The Satin Slipper

The Satin Slipper (Le Soulier de satin) is a long play by the French dramatist and poet Paul Claudel, written in 1929. It was first performed on stage in 1943 (abridged), in a production by Claudel and Jean-Louis Barrault.^[1] Its full running time is roughly eleven hours.

The scene is set during the Renaissance at the time of the conquistadors. The play is a love story dominated by the ideas of sin and redemption and the various characters, some divine and some comic, frequently engage in a dialogue as though between Heaven and Earth.

Nowadays it is rarely staged, because of its extreme length and its challenging production requirements. Full-length productions were staged in Paris, and the Avignon Festival in 1987,^[2] and by Olivier Py at the Théâtre de l'Odéon in Paris in 2009.

It was made into a seven-hour film in 1985 by the Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira.

In May 2021 an opera version by Marc-André Dalbavie received its premiere at the Paris Opera, with a libretto by Raphaèle Fleury.^[2]

• Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century

• Edition critique : Le Soulier de satin by Paul Claudel, Antoinette Weber-Caflisch, Annales littéraires de l'Université de Besançon, n° 334, Les Belles Lettres, 1987.

• Full text of Le Soulier de satin (in French) at Internet Archive
• Summary of the play at Société Paul Claudel (in French)

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