Fechter, Charles Albert

Fechter, Charles Albert (1824–79), actor born in London but educated in France, who played in French and English, both in America and in Europe, with equal success. He made his début at the Comédie-Française in 1840, but soon left to make his reputation elsewhere, and became an outstanding jeune premier, being the first actor to play Armand Duval in the younger Dumas's La Dame aux camélias (1852). At that time he was co-director of the Odéon, but chafing at the restrictions imposed on him in favour of the Comédie-Française he returned to London, where he had appeared some years earlier, in an English translation of Hugo's Ruy Blas. Though his accent was never very good, he played with so much fire and fluency that the audience was carried away, and he became very popular. He followed this success with a revolutionary production of Hamlet in 1861, in which the subtlety and depth of his performance impressed even those who clung to the traditional style. His Othello was not so successful, and in a revival he played Iago. In 1863 he took over the management of the London Lyceum, where he appeared in a series of melodramas, and in 1870 he made his début in New York. After touring for some time, he opened the old Globe Theatre in Boston under his own name, making many improvements and innovations, and appeared there in new plays as well as in some of his former successes. His quarrelsome and imperious nature made him many enemies and after a last visit to England he retired in 1876 to a farm near Philadelphia where he died.