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Sacha Pitoëff
Sacha Pitoëff (born Alexandre Pitoëff; 11 March 1920 – 21 July 1990) was a Swiss-born French actor and stage director. Early life and education Pitoëff was born in Geneva, Switzerland, on 11 March 1920, the son of Russian-born parents Ludmilla (née Smanova) and Georges Pitoëff. Both of his parents were born in the city of Tbilisi (in modern-day Georgia), then a part of the Russian Empire. The Pitoëffs were prominent actors in France, Georges was a founding member of the ''Cartel des Quatre'' (Group of Four), a group including Louis Jouvet, Charles Dullin, and Gaston Baty, dedicated to rejuvenating the French theatre. Sacha graduated from Lycée Pasteur in Neuilly-sur-Seine, outside Paris. He studied acting and stage direction under Jouvet at the Théâtre de l'Athénée. Career Stage career During World War II, the younger Pitoëff followed his mother back to Switzerland, where he played his earliest roles. After the war he returned to Paris, becoming gener ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anastasia (1956 Film)
''Anastasia'' is a 1956 American period drama film directed by Anatole Litvak and written by Arthur Laurents. Set in interwar France, the film follows a plot related to rumors that the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, the youngest daughter of the late Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, survived the execution of her family in 1918. Russian General Bounine (Yul Brynner), former leader of the White Army during the Russian Revolution, along with his associates plot to swindle an inheritance of £10 million from the Grand Duchess using an amnesiac (Ingrid Bergman) who looks remarkably like the missing Anastasia. The exiled émigrés of the Russian aristocracy, in particular the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna (Helen Hayes) of Denmark, must be convinced that their handpicked claimant is legitimate if the plotters are to get her money. ''Anastasia'' was adapted from a 1952 play written by Guy Bolton and Marcelle Maurette. He was inspired by the story of A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uncle Vanya
''Uncle Vanya'' ( rus, Дя́дя Ва́ня, r=Dyádya Ványa, p=ˈdʲædʲə ˈvanʲə) is a play by the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. It was first published in 1898, and was first produced in 1899 by the Moscow Art Theatre under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavski. The play portrays the visit of an elderly professor and his glamorous, much younger second wife, Yelena, to the rural estate that supports their urban lifestyle. Two friends—Vanya, brother of the professor's late first wife, who has long managed the estate, and Astrov, the local doctor—both fall under Yelena's spell, while bemoaning the ''ennui'' of their provincial existence. Sonya, the professor's daughter by his first wife, who has worked with Vanya to keep the estate going, suffers from her unrequited feelings for Astrov. Matters are brought to a crisis when the professor announces his intention to sell the estate, Vanya and Sonya's home, with a view to investing the proceeds to achieve a higher inco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Claude Jade
Claude Marcelle Jorré, better known as Claude Jade (; 8 October 1948 – 1 December 2006), was a French actress. She starred as Christine in François Truffaut's three films '' Stolen Kisses'' (1968), '' Bed and Board'' (1970) and '' Love on the Run'' (1979). Jade acted in theatre, film and television. Her film work outside France included the Soviet Union, the United States, Italy, Belgium, Germany and Japan. Early career The daughter of university professors, Jade spent three years at Dijon's Conservatory of Dramatic Art. In 1964 she played on stage 40 times the part of Agnès in Molière's ''L'école des femmes''. In 1966 she won the Prix de Comédie for Jean Giraudoux's stage play '' Ondine'', performed at the Comédie Boulogne. She moved to Paris and became a student of Jean-Laurent Cochet at the Edouard VII theater, and began acting in television productions, including a leading role in TV series '' Les oiseaux rares''. Films with François Truffaut While performing as F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry IV (Pirandello)
''Henry IV'' ( ) is an Italian play ''(Enrico IV)'' by Luigi Pirandello written in 1921 and premiered to general acclaim at the Teatro Manzoni in Milan on 24 February 1922. A study on madness with comic and tragic elements, it is about a man who believes himself to be Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor. It has been translated into English by Tom Stoppard, among others. Rex Harrison starred in a noted British production which went to Broadway in 1973, though the Stoppard translation was not used in the production. In 2019, it was ranked by ''The Independent'' as one of the 40 greatest plays ever written. Plot overview An unnamed Italian aristocrat falls off his horse while playing the role of Henry IV during carnevale festivities, which take place annually before Lent. After he comes to, he believes himself to be Henry. For the next twenty years, his family, including his sister and now his nephew, Marchese Carlo Di Nolli, maintain an elaborate charade in a remote Umbrian villa, decor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello (; 28 June 1867 – 10 December 1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, poet, and short story writer whose greatest contributions were his plays. He was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his almost magical power to turn psychological analysis into good theatre." Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written in Sicilian. Pirandello's tragic farces are often seen as forerunners of the Theatre of the Absurd. Biography Early life Pirandello was born into an upper-class family in an area called "Caos" ("Chaos" in Italian, but in Sicilian dialect lit. "Trouser", from the shape of a nearby ravine), near Porto Empedocle, a poor suburb of Girgenti (Agrigento, a town in southern Sicily). His father, Stefano, belonged to a wealthy family involved in the sulphur industry, and his mother, Caterina Ricci Gramitto, was also of a well-to-do background, descending from a family of the bourgeois prof ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Théâtre De L'Œuvre
The Théâtre de l'Œuvre is a Paris theatre on the Right Bank, located at 3, Cité Monthiers, entrance 55, rue de Clichy, in the 9° arrondissement. It is commonly conflated and confused with the late-nineteenth-century theater company named Théâtre de l'Œuvre (or simply, L'Œuvre), founded by actor-director-producer Aurélien Lugné-Poe, who would not take control of this performance space until 1919. His company is best known for its earlier phase of existence, before it acquired this theatre venue. From 1893 to 1899, in various Parisian theatres, Lugné-Poe premiered modernist plays by foreign dramatists (Ibsen, Strindberg, Hauptmann, Bjørnson, Wilde), as well as new work by French Symbolists, most notoriously Alfred Jarry’s nihilistic farce ''Ubu Roi'', which opened in 1896 at Nouveau-Théâtre (today, Théâtre de Paris, 15, rue Blanche). It is best to discuss the surviving theater building and Lugné-Poe's several-phase theater production company separately, though th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Three Sisters (play)
''Three Sisters'' (russian: Три сeстры́, translit=Tri sestry) is a play by the Russian author and playwright Anton Chekhov. It was written in 1900 and first performed in 1901 at the Moscow Art Theatre. The play is sometimes included on the short list of Chekhov's outstanding plays, along with ''The Cherry Orchard'', ''The Seagull'' and ''Uncle Vanya''. Characters The Prozorovs * Olga Sergeyevna Prozorova (Olga) – The eldest of the three sisters, she is the matriarchal figure of the Prozorov family, though at the beginning of the play she is only 28 years old. Olga is a teacher at the high school, where she frequently fills in for the headmistress whenever the latter is absent. Olga is a spinster and at one point tells Irina that she would have married "any man, even an old man if he had asked" her. Olga is very motherly even to the elderly servants, keeping on the elderly nurse/retainer Anfisa, long after she has ceased to be useful. When Olga reluctantly takes the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Seagull
''The Seagull'' ( rus, Ча́йка, r=Cháyka, links=no) is a play by Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov, written in 1895 and first produced in 1896. ''The Seagull'' is generally considered to be the first of his four major plays. It dramatises the romantic and artistic conflicts between four characters: the famous middlebrow story writer Boris Trigorin, the ingenue Nina, the fading actress Irina Arkadina, and her son the symbolist playwright Konstantin Treplev. Like Chekhov's other full-length plays, ''The Seagull'' relies upon an ensemble cast of diverse, fully developed characters. In contrast to the melodrama of mainstream 19th-century theatre, lurid actions (such as Konstantin's suicide attempts) are not shown onstage. Characters tend to speak in subtext rather than directly. The character Trigorin is considered one of Chekhov's greatest male roles. The opening night of the first production was a famous failure. Vera Komissarzhevskaya, playing Nina, was so intimidated b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Romy Schneider
Romy Schneider (; born Rosemarie Magdalena Albach; 23 September 1938 – 29 May 1982) was a German-French actress. She began her career in the German genre in the early 1950s when she was 15. From 1955 to 1957, she played the central character of Empress Elisabeth of Austria in the Austrian '' Sissi'' trilogy, and later reprised the role in a more mature version in Luchino Visconti's '' Ludwig'' (1973). Schneider moved to France, where she made successful and critically acclaimed films with some of the most notable film directors of that era. Early life Schneider was born Rosemarie Magdalena Albach in Vienna, six months after the ''Anschluss'' of Austria into Nazi Germany, to actors Magda Schneider and Wolf Albach-Retty. Her paternal grandmother, Rosa Albach-Retty, was also an actress. Schneider's mother was German while her father was Austrian. Four weeks after Romy's birth, the parents brought her to Schönau am Königssee in Germany where she and later her brother Wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; 29 January 1860 Old Style date 17 January. – 15 July 1904 Old Style date 2 July.) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics."Stories ... which are among the supreme achievements in prose narrative.Vodka miniatures, belching and angry cats George Steiner's review of ''The Undiscovered Chekhov'', in ''The Observer'', 13 May 2001. Retrieved 16 February 2007. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov was a physician by profession. "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress." Chekhov renounced the theatre after the reception of ''The Seagull'' in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 189 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anna Langfus
Anna Langfus (born Anna-Regina Szternfinkiel; 2 January 192012 May 1966) was a Polish-French author. She was also a Holocaust survivor. She won the Prix Goncourt for ''Les bagages de sable'' (translated as "Bags of Sand"), about a concentration camp survivor. Early life and career Born Anna-Regina Szternfinkiel in Lublin on 2 January 1920, she was the only child of Polish-Jewish parents.''Anna Langfus.'' Ośrodek Brama Grodzka - Teatr NN When she turned 17, she married Jakub Rajs, and they traveled to Belgium in 1938 to attend the Ecole Polytechnique de Verviers. They intended to become textile engineers so that they could manage her parents' factory. In 1939, they traveled back to Poland for a vacation, but soon Occupation of Poland (193 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Musil
Robert Musil (; 6 November 1880 – 15 April 1942) was an Austrian philosophical writer. His unfinished novel, ''The Man Without Qualities'' (german: link=no, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften), is generally considered to be one of the most important and influential modernist novels. Family Musil was born in Klagenfurt, Carinthia, the son of engineer Alfred ''Edler'' Musil (1846, Timișoara – 1924) and his wife Hermine Bergauer (1853, Linz – 1924). The orientalist Alois Musil ("The Czech Lawrence") was his second cousin. Soon after his birth, the family moved to Chomutov in Bohemia, and in 1891 Musil's father was appointed to the chair of Mechanical Engineering at the German Technical University in Brno and, later, he was raised to hereditary nobility in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was baptized ''Robert Mathias Musil'' and his name was officially ''Robert Mathias Edler von Musil'' from 22 October 1917, when his father was ennobled (made ''Edler''), until 3 April 1919, whe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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