Lyric Opera 2024-2025 Issue 7 - La bohème

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 26 Both sides of the prostitution coin became popular subjects for artists by mid-century. Mère Grégoire , painted by the undisputed leader of Realism, Gustave Courbet, was inspired by a popular song written in the 1820s by French lyricist Pierre-Jean Béranger about the proprietor of a house of prostitution known as Madame Grégoire . Courbet’s “Mother Gregory” (1855) is a demurely dressed and ample middle-aged woman depicted in the midst of a transaction, with coins scattered on a marble-topped counter, a ledger beneath her right hand, and a small bell used to summon her female employees. She appears to be accepting payment while offering a flower, the symbol of love, to a paying customer — all of which, for those familiar with the song, could easily be decoded and aligned with Béranger’s ribald lyrics. Courbet’s hidden message alludes to Madame Grégoire’s filles soumise s, and represents a sex trade that had specific rules that unregulated prostitutes did not follow. In contrast to brothel workers, covert prostitutes could be any working-class women not protected by marriage or family — including barmaids, laundresses, flower sellers, artist’s models, entertainers, or, like Mimì, underpaid needleworkers — who were forced into prostitution or cohabitation with a man in the hope of finding steadier circumstances. The Impressionists, whose compositions of modern life frequently signaled flirtatiousness and sociability among the sexes, did not shy away from imaging prostitution in paintings seemingly observed from life rather than modeled in a studio. (This notion is examined in depth in Hollis Clayson’s brilliant 2003 work, Painted Love .) Degas, for example, painted young laundresses, milliners, and pubescent dancers from the Parisian corps de ballet who often supplemented their meager earnings with sex work. Although now seen as part of the joie de vivre characterizing Impressionism, numerous works by Degas and other painters of modern life often concealed a sinister undertone, touching upon controversial 19th century aspects of women’s work outside the home. Indeed the free-ranging fille insoumise was a central theme in bourgeois culture, as shown more explicitly in the 1899 scene In the Wings by Degas’ close friend, the graphic artist and painter Jean-Louis Forain. As shown on page 24, backstage at the opera, two elegantly dressed men confront a ballerina: one directly addresses her while another looms just behind, so close that his black top hat overlaps with her orange headdress. For contemporary viewers their intentions would be clear. They represent wealthy fellows of the Jockey Club, whose membership included backstage privileges that allowed special access to the dancers. Although the ballerina’s stoic demeanor suggests an indifference to their advances, Forain’s artful fiction belies the reality of sexually exploited young ballet dancers, whose career and finances depended on finding favor among male donors. In Impressionist paintings from the 1860s and 1870s, the prostitute’s stark plight and social oppression was often prettified by art. Auguste Renoir’s 1877-79 The Laundress , shows his favorite model, Nina, without any reference to the backbreaking labor involved in her profession. Instead, Renoir adheres to the stereotypical characteristics of laundresses from the male viewpoint: promiscuous and available. He paints her artfully disheveled, rosy-cheeked, standing with hands on her hips, with one sleeve slipping seductively off her shoulder. It was not until the end of the century that artists like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec began to depict women, either on the street or in the brothel, more straightforwardly in large-format paintings. As a provincial aristocrat who embraced the counterculture of bohemian nightlife, Lautrec became the chronicler of the café concerts and cabarets of the Butte, where dancers and singers, also insoumises , found their prey. As in the café scenes of La Bohème , in Moulin de la Galette Lautrec presents an atmosphere of hedonism where a mixture of drink, crowds, dancing, and even the presence of gendarmes Mère Grégoire by Gustave Courbet,1855