French actor and director, lover of poetry and music, born in La Broque on 1st January 1925. Having been awarded for comedy and tragedy at the Conservatoire de Paris (1944), he won an engagement from Comédie Française, where he had his début in the title role of Victor Hugo’s Ruy Blas, and in 1953 was granted the ‘sociétaire’ status. The long list of roles played by the artist for Comédie-Française covers both works by classics including Corneille, Racine, Molière and Marivaux, and contemporary works by Claudel, Giraudoux, and Pirandello. Eagerly entrusted with playing Shakespearian characters, the artist was also the youngest ever actor to play Cyrano de Bergerac in Rostand’s play.
Leaving Comédie Française in 1972, Deiber remained sociétaire honoraire, which allowed him to continue performing for them. Yet Deiber’s life was more and more inspired and engaged by his passion for music, which made him direct The Barber of Seville at the Opéra Comique in Paris already in 1956. The play was soon followed by other productions including Puccini’s Triptych and The Marriage of Figaro. His later productions included Medea and Benvenuto Cellini at Palais Garnier, and collaboration with the San Carlo opera theatre in Naples. Among other plays at the Metropolitan Opera, Paul-Émile Deiber directed Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette, Bellini’s Norma and Massenet’s Werther. Besides these, he collaborated with theatres in Chicago, San Francisco, Brussels, Geneva, Vienna, Nice, Lyon and Bordeaux, and a number of Japanese theatres. On his artistic path, he encountered many eminent conductors, including Georges Prêtre, Molinari Pradelli, Seiji Ozawa, Richard Bonynge, Colin Davis, Alberto Erede, Karl Böhm, and Christoph Eschenbach, and the brightest stars of the opera including Luciano Pavarotti and Montserrat Caballé to mention a few.
In the years 1985–1990, he was the director of Théâtre de Boulogne-Billancourt. He adapted Schiller’s Maria Stuart to the needs of television. At Comédie-Française he wrote La Troupe du Roy in tribute to Molière.