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Augustine Susanne Brohan

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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AUGUSTINE SUSANNE BROHAN (1807-1887), French actress, was born in Paris on the 22nd of January 1807. She entered the Conservatoire at the age of eleven, and took the second prize for comedy in 1820, and the first in 1821. She served her apprenticeship in the provinces, making her first Paris appearance at the Odeon in 1832 as Dorine in Tarlufe. Her success there and elsewhere brought her a summons to the Comedie Frangaise, where she made her debut on the 15th of February 1834, as Madelon in Les Precieuses ridicules, and Suzanne in Le Mariage de Figaro. She retired in 1842, and died on the 16th of August 1887.

Her elder daughter, Josephine Felicite Augustine Brohan (1824-1893), was admitted to the Conservatoire when very young, twice taking the second prize for comedy. The soubrette part, entrusted for more than 150 years at the Comedie Frangaise to a succession of artists of the first rank, was at the moment without a representative, and Mdlle Augustine Brohan made her debut there on the 19th of May 1841, as Dorine in Tartufe, and Lise in Rivaux d'eux-memes. She was immediately admitted pensionnaire, and at the end of eighteen months unanimously elected societaire. She soon became a great favourite, not only in the plays of Moliere and de Regnard, but also in those of Marivaux. On her retirement from the stage in 1866, she made an unhappy marriage with Edmond David de Gheest (d. 1885), secretary to the Belgian legation in Paris.

Susanne Brohan's second daughter, EmLIE MADELEINE