RACHEL (1821-1858), French actress, whose real name was Elizabeth Felix, the daughter of poor Jew pedlars, was born on Feb. 28, 1821, at Mumpf, in the canton of Aargau, Switzerland. At Reims she and her elder sister, Sophia, afterwards known as Sarah, joined a troupe of Italian children who made their living by singing in the cafes, Sarah singing and Elizabeth, then only four years of age, collecting the coppers. In 183o they came to Paris, where they sang in the streets, Rachel giving such patriotic songs as the Parisienne and the Marseillaise with a rude but precocious energy which evoked an abundant shower of coppers. Etienne Choron undertook to give the two sisters gratuitous instruction, and after his death in 1833 they were received into the Conservatoire. Rachel made her first appearance at the Gymnase in Paul Duport's La V endeenne on April 4, 1837, with only mediocre success. On June 12, 1838, she made her debut at the Theatre Francais, as Camille in Corneille's Horace, when her remarkable genius at once received general recognition. In the same year she won a great triumph as Roxane in Racine's Bajazet, but it was in Phedre, which she first played on Jan. 21, 1843, that her peculiar gifts were most strikingly manifested. Her range of characters was limited, but within it she was unsur passable. She excelled in the impersonation of evil or malig
nant passion, in her presentation of which there was a majesty and dignity which fascinated while it repelled. By careful training her voice, originally hard and harsh, had become flexible and melodious, and its low and muffled notes under the influence of passion possessed a penetrating quality that was irresistible. Per haps her most successful appearance in plays by contemporary i authors was in 1849 in Scribe and Legouve's Adrienne Lecouvreur, which was written for her. In 1841 and in 1842 she visited London, where her interpretations of Corneille and Racine were the sensation of the season. In 1855 she made a tour in the United States with comparatively small success, but her powers had begun to deteriorate. She died of consumption at Cannet, near Nice, on Jan. 4, 1858, and was buried in the Jewish part of the cemetery of Pere Lachaise in Paris. Rachel's third sister was Lia Felix (q.v.).
See Jules G. Janin, Rachel et la tragedie (1858) ; Mrs. Arthur Kennard, Rachel (Boston, i888) ; A. de Faucigny-Lucinge, Rachel et son temps (Iwo) ; L. Barthou, Rachel (1926) ; J. Agate, Rachel (1928).