Georgette Leblanc

Georgette Leblanc was a French soprano, actor, memoirist, and writer whose career joined opera, theater, film, and literature. The Choice of Life, translated from French by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, explores women’s emotional lives through a narrator’s encounter with Rose and her desire to guide the younger woman toward greater freedom. The Blue Bird for Children occupies a more collaborative place in Leblanc’s bibliography. She reshaped Maurice Maeterlinck’s play about Tyltyl and Mytyl’s search for happiness into a prose story for children; Teixeira de Mattos translated it, and Frederick Orville Perkins later edited a school edition. Leblanc had a long personal and artistic partnership with Maeterlinck and performed roles connected with his drama, alongside appearances in works by composers including Massenet and Dukas. She also starred in the 1924 film L’Inhumaine and wrote autobiographical works. Her two listed books show different sides of that varied practice: one develops her own reflective fiction, while the other translates theatrical symbolism into a form intended for younger readers.