FECHTER, Diet CHART.ES ALBERT (1821• 79). A noted actor. Ile was born probably in bilidon (tinnigh accounts from another source say Paris). his father being of Hermon and his mother of Italian descent. Ile was educated in France, and in 1810 appeared in private theatri cabs; in IS41 he went with a strolling company to Italy, returning to Paris the smug year and entering the Conservatoire with a view to the Thatre Francais. At the same time he stud ied sculpture, but gave it up for the stage, and in I511 made his debut at the 'fh(•:ttre Fran (;:iis as Sefde in Voltaire's ilahowel. Afterwards he played in Berlin, and in 1847 took a French company to London. In 1847 he married Mlle. Ehlonore Rabin, a French actress of note. (She died in 1895.) From 1848 to 1860 he was the reigning favorite in Paris. lie was the original Armand Duval in La dame aux camelias, in which part lie won remarkable success. In 1860 he made his first appearance in English drama in London, in Ray Bias, following with Corsican Brothers, Don Ct'Sqr de Baran, Hamlet, Othello, Bel Detn(mio, and other plays, among them an adaptation of his own called Rouge et Noir.
While not altogether at home on the English stage, Fechter showed himself capable of appre ciating the difficulties lie had to contend with, and, in sonic measure, of surmounting them. His impersonation of flanilut was, upon the whole, one that marked him as an actor of very high powers.. For a time lie was the lessee of the Lyceum Theatre, playing the chief parts in most of the pieces produced. In 1870 he came to the United States, where, except for a brief return to England two years later, he thence forward remained. Ile met with great success as an actor, particularly in Boston; but his im perious temper made him so many enemies that his attempts to manage theatres in both Boston and New York were speedy failures. in 1874, though his first wife was still living, he was married to Lizzie Price, an American actress frith whom he had appeared in New York. In 1876, after an accident which somewhat disabled him, he retired to a farm near Quakertown, Pa., where he died. Consult Field, Charles Albert Pechter (Boston, 1882).