Author: Lillian Groag Publisher: Dramatists Play Service Inc ISBN: 9780822215011 Category : Drama Languages : en Pages : 88
Book Description
THE STORY: An hilarious farce about an imagined meeting in Paris, 1897, between the famous theater divas Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse. The two actresses--who were the biggest and most temperamental stars of their day--were scheduled to perform b
Author: Julie Kavanagh Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 0804171556 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 322
Book Description
This riveting biography brilliantly explores the short, intense, and passionate life of the country girl from Normandy, who at thirteen fled her brute of a father to go to Paris. Almost overnight she became one of the most admired courtesans of the 1840s—the inspiration for Alexandre Dumas fils’ The Lady of the Camellias and Verdi’s La Traviata. With her aristocratic ways, elegant clothes and signature camellias, Marie was always a subject of fascination at the opera and the boulevard cafés. Her death at twenty-three from tuberculosis created such an outpouring of sympathy in the press that Charles Dickens, who was in Paris at the time, was amazed. “Everything is erased in the face of an incident which is far more important,” he wrote, “the romantic death of one of the glories of the demi-monde, the beautiful, the famous Marie Duplessis.”
Author: Marcel Proust Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 1101503114 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 640
Book Description
The third volume of one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century Mark Treharne's acclaimed new translation of The Guermantes Way will introduce a new generation of American readers to the literary richness of Marcel Proust. The third volume in Penguin Classics' superb new edition of In Search of Lost Time—the first completely new translation of Proust's masterpiece since the 1920s—brings us a more comic and lucid prose than English readers have previously been able to enjoy. After the relative intimacy of the first two volumes of In Search of Lost Time, The Guermantes Way opens up a vast, dazzling landscape of fashionable Parisian life in the late nineteenth century, as the narrator enters the brilliant, shallow world of the literary and aristocratic salons. Both a salute to and a devastating satire of a time, place, and culture, The Guermantes Way defines the great tradition of novels that follow the initiation of a young man into the ways of the world.
Author: René Weis Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 0198708548 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 417
Book Description
The story of Marie Duplessis, the woman who inspired Verdi's La traviata. A rags-to-riches fairytale, from rural poverty to Parisian stardom, which ended in tragedy but gave rise to some of the most heart-wrenching and lyrical music ever composed.
Author: Sarah Jio Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0452298393 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 322
Book Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of Always and Blackberry Winter: “An intoxicating blend of mystery, history and romance, this book is hard to put down.”—Real Simple On the eve of World War II, the last surviving specimen of a camellia plant known as the Middlebury Pink lies secreted away on an English country estate. Flora, an amateur American botanist, is contracted by an international ring of flower thieves to infiltrate the household and acquire the coveted bloom. Her search is at once brightened by new love and threatened by her discovery of a series of ghastly crimes. More than half a century later, garden designer Addison takes up residence at the manor, now owned by the family of her husband, Rex. The couple’s shared passion for mysteries is fueled by the enchanting camellia orchard and an old gardener’s notebook. Yet its pages hint at dark acts ingeniously concealed. If the danger that Flora once faced remains very much alive, will Addison share her fate? Fans of Downton Abbey should rush to pick up this novel.
Author: Alexandre Dumas fils Publisher: DigiCat ISBN: Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 194
Book Description
Set in mid-19th-century France, the novel tells the love story between Marguerite Gautier, a demimondaine or courtesan and Armand Duval, a young bourgeois. Marguerite is nicknamed "lady of the camellias" because she wears a red camellia when she is unavailable for making love and a white camelia when she is available to her lovers. 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. La Dame aux Camélias is a semi-autobiographical novel based on the author's brief love affair with a courtesan, Marie Duplessis.