The Moliere Year begins in Paris: the Paris National Theater shows "Tartuffe"

It is not known exactly when Jean-Baptise Poquelin, known as Molière, was born. But it is known that he was baptized on January 15, 1622 in Paris. On the anniversary, the nearly seventy members of the Comédie-Française ensemble gathered on stage, all in their own costumes and a politely recited line from one of his many plays.

Thus began the Molière Year at the Paris National Theatre, which is often called "La Maison de Molière" because it was there that the celebrated work of the actor and chef de troupe was to be continued in an institution.

As if that were possible: pouring the fluids of the theater into solid structures. There will be a Molière commemorative coin, a musical program in Versailles in early summer, exhibitions and colloquia, and a kind of national dictate in which all state radio stations will participate. Because how do you call the French: "La Langue de Molière". 400 years of Molière is also an educational project.

Director Ivo von Hove does not rely on the moral conflict

The Belgian Ivo van Hove is responsible for the first new production at the Comédie-Française with the most-performed piece in the Molière repertoire of the house. "Le Tartuffe ou l'Hypocrite".

The Sun King did not release the first version from 1664 to the public. It took two more versions before the play was allowed to be performed five years later. The king had trouble with the divided Catholic Church.

The reason for his ban was a matter of state, not a question of taste. Molière finally remodeled the story of the hypocritical bigot into a veritable crime story, paid homage to the king with a deus ex machina effect and chose his judiciary to solve a family problem. Anger with politics and religion has been inscribed in the play since it was written.

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Queen Mother Anne of Austria and the Archbishop of Paris were the operators of the ban at the time, today the cultural sector in France still has problems with radical Catholics who are now organizing themselves via social networks. They recently managed to prevent an organ concert by the Swede Anna von Hausswolff. She was a satanist, someone had posted.

Years ago, the scene tried to prevent the Paris performance of Romeo Castellucci's play about the face of Christ. The Tartuffe is a great starting point for anyone wanting to make historical connections when it comes to cancel culture. Ivo van Hove does not do that: he stages the original version from 1674, reconstructed by Molière researcher Georges Forestier, the text of which had been lost.

Unknown emotional world

At the beginning, when no word has been spoken, we see Orgon discovering a man's body in a pile of clothes, how he takes it out, how his whole family carefully undresses the man, bathes and dresses up in a suit and tie. A bum is brought back to life with a picture of quiet mercy. Only once in Ivo van Hove's Tartuffe production is religion a topic: in the opening picture. So religion doesn't suddenly come into the family with the hypocrite Tartuffe.

Tartuffe is a projection surface for unknown emotional worlds for Orgon, his wife Elmire, his son Damis and all the others with the exception of the life-wise servant Dorine; as well as a teacher especially for the emotionally parched family man Orgon, who is embodied by the actor Denis Podalydès.

Ivo van Hove casts Tartuffe as a character of great affective abilities, someone who treats each and everyone in this dysfunctional family differently, particularly the master's repressed homosexuality. As in a bizarre ritual, Orgon and Tartuffe, played by the smart Christophe Montenez, face each other, let their hands approach and encircle each other without ever touching. A haunting image of suppressed homoeroticism.

In the scene, no language comes out of the mouths but shapeless sounds: turmoil of instincts. Otherwise, Molière's rich language serves as a mask with which one can excellently debate values ​​and meanwhile fight, psychologically abuse or do the laundry. Elmire and Tartuffe's love scenes are more than a test set to prove Orgon Tartuffe's machinations. The two are really lovers.

Disturbed mother relationship

Finally, the director intervenes in the dramaturgy and intensifies what is inherent in it: Everyone has now understood the game that is being played here, except for Madame Pernelle, who is immoral obstinate mother of the father of the family. And it's also clear now: all the misery in this family is rooted in the twisted relationship between this mother and her morally misguided son. This spoiler must be and does not spoil the enjoyment of the Comédie-Française - Madame Pernelle is quickly covered with flowers and disposed of in the flames of a crematorium oven. And it goes on: Orgon becomes the bum that Tartuffe was in the beginning. Everything has now fallen to the hypocrite: Orgon's wealth, his wife Elmire, who is expecting a child from him, and the rest of the reformed family. A cynical conclusion. A bad ending.

More on the subject

In this one The world works better if you flexibly reinterpret your value system depending on the situation. Tartuffe is a master at that. The false piety that surrounds the play, and which the French theater icon Ariane Mnouchkine successfully updated with Islamism in the 1990s, has largely been erased here. Ivo van Hove is not interested in the conflict between acted and experienced morality, but rather the conflict between acted and experienced emotionality. The Molière year begins politically, if only as a private policy.