Dmitri Hvorostovsky singing aria from The Queen of Spades during reopening gala of the Bolshoi Theatre, 28 October 2011 (Caption and photo credit: Wikipedia)
It is so difficult to accept the death of Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. He was a powerful male singer with a “silver mane” (this description is not mine). Hvorostosky had brown hair, but it turned white in his early thirties. He passed away on 22 November 2017, at the age of 55.
Hvorostovsky was born in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, on 16 October 1962, to what I would describe as an upper middle-class family. He came to the attention of music lovers everywhere when he won the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, in 1989.
In the summer of 2015, Hvorostovsky announced that he had a brain tumour. After a short leave, he resumed his career, at a slower pace and briefly. An inoperable malignant brain tumour is merciless.
Baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky was in good health when he sang Di Provenza, il mar, il suol, an aria from Giuseppi Verdi‘s La Traviata(1852), an opera derived from a novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils‘ (27 July 1824 – 27 November 1895) La Dame aux camélias (The Lady with/of the Camellias) (1848), or Camille, to an English-speaking audience. Dmitri Hvrostovsky is Giorgio Germont, trying to persuade his son, Alfredo, who loves Violetta, to return to Provence, the family home (Scene 2 of La Traviata).
The protagonist of Giuseppi Verdi‘s La Traviata (the fallen woman) is Violetta Valéry. Alexandre Dumas named his protagonist Marguerite Gautier. She had been Marie Duplessis (1824 – 1847) who wore a red camellia when she was menstruating, a message to her lovers. She was born Alphonsine Rose Plessis, in Normandy, to an abusive father who sold her when she was 15.
At the age of 16, the beautiful Marie Duplessis conquered Paris. She bore a child to Charles Morny, duc de Morny, but the baby died a month after birth. The duc de Morny, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand‘s illegitimate grandson and a half-brother to Napoleon III, looked after Marie Duplessis, providing her with an apartment and transforming her into a refined courtesan and salonnière, the most famous in her days. She was Alexandre Dumas, fils’ lover and a lover to various aristocrats as well as composer Franz Liszt. Alexandre Dumas, fils, born in 1824, could not afford to marry her.
The lovely Marie Duplessis died of tuberculosis on 3 February 1847, at the age of 23. At her bedside were her husband, a brief marriage, the comte de Perregaux, and her former lover, the Baltic-German count Gustav Ernst von Stackelberg.
Alexandre Dumas, père (24 July 1802 at Villers-Cotterêts – 5 December 1870, at Puy, near Dieppe), the legitimate son of Marie-Louise Labouret;
Alexandre Dumas, fils (Paris 27 July 1824 – 27 November 1895) the illegitimate son of Marie-Laure-Catherine Labay, a dressmaker.
The List
The above list is quite impressive. The descendants of French marquis Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, a colonel andgénéral commissaire in the artillery of the colony, include a famous general who played a significant role in Napoleon’s early military victories, between 1795 and 1799, the Directoire FR period of French history, or the first Republic.
Not only was Thomas-Alexandre a general but he was:
“the highest-ranking person of color of all time in a continental European army [and he is] the first person of color in the French military to become brigadier general, the first to become divisional general, and the first to become general-in-chief of a French army.” (See Thomas-Alexandre Dumas , Wikipedia.)
In fact, “Dumas [Thomas Alexandre] shared the status of the highest-ranking black officer in the Western world only with Toussaint Louverture (who in May 1797 became the second black general-in-chief in the French military) until 1975[.]” (See Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, Wikipedia.)
However, Thomas-Alexandre lived at a very difficulty time in the history of France, Revolutionary France. So did Joseph Boulogne, chevalier de Saint-George, the “black Mozart,” a swordsman, an equestrian and Thomas-Alexandre’s life-long friend. They were members of the aristocracy, yet could ill-afford to oppose the notion of equality promoted in Revolutionary France. The two were mulattos, born to freed slaves in the Carribeans: Saint-Domingue (the current Haiti) with respect to Thomas-Alexandre (25 March 1762,- 26 February 1806) and Guadeloupe, in the case of Joseph Boulogne, chevalier de Saint-George (approximately 1745 – 1799).
Aristocrats: Thomas A. Dumas & Saint-George
Both would be in the military during Revolutionary France and would do so as aristocrats. Just how Joseph Boulogne became an aristocrat is not entirely clear in my mind. His father Georges Bologne was ennobled in 1757 and, after completing his studies, Joseph Boulogne was appointed Gendarme de la Garde du Roi (Gendarme of the King’s Guard). In fact, Georges Bologne may have been the descendant of Italian aristocrats, but Joseph was born out-of-wedlock.
Marie-Cessette Dumas
Be that as it may, Thomas-Alexandre, was born to an aristocrat, marquis Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie. Antoine had joined his brother Charles, in Saint-Domingue, but he disappeared probably to escape his creditors. He took three slaves with him and started to live under a pseudonym: Alexandre Delisle. He sold his three slaves so he could buy a small sugar plantation at Jérémie, Saint-Domingue and then purchased “for an exorbitant price,” black slave Marie-Césette (Dumas).
Marie-Césette was not a mulâtresse.[i] It appears she was from Gabón and is the mother of three children: two sons and a daughter or two daughters and a son, by Antoine. Sources differ. But a fourth child, a daughter, was also born to Marie-Césette, or Cessette[ii] before she was bought.
Antoine’s Family Sold à réméré
Thomas-Alexandre and his sisters were sold, with an option to be bought back or the “right of redemption.” This sort of transaction was called à réméré. Antoine-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie became rich as a slave-trader and also sold various properties in France. He therefore repurchased Thomas-Alexandre who lived in France.
The name Dumas means “from the farm,” but the name could be Dûma,[iii]a name originating from an ethnic group called Fang. Thomas-Alexandre adopted his mother’s surname and it became the name of his very famous son, Alexandre Dumas, père (father) and grandson, Alexandre Dumas, fils (son). Both were very popular writers who were elected to the Académie française.
The most famous Dumas, Alexandre Dumas, père had three illegimate children, one of whom is Alexandre Dumas, fils, born to Marie-Laure-Catherine Labay, a dressmaker. Dumas, fils, was an illegitimate child. He is the author of La Dame aux Camélias, or The Lady of the Camellias.
Antoine Returns to France
Alexandre Dumas, père, by Nadar(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Antoine was presumed dead and his brother Charles had returned to France, playing Marquis. However, Antoine also returned to France and reclaimed his real identity, that of Antoine Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie. That story was fictionalized as The Count of Monte-Cristo(1944), by Dumas, père and his ghost writer Auguste Maquet. Auguste Maquet also co-wrote The Three Musketeers(1844). Getting money out of Saint-Domingue was difficult and therefore perfect material for Dumas, père, a passionate writer. The Three Musketeersfeatures d’Artagnan who arrested Nicolas Fouquet.
“D’Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos” by Maurice Leloir (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Saint-George and Thomas-Alexandre connection
La Boëssière’s Academy
It would appear that marquis Antoine Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie returned to France in c. 1775 and died at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in 1786, just short of the French Revolution (1789 – 1796). He had bought back his son Thomas-Alexandre who met the above-mentioned mulatto and aristocrat Joseph Boulogne, chevalier de Saint-George (25 December 1745 – 10 June 1799) when both studied under fencing master La Boëssière, at La Boëssière’s Academy. That friendship ended with the death of Saint-George who did not find employment after the Revolution and was weakened by a two-year stay in a jail. He may have died of gangrene.
Along with Saint-George, Thomas-Alexandre was an illustrious man of colour in Europe. Thomas-Alexandre entered the military in 1786, at the age of 24. By the age of 31, Dumas was in command of 53,000 troops as the General-in-Chief of the French Army of the Alps. According to Wikipedia, “Dumas’ strategic victory in opening the high Alps passes enabled the French to initiate their Second Italian Campaign against the Austrian Empire.” (See Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, Wikipedia)
Thomas-Alexandre’s Demise
Thomas-Alexandre also served in Egypt where he had a verbal disagreement with Napoleon Bonaparte himself. He therefore left on an unsafe ship and was taken prisoner in the Kingdom of Naples and thrown in a dungeon where he was imprisoned from 1799 to 1802.
When he was released, Thomas-Alexandre “was partially paralyzed, almost blind in one eye, had been deaf in one ear but recovered; his physique was broken.”A broken gentleman, Thomas-Alexandre, fathered Alexandre Dumas, père (born 1802)on his return to Villers-Cotterêts. However, Thomas-Alexandre was sick and he was poor, and Napoleon Bonaparte did not help him. He died of a stomach cancer in February of 1806.
Conclusion
The Dumas story is a success story. Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie had a gifted and prominent son, and equally accomplished grandson and great-grandson. In fact, there would be more prominent descendants of Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie and Marie-Cessette Dumas. However, our mulatto heroes, the Chevalier de Saint-George and Thomas-Alexandre Dumas were victims. One was the victim of the French Revolution, the other, Thomas-Alexandre, the victim of a heartless Napoleon Bonaparte. Bonaparte did not have a conscience.
To a person who found fault with his lineage, Alexandre Dumas, père said:
My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great-grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours ends. [iv]
[ii] Reports vary concerning Marie Céseste or Cessette. Some biographers and historians claim she was of mixed ancestry. Some also claim she was not married to Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie. Antoine Alexandre did sell his family à réméré, i.e. with an option to buy then back but he did not claim Marie-Cessette back. It may be that she had died of dysentery c 1772 to 1774.
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