A key work of Hugolian theatre, the author’s “most powerful” play according to George Sand, Lucrèce Borgia entered the Repertoire in 1918. “And now mingle with all this moral deformity a pure feeling, [...] maternal love; inside your monster, put a mother and the monster will make you cry” states the preface. The director was inspired by Antoine Vitez’s staging in Avignon in 1985 to follow Hugo’s lyricism so as to “better descend into this shadowy abyss that is Lucrèce Borgia, an ambivalent and subversive tragedy, a sort of monster of beauty and impropriety” in order to recreate the poetic violence of the incestuous drama. The play calls for a scale of gesture, feeling and acting that accepts ridicule and exaggeration, that does not hold back from embracing the grotesque and the sublime. “Hugo stretches this tension in every scene to accentuate contrasts. It is clearly from Shakespeare that Hugo borrowed this fundamental law of drama.” The opening scene shows a gondola in which a group of bedraggled men, their faces covered by grotesque masks, tell the story of the infamous Borgia family, recounting how the two brothers Cesare and Juan killed each other for the love of their sister Lucrezia. Hugo has deformed historical reality here to better adapt it to his dramatic vision, depicted Lucrezia as tarnished by fratricide and transformed into a monster by the force of maternal love: “the use of disguise and masks in the staging comes from both the play and the desire to make Lucrezia less a dramatic heroine than an allegory of the pariah” adds Denis Podalydès.

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THE MEMORY OF A BATTLE always remains attached to its location. That of Hernani at the Comédie-Française thus offered Victor Hugo a setting for his next work, Le Roi s’amuse. But the failure and prohibition of this play, accused of glorifying regicide, immediately shut the door to him, ruling out any prospect of premiering Lucrèce Borgia there. Thanks to Mademoiselle George, a former sociétaire of the Comédie-Française, the play was accepted by Harel, director of the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin, who was open to the Romantic movement. Hugo stood in as director, closely following the rehearsals and performances of his actors, Frederick Lemaître (Gennaro) and Juliette Drouet (Princess Negroni) –from then on, the actress was to share the rest of her life with Hugo. On 2 February 1833, the premiere was a triumph, although the plays’ perceived attack on political morality tempered critics’ enthusiasms.

Lucrèce Borgia did not enter the Comédie-Française Repertoire until 1918, under the threat of German bombardment, which had disrupted performances in Parisian theatres since the beginning of the month. The context of the war accentuated the violence of the work, which was viewed poorly. Between 1935 and 1948, subsequent productions fared better, respectively featuring Mary Marquet and Louise Conte in the lead role.

Devastating, tortured, torn apart, because for her, “being a mother is hell”, wishing to do good but only doing evil, Christine Fersen was the Lucrezia chosen by Jean-Luc Boutté (1994), continuing his cycle of Victor Hugo productions (Marie Tudor in 1982, Le Roi s’amuse in 1991).

Masks have a predominant role in this play. Denis Podalydès substantiated this theme in 2014 by having the male actor Guillaume Gallienne play Lucrezia. The male-female reversal “is less about a woman being played by a man than a woman being locked in an appearance that is not her own” and as such acts as an allegory for the moral monster cited by Hugo in his preface. The inversion of genders is mirrored in the character of Gennaro, who in this production is a woman, played by Suliane Brahim. As with every Comédie-Française production, cast changes occur during the season, in keeping with the alternating calendar. In this case, Elsa Lepoivre became the new Lucrezia and Gaël Kamilindi played Gennaro.

• Visual: Lucrèce Borgia by Victor Hugo, 1933, with Maurice Donneaud, Denis D’Inès, Mary Marquet – photo. Manuel frères, coll. CF

Directed by: Denis Podalydès
Scenography: Éric Ruf
Costumes: Christian Lacroix
Lights: Stéphanie Daniel
Sound: Bernard Valléry
Choreography: Kaori Ito
Make-up and VFX: Dominique Colladant
Masks: Louis Arene
Direction assistant: Alison Hornus
Scenography assistant: Dominique Schmitt
Make-up assistnt: Laurence Aué and Muriel Baurens