Aurélie Thiele Explores the WWII Opera World in 'The Paris Understudy'

French American author, Aurélie Thiele, joins Writer’s Voices to talk about her debut novel, a historical fiction titled The Paris Understudy. Set in Paris in the time before, during, and after WWII, the book tells the story of two rival women, French opera extraordinaire, Madeleine Moreau, and her understudy, a novice named Yvonne Chevallier. When Madeleine is given the opportunity to perform at an esteemed German opera festival, her and Yvonne travel to Germany where they find out that Adolf Hitler will be in attendance. Upon learning this news, Madeleine departs suddenly, leaving Yvonne to perform at the festival alone and catching the eye of Hitler. As for what inspired Thiele to write this novel, she said, “…about 12 years ago I learned about an opera singer named Germaine Lubin, was a very famous opera singer in Paris in the 1930’s and also during the war. She was part of the famous 4 singing Wagner, and she stayed famous during the war because she kept singing and she sang for the Nazis, and she also took on a German lover, a Nazi lover, associated with the Nazis. She did not ever denounce anyone as far as we know, but she did socialize with them pretty intensively. At the end of the war, she was arrested and tried for national treason for her behavior during the war, and she was put in prison for about a year and then she lost her French citizenship for a couple of additional years, and she had to live in Italy for a couple of years before she could return, but even after she could return to France her career never recovered. No one wanted to hire her.”

In regards to which character is based on Lubin, Thiele explained that both women had characteristics that embodied the famous singer. “…I realized pretty quickly that [Lubin] would not make a very good novel character because she never expressed any remorse for her behavior during the war… and so she had no character growth. She just said, ‘I wanted to sing, I needed to sing, singing is my talent,’ and that was obviously not going to be a very sympathetic character in a novel, and so what I decided to do is to split some of her attributes between Yvonne and Madeleine. So Madeleine got the famous part of Germaine Lubin, super diva singing Wagner, being very well established, very successful, and Yvonne got the… singing for the Nazis, associating with the Nazis…”