Anyone who has ever performed Racine knows that the most difficult challenge is to enter and move silently towards the middle of the stage before pronouncing the first “Madame”. This silent advance is weighed down with a psychology that has no place here because in this theatre, one only exists by speaking and one dies as soon as one can no longer answer. This formidable function pleads in favour of oratorio.
Patrice Chéreau once gave me a key to the rehearsals of Phèdre, explaining to me that the characters in Racine do not die from hostile circumstances but from their own inner contradictions. The seraglio is therefore internal here, its complexity even greater and confinement an intimate matter. The action is set within a harem, a place of myriad fantasies. The noise of the world, of distant battles, of uncertain returns and unnatural alliances slowly penetrates the thickness of the walls and even more slowly that of the skin to reach the heart, like a being in the womb trying to discern the dull echo of the outside world. The quintessence of Racine’s language is contained in this porosity between the world and its echo within itself. This is the only geography to be studied and combines all Racine’s kingdoms, whether Greek or Ottoman. The language is labyrinthine and the oratorio encouraged by the set design on the Studio Marigny leads us to and obliges us to enter this concentrated study.”
Éric Ruf

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Premiered in 1672, Bajazet was, until 1815, one of the most regularly staged plays in the Repertoire – performed a few times every year. Thereafter, the audience was not so sure of seeing it as often as it was no longer part of the “Repertoire collection”, i.e. the Troupe’s core list of plays, which it performed more intensely than today as more than one hundred plays were staged annually. In fact Bajazet only returned to the stage when some great actors took possession of the lead roles – Rachel played Roxane from her debut in 1838 until 1854 – or when the performances were refreshed with a new cast. Adeline Dudlay (Roxane) and Albert-Lambert (Bajazet) dominated the 1887 revival, and Madeleine Roch and Mme Segond-Weber shared the roles of Roxane and Atalide from 1905. An oriental play, Bajazet is an expensive work for the theatre to stage in terms of sets and costumes.

It was in 1937 that, for the first time, a director, Jacques Copeau, took charge of the play. His cast included Maurice Escande, Mary Marquet and Véra Korène, the sets were designed by Louis Sue and the costumes by Marie-Hélène Dasté. This marked the first use of painted costumes at the Comédie-Française, these garments replacing the traditional embroideries. Jacques Copeau imposed his own aesthetic of simplified forms, both for the costumes and for the finely drawn sets. In doing so, he broke from the style of past performances of the play, in which embroidered textiles enhanced with gems or very complex decorations with rich curtains had been favoured, to represent the opulence of the seraglio. His directorial approach left a strong impression: in 1949 Maurice Escande directed a new production “after the Jacques Copeau staging” and in his 1957 production, Jean Marchat also kept the 1937 costumes and sets.

In 1966, Michel Etcheverry directed a production with new costumes and sets, before Éric Vignier took on the play in 1995 at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier. Éric Ruf, who was cast in the title role in the latter production, proposed his own vision of the play at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in 2017, designing the scenography as well as directing.

• Bajazet, 1933 (1) © photo. Manuel frères / Coll. Comédie-Française

Staging : Éric Ruf
Light and vidéo : Bertrand Couderc