L’Orphelin de la Chine at the Comedie Francaise, 1755

The Jesuit-educated Francois-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire (1694 1778), read all the travel literature about China he could find, mostly the Jesuit reports, and reputedly kept a picture of Confucius on his library wall. The rationality he perceived in China appealed to him immensely. Voltaire rewrote the Chinese classic Orphan of the Zhao Family as L’Orphelin de la Chine after he declared that the original story revealed how reason and intellect inevitably triumph over ignorance and barbarity. The Comedie Francaise published the five act play in 1755 and also perofrmed the play for the first time there in August of that year. Of course Voltaire was commenting on the Enlightenment and the Catholic Church more than China. In the play the oraphan, who is in fact the royal heir, is entrusted to an official Voltaire named Zamti. Here then is the Comedie Francaise’s Zamti from 1755…..