Character Background and Influences
Unsurprisingly, opera was one of Hergé's pet hates. An obvious inspiration for the character is Emma Calvé, the most famous Marguerite of all times, who was at the peak of her career during Hergé's youth. However, Helsingin Sanomat suggested in October 2008 that Castafiore was modelled after Aino Ackté, a Finnish soprano.
Though la Castafiore is obviously Italian, her pet aria is from a French opera (Faust was composed by Charles Gounod) rather than the Verdi, Puccini, or Donizetti one might expect from a star of La Scala. Faust, and this aria in particular, was among the most famous of all operas in Hergé's time. (To sing "Je ris de me voir" would have been something like a famous actor getting up and starting with "To be or not to be"). Furthermore, the choice of this aria is intentionally comic. Hergé depicts the busty, aging, glamorous and utterly self-absorbed opera diva as Marguerite, the picture of innocence, taking delight in her own image in the mirror.
Although Sra. Castafiore invariably sings her signature aria in Hergé's books, in the 2011 Spielberg/Jackson film The Adventures of Tintin, the character (voiced by soprano Renée Fleming) presents a different aria, "Je veux vivre..." from Gounod's Romeo et Juliette. (Oddly, the lead-in (played by an invisible orchestra) is the introduction to yet another coloratura aria, "Una voce poco fa", from Rossini's Barber of Seville.)
Bianca Castafiore is portrayed by Kim Stengel in the motion-capture film The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, which merges plots from several books.
The asteroid 1683 Castafiore, discovered in 1950, is named after the character.
Read more about this topic: Bianca Castafiore
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