I’m cleaning out.
One does after age 70. Who is going to want all those musical-theatre birth and
death certificates ... hundreds, from all round the world … they cost me a heap,
but had to be had, for the ENCYCLOPAEDIA. And now?
Who is going to
want a vast set of Viennese operetta Theaterzettel? And who … omigosh, this….
A folder of
letters and autograph documents … From Robert Planquette to Tim Rice and John
Hollingshead, and … Hyacinthe to Guy Bolton to Anna Neagle, Lillian Gish and
Boo Laye ... who all three sat together on our couch and I didn’t take a
photograph! Ivan Caryll, Louis Alter, Pradeau, Percy Greenbank … How did I get
these? The old ones: flea-markets, mostly.
When we lived in
St Paul de Vence, Ian and I took a weekly bus jaunt down to Nice for a stroll
through the splendid Monday flea-market and lunch at the wonderful Acchiardo
restaurant (about an undevalued pound a head … delicious!). Ian searched for musical
theatre recordings, I searched for simply anything paper-made to do with my
subject. Programmes, sheet music, ephemera. I remember I got the complete works
of Meilhac and Halevy in umpteen volumes for about 30 quid. And amongst a
folder of junky old stuff I found a selection of letters, from 'the Collection F H Monge'. Pradeau, Hyacinthe,
Julia Baron … well, who, apart from myself, would, in the 1980s, have known even who
they had been. A few francs apiece. Bought them. Now that I know so much more, four decades later, I’m sure that I left some 1860s treasures behind.
Julia Baron. Just
a name. All I knew was the she had created the role of Dindonette in Hervé’s L’Oeil Crevé. And this was a simple
note, arranging a rehearsal. But 6 francs ..? So I bought it, and it has sat on
a shelf, with the others, for 30 years. But today a photo of said lady surfaced
on my radar. Hmm. Luscious lady. So I got fascinated, and thought I’d research
a little.
JULIA BARON |
I didn’t find
anything about her birth and early life. I can’t believe one would choose
‘Baron’ as a stage name, given that there was a dynasty of Barons in the French
theatre ... but, anyway, French encyclopedias skip around that and just say born
c1836. And what emerges thereafter falls into three categories. (1) Her huge
success as Dindonette (2) her renunciation of opéra-bouffe for the comedy of
the Palais-Royal and (3) her colourful side-career as one of Paris’s top
courtesans. She was following in the footsteps of the three-years-older
Hortense Schneider (of whom she was touted as the ‘successor’) not only as
performer on the stage but as a performer off the stage.
Hortense Schneider |
Her career ON the
stage can be summed up pretty briefly. It was almost entirely successful. She began small. At the Bouffes-Parisiens, it
seems. (Not Italy, as one source says: that was Clara Baron, a different lady altogether). Yes! Here she is ...
Baran? Hmmm. Error or ....?
Until Hervé took a fancy to her and hired her for one of the leading roles in his 1865 remake of the famous féerie La Biche au bois for Marc Fournier at the Porte Saint-Martin. Hervé himself played the Prince, house star dancer Mariquita was Robin, and Julia was voted ‘ravissante’ in the saucy part of Giroflée. The show ran an entire year.
The young Julia in Bouffes days |
Until Hervé took a fancy to her and hired her for one of the leading roles in his 1865 remake of the famous féerie La Biche au bois for Marc Fournier at the Porte Saint-Martin. Hervé himself played the Prince, house star dancer Mariquita was Robin, and Julia was voted ‘ravissante’ in the saucy part of Giroflée. The show ran an entire year.
Mariquita |
From there, Julia
returned to the Bouffes, where she can be seen as Juno in the famous Cora Pearl
(for 12 nights) edition of Orphée aux
enfers. ‘Elle est bien la reine d’Olympe’ sighed the press. But one or two
saw past the beauteous face and deliciously plumpish form and decided 'Julis Baron avec sa voix ferme et mordante, son jeu vif et intelligent, avait mis le rôle de Junon au premier plan'.
But Hervé wasn’t about to
let his star go. When his new crazy opéra super bouffe L’Oeil Crevé was staged at
the Folies-Dramatiques he imported Mlle Baron from the Bouffes to star. She rocked Paris. ‘Jamais Hervé ne trouva interprète aussi parfaite pour le rôle ultra fantaisiste de Fleur de Noblesse’ elle ‘fit courir tout Paris’, ‘Mlle Julia Baron avait assumé une grande responsabilité dans l'Oeil creve et, rendons-lui justice, avait obtenu une grande part du succès…’
Julia |
The newspapers, which had but little featured Julia’s high-society sex
life alongside more starry others of her ilk, such as Schneider and Léa Silly, moved,
now that she was a star, into full flood. An Englishman, it was reported, had
asked her to ‘make him happy’ and she had responded ‘on the 100th night of the
run’. The journalist continued: L’Oeil
crevé has just passed its 300th night, so we suppose he has been ‘made
happy’ three times.
Her name was linked with a ‘gold refiner’, who was said to have bought
her a house, with the libertine Saint-Cère, with Prince Anatole Demidoff, whom
she allegedly shared with her understudy Mathilde Lasseny, although his
children were by a third actress-singer, Céline Montaland … she was listed prominently in Arsène
Houssaye’s piece on Les Courtisanes, and
followed only Cora Pearl and Giulia Barucci in a colourful list entitled Les Highlifeurs in 1868. One paper
dismissed the whole bunch as ‘cocottes’, not to be compared with grand
‘courtisanes’ of earlier times, but they seem to have done their job
effectively enough. Another, more susceptible, spent half a page comparing the
off-stage talents of Baron and Lasseny. Julia came out as ‘classier’.
Mathilde Lasseny |
But she was top of another list too. No-one, insisted the press, time and
again, could play and sing the crazy works of Hervé with such verve and ease
and effect as could the delicious Julia Baron.
But she threw it in. Hervé had written the role of Frédégonde in Chilpéric for her, the
Folies-Dramatiques had scheduled her for Le
Canard à Trois becs (both turned out huge hits), but Julia walked away, and
followed where the older Schneider had led to the Palais Royal. She would stay there
for the six years of her career remaining. She sang Métella and later la
Baronne in La Vie parisienne, Schneider’s
role in Les Diables roses, created
the part of Castagnette in the international hit Le Carnaval d’un merle blanc (Nemesis)
and, in 1871, starred in the premiere of an even bigger hit as Fanny ‘Bombance’
in Tricoche et Cacolet. Engaged for
three years at the Palais Royal, she remained for five, after which….
It is said she went to Russia. For the second time, she had cut in the
blossom a major career…
Marie Cico |
I don’t know what became of her. Neither, seemingly, did the French
press. But as her fellow highlifeurs and good-time-girls — Marie Cico, Blanche d’Antigny
et al -- bade their lives and their
diamonds farewell ‘before their first wrinkle’, Julia was quoted as being still
alive. When L’Oeil crevé was revived
in 1882 the new Dindonette was slated and a reviewer remembered: ‘Je revois encore cette gaie, grosse, grasse, blonde et rose Julia Baron avec ses belles lèvres rouges et rieuses dans son joli visage...'.
I really
hope she lived long and happily. I think the French knew. They just didn’t
tell. Schneider is said to have outlived her. Me, I just wonder what Julia
Baron might have been and done in Schneider’s celebrated original roles had she
been in the right place at the right time. Well, we’ll never know.
But, as
one writer said of her ‘elle
avait l’eloquence de la chair’. She
simply oozed sex.
So that little 6-franc page of paper from les Puces in Nice has quite a
story behind it. I have a letter from a nineteenth-century Parisian … cocotte?
PS I see the Musée Carnavalet says she was born Jenny Boudin in 1836 ... I shall investigate!
It seems, incidentally, that Julia had a sister, Léonie BARON (also Boudin) who was active in both the fields in which Julia shone. She can be seen in a small part in L'Oeil crevé, in larger rôles in the provinces (Clairette in La Fille de Madame Angot etc), and lavishly in the gossip columns. She apparently was pretty fair horsewoman and thus copped a few paragraphs about 'riding' and stallions'.
Léonie Baron |
And here are the girls together ..
I can't comment on this fascinating lady I'm afraid... although a lot of me wishes I could!
ReplyDeleteBut I noted this particular post because you say that you are currently throwing out a career's worth of old certificates and things. And you are the only person in the world who seems to have got the birthdate of Percy Anderson (the theatre costume designer, his family collided with mine near Hyde Park in London) correct, so that just must have come from his birth certificate (I also saw you updated that bit - and his death place - between your two editions of the encyclopedia.
I'm currently rewriting PA's Wikipedia article and so am long-windedly collating all the source-material I can find so I get it right. I like that you showed his frailty with that court case (and, again, you have info that I haven't found - which was the company that shielded his name? How did he get found out?).
Any answers, I can be found at colin [at] genesproject [dot] com should you wish to reply. Oh, and I live well only a mile or two from your old stomping ground of 'London by Sea'. NZ sounds good too methinks!
But, whatever, I am really enjoying reading through random posts on your blog. Great colour, great depth.
Best, Colin