Marie Duplessis.. Mon Dieu.. Quelle Femme…
How… could…
A… semi-illiterate waif…
From… Nonant-le-Pin…
Normandy… France…
Emerge… as the toast…
Of 19th century… Paris…
Who… inspired…
Operas… plays…
Novels… films… ballets…
Marie… Duplessis…
Inspired Alexandre Dumas to write the 1848 novel “La Dame aux Camélias“… which was also the inspiration that prompted Verdi to write “La Traviata“… performed in Venice in 1853… and prompted Proust to declare it… “a work which goes straight to the heart“…
George Cukor directed the film “Camille“… with my much admired… Greta Garbo as Marguerite Gautier… which never fails to move one to tears…
Duplessis as the young courtisan was often depicted… on stage by Sarah Bernhardt… sung by Maria Callas… and danced by the Iconic ballerina Margot Fonteyn…
Marie… Duplessis…
Arrived in Paris in 1840… a pauper peasant girl who very quickly learnt the art of dressing and behaving like a duchess…
Within a few years she would entertain aristocrats… artists… and celebrated writers in her Parisian salon… Alexandre Dumas, fils… was the famous writer who fell in love with her…
Franz Liszt… the handsome composer… was “bewitched” by her…
Born in 1824 in a small village to a mother who worked as a maid and abandoned her… and a father who abused his daughter… she was left to struggle on her own as a thirteen year old clochard…
In Paris she found work in a dress shop… became a “grisette“… a girl of easy virtue… her beauty also allowed her to become a painter’s model as well as a poet’s muse…
However… what launched her into the high echelon’s of society was her accepting a widower’s offer of a furnished apartment and a lump sum… which transformed her status from a working girl to a kept woman… which in turn allowed her to become a French courtisan and mistress to prominent wealthy men… a viscount and a duke…
It was the Duc de R who like “Pygmalion” developed the young girl into… “an incomparably distinguished woman“… another Duc de Guiche… tried to give her a title of a duchess in order that she could attend grand balls and got to court marriages…
The semi-illiterate pauper was now socialising with… “la crème de la crème“… of Parisian society…
After Dumas left her in 1845… as he was not rich enough to keep-up with her astronomical spending of 40,000 francs per month… she met and fell in love with Liszt… the legendary composer…
Sadly their love did not last… for she died from “consumption” three months later…
Marie… Duplessis…
A… legendary beauty…
A life… enchanted…
A life story… that fascinates…
“Mon Dieu…
Quelle…
Femme“…
a.