La Dame aux Camélias

La Dame aux Camélias

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

For other uses, see The Lady of the Camellias (disambiguation).

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

The Lady of the Camellias
Poster for a performance of the theatrical version, with Sarah Bernhardt (1896)
Written by	Alexandre Dumas, fils
Date premiered	2 February 1852 (1852-02-02)
Place premiered	Théâtre du Vaudeville, Paris, France
Original language	French
Genre	Drama

La Dame aux Camélias (literally The Lady with the Camellias, commonly known in English as Camille) is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils, first published in 1848, and subsequently adapted by Dumas for the stage. La Dame aux Camélias premiered at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris, France on February 2, 1852. The play was an instant success, and Giuseppe Verdi immediately set about putting the story to music. His work became the 1853 opera La Traviata, with the female protagonist, Marguerite Gautier, renamed Violetta Valéry.

In the English-speaking world, La Dame aux Camélias became known as Camille and 16 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 author Dumas, fils.^[1]

Contents

 [hide] 

• 1 Summary and analysis
• 2 Stage performances
• 3 Adaptations
  • 3.1 Opera
  • 3.2 Film
    • 3.2.1 Films entitled Camille
    • 3.2.2 Other films based on La Dame aux Camélias
  • 3.3 Ballet
  • 3.4 Stage
  • 3.5 Other novels
• 4 References
• 5 External links

Summary and analysis[edit]

Marie Duplessis

Illustration by Albert Lynch

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.^[2] Marguerite is nicknamed la dame aux camélias (French for 'the lady of the camellias') because she wears a red camellia when she's menstruating and unavailable for making love and a white camelia when she is available to her lovers.^[3]

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. Up until Marguerite's death, Armand believes that she left him for another man. Marguerite's death is described as an unending agony, during which Marguerite, abandoned by everyone, regrets what might have been.^[3]

The story is narrated after Marguerite's death by two male narrators, Armand and an unnamed frame narrator. Some scholars believe that Marguerite's illness and Duplessis's publicized cause of death, "consumption", was a 19th-century euphemism for syphilis.^[2] 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 the Chevalier des Grieux's love for Manon in Manon Lescaut (1731), a French 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[edit]

Eugénie Doche created the role of Marguerite Gautier in 1852

America's most famous interpreter, Clara Morris as Camille (1874)

Sarah Bernhardt as Marguerite Gautier (1882)

Dumas wrote a stage adaptation that premiered February 2, 1852, at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris. Eugénie Doche 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 wrote in his preface, 'Mme. Doche is not my interpreter, she is my collaborator'."^[4]

In 1853, Jean Davenport starred in the first United States 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.^[5]:115

The role of the tragic Marguerite Gautier became one of the most coveted amongst actresses and included performances by Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, Margaret Anglin, Gabrielle Réjane, Tallulah Bankhead, Lillian Gish, Dolores del Río, Eva Le Gallienne, Isabelle Adjani, Cacilda Becker, and Helena Modrzejewska. Bernhardt quickly became associated with the role after starring in Camellias in Paris, London, and several Broadway revivals, plus the 1911 film. Dancer/Impresario Ida Rubinstein successfully recreated Bernhardt's interpretation of the role onstage in the mid-1920s, coached by the great actress herself before she died.

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".^[6]

Adaptations[edit]

Opera[edit]

Fanny Salvini-Donatelli, the first Violetta in La traviata (1853)

The success of the play inspired Giuseppe Verdi to put the story to music. His work became the 1853 opera La traviata, set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. The female protagonist, Marguerite Gautier, is renamed Violetta Valéry.

Film[edit]

Sarah Bernhardt in the 1911 French film adaptation, with André Calmettes

Clara Kimball Young in Camille (1915)

Theda Bara in Camille (1917)

Alla Nazimova in Camille (1921)

Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor in Camille (1936)

La Dame aux Camélias has been adapted for some 20 different motion pictures in numerous countries and in a wide variety of languages. The role of Marguerite Gautier^[7] has been played on screen by Sarah Bernhardt, María Félix, Clara Kimball Young, Theda Bara, Yvonne Printemps, Alla Nazimova, Greta Garbo, Micheline Presle, Francesca Bertini, Isabelle Huppert, and others.

Films entitled Camille[edit]

There have been at least nine adaptations of La Dame aux Camélias entitled Camille.

• Camille (1915), an American silent film adapted by Frances Marion, directed by Albert Capellani, starring Clara Kimball Young as Camille and Paul Capellani as Armand
• Camille (1917), an American silent film adapted by Adrian Johnson, directed by J. Gordon Edwards, starring Theda Bara as Camille and Alan Roscoe as Armond
• Camille (1921), an American silent film starring Alla Nazimova as Camille and Rudolph Valentino as Armand
• Camille (1926), an American silent film directed by Fred Niblo, starring Norma Talmadge as Camille and Gilbert Roland as Armand
• Camille: The Fate of a Coquette (1926), an American short film by Ralph Barton, compiled from his home movies, loosely based on La Dame aux Camélias
• Camille (1936), an American film directed by George Cukor, starring Greta Garbo as Camille and Robert Taylor as Armand
• Camille 2000 (1969), an Italian film adapted by Michael DeForrest, directed by Radley Metzger, starring Danièle Gaubert as Marguerite and Nino Castelnuovo as Armand
• 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
• Camille (1984), a television film adapted by Blanche Hanalis, directed by Desmond Davis, starring Greta Scacchi as Camille and Colin Firth as Armand

Other films based on La Dame aux Camélias[edit]

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.
• La Dame aux Camélias, a 1911 French language silent film, directed by André Calmettes and Henri Pouctal. It stars Sarah Bernhardt.
• La Signora delle Camelie, a 1915 Italian language silent film. It was directed by Baldassarre Negroni. It stars Hesperia, Alberto Collo and Ida Carloni Talli.
• La Signora delle Camelie, a 1915 Italian language silent film. It was directed by Gustavo Serena. It stars Francesca Bertini and Serena.
• Arme Violetta (1920), a German language silent film starring Pola Negri.
• Damen med kameliorna, a 1925 Swedish language film adapted and directed by Olof Molander, starring Uno Henning and Tora Teje.
• La Dame aux Camélias (1934), the first sound adaptation, was a French language film adapted by Abel Gance and directed by Gance and Fernand Rivers. It starred Yvonne Printemps and Pierre Fresnay.
• 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.
• Camelia, a 1952 Mexican film directed by Roberto Gavaldón, and stars María Félix.
• La Dame aux Camélias, a 1953 French language film adapted by Jacques Natanson and directed by Raymond Bernard, starring Gino Cervi, Micheline Presle and Roland Alexandre.
• 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.
• Ahed El Hawa, a 1955 Egyptian film adaptation starring Mariam Fakhr El Dine.
• Kamelyalı Kadın, 1957 Turkish film starring Çolpan İlhan.^[8]
• Camelle 2000, a 1969 film, starring Danièle Gaubert.
• The Lady of the Camellias, a 1976 UK television serial, starring Kate Nelligan.
• La Dame aux Camélias, a 1981 French language film adapted by Jean Aurenche, Enrico Medioli and Vladimir Pozner, and directed by Mauro Bolognini. It stars Isabelle Huppert.
• Dama Kameliowa , a 1994 Polish language film
• Moulin Rouge!, a 2001 film by Baz Luhrmann, loosely based on the story, with Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor in lead roles.^[9]

Ballet[edit]

• Lady of the Camellias is a ballet by John Neumeier with music by Frédéric Chopin, created for Marcia Haydée, then prima ballerina of the Stuttgart Ballet. It premiered at the Staatstheater Stuttgart in 1978.^[10]

• 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.
• Marguerite and Armand is an adaptation created in 1963 by renowned choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton specifically for Rudolf Nureyev and prima ballerina assoluta Dame Margot Fonteyn.
• Veronica Paeper created a ballet Camille based on The Lady of the Camellias which has been staged several times since 1990.^[11]

Stage[edit]

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

In 1999 Alexia Vassiliou collaborated with composer Aristides Mytaras for the contemporary dance performance, La Dame aux Camélias at the Amore Theatre in Athens.

It is also the inspiration for the 2008 musical Marguerite,^[12] which places the story in 1944 German-occupied France.

Other novels[edit]

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.