Il faut qu’une porte soit ouverte ou fermée

ALFRED DE MUSSET is both the child prodigy of Romanticism and the least performed of the Romantics, at least during his lifetime. At the age of 20, he presented La Nuit vénitienne (The Venetian Night) at the Odéon, a first attempt... and a first failure that prompted him to turn away from the theatre, to free himself from the constraints of stage and write plays gathered in a volume entitled Spectacle dans un fauteuil (Theatre in an Armchair). These plays were intended for reading only, with no plans to stage them. And yet, Musset went on to become one of the most frequently performed authors of the Repertoire. His proverb-form play Il faut qu’une porte soit ouverte ou fermée (A Door Must Be Kept Open or Shut), is quite typical of this unique status he enjoys.

In 1848, Musset was personally and artistically at a low ebb suffering from chronic depression and sentimental disappointments, alcohol and drugs had dried up his inspiration and he was writing less and less. On the eve of the Revolution, a providential event saved him from poverty: when the actress Madame Allan-Despréaux returned from Russia, where she had performed his plays, and joined the Comédie-Française, it boosted his career.

Il faut qu’une porte soit ouverte ou fermée was premiered at the height of the Revolution, on 7 April 1848, at the Théâtre-Français, now named Théâtre de la République. With a running time of about forty minutes, the play seemed totally at odds with its time in a context where the July monarchy had been overthrown and Paris was a bloody battlefield. Only a few dozen people came to applaud it. Ironically, the day before, the theatre was packed for the free republican performance, which honoured three muses and three loves of Musset: George Sand, his great childhood passion, Pauline Viardot, a singer with whom he had fallen in love but who didn’t reciprocate, and the actress Rachel, who performed the Marseillaise and thus embodied Freedom and the Republic.

The critics didn’t take Musset very seriously. He seemed out of step with his era, an eccentric whose work, though constant, was deemed to be a touch old-fashioned. Indeed, in the revolutionary context, plays were judged on the basis of their political morality, with regard to the recent upheavals, and so Musset’s play was defended only by his friend Théophile Gautier.

And yet, while the critics were mostly negative and the premiere almost deserted, the play was performed 52 times in its first year. Mussetian proverbs quickly found their place in the alternating calendar and were very frequently revived in years to come.