Jacques Hébertot

[1] Resolutely anti-conformist, Jacques Hébertot frequented the theaters of Paris and mingled with young people of the artistic circles and the poets of the time.

From now on he was linked to the avant-garde artistic movement, and he frequented the dîners de Passy where he met his young friend Guillaume Apollinaire, as well as Max Jacob, Oscar Milosz, Erik Satie, Igor Stravinsky, and Fernand Léger.

Throughout his period on the front he wrote his notebooks, various notes, articles for the newspaper Le Matin, political reflections, poems, and a description of the horrors of war.

Rolf de Maré, who was an admiror of the Ballets Russes, and was eager to launch a new troop, felt that Jacques Hébertot was the man of the situation.

Jacques Hébertot rented the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées for three evenings, from 25 to 27 March 1920, and engaged an orchestra of 45 musicians under the direction of Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht.

Rolf de Maré, convinced, decided to entrust Jacques Hébertot to find in Paris a bigger venue to present the Ballets suédois.

The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées became an important artistic center, particularly in the theatrical and musical fields, bringing together high-quality personalities: theatre directors like Georges Pitoëff and Ludmilla Pitoëff, Louis Jouvet and Gaston Baty, authors like Jean Cocteau, Paul Claudel, Blaise Cendrars, Francis Picabia, Anton Chekhov, Jules Romains, and Luigi Pirandello, composers like Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric, Germaine Tailleferre and Erik Satie.

[2] At the same time, he created the periodicals Théâtre et Comœdia illustré, Paris-Journal, La Danse, Monsieur (with the collaboration of Louis Aragon, Georges Charensol and René Clair).

In 1938 he joined his friends Georges and Ludmilla Pitoëff at the Théâtre des Mathurins, and produced Sei personaggi in cerca di autore by Pirandella and Création de un ennemi du peuple by Henrik Ibsen.

"[3] After producing a number of shows, most of which were retained, the creation of a play by Pierre Brasseur and his desire to devote himself to the theater which now bears his name, pushed him to sold the lease of the Théâtre de l'Oeuvre in 1944 to Raymond Roll.

Shortly before his death, he told Diego Fabbri, in an interview published in the program of the spectacle Bienheureux les violents, that "with the theater, it was poetry that had been essential to his life."

Bertrand Poirot-Delpech wrote in Le Monde, on 21 June 1970: "The death of the master has the effect of a very old tree that falls to the bottom of a family park.

This collection was entered thanks to the Association de la Régie Théâtrale, following a donation from Serge Bouillon, manager of the Société Immobilière Batignolles-Monceau (owner of the Théâtre Hébertot's walls).