Phèdre (French: [fɛdʁ]; originally Phèdre et Hippolyte) is a French dramatic tragedy in five acts written in alexandrine verse by Jean Racine, first performed in 1677 at the theatre of the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris.
Phèdre (French: [fɛdʁ]; originally Phèdre et Hippolyte) is a French dramatic tragedy in five acts written in alexandrine verse by Jean Racine, first performed in 1677 at the theatre of the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris.
Euripides (/jʊəˈrɪpɪdiːz/; Ancient Greek: Eὐριπίδης, romanized: Eurīpídēs, pronounced [eu̯.riː.pí.dɛːs]; c. 480 – c. 406 BC) was a Greek tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three authors of Greek tragedy for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him, but the Suda says it was ninety-two at most. Nineteen plays attributed to Euripides have survived more or less complete, although one of these (Rhesus) is often considered not to be genuinely his work. Many fragments (some of them substantial) survive from most of his other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined: he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes, and Menander.
Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy, some of which are characteristic of romance. He was referred to by Aristotle as "the most tragic of poets", probably in reference to a perceived preference for unhappy endings, but Aristotle's remark is seen by Bernard Knox as having wider relevance, since "in his representation of human suffering Euripides pushes to the limits of what an audience can stand; some of his scenes are almost unbearable." Focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown, Euripides was "the creator of ... that cage which is the theatre of Shakespeare's Othello, Racine's Phèdre, of Ibsen and Strindberg," in which "imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates". But he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.
Jean-Baptiste Racine (/ræˈsiːn/ rass-EEN, US also /rəˈsiːn/ rə-SEEN; French: [ʒɑ̃ batist ʁasin]; 22 December 1639 – 21 April 1699) was a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, along with Molière and Corneille, as well as an important literary figure in the Western tradition and world literature. Racine was primarily a tragedian, producing such "examples of neoclassical perfection" as Phèdre, Andromaque, and Athalie. He did write one comedy, Les Plaideurs, and a muted tragedy, Esther, for the young.
Racine's plays displayed his mastery of the dodecasyllabic (12 syllable) French alexandrine. His writing is renowned for its elegance, purity, speed, and fury, and for what American poet Robert Lowell described as a "diamond-edge", and the "glory of its hard, electric rage". Racine's dramaturgy is marked by his psychological insight, the prevailing passion of his characters, and the nakedness of both plot and stage.
Hôtel de Bourgogne (French pronunciation: [otɛl də buʁɡɔɲ]) was a theatre, built in 1548 for the first authorized theatre troupe in Paris, the Confrérie de la Passion. It was located on the rue Mauconseil (now the rue Étienne Marcel in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris), on a site that had been part of the residence of the Dukes of Burgundy (the former Hôtel de Bourgogne). The most important French theatre until the 1630s, it continued to be used until 1783, after which it was converted to a leather market and eventually totally demolished.
The Confrérie performed farce and secular dramas, but lacking great success, began renting the theatre to itinerant acting companies, including Italian commedia dell'arte troupes, who introduced the characters Harlequin and Pantalone, as well as burlesque. In 1628, a French company, the Comédiens du Roi, became permanently established and performed many of the classics of French theatre, including Andromaque and Phèdre by Jean Racine.
Jacques Pradon, often called Nicolas Pradon (1632 – 14 January 1698), was a French playwright. Early in his career, he was helped by Pierre Corneille and was introduced to the salons at the Hôtel de Nevers and the Hôtel de Bouillon by Madame Deshoulières.
Pradon was born in Rouen and is the author of eight tragedies: Pyrame et Thisbé (1674) (see Pyramus and Thisbe), Tamerlan, ou la mort de Bajazet (1676), Phèdre et Hippolyte (1677), La Troade (1679), Statira (1680), Regulus (1688), Germanicus (1694) and Scipion (1697). His plays enjoyed a certain limited success, but were severely judged by his rival Jean Racine, who also wrote tragedies based on the stories of Bajazet (Bayezid I) and Phaedra ("The only difference between Pradon and me is that I know how to write", Racine is reported to have said), and Racine's supporter Nicolas Boileau. This rivalry was particularly intense when Pradon brought out his Phèdre et Hippolyte at the same time as Racine's Phèdre (the writers Donneau de Visé and Adrien-Thomas Perdou de Subligny both took Pradon's side), and throughout his life Pradon wrote several attacks on Boileau. He died in Paris.
Hippolyte et Aricie (Hippolytus and Aricia) was the first opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau. It was premiered to great controversy by the Académie Royale de Musique at its theatre in the Palais-Royal in Paris on October 1, 1733. The French libretto, by Abbé Simon-Joseph Pellegrin, is based on Racine's tragedy Phèdre. The opera takes the traditional form of a tragédie en musique with an allegorical prologue followed by five acts. Early audiences found little else conventional about the work.