February 3, 1847: The French courtesan and salon hostess Marie Duplessis died of tuberculosis in Paris at just 23 years old

 

February 3, 1847: The French courtesan and salon hostess Marie Duplessis died of tuberculosis in Paris at just 23 years old.

"She had recently turned 23 and was the most fashionable courtesan in Paris, the uncontested queen of the horizontales who serviced the city’s rich bourgeoisie, upper classes, artists, writers and musicians. Her life and death would inspire Verdi’s most famous opera – 'La traviata'.

By all accounts Duplessis was as refined as she was brilliant, precocious and generous. Franz Liszt was among her many lovers. He was touring Russia when news reached him that she had died. Hers, he declared, had been the sweetest nature, pure and serene, unsullied by the corruption of her shadowy world. Clearly there was something very special about Marie Duplessis.

Nor did the wider French press hold back with their tributes after her death on 3 February 1847. After all, in addition to such lovers as Liszt, Alexandre Dumas fils and — perhaps too — Dumas père, Duplessis’ wider circle of acquaintances encompassed some of her most illustrious contemporaries.

Within a year of Duplessis’ death, Dumas fils had written 'La Dame aux camélias'. They had been lovers for 11 months. The novel was instantly recognized as a roman à clef and took Paris by storm, not least because of its candid, unapologetic portrayal of forbidden pleasures and vices. Dumas’ pretext for basing it so intimately on his own life was that at 24 he was too young to invent fiction.

On 2 February 1852, pointedly almost five years to the day since her death, Dumas’ dramatic adaptation of 'La Dame aux camélias' received its premiere at the Vaudeville. It was almost certainly through this that Verdi and his companion, the singer Giuseppina Strepponi, first encountered the story of Marie Duplessis in the guise of Marguerite Gautier. Verdi appears to have decided there and then to compose 'La traviata'."

(Grave of Marie Duplessis in Paris' Montmartre Cemetery; Marie Duplessis, painted by Édouard Viénot, 19th century; Vivien Leigh in stage production of 'The Lady of the Camellias')