Matei Millo
Matei or Mateiu Millo was a Moldavian, later Romanian stage actor, singer, producer and playwright, noted as a founding figure in local theater. Hailing from two lineages of boyar aristocrats, he appeared in amateur productions around the age of twenty, alongside Vasile Alecsandri—who, later in life, was Millo's main literary backer. Violently shunned by his parents for what was seen as a lowly profession, he spent some time in Paris, possibly studying acting, and experienced there a form of material destitution that would plague him throughout his career. He returned to a position as art director of Moldavia's National Theater in Iași, pushing through an agenda of subversive Romanian nationalism, then playing some part in the liberal uprising of 1848. Late that year, Millo created an all-Romanian sensation by writing, producing, and starring in the first local operetta, Baba Hârca. His performances in travesti, and his penchant for naturalness, became hugely popular with theatergoers of all classes. They prompted Alecsandri to use Millo for a long series of Coana Chirița comedies.
Touring all Romanian-inhabited provinces, which at the time straddled three empires, Millo settled in Wallachia during 1852; he took charge of the Grand Theater in Bucharest, while also teaching at the Conservatory, and involved himself in the effort toward Moldo–Wallachian unification. He was a high-ranking Freemason, and as such involved in political intrigues before and during the creation of a Romanian Principality. Millo had renounced his boyar title and had championed the common folk, but, finding himself challenged by younger professionals such as Mihail Pascaly, fell back on conservative elitism. His conflict with Pascaly grew into a clash of philosophies and acting styles, particularly since his rival questioned the moral qualities of Millo's plays and revues. The aging Millo continuously promoted himself, including by having publicity images of himself taken by Carol Szathmari, or by claiming to be fighting government censorship. He was pushed into near-bankruptcy by his quarrels and the disdain of the Westernized theatergoers, though he still registered moral victories and gained an international following.
Millo returned to putting out nationalist propaganda during the Romanian war of independence, and subsequently reconciled with Pascaly—whom he eventually outlived. He remained unchallenged in the post-1881 Kingdom of Romania, which awarded him some high distinctions, and was upheld as a good example by the influential group of writers at Junimea. He was by then indigent, and only drew serious revenue from continuously touring. His physical decline visible to his audience, Millo died in 1896, shortly after one final performance at Iași—leaving a trove of unpublished manuscripts. While he did not receive formal accolades during the first half of the 20th century, he had some of his plays continuously performed; he was the object of a public cult under the communist regime, which regarded him as a critic of previous administrations. He endures in cultural memory mainly for having helped to limit the spread of neo-romanticism, and for having introduced his country to theatrical realism.
Biography
Origins and debut
Millo is conventionally said to have been born on the night of November 24–25, 1814, though he preferred November 24, "just before Saint Catherine's", as his official birthday; he also mentioned having been a premature baby. While he himself did not indicate the year, his biographer Ioan Massoff hypothesized that it was likely 1813, which is also used by writer Mihail Sadoveanu. His parents were Vasile Millo and Zamfira née Prăjescu, and his grandfather was the poet Matei Milu. The family practiced Eastern Orthodoxy, as subjects of the Moldavian Metropolis. Matei Jr had several sisters, who became nuns at Agapia and Văratec; he also had a brother, Alecu. Early newspaper reports have the actor as a native of Spătărești, in Suceava County, while Sadoveanu believes that Millo was born at Iași, the Moldavian capital, on what was already known as "Millo Street". Later biographies contrarily settle on the village of Stolniceni-Prăjescu, in Iași County, also rendered as "Stolnicești" in some accounts.The actor's paternal ancestors were French and Greek, active in the Danubian Principalities when these were still tributary states of the Ottoman Empire. His great-grandfather on that side was Jean Mille, who had worked as a Dragoman in 18th-century Moldavia before being raised into the local boyardom, and naturalized as "Enacache Mille". Matei's Moldavian mother belonged to a more ancient boyar clan, first attested in the 16th century. She had family on both sides of the new border with the Russian Empire, which in 1812 had annexed the principality's eastern half, organizing it as the "Bessarabia Governorate". Zamfira thus owned a Bessarabian estate at Stăuceni.
Always regarded as a member of the boyar class, young Matei was first educated by private tutors at Spătărești. As assessed by Sadoveanu, such schooling came late in childhood and was "rather superficial." He was later sent to Victor Quinem's boarding school in Iași. Though he only attended from 1833 to 1834, he became proficient in French, the language of instruction. He is believed to have debuted as an actor in April 1834, when he appeared in an amateur staging of Gheorghe Asachi's Serbarea Păstorilor Moldoveni. The show was honoring Pavel Kiselyov, who had been Russian overseer in the Danubian Principalities; Millo shared the stage with three future writers and politicians: Vasile Alecsandri, Costache Negri, Mihail Kogălniceanu. Millo alone drew praise from Moldavia's ruling Prince, Mihail Sturdza, who awarded him an engraved and gilded pocket watch. At least one manuscript of a play by Millo, called Sărbare ostășască, dates back to 1834—and was intended as an homage for Prince Sturdza's birthday. His formal debut as an author was with the play Un poet romantic, published in 1850 but dated by Sadoveanu to 1835. It constitutes a study of the conflict between the old society and the newer ideas brought in by Romanticism. Although performed at various intervals, it was never actually given a finishing touch, and is regarded by Negruzzi as an incomplete work.
Millo's embrace of acting was viewed as an embarrassment by his relatives, who once had him beat up in public in hopes of persuading him to reconsider. The young man was enrolled at the princely college, Academia Mihăileană, from 1835 to 1836. According to Sadoveanu, in 1835 he completed and staged two other plays, namely Postelnicul Sandu Curcă and Piatra Teiului. The latter, a musical with contributions by Elena Asachi, was performed for Sturdza at a manor in Horodniceni; it also marked Millo's much-lauded debut as a singer. In November 1840, Millo, having already left his family home, informed his father that he was leaving for Paris, in the Kingdom of France, together with a boyar friend, Nicu Mavrocordat. They only arrived at their destination in January of the following year. Living there to 1845, and mysteriously spelling his surname as "Millot", he studied theater, took private lessons, followed the great actors of the day and probably played minor roles with French troupes. Sadoveanu believes that he was also employed at the Théâtre du Vaudeville.
Vasile Millo had died in 1841, leaving Matei's maternal uncle, Iancu Prăjescu, as his children's main caretaker. In a review of their correspondence, genealogist Arthur Gorovei observed that Millo was explaining his studies of dramatic art as a valid career choice, since, upon his return to Moldavia, he could be assigned a state salaried job in that field; he was purposefully vague or "fantasizing", sometimes presenting himself as a student of engineering. Literary historian Claudia Dimiu suggests that Millo had claimed to be specializing in "political economy", and was receiving his stipend on a promise that he would graduate in that field. His protector was a distant relative, Ortansa the Countess Fallaux, who was also the object of his affection, and possibly his lover. Millo spent the entirety of his income and, at some point before August 1844, did time in the debtors' prison. To escape re-incarceration, he asked Prăjescu to send him large sums, threatening suicide. He promised to return home on repeated occasions, but complained that the money went toward curing his erysipelas.
First successes
Millo's passion for acting continued to annoy his aristocratic relatives, who were only placated when they obtained him employment as art director of the Iași National Theater, where he began serving on February 15, 1846. He shared the attributes of his office with Nicolae Șuțu, who had earned respect as a political writer. Their management was immediately criticized by a group of Romanian nationalists, including Nicolae Istrati, who objected that the first play taken up in production was an adaptation of Clarissa, done with an all-French troupe of actors. Millo was affected by this reaction, and commissioned Asachi to write a Moldavian-themed play that could satisfy the public. Șuțu withdrew from the enterprise soon after, and Millo took over as the more senior manager, supervising Victor Boireaux Delmary, who had been called in to handle French-language productions. He also employed Alexandru Flechtenmacher as a bandmaster. Now legally emancipated, in March 1846 Millo started a dispute with Prăjescu over the remainder of his estate; it emerged at the time that he had single-handedly spent most of the family income, including all revenue produced by the estates of Spătărești and Stăuceni, on his personal expenses in Paris. Spătărești went to Matei's brother.Upon his return from Paris, Millo reportedly brought in a "case filled with plays, roles, wigs, costumes, makeup and many other of the minuscule tools of the theatrical art". He himself performed only occasionally, as an unpaid amateur—critic Iacob Negruzzi reports seeing him in 1847, when the Iași troupe organized a benefit show for survivors of the great fire which had ravaged the Wallachian capital, Bucharest. Various scholars read such performances as already professional, and indicate his debut as occurring even earlier, on March 1, 1847. He explored taboos, and riled up boyars in the audience, with the piece Mulatrul. This work indirectly referred to the fate of Romanies, most of whom were slaves of the boyars, by having them compared to Black slaves in the US. Mulatrul was performed in October 1847, and resulted in the National Theater being closed down by Prince Sturdza; Millo lost his position to the more obedient B. Luzzatti, and was retained only as an actor and stage director. In 1848, he returned as Chir Găitanis in Alecsandri's comedy, Nuntă țărănească; the production generated publicity by having boyaresses appear in traditional peasant clothes.
One contemporary account, by Andrieș Bașotă, informs that Millo conspired with other youths, including Kogălniceanu, Negri, and Alecsandri, in fomenting the liberal uprising of March 1848; surrounded in Alecu Mavrocordat's home by the Sturdza loyalists, he only narrowly managed to evade arrest. As noted by actor Mihail Belador, Millo himself had embraced nationalism, and, after the abortive revolution, found ways around state censorship for the circulation of national ideas. He opened in December 1848 with his own comédie en vaudevilles, Nișcorescu, which was a major hit. According to Sadoveanu, it broke with the traditions inaugurated by Costache Caragiale—in that it no longer relied on overacted renditions of texts by Caragiale and Costache Aristia, and had embraced modern tastes. Also that month, Millo followed up with Baba Hârca, set to Flechtenmacher's melodies and largely inspired by tales of Gypsy witchcraft. It is remembered as the first-ever Romanian operetta. He appeared as the titular character, in travesti as a Romani hag; his performance and the text, which used accessible Romanian, drew in crowds from all across town, unusually including members of the lower classes. The songs in particular were widely circulated after being published in Anton Pann's sheet music collection, Spitalul amorului. However, ethnographer Ioan Pop-Curșeu argues that the play was essentially supportive of racial and class segregation, its message amounting to: "it does not do for Gypsies to go against a nobleman."
Millo was selected by Alecsandri to star as Coana Chirița, another travesti act, in a series of highly successful comedies, which Millo also produced and premiered. His performance was widely regarded as a masterclass in visual humor, since the audience habitually burst out laughing before he had recited his first line. In 1850, despite renewed anger from his family and fellow boyars, Millo opted to turn professional, and proceeded to tour the Moldavian and Wallachian towns. Upon crossing the border at the Milcov, he was retained for a while. Some accounts suggest that he was being persecuted by the Moldavian authorities, possibly instigated by rival actors from Wallachia, who refused to stamp his passport until reported on by indignant newspapers. He had taken with him his entire troupe, including future celebrities such as Neculai Luchian and Elena Theodorini. As they waited to be allowed their crossing, they improvised a theater from one of Focșani's trading-posts, and staged subversive, "national" plays for a delighted audience. Millo then took Coana Chirița to Bucharest's Bossel Hall, premiering it on August 5, 1850. This performance was the first in Wallachia's history to require three encores. Beginning in 1851, Millo staged numerous performances for the Romanians living under Imperial Austrian rule in Transylvania and Bukovina—as noted by writer Camil Baltazar, he effectively established a "cultural embassy" to these territories. Some Bessarabians also report that Millo and his troupe came to Kishinev, though no contemporary trace of this has been found.
Millo was much loved by the Romanian-speaking public for his repertoire, in which Alecsandri's comedies featured most prominently, and for his playing style, comically realist, with touches of gravity. As Negruzzi notes, his contribution in this area saw him appearing as "original types from all our social classes". He was by then the only producer whom Alecsandri still agreed to work with, but also staged French comedies translated by the Countess Fallaux. He was also experimenting as a lyrical poet, albeit less known in the field: in 1851, he produced a romantic piece dedicated to Neamț Citadel; it survived in a copy made by Alecsandri, who much admired it. Finding solidarity with his more destitute spectators, Millo openly renounced all claims to a boyar's title and privilege.