Sarah Bernhardt as Cleopatra

Napoleon Sarony

1891

Postcards, such as this image of the actress as Cleopatra, advertised Sarah Bernhardt’s celebrated performances for global audiences. Born Henriette-Rosine Bernard to a Jewish courtesan of Dutch Jewish background, Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923) was raised in a pension and educated in a convent school near Versailles. She initially wanted to become a nun but at the age of sixteen was persuaded by her mother’s lover to become an actor. While studying at Paris’s Conservatoire de Musique et Declamation, she was heavily influenced by the iconic French actress Rachel Félix, who was also Jewish; perhaps in emulation, Henriette-Rosine adopted the stage name Sarah. Bernhardt toured across Europe, the Americas, Australia, and the Middle East, becoming the first internationally famous celebrity actor. In addition to starring in more than seventy roles, she was a theater manager (notably of the Théâtre des Nations, later named the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt), a sculptor, and the author of plays, prose, and poetry. In 1905, a stage accident in Brazil led to the amputation of her right leg; but Bernhardt continued to draw sellout crowds for her “golden voice” and magnetism.

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Credits

Photograph by Napoleon Sarony. Theatrical Cabinet Photographs of Women (TCS 2), Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7.

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Theater in Jewish Culture

1750–1880

The novelty in Jewish performing arts in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries involved the adaptation of traditional materials into new forms, as well as a turn to performing arts that were unconnected to religious life. 

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The Expansion of Jewish Performance Art: Theater, Dance, and the Birth of Cinema

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