Bloodless, Attractive, and Silent: Ophelia’s Death On- and Off-Stage in Nineteenth-Century France and Italy

During the nineteenth century, Ophelia became one of the most frequently depicted characters in iconography symbolising virginal purity and self-sacrificial victimhood. In France and Italy, Ophelia’s reception was connected to Hamlet’s adaptations for the stage in the respective countries, but Ophelia’s iconography partly followed its own path, as evidenced by the large occurrence of pictures showing her off-scene death, with significant details such as Ophelia’s clutching the branch before drowning, while keeping her eyes wide open. Highlighting the differences between French and English iconography in the gendered iconisation of the character, this article focuses on the mutual influence between the diffusion of a visual tradition and Hamlet’s stage re-elaborations, both in drama and opera. The reworking of the figurative theme in France took a turn during the Romantic period, following the success of Harriet Smithson’s performances, which contributed to the transformation of Ophelia’s character into a visual icon of romantic lovesickness. The death scene reached a climax of popularity with the 1868 operatic adaptation with music by Ambroise Thomas, in which the drowning was performed on stage, creating an osmotic intertextuality between iconography and theatre. Christine Nilsson’s successful Ophelia contributed to popularise the topos of a melodramatic victim of love, an image which the visual arts transposed into the context of a disquieting Gothic atmosphere, triggering a morbid voyeuristic fascination towards the subject. KEYWORDS: Ophelia; Hamlet; visual arts; iconography; drama; opera