Playwright, born in Ghent, NW Belgium. He studied law at Ghent University, became a disciple of the Symbolist movement, and in 1889 produced his first volume of poetry, Les Serres chaudes (Hot House Blooms). His masterpiece was the prose-play Pelléas et Mélisande (1892), on which Debussy based his opera. He wrote many other plays, which have been widely translated, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911.
Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck (August 29, 1862 - May 6, 1949) was a Belgian poet, playwright, and essayist.
Biography
Count Maurice Maeterlinck was born in Ghent, Belgium, in a wealthy, French-speaking family.
In 1889, he became famous overnight after his first play, La princesse Maleine had received enthusiastic praise from Octave Mirbeau, the literary critic of Le Figaro (August 1890). In the following years, he wrote a series of symbolist plays characterized by fatalism and mysticism, most importantly L'Intruse (The Intruder, 1890), Les Aveugles (The Blind, 1890) and Pelléas et Mélisande (1892, this last of which received several well-known musical treatments (see below).
His greatest contemporary success, however, was the fairy play L'Oiseau Bleu (The Blue Bird, 1909). This play has been made into several films, including one made in 1940 in Technicolor, starring Shirley Temple (her first unsuccessful film), and the joint United States/Soviet Union production The Blue Bird (Russian: Sinyaya Ptitsa) (1976), starring Elizabeth Taylor (this version was also not a box office success, and was savaged by the critics).
In 1926 he published La Vie des Termites (The Life of the White Ant) plagiarising "The Soul of the White Ant" researched and written by the South African poet and scientist Eugene Marais (1871 - 1936).
In 1930 he bought a château in Nice, France, and named it Orlamonde, a name occurring in his work Quinze Chansons.
According to an article published in the New York Times in 1940, he arrived in the United States from Lisbon on the Greek Liner Nea Hellas.
Maeterlinck in Music
Pelléas et Mélisande served as the inspiration for four major turn-of-the-century musical compositions, an opera by Claude Debussy, (L 88, Paris, 1902), incidental music to the play composed by Jean Sibelius (opus 46, 1905), an orchestral suite by Gabriel Fauré (opus 80, 1898), and a symphonic poem by Arnold Schoenberg (opus 5, 1902/03).
Other operas, suites, symphonies based on Maeterlinck's plays include:
Ariane et Barbe-bleue: opera in 3 acts by Paul Dukas (1899-1907; Paris, Opera-Comique, 1907) Princess Maleine: Bréville, Lili Boulanger The Seven Princesses: Bréville The Death of Tintagiles: Löffler, Santoliquido Aglavaine and Sélysette: Honegger Monna Vanna: Ábrányi Emil jr., Février, Rachmaninoff Les Aveugles (The Blind): Beat Furrer (as "Die Blinden")
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