A Mythic Phèdre
Silvia Monfort figures among the most important performers of Phèdre. Notably, she had as a partner in the role of Theseus Jean-Claude Drouot or of course Alain Cuny in the theatre and in a televised version in 1982.
A study by the CNRS about the great tragediennes who have incarnated this character in the 20th century was published in Pour la Science, the French version of Scientific American. This study analyzed the relationship between the pauses and the versified text as well as the fluctuations in delivery and demonstrated that Silvia Monfort made the most important use of them (92% of pauses and 3.8 syllables/minute) in relation to other tragic actresses (Sarah Bernhardt, Marie Bell, Nada Strancar and Natacha Amal); this characteristic of her acting contributed to give Silvia Monfort's interpretation an exceptional quality of psychological depth and emotion which made a success out of her.
She herself said of her character in 1973: "Phèdre burns in each one of us. We have hardly grasped the image in the mirror when she dims, and the imminence of this obliteration sharpens the acuteness of the reflection What matters is that there has been a meeting in mystery even from the first reading. It is like desire, or rather it is present in the look that provokes it, or rather there will never be unison. All the opinions, competent, imperious, singular, that were offered to me on the subject of Phèdre, and to which I listened intensely, had no other result with me than to lead me back to my Phèdre, despite her long being hazy, with the obviousness of a pawn moving back to the first square on a board game this is the wonder of Phèdre: to tackle it is to resign oneself to it."
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