A jewel of a role - Stage jewellery at the Paris Opera - Exhibitions - Visits

A jewel of a role

Stage jewellery isn’t merely beautiful: it speaks volumes!

In numerous 19^th-century opera and ballet libretti, particularly during the Second Empire, it played a key role as a theatrical device to propel the action or build suspense.

It also enhanced dramaturgy by identifying characters at a glance: the rich and the powerful, sorce- resses and femmes fatales were recognisable by their lavish ornaments ; conquerors and warriors by their opulent armour.

Tell me what jewellery you are wearing and I’ll tell you who you are.

Jewellery’s sparkle and splendour fascinates and excites covetous- ness. 19th-century librettists understood this well and used it as a source of temptation to propel the action forward and reveal the weaknesses of their characters. It is the casket of jewels given to her by Mephistopheles that precipitates Marguerite’s downfall in Faust (Charles Gounod) in the famous “Jewel Song”, and it is the glinting of gold that triggers the action in Richard Wagner’s Ring.

Sometimes, too, jewellery served to reveal an identity hitherto hidden or unknown, facilitating the coups de théâtre that so delighted audiences of the period.

Caroline Miolan-Carvalho in the role of Marguerite in ‘Faust’ by Charles Gounod / BnF, département de la Musique, Bibliothèque-musée de l’Opéra

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In the 19^th century, most performances at the Paris Opera were of new or recent works.

Jewellery at that time took on a functional dimension all the more crucial to the legibility of the plot given that supertitles did not yet exist and that works were heard amid the babble of conversation, a far cry from today’s religious silence.

Jewellery conveyed characters’ social status and helped to identify the protagonists. A crown indicated a king, a mitre a pope, a helmet a Valkyrie.

Pair of gloves for "Le Roi d'Ys" by Édouard Lalo, directed by Pierre Chéreau / BnF, département de la Musique, Bibliothèque-musée de l’Opéra

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Associated with seduction, jewellery plays a key role in eroticism in a wide variety of ways: tiaras, bodices, belts, combs, bracelets and necklaces reveal or conceal the body all the better to enhance it.

Of course, these ornaments reflect the 19^th century’s conception of womanhood and its taste for femmes fatales, Carmen being the most striking example of this. One might also wonder whom these jewels best served, the character or the diva – often a tragedienne – who wore them.

In ballets, tiaras had to be lighter so as not to impede the dancers’ movements, proof that symbolic jewellery did sometimes give precedence to practical considerations.