La Belle Otero

Agustina del Carmen Otero Iglesias was born in Valga Galicia, Spain, daughter of a Spanish single mother, Carmen Otero Iglesias (1844–1903), and a Greek army officer named Carasson.[https://www.placedeslibraires.fr/ebook/9782402042819-souvenirs-et-vie-intime-caroline-otero/ Les Souvenirs et la Vie Intime de la Belle Otero], Place des Libraires Her family was impoverished, and as a child she moved to Santiago de Compostela working as a maid. At age 10, she was raped, and at 14, she left home with her boyfriend and dancing partner Paco and began working as a singer/dancer in Lisbon.

File:Valga, a Bela Otero 01-05.jpg In 1888, Otero found a sponsor named Ernest Jurgens in Barcelona who moved with her to Marseilles to promote her dancing career in France. She soon left him and created the character of La Belle Otero, portraying herself as an Andalusian Romani woman.[http://www.lockkeeper.com/short/otero/otero.htm Caroline "La Belle" Otero by Lockkeeper]. Lockkeeper.com. Retrieved on 16 November 2010. She was pretty, confident, intelligent, with an attractive figure. It was said that her extraordinarily dark black eyes were so captivating that they were "of such intensity that it was impossible not to be detained before them".{{Cite web|url=http://www.brasilcult.pro.br/teatro/painel17.htm|title=Cultura e Conhecimento: Teatro|website=www.brasilcult.pro.br}} She wound up as the star of Folies Bèrgere productions in Paris. In 1892 she along with Prince Albert of Monaco and Nicholas I of Montenegro lived in the same apartment together. One of her more famous costumes featured her voluptuous bosom partially covered with glued-on precious gems, and the twin cupolas of the Carlton Hotel built in 1912 in Cannes are popularly said to have been modeled upon her breasts.[http://icqurimage.com/Magazine/courtesan.html Icqurimage Electronic magazine: A brief history of the Courtesan] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060319091907/http://icqurimage.com/Magazine/courtesan.html |date=19 March 2006 }}. Icqurimage.com. Retrieved on 16 November 2010.[http://membres.multimania.fr/andresy/otero.htm la belle Otero] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100111041446/http://membres.multimania.fr/andresy/otero.htm |date=11 January 2010 }}. Membres.multimania.fr. Retrieved on 16 November 2010.File:Au Bois De Boulogne Vanity Fair 1897-06-03.jpg and Cléo de Merode in a fashionable crowd in the Bois de Boulogne drawn by Guth, 1897 ]]

Within a short number of years, Otero was said to be the most sought-after woman in Europe. She was serving, by this time, as a courtesan to wealthy and powerful men of the day, and she chose her lovers carefully. She associated herself with Kaiser Wilhelm II,{{Cite web|url=http://www.bild.de/unterhaltung/tv/serien/der-kaiser-hatte-wirklich-sex-im-adlon-28011514.bild.html|title=Familien-Saga Adlon: Was ist wahr und was ist Erfindung im großen TV-Epos? – TV – Bild.de|date=10 January 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130110154514/http://www.bild.de/unterhaltung/tv/serien/der-kaiser-hatte-wirklich-sex-im-adlon-28011514.bild.html|archive-date=10 January 2013}} Prince Albert I of Monaco, Prince Nicholas I of Montenegro, King Edward VII, Peter I of Serbia, and King Alfonso XIII of Spain, as well as Russian Grand Dukes Peter and Nicholas, the Duke of Westminster and writer Gabriele D'Annunzio. Her love affairs made her notorious, and the envy of many other notable female personalities of the day. Six men reportedly committed suicide after their love affairs with Otero ended, but this has never been substantiated beyond a doubt. It is a fact, however, that two men did fight a duel over her.

In August 1898, in St-Petersburg, the French film operator Félix Mesguich (an employee of the Lumière company) shot a one-minute reel of Otero performing the famous "Valse Brillante." The screening of the film at the Aquarium music-hall provoked such a scandal (because an officer of the Tsar's army appeared in this frivolous scene) that Mesguich was expelled from Russia.Jacques Rittaud-Hutinet (1990). Le cinéma des origines: Les frères Lumière et leurs opérateurs, pp.176–177. {{ISBN|2-903528-43-8}} (in french)

Otero retired after World War I, purchasing a mansion and property at a cost of the equivalent of {{US$|15 million}}. She had accumulated a massive fortune over the years, about {{US$|25 million}}, but she gambled much of it away over the remainder of her lifetime, enjoying a lavish lifestyle, and visiting the casinos of Monte Carlo often. She lived out her life in a pronounced state of poverty until she died of a heart attack in 1965 in her one-room apartment at the Hotel Novelty in Nice, France.

Of her heyday and career, Otero once said "Women have one mission in life: to be beautiful. When one gets old, one must learn how to break mirrors. I am very gently expecting to die."[https://web.archive.org/web/20080220203138/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,833628,00.html World: Suivez-Moi, Jeune Homme]. Time (23 April 1965). Retrieved on 16 November 2010.

• Les Souvenirs et la Vie Intime de la Belle Otero (1926). {{ISBN|9782402042819}}

A Jose Martí poem "El alma trémula y sola" was inspired and dedicated to Carolina Otero

• A 1954 film La Belle Otero starring Mexican actress María Félix.{{Cite web |url=https://en.unifrance.org/movie/4763/la-belle-otero |title=La Belle Otero (1954) |website=UniFrance |language=en |access-date=3 November 2018 }}
• A portrait of "Madame Otero" in Colette's My Apprenticeships.{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2GIQrnvJWmMC&pg=PT122 |title=The Book of the Courtesans: A Catalogue of Their Virtues |last=Griffin |first=Susan |date=6 February 2002 |publisher=Crown/Archetype |isbn=9780767910828 |page=122 |language=en }}

Belle-otero-2-f.jpg|La Belle Otero circa 1890

La Belle Otero 1894.jpg|La Belle Otero at Folies-Bergère, 1894

La Belle Otero - Folies Bergere.jpg|An 1894 Folies Bergère poster

La Belle Otero - 1905 Postcard.jpg|A 1905 postcard of La Belle Otero

La Belle Otero.jpg|La Belle Otero, by Léopold-Émile Reutlinger

La Belle Otero (BPL, Hale Collection).jpg|La Belle Otero by Léopold-Émile Reutlinger

OTERO, Carolina. 'La bella Otero' SIP. 129-20. Photo Reutlinger.jpg|La Belle Otero by Léopold-Émile Reutlinger

La Belle Otero, par Jean Reutlinger, 1.jpg|La Belle Otero by Jean Reutlinger

La Belle Otero, par Jean Reutlinger, 2.jpg|La Belle Otero by Jean Reutlinger

CarolinaOtero1912.tif|La Otero from a 1912 publication

Carolina “La Belle” Otéro.jpg|Vintage postcard of La Belle Otero

Hand tinted postcard of La Belle Otero.jpg|Vintage postcard of La Belle Otero by Léopold-Émile Reutlinger

Hand tinted postcard of La Belle Otero by Léopold-Émile Reutlinger.jpg|Hand tinted postcard of La Belle Otero by Léopold-Émile Reutlinger

• Hispagnolisme
• Women in dance

{{Reflist|2}}

• Arruíname pero no me abandones. La Bella Otero y la Belle Époque. De Marie-Helène Carbonel i Javier Figuero. Ed. Espasa Calpe, 2003. In Spanish
• A Bela Otero, pioneira do cine, Miguel Anxo Fernández In Galician
• La passion de Carolina Otero Ramón Chao, 2001. French novel about the fictional life of the dancer.

{{Commons category}}

• [http://lockkeeper.com/short/otero/otero.htm La Belle – the Beautiful]
• [http://hotelcarlton.fr/labelleotero La Belle Otèro in the history of the Hotel Carlton] {{in lang|fr}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Otero, La Belle}}

Category:1868 births

Category:1965 deaths

Category:French vedettes

Category:People from Caldas (comarca)

Category:Mistresses of Edward VII

Category:Spanish female dancers

Category:Spanish stage actresses

Category:Spanish vedettes

Category:Actresses from Galicia (Spain)

Category:Spanish courtesans

Category:19th-century Spanish actresses

Category:20th-century Spanish actresses

Category:Spanish people of Greek descent