"Trans-Channel melodrama: Frédérick Lemaître e Robert Macaire da Parigi a Londra"

Placing its focus on the interrelations between the theatrical worlds of London and Paris, this essay examines the effects and implications of the arrival of a French actor (and a star, moreover) on the mid-nineteenth-century London stage. In particular, it examines the moment when the sensational Parisian actor Frédérick Lemaître arrived there in early 1835, and caused a sensation in a theatrical dimension that was already hugely sensitized – and not always positively – to foreign presences and, especially foreign encroachments. At the beginning of 1835 Lemaître arrived in London with his phenomenal ‘Robert Macaire’ material and its captivating brand of melodramatic, but also ironic, criminality. The arrival of this phenomenon, this essay contends, makes 1835 a significant test year in the development of the trans-Channel stage, a ‘hot chronology’ in which questions and issues acquire visibility and gain traction in major ways.