Arts • & • Entertainment
Stephanie Zimbalist, Hershey Felder, and Anthony Crivello will portray George Sand, Frederic Chopin, and Eugene Dalacroix in "Romantique." (Photo/Kati Mitchell)
Springtime in Paris
For his new play, Hershey Felder took his cast, crew to France to soak up the spirit of Chopin
By Ethan Gilsdorf, Globe Correspondent, 7/20/2003
Not Hershey Felder. For his upcoming production ''Romantique,'' Felder
invited not only his core cast but a 22-person entourage of directors,
actors, set designers, photographers, publicists, chefs, spouses, and even
a resident scholar on a four-day inspirational tour of Paris and the
countryside.
The idea? Re-create one summer night in 1846: the final time composer
Frederic Chopin and painter Eugene Delacroix would visit writer George
Sand's Chateau de Nohant.
Clearly, Felder, who'll play Chopin, sees method acting as an extreme
sport.
''I was desperate to go back in time,'' he says, surrounded by a mound
of luggage. ''I should have been born in the 1820s. I feel lost in the
wrong century.''
The line between the play and play time has been intentionally blurred
on this trip. Felder wanted his entire cast and crew to soak up some
19th-century ambiance and have a good time. ''The thing that I love
most is to produce,'' he says. ''To host a party in Paris and live with
them in 1846 is a dream come true.''
Felder is perched on the edge of a chair in the Left Bank flat he
rented as his production team's temporary Paris headquarters -- naturally,
at the same address, 19 Quai Malaquais, where George Sand once lived. Just
this morning, the group returned from its two-day sojourn in Nohant-Vic,
the site of Sand's country escape.
Now it's a sultry Saturday late spring afternoon, their last in Paris
before heading home.
Various personnel rush about with costumes, equipment, and mysterious
black bags. Celebrity photographer Lance Staedler and his assistants
arrange cameras and lights. Doorbells buzz. Phones ring. The play's
codirector, Joel Zwick of ''My Big Fat Greek Wedding'' fame, wanders by in
stocking feet.
''I think it has made a difference to be here, to immerse yourself in
the period, to hang with people and become a family,'' says Zwick, who's
enjoying the wining-and-dining free ride. ''That will help pull this
together.''
''We call these pieces `imaginations,' '' explains Felder, as caterers
lay out an impressive spread of Lebanese dishes for lunch. ''We don't want
to say we know what it was like to be them. We can only pretend.''
Continuing a trilogy ''Romantique'' opens
Aug. 1 for a two-week engagement at the American Repertory Theatre's Loeb
Drama Center. Part two in a planned trilogy of musical plays celebrating
the lives of musicians, the new work comes on the heels of Felder's
popular one-man show ''George Gershwin Alone,'' which enjoyed a sold-out
run at the ART's Cambridge home last summer, and finishes its return
engagement this Saturday. (Part three is slated to be about Beethoven.)
The Gershwin piece was ''the first test,'' says Felder, a polished
pianist, composer, actor, and musical theater addict who suffers from no
lack of confidence. ''It went from a three-week run to 1,200 performances
[including] Broadway. I was the one to do it. I had the right combination
of stuff.''
Putting actors in period costume is not enough, he says. You have to
understand what drives the characters -- a quest he says has involved
three years of research. His Paris pilgrimage, he hopes, will be the
inspirational icing on the cake.
''This play will be more than just wearing a wig and sitting in front
of a piano,'' Felder vows.
In ''Romantique,'' Felder explores a famed friendship that brought
together literary, musical, and artistic cultures in 19th-century France.
Seduced by Parisian salons, Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin left her
husband to pursue the literary life, assumed the pen name of George Sand,
and found herself alongside Balzac, Liszt, Delacroix, and Chopin, whom she
fell for, financially supported, and lived with for about a decade. Thanks
in part to her largesse, Chopin became arguably the greatest composer of
music for the piano.
Known for his monumental canvases and considered France's most
accomplished Romantic painter, Delacroix instructed Sand's children in art
and lived on the estate for three months, becoming close friends with both
Sand and Chopin. The trio was devoted to art -- Delacroix and Chopin on
the bohemian side, Sand on the aristocratic.
''The output of these three was incredible,'' says Felder. Sand's
groundbreaking life was a model for how women could live and love. (She is
also credited with being the first person to write about the female
orgasm.) She survived as a working writer -- unprecedented for a woman in
her day -- churning out 70 novels, 24 plays, and 40,000 letters.
''With a pen!'' Felder emphasizes. ''Not typing and sending e-mails.''
Earlier in the week, the troupe visited the Delacroix and Chopin
gravesites at Pere Lachaise and studied period paintings in the Louvre and
the Musee national Eugene Delacroix. They lurked in the Musee de la Vie
Romantique where, in a nearby apartment, Sand and Chopin consummated their
amorous affair. They gawked at Chopin's residences on Rue de la Chaussee
d'Antin and Place Vendome. They paid him homage at the site of his
funeral, La Madeleine and Place de La Concorde.
At Sand's chateau-cum-artist colony, about 150 miles south of Paris,
they put in two days of rehearsals, did some sightseeing, and even ate the
hearty food the 19th-century artistes might have dined on, some prepared
directly from Sand's own recipes.
`Enormous music' Felder says the highlight
was his recital of Chopin's funeral march, played on Sand's piano in the
same salon where Chopin composed it.
Considered a piano virtuoso, the shy Chopin actually disliked playing
in public. He preferred performing in private salons like the Chateau de
Nohant's -- the imaginary setting of ''Romantique.''
Felder says the bond between Sand and the manic-depressive,
perfectionist, ''a little wacko'' Chopin allowed him to explore the
connection between melancholy and the act of creation.
''Chopin lived hard, died young, like Gershwin and Mozart,'' he says.
''Romanticism was complete self-expression of emotion, melody, color,
line, form. It was not just roses and `I love you.' ''
The Polish-born musician died of tuberculosis in 1849 at 39.
''Despite his madness, he was able to produce so much,'' Felder says.
Naturally, Chopin's ''enormous music'' will be integral to the play.
''It was frightening to undertake,'' Felder says, disappearing into a back
room.
''Lots of descriptions exist of how Chopin played,'' says scholar
Jeffrey Kallberg, finishing Felder's thought. Kallberg is the author of
''Chopin at the Boundaries'' and a forthcoming book on the Chopin
Nocturnes, the famous short compositions suggestive of nighttime calm.
Kallberg explains the concept of rubato, or robbed time, that Chopin
pioneered: strict tempo temporarily loosened to give some notes more time
to be played slowly. ''Stretching and condensing rhythm is something that
modern pianists have forgotten.''
It is a technique that Felder, playing Chopin, will try to master.
Suddenly, Sand and Delacroix sweep in. Stephanie Zimbalist, best known
for her stint on the 1980s TV show ''Remington Steele,'' and Anthony
Crivello, who received a Tony Award for ''Kiss of the Spider Woman,'' have
donned their sweltering costumes for a photo shoot.
''The play brings us back to a time when Sand broke a lot of
barriers,'' says Zimbalist. ''In the Romantic age, it was a time to
express yourself sexually, creatively. I think we are living in a more
oppressive age today.'' Zimbalist doesn't much look like Sand, but with a
wild black mop, Crivello might be Delacroix's brother. When Felder
returns, wearing a blond pompadour wig, light blue vest, and white shirt,
his resemblance to Chopin is striking.
Felder produces a stack of photocopies and distributes papers to those
not already preoccupied with makeup or plates of food. It's a letter from
Liszt to Chopin, saying, ''Madame Sand strongly desires to see you,'' that
she lives at ''quai Malaquais 19,'' and would like to meet him at the Cafe
d'Orsay, which just happens to be right down the street.
Outside, the city becomes calm. Trees waver in the heat. Beyond them,
the shimmering Seine, and on the other bank, the Louvre.
In this pale yellow apartment adorned with antiques, Sand, Chopin, and
Delacroix pose by the tall windows overlooking the river.
The past and present eerily intersect. An ephemeral moment. Then it
dissipates into the wash of afternoon light.
When ''Romantique'' debuts, Felder hopes the cast and crew bring such
moments back again.
''Romantique'' runs Aug. 1 - 17 at the American Repertory Theatre,
64 Brattle St., Cambridge. For tickets call 617-547-8300. For more
information, go to www.amrep.org
This story ran on page N1 of the Boston Globe on
7/20/2003.
© Copyright
2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
