The various figures of young women living in bohemia stand out like signposts in the bustling development of tango lyrics. Milonguita the flapper comes early, referred to in other songs as Esther; Malena the nightclub singer appears two decades later, when the tango had left the alleys of the opera theaters to stand in the limelight itself. In between, a few other faces flash into view, and one of the most enduring, also named in later songs, is “Griseta.”
The young woman depicted here is one of many French working girls, usually shop attendants or seamstresses, known as grisettes for the gray flower-print dresses they originally wore in the 1830s. By the 1920s, many of these girls left their dingy working-class prospects in Paris to emigrate to Buenos Aires, in search of a better life—or a magnate to seduce, as the dramas of the day required. The character here has not quite arrived on a steamboat, however: she is a walking pastiche of the most popular operas of the day.
As for the song’s references… Mimí and Musetta are the lead sopranos in Puccini’s La Bohème, whose lead tenor is Rodolfo (Schaunard is Rodolfo’s friend). Manon and the Chevalier Des Grieux are the main characters of Massenet’s Manon and Puccini’s Manon Lescaut. Marguerite Gauthier and Armand Duval are the main characters of La Dame aux Camélias or Camille by Alexandre Dumas fils, adapted by Verdi into his opera La Traviata. All three of these grisettes—Mimí, Manon, Marguerite—who were among the era’s most famous stage figures, die of consumption at the end of their stories.
Grisette
(Tr. Jake Spatz)
YouTube: Carlos Gardel | Roberto Rufino
Half Musetta and yet strangely half Mimí,
With caresses from Rodolfo and from Schaunard,
Finest flower of Paris,
She chased her novel dreams
To where the outskirts are…
And gone astray amid the crazy cabaret,
By the swagger of some tango’s waggish drone,
There, she nursed her fancies on:
She dreamt of her Des Grieux,
She wished to be Manon.
France’s darling!
Bearing with you, so vivacious,
Sentimental and flirtatious,
The poesy of the quartier…
Who could know, then,
Your grisette romance’s pages
Had one stanza alone:
The inaudible moan
Of Margarita Gauthier?
Yet the outskirts’ chilling squalor, after all,
Withered up the innocence behind her faith,
And never finding her Duval,
It dried her little heart
Like a May Day bouquet.
And one evening, full of champagne, full of coke,
By the gloomy bellows’ funereal drone,
She, poor thing, lay down to sleep,
The same way as Mimí,
The same way as Manon.
Griseta (1924)
Music: Enrique Delfino
Lyrics: José González Castillo
Mezcla rara de Museta y de Mimí
con caricias de Rodolfo y de Schaunard,
era la flor de París
que un sueño de novela
trajo al arrabal…
Y en el loco divagar del cabaret,
al arrullo de algún tango compadrón,
alentaba una ilusión:
soñaba con Des Grieux,
quería ser Manon.
Francesita,
que trajiste, pizpireta,
sentimental y coqueta
la poesía del quartier,
¿quién diría
que tu poema de griseta
sólo una estrofa tendría:
la silenciosa agonía
de Margarita Gauthier?
Mas la fría sordidez del arrabal,
agostando la pureza de su fe,
sin hallar a su Duval,
secó su corazón
lo mismo que un muguet.
Y una noche de champán y de cocó,
al arrullo funeral de un bandoneón,
pobrecita, se durmió,
lo mismo que Mimí,
lo mismo que Manon.