Background
French dramatist, was born at Metz, in Lorraine, on June 10, 1854, the son of a prominent industrialist.
FRANÇOIS
French dramatist, was born at Metz, in Lorraine, on June 10, 1854, the son of a prominent industrialist.
He received a technical education at the ÉcoleEcole Centrale and was supposed to assume the direction of his father's factories, but difficulties with the Germans, who had taken Lorraine, forced him to turn to drama instead.
Curel's first plays, L'Envers d'une sainte (1892; A False Saint, 1916), Les Fossiles (1892; The Fossils, 1915), and L'Amour brode (1893), all exhibiting a naturalistic tinge, were performed at the ThéâtreTheatre Libre. Curel then turned from naturalism to the drama of ideas in La nouvelle idole (1899), which discusses the relationship between science and faith. The problems of capital and labor underlie Le Repas du lion (1898), also a psychological and moral play. In all his plays, such as La Fille sauvage (1902), Le Coup d'aile (1906; The Beat of the Wing, 1909), L'ÂmeL'Ame en folie (1920), and L'lvresse du sage (1922), Curel treated lofty themes--race, genius, science, faith, sanctity, human evolution, moral heredity, and social questions.