Victorien Sardou

Victorien Sardou (1831-1908), French dramatist and creator of the “well-made” play, born in Paris. Sardou studied medicine for a brief time at a Paris hospital. He turned to writing and quickly gained enormous popularity. Today his contrived melodramas are admired much less than they were in his lifetime. He wrote about 70 plays, including Madame Devil-May-Care (1893; trans. 1901) and Robespierre (1899; trans. 1899). For the French actor Sarah Bernhardt, he wrote the well-known Fedora (1882; trans. 1883) and La Tosca (1887; trans. 1925), both of which were adapted for opera librettos.