page_title: Tuberculosis in human culture
section_title: Opera
hierarchical_section_title: Tuberculosis in human culture / Portrayals / Opera
caption_attribution_description: English: End of Act 3 "La mort d'Antonia" of Offenbach's opera Les contes d'Hoffmann, as performed in the first production at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in 1881. In front: fr:Adèle Isaac (Antonia); in back, left to right: en:Hippolyte Belhomme (Crespel), fr:Marguerite Ugalde (Nicklausse), fr:Pierre Grivot (Franz), fr:Émile-Alexandre Taskin (Miracle), fr:Jean-Alexandre Talazac (Hoffmann) Français&#160;: La création des Contes d'Hoffmann à l'Opéra-Comique (1881) avec, debout de gauche à droite, Hippolyte Belhomme (Crespel), Marguerite Ugalde (Nicklausse), Pierre Grivot (Franz, à genoux), Émile-Alexandre Taskin (Miracle), Jean-Alexandre Talazac (Hoffmann)&#160;; au sol, Adèle Isaac (Antonia)
context_page_description: Through its effect on the world's population and major artists in various fields, tuberculosis has influenced history. The disease was for centuries associated with poetic and artistic qualities in its sufferers, and was known as "the romantic disease". Many artistic figures including the poet John Keats, the composer Frédéric Chopin and the artist Edvard Munch either had the disease or were close to others who did.
  Tuberculosis played prominent and recurring roles in diverse fields. These included literature, as in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, set in a sanatorium; in music, as in Van Morrison's song "T.B. Sheets"; in opera, as in Puccini's La bohème and Verdi's La Traviata; in art, as in Monet's painting of his first wife Camille on her deathbed; and in film, such as the 1945 The Bells of St. Mary's starring Ingrid Bergman as a nun with tuberculosis. The disease also appears in fields such as anime and manga.
context_section_description: Several major operas have exploited the theme of heroines dying tragically of tuberculosis, including
  Mimì in Puccini's opera La bohème. 
  Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata features the consumptive Violetta Valéry, based on Marguerite Gautier in Alexandre Dumas, fils's 1848 novel La Dame aux Camélias. In Jacques Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann, Antonia has tuberculosis and is under the control of a Svengali-like quack doctor who forces her to sing herself to death by conjuring the shade of her dead mother, an opera singer. Numerous stage and film adaptations have been made, usually titled Camille or The Lady of the Camellias in English-language versions, and more loosely, as the 2001 film Moulin Rouge!, where Satine dies of tuberculosis. The real life Paris courtesan Marie Duplessis, the historical Lady of the Camellias, died of the disease at age 23.
caption: The death of Antonia from tuberculosis in the original 1881 production of The Tales of Hoffmann.
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