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Charlotte Desmares
Christine Antoinette Charlotte Desmares (1682 – 12 September 1753), professionally known as Mlle Desmares, was a French stage actress. Scion of a notable comic actor family, she had an active stage career that spanned three decades, performing with the Comédie-Française from 1699 until her retirement in 1721; she was also remembered as a mistress of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, Regent of France. Life She was born in Copenhagen to the comic actors Nicolas Desmares and Anne d'Ennebault and trained under her aunt la Champmeslé. She made her stage début aged sixteen with the Comédie-Française company on 30 January 1699 in ''Oreste et Pylade'' by Lagrange-Chancel. In only three months she became so successful that she was accepted as a '' sociétaire'' of the company to replace her aunt, who had left it in 1698. Succeeding her aunt as the company's leading actress, Desmares played tragic roles (such as Hermione in ''Andromaque'' by Jean Racine, Émilie in '' Cinna'' by Pier ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
François-Bernard Lépicié
François-Bernard Lépicié (6 October 1698 – 17 January 1755) was an 18th-century French engraver, historiographer and biographer. Lépicié married Renée-Élisabeth Marlié, who became an engraver under the training of her husband and with whom he had a son, the painter Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié. He died from a stroke. Gallery Sources * Philippe Le Bas ''Dictionnaire encyclopédique de la France'', vol.10, Paris, Firmin Didot frères, 1843, (p. 180). * Louis-Gabriel Michaud, ''Biographie universelle, ancienne et moderne ou histoire'', vol.24, Paris, Mme Desplaces, 1854, (p. 250). Further reading * External links François-Bernard Lépiciéon Joconde Joconde is the central database created in 1975 and now available online, maintained by the French Ministry of Culture, for objects in the collections of the main French public and private museums listed as ''Musées de France'', according to ... François-Bernard Lépiciéon data.bnf.fr Monumen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andromaque
''Andromaque'' is a tragedy in five acts by the French playwright Jean Racine written in alexandrine verse. It was first performed on 17 November 1667 before the court of Louis XIV in the Louvre in the private chambers of the Queen, Marie Thérèse, by the royal company of actors, called "les Grands Comédiens", with Thérèse Du Parc in the title role. The company gave the first public performance two days later in the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris. ''Andromaque'', the third of Racine's plays, written at the age of 27, established its author's reputation as one of the great playwrights in France. Origins of the play Euripides' play ''Andromache'' and the third book of Virgil's ''Aeneid'' were the points of departure for Racine's play. The play takes place in the aftermath of the Trojan War, during which Andromache's husband Hector, son of Priam, has been slain by Achilles and their young son Astyanax has narrowly escaped a similar fate at the hands of Ulysses, who has unknowi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charlotte Aglaé D'Orléans
Charlotte Aglaé d'Orléans (22 October 1700 – 19 January 1761) was Duchess of Modena and Reggio by marriage to Francesco III d'Este. She was the third daughter of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans and his wife, Françoise-Marie de Bourbon. She was born a '' princesse du sang'', and had ten children, including Ercole III d'Este, Duke of Modena. Youth Charlotte Aglaé d'Orléans was born at the Palais-Royal, her parents' residence in Paris. She was one of eight children of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, nephew of King Louis XIV of France, and Françoise Marie de Bourbon, the latter's legitimized daughter. As a young child, Charlotte Aglaé was known at court as ''Mademoiselle de Valois''. Her second name comes from the youngest of the three Greek Charites: ''Aglaea''. At a young age, she and her elder sister Louise Adélaïde were placed in the Abbey of Chelles, which her sister would years later 'rule' as abbess. In 1714, she was sent by her parents to Val-de-Grâce Abbey. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Madame Palatine
Princess Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate (german: Prinzessin Elisabeth Charlotte von der Pfalz), (french: Princesse Élisabeth-Charlotte du Palatinat); known as Liselotte von der Pfalz, 27 May 1652 – 8 December 1722) was a German member of the House of Wittelsbach and, as ''Madame'' (''Duchesse d'Orléans''), the second wife of Philippe I, Duke of Orléans (younger brother of Louis XIV of France), and mother of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, France's ruler during the Regency. She gained literary and historical importance primarily through preservation of her correspondence, which is of great cultural and historical value due to her sometimes very blunt descriptions of French court life and is today one of the best-known German-language texts of the Baroque period. Although she had only two surviving children, she not only became the ancestress of the House of Orléans, which came to the French throne with Louis Philippe I, the so-called "Citizen King" from 1830 to 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louis, Dauphin Of France (son Of Louis XIV)
Louis, Dauphin of France (1 November 1661 – 14 April 1711), commonly known as Grand Dauphin, was the eldest son and heir apparent of King Louis XIV and his spouse, Maria Theresa of Spain. He became known as the Grand Dauphin after the birth of his own son, Louis, Duke of Burgundy, the Petit Dauphin. As he and his son died before his father, they never became king. His grandson instead became King Louis XV at the death of Louis XIV, while his second son inherited the Spanish throne as Philip V through his grandmother. Biography Louis was born on 1 November 1661 at the Château de Fontainebleau, the eldest son of Louis XIV of France and Maria Theresa of Austria (who were double first-cousins to each other). As a '' Fils de France'' ("Son of France") he was entitled to the style of ''Royal Highness.'' He was baptised on 24 March 1662 at the chapel of the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye and given his father's name of Louis. At the ceremony, the Cardinal de Vendôme and the Prin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
King Louis XIV
Louis XIV (Louis Dieudonné; 5 September 16381 September 1715), also known as Louis the Great () or the Sun King (), was List of French monarchs, King of France from 14 May 1643 until his death in 1715. His reign of 72 years and 110 days is the List of longest-reigning monarchs, longest of any sovereign in history whose date is verifiable. Although Louis XIV's France was emblematic of the Absolutism (European history), age of absolutism in Europe, the King surrounded himself with a variety of significant political, military, and cultural figures, such as Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Bossuet, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Colbert, Charles Le Brun, Le Brun, André Le Nôtre, Le Nôtre, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Lully, Cardinal Mazarin, Mazarin, Molière, Jean Racine, Racine, Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, Viscount of Turenne, Turenne, and Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, Vauban. Louis began his personal rule of France in 1661, after the death of his chief minister, the Cardinal Mazarin. An adherent o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adrienne Lecouvreur
Adrienne Lecouvreur (5 April 1692 – 20 March 1730), born Adrienne Couvreur, was a French actress, considered by many as the greatest of her time. Born in Damery, she first appeared professionally on the stage in Lille. After her Paris debut at the Comédie-Française in 1717, she was immensely popular with the public. Together with Michel Baron, she was credited for having developed a more natural, less stylized, type of acting. Despite the fame she gained as an actress and her innovations in her acting style, she was widely remembered for her romance with Maurice de Saxe and for her mysterious death. Although there are different theories that suggest she was poisoned by her rival, the Duchess of Bouillon, scholars have not been able to confirm it. Her story was used as an inspiration for playwrights, composers and poets. The refusal of the Catholic Church to give her a Christian burial moved her friend Voltaire to write a poem on the subject. Life Early years Adrienne Lec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philippe Néricault Destouches
Philippe Néricault Destouches (9 April 1680 – 4 July 1754) was a French playwright who wrote 22 plays. Biography Destouches was born at Tours, in today's department of Indre-et-Loire. When he was nineteen years of age, he became secretary to M. de Puysieux, the French ambassador to Switzerland. In 1716 he was attached to the French embassy in London, where he remained for six years under abbé Dubois. He later contracted a marriage with Dorothea Johnston, Lancashire lady; however, the marriage was not avowed for some years. In 1727 he portrayed his domestic circumstances in ''Le Philosophe Marié'' (The Married Philosopher). Upon returning to France in 1723, he was elected to the Académie française. In 1727 he acquired considerable estates, the possession of which conferred the privileges of nobility. He spent his later years at Fortoiseau, his chateau near Melun, and died July 4, 1754. Destouches wished to revive the comedy of character as understood by Molière, but ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean-François Regnard
Jean-François Regnard (7 February 1655 – 4 September 1709), "the most distinguished, after Molière, of the comic poets of the seventeenth century", was a dramatist, born in Paris, who is equally famous now for the travel diary he kept of a voyage in 1681. Regnard inherited a fortune from his father, a successful merchant who had given him an excellent classical education; he then increased it, he affirms, by gambling. He took to traveling, and on a return voyage from Italy in 1678 was at the age of twenty-two captured by an Algerian pirate, sold as a slave in Algiers and taken to Constantinople, where the French consul paid ransom for his release. He went on traveling, undaunted. His ''Voyage de Flandre et de Hollande, commencé le 26 avril 1681.'' reporting his trip through the Low Countries, Denmark and Sweden, where he dallied at the courts of Christian V and Charles XI and then north to Lapland, returning through Poland, Hungary and Germany to France, is mined by social ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his ''Pen name, nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity—especially Criticism of the Catholic Church, of the Roman Catholic Church—and of slavery. Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state. Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including stageplay, plays, poems, novels, essays, histories, and scientific Exposition (narrative), expositions. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets. Voltaire was one of the first authors to become renowned and commercially successful internationally. He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties and was at constant risk from the strict censorship laws of the Catholic French monarchy. His polemics ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oedipus (Voltaire Play)
''Oedipus'' (french: Œdipe) is a tragedy by the French dramatist and philosopher Voltaire that was first performed in 1718. It was his first play and the first literary work for which he used the pen-name Voltaire (his real name was François-Marie Arouet). Composition Voltaire completed the play in 1717 during his 11-month imprisonment. In a letter of 1731 Voltaire wrote that when he wrote the play he was "full of my readings of the ancient authors [...] I knew very little of the theater in Paris." In adapting Sophocles' Athenian tragedy ''Oedipus Rex'', Voltaire attempted to rationalise the plot and motivation of its characters. In a letter of 1719 he indicated that he found it improbable that the murder of Laius had not been investigated earlier and that Oedipus should take so long to understand the oracle's clear pronouncement.Burian (1997, 245). Voltaire adds a subplot concerning the love of Philoctète for Jocasta, Jocaste. He also reduces the prominence of the theme of ince ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jocasta
In Greek mythology, Jocasta (), also rendered Iocaste ( grc, Ἰοκάστη ) and also known as Epicaste (; ), was a daughter of Menoeceus, a descendant of the Spartoi Echion, and queen consort of Thebes. She was the wife of first Laius, then of their son Oedipus, and both mother and grandmother of Antigone, Eteocles, Polynices and Ismene. She was also sister of Creon and mother-in-law of Haimon. Life After his abduction and rape of Chrysippus, Laius married Jocasta. Laius received an oracle from Delphi which told him that he must not have a child with his wife, or the child would kill him and marry her; in another version, recorded by Aeschylus, Laius is warned that he can only save the city if he dies childless. One night, Laius became drunk and fathered Oedipus with Jocasta. Jocasta handed the newborn infant over to Laius. Jocasta or Laius pierced and pinned the infant's ankles together. Laius instructed his chief shepherd, Menoetes (not to be confused with Menoetes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
