French postcard. 1910s. Cliché Félix, No. 6. Madeleine Roch as the Tragic Muse in the play Les Cloches de Port Royal at the Comedie Francaise in Paris. This picture was also used in the , French magazine "Le Theatre" of March 1912. Madeleine Roch (1883–1930) was a reputed French 'tragédienne' from the Comédie Française, who between 1909 and 1913 acted in a series of 11 film d'art-like historical films at Pathé Frères, such as the Tolstoy adaptation Résurrection (1909), Messaline (Ferdinand Zecca and Henri Andréani, 1910), Cléopâtre (Zecca and Andréani, 1910), Moïse sauvé des eaux (Henri Andréani, 1911), Radgrune (Camille de Morlhon, 1911), and Une intrigue à la cour d’Henry VIII (De Morlhon, 1911). Madeleine Roch entered the Comédie-Française in 1903 and was Sociétaire there between 1912 and 1930. Her quitting of film acting in 1912 may have had to do with becoming sociétaire. She was in particular a performer of the plays of Jean Racine, such as Andromaque, Brittanicus, and Phèdre, and Greek tragedy. At the open air Théâtre des Arènes in Béziers, she starred in e.g. Le premier glaive (1908), La fille du soleil (1909), Héliogabale (1910), and Les esclaves (1910). In 1930 Roch gave her last stage performance. She died in the same year.
