Éric Génovèse ・ Comédie-Française

Having been trained by Pierre Vial, Madeleine Marion, Jean-Pierre Vincent and Viviane Théophilidès at the Paris Conservatory, Éric Génovèse entered the Comédie-Française on the 1st of December 1993 in order to play Scipio in Albert Camus’s Caligula directed by Youssef Chahine and Fortinbras and the Player Queen in Shakespeare’s Hamlet by Georges Lavaudant. He was appointed the 499th sociétaire of the Company on the 1st of January 1998.

Éric Génovèse has worked with renowned directors such as Roger Planchon in Occupe-toi d’Amélie by Feydeau, Daniel Mesguich in The Tempest by Shakespeare and Mithridate and Andromaque by Racine, Robert Wilson in Fables by La Fontaine, Alain Françon in The Three Sisters by Chekhov and The Sea by Edward Bond, and finally Éric Ruf in Peer Gynt by Ibsen. He has been cast in a wide variety of roles in Molière’s plays: The Miser by Andrei Serban, The Forced Marriage by Andrzej Seweryn, Amphitryon by Anatoli Vassiliev. Marcel Bozonnet offered him the title role in Tartuffe in 2004. He undertook the role of Philinte in Le Misanthrope on two occasions, first under the direction of Lukas Hemleb in 2007, and then in Clément Hervieu-Léger’s staging in 2014. In 2018, Clément Hervieu-léger entrusted him to play M. Gabor and the Masked man in Frank Wedekind’s Spring Awakening.

He has also proven his skills in the twentieth century’s repertoire: Eugène Ionesco’s Jacques ou la soumission as staged by Simon Eine, Marguerite Duras’ Agatha by Alison Hornus and La Pluie d’été by Emmanuel Daumas, Copi’s Une visite inopportune by Lukas Hemleb, Tony Kushner’s Homebody / Kabul by Jorge Lavelli, Pinter’s The Birthday Party by Claude Mouriéras, and Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children by Jorge Lavelli, followed by The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Katharina Thalbach. Director Ivo van Hove requested that Éric Génovèse take up the role of Wolf von Aschenbach in The Damned after Visconti’s screenplay.

As a stage director, Éric Génovèse led the actors of the Company in a montage of texts by Fernando Passoa entitled Le Privilège des chemins in 2004, and later in 2012, in Erzuli Dahomey, déesse de l’amour by Jean-René Lemoine.

Outside of the Comédie-Française, he directed Verdi’s Rigoletto at the Opéra national de Bordeaux, Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Rolf Liebermann’s The School for Wives at the Opéra national de Bordeaux, and Donizetti’s Anna Bolena at the Vienna State Opera. Éric Génovèse has also played in Jeanne au Bûcher by Paul Claudel/Arthur Honegger which was directed by Côme de Bellescize and presented in Toulouse, Paris and later at New York City’s Lincoln Center.