October 31, 2006 -

Casanova: You were born too late—all I can offer you is my eyes.
Francisca: And your lips.

It’s disconcerting, this dialogue between dawn and dusk from the pen of Russian poet Marina Tsvetayeva (1892–1941). It’s desperate, this meeting between the idealism of youth—so in love with the moment—and the bittersweet nostalgia of old age. They’re incandescent, these verses laced with scorching realism that crash and break like waves, and—thanks to the genius of translator André Markowicz—retain all the energy, rhythm and cadences of the original Russian.

The plot of La Fin de Casanova (“The Last Days of Casanova”) is simple: It’s New Year’s Eve, 1799, at the Château de Dux in Bohemia. While the guests celebrate in the banquet hall, the aging Giacomo Casanova, sequestered in his apartments, is feeding a lifetime’s worth of love letters into the fire before fleeing into the blizzard raging outside. Suddenly, Francisca, a young girl, enters the room and declares, “Here’s what I’ve come to tell you: I love you”—revealing an immoderate passion for this mythical figure of a century on the eve of extinction. However, this seemingly straightforward story has myriad ramifications…

At the crossroads of two centuries

An intimate two-hander between an aging man and a young woman, La Fin de Casanova—the third part of a trilogy entitled The Phoenix—is not a tale of seduction, as it might at first appear, but a story of transmission and transformation. Tsvetayeva’s Casanova is not so much a seducer as a poet—as indeed was the real Casanova (1725–1798), who created his own mythology through such works as The Story of My Escape from the Prisons of Venice and The Story of My Life. The impossibility of the love between Casanova and Francisca not only gives that love its power, but turns it into poetry. And this metamorphosis of burning desire into poetry runs through the play like a scarlet thread.
To respect the intimacy of this desperate and decisive encounter, director Denis Marleau is inviting only 150 people at a time into the austere room in the Château de Dux (now Duchcov, Czech Republic) where the real Casanova actually lived. The members of the audience become phantom witnesses to this meeting, blending into the background of the NAC Studio which has been completely transformed for the occasion.

Readers will recall that Gabriel Gascon, who was originally cast as our fictional Casanova, had to withdraw for health reasons and was replaced by Pierre Lebeau. Francisca will be played by Éliane Préfontaine, making her speaking debut at the NAC (she appeared in 2001 in a non-speaking role, as one of the young women in Maurice Maeterlinck’s Intérieur, directed by Denis Marleau). Gaétan Nadeau, whom NAC audiences will remember from Robert Pinget’s Abel et Bela (March 2004), plays the Prince of Ligne and the valet.

“Pierre Lebeau is completely convincing in the role.… He makes Casanova’s entire aspect tangibly real, from the master seducer he was to the aging lion he has become.”
– Christian Saint-Pierre, Voir

“Denis Marleau’s staging is incredible and enhances the theatre experience, promoting a real exchange between the audience and the performers.”
– David Lefebvre, MonTheatre.qc.ca

“Pierre Lebeau’s presence, his voice, most of all his energy: immense, glacial one moment, incandescent the next. An aesthetic experience that approaches rapture.”
– Michel Bélair, Le Devoir

La Fin de Casanova
Written by Marina Tsvetayeva
Translated by André Markowicz
Directed by Denis Marleau
With Pierre Lebeau, Éliane Préfontaine and Gaétan Nadeau
Visual and sound design: Denis Marleau / Artistic collaboration: Stéphanie Jasmin
Assistant director: Martin Émond / Costumes: Daniel Fortin / Lighting: Marc Parent
Props: Stéphane Longpré / Makeup and wigs: Angelo Barsetti / Music: John Rea
Produced by UBU in coproduction with ESPACE GO
and the National Arts Centre French Theatre

November 8–11, 2006 at 20:00
Added performance: November 11, 2006 at 14:00
National Arts Centre / Studio
53 Elgin Street, Ottawa, ON
Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes with no intermission

Tickets $31.50 regular, $17 full-time students
en vente à la Billetterie du CNA, chez Ticketmaster au (613) 755-1111 ou via le réseau Internet au www.nac-cna.ca.

Full-time students ages 13–29 are eligible to purchase Live Rush™ tickets
at $10 each (subject to availability).

Available in person at the NAC Box Office between 14:00 and 18:00 on the day of the performance only, on presentation of a valid Live Rush™ membership card.

Groups of 10 or more receive up to 20% off regular ticket prices.
Reservations: (613) 947-7000, ext. 384, or grp@nac-cna.ca.

About the poet Marina Tsvetayeva

“This was my life’s ambition: at the age of 17, to be the lover of Casanova (a stranger!)—to be abandoned—and to bring up my amazing son by him.
And then—to love everyone.”
– Marina Tsvetayeva

Born in Moscow in 1892, Marina Tsvetayeva spent much of her childhood abroad, first in Italy where her mother was being treated for tuberculosis, then at boarding school in Switzerland and Germany. She published her first collection of poems, Evening Album, in 1910. In 1912 she married Sergei Efron; they had three children, including a daughter who died of starvation during the famine that followed the Russian Revolution of 1917. From 1918 to 1922 Tsvetayeva lived in poverty in Moscow while Efron fought as an officer with the White Army. Nevertheless, she rose above her harsh situation, producing several works that brought her to the attention of Moscow’s artistic and literary community. In 1922 the family fled to Berlin, then to Prague and finally to Paris, always under precarious conditions. Feeling disconnected from Paris’ circle of Russian émigré writers, Tsvetayeva began an intense correspondence with Boris Pasternak, Rainer Maria Rilke and others, much of which has since been published. In 1939 she returned to the Soviet Union and was reunited with her husband and daughter, both of whom were arrested for espionage soon afterwards. In 1941, as the German army invaded the USSR, Tsvetayeva and her son were evacuated to Yelabuga, in the Tartar Autonomous Republic, where she committed suicide later that year.

Tsvetayeva ‘s tragic life was marked by a series of grand passions (real and imagined) for those close to her and others, which she expressed in her poetry and in her voluminous correspondence, essays, plays and novels. Although disciplined and carefully structured in form and content, her lyric poetry conveys a sense of immediacy and spontaneity that echoes her own passionate zest for life. Recognized as a leading Russian poet of the 20th century, Martina Tsvetayeva occupies a unique place for the fiercely independent spirit and determined solitude that set her apart from the prevailing literary and political tendencies of her day. English translations of her poetry and prose include Selected Poems, The Demesne of the Swans, In the Inmost Hour of the Soul, The Ratcatcher: A Lyrical Satire, A Captive Spirit: Selected Prose, and Art in the Light of Conscience: Eight Essays on Poetry.

The National Arts Centre French Theatre gratefully acknowledges the support of our media partner for this production: Radio-Canada 90.7 FM (La Première Chaîne)

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For more information, please contact:
Guy Warin, Communications & Media Relations Officer
French Theatre – Canada’s National Arts Centre
(613) 947-7000 or 1 866 850-2787, ext. 759
gwarin@nac-cna.ca