Les Années Folles

Notes on the Program

by Steven Blier

The 1923 boulevard comedy L’Amour masqué brought together three icons of French musical theater: playwright, lyricist and actor Sacha Guitry, composer André Messager, and operetta star Yvonne Printemps. Sacha Guitry was the song of another theater legend, Lucien Guitry; the younger Guitry wrote many vehicles for his father to star in during the twilight years of his career, and they often performed in tandem. Sacha was the author of a prodigious output – 124 plays, 32 movies, and 26 books in a career spanning some 52 years; and this doesn’t begin to account for the works of other authors in whose plays he appeared. His elegant presence, patrician command of rhyming dialogue and rapier wit and innuendo have few peers. To call him a “French Noel Coward” gives a shorthand sense of the nature of his artistry – a popular entertainer whose consummate literacy was still able to find a large public.

Although Yvonne Printemps cannot claim the distinction of being Guitry’s first wife, she was the charming instigation of the first of his many divorces. Discovered at the age of thirteen when two revue writers overheard her singing in her mother’s shop, she was immediately whisked off to the Folies-Bergères for an audition, which led to her successful debut there. The theater manager christened her with the stage name “Printemps” because of her tender years and fresh appeal – while her ever-watchful mother became known as “Mme. Hiver”. Guitry met her when she was nineteen, and formed an artistic union that led to their marriage in 1919, an even attended by Georges Feydeau and Sarah Bernhardt, whose imposing presence apparently overshadowed that of the bride. Thereafter they appeared in play after play in Paris, until their marriage dissolved, messily, in 1932. The charm and magnetism of this performer can still be experience first-hand in her movies and recordings. She had the rapid vibrato typical of French sopranos – but also a classic legato line, a vivid, seemingly spontaneous delivery, a sense of incipient laughter in her voice. Poulenc wrote “A ss guitare” and “Les chemins de l’amour” for her; Hahn composed the music for several of her stage triumphs. Gamine, flirtatious, magnetic, charmingly self-centered, she seem to be playing the first act of Massenet’s Manon for her entire life.

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