Louise Dimanche (before 1715 - floruit 1739), was a French actress, opera singer, ballet dancer, and theatre director. She was the director of the La Monnaie in Brussels from 1721 to 1722. She was the first woman to hold this position.

Life

Dimanche was a dancer at La Monnaie in 1715, where she took part in ''Les Nouvelles Fêtes vénitiennes'' by

Antoine Danchet Antoine Danchet (7 September 1671 – 21 February 1748) was a French playwright, librettist and dramatic poet. Biography Danchet was born in Riom, in the Auvergne, France. Having been a professor of rhetoric at Chartres and then a tutor at Par ...

and

André Campra André Campra (; baptized 4 December 1660 – 29 June 1744) was a French composer and conductor of the Baroque era. The leading French opera composer in the period between Jean-Baptiste Lully and Jean-Philippe Rameau, Campra wrote several '' tra ...

. It was followed by a performance of ''Omphale'' by Antoine Houdar de La Motte and André-Cardinal Destouches. Afterwards, she danced and sang in Lille in 1715–1718, where she married her first husband

Antoine Vernet Antoine is a French given name (from the Latin ''Antonius'' meaning 'highly praise-worthy') that is a variant of Danton, Titouan, D'Anton and Antonin. The name is used in France, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada, West Greenland, Haiti, French Guiana ...

, a singer also known as Forêt. After a short stay in The Hague in 1719, Dimanche was appointed director of

Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie The Royal Theatre of La Monnaie (french: Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, italic=no, ; nl, Koninklijke Muntschouwburg, italic=no; both translating as the "Royal Theatre of the Mint") is an opera house in central Brussels, Belgium. The National O ...

in Brussels. She was succeeded by

Thomas-Louis Bourgeois Thomas-Louis Bourgeois (Fontaine-l'Évêque, Hainaut, Belgium 24 October 1676 - Paris, January 1750 or 1751) was a Walloon composer and haute-contre. He was maître de chapelle at Toul Cathedral, then Strasbourg Cathedral before employment from 1707 ...

, after which Dimanche returned to Lille where she remained and performed until 1725. She married her second husband, the singer Nicolas Demouchy, in Lille in the year 1722. In 1729, Dimanche was a singer of the royal chapel in Dresden. Afterwards, she returned to Lille where she founded a new artistic troupe. She married Jean-Nicolas Prévost, one of the troupe's members, in 1737. The marriage took place in Brussels. Dimanche returned to The Hague in 1739, where she gave birth to a son named Jean-François. His godmother was the French actress Jeanne Dulondel. Nothing is known of Dimanche's life after these events.

References

* Jean-Philippe Van Aelbrouck: Dictionnaire des danseurs: chorégraphes et maîtres de danse à Bruxelles de ... Directors of La Monnaie 18th-century French ballet dancers 18th-century French women opera singers French theatre directors French women theatre directors Actors from the Austrian Netherlands Year of death missing Year of birth uncertain 18th-century French actresses French stage actresses 18th-century theatre managers Women from the Austrian Netherlands {{France-stage-actor-stub