Marie Champmeslé 18 February 1642 – 15 May 1698) was a French stage actress.

 

Marie Champmeslé 18 February 1642 – 15 May 1698) was a French stage actress.

La Champmeslé, tragedian from Rouen

The Rouen people know the rue de la Champmeslé well, which opens into the rue du Gros-Horloge and goes down towards the Seine. But how many know who this Champmeslé was?

In the "Mercure Galant" of May 1698, a weekly newspaper of information, one can read "  It is glorious enough for those who embrace a profession to distinguish themselves enough there to make their name known by all the earth. This is what happened to Mademoiselle de Champmeslé who has just died…  ”

La Champmeslé is actually called Marie DESMARES. She was born in ROUEN, Saint-Paul parish, on February 18, 1642. After the death of her father, Guillaume DESMARES, in 1753, probably victim of the plague epidemic, her mother, Marie, remarried with Antoine Laguerault, fat landowner of Eauplet, territory of the commune of Bonsecours (Seine-Maritime) which gave her daughter-in-law a basic education that was quite sufficient for the time: Marie could read, write and count.

CHAMPMESLE2.JPG

At 15, she married the actor from Harfleur, Pierre Fleurye, who died a few years later.

Anklet.jpg

Charles Chevillet

With a "pleasant" face, a size "advantageous, well taken and very noble" and an exceptional voice which made her admirers say that "hearing it, one was obliged to shed tears" , she decides at 23 years to embrace the theatrical career by natural inclination for this art where she was going to illustrate herself with such brilliance. She began in Rouen in the traveling troupe of François Serdin alongside a young Parisian, also an actor and bon vivant, Charles Chevillet, who took for the theater name that of "Champmeslé" and whom she married on January 6, 1666 in the Church of Saint-Eloi in Rouen.

CHAMPMESLE.JPG

Marriage certificate of Charles Chevillet and Marie Desmares - Parish register - St-Eloi Church in Rouen.

In 1668, the plague which raged once again in Normandy pushes the young couple to conquer Paris. On February 15, 1669, they both joined the theater company of the Marais, rue Vieille-du-Temple. This is where Marie begins in a play by Abbé Boyer entitled “La fête de Vénus”. The following year, the couple joined the Hôtel de Bourgogne, a rival Parisian theater but slightly better known than that of the Marais. Marie replaces at short notice Duparc, another tragic actress, unavailable because ill. In the role of Hermione, at this premiere of "Andromache", quivering with the talent of a great tragedian with a sublime voice, Marie obtains an unprecedented success. “La Champmeslé” was born! Racine falls in love with her and quickly becomes her lover. He entrusts her with all the major female roles in his plays. With each creation, enthusiasm seizes the crowds. Marie triumphs in “Bajazet” (1672), “Mithridate” (1673), “Iphigénie” (1674) created in Versailles in front of King Louis XIV, and “Phèdre” (1677) which will remain her greatest triumph. This last piece, however, marks his break with Racine after a 7-year affair.

LA Champmesle in Phèdre.jpg

La Champmeslé in Phèdre

Marie, however, continued her acting career. She integrates, always with her husband from whom she will never separate, Molière's troop at the Hotel Guénégaud. Triumphant in "Ariane", the play by Thomas Corneille, her performance inspires Madame de Sévigné, whose son Charles will have an affair with the tragic actress, the following comment: "  I saw Ariane for her alone (La Champmeslé). This comedy is bland, the actors are cursed but when La Champmeslé arrives, we hear a whisper and we cry in despair.  "His house is the meeting place for fine minds like La Fontaine who dedicated his fable to him" Belphégor "and Boileau who immortalized it with these verses:

"  Never Iphigenia in Aulide immolated,

Did not cost so many tears to the assembled Greece,

That, in the happy spectacle to my eyes spread out,

Made it under his name for Champmeslé  ”.

When the Comédie-Française was born in 1680, Champmeslé became one of its main members. 

Stamp Champmesle.jpg

She died in Auteuil, probably from cancer, on May 15, 1698, aged 56. Her husband died three years later, on August 22, 1701. The couple never had children.

Aditya Roy Kapur speaks about grey role in film 'Malang'