Lyric Opera 2024-2025 Issue 7 - La bohème

27 | Lyric Opera of Chicago contribute to the promiscuity associated with nightlife and prostitution. A wooden barrier bisects the women seated in expectation of an invitation that will lead them to the dance floor; they are under the surveillance of the bony man seated behind them, described by the scholar Richard Thomson as “Alphonse, the enforcer, or pimp.” In his later and most celebrated nightclub scene shown on page 28, At the Moulin Rouge , expensively fashioned female dancers and singers (including Jane Avril, with her signature red hair and fur-trimmed dress, seen from behind) share a table with well-heeled gentlemen. Like Puccini’s Musetta, who ascends from call girl and café singer through her relationship with the Count, Avril is a former can-can dancer whose marriage to artist-designer Maurice Biais lifts her out of her envisaged trajectory as a professional prostitute. In this crowded and chaotic scene of mirth and vice, Lautrec, the noticeably short man at center, just above Avril’s head, presents himself strolling with his cousin Gabriel de Tapies, as a detached observer to the debauchery inherent in Montmartre nightlife. When I think of Musetta’s role as ostentatious performer on and off the stage, I can almost imagine her as the subject of another figure of clandestine prostitution painted by Lautrec’s close artist friend, Louis Anquetin. In this 1888 work, A Woman at the Élysée Montmartre , an unidentified woman is shown strolling under the electric lights of an outdoor beer garden behind a popular dance hall. Exaggeratedly made-up with rice powder, she is inappropriately attired, her outrageously over-decorated hat completely incompatible with the nighttime atmosphere. Her unbuttoned peplum jacket is flung open to reveal a Moulin de la Galette by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec,1889 A Woman at the Élysée Montmartre by Louis Anquetin,1888 The Laundress by Auguste Renoir,1877-79