Blanche d'Antigny

Blanche d'Antigny
Blanche d'Antigny
	Penitent Magdalene by Baudry, the model was Blanche d'Antigny
Born	Marie Ernestine Antigny; 9 May 1840; Martizay, France
Died	30 June 1874 (aged 34)

Blanche d'Antigny (9 May 1840 – 30 June 1874) was a French singer, actress and courtesan^[1] whose fame today rests chiefly on the fact that Émile Zola used her as the principal model for his novel Nana.^[2]^[3]

Life

Blanche d'Antigny was born Marie Ernestine Antigny in Martizay, France.

Paul Baudry for his painting The Penitent Madeleine.^[4] She became the mistress of the Russian police chief Mesentzov who took her to St. Petersburg^[7] and, when she was forced to leave Russia by special order of the Tsarina.^[4]

When she set it into her head to become a star on the operetta stage,

Gounod's opera.^[10] Blanche d'Antigny played the leading roles in many of the hits of Hervé, Offenbach, and their disciples (Le tour du chien vert, L'œil crevé, La Vie parisienne

, La Cocotte aux œufs d'or, etc. etc.) between 1870 and 1873. Her lovers showered her with gifts and spent enormous sums of money on her, but she was unable to hold on to any of it.

After a scandal caused by the financial ruin of one of her lovers, she thought it better to leave Paris for a while. She went to Egypt where she appeared on the stage in Cairo [4] and had an affair with the Khedive. When she was asked why she had taken along to Cairo not only her chambermaid but also her coachman, although she had neither horses nor a coach there, she is reported to have answered: "What the hell! I owe Augustine 20,000 francs, and Justin 35,000; they wouldn't let me go without them!" She returned from this tour infected with typhoid fever and died.^[4] Blanche d'Antigny is buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.^[4]

References

^ Ditmore 2006, p. 555.
^ Blyth 1970, p. 96.
^ Richardson 1978, p. 78.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f "Blanche d'Antigny". Les Amis du Vieux Martizay. 2004. Retrieved February 14, 2019.
^ Fryer 2005, p. 23.
^ Price 1998, p. 16.
^ ^a ^b Nagelkerke 2012, p. 13.
^ González 2014, pp. 375–390.
^ Houbre 2006, p. 59.
^ *Dubé, Paul; Jacques Marchioro. "Paulus - Mémoires". Du Temps des cerises aux Feuilles mortes. Archived from the original on June 8, 2007. Retrieved 14 February 2019.