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The Medieval Leper Plagues Modern Paris: Sylvio Lazzari's La Lépreuse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2011

Julie McQuinn
Julie McQuinn
Affiliation:
Lawrence University
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Extract

February 1912: The curtain of the Opéra-Comique rises to reveal medieval Brittany. Washerwomen gossip about lepers who walk among the healthy, in defiance of the law. The women hint to Maria that her son, Ervoanik, is in love with the beautiful Aliette, who, it is rumoured, is one of these freely roaming lepers. Ervoanik does love Aliette, and when he informs his parents of his decision to marry her, his father explodes in rage. Doesn't he know that she is the daughter of a leper? Ervoanik refuses to believe it. The hideous appearance of Aliette's mother, Old Tili, betrays her own leprosy as she attempts to lure young children with her singing to eat her infected breads. When Aliette and Ervoanik stop at Old Tili's cottage to rest before making a holy pilgrimage, Tili assumes that Aliette intends to infect him, just as she has infected so many others. When she realizes that Aliette truly loves Ervoanik and plans to live with him chastely, Tili lies, telling her that he already has a wife and children. Aliette confronts Ervoanik, and he claims it is true, as a joke. She immediately touches her lips to a cup of wine and offers it to him. He drinks. In the third act, Ervoanik, now a leper, awaits the procession of the dead, which leads him to his house of exile. Aliette joins him.

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Articles
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Nineteenth-Century Music Review , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , June 2010 , pp. 45 - 80
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 B.M., ‘Les Premières’, L'Humanité (9 Feb. 1912): 2. All translations are mine, unless otherwise stated.

2 Adolphe Boschot, ‘La Lépreuse à l'Opéra-Comique’, Echo de Paris (8 Feb. 1912): 4.

3 Bataille adapted the libretto for the opera from his play of the same name – his first performed play, which premiered 6 May 1896 at the Comédie-Parisienne and was produced by the Société Théâtrale de l'Æuvre and directed by Lugné-Poë André Antoine, Le Théâtre, vol. 1 (Paris: Les Editions de France, 1932): 340. Two years later, the well-respected critic Jules Lemaître attracted much attention to the play with his glowing article (‘La Semaine dramatique') in the Journal des Débats (18 May 1896): 1–2. Almost every reviewer of the opera quoted Lemaître's article, often at great length. This column was reprinted in Lemaître's Impressions de Théâtre, vol. 10 (Paris: Boivin, 1927): 361–73.

4 Carré, Albert, Souvenirs de Théâtre (Paris: Plon, 1950): 349–50.Google Scholar The Grand Guignol was a theatre specializing in horror plays.

5 René Dumesnil, ‘L'Exemple de Sylvio Lazzari’, L'Information Musicale 91 (20 Nov. 1942): 107. In addition to being mentioned by many reviewers of the opera, this ‘adventure' is described in detail by Carré (Souvenirs, 350–52) and by Wolfgang Asholt in ‘La Lépreuse von H. Bataille/S. Lazzari (1896/1912)’, in Oper als Text: Romanistische Beiträge zur Libretto-Forschung, ed. Albert Gier (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätverlag, 1986): 299–318. Asholt's explanation is based on L'Affaire de La Lépreuse (Paris: Librairie générale, 1910); Journal officiel de la République française, Chambre des Députés (1906): 747–50; and contemporary journals and newspapers. The main elements include a new libretto (eventually titled L'Ensorcelé [The Bewitched]) devoid of leprosy; Carré promising a production, stalling and eventually changing his mind; the debate in the Chamber of Deputies in 1906, which eventually resulted in Carré's agreement to produce the original libretto; Bataille and Lazarri accusing Carré of attempting to sabotage the opera; Carré's desire to pay off the pair; in 1908, Carré's discussion with the Société des Auteurs, which supported him; and finally, Carré's decision to mount the work and his lawyer's ability to make a final reconciliation.

6 Naomi Schor has explored the conception of Brittany as a domestic Orient in ‘Domestic Orientalism: On the Road with Gustave and Maxime’, in Corps/Décors: Femmes, Orgie, Parodie; Hommage à Lucienne Frappier-Mazur, ed. Catherine Nesci (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1999): 58. See also Theodore Zeldin, France 1848–1945, Vol. I, Ambition, Love and Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973): 132–3, and Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchman: The Modernization of Rural France 1870–1914 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976): 5.

7 See, for example, Julia Rowland Myers, ‘“Sympathy for Humanity”: Robert Wylie and His Paintings of Breton Life’, American Art Journal 28/2 (1997): 83–121, 86, and Paul, Judy Le, Gauguin and the Impressionists at Pont-Aven (New York: Abbeville Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

8 For a discussion of Breton prints in the second half of the century, see Herbert, Robert L., Peasants and ‘Primitivism' (South Hadley, MA: Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, 1995). Also see Myers, ‘“Sympathy for Humanity”’, 83Google Scholar.

9 Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen, 351. Also see Gabriel P. Weisberg, ‘Vestiges of the Past: The Brittany “Pardons” of Late Nineteenth-Century French Painters’, Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980): 134–8, 136.

10 Silverman, Deborah, Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search for Sacred Art (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000): 92–3. Also see Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen, 347, for an example of the institution of a new pardon.Google Scholar

11 Silverman, Van Gogh and Gauguin, 92. In 1906, A. Le Braz described the appeal and charm of the festivities of the pardon, exclaiming, ‘How innocent, how primitive!” Braz, A. Le, The Land of Pardons trans. Frances M. Gostling (New York: MacMillan, 1906): xixGoogle Scholar.

12 Orton, Fred and Pollock, Griselda, ‘Les Données Bretonnantes: La Prairie de la Représentation’, in Modern Art and Modernism: A Critical Anthology, ed. Frascina, Francis and Harrison, Charles (New York: Harper and Row, 1982): 285–304.Google Scholar Orton and Pollock assert that Seurat's Grand Jatte ‘was so successful as a painting and as a gesture that it helped close that Parisian landscape of pleasure as a subject for vanguard painting’. ‘There was no alternative for the vanguard to seeing Paris as Seurat revealed it both because of what he showed and because of the way the mode of representation redefined what was represented.’ Ibid., 297.

13 Orton and Pollock (ibid.) expose the myths of costume, language and economics. Also see Schor, ‘Domestic Orientalism’, 59; and Herbert, Peasants and ‘Primitivism'.

14 See Pollock, Griselda, Avant-Garde Gambits 1888–1893: Gender and the Color of Art History (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1992): 60.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., 60.

16 Gauguin, for example, in Vision After the Sermon, ‘evacuates the modernity of Brittany by casting the scene into a pre- or non-modern field, of religiosity, superstition, visions’. Pollock notes how both Bernard and Gauguin ‘exoticized' their female peasant subjects by medievalizing and orientalizing their faces. Ibid., 56–7. In a letter to Van Gogh (20 October 1889), Gauguin described the peasants as having a medieval quality about them, seemingly unaware of the actual year in which they lived. Orton and Pollock, ‘Les Données Bretonnantes’, 301.

17 Lemaître, Impressions de Théâtre, 373. Also quoted in Edouard Sarradin, ‘Théâtres’, Journal des débats (9 Feb. 1912): 3.

18 Luzel, F.M., Gwerziou Breiz-Izel: Chants populaires de la Basse-Bretagne (Paris: Lorient, 1868–74): 243–7.Google Scholar This tale is told in part from the point of view of a five-year-old child. Her father is a leper and her mother is hanged and burned for the murder of her baby. The child goes to see her father, and he warns her to back away from the door because she might catch leprosy through the hole in the lock. So she ‘put her head to the window, and both their hearts broke’.

19 So well known was this collection that Henri Marcel Fay, in his Histoire de la lèpre en France: Lépreux et cagots du Sud-ouest (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1910) does not even provide any publication information when he quotes from it, and it is not included in his extensive bibliography. In the song ‘Notre-Dame du Folgoat’, a young girl, falsely accused and condemned to death, asks her father to make a pilgrimage to Folgoat for her. She is brought to Folgoat to be hanged, but she does not die and credits ‘Notre-Dame Marie du Folgoat' for protecting her. Thèodore Hersar de la Villemarqué, Barzaz-Breiz: Chants populaires de la Bretagne, vol. 2, 4th ed. (Paris: A. Franck, 1846): 71–83. Villemarqué also describes the original miracle that took place in Folgoat in 1315.

20 The end of Villemarqué's description reads as follows: ‘Once at the threshold, the priest, in the presence of the people, again encouraged patience, consoled him anew, made him pledge never to go out without his black hood on his head and his red cross on his shoulder; not to enter churches, nor any houses, nor taverns to buy wine; not to go to the mill or the bakehouse, not to wash his hands nor his clothes in the springs nor in the current of the stream, not to appear at festivals, nor at pardons, nor other public assemblies; to touch produce in the markets only with the end of his rod and without speaking, to answer only downwind, not to wander at all in the evening in the sunken roads, not to touch children … not to offer them anything … then he poured a shovel of earth on his feet, blessed it in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.’ Ibid., 351–2.

21 L'Héritier, Henry, La Vie et l'oeuvre d'Henry Bataille, vol. 1 (Paris: Editions de l'Ame Gauloise, 1930): 69.Google Scholar

22 Bataille, Henry, preface to ‘Ton Sang' précédé de ‘La Lépreuse’ (Paris: Mercure de France, 1898): ix–x.Google Scholar

23 Villemarqué only describes this song, as he was unable to verify its authenticity and therefore refused to print the text. In his description, the young leper, Marie, ‘splits a finger, and with her blood … gives leprosy to fourteen people of the family who spurned her, and her young lover dies from it’. Barzaz-Breiz, 352–3. Luzel writes in his preface that the irregularities and incompleteness of many of the texts he is publishing are simply distinctive characteristics of this popular poetry: ‘I provided what I found, what really exists among the people, real, popular poetry.’ Luzel, Gwerziou Breiz-Izel, iii–iv. All three versions were recorded in 1863 in three different places. They may be found in ibid., 253–65.

24 Bataille renamed the young leper and greatly expanded the role of Old Tili.

25 Pierre Lalo reminds his readers that some young Breton musicians accused Bataille of plagiarism, and raises the notion of authenticity relative to Bataille's style: ‘The fact is the more regrettable that these fragments of the popular poem are of a plain style, solid and strong, extremely different from the affectation and the manner that are in other works the habitual traits of the style of Mr Bataille; and thus Mr Bataille could seem to claim merits that were not at all his.’ Lalo, ‘La Musique’, Le Temps (13 Feb. 1912): 3. The accusations of the Association of Breton Composers and Bataille's response were published in Comoedia on 8, 9 and 10 February.

26 Lazzari even wrote the score in Brittany, which according to Comoedia, he called ‘his dear country’, and which inspired his music ‘in delicious moments he spent in Pouldu, in a little house on the Breton coast where, rocked by the rhythm of the waves, he found his best inspirations’. Prudomme, ‘Opéra-Comique’, Comoedia (5 Feb. 1912): 2.

27 Louis Schneider, ‘Théâtre National de l'Opéra-Comique: La Lépreuse’, Le Théâtre (1 Apr. 1912): 4–8, 5.

28 Albert Aurier, ‘Le Symbolisme en peinture: Paul Gauguin’, Mercure de France 2 (Mar. 1891): 155–64, in Dorra, Henri, ed., Symbolist Art Theories (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994): 192–203Google Scholar.

29 Bataille, preface to ‘Ton Sang', viii. ‘Tout est venu de l'âme primordiale, tout ce que nous sommes, tous nos petits gestes innombrables sont la répercussion du geste rare et beau de l'âme primitive. Et voilà pourquoi le moindre fragment de poésie populaire nous secoue de cette nostalgie puissante. Il semble que nous nous y reconnaissions lointainement et que nous y pleurions notre simplicité perdu, – car la réalité intérieure de nous-même fera longtemps encore le souci de beaucoup d'entre nous.’ He explained that these two plays contain ‘the same natural forces … facing each other’. Ibid., xiv.

30 James F. Knapp, ‘Primitivism and Empire: John Synge and Paul Gauguin’, Comparative Literature 41/1 (Winter 1989): 53–68, 67. In his examination of prints, Herbert found that these depictions ‘also revealed the conflicts of modern culture’. Herbert, Peasants and ‘Primitivism’, 19.

31 Asholt explains that critics of Bataille's play clearly regarded the work as symbolist, while Carré and the delegates in the Chamber responded to the opera libretto on a more realist/social level. This tension between symbolist and realist readings may also be found in reviews of the opera. Prudhomme addresses this tension between ‘idealism' and ‘realism' explicitly in a series of pieces in Comoedia (all titled ‘Opéra-Comique’, Comoedia (3 Mar. 1912: 2; 4 Mar. 1912: 2; 14 Mar. 1912: 3; and 16 Mar. 1912: 2)). He asserts that Bataille's work is ‘idéaliste' and criticizes elements of realism in the production, such as the blotches on Tili's face.

32 Schneider, ‘Théâtre National de l'Opéra-Comique: La Lépreuse': 7.

33 Boschot, Echo de Paris.

34 Landormy, Paul, La Musique française de Franck à Debussy (Paris: Gallimard, 1943):Google Scholar 156. Lazzari (1857–1944) was born in Austria-occupied Bozen and became a naturalized French citizen in 1896. He studied law in Innsbruck and Vienna, and then attended the Paris Conservatoire, studying with Guiraud and Franck. His works include chamber music, songs, symphonic poems and operas. He served as President of the Wagnerian Association for many years. See ibid.; Arthur Pougin, ‘Semaine théatrale’, Le Ménéstrel (10 Feb. 1912): 43–4, 43; and articles by Emile Vuillermoz (‘On doit une réparation à Sylvio Lazzari’, L'Information musicale 91 (20 Nov. 1942): 105–6), Gustave Samazeuilh (‘Sur une amitié de quarante ans’, L'Information musicale 91 (20 Nov. 1942): 106), Adolphe Boschot (‘Sur La Lépreuse', L'Information musicale 91 (20 Nov. 1942): 106) and René Dumesnil (‘L'exemple de Sylvio Lazzari'; see n. 5 above).

35 Schneider, ‘Théâtre National de l'Opéra-Comique: La Lépreuse': 8.

36 Boschot (Echo de Paris) identified the ‘truthfulness' of the decors, ‘which makes us feel the charm of Brittany’.

37 Villemarqué's collection consists primarily of the song texts. There is a small section at the end of the second volume that includes melodies for some of the songs, including this one.

38 Musical examples taken from the piano-vocal score. Lazzari, Sylvio, La Lépreuse (Paris: Eschig, 1909).Google Scholar

39 Villemarqué reported that washerwomen often sang, and that their songs often corresponded to actual happenings in their villages. Barzaz-Breiz, 145–7. Washerwomen were a popular Breton artistic subject. See Myers, ‘Robert Wylie and His Paintings of Breton Life’, 102.

40 Villemarqué, Barzaz-Breiz. The text is on pp. 354–9 and the melody on p. 46 of the appendix. This song is the lament of a young man in love with a girl who rejects him because of his leprosy. The text begins: ‘Creator of heaven and earth! My heart is weighed down with pain; I spend my days and nights dreaming of my sweet beauty, my love.’

41 See Huebner, Steven, French Opera at the Fin de Siècle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Fulcher, Jane, French Cultural Politics & Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); andGoogle ScholarSuschitzky, Anya, ‘Ariane et Barbe-Bleue: Dukas, the Light and the Well’, Cambridge Opera Journal 9/2 (Jul. 1997): 133–61Google Scholar.

42 Prudhomme asserts that La Lépreuse ‘has the very rare value of being fundamentally French' because of its links to French literature of the Middle Ages. He compares the opera to Gounod's Mireille, which he calls more Greek than French. Prudhomme, Comoedia (16 Feb. 1912).

43 Huebner writes: ‘Even within the limited confines of the fin-de-siècle repertory, ideas about what constituted pastiche were not grounded in absolutes, but shaped by contextual factors such as the aesthetic, political designs, age, and training of the critic and/or composer.’ French Opera, 243.

44 René Bizet, ‘Une Mélodie inédite d'Henry Bataille: L'auteur du poème de “La Lépreuse” nous parle de la musique de M. Sylvio Lazzari’, Comeodia (5 Feb. 1912): 2.

45 Boschot, Echo de Paris.

46 Jean Marnold, ‘Musique’, Le Mercure de France (1 Mar. 1912): 176–9, 178.

47 The partnership of Bruneau and Zola, for example, resulted in attempts to create ‘a new kind of drame lyrique’, to bring truth and idea together with realistic modern settings and characters to create a more ‘human' music drama. Like La Lépreuse, their La Rêve includes a long religious ritual, the depiction of which relies heavily on borrowed chant.Mireille, set in nineteenth-century rural Provence, involves a long pilgrimage and the use of Provençal folk music. Huebner, French Opera, 399, 406. A few of the critics of the opera also identified these parallels.

48 For images of the original costumes, see L'Avant-scène opéra 65 (Jul. 1984): cover, 8, 17, 76.

49 According to Huebner, the stark textures, concision and brevity of motifs indicate an attempt on the part of Lalo to separate his work from that of Wagner. French Opera, 242–51.

50 Prudhomme, ‘Opéra-Comique’, Comoedia (25 Feb. 1912): 4.

51 Prudhomme, ‘Opéra-Comique’, Comoedia (28 Feb. 1912): 2.

52 And in fact, for Lalo, the music of La Lépreuse contained ‘nothing Wagnerian beyond the principal of thematic development’, which, in Lalo's opinion, was applied with ‘simplicity and in a way more melodic and vocal than Wagner would do’. Lalo, Le Temps.

53 Preface to Fay, Histoire de la lèpre, v.

54 Silverman, Deborah L., Art Nouveau in Fin-de-siècle France: Politics, Psychology, and Style (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989): 94.Google Scholar

55 Huysmans, J.K., Trois primitifs (Paris: Librairie Léon Vanier, 1905): 35–6.Google Scholar Translation by Robert Baldick taken from Grünewald, with an essay by J-K Huysmans (Oxford: Phaidon, 1976): 9. See also Ober, William B., MD, ‘Can the Leper Change his Spots? The Iconography of Leprosy. Part II’, The American Journal of Dermatopathology 5/2 (Apr. 1983): 173–86, 182Google Scholar.

56 Lalo, Le Temps.

57 Prudhomme, L'interprétation, Comoedia (6 Feb. 1912): 2.

58 Jumel, who represented Carré, closed his speech to the Chamber with this point. Journal officiel de la République française, Chambre des Députés, 750. Quoted in Asholt, ‘La Lépreuse’, 310.

59 Ibid.

60 Lemaître, Impressions de Théâtre, 366.

61 For example, Fay uses the Villemarqué collection as evidence in his discussion of leprosy, quoting a Breton folk song that describes a symptom of leprosy. Fay, Histoire de la lèpre, 28–9.

62 As Jill Harsin describes: ‘It was not considered appropriate for respectable women to know about the disease, or to speak of it if they knew.’ Physicians supported the right of the syphilitic man ‘to control the knowledge that the woman in the case would receive’ for the sake of family stability, and an 1892 law requiring physicians to report dangerous illnesses to the Ministry of the Interior excluded syphilis and tuberculosis, ‘illnesses that, if known, would harm the employment or marriage prospects of the victim’. Harsin, ‘Syphilis, Wives, and Physicians: Medical Ethics and the Family in Late Nineteenth-Century France’, French Historical Studies 16/1 (spring 1989): 72–95, 73, 85, 80–81.

63 Leavy, Barbara Fass, To Blight with Plague: Studies in a Literary Theme (New York: New York University Press, 1992): 157–8.Google Scholar

64 Eugène Brieux, Théâtre Complet de Brieux, vol. 6 (Paris: Stock, 1923). After this play was banned, Brieux held a private reading for doctors, playwrights and critics. A petition seeking to stop censorship resulted and was highly publicized. By 1905, the Chamber of Deputies voted to remove the salaries of the censors from the budget. Hemmings, F.W.J., Theatre and State in France, 1760–1905 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994): 224. Also seeGoogle ScholarAntoine, , Mes Souvenirs sur le Théâtre Antoine et sur l'Odéon (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1928): 187Google Scholar.

64 Antoine, Mes Souvenirs, 184. Antoine described the reaction of the public to the first performances in 1905: ‘The performances of Les Avariés continue before solemn houses which understand perfectly the immense import of the play, but my head ticket-collector informed me that almost every evening one or two spectators felt sick and were forced to leave the theater.’ Ibid., 253.

65 Brieux, , Théâtre Complet, 93.Google Scholar

66 Elaine Showalter has discussed a few of these works, including Nana, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ghosts and Jude the Obscure. ‘Syphilis, Sexuality, and the Fiction of the Fin de Siècle’, in Sex, Politics, and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Novel, ed. Ruth Bernard Yeazell (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986): 88–115. Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon build a strong case for a turn-of-the-twentieth- century reading of Wagner's Parsifal as a tale of syphilis. ‘Syphilis, Sin and the Social Order: Wagner's, RichardParsifal', Cambridge Opera Journal 7/3 (1995): 261–75Google Scholar.

68 Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. fr. 9140, fol. 151v.

69 Brody, Saul Nathaniel, The Disease of the Soul: Leprosy in Medieval Literature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974): 56–7.Google Scholar

70 Allen, Peter Lewis, The Wages of Sin: Sex and Disease, Past and Present (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000): 39.Google Scholar

71 Chauliac's, Guy deLa Grande Chirurgie (1363), ed. Nicaise, E. (Paris: Germer Baillière, 1890), includes a description of leprosy. Dr Fay's previously mentioned Histoire de la lèpre of 1910 incorporates a multitude of primary sources, past and present, providing a highly documented, detailed and technical discussion of the complex nature of society's understanding of leprosy and treatment of lepers since the Middle Ages. Other fin-de-siècle publications includeGoogle ScholarRobert's, UlysseLes Signes d'infamie au Moyen Age: Juifs, sarrasins, hérétiques, lépreux, cagots et filles publiques (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1891) andGoogle ScholarGrand's, Léon LeStatuts d'hotels-Dieu et de léproseries; recueil de texts du XIIe au XIVe siècle (Paris: Alphonse Picard, 1901).Google ScholarZambaco's, Démétrius-AlexandreLa Lèpre à travers les siècles et les contrées (Paris: Masson, 1914) includes a lengthy discussion of the existence of leprosy in the present dayGoogle Scholar.

72 Fournier, Dr Alfred, quoting Michel Lévy, in The Prophylaxis of Syphilis, trans. C.F. Marshall (London: Rebman, 1906):Google Scholar 3. Prophylaxie de la syphilis was first published in 1903. Lévy, was the author of Traité d'hygiene publique et privée (Paris: J.B. Baillière, 1844),Google Scholar which went through many editions.

73 See Gilman, Sander, Disease and Representation: Images of Illness from Madness to AIDS (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988 about how to respond to AIDS, American society was reenacting a drama that had been written centuries before.’ Allen, Wages of Sin, xv. See Hutcheon and Hutcheon, ‘Syphilis, Sin and the Social Order’, 265–6, for a succinct description of syphilis as we understand it today. Also see Brody, Disease of the Soul, 28–31. Leprosy symptoms are also discussed in great detail in Fay, Histoire de la lèpre. Also see Luke Demaitre, Leprosy in Premodern Medicine: A Malady of the Whole Body (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).Google Scholar

74 See Zeldin, , France 1848–1945, Vol. II, Intellect, Taste and Anxiety (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977): 867.Harsin identifies 1890–1910 as the period during which ‘the increasingly fervid rhetoric against syphilis … reached its greatest intensity in France’. Harsin, ‘Syphilis, Wives, and Physicians’, 74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

75 Corbin, Alain, Women For Hire: Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850, trans. Alan Sheridan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990): 251, 275.Google Scholar Fournier discussed lifestyle with the same scientifically rigorous rhetoric that he used for medical treatment and physical symptoms. Excess is the sin which invites syphilis in: ‘An organ which is stimulated or overworked in a syphilitic is an organ which is menaced by syphilis, for stimulation tends to direct the disease to this organ. For example, venereal excess and neglect render vulvar syphilides severe in common prostitutes.’ ‘The overworked and the debauched' attract syphilis of the nervous system, and even too much thinking can open up one's brain to infection. Fournier, Alfred, The Treatment of Syphilis, trans. C.F. Marshall (London: Rebman, 1906): 44–5,Google Scholar 263. Traitement de la syphilis was first published in 1893.

76 Harsin, , ‘Syphilis, Wives, and Physicians’, 73.Google Scholar

77 Fournier, , The Prophylaxis of Syphilis, 3.Google Scholar

78 Ibid., 88–9. For leprosy parallels, see Fay, Histoire de la lèpre, 23–4.

79 Fournier is even suspicious of the telephone, writing: ‘So far as I know, no authentic case of contamination by the use of the public telephone has yet been recorded, but some day or other we must expect to meet with contagion of this kind.’ The Prophylaxis of Syphilis, 101.

80 Ibid., 32. He voices the same concerns in The Treatment of Syphilis, 14, 269.

81 Le Monsieur de l'Orchestre, ‘La Lépreuse à l'Opéra-Comique’, Le Figaro (8 Feb. 1912): 5–6.

82 Marnold, , Mercure de France, 179.Google Scholar

83 Bellaigue complained that he could not understand why Ervoanik, who has only just acquired leprosy, should ‘be the object, and so soon, of such severity, while two known and recognized lepers, Aliette and her mother, can indulge with impunity in their fatal propaganda’. Camille Bellaigue, ‘Revue musicale’, Revue des deux mondes (15 Apr. 1912): 923–9, 925. Lalo (Le Temps) agreed: ‘Hardly is Ervoanik suspected of having leprosy, then he is locked up in the maison blanche. But Old Tili, the one covered with ulcers and sores, … lives in freedom in her cottage; and the innocent [blanche] Aliette, whose beauty has not at all suffered the damage of the sickness, but who, through her kisses, leads a large number of young men to the tomb, wanders freely across the country.’

84 Gilman, , Disease and Representation, 13.Google Scholar

85 Schneider, ‘Théâtre National de l'Opéra-Comique: La Lépreuse’, facing 6.

86 From this point forward, I will refer to the Leper theme when the theme is heard in its entirety, and to the Leper motif when only the opening of the theme is employed.

87 Boschot, Echo de Paris. Boschot is right; Ervoanik tells Aliette: ‘You would not have lied with those eyes nor with those lips.’

88 The fact that Aliette's song cannot be found in the folk collection suggests that it may have been developed from the Leper theme.

89 The texts reads: ‘Good evening, good evening, good evening! We will sing, we will whistle, we will skip! And dance then, François the Seneschal, let's dance hard to crack our backs! That the devil gives you a good year, three little lepers in bed with your wife! One becomes King, one becomes Pope, the last breaks your back! Ha! Ha! Beat me, strike me! Your time will come.’

90 Villemarqué, , Barzaz-Breiz, vol. 1, 57–65.Google Scholar

91 Schneider, ‘Théatre National de l'Opéra-Comique: La Lépreuse’, 6.

92 ‘With a morsel of bread you gave them leprosy. Happy again you, who can give death in a glass! If it isn't you, Senechal, it will come to others. The first who passes will drink from my bowl, I swear it here. Come forward, young men, come forward! There is room here to eat and sleep … Come forward! Eh! Let us dance, François the Seneschal! Pages, scholars and peasants, come all to the entertainment!’

93 Brieux, Théâtre Complet, 80–81. Depictions of syphilitic women in literature and theatre played a large role in the spread of fear of syphilis and of the women who carried its destructive and contaminating power within them. See, for example, D'Aurevilly, Barbey, ‘A Woman's Revenge’, in Les Diaboliques, trans. Ernest Boyd (London: Dedalus, 1986) andGoogle ScholarHuysmans, , Against Nature [A Rebours], trans. Margaret Mauldon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998 [1884])Google Scholar.

94 Fournier, The Prophylaxis of Syphilis, 178. He argues: ‘Society has the right to defend itself against the diseased prostitute who distributes syphilis to all comers’. Ibid., 163.

95 Registered prostitutes not found to be diseased were expected to work in the government-approved maisons de tolérance, which, in effect, served as simply another form of attempted containment.

96 Corbin, , Women For Hire, 94.Google Scholar

97 Foucault has explained how, long after the lepers disappeared, the lazar houses persisted, along with ‘the values and images attached to the figure of the leper': ‘Often, in these same places, the formulas of exclusion would be repeated, strangely similar two or three centuries later.’ Foucault, Michel, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Vintage, 1965): 6–7Google Scholar.

98 These uniforms are shown in Picasso's depictions of Saint-Lazare inmates. He visited Saint-Lazare in 1901. Michael Leja argues that his interest is a direct reflection of the debate over syphilis and the governmental control over prostitution, and that he portrays the women in his paintings from this period as victims rather than monsters. ‘“Le Vieux Marcheur” and “Les Deux Risques”: Picasso, Prostitution, Venereal Disease, and Maternity, 1899–1907’, Art History 8/1 (Mar. 1985): 66–81.

99 Corbin, , Women For Hire, 94–5, 100.Google Scholar

100 Parliament discussed syphilis in 1907, but did nothing about it. Real efforts to control it took place after the First World War. Zeldin, , France, Vol. I, 304–5Google Scholar.

101 See Brody, Disease of the Soul, 96, and Fay, Histoire de la lèpre, for ambiguities and inconsistencies regarding the laws applying to lepers and the enforcement of those laws.

102 Brody, , Disease of the Soul, 81.Google Scholar

103 Andrew Aisenberg, ‘Syphilis and Prostitution: A Regulatory Couplet in Nineteenth-Century France’, in Sex, Sin and Suffering: Venereal Disease and European Society since 1870, ed. Roger Davidson and Lesley A. Hall (London: Routledge, 2001): 15–28, 16.

104 In Les Avariés, the doctor consistently asserts the individual's right not to be infected with syphilis unknowingly. Brieux, , Théâtre Complet, 27, 52Google Scholar.

105 Fay, , Histoire de la lèpre, 36.Google Scholar

106 Harsin, , ‘Syphilis, Wives, and Physicians’, 95.Google Scholar

107 There is no recording of the entire opera, but this scene was recorded in 1933, conducted by Piero Coppola, with Madeleine Sibille as Aliette (Gramo DB 4853). It is available through Malibran-Music on Paris L'Opéra-Comique, vol. II, CDRG136, and on Madeleine Sibille, MR672.

108 These characteristics recall Tili's sorcery music.

109 The text of one of the original songs reads: ‘With a drop of blood from my little finger, I would give leprosy to a hundred, as to one!' Luzel, Gwerziou Breiz-Izel, 263. This text and music return in the third act; Aliette sings these words from afar, three times, causing Ervoanik to cry out for her.

110 ‘I feel my heart leave me, the kisses leave, the kisses cry out, the first kiss wants to escape … I feel it, at the edge of my mouth, at the edge of his, I can't restrain it any longer, ah!’.

111 The first performance took place on 12 December 1912. Cronin, Vincent, Paris on the Eve: 1900–1914 (London: Collins, 1989): 120Google Scholar.

112 The characters pray at length in Latin, and Lugné-Poë replaced speaking with intoning. Ibid., 119.

113 Fowlie, Wallace, introduction to Paul Claudel, Two Dramas, trans. Wallace Fowlie (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1960): 154.Google Scholar

114 ‘Hieratic witnesses of evil, they accomplish their salvation in and by their very exclusion: in a strange reversibility that is the opposite of good works and prayer, they are saved by the hand that is not stretched out. ... Abandonment is his salvation; his exclusion offers him another form of communion.’ Foucault, Madness and Civilization, 7.

115 Brody, , Disease of the Soul, 103–4.Google Scholar

116 She states her plan to ‘fulfill the law. Show myself to the priest. Then find … the place reserved for people like me. The lepers' colony of Géyn.’ Claudel, Two Dramas, 233.

117 In the play, Ervoanik and Aliette never meet in the last act, and he goes into exile alone.