The Lady of the Camellias (French: La Dame aux Camélias), sometimes called in English Camille, is a novel by Alexandre Dumas fils. First published in 1848 and subsequently adapted by Dumas for the stage, the play premiered at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris, France, on February 2, 1852. It was an instant success. Shortly thereafter, Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi set about putting the story to music in the 1853 opera La traviata, with female protagonist Marguerite Gautier renamed Violetta Valéry.
In some of the English-speaking world, The Lady of the Camellias became known as Camille, and sixteen versions have been performed at Broadway theatres alone. The title character is Marguerite Gautier, who is based on Marie Duplessis, the real-life lover of the author.[5]
Written by Alexandre Dumas fils (1824–1895) when he was 23 years old, and first published in 1848, La Dame aux Camélias is a semi-autobiographical novel based on the author's brief love affair with a courtesan, Marie Duplessis. Set in mid-19th-century France, the novel tells the tragic love story between fictional characters Marguerite Gautier, a demimondaine or courtesan suffering from consumption, and Armand Duval, a young bourgeois.[6] Marguerite is nicknamed la dame aux camélias (French for 'the lady of the camellias') because she wears a red camellia when she is menstruating and unavailable for sex and a white camellia when she is available to her lovers.[7]
Armand falls in love with Marguerite and ultimately becomes her lover. He convinces her to leave her life as a courtesan and to live with him in the countryside. This idyllic existence is interrupted by Armand's father, who, concerned with the scandal created by the illicit relationship, and fearful that it will destroy Armand's sister's chances of marriage, convinces Marguerite to leave. Until Marguerite is on her deathbed, Armand believes that she left him for another man, known as Count de Giray. He comes to her side as she is dying, surrounded by her friends, and pledges to love her even after her death.[7]
The story is narrated after Marguerite's death by two men, Armand and an unnamed frame narrator. Near the beginning of the novel, the narrator finds out that Armand has been sending camellia flowers to Marguerite's grave, to show that his love for her will never die.
Some scholars believe that both the fictional Marguerite's illness and real life Duplessis's publicized cause of death, "consumption", was a 19th-century euphemism for syphilis,[6] as opposed to the more common meaning of tuberculosis.
Dumas fils is careful to paint a favourable portrait of Marguerite, who despite her past is rendered virtuous by her love for Armand, and the suffering of the two lovers, whose love is shattered by the need to conform to the morals of the times, is rendered touchingly. In contrast to the Chevalier des Grieux's love for Manon in Manon Lescaut (1731), a novel by Abbé Prévost referenced at the beginning of La Dame aux Camélias, Armand's love is for a woman who is ready to sacrifice her riches and her lifestyle for him, but who is thwarted by the arrival of Armand's father. The novel is also marked by the description of Parisian life during the 19th century and the fragile world of the courtesan.[citation needed]
Stage performances
Eugénie Doche created the role of Marguerite Gautier in 1852Eleonora Duse as Marguerite Gautier, late 19th century
America's most famous interpreter, Clara Morris as Camille (1874)
Dumas fils wrote a stage adaptation that premiered February 2, 1852, at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris. Eugénie Doche [fr] created the role of Marguerite Gautier, opposite Charles Fechter as Armand Duval. "I played the role 617 times," Doche recalled not long before her death in 1900, "and I suppose I could not have played it very badly, since Dumas fils wrote in his preface, 'Mme. Doche is not my interpreter, she is my collaborator'."[8]
In 1853, Jean Davenport starred in the first American production of the play, a sanitized version that changed the name of the leading character to Camille—a practice adopted by most American actresses playing the role.[9]: 115
Of all Dumas fils's theatrical works, La Dame aux Camélias is the most popular around the world. In 1878, Scribner's Monthly reported that "not one other play by Dumas fils has been received with favor out of France".[10]
The success of the play inspired Giuseppe Verdi to put the story to music. His work became the opera La traviata, set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. On March 6, 1853, La traviata opened in Venice, Italy at the La Fenice opera house.[11] The female protagonist, Marguerite Gautier, is renamed Violetta Valéry, and the male protagonist, Armand Duval, is renamed Alfredo Germont.
Film
Sarah Bernhardt in the 1911 French film adaptation, with André Calmettes
Camille (1981), commonly known as La Dame aux Camélias or Lady of the Camellias (Italian: La storia vera della signora dalle camelie, lit. 'the true story of the lady of the camellias'), a French-Italian film directed by Mauro Bolognini, starring Isabelle Huppert as Alphonsine
In addition to the Camille films, the story has been the adapted into numerous other screen versions:
Kameliadamen, the first movie based on the work. Kameliadamen was a 1907 Danish silent film directed by Viggo Larsen and starring Oda Alstrup, Larsen, Gustave Lund and Robert Storm Petersen.
A 1944 Spanish-language version was produced in Mexico. It was adapted by Roberto Tasker, directed by Gabriel Soria, and starred Lina Montes and Emilio Tuero.
La mujer de las camelias, a 1954 Argentine film adapted by Alexis de Arancibia (as Wassen Eisen) and Ernesto Arancibia, and directed by Ernesto Arancibia. It stars Zully Moreno.
Lady of the Camellias is a ballet by Val Caniparoli with music by Frédéric Chopin. It premiered with Ballet Florida at the Raymond Kravis Center in 1994.
Veronica Paeper created a ballet Camille based on The Lady of the Camellias which has been staged several times since 1990.[14]
Stage
Amongst many adaptations, spin-offs, and parodies, was Camille, "a travesty on La Dame aux Camellias by Charles Ludlam, staged first by his own Ridiculous Theatrical Company in 1973, with Ludlam playing the lead in drag.[15]
In 1999 Alexia Vassiliou collaborated with composer Aristides Mytaras for the contemporary dance performance, La Dame aux Camélias at the Amore Theatre in Athens.[citation needed]
In My Ántonia by Willa Cather, the characters Jim Burden and Lena Lingard are much moved by a theatrical production of Camille, which they attend in book 3, chapter 3.[citation needed]Love Story, published by Eric Segal in 1970, has essentially the same plot updated to contemporary New York. The conflict here centres on the relative economic classes of the central characters.[citation needed]
^Thorold, W. J.; Hornblow (Jr), Arthur; Maxwell, Perriton; Beach, Stewart (October 1901). "The First Lady with the Camelias". Theatre Magazine. pp. 14–16. Retrieved 2017-05-12.
^Ferguson, Stephanie (14 February 2005). "La Traviata". Guardian. London. Retrieved 11 December 2010. Staged as La Traviata for Northern Ballet Theatre in Leeds, UK in 2005.
.jpg)
.jpg)
