Napoleon left the stage to meet the Compiégnois. We would think we have returned to a time that history has remembered under the name “First Empire”. Or maybe we got lost in the filming of a period film.
There Salles-Nicolas chapel of Compiègne exhibits Saturday December 21 and Sunday December 22 around thirty costumes from the musical Napoleon signed by Serge Lama. The singer played the title role alongside Christine Delaroche in that of Joséphine. Entrance is free, all day.
The founding president of the Société Napoléonienne de Compiègne Jean Arida had the opportunity to buy these costumes. “These are the authentic costumes,” he enthuses. Moreover, there are still the names of each of the actors on the collars. They sometimes played four or five different roles. This musical comedy with 560 performances brought together more than 850,000 spectators between 1984 and 1989.
Former actors came to the exhibition
A small but solid team of volunteers restored and completed all these pieces. They followed the advice of Jean-Philippe Ancelle, choir director in the musical, who played the role of Lucien Bonaparte. But also from Pascal Dosier who held that of Célestin, from Elisabeth and Jean-Baptiste Magrou and from the Compiégnois historian Guillaume Levillain.
These specialists were also present at the inauguration of the exhibition. The opportunity for Jean-Philippe Ancelle and Jean-Marie Retby, two of the actors in the cast of Serge Lama’s Napoléon, to immerse themselves in this show repeated in Quebec. “It was a great adventure,” confides Jean-Philippe Ancelle. We thought we would play for around ten performances at most. in fact we have exceeded five hundred.”
During this evening, some of the guests wore the costumes of the First Empire. Like Marie-Caroline Béhue Guetteville, a costume designer from Compiègne, who works for cinema and theater.
