René Fauchois

René Fauchois (31 August 1882 – 10 February 1962) was a French dramatist, librettist and actor. Stagestruck from his youth he moved from his native Rouen to Paris as a teenager to pursue a stage career. He had early success both as an actor and as a playwright. Among those with whom he collaborated as his career flourished were Sarah Bernhardt and Sacha Guitry. His career lasted for more than sixty years, and his output was prolific.

As a librettist Fauchois is probably best known for writing the "poème lyrique" for Fauré's Pénélope (1913). His best-known play is Prenez garde à la peinture (1932), a comedy of bourgeois avarice, adapted for US and British stage and screen as The Late Christopher Bean. His 1919 comedy Boudu sauvé des eaux has been filmed in both French and English.

Fauchois was born in Rouen to a family of modest means. He was educated at the state schools of the city, the école maternelle, école communale and école primaire supérieure. He sang in the choir of a local church, where he developed a strong interest in ritual and religion. Determined on a theatrical career he moved to Paris as a young man, enrolling as a student at the Conservatoire national de musique et de déclamation. He supported himself by selling newspapers and working as a prompter at the Théâtre de l'Œuvre.

While still a student Fauchois had his first play produced. This was Le Roi des Juifs, a verse drama in five acts, which the Théâtre de l’Œuvre staged in 1899. The following year he successfully auditioned for a small role in Edmond Rostand's play L'Aiglon, presented by and starring Sarah Bernhardt. From this beginning he made a successful career as an actor, appearing in several more productions with Bernhardt and with Mounet-Sully. He was a versatile actor, capable of playing tragic classical heroes or modern light comedy leads.

As a playwright Fauchois had a series of modest successes between 1902 and 1909. His first real triumph was in 1909, a three-act verse drama called Beethoven, a portrayal of the composer's life and personality. It was translated into several languages and produced in many parts of the world. A succession of plays followed, none quite such great hits as Beethoven, but successes nevertheless. A long-term project, begun in 1907 but not complete until 1913, was an opera, Pénélope, with a libretto by Fauchois and music by Gabriel Fauré. The Fauré scholar Jean-Michel Nectoux comments on aspects of the libretto that he regards as flawed, but Fauré was much impressed by "the straightforwardness of the action and by the dignity of the characters". The work was a success when presented at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, but its fame was short-lived: the furore of the premiere of The Rite of Spring in the same theatre less than a month later relegated the opera to the background. A few years later Fauchois wrote another libretto on a classical theme: Nausicaa, to music by Reynaldo Hahn, which was premiered in 1919.

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