Marie Duplessis

Marie Duplessis ( born January 15, 1824 in Nonant - le-Pin, † February 3, 1847 in Paris, Alphonsine Plessis actually ) was a French courtesan. She was the historical model for Alexandre Dumas ' novel and stage figure " Marguerite Gautier " ("The Lady of the Camellias " ) and Giuseppe Verdi's " Violetta Valery " ( opera " La Traviata")

Life

Alphonsine Plessis was born on January 15, 1824 in a small village in Normandy. Her childhood and early youth was marked by poverty. In her early years she worked as a maid in an inn, then in an umbrella factory.

With about 15 years ago she came to relatives in Paris, where she first got by as a washerwoman and milliner until she became the mistress of a wealthy businessman, who established her a small apartment and allowed her a modest luxury.

Within a short time was from the peasant girl one of the most sought after and most expensive courtesans of Paris. She learned to read and write, took piano lessons, and eventually was considered extremely educated and well read. She changed her name from Alphonsine Plessis was Marie Duplessis. Her lovers included Alexandre Dumas, fils and Franz Liszt, to her close friends Theophile Gautier and Jules Janin. Marie was famous for her extraordinary beauty, her elegance, her tact and her style. Supposedly, no one who met her for the first time, had the idea to have a prostitute in front of him. Marie had a great fondness for flowers, especially for camellias. On 25 nights a month they should white, on the other evenings when she had her period, red flowers have worn in the hair or on her dress. Alexandre Dumas, who took over this peculiarity in his novel, claimed that no one was aware of the reason for this change of color - an assertion which hardly corresponded to the facts but a trick of the author represented to be emphasized " intimate " relationship with the protagonist of his work.

In January 1846 Marie married in a registry office in London's Kensington Count Edward de PERREGEAUX. When the marriage failed after a short time, Marie, who suffered from tuberculosis, was already seriously ill. Nevertheless, her life was now wild and exuberant than ever. Less than a year later, on February 3, 1847, she died, deeply in debt and deserted by all friends in their apartment on the Boulevard de la Madeleine Ranked # 11 in Paris. She was only 23 years old.

After her death,

Her grave is located in the Montmartre Cemetery in Paris. The small tomb with the words " Ici repose Alphonsine Plessis ' is always decorated nearly 160 years after her death with flowers, lay down their visitors there.

Marie's death aroused a certain sensation. At the auction of her estate was to the good and the less good company of Paris, the jack in the hand. Theophile Gautier and Jules Janin dedicated their obituary. The writer Alexandre Dumas, fils ( son of the creator of the "Three Musketeers" ) continued her with his massively successful novel " The Lady of the Camellias ", in which he recorded his own relationship with Marie, a literary monument. For this novel, in which he gave her the name " Marguerite Gautier ", he made some time later an eponymous play, which premiered in 1852.

The Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi knew the novel as well as the stage version and wrote the opera " La Traviata " in which Marie named " Violetta Valery " and received the 1853 in Venice was first performed.

Much has been said and written about Marie Duplessis, but perhaps the most beautiful and the most moving tribute came from Franz Liszt: "Poor Mariette Duplessis ," he once said, " when I think of it, resounds in my heart a mysterious chord of a ancient elegy ".