• 05/06/2022
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Adjani, Blanquer, Gagnaire, Huster, Lacombe … Thirteen personalities tell "their" Molière<

Four hundred years ago was born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, the largest French playwright, a symbol always read and played.Born in the first days of the year 1622, history retained its baptism date on January 15, 1622, in Paris.Celebrated on the occasion of several festivals, notably in Pézenas (Hérault) this weekend, the Sunday Journal met personalities from all horizons to question them on the great author.Actress or doctor, minister or cook, designer or great author, they tell their intimate link to Molière.

Isabelle Adjani, actress: "He made me serious"

"My meeting with Molière is that of a beginner with his destiny. If you are not serious when you are 17 years old, my postcole discovery of Molière made me serious by becoming the youngest actress of the French.For the Women's School, the brilliant Jean-Paul Roussillon was looking for his Agnès and claimed not to find the adequate actress at the Conservatoire, by which I never passed.

After a television version against the Grand Bertrand Blier in the role of Arnolphe, I therefore found myself facing Michel Aumont, also denied ... I never tire of the theater of Molière, Tartuffe in particular.I was just 17 years old when I saw him the first time, in Lyon, in a staging by Roger Planchon, unforgettable.There have been many others since, with wonderful actors over the versions, from Micha Lescot to Xavier Gallais recently.Molière is definitely a talent incubator. "

Jean-Michel Blanquer, Minister of Education: "He would make fun of wokism"

"Like many French people, I discovered Molière in sixth grade, playing learned women ... Even if we do not impose authors, he is and will remain a must of our colleges and high schools. Especially sinceOur priorities is to strengthen theatrical practice, which has real educational virtues, for team spirit as for public speaking. In this year Molière, we also launched with the Comédie-Française a competition with competition withYoung people, who can imagine their own room or something from a quote.

By his permanent news and his language, Molière does not get rid of.Today, he might have something to say about the covid and he would undoubtedly make fun of the current language modes through precious ridiculous news ... "

Natalie Dessay, singer and actress: "I owe her the scene virus"

"I owe him everything because it is by seeing Molière, the film by Ariane Mnouchkine [1978], that I caught the scene virus. I say the scene, because the music has never been, atBack, a way to be on stage. I must have been 12 years old, and what this film showed a traveling troop life was great.

From then on, I knew that I too wanted to go on stage to say stories.I see this sequence where Molière enters a barn and discovers Madeleine Béjart who declares a tragic text, or rather chasing him.He is seized by his beauty and his way of saying the verses, but also by the situation when his gaze slides towards the spectators, themselves bewitched.It was this look and coming from the scene to the room, this Molière disorder played by Philippe Caubère, who marked me.I have never met Molière in my career, but if it arose, I would stick! "

Pierre Gagnaire, chef: "If he was at my table"

"I was 10 years old when I discovered the Tartuffe and the imaginary patient at the comedy of Saint-Etienne, where Jean Dasté imagined sharp staging while doing very popular theater. It was pure emotion…

Molière is of absolute modernity, his statement remains current because the human being is always the same, with his deceptions and his hypocrisies ... I love the theater, but one of my frustrations is to see few shows, becauseWe, cooks, are also on stage at the time of performances.If Molière was at my table today, maybe it would be me who died in the kitchen, like him on stage ... that would be good to leave like this, but as late as possible! "

Marina Hands, resident of the Comédie-Française: "A machine that cannot be stopped"

"I am the type to live in the present and to be wary of the scriptures of the past. The youngest, Molière and the great classics left me cold. It was by exercising this profession that I became aware of the power and the pleasure that'We can experience. What could be more magnificent than doing justice to the resonance, the audacity and the truth of a thought from the past but whose finesse remains unstoppable? To this game, Molière is the strongest.

It's a machine that cannot be stopped!If his vision of the world reaches us, it is because he had understood that too much marginalized, it was to die, while adapting to society was to be heard.This is what he did by writing a second version of Tartuffe.After the censorship of the first, which I play [in the role of Elmire] under the direction of Ivo Van Hove in French.

Here, we come across his bust at the hearth of the actors, as if Molière remained forever the boss of the house.But it is the armchair of an imaginary patient*, under glass at Richelieu, which makes me dream.In short, it only existed for the representations he gave before dying. "

Francis Huster, actor and director: "Soon at the Pantheon!"

"I will not go back on stage as long as Molière is not in the Pantheon. I have no doubt that the President of the Republic will soon open the doors to him." This fight is just, "he made me recently know.Champagne is cool, we will finally be able to laugh at the Pantheon! Since Jean Moulin is sacrifice, Albert Camus the fight and Victor Hugo Honor, I say that Molière is love.

All the women I loved, it was by Molière that I had them: Isabelle Adjani, Isabelle Nanty, Cristiana Reali ... He is the great liberator of the woman on stage: Elvire, Agnès, Armande and Dorine whoare fighting equally with men and dominate them, it does not exist in Racine or Corneille, where all women are defeated!

Today, he would certainly write about the feminicide and the covid.He knew how to bring down the bridge that separates the people from power.By playing Musset or Giraudoux, I often had the impression that these poets spoke by me, it was flattering.With Molière, whom I played more than 4,000 times, never: I felt naked.With him, we cannot lie, we live.In football, we expect everything from Kylian Mbappé, a perfect Sganarelle so he is cheerful, alive.Molière, you have to play it like Mbappé! "

Author of the love dictionary of Molière (Plon).

Christian Lacroix, Couturier: "The Larousse classics of my childhood"

"My relationship with Molière began with the small Larousse classics in college, whose illustrations of the various productions of these pieces, sets and costumes I scrutinized. The class readings where we have been rather ungrateful, but the desire for theater passed.Around 10 years old, I built a paper setting with all the costumes of the imaginary patient.

But it was Racine's Phèdre that brought me to French and earned me a first Molière.This golden bust made me experience a new feeling, a pride that I had not felt by receiving the golden dice of haute couture.The feeling of being in my place.I tasted the timelessness, audacity and mind of Molière by making the costumes of the Bourgeois gentleman of Denis Podalydès, of the Tartuffe by Michel Fau.

This January 15, I unfortunately missed the annual ceremony that I like to attend: the tribute of the residents of the Comédie-Française, bowing in front of his bust and reciting extracts which say his funny and lucidity.Each time, this plaster bust with a leaning air, as on the little classic of my childhood, makes me go up tears in my eyes, admiration and recognition. "

Karine Lacombe, infectiologist: "of great medical news"

"Molière reminds me of my childhood and a magnificent collection of her connected leather works, which my mother had offered me. For my middle class family, it was a luxury that I was proud of. I had the opportunityto reread Molière with my two elders, when they were in college. It is a theater that speaks to all, children or adults, and which transcends social classes. It remains of great news, medical for example.

With the doctor in spite of himself and the imaginary patient, he laughs at impatient patients and doctors who are steeped in a complicated vocabulary and questionable therapeutic practices.In the 17th century, the mere fact of being a doctor gave social power that no longer exists today.Like all "intellectual" professions and elites, we are disputed.Everyone believes to know better, and the truth is necessarily on social networks ... "

Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, writer, Goncourt prize 2021: "The French spirit more than his language"

"I discovered Molière in high school in Senegal, then I deepened him in France. From the 17th century, I preferred the tragedies of root and corneille, including for the language, more adjusted and deep than prose. With theYears, I started to find Molière more interesting, even more by seeing his plays in the theater. I remember an stingy mounted by Catherine Hiegel at the Comédie-Française in 2009. It was less comical thanworrying, I liked seriousness behind the farce. But Molière's success over time is also that of comedy, which prevails over any other genre. It is no coincidence that it wasTranslated into Wolof and played in Dakar.

Me, I write in French, which is not that of Molière or Racine but that of a community which is called La Francophonie.We are talking about Molière's language, but for me, it is more representative of the French spirit: rebellious, insolent towards the powerful. "

Richard Malka, lawyer: "He would write for Charlie Hebdo"

"By his freedom, his humor and his fights against the institutions, especially religious, Molière appears to me as the founding spirit of the Enlightenment. It is a free-thinker at a time when we could finish on the pyre for hisIdeas. Under Louisxiv, he allows himself, with Tartuffe, to openly criticize religion and his bigoteries. This avant-garde piece will earn him censorship. After having faced it, he goes even further with Donjuan.No longer just challenges temporal power but spiritual power: until the end, Don Juan refuses to pray and his last word is no.

Today, where are the authors capable of such courage?What is wonderful is that he understood that humor was the best weapon to touch the people.This is what I kill myself to recall when I plead.The philosophers are useful, but, to convince, nothing beats humor, parody, satire.If Molière lived today, he would write for Charlie Hebdo. "

Jean-Michel Othoniel, visual artist: "both quality and popular"

"Child, I saw the stingy at the comedy of Saint-Etienne with the great Jean Dasté. I was 6 years old, I was frightened by the dark side of Harpagon and fascinated by his grandiloquence, without understanding everything… Years later, the film Molière by Ariane Mnouchkine marked me. There was so much in this contemporary character, a relationship with the grotesque, the carnival, a denunciation of classes differences.

I like that his work is both quality and popular.This is what I aim in in my art.The Kiosk of Noctambules, my sculpture installed against the Comédie-Française for twenty years, has a discreet tribute: the metal bench, which recalls the armchair of Molière, the one on which he played before dying and which is always exposed intheater."

Guy Roux, football coach: "The Guignols compared me to the stingy"

"I read several pieces of Molière at the Lycée in Auxerre. I saw as a accompanist of students in Limoges where I was master of boarding school, then much later in the cinema, like the stingy withLouis de Funès. In the 1990s, the Guignols de l'Info on Canal+ made me put on his costume. Their first sketch shocked me, I was a little angry. I then learned one or two lines ofThe stingy that I came out when I was bothering ...

But the comparison took well to the public and I was offered advertisements that used this image of Radin.I have turned around twenty!I understood very early on that knowing how to count was a quality, but I became a symbol of good management and it served AJ Auxerre in discussions with its bankers.So I say thank you to Molière! "

Ivo Vanhove, director: "He touches the universal"

"Molière is the French author par excellence. But kid, in Belgium, I heard more about Shakespeare. Having become a director, I went up in English, German and Dutch. There, I am luckyTo mount, in French, the Tartuffe in three acts, the first version prohibited by the king that Molière could only play twice.

In any comedy, there is a black soul and it is that of Tartuffe which I take here in a short form, forty-five minutes, but explosive, with tender scenes that switch to violence.For me, the important thing in Molière is the disguised author of social dramas.He hides behind the facade of family conflict to approach deeper themes: religion, inequalities.He touches the universal, like the older ones. "

*And not stingy as indicated in a previous version of this article.