The Devil in Love (novel)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Le Diable Amoureux (The Devil in Love, 1772) is an occult romance by Jacques Cazotte which tells of a demon, or devil, who falls in love with Alvaro, an amateur human dabbler, and attempts, in the guise of a young beautiful woman, to win his affections.
The novel was sub-titled un roman fantastique, the first time in literary history that a work was so labeled, and thus started a literary style known as fantastic fiction, where surreal events intrude on reality and the reader is left guessing whether the events actually occurred or were merely the product of the character's imagination. Le Diable Amoureux can also be considered the first modern French horror novel. The supernatural was not treated as a fantamasgory, or for satirical or philosophical purposes. It was intended to be real and to induce fear in the reader.
Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
The book has been made into an opera Vlublionny Diavol ("Le Diable Amoureux") by the Russian composer Alexander Vustin. The book also served as inspiration for, and is referred to within, Spanish author Arturo Perez-Reverte's novel The Club Dumas (El Club Dumas, 1993). Roman Polanski's 1999 adaptation of the novel, The Ninth Gate, stars Johnny Depp as rare book dealer Lucas Corso. Corso is hired to compare versions of a book allegedly authored in league with the Devil, and finds himself aided by a demon in his adventure.
The 19th century Balletmaster Joseph Mazilier created a ballet adaptation of Le Diable Amoureux for the Ballet du Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique (today known as the Paris Opera Ballet) to the music of the composers Napoléon Henri Reber and Francois Benoist. The work premiered on September 21, 1840 at the Théâtre Imperial de l´Opéra, Paris. It was later restaged in a revised version under the title Satanella by the great Balletmaster/choreographer Marius Petipa with his father Jean Petipa for the Imperial Ballet with the original music re-orchestrated by Konstantin Liadov. This revival premiered on February 10, 1848 at the Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Petipa later added the famous Venetian Carnival Grand Pas de Deux to the ballet in 1870, which became known as the Fascination Pas de Deux from Satanella, as it is still known today.
