| The Lady of the Camellias | |
|---|---|
 Alphonse Mucha's poster for a performance of the theatrical version, withSarah Bernhardt (1896) | |
| Original title | La Dame aux Camélias |
| Written by | Alexandre Dumasfils |
| Date premiered | 2 February 1852 (1852-02-02) |
| Place premiered | Théâtre du Vaudeville,Paris, France |
| Original language | French |
| Genre | Tragedy[1][2][3][4] |
The Lady of the Camellias (French:La Dame aux Camélias) is anovel byAlexandre Dumasfils. First published in 1848 and subsequentlyadapted by Dumas for thestage, the play premiered at theThéâtre du Vaudeville inParis, France, on February 2, 1852. It was an instant success. Shortly thereafter, Italian composerGiuseppe Verdi set about putting the story to music in the 1853 operaLa traviata, with female protagonist Marguerite Gautier renamed Violetta Valéry.
In some of the English-speaking world,The Lady of the Camellias became known asCamille, and sixteen versions have been performed atBroadway theatres alone. The title character is Marguerite Gautier, who is based onMarie Duplessis, the real-life lover of the author.[5]
Written by Alexandre Dumasfils (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 acourtesan,Marie Duplessis. Set in mid-19th-century France, the novel tells the tragic love story between fictional characters Marguerite Gautier, ademimondaine or courtesan suffering fromconsumption, and Armand Duval, a young bourgeois.[6] Marguerite is nicknamedla dame aux camélias (French for 'the lady of the camellias') because she wears a redcamellia when she ismenstruating 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 unnamedframe 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 Marguerite's gruesome illness, i.e.tuberculosis, was also employed by Dumasfils as a metaphor that contemporary audiences might have recognised forsyphilis; casting “consumption” (a disease that was considered fashionable and alluring in women) as a physical manifestation of the sins of sexual and moral abandon, and Marguerite’s bloodletting and death as a purging of those sins.[6]
Dumasfils 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 theChevalier des Grieux's love for Manon inManon Lescaut (1731), a novel byAbbé Prévost referenced at the beginning ofLa 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]
Dumasfils wrote a stage adaptation that premiered February 2, 1852, at theThéâtre du Vaudeville in Paris.Eugénie Doche [fr] created the role of Marguerite Gautier, oppositeCharles 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 Dumasfils 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
The role of the tragic Marguerite Gautier became one of the most coveted among actresses and included performances bySarah Bernhardt,Laura Keene,Eleonora Duse,Margaret Anglin,Gabrielle Réjane,Tallulah Bankhead,Lillian Gish,Dolores del Río,Eva Le Gallienne,Isabelle Adjani,Cacilda Becker, andHelena Modjeska. Bernhardt quickly became associated with the role after starring in Camellias in Paris, London, and severalBroadway revivals, plus the 1911 film. The dancer and impresarioIda 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 Dumasfils'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 byDumasfils has been received with favor out of France".[10]
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The success of the play inspiredGiuseppe Verdi to put the story to music. His work became the operaLa traviata, set to an Italianlibretto byFrancesco 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.
La Dame aux Camélias has been adapted for some 20 differentmotion pictures in numerous countries and in a wide variety of languages. The role of Marguerite Gautier has been played on screen bySarah Bernhardt,María Félix,Clara Kimball Young,Theda Bara,Yvonne Printemps,Alla Nazimova,Greta Garbo,Micheline Presle,Francesca Bertini,Isabelle Huppert, and others.
There have been at least nine adaptations ofLa Dame aux Camélias entitledCamille.
In addition to theCamille films, the story has been the adapted into numerous other screen versions:
Amongst many adaptations, spin-offs, and parodies, wasCamille, "a travesty onLa Dame aux Camellias byCharles Ludlam, staged first by his own Ridiculous Theatrical Company in 1973, with Ludlam playing the lead indrag.[15]
In 1999Alexia Vassiliou collaborated with composer Aristides Mytaras for the contemporary dance performance,La Dame aux Camélias at the Amore Theatre in Athens.[citation needed]
It is also the inspiration for the 2008 musicalMarguerite,[16] which places the story in 1944German-occupied France.
InMy Ántonia byWilla 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 byEric 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]
La Dame aux Camélias public domain audiobook atLibriVox(in French),Camille(in English), andLa Dama de las Camilias(in Spanish)