Alessandro Cagliostro - Appearances in Fiction

Appearances in Fiction

• He appears as a principal character in the 1794 opera Le congrès des rois, a collaborative work of 12 composers.
• The French composer Victor Dourlen (1780–1864) composed the first act to Cagliostro, ou Les illuminés which premiered on 27 November 1810. The second and third act were composed by Anton Reicha (1770–1836).
• The Irish composer William Michael Rooke (1794–1847) wrote an unperformed work Cagliostro.
• Adolphe Adam wrote the opéra comique Cagliostro which premiered on 10 February 1844.
• Albert Lortzing wrote in 1850 the libretto for a comic opera in three acts, Cagliostro, but did not compose any music for it.
• Johann Strauß (Sohn) wrote the operetta Cagliostro in Wien (Cagliostro in Vienna) in 1875.
• The French composer Claude Terrasse (1867–1923) wrote Le Cagliostro which premiered in 1904.
• The Polish composer Jan Maklakiewicz (1899–1954) wrote the ballet in three scenes Cagliostro w Warszawie which premiered in 1938.
• The Romanian composer Iancu Dumitrescu (1944–) wrote the 1975 work Le miroir de Cagliostro for choir, flute and percussion.
• The opera Cagliostro by the Italian composer Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880–1968) was performed on Italian radio in 1952 and at La Scala on 24 January 1953.
• The comic opera Graf Cagliostro was wrtiten by Mikael Tariverdiev in 1983.
• Friedrich Schiller wrote an unfinished novel Der Geisterseher (The Ghost-Seer) between 1786 and 1789 about Cagliostro.
• Johann Wolfgang Goethe wrote a comedy based on Cagliostro's life, also in reference to the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, The Great Cophta (Der Groß-Coptha) which was published in 1791.
• Alexandre Dumas, père used Cagliostro in several of his novels (especially in Joseph Balsamo).
• Cagliostro is mentioned by Friedrich Nietzsche in section 194 of Beyond Good and Evil, first published in 1886: "One type wants to possess a people – and all the higher arts of a Cagliostro and Catiline suit him to that purpose."
• Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy wrote the supernatural love story Count Cagliostro where the Count brings to life a long dead Russian Princess, materializing her from her portrait. The story was made into a 1984 Soviet TV movie Formula of Love.
• In The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle the central character, Professor Challenger, is referred to as Cagliostro by a newspaper editor who disbelieves his account of his expedition.
• The Phantom comic book featured Cagliostro as a character in the story The Cagliostro Mystery from 1988, written by Norman Worker and drawn by Carlos Cruz.
• In the DC Comics universe, Cagliostro is described as an immortal (JLA Annual 2), a descendant of Leonardo da Vinci as well as an ancestor of Zatara and Zatanna (Secret Origins 27). Also, the DC Comics supervillain known as the Fadeaway Man wields an item called the Cloak of Cagliostro, which allows him to teleport.
• Cagliostro is a character in Robert Anton Wilson's The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles.
• Cagliostro is frequently alluded to in Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's Pendulum.
• Mikhail Kuzmin wrote a novella called The Marvelous Life of Giuseppe Balsamo, Count Cagliostro (1916).
• Cagliostro is a character in Psychoshop, a novel by Alfred Bester and Roger Zelazny.
• Josephine Balsamo, a descendent of Joseph Balsamo who calls herself Countess Cagliostro, appears in Maurice Leblanc's Arsene Lupin novels.
• Cagliostro makes several cameo appearances as a vampire in Kim Newman's Anno Dracula novels.
• The manga Rozen Maiden reveals Count Cagliostro to be merely one of many different aliases adopted by the legendary dollmaker Rozen. He was shown to be in prison whittling wood.
• The French film director Georges Méliès (1861–1938) directed the 1899 film Le Miroir de Cagliostro.
• Cagliostro has been played in film by
  • Hans Stüwe (Cagliostro, 1929, silent movie directed by Richard Oswald)
  • Orson Welles (Black Magic, 1949)
  • Howard Vernon (Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, 1972)
  • Bekim Fehmiu (Cagliostro, 1975)
  • Jean Marais (Cagliostro in Wien), 1978
  • Nodar Mgaloblishvili (Formula of Love, 1984 (TV))
  • Nicol Williamson (Spawn, 1997)
  • Christopher Walken (The Affair of the Necklace, 2001)
• In the 1943 German epic Münchhausen, Cagliostro appears as a powerful, morally ambiguous magician, portrayed by Ferdinand Marian.
• Cagliostro appears as a villainous magician in an episode of the 1960s series Thriller, entitled "The Prisoner in the Mirror"; he is played by Henry Daniell and Lloyd Bochner.
• The second Lupin III movie goes by the title of The Castle of Cagliostro, drawing on Maurice Leblanc's Arsene Lupin novels. Cagliostro appears as the main antagonist of the film, a ruler of a fictional country bearing the same name who influences the world's economy through counterfeiting.
• The Mummy (1932 film), starring Boris Karloff, was adapted from an original story treatment by Nina Wilcox Putnam, titled "Cagliostro" for Karloff to star in. Based on Cagliostro and set in San Francisco, the story was about a 3000-year old magician who survives by injecting nitrates.