| Bianca Castafiore | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Casterman (Belgium) |
| First appearance | King Ottokar's Sceptre (1939) The Adventures of Tintin |
| Created by | Hergé |
| In-story information | |
| Full name | Bianca Castafiore |
| Partnerships | List of main characters |
| Supporting character of | Tintin |
Bianca Castafiore (Italian pronunciation:[ˈbjaŋkakastaˈfjoːre]), nicknamed the "MilaneseNightingale" (French:le Rossignol milanais), is a fictional character inThe Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonistHergé. She is an opera singer who frequently pops up in adventure after adventure. While famous and revered the world over, most of the main characters find her voice shrill and appallingly loud, most notablyCaptain Haddock, who ironically is the object of Castafiore's affections. She also has a habit of mispronouncing everyone's names (such as "Hammock", "Paddock", and "Fatstock" for Haddock), with the exception ofTintin and her personal assistants. Castafiore is comically portrayed as narcissistic, whimsical, absent-minded, and talkative, but often shows a more generous and essentially amiable side, in addition to an iron will.
Hergiven name means "white" (feminine) inItalian, and hersurname is Italian for "chaste flower". She first appeared in 1939, but from the 1950s, Hergé partially remodelled her after the Greek sopranoMaria Callas.[1]
The comical Italianopera diva first appears inKing Ottokar's Sceptre, and is also inThe Seven Crystal Balls,The Calculus Affair,The Castafiore Emerald,The Red Sea Sharks,Tintin and the Picaros, and would have appeared in the unfinishedTintin and Alph-Art. She is played on radio inLand of Black Gold and inTintin in Tibet, Captain Haddock imagines her singing inFlight 714 to Sydney, and mentions her famous aria inDestination Moon. Although she is apparently one of the leadingopera singers of her generation, the only thing that Castafiore is ever heard to sing are a few lines of her signature aria, "The Jewel Song" (l'air des bijoux, fromGounod'sFaust), always at ear-splitting volume (and violent force—certainly enough to part the Captain's hair, shatter glasses and a breeze enough to blow back a curtain in anopera box—"She's in fine voice tonight.").
When on tour, she usually travels with her piano accompanist,Igor Wagner, and her maid,Irma.At odds with her reputation as a leading opera singer, inThe Seven Crystal Balls, she appears third on the bill of a variety show (although at an opera house), following a genuineclairvoyant act and a knife thrower (revealed to beGeneral Alcazar), and preceding a magician. She is depicted as a preening, melodramatic diva, although she has a kind heart. InThe Calculus Affair, for example, she provides a diversion to distract the sinisterColonel Sponsz so thatTintin andCaptain Haddock can escape and rescue their friendCalculus. A recurring comic trope in the series is Haddock's aversion to Castafiore, who can never remember his name (addressing him variously as Hammock, Paddock, Padlock, Hemlock, Hassock, Havoc, Maggot, Bartok, and Bootblack, among other names). Gossip journalists once reported a romance and engagement between Castafiore and Haddock inThe Castafiore Emerald, complete with photographs of Castafiore showing a disgruntled Haddock the flowers in his own garden. This quite chagrined the captain, but not the diva, who was quite used to such inventions from the tabloids.
Castafiore was once falsely imprisoned by the South American dictatorGeneral Tapioca andColonel Sponsz in order to lure Calculus, Haddock and Tintin toSan Theodoros where they prepare a deadly trap for them and Tapioca's rival, Alcazar (Tintin and the Picaros). Their ruse backfired, not least because Castafiore expressed her contempt for hershow trial and her life sentence with her trademark ear-splitting rendition of the Jewel Song. The court had to be cleared. In prison, Castafiore made her jailers suffer even more by throwing her pasta over their heads because they had not cooked ital dente.
Opera was one of Hergé's pet peeves. "Opera bores me, to my great shame. What's more, it makes me laugh," he once admitted. And so, perhaps not surprisingly, he created an archetypical singer who makes the reader laugh.[2]
Though la Castafiore is obviously Italian, her pet aria is from a French opera (Faust was composed byCharles Gounod) rather than the Verdi, Puccini, Bellini, or Donizetti one might have expected from a star ofLa Scala (although inThe Castafiore Emerald, she mentions that her regular repertoire includes Rossini, Puccini, Verdi, and Gounod.[3] She is also called by La Scala to perform inLa Gazza Ladra, by Rossini, an opera whose title is the key to solving the mystery of the thefts in the episode.)Faust, and this aria in particular, was among the most famous of all operas in Hergé's time. Furthermore, the choice of this aria is intentionally comic: Hergé depicts the aging, glamorous and utterly self-absorbed opera diva as Marguerite, the picture of innocence, taking delight in her own image in the mirror, with the oft-repeated quote:Ah, I laugh to see myself so beautiful in this mirror!.[4]
Bianca Castafiore is portrayed by Kim Stengel in the 2011 filmThe Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, which merges plots from several books.[5]Renée Fleming provided the singing voice. Although Sra. Castafiore invariably sings her signature aria in Hergé's books, in the film, the character presents a different aria, "Je veux vivre..." from Gounod'sRomeo et Juliette. Oddly, the lead-in (played by an invisible orchestra) is the introduction to yet another coloratura aria, "Una voce poco fa", from Rossini'sBarber of Seville.
Theasteroid1683 Castafiore, discovered in 1950, is named after the character.
Kim Newman includes Castafiore in hisalternative history novelsMoriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles andDracula Cha Cha Cha along with many other characters from other authors.
Bianca Castafiore is said to have been inspired by Hergé's own grandmother—Hergé believed that his father was an illegitimate son of the Belgian kingLeopold II, but only his grandmother could have known the truth. He added subtle references such as operas that Bianca sang, referring to such stories.[6][7]
