Lucien Germain Guitry (13 December 1860 – 1 June 1925) was a French

actor An actor (masculine/gender-neutral), or actress (feminine), is a person who portrays a character in a production. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. ...

Life

In 1885, while living in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

, Guitry appeared at the French (or Mikhaylovsky) Theatre. His son, the future actor, writer and director

Sacha Guitry Alexandre-Pierre Georges "Sacha" Guitry (; 21 February 188524 July 1957) was a French stage actor, film actor, director, screenwriter, and playwright of the boulevard theatre (aesthetic), boulevard theatre. He was the son of a leading French ac ...

, was born in Saint Petersburg and named in honour of

Tsar Alexander III Alexander III (; 10 March 18451 November 1894) was Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Poland and Grand Duke of Finland from 13 March 1881 until his death in 1894. He was highly reactionary in domestic affairs and reversed some of the liberal ...

. Lucien met the composer

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky ( ; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer during the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally. Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most popula ...

and his brother Modest, and became good friends with them.Alexander Poznansky, ''Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man'', p. 452 It was at Guitry's instigation that Tchaikovsky wrote both his ''Hamlet'' Overture-Fantasy (Op. 67a) in 1888, and the

Incidental Music Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, or some other presentation form that is not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as th ...

to the Shakespeare play (Op. 67b) in 1891, for which he reused the overture-fantasy in shortened form as the overture. He became prominent on the French stage at the Renaissance theatre ('' Les Mauvais bergers'', by Octave Mirbeau), in 1897, then at Porte Saint-Martin theatre in 1900, and the Variétés in 1901. He was a member of the Comédie-Française, but resigned in order to become director of the Renaissance, where he was principally associated with the actress Marthe Brandès, who had also left the Comédie. Here, in a number of plays, he established his reputation as one of the greatest contemporary French actors in the drama of modern reality. In 1920 he went to London, with his son Sacha, and was a success in a play titled ''Pasteur'', himself playing the eponymous scientist, and in his son's play ''Mon Père avait Raison''.

Filmography

* '' Ceux de chez nous'' (1915)

References

Attribution: * *

External links

* French male stage actors Male actors from Paris 1860 births 1925 deaths Burials at Montmartre Cemetery 20th-century French male actors Expatriates in the Russian Empire {{France-stage-actor-stub