Baron Lestat (1 results)

Title with woodcut vignette of musical instruments.   8vo. [4], 75pp. Eighteenth-century red morocco, simple gilt fillet and floral cornerpieces, spine gilt in compartments, a.e.g. St. Petersbourg, aux dépens de l'Auteur,  The extremely rare, sole edition of this play in print, written and performed just once for Catherine the Great, handsomely printed and likely bound in St Petersburg in 1784. An impressive survival in exceptional condition of an artefact of the cultural francophilia of the Russian imperial court in this period. We have traced no other copies in institutions outside Russia.   Written by playwright and French attaché to the Empress? cabinet, Baron D?Estat, and inspired, as he writes in his Avis aux lectures, by a popular romance, the present play was performed by the French troupe at the Empress? court in St Petersburg on 20 June, 1784. This permanent troupe ?made up of actors invited by the Russian court from all over German and French territories ? was established under empress Elisabeth and had their first performance in 1743. By Catherine?s rule they cost the Russian court twice as much as the Russian equivalent (Evstratov, p.50), testament to the established ?cultural and linguistic Gallicization? of the Russian court that had begun under Catherine?s predecessors and that the Empress continued in earnest. ?French theatre was at the heart of Catherine?s theatrical and political projects? (Evstratov, p.15); her trust in the ?civilising? function of theatre itself as ?l?école du peuple? (Ponzetto, 82) is borne out in listings of French-language plays at her court between 1762 and 1796. They reveal the sheer frequency and variety of such performances, including dramas such as the present work, comedies (Catherine?s particular favourites), opera, ballet, and theatre ?en pierre?, masques.   This play was performed just once at Catherine?s court and its author is little-known, which makes the survival of this volume all the more remarkable. In his study of French theatre at the Russian court in this period, Alexei Evstratov writes that French pieces and plays written expressly for Russian theatre were far less numerous than performances of plays originally written for French audiences and imported from France. Within that already small group, Evstratov distinguishes between those written by individuals who worked professionally for the theatre, and occasional writers with no other theatrical connection; in turn, of those twentyfive pieces, only nine plays performed were written by foreign diplomats, a group which includes D?Estat as French attaché to the cabinet (Evstratov, p.144).   D?Estat was known to Catherine the Great; in honour of the completion of the construction of Catherine?s Theatre de l?Hermitage at the Winter Court in 1785, just a year after the present work was performed and printed, a collection was published of pieces written specifically to be performed there. Printed in an extremely small run ?as a sort of plaquette souvenir? (Ponzetto, 85), the Recueil des pieces de l?Hermitage (4 vol., St Petersburg: typographie de l?Ecole des Mines, 1788) contained several short pieces composed by a small group that included Catherine herself, several Russian and Austrian dignitaries, and d?Estat, one of only two French contributors (his pieces in the third volume; Ponzetto, 85).   He was, briefly, the subject of a letter from the Empress in 1792 in which she mentions this contribution and touches on his career [our translation]: ?I already knew what you told me about D?Estat; he came from the vast poultry yard of Prince Potemkin; from there he entered the service of the Prince of Nassau, and gained access to the theatre de l?Hermitage because he wrote proverbes dramatiques [short comedic pieces based on a proverb]; he never went beyond the theatre; he went to Paris under the pretext of poor health; his comments in Warsaw and Paris saw him removed from the [presumably diplomatic] service and he lost his pen.