Rose Perrine le Roy de la Corbinaye (December 10, 1730August 5, 1799) was a French actress, best known under the name of Madame Bellecour.

Biography

Le Roy was born at

Lamballe Lamballe (; ; Gallo: ''Lanball'') is a town and a former commune in the Côtes-d'Armor department in Brittany in northwestern France. On 1 January 2019, it was merged into the new commune Lamballe-Armor. It lies on the river Gouessant east-s ...

as the daughter of an artillery officer. Under the stage name of “an itinerant comic actor” Beaumenard, le Roy made her first

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

appearance in 1743 as Gogo in

Charles Simon Favart Charles Simon Favart (13 November 1710 – 12 May 1792) was a French playwright and theatre director. The Salle Favart in Paris is named after him. Biography Born in Paris, the son of a pastry-cook, he was educated at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, a ...

's ''Le Coq du village''. After a year at the Opéra-Comique, she played in several companies, including that of

Marshal Saxe Maurice, Count of Saxony (german: Hermann Moritz von Sachsen, french: Maurice de Saxe; 28 October 1696 – 20 November 1750) was a notable soldier, officer and a famed military commander of the 18th century. The illegitimate son of Augustus I ...

, who is said to have been not insensible to her charms. In 1749, she made her debut at the

Comédie-Française The Comédie-Française () or Théâtre-Français () is one of the few state theatres in France. Founded in 1680, it is the oldest active theatre company in the world. Established as a French state-controlled entity in 1995, it is the only state ...

as Dorine in ''

Tartuffe ''Tartuffe, or The Impostor, or The Hypocrite'' (; french: Tartuffe, ou l'Imposteur, ), first performed in 1664, is a theatrical comedy by Molière. The characters of Tartuffe, Elmire, and Orgon are considered among the greatest classical thea ...

'', and her success was immediate. Le Roy retired in 1756, but after an absence of five years, during which she married Jean Claude Gilles Colson ("Bellecour"), she reappeared as Madame Bellecour, and continued her successes in

soubrette A soubrette is a type of operatic soprano voice ''fach'', often cast as a female stock character in opera and theatre. The term arrived in English from Provençal via French, and means "conceited" or "coy". Theatre In theatre, a soubrette is a ...

parts in the plays of

Molière Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (, ; 15 January 1622 (baptised) – 17 February 1673), known by his stage name Molière (, , ), was a French playwright, actor, and poet, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the French language and worl ...

and

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 vo ...

. She retired finally at the age of sixty, but troubled times had put an end to the pension which she received from

Louis XVI Louis XVI (''Louis-Auguste''; ; 23 August 175421 January 1793) was the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. He was referred to as ''Citizen Louis Capet'' during the four months just before he was ...

and from the theatre, and she died in abject poverty. There is a charming portrait of her owned by the Théâtre Français.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bellecour, Madame 1730 births 1799 deaths People from Lamballe Actors from Brittany French stage actresses Troupe of the Comédie-Française 18th-century French actresses

Biography

See also

References