Ingénue
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
Related e |
Featured: |
Typically, the ingenue is beautiful, gentle, sweet, virginal, and often naïve, in mental or emotional danger rather than physical danger, usually a target of The Cad; whom she may have mistaken for The Hero. Due to lack of independence, the ingenue usually lives with her father or a male father figure (although in some rare cases she lives with a motherly figure). The vamp is often a foil for the ingenue (or the damsel in distress, for that matter).
In opera and musical theatre, the ingenue is usually sung by a lyric soprano. The ingenue stereotypically has the fawn-eyed innocence of a child.
The ingenue is often accompanied with a romantic side plot. This romance is usually considered pure and harmless to both participants. In many cases, but not all, the male participant is just as innocent as the ingenue is. Also, the ingenue is similar to the girl next door archetype.
Ingenue and ingenuous may also refer to a new actor or actress or one typecast in such roles.
Ingenue examples
- Antonia in Les contes d'Hoffmann and in The Monk
- Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew
- Belle in Beauty and the Beast
- Cosette in Les Misérables
- Christine Daaé in The Phantom of the Opera
- Polly Browne in Sandy Wilson's The Boy Friend
- Cinderella
- Clara Johnson in The Light in the Piazza
- Dorothy Gale in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
- Eva St. Clair in Uncle Tom's Cabin
- Gilda in Rigoletto
- Gretchen in Goethe's Faust
- Hannah Jelkes in The Night of the Iguana
- Jemima in Cats
- Johanna Barker in Sweeney Todd
- Josephine in H.M.S. Pinafore
- Julie Jordan in Carousel
- Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi
- Lakmé
- Lili
- Liù in Turandot
- Madame Butterfly
- Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance
- Magnolia in Show Boat
- Michaëla in Carmen
- Mimì in La Bohème
- Nannetta in Falstaff
- Peggy Sawyer in 42nd Street
- Philia in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
- Rapunzel in Into the Woods
- Snow White
- Tatajana in Eugene Onegin
- Many of the paintings of William-Adolphe Bouguereau depict scenes of ingenues
See also