks that Reinhardt misunderstood the pathos of the play; his own sketches (now in the collection of the French National Library) show that he was going to return this Greek story into the realm of the sublime and ideal. These sketches quote purified architectonic forms and quite traditional scenes of the ritual sacrifices…

At the same time the play interests the reformer of the French theatre Aurélien Lugné-Poe. The director who (together with his wife Suzanne Desprès) is equally in contact with Duse (because of the Ibsen productions), in turn, thinks about Elektra as about a play precisely for Desprès. And it is possible, that he is somehow inspired just by the Berlin production.

Hilda Burger, the editor of the correspondence between Kessler and Hofmannsthal provides astonishing information: in 1909 Suzanne Desprès made a successful tour with this play in Vienna, Berlin, Budapest, Istanbul, Jassy, Stuttgart, Munich, Buenos Aires etc. Why has the memory of this production so completely disappeared from the history of theatre?

Suzanne Desprès whom monographs had been dedicated during her lifetime, didn’t interest the historians of theatre later on (I managed to find only one article, by Sylvie Jouanny; it is quite informative as for the analyze of the possibilities to reconstruct the actress’s work from the reviews…). The actress who used to be associated with the “new theatre” to the same extent as  Lugné-Poe, today remains completely in the shadow of the latter.

The story of the French Elektra needs to be reconstructed directly from the contemporary responses to that production. First of all, astonishing are its visual traces. Desprès had played “Greek” parts also before Elektra. Whatever that performance could be, the photos feature her in the conventional classicized dress. Her hair is neatly formed in an equally traditional way for such heroines. The photos, sketches and caricatures that reflect her appearance in Elektra by Hofmannsthal represent something completely different. Her black hair is in disorder, her glance is wild, and her movements are angular.

What about the reviews? It turns out that theatre Œuvre scrupulously collected any press publications. The newspapers clippings were glued to the pages of huge books where the dates of the guest performances were also written down. These books, however, are available only in microfilms today. To look through enormous films for a material in question, without the information where it could appear, sometimes may lead to a state of despair… Suddenly a treasure is just there: for example, a collection of the reviews from the performances in Berlin. Not only the press of the Reichstadt responded to these guest appearances in 1909, but quite a number of the correspondents from other German cities – this was an important event! Many of the reviews are far from being benevolent but even if it is so, there are very useful; in fact they demonstrate how the image which Eysoldt had created in Elektra (and that had raised so much controversy in 1903) by 1909 became canonized and how precisely it became canonized … For too many a critic that pre-image actually obscured what Desprès tried to articulate – happily not for all of them.

Berlin reviews represent probably the most valuable part of the findings, while they illuminate both Desprès’s interpretation as well as the way the creation of Eysoldt kept to be remembered through the years.

In Vienna, in Hofmannsthal’s home country Suzanne Desprès as Elektra raised less controversy (which indirectly demonstrates how the first performance of this part by Gertrud Eysoldt in Berlin began to determine its reading and make to demand a similar performance from other actresses as well).

What about Paris? There is something symbolic in the fact that in the scrupulous chronical of Œuvre theatre this premiere is absent. One of the microfilms ends just when this premiere is about to take place. The next one begins with the later performances and tours. The catalog of the French National Library lists also a separate file dedicated precisely to Elektra. But my order of the file is canceled with the comment: “out of usage”… And there is no microfilm of this file either… Happily, on the last day of my stay, due to the help of a librarian of the Preforming Arts Department, the mysterious file is given to my disposal…