Bianca Castafiore

Bianca Castafiore , known as Castafiore , is a recurring character of the adventures of Tintin imagined by Hergé.

Presentation

Castafiore is a professional singer Italy, called the Rossignol Milanese by the press, with which it maintains the variable reports/ratios, according to silence on its stoutness. Maria Callas would have been a model for this character, although its career is posterior on arrival of Castafiore in the sceptre of Ottokar . Castafiore is accompanied in its peregrinations and on scene and its repetitions by its pianist Igor Wagner, like by its chambermaid Irma, with which it maintains only the professional reports/ratios.

Framed well, Castafiore is equipped with a powerful voice. Its purple passage is the Air of the jewels , sung by Marguerite in the opera Faust of Charles Gounod. Tintin which it took in hitch-hiking prefers to continue with foot rather than to undergo its beautiful canto . The Capitaine Haddock has, him also, an aversion for this type of operatic aria although the professional singer continues it by her song, in person or wave, and this through all planet until in the the Himalayas. However, Castafiore tests for him a certain affection, in spite of its difficulty of retaining the exact name of the captain: " Karpock" , " Kodak" , " Harrock" (" Harrock' N roll" supplemented this last), etc… In return, the Haddock captain will not fail to call it " Castafiole" and " Castapipe".

In the Business Sunflower , it helps Tintin and the Haddock captain in a decisive way in their providing hiding-place and disguise, which shows a great courage taking into account the rigor of the police state borders. Castafiore then makes think of Marlène Dietrich vis-a-vis the Nazis, Pablo Casals vis-a-vis Franco or Melina Mercouri vis-a-vis the Greek colonels. It had already saved Tintin in the Sceptre of Ottokar by not denouncing it with the authorities syldaves and especially it will draw in a thundering way Tintin and Haddock of the claws from frightening the Marquis Di Gorgonzola in Coke in Stock . Tintin and Haddock thus owe him several times the life.

This apparent Phobie of Haddock for the universe of the beautiful canto will lead to a famous label in the Jewels of Castafiore : that where the Haddock captain, deadened and corroded by the concern related to the invasion of the Castle of Moulinsart, makes a Cauchemar in which it sees naked in the forefront of a floor of Perroquet S out of evening dress, attending the lyric outburst, on the scene, of Castafiore with head and wings of parrot…

Anecdotes

  • Castafiore is the only female character of foreground of the series Tintin . It only is very seldom development although the significance of its name (" White Pure Fleur") that is to say a whole program. To allot the only feminine role to a pure character (and castrator) was worth in Hergé some charges of Misogynie and machism. It was also suggested that Hergé itself hated the opera. However, the rejection by Hergé of the lyric art seems a little contradictory with the presence in its team, in the Années 1940, of Edgar P. Jacobs, former lyric singer, with whom the friendly relations will continue beyond the Temple of the Sun. Peut-être were there actually only spades without spite.

  • This allusion to the chastity of Castafiore takes all its salt when it is known that the jewels are in psychoanalysis one of the metaphors of virginity. Thus, by singing album after album the famous " Air of Bijoux" and by exclaiming " Sky, my jewels! " all along the album the Jewels of Castafiore , celebrates it lady would anything else make it, all in all, only protest its fear of losing its virginity.

Appearances

Castafiore appears in the albums:

But made appearances “surprised” (One hears it with the radio) in the albums:

Like in films:

Air of the jewels

Ah! I laugh to see me,
If beautiful in this mirror!
Is this you, Marguerite?
Answer, answer me quickly! -
Not! not! - it is not any more you!
Not! not! - it is not any more your face!
It is the girl of a king,
That one greets in the passing! -
Ah, if it were here! …
If he saw me thus!
Like a young lady,
He would find me belle.
(It avoids collar.)
Let us complete the metamorphosis!
He still delays me of essayer
The bracelet and the collar!
(It avoids bracelet and rises.)
God! it is as a hand which on my arm is posed!
Ah! I laugh at me voir
If beautiful in this mirror!
Is this you, Marguerite?
Answer, answer me quickly! -
Ah, if it were here! …
If he saw me thus!
Like a young lady,
He would find me belle.
Marguerite, it is not any more you,
It is not any more your face,
Not! it is the girl of a king,
That one greets with the passage.

Random links:Hollywood Records | Ferdinand Lemaire | Marc Libbra | District of Hedong | Pierre All Saints' day | Chania