Antoine Kerbaj has folded his giant wings. At the end of a life filled with great roles and tirades, the great actor, whose presence and elocution made the stage vibrate and the screens burst into life, has passed away discreetly, almost furtively.

During this last decade, his presence in the world had slowly faded, his voice became muffled, his powerful gaze turned towards this parallel world where Alzheimer's was gradually taking him away. Until the end, however, his words, his sentences, retained that incomparable diction that made him the magnificent embodiment of stage art for almost five decades in Lebanon.

History buff and Napoleon fan

Born in 1935 in Zabougha, a village in Metn, at the time still without electricity or telephone lines, Kerbaj created his childhood games by composing sketches from the age of 9, distributing roles to his group of friends. Although he dreamed of conquering the Beirut stage, the young boy remained studious and serious. Passionate about history, he was captivated by great historical figures, both Lebanese patriotic figures and Napoleon Bonaparte. When it came to choosing a career, he first began studying law, eventually graduating with a degree in history from Saint Joseph University, a subject he would teach for a time.

The years of Shakespeare, Sartre and Ionesco

In 1960, when Mounir Abou Debs, freshly returned from the Sorbonne Paris, founded the Institute of Modern Theatre in Beirut at the instigation of the Baalbeck Festival, the very young history and geography teacher could not resist the temptation of acting and joined, every evening, the core of aspiring actors who gravitated in the orbit of the author and director. It was only after two years that the latter noticed him and entrusted him with the Arabic translation and interpretation of the title role of Shakespeare's Macbeth. With his tall stature and stentorian voice, Kerbaj took on the role superbly. From then on, his life took a new turn. Knighted by the leading figures of the theatre world of the time, he moved in the circle of Antoine and Latifeh Moultaka, joined Berge Fazlian's troupe and performed in almost all the great works of the world repertoire, adapted into Arabic (and often translated by him) during these effervescent Lebanese sixties. To his credit, Sartre's The Flies and Ionesco's The King is Dying, as well as Goethe's Faust and Sophocles' Antigone and Oedipus the King.

Both a Rahbani actor and Victor Hugo's Jean Valjean

Alongside this intellectual and elitist register, Kerbaj would broaden his acting range by collaborating with the Rahbani – after having played, in 1967 with Feyrouz in the film Safar Barlek by Henri Barakat. Fiercely patriotic and driven by the desire to defend popular works, in the noble sense of the term, he would play several Rahbanian roles: That of the "wali" in Sah al-Nom; the Roman legionary in Petra; Professor Assaf in Saif 840 (Summer of 840); or the bandit in al-Mahata (The Station) in 1974. The same year, he also played Jean Valjean in a Lebanese television adaptation of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, proving, if proof were still needed, the versatility of his skills, culture and talent.

In 1966, his path crossed that of Laure Ghorayeb, an artist and art critic with a fiery temperament to match his own. She would become his alter ego, his wife and the mother of his three children, Walid, Roula, and Mazen. Having passed away two years earlier, she watched over the "King" like a lioness until the very end. This designation was also given to him by his son, the illustrator Mazen Kerbaj, who dedicated a graphic biographical series entitled Antoine to him at Samandal Publishing.

Kerbaj was the king of the Lebanese stage. He was the leading star of the stage and television works of Antoine Ghandour, Maroun Abboud, Yacoub al-Shedrawi, Issam Mahfouz, Berge Fazlian and Jalal Khoury, he alternated the imposing historical figures that he loved to portray so much, the dark and political dramas, with lighter roles. He knew how to put his talent, his panache, his voice and his phrasing recognizable among a thousand to the service of the texts of the greatest Lebanese playwrights and directors such as Musicals, those of Romeo Lahoud, of Caracalla, and of Rahbani.

"His name has become synonymous with rhetoric, loquacity," said the critic Nazih Khater in a tribute to him by the Cultural Movement of Antelias in 2001.

'His voice and physique distinguished him from everyone else'

"He was unlike any other. His voice and physique set him apart from everyone else, and his exceptional acting skills made him stand out from the rest," said actress and director of the al-Madina theater Nidal al-Ashqar, his friend and partner in Hamlet by Mounir Abou Debs, presented as part of the Baalbeck Festival, and Abu Ali al-Asmarani, by Berge Fazalian.

From his dazzling theatrical and television career, which spanned from Lebanon's golden age until 2005, and developed from Beirut theaters to the greatest festivals in the Arab world and beyond the oceans (Baalbeck, Beiteddine, but also Cairo, Baghdad, London, Los Angeles and Montreal), Kerbaj left the memory of a legendary actor. A man of courage and tenacity who stops at nothing. And who will remain in the memories as the incarnation of the hero, the Lebanese Abaday with the dark eye and the proud mustache. In the image of Youssef Beyk Karam whom he played in the eponymous play by his friend Antoine Ghandour, of Geha, emblematic national hero, priceless entertainer between laughter and tears, or of Barbar Agha, this rebel against all submission.

Such was Antoine Kerbaj. This "young boy [who] fulfilled his dream. And who became a giant of the stage," to use the words of Khater.

This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.