La Comédie-Française

Cyrano has a prominent nose but also a gift with words by which he helps handsome Christian to conquer Roxane. Also in love with the girl he chooses not to reveal to her that every word of Christian comes out of his own heart. In cinema, this ROSTAND classic filmed live from the Comédie Française.

Paris, sum­mer 2020. Actors from “la Comédie-Française”, France’s most pres­ti­gious the­ater, rehearse Christophe Hon­oré’s new play, an adap­ta­tion of Mar­cel Proust’s “The Guer­mantes Way”. When the show is sud­den­ly can­celed, the dra­ma group decides to go ahead with it any­way, in the name of art and for the joy of act­ing together.

The life and work of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1622-73), the greatest French-language playwright, Molière, who revolutionized theater by bringing to the stage, with lucidity and dazzling modernity, the themes of his time and who had a special relationship with Louis XIV, the dazzling Sun King, that allowed him to develop as an artist while using his talent, like that of many other artists of his time, to enhance his personal glory.

M. Jourdain is a cloth merchant who wants to become a gentleman, learning dance, music, fencing and philosophy. Mme Jourdain is worried about Dorante's expenses and prefers her daughter Lucile to marry Cléonte. The two young men's servants use subterfuge to get M. Jourdain to accept Cléonte as son-in-law. They fake the arrival of the Grand Turk's son in Paris, and, in an Oriental ballet, confer upon M. Jourdain the title of Mammamouchi, his daughter marrying the son of the Grand Turk, who is none other than Cléonte in disguise.

On the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Molière’s birth on 15 January 2022, Ivo van Hove reunited with the Troupe for their third collaboration, a production of Le Tartuffe ou l’Hypocrite, the original version in three acts, banned at its premiere in 1664 and reconstructed thanks to the work of ‘theatrical genetics’ overseen by Georges Forestier and Isabelle Grellet.

Le Petit-Maître corrigé is a three-act romantic comedy by French playwright Marivaux. It was first performed on November 6, 1734, by the Comédie-Française in Paris. In this production Clément Hervieu-Léger makes the eighteenth century resonate with our era, all the more so given that the language is “simpler than in other Marivaux plays, while still as refined, precise and full of humour”. The story is that of a young Parisian whose parents have found a good match for him, a count’s daughter. But when he goes to visit her in her country home, the handsome boy – whose Parisian manners are far removed from the rules of decorum that reign in the provinces – cannot open his heart to his lovely intended. Stung, the latter decides to punish his arrogance while a former lover arrives to prevent the marriage. Between the alliance of master and manservant, and the complicity of mistress and maid, a romantic intrigue ensues full of light-hearted conspiracies and feverish emotions.

An adaptation of William Shakespeare's play "Romeo and Juliet", staged by Éric Ruf.

Woman hero Dom Juan lives a life full of excesses and love affairs. When he seduces the nun Elvire, but shows no interest in her a short time later, he gets to deal with her vengeful brothers. Dom Juan and his assistant Sganarelle have to flee and set out on a journey full of strange encounters.

New York, 1985. Against the backdrop of AIDS - divine punishment inflicted on gays according to puritan America -, angels, who epilogue on the emptiness of the American dream, cross paths with the ghost of the spy Ethel Rosenberg, separating lovers and destitute patients. Prior, suffering from the AIDS virus, loves Louis who is about to leave him. Roy Cohn, man of power, Jewish and homosexual lawyer, anti-Semite and homophobe, lives in denial of his HIV status. Harper takes refuge in drugs to soften her married life with Joe, whose uncertain sexuality clashes with well-established religious beliefs. Following the cancellation of "Angels in America"performances ​​due to the health crisis of 2020, the project became a TV movie: "Angels - Salle Escande" is shot in the privacy of rehearsals.

Accompanied by a child, the mathematician Galileo observes the firmament with a telescope. Ten years ago, the philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned in Rome for having supported the idea of an infinite and centerless universe, based on the work of Copernicus. By dint of observations and calculations, Galileo seeks proofs for his hypothesis of a cosmic system where the Earth is "an ordinary celestial body, one among thousands". From Padua to Venice, the mathematician shakes certainties by confronting the power of a Church which wishes to maintain its absolute power in the "crystal spheres" where Ptolemy has hitherto locked up the world.

Alceste loves Célimène, a flirtatious woman from the Parisian high society. He loathes this world for its hypocritical etiquette but, shaken by a public trial he is called to by this social circle, he must visit Célimène to ask for her help…

Theater play "Les fourberies de Scapin" played by the "Comédie française" in 1998.

For her latest project, commissioned by Arte and starring members of the Comédie-Française, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (A Castle in Italy, Rendez-Vous 2014) shot an idiosyncratic, half-modernized adaptation of one of Chekhov’s greatest, most expansively melancholy plays.