The word 'courtesan' is correct and usable in written English.
It refers to a woman who is a mistress or companion of a wealthy or powerful man, typically one who is a patron of the arts and offers financial support and gifts in exchange for her company and sexual favors. Example: The king's favorite courtesan was known for her wit, beauty, and expensive tastes, which made her the envy of all the other women in the court.
Knowing almost nothing about the reputedly gloomy French novelist, I went to see a stage adaptation of Nana, his portrait of a Parisian courtesan.
"I tell the singers, 'if you get this bar right, it will be a world premiere' .Given that the opera about the tragic love-life of the Parisian courtesan, Violetta Valéry, was performed 533 times around the world during the 2012-13 opera season, Glyndebourne's production will not exactly be a world premiere for either the performers or the audience.
Alan Rubin, a leading European furniture dealer based in Paris, brought an ornate carved and gilded Louis XVI bed that was made ten years before the French revolution for Marie-Madeleine Guimard, a leading ballerina at Paris Opera and a well known courtesan of the period.
It has been claimed in turn that she was a famous Roman courtesan, a garden-variety prostitute, an aristocrat, a servant, a noble bride, the painter's sister or, most recently, a man.Ms Neilson tests each claim against clues provided by Antea's costume and jewellery, and details from contemporary poetry, as well as other works of art.
Her performance beautifully conveyed Violetta's vulnerability, but not the passion of this dying courtesan.
An accomplished pen-portraitist, Lord Norwich calls on another, Procopius, for a memorable depiction of the Empress Theodora, wife of Justinian I and a renowned courtesan.
But the courtesan did not get a chance to jerk tears in Montpellier on June 4th.
In the town, the mayor and the schoolmaster compete for the attentions of the local courtesan, a Frenchwoman who is nurturing her own guilty secrets.
At Persepolis he ceremonially burned down the palace of Xerxes, as a symbol that the Panhellenic war of revenge was at an end; for such seems the probable significance of an act that tradition later explained as a drunken frolic inspired by Thaïs, an Athenian courtesan.
The story is not about kings but about Kōvalaṉ, a young Pukār merchant, telling of his marriage to the virtuous Kaṇṇaki, his love for the courtesan Mātavi, and his consequent ruin and exile in Maturai, where he dies, unjustly executed when he tries to sell his wife's anklet to a wicked goldsmith who had stolen the Queen's similar anklet and charged Kōvalaṉ with the theft.
She is often evoked in connection with the sympathetic and radiant portrayal of Violetta in La traviata (The Fallen Woman a rough analogy, to be sure, for Violetta the courtesan had fallen a great deal farther than Strepponi the singer).
