Le Gendarme incompris

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Le gendarme incompris
The misunderstood Gendarme
Written by Jean Cocteau and Raymond Radiguet
Date premiered 24 May 1921
Place premiered Théâtre Michel (Paris)
Original language French
Genre Comédie bouffe

Le Gendarme incompris (The misunderstood Gendarme) is a one-act play written in 1920 by Jean Cocteau and Raymond Radiguet and set to music by Francis Poulenc, his FP 20a.

A one-act play is a play that has only one act, as distinct from plays that occur over several acts. One-act plays may consist of one or more scenes. In recent years, the 10-minute play has emerged as a popular subgenre of the one-act play, especially in writing competitions. The origin of the one-act play may be traced to the very beginning of drama: in ancient Greece, Cyclops, a satyr play by Euripides, is an early example.

Jean Cocteau French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, writer, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. Cocteau is best known for his novel Les Enfants Terribles (1929), and the films The Blood of a Poet (1930), Les Parents Terribles (1948), Beauty and the Beast (1946) and Orpheus (1949). He was described as "one of [the] avant-garde's most successful and influential filmmakers" by AllMovie.

Raymond Radiguet French writer

Raymond Radiguet was a French novelist and poet whose two novels were noted for their explicit themes, and unique style and tone.

Contents

The play features three characters: Commissaire Médor [lower-alpha 1] played by Pierre Bertin), a gendarme named the Penultimate whose replicas are from a poem in the Divagations by Stéphane Mallarmé, and an old lady, the Marquise de Montonson. [1]

Commissaire de police police commissioner in France

Commissaire de police is a rank in the French National Police. It should not be confused with the French appointment of "armed forces commissary" which is an administrative military position.

<i>Divagations</i> 1897 prose collection by the French writer Stéphane Mallarmé

Divagations is an 1897 prose collection by the French writer Stéphane Mallarmé. The book introduces the idea of "critical poems", a mixture between critical essays and prose poems. The book is divided into two parts, first a series of prose poems, and then the actual "divagations" - "wanderings" or "ravings".

Stéphane Mallarmé French Symbolist poet

Stéphane Mallarmé, whose real name was Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism.

It was played publicly only once, on 24 May 1921, in addition to the dress rehearsal the day before. Two more performances were scheduled for 25 and 26 May. [2]

Suite

Poulenc derived a suite for orchestra drawn from the incidental music, which was first performed in London on 11 July 1921, conducted by Ernest Ansermet).

A suite, in Western classical music and jazz, is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral/concert band pieces. It originated in the late 14th century as a pairing of dance tunes and grew in scope to comprise up to five dances, sometimes with a prelude, by the early 17th century. The separate movements were often thematically and tonally linked. The term can also be used to refer to similar forms in other musical traditions, such as the Turkish fasıl and the Arab waslah and nuubaat.

Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, film, 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 the "film score" or "soundtrack".

Ernest Ansermet Swiss conductor

Ernest Alexandre Ansermet was a Swiss conductor.

The work comprises 3 movements for double bass, cello, violin, clarinet, trumpet and trombone:

The duration is about 6:35 minutes

Notes

  1. ↑ common name for a dog in French

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Les Soirées de Nazelles, FP 84, is a set of variations for piano written by the French composer Francis Poulenc. During the evenings, the composer used to sit at the piano and improvise "portraits" of his friends, all based on a given theme. The work was begun in 1930, and completed at Noizay on October 1, 1936. At the beginning of the score, it reads:

The variations that form the center of this work were improvised at Nazelles during long country evenings wherein the composer played "portraits" for friends gathered around his piano.

We hope that these variations, each one somewhere between a first draft and a finished work, will have the power to evoke this game in the spirit of a Touraine region living room– with a window open to the night.

The Sonate pour cor, trompette et trombone, FP 33a, by Francis Poulenc is a piece of chamber music composed in 1922 and dedicated to Raymonde Linossier (1897–1930). Poulenc revised it in 1945. Its total execution time is about eight minutes.

References

  1. ↑ Hervé Lacombe (2013). Francis Poulenc. Paris: Fayard. p. 1888. OCLC   828409020. 1bMPswLwba0C.
  2. ↑ Duchesnau, Michel; de Médicis, François; Caron, Sylvain (2006). Musique et modernité en France, 1900-1945. Montréal: Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal. p. 101. OCLC   123960160. 49zu4F0IOC0C.
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