Théâtre du Châtelet

Auditorium of the Théâatre du Châtelet, 2008

The Théâtre du Châtelet (French pronunciation: [teɑtʁ dy ʃatlɛ]) is a theatre and opera house, located in the place du Châtelet in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France.

One of two theatres (the other being the Théâtre de la Ville) built on the site of a châtelet, a small castle or fortress, it was designed by Gabriel Davioud at the request of Baron Haussmann between 1860 and 1862. Originally built with 3,000 seats, it was named the Théâtre Impérial du Châtelet, but has undergone remodeling and name changes over the years. Currently it seats 2,500 people.

Origins[link]

The theatre ca. 1875

The theatre is one of two apparent twins constructed along the quays of the Seine, facing each other across the open Place du Châtelet and its ornate fountain. The other is the Théâtre de la Ville (previously the Sarah Bernhardt). Their external architecture is essentially Palladian entrances under arcades, although their interior layouts differ considerably. At the centre of the plaza is a sphinx-endowed fountain, erected in 1808, which commemorates Napoleon's victory in Egypt.

The Théâtre du Châtelet was originally used for drama performances. Notably, beginning in April 1876, the stage version of Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, adapted by Verne and Adolphe d'Ennery, began a run spanning sixty-four years and 2195 performances (although not continuously). It was only the Nazi occupation of Paris in May 1940 that closed this production permanently.^[1]

Into the 20th Century, the theatre was used for operettas, variety and ballet performances, for classical and popular music concerts. It was also, for a time, a cinema. Regular seasons of opera and ballet were presented by a variety of impresarios, among them Gabriel Astruc, who introduced Diaghilev's Ballets Russes here. Igor Stravinsky’s Petrouchka received its premiere in the theatre on 13 June 1911, as did Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau’s Parade on 18 May 1917. In addition, many foreign composers and conductors made appearances in the theatre, including Tchaikovsky, Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss.

Recent history[link]

Since 1979, it has been operated by the City of Paris, and, after undergoing a major restoration, re-opened under the name of the Théâtre Musical de Paris in 1980. It was acoustically re-modeled again in 1989 and reverted to the Théâtre du Châtelet name. It is currently mainly used for opera performances and concerts.

Under the direction of Stéphane Lissner for four years from 1995, the theatre received additional improvements in acoustics and sightlines.

In recent years, the theatre has become the home of the Orchestre de Paris and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. Since 1993 the Philharmonia Orchestra of London has an annual residency period. Shirley Horn recorded her 1992 live album I Love You, Paris at the Théâtre du Châtelet.

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Allison, John (ed.), Great Opera Houses of the World, supplement to Opera Magazine, London 2003

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Théâtre du Châtelet

• Official website
• Floormic Profile

Coordinates: 48°51′28″N 2°20′47″E / 48.85778°N 2.34639°E / 48.85778; 2.34639

Sweeney Todd is a fictional character who first appeared as the murderer of the Victorian penny dreadful The String of Pearls (1846–1847) and he was later introduced as an antihero of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and its film adaptations. Claims that Sweeney Todd was a historical person^[1][2] are strongly disputed by scholars,^[3][4][5] although there are possible legendary prototypes.^[6]

In the original version of the tale, Todd is a barber who dispatches his victims by pulling a lever while they are in his barber chair, which makes them fall backward down a revolving trapdoor into the basement of his shop, generally causing them to break their necks or skulls. Just in case they are alive, he goes to the basement and "polishes them off" (slitting their throats with his straight razor). In some adaptations, the murdering process is reversed, with Todd slitting the throats of his customers before they are dispatched into the basement via the revolving trapdoor. After Todd has robbed his dead victims of their goods, Mrs. Lovett, his partner in crime (in some later versions, his friend and/or lover), assists him in disposing of the bodies by baking their flesh into meat pies, and selling them to the unsuspecting customers of her pie shop. Todd's barber shop is situated at 186 Fleet Street, London, next to St. Dunstan's church, and is connected to Mrs. Lovett's pie shop in nearby Bell Yard by means of an underground passage. In most versions of the story, he and Mrs. Lovett hire an unwitting orphan boy, Tobias Ragg, to serve the pies to customers.

The tale surrounding the character became a staple of Victorian melodrama. Later it was the subject of a 1959 ballet by English composer Sir Malcolm Arnold and, in 1979, a Tony award-winning Broadway musical by Stephen Sondheim. Sweeney Todd has also been featured in several films, the most recent being 2007's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp, based on the 1979 musical.

Literary history[link]

Sweeney Todd first appeared in a story entitled The String of Pearls: A Romance. This penny dreadful was published in 18 weekly parts, in Edward Lloyd's The People's Periods and Family Library, issues 7-24, 21 November 1846 to 20 March 1847. It was probably written by James Malcolm Rymer, though Thomas Peckett Prest has also been credited with it; it is likely that each worked on the serial from part to part. Other attributions include Edward P. Hingston, George Macfarren and Albert Richard Smith.^[6][7] In February/March 1847, before the serial was even completed, The String of Pearls was adapted as a melodrama by George Dibden Pitt for the Britannia Theatre in Hoxton. It was in this alternative version of the tale, rather than the original, that Todd acquired his catchphrase: "I'll polish him off".^[6] Neil Gaiman, in a promotional "penny dreadful", identified a number of earlier texts that feed into the Todd story, some dating back to at least the late 17th century.^{[citation needed]}

Another, lengthier, penny part serial was published by Lloyd from 1847/8, with 92 episodes and published in book form in 1850 as The String of Pearls with the subtitle "The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance". This expanded version of the story was 732 pages long.^[6] A plagiarised version of this appeared in America c. 1852–53 as Sweeney Todd: or the Ruffian Barber. A Tale of Terror of the Seas and the Mysteries of the City by "Captain Merry" (a pseudonym for American author Harry Hazel (1814–89)).^[6]

In 1875, Frederick Hazleton's c. 1865 dramatic adaptation Sweeney Todd, the Barber of Fleet Street: or the String of Pearls (see below) was published as Vol 102 of Lacy's Acting Edition of Plays.^[6]

A scholarly, annotated edition of the original 1846–47 serial was published in volume form in 2007 by the Oxford University Press under the title of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, edited by Robert Mack.

Alleged historical basis[link]

The original story of Sweeney Todd was quite possibly based on an older urban legend, originally based on dubious pie-fillings.^[6] In Charles Dickens's Pickwick Papers (1836/7), the servant Sam Weller says that a pieman used cats 'for beefsteak, veal and kidney, 'cording to the demand', and recommends that people should buy pies only 'when you know the lady as made it, and is quite sure it ain't kitten.'^[8] Dickens then developed this in Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-4) published two years before the appearance of Sweeney Todd in The String of Pearls (1846-7), a character called Tom Pinch is grateful that his own "evil genius did not lead him into the dens of any of those preparers of cannibalic pastry, who are represented in many country legends as doing a lively retail business in the metropolis".^[9] A similar story, which first appeared in an 1824 publication called The Tell Tale, reported how a barber and wig-maker of the Rue de la Harpe in Paris cut his customers' throats, relieved them of their valuables and then had their bodies made into meat pies, utilising the services of a pastry cook, whose establishment was on the same street.^[6][7]

Claims that Sweeney Todd was a real person were first made in the introduction to the 1850 (expanded) edition of The String of Pearls and have persisted to the present day.^[6] In two books,^[1][2] Peter Haining argued that Sweeney Todd was a historical figure who committed his crimes around 1800. Nevertheless, other researchers who have tried to verify his citations find nothing in these sources to back Haining's claims.^[3][4][5] A check of the website Old Bailey at^[10] for "Associated Records 1674-1834" for an alleged trial in December 1801 and hanging of Sweeney Todd for January 1802 show no reference; the only murder trial for this period is that of a Governor/Lt Col. Joseph Wall who was hanged 28 January 1802 for killing a Benjamin Armstrong on 10 July 1782 on the isle of Gorée, West Africa, and the discharge of a Humphrey White in January 1802.^{[original research?][10]}

A late (1890s) reference to the urban legend of the murdering barber can be found in the poem by the Australian bush poet Banjo Paterson - The Man from Ironbark.

On stage, screen and audio[link]

• The String of Pearls (1847) a melodrama by George Dibden Pitt. It opened at Hoxton's Britannia Theatre, and billed as "founded on fact". It was something of a success, and the story spread by word of mouth and took on the quality of an urban legend. Various versions of the tale were staples of the British theatre for the rest of the century.
• Sweeney Todd, the Barber of Fleet Street: or the String of Pearls (c. 1865), a dramatic adaption written by Frederick Hazleton which premiered at the Old Bower Saloon, Stangate Street, Lambeth.^[6]
• "Sweeney Todd, The Barber", a song which assumes its audience knows the stage version and claims that such a character existed in real life. Stanley Holloway, who recorded it in 1956, attributed it to R. P. Weston, a songwriter active from 1906 to 1934.
• Sweeney Todd (1926), the first film version of the story, starring G.A. Baughan in the title role. The film is now lost.
• Sweeney Todd (1928) a silent film starring Moore Marriott as Sweeney Todd and Iris Darbyshire as Mrs. Lovett. This is the first surviving film adaptation.
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936), a film version of the Victorian melodrama starring Tod Slaughter as Sweeney Todd and Stella Rho as Mrs. "Lovatt".
• "The Strange Case of the Demon Barber" (8 January 1946), an adaptation of the Sweeney Todd story featured in an episode of the radio drama The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. In this interpretation, an actor playing the character on stage begins to believe he is committing similar murders while sleepwalking, while Holmes and Watson uncover something different that may prove his sanity.
• In 1947, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's CBC Stage Series broadcast a radio adaptation of the Pitt play starring Mavor Moore as Todd, Jane Mallett as Mrs. Lovett, John Drainie as Tobias, Lloyd Bochner as Mark Ingesterie and Arden Kaye as Johanna Oakley. The production was adapted by Ronald Hamilton and directed by Andrew Allan, with original music composed by Lucio Agostini.
• Sweeney Todd (1959), a ballet version performed by the Royal Ballet with music by Malcolm Arnold. The choreography was directed by John Cranko.
• Bloodthirsty Butchers (1970), a horror film with John Miranda as Sweeney Todd and Jane Helay as Maggie Lovett, directed by Andy Milligan.
• "Sweeney Todd" (1970), an episode of the ITV series Mystery and Imagination starring Freddie Jones as Sweeney Todd and Heather Canning as Nellie Lovett. In this adaptation, written by Vincent Tilsey and directed by Reginald Collin, the title character is portrayed as insane rather than evil. Lewis Fiander played Mark Ingesterie with Mel Martin as the heroine Charlotte and Len Jones as Tobias.
• Sweeney Todd (1973), an hour-long TV production by the CBC Television series The Purple Playhouse with Barry Morse as Todd. This was again Pitt's version of the play.
• Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1973), a play by the British playwright Christopher Bond. This version of the story was the first to give Todd a more sympathetic motive: he is a wrongfully imprisoned barber who returns to London after 15 years in an Australian penal colony under the new name Sweeney Todd, only to find that the judge responsible for his imprisonment has raped his young wife and driven her to suicide, and adopted his daughter. He at first plans to kill the judge, but when his prey escapes, he swears revenge on the whole world and begins to slash the throats of his customers. The character's new, tragic backstory was Bond's way of grafting dramatic themes from The Revenger's Tragedy onto Pitt's stage plot.
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. A Musical Thriller (1979), the acclaimed musical adaptation of Bond's play by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler starring Len Cariou as Sweeney Todd (here christened Benjamin Barker) and Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett. George Hearn and Dorothy Loudon later succeeded Cariou and Lansbury in the lead roles. In 1982, the musical was televised on The Entertainment Channel, starring Hearn and Lansbury, and directed by Terry Hughes and Harold Prince. It was produced by RKO Pictures and RKO/Nederlander Productions.
• The Tale of Sweeney Todd (1998), a television movie directed by John Schlesinger, commissioned by British Sky Broadcasting for which Ben Kingsley received a Screen Actors Guild Best Actor nomination for his portrayal of the title role. Joanna Lumley portrayed Mrs. Lovett.
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street in Concert (2001), a filmed concert version of Sondheim's musical, stars George Hearn as Sweeney Todd/Benjamin Barker, Patti LuPone as Mrs. Lovett, Timothy Nolen as Judge Turpin and Neil Patrick Harris as Tobias.
• In Jersey Girl (2004) Ollie Trinke (Ben Affleck) and his on screen daughter sing "God, That's Good!!" from the Sondheim version for her school play, accompanied by Liv Tyler.
• The second episode of the BBC Radio comedy series 1835, entitled "Haircut, Sir?", written by Jim Poyser and broadcast in June 2004 had aimless aristocrat Viscount Belport (Paul Rider) and his servant Ned (Jason Done) joining the police force under Sir Robert Peel and encountering demon barber Sweeney Todd (Jonathan Keeble) on their first case.
• A Broadway revival of the Sondheim musical, directed by John Doyle, was mounted at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre in 2005. The ten-person cast, who played their own instruments in new orchestrations, consisted of John Arbo (Jonas Fogg; bass player), Donna Lynne Champlin (Pirelli; piano, accordion, flute), Alexander Gemignani (The Beadle; piano, trumpet), Mark Jacoby (Judge Turpin; trumpet, percussion), Diana DiMarzio (Beggar Woman/Lucy Barker; clarinet), Benjamin Magnuson (Anthony Hope; cello, piano), Lauren Molina (Johanna Barker; cello), Manoel Felciano (Tobias; violin, clarinet, piano), Patti LuPone (Mrs. Lovett; tuba, percussion), and Michael Cerveris (Sweeney Todd; guitar). Cerveris, LuPone, and Felciano were all nominated for Tony Awards; the show itself was nominated for Best Revival, and won Tonys for Best Direction and Best Orchestration.
• Sweeney Todd (2006), a BBC television drama version with a screenplay written by Joshua St Johnston and starring Ray Winstone in the title role and Essie Davis as Mrs Lovett.
• Sweeney Todd and the String of Pearls: an Audio Melodrama in Three Despicable Acts (2007), an audio play by Yuri Rasovsky, won three 2008 Audie Awards for best audio drama, best original work and for achievement in production.
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) a film directed by Tim Burton, adapted from Sondheim's musical. It stars Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd, Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett, Alan Rickman as Judge Turpin, and Ed Sanders as Toby. The cast also includes Sacha Baron Cohen as Pirelli and Timothy Spall as Beadle Bamford, Turpin's henchman. The film received two Golden Globe Awards - one for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical (Johnny Depp), and one for Best Picture, Comedy or Musical. The film was also nominated for three Academy Awards, winning for Art Direction.
• "Demon Sweeney Todd", a song written by the NWOBHM band, Saxon in their album Into The Labyrinth released in 2009
• Sweeney Todd Musical, a 2009 musical rendition by the Repertory Philippines group, starring Audie Gemora in the title role, and Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo as Mrs. Lovett. Gerard Salonga of Filharmonika conducted the orchestra. It was directed by Baby Barredo and Michael Williams.
• Oh My Meat Pie, an episode in the 12th season of Good Eats, an educational cooking show on The Food Network starring Alton Brown. Brown plays his great-grandfather who stumbles upon a pie shop in London run by Mrs. Lovett; they are frequently visited by her neighbor, Mr. Todd, a barber. At one point, Lovett provides Brown with a large tub of ground meat for his recipe of shepherd's pie and is evasive about what type of meat it is.
• "Andy's Play", the third episode in the 7th season of The Office, centers around Andy Bernard's role in a local musical production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
• "Major League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", the seventh episode in the 5th season of Robot Chicken, SpongeBob discovers that Mr. Krabs is killing other sea creatures and baking them into pastries. SpongeBob plays the role of Mark Ingestrie, while Mr. Krabs plays the role of Sweeney Todd.
• Inspired by Sweeney Todd's slaughter and sale of human flesh, the Danish motion picture "The Green Butchers", starring Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas, also features cannibalistic slaughter and sale of meat leading to a booming business mainly based on the human meat, in this instance sold as marinated chicken.
• "Waiting to Exhale", the second episode of the 2nd season of the television series Dexter. When Dexter Morgan asks his colleague Vince Masuka where the best place to hide a corpse is, he ends his extensive answer with "Hell, even meat pies".

Comics[link]

The character of Sweeney Todd is presented as a villain in Marc Andreyko's Manhunter series, where he appears as a ghost which possesses men (causing them to resemble him) and murders women. A supporting character, Obsidian, is shown to be a fan of Sondheim's musical.

Neil Gaiman and Michael Zulli were to have created a Sweeney Todd adaptation for Taboo, published by Steve Bissette and Tundra, but only completed a prologue.

Classical Comics, a UK publisher creating graphic novel adaptations of classical literature, has produced a full colour paperback Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Sweeney Todd (176 pages, November 2010, Original Text, ISBN 978-1-906332-79-2, Quick Text, ISBN 978-1-906332-80-8, forthcoming) with script adaptation by Sean M. Wilson, linework by Declan Shalvey; colouring by Jason Cardy & Kat Nicholson and lettering by Jim Campbell.

Rhyming slang[link]

In rhyming slang, Sweeney Todd is the Flying Squad (a branch of the UK's Metropolitan Police), hence the television series The Sweeney.

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street edited by Robert Mack (2007). Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-922933-3
• Robert Mack (2008) The Wonderful and Surprising History of Sweeney Todd: The Life and Times of an Urban Legend. Continuum. ISBN 0-8264-9791-8
• Rothman, Irving N. "Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd (1979). In The Barber in Modern Jewish Culture (2008). 365-76. ISBN-13: 978-0-7734-5072-1

External links[link]

• The String of Pearls etext of the 1846/47 penny dreadful that first featured Sweeney Todd
• BBC Radio 4 Extra - 1835: 2. Haircut, Sir?

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2011)

Lee Blakeley (born 1971, Yorkshire) is a British Opera and Theatre director.^[1]

References[link]

This article about a theatre director is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Chantal Anne Akerman (born 6 June 1950) is a Belgian film director, artist, and professor of film at the European Graduate School.^[1] Akerman's best-known film, Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), exemplifies a dedication to the ellipses of conventional narrative cinema.^{[citation needed]}

Early life[link]

Akerman was born to an observant Jewish family in Brussels, Belgium. Her grandparents and her mother were sent to Auschwitz; only her mother came back. This is a very important factor in her personal experience, and her mother's anxiety is a recurrent theme in her filmography. Akerman claims that, at the age of 15, after viewing Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou (1965), she decided to make movies the same night. At 18, Akerman entered the Institut National Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle et des Techniques de Diffusion, a Belgian film school. During her first term, however, Akerman chose to leave and make Saute ma ville, a thirteen-minute black-and-white picture in 35mm. Akerman partially subsidized Saute ma ville from shares she sold on the Antwerp diamond exchange, procuring its remaining budget through clerical work. In 1971, Saute ma ville premiered at the Oberhausen short-film festival.^[2] This same year Akerman moved to New York and remained there until 1972.

At Anthology Film Archives in New York, Akerman became impressed by the work of Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Michael Snow, and Andy Warhol. She states that Snow's La Région Centrale introduced her to the relationship between film, time and energy.¹ Her 1972 feature Hotel Monterey and shorts La Chambre 1 and La Chambre 2 reveal structural filmmaking's influence through their usage of extended-duration takes. These protracted shots serve to oscillate the films' images between abstraction and figuration. Akerman's films from this period also signify the start of her collaboration with cinematographer Babette Mangolte.

In 1973, Akerman returned to Belgium and, in 1974, received critical recognition for her feature Je tu il elle. In 1991, she was a member of the jury at the 41st Berlin International Film Festival.^[3] In 2011 Akerman became a Visiting Distinguished Professor in the Film/Video Program of the City College of New York.

Identity aesthetics[link]

According to the book Images in the Dark by Raymond Murray, Akerman refused to have her work ghettoized, and she denied the New York Gay Film Festival the right to screen Je tu il elle. "I will never permit a film of mine to be shown in a gay film festival."

Filmography[link]

Further reading[link]

• Sultan, Terrie (ed.) Chantal Akerman: Moving through Time and Space. Houston, Tex.: Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston ; New York, N.Y.: Distributed by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 2008.
• Schenker, Andrew (15 January 2010). "Eclipse Series 19: Chantal Akerman in the Seventies". Slant Magazine. http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/eclipse-series-19-chantal-akerman-in-the-seventies/1651. Retrieved 23 August 2010. 

References[link]

External links[link]

• Chantal Akerman Faculty Page at European Graduate School (Biography, bibliography and articles)
• http://www.paradisefilms.be
• Chantal Akerman at the Internet Movie Database
• Artist's page in Artfacts.Net with actual major exhibitions.
• Interview with Chantal Akerman
• Screens of Film, Video, Memory, and Smoke by Ana Balona de Oliveira in Fillip
• Chantal Akerman, Professor in the Film/Video Program of the City College of New York]