Ex. 11. Complete any of the “Character Maps” (see p. ) and retell the story. HOME READING V SARAH BERNHARDT (1844–1923)

 

 

HOME READING V

SARAH BERNHARDT (1844–1923)

Ex. 1. Answer the questions:

16. What was Sarah Bernhardt?

17. When and where was she born?

18. Where did she live?

19. How do you think what kind of character she had?

20. What facts of her life do you know?

Ex. 2. Read and translate the text about Sarah Bernhardt:

  1. Many people believe that Sarah Bernhardt was the greatest actress in the history of the theater. She fascinated audiences around the world. People adored her and called her "The Divine Sarah." Her performances were very dramatic and so was her life.
  2. Sarah was born in 1844 in a poor neighborhood in Paris. Her mother, Julie Bernard, was a beautiful woman who had many boyfriends. Sarah never knew her father. Julie loved to travel and there was no place in her life for Sarah. So, Sarah grew up feeling unwanted.
  3. Friends and family members helped to care for Sarah. Mostly she lived with her nurse in a small, dark room in a poor, dirty neighborhood. She was thin, pale, and sick-looking. She was also very unhappy. When Sarah was about five years old, she threw herself out a window when her aunt refused to take her home with her. Sarah was badly hurt and she couldn't walk. Her mother was forced to take care of her until she was well enough to go away to boarding school.
  4. Sarah had a bad temper and loved to break the rules. The boarding school didn't want her, so her mother sent her to a Catholic convent school where the teachers were nuns. Sarah needed to be disciplined and educated. This wasn't easy because Sarah had a lot of energy and passion. She tried to use her energy in a good way. She started studying to become a nun. This didn't work because Sarah was still very rebellious. In the end, the convent couldn't handle Sarah and the nuns asked her to leave. Sarah's family had to think of something else to do with their wild child.
  5. When Sarah was about 16, a friend of her mother's suggested that she study acting. Sarah wasn't sure about it, but everyone else thought it was a wonderful idea. She chose a scene to perform for the examination to enter the French government's acting school, the Paris Conservatoire. She studied very hard. When she began the scene, the judges stopped her. They wanted her to choose a boy to act in the scene with her. But Sarah had practiced alone, so she refused. The judges were shocked, but they offered to let Sarah perform something else. She chose to tell a story she knew. This was very unusual because the judges wanted her to act, not tell a story. But Sarah insisted. She told the story with such brilliance that she was accepted even before she finished.
  6. Sarah studied at the Conservatoire for several years and made her first stage appearance at the national theater company, the Comedie Francaise, when she was 17. It was the most prestigious theater in Europe. But Sarah's debut was a failure. When she heard what people thought about her, she swallowed poison and almost died. "Life is useless," she said to her friends. "I wanted to see what death was like." Sarah continued to act without much success. She finally left the company after she slapped the face of their oldest and most respected actress.
  7. Sarah Bernhardt had a terrible temper. But she also had charm, passion, and a strong personality. She had friends and boyfriends all over Europe. Around this time, she gave birth to her only child, Maurice. But like her mother, she didn't marry his father, who was a prince. Bernhardt wanted to be free to do whatever she wanted. She was 22 now and determined to succeed. She joined the Odeon Theater and studied very hard for the next six years. She performed with all her energy and passion and became a well-respected actress.
  8. In 1869, Bernhardt had her first great success. She acted in a play called Le Passant ("The Passerby"), which played for over 100 nights. She was on her way to a brilliant career. But the Franco-German War interrupted her life for a while. Paris was under attack. In 1870, Bernhardt organized a military hospital in the theater. After the war ended in 1871, the Odeon began to produce plays again, and she returned to acting. The audiences loved her and the critics went wild. The Comedie Francaise asked her to come back to them. She gave unforgettable performances. Her fans called her "The Divine Sarah."
  9. People began to tell stories about Bernhardt. Some were true, some were not so true. They said she smoked cigars and acted like a man. Because she was thin and played male roles, some people said she was a boy dressed up in women's clothes. Sarah loved the publicity and lived a life as wild, exciting, and bizarre as the stories about her.
  10. Sarah Bernhardt worked hard and didn't rest. Her doctors told her that if she didn't rest, she would die at a young age. She was always fascinated by death. No one played a death scene like Sarah Bernhardt. She liked to walk around in cemeteries. She always kept a special coffin and placed it beside her bed so it would be the first thing she saw when she woke up. Sometimes she slept in it. Sometimes she served tea to her friends on it. She brought the coffin with her wherever she went. Bernhardt was pretty wild, so it isn't surprising that she had a few wild pets, including a wildcat, two young lions, and a young tiger. She took them with her to the theater and kept them in her dressing room during her performances.
  11. Sarah Bernhardt became the leading actress of the Comedie Franchise. When the company traveled to London, thousands of people came to see her and not the Comedie Francaise. After her last performance in the United States, 50,000 people came to the stage door to say goodbye to her. But the management didn't like her temper or her strange lifestyle. When the managers told her this, she left the company and formed her own. She called it the Sarah Bernhardt theater. She played many important parts. In fact, she was one of the first women to play Hamlet. By then she was 36 years old. She traveled around the world and became an international celebrity. There was no actor or actress in the world like Sarah Bernhardt.
  12. Bernhardt was not like other actresses; age didn't hurt her career. She became more brilliant as she got older. It seemed that nothing could stop her. She worked 14 and 15 hours a day and played the most difficult roles. When she was 64 years old, she shocked audiences when she played 19-year-old Joan of Arc. Around this time, Bernhardt hurt her leg during a performance. The leg never healed properly, and she suffered with pain for many years. In 1915, her leg had to be cut off, so Sarah began to play her parts sitting in a wheelchair. The following year, during World War I, she still entertained the soldiers. When she was 79, she worked on a film for an American producer. But she was too ill to leave her house, so he filmed her in her living room. When she could no longer sit in a chair she said, "Film me in bed. Then Sarah Bernhardt died. She was buried in the coffin she always took with her.

 

Ex. 3. Highlight the story (see p. )

Ex. 4. Choose the best answer:

1. Paragraph 3 is mostly about ______________ .

a. how Sarah lived as a child

b. the attitudes of family members toward Sarah
с. Sarah's health as a child

 

2. The main topic of paragraph 8 is _______________.

a. what Bernhardt did during the war

b. the Franco-German War

c. the beginning of Bernhardt's great career

 

3. Paragraph 10 is mostly about Bernhardt's ___________

a. poor health

b. strange habits and interests

c. ability to act out death scenes

 

4. The main topic of paragraph 12 is ______________ .

a. that old age and illness didn't affect Bernhardt's brilliant career

b. how Bernhardt shocked people with her performance as Joan of Arc
с. how Bernhardt suffered with pain in her final years

 

Ex. 5. Choose the best answer:

 

1. Sarah threw herself out a window because she _____________.

a. wanted to go to boarding school

b. wanted to live with her aunt

c. was trying to get her mother's attention

 

2. Sarah's family decided that she should study acting because ____________.

a. they didn't know what to do with her next

b. Sarah showed great promise as an actress
с. Sarah always wanted to be an actress

 

3. Sarah's examination to enter the Conservatoire was very unusual because she ________________.

a. told a story instead of acting a scene

b. acted out a scene with a boy

c. didn't choose the scene the judges had suggested

 

4. During the Franco-German War, Bernhardt ___________.

a. continued to act

b. started her own theater company

c. organized a military hospital

 

5. One of Bernhardt's strange activities was ________________.

a. sleeping in a coffin

b. serving tea in a cemetery

c. going on stage with wild animals

 

6. Bernhardt started her own company after the Comedie Francaise _______

a. refused to send her to the United States

b. criticized the way she lived

c. told her she was too old to act

Ex. 6. Put the sentences in the correct order:

· The convent asked Bernhardt to leave.

· Bernhardt worked on a film with an American producer.

· Bernhardt became the leading actress of the Comedie Francaise.

· Bernhardt failed in her stage debut.

· Bernhardt played the role of Joan of Arc.
Bernhardt started her own theater company.

 

Ex. 7. Choose the main idea of the text:

 

1. The passage concludes that ______________.

a. Bernhardt's strange lifestyle almost destroyed her career

b. Bernhardt's bizarre and emotional personality had a good effect on her
career

c. Bernhardt's happy and normal childhood helped her career

 

2. The passage suggests that _______________.

a. Bernhardt's acting career was the most important thing in the world to her

b. Bernhardt wanted to change to please other people

с. Bernhardt wanted to succeed but didn't like to work hard

 

3. The passage implies that __________________.

a. Bernhardt should have stopped acting as she got older

b. Bernhardt was no longer a celebrity when she was older and sick

c. most actresses of that time gave up their careers as they got older

Ex. 8. Write the correct words in the blanks:

 

handle publicity debut passion adore

divine slap prestigious dramatic bizarre

1. ____________ is a very strong and often uncontrollable feeling, especially of love, hate, or anger.

2. To _____________ is to hit someone quickly with the flat part of the hand.

3. Something _________________ is exciting and impressive.

4. To _____________ something is to control it.

5. Something ______________ is strange, peculiar, or odd.

6. The first time someone performs in public is a _______________ .

7. Something excellent that is almost godlike is _______________ .

8. The attention that someone or something famous gets is called ____________ .

9. To love and admire someone very much is to ____________ that person.

10. Something ______________ is respected and admired by many people.

 

Ex. 9. Answer the questions:

 

1. What are some of the world's most prestigious universities?

2. What are some things that people have a lot of passion about?

3. When was the last time you had to handle a difficult person or situation?

4. Who gets a lot of publicity!

5. What was a recent dramatic event?

 

Ex. 10. Translate the following words and phrases into Russian and learn them by heart: