Bianca Castafiore

Bianca Castafiore
Bianca Castafiore, by Hergé
Publication information
Publisher	Casterman (Belgium)
First appearance	King Ottokar's Sceptre (1939) The Adventures of Tintin
Created by	Hergé
In-story information
Full name	Bianca Castafiore
Partnerships	List of main characters
Supporting character of	Tintin

Bianca Castafiore, the "Milanese Nightingale" (French: le Rossignol milanais), is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. She is an opera singer whose demeanor comically aggravates Captain Haddock's stereotyped sea-captain misogyny as she pops up in adventure after adventure. Castafiore is comically portrayed as narcissistic, whimsical, absent-minded, and talkative, and seems unaware that her voice is shrill and appallingly loud. She is also wealthy, generous and essentially amiable, and has a will of iron.

Her forename means "white" (feminine) in Italian, and her surname is Italian for "chaste flower".

The comical Italian opera diva first appears in King Ottokar's Sceptre, and is also in The Seven Crystal Balls, The Calculus Affair, The Castafiore Emerald, Tintin and the Picaros, The Red Sea Sharks, and would have appeared in the unfinished Tintin and Alph-Art. She is played on radio in Land of Black Gold and in Tintin in Tibet, Captain Haddock imagines her singing in Flight 714 to Sydney, and mentions her famous aria in Destination Moon. Although she is apparently one of the leading opera singers of her generation, the only thing that Castafiore is ever heard to sing are a few lines of her signature aria, "The Jewel Song" (l'air des bijoux, from Faust), always at ear-splitting volume (and violent force—certainly enough to part the Captain's hair, shatter glasses and a breeze enough to blow back a curtain in an opera box—"She's in fine voice tonight.").