Rachel, ÉLISA (properly ÉLISA RACHEL FÉLIX), a great tragic actress, was born of poor itinerant Jewish parents at Munn, in the Swiss canton of Aargau, 24th March 1821. At last the family settled at Lyons, and here Rachel and her sister Sarah used to sing for chance gratuities in the streets and cafés. About 1830 the household was transferred to Paris, and here Étienne Choron gave her her first lessons in singing, Saint Aulaire in declamation; but later it was Samson from whom she learned most. Mademoiselle Mars divined her genius, but it was not till Véron and Jules Janin had written glowing criticisms that she took the playgoing world of Paris by storm. She made her first appearance at the Gymnase in the Vendéenne in 1837 with but moderate success, but on 12th June 1838 she appeared as Camille in Les Horaces at the Théâtre Français. From this time forward, in the great parts supplied by the classic masterpieces of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire, she shone without a rival; her fame may be said to have culminated in her appearance as Phèdre in Racine's tragedy in 1843. In Adrienne Lecouvreur, a piece expressly written for her by MM. Legouvé and Scribe, she had also immense success, though in other more modern parts her popularity was somewhat less. The furore excited in Paris in 1848 by her public recitation of the Marseillaise will continue to connect her name with the history of the Revolution. In 1849 she made the tour of the French provinces; before or afterwards she also visited London, Belgium—where Charlotte Brontë saw her—Berlin, and St Petersburg, everywhere meeting with enthusiastic applause. Her health now began to fail; in 1855, in the course of a professional visit to America, it altogether gave way, and she returned utterly prostrated. A residence at Cairo failed to restore her to strength; and on the 3d January 1858 she died at Cannet, near Toulon. As an artist, within the limits prescribed by her genius, Rachel has probably never been quite equalled. Of the burning intensity which characterised her rendering of passion in its fiercer concentrations no words can give an adequate image. 'She does not act—she suffers,' one observer well said of her. Her Phèdre—by common consent her masterpiece—was an apocalypse of human agony, not to be forgotten by any one who ever witnessed it. In character Rachel was neither exemplary nor altogether amiable. She gave her first love to a Jew, who used her shamefully, publishing her letters after the rupture; in 1844 she bore a son to Count Walewski, himself a son of Napoleon by a Polish mother. In her pro- fessional relations she was notoriously grasping and avaricious, although she could be royal in her munificence. She lavished her love upon her family, and heaped them with the wealth that she had gained. Her immense popularity enabled her to dictate her own terms to managers, and of this power she is said to have availed herself without scruple or generosity. She made over four millions and left one and a half million of francs. Her elder sister Sarah (died 1877) failed as an actress, but lived to make a fortune by the sale of the cosmetic 'eau des fées.'
See J. Janin, Rachel et la Tragedie (1858); D'Heylli, Rachel d'après sa Correspondance (1882); and the Life by Mrs Arthur Kennard (1885).