All about Phantom of the Opera

Home -> Fantoma -> A existat Erik? -> Surse de inspiratie pentru Carlotta

The Patti Sisters

Leatha Ann Betts wrote:

Carlotta Patti was in a wheelchair. Her sister, Adelina Patti was very competitive with Christine Nilsson. French critics were constantly comparing their styles: making fun of Christine's Swedish accent on the one hand but stating that Adelina Patti could not sing as high or as gracefully, on the other. Both Patti sisters were infamous divas of the French opera.

If one is convinced that Leroux gave his heroine the background of Christine Nilsson, it makes sense that the Patti sisters might be used as Carlotta. To begin with, the name "Carlotta" is a convenient coincidence. Additionally, Adelina Patti wrote fairly cattish things about Nilsson, an example of which can be seen in the article she wrote entitled The Art of Song, Yesterday and To-day.
Incidentally, with regard to the time capsules buried under the Opera Garnier, "Patti" is one of names listed as a voice included in the recordings. (See the Opera Garnier Time Capsule Roster (this is an MS Word.doc). The day may come when we'll have a chance to hear the voice of Christine's rival. Too bad a Nilsson recording wasn't also included.

Marie Miolan-Carvalho

Regarding Gounod's opera Faust, Phil Riley, in his The Making of PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (The original 1925 Shooting Script), writes:

The work was immediately optioned by a man named Leon Carvalho, who having failed at his own attempts to become an opera star, now managed the career of his partner and wife, Marie Miolan. He operated a smaller company called the Theatre Lyrique . . . Marie Miolan was reported to be just "lightly gifted", but the fear she inspired by her iron will and lust for fame caused many to yield to that will just to avoid a confrontation with her. In her younger days her beauty had carried her, but now beginning to show her age, the fact that she had a thin, shrill voice was becoming noticeable. "Faust" was therefore commissioned as a show case to revive Mlle. Miolan's fading career .
When performed for the first time, on March 19, 1859, Gounod's fathfulness to the original grim theme was . . . so somber that it flopped commercially . . . (Riley, 23)

Interestingly, Carvalho is one of the "real" artists mentioned in Leroux. In Chapter 2, "The New Marquerite," Leroux writes:

But the greatest triumph belonged to Christine Daae who began with some passages from "Romeo and Juliette." It was the first time the young artist sang that work of Gounod's which, moreover, had never been performed at the Opera and which the Opera-Comique had only just revived after its long-ago debut at the old Theatre-Lyrique with Mme. Carvalho. (Leroux, Chapter 2, Paragraph 9)

In the Essential Phantom of the Opera, Leonard Wolf footnotes the above passage as follows:

Marie Miolan Carvalho (1826-1895), a member of a famous French family of musicians, was a gifted soprano who had a long and successful career as an opera singer. She sang in Halevy's "La Juive" in 1849. The year of the opening performance of "Romeo and Juliette" at the Theatre Lyrique was 1867. (Wolf, 41)

I'm uncertain why Riley believes Carvalho to be the only model for Carlotta though she did sing in a flop performance of Faust.

Rosa Carron

In Leroux, the chandelier interrupts la Carlotta, falling during her duet in a performance of Faust, and landing on the head of a "concierge" who had just been hired to take over Madame Giry's job. Although, historically, there were two chandelier incidents (see the following section on More Than One Opera House), the one that occurred at the Opera Garnier (almost 16 years later than in the novel) was a falling counterweight, not the entire chandelier. It interrupted the diva Rosa Carron, who was in the midst of singing an encore at the time. She reported hearing a loud crash and seeing a bright flash of light and a cloud of dust. Interestingly, she did not report seeing the actual counterweight fall, though it did end up landing on a woman who worked as a concierge on the Rue Rochechouart.

And the Winner Is . . .

I believe it's possible that there wasn't any single soprano after whom Leroux modeled Carlotta. I think Betts' idea of the melding of two (or more) individuals is more likely. If we go with Nilsson as being the model for Daae, it makes sense to choose Adelina Patti since the two were rivals. The name Carlotta again indicates a Patti. But it was Carron who was interrupted by the chandelier incident and it was Carvalho who flopped in Faust. Perhaps Leroux took different aspects of different individuals and ended up with a composite character he named Carlotta.