Nineteenth-century Irish actress Harriet Smithson, the woman who brought Shakespeare to Paris and made the role of Ophelia her own, is the muse for this stunning novel.
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Nineteenth-century Irish actress Harriet Smithson, the woman who brought Shakespeare to Paris and made the role of Ophelia her own, is the muse for this stunning novel.
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New. Hardcover New Ships From Canada New in new dust jacket Glued binding Paper over boards With dust jacket 351 p Audience: General/trade From Booklist Nineteenth-century Irish actress Harriet Smithson is primarily remembered as muse to renowned French composer Hector Berlioz In this fictional reworking of Smithson's life, Balint recalls the performer who took Paris by storm with her fiery interpretation of Ophelia in 1827 From her unconventional childhood as the daughter of itinerant players to her phenomenal success on the London stage, a portrait of Harriet as a sublimely interesting character caught in the throes of her own personal drama is created Drawing parallels between the actress and some of her most famous roles, the author is able to reconstruct the vibrantly intoxicating atmosphere of the theatrical world in the early nineteenth century A lavishly romantic fictional biography of an overlooked cultural icon Margaret Flanagan Copyright Ac American Library Association All rights.
I enjoyed Balint's novel The Salt Letters and had just run across some engravings of Harriet Smithson playing Ophelia, so I decided to give this one a try. The story is an interesting one: an Irish girl is taken on by a Dublin theatrical company, then Drury Lane, and finally becomes the toast of Paris, especially due to her innovative portrayal of the mad Ophelia, wearing a black veil and with pieces of straw stuck in her hair. I was very interested in Smithson's marriage to the composer Hector Berlioz, but Balint only gives us Harriet's imagined letters to their son and glimpses of Berlioz's obsessive courtship. For some reason, Balint decided on an odd structure. The letters, present-day, are interspersed with memories in random chronological order. Just as you are progressing through Harriet's first trip to Paris, you suddenly are shuttled back to her teenage years, living with a priest in an Irish village, then back to Drury Lane, back to Paris--there's no logic or connection in the structure at all, and it gets a bit irritating after awhile. I wouldn't say this is a great book, but it's relatively satisfying. I'm really looking forward to reading Jude Morgan's novel about Smithson, titled Symphony.