Splendors and Miseries: Balzac and Lost Illusions at the Molière Month

Paris can build reputations as quickly as it tears them down... Splendors and Miseries, a play adaptation of Lost Illusions by Honoré de Balzac, is staged in the Court of the Grand Stables on June 11 and 12, 2026 at 8:30 PM, as part of the Mois Molière. A production directed by Paul Platel, in collaboration with Laure Sauret, tracing the journey of Lucien Chardon, a young ambitious man who comes to Paris to claim his place in the literary and social world.

The plot follows Lucien Chardon, a provincial from Angoulême who longs to write, to be recognised, and to rise socially. To get closer to the aristocracy, he adopts the surname Rubempré and heads for Paris, where salons, journalism, and influential networks initially fling open doors for him. But this rapid ascent rests on unstable ground: money, deals, rivalries, and profit-driven logic gradually turn his ambitions into a trap.

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The play revisits a sweeping Balzacian impulse: the journey of a young man who thinks he’s stepping into the world of letters and discovers a system where the value of a writer’s work depends as much on what it can earn. The production tackles social and political themes tied to the Restoration, yet they remain strikingly legible today: the manufacture of fame, the influence of the press, class dynamics, the seduction of power, and the gradual erasure of ideals. The cast brings together Marianne Giropoulos, Gaëtan Poubangui, Nicolas Katsiapis, Manon Xardel, Jason Marcelin Gabriel and Willy Maupetit.

With Splendors and Miseries, Lucien’s story shifts from a simple personal arc to a portrait of a society that can promise a lot and then ruthlessly reclaim what it once seemed to offer. The question remains: in a world where success is earned through exposure, alliances, and compromises, what becomes of the dreams we carried before entering it?

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