It was the custom of the Greeks to sing all their poetry and they gave no theatrical pieces that were not sung and accompanied by instruments.
“In Homeric days,” says M. Charles Magnin, “the singers went about like the troubadours in the Middle Ages, celebrating the exploits of heroes in festivals, in public assemblies and in the palaces of kings, and always preferring the very latest songs.”
Thespis, in the scenarii which he composed, caused his songs to be sung by a chorus; this, for instance, was the case with the songs to Bacchus and Silenus in the scenarii entitled The Vintage. Thereafter the actors would declaim. He was the first to draw from the chorus a solo singer who was known as a corypheus. Æschylus added a second singer, and when Terpander had introduced lyre accompaniments for the songs the foundations of opera were laid.
The Latins failed to develop that taste and fashion for music which had characterised the Greeks. With them songs and accompaniments were things apart from poetry. We know that the Atellanæ were composed of farces, pantomimes, dances and music. Many of their plays must greatly have resembled our modern comic operas or, rather perhaps, those pieces which once were called interludes in Italy, and are known to-day as opera buffa. In antiquity this name of interlude was given to all pieces that were played or sung during the intervals in the main performance. The tragic or comic chori would come upon the proscenium between every two acts. Little by little these chori were replaced by mimes, buffoons or dancers, and then by short pieces mingled with songs to sustain the patience of the spectators during the wait.
“After the fashion of the ancients,” says M. Castil-Blaze, in his Histoire de l’Opéra Italienne, “who brought on the chorus during the entr’actes of their dramas, the Italians gave madrigals and songs to fill up the same spaces. These interludes, unconnected by any dialogue, did not long retain the suffrages of the public. La Flora by Alamanni, Il Granchio by Salviati, and La Cofanaria by Ambra, which were performed and published in Florence in 1566, with the concert interludes written by Lori, Nerli and Cini for these gay comedies, led the public to exact something better. Il Mogliazzo and La Cattrina (atto scenico rusticale), by Francesco Berni, produced in Florence in 1566 were extremely successful because a remarkable dramatic action with two or three characters was unfolded in these harmonious interludes. This was the dawn of the opera buffa, a happy prelude to the Gallina Perduta of Francesco Escolani, which soon took Italy by storm, and to La Serva Padrona which was greeted with enthusiasm, by the whole of Europe.”
The Président de Brosses, writing of this little masterpiece of Pergolese’s, says:
“There are a male and a female buffoon who play a farce in the entr’actes in a manner so natural, and with an expression so comical, that it is impossible to conceive the like. It is not true that it is possible to die of laughter, for if so I should now be dead, notwithstanding that the pain I experienced in the expansion of my spleen hindered me from hearing as well as I desired the celestial music of this farce.”
In the nineteenth century, between the lowering and raising of the curtain, the entr’acte existed in all its tiresomeness. The boredom begotten of these long waits was frequently a source of ill-will on the part of the public, who spent half the evening yawning. It was necessary that a piece should be very good to survive these entr’actes. It was generally deplored in France that the custom of filling these gaps as in the eighteenth century should have passed from fashion. It was in these interludes that the Italians showed, more even than in their dramas and tragedies, how great they are as composers, as actors, as mimes and as singers.
“The Italians” (says the Président de Brosses) “have cultivated a taste for the theatre which is above that of any other nation; and as they are no less gifted in the matter of music, they never divorce the one from the other; thus most often tragedy, comedy and farce are all opera in Italy.”
The first opera buffa was performed in Rome at the beginning of the sixteenth century on the occasion of the fêtes given by Giuliano de’ Medici, the brother of Leo X. The comedy of Plautus, Pœnulus, was set to music and performed on two consecutive days in an immense theatre expressly built in the square of the Capitol.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there were no pieces, whether scenarii for improvisors or fully written plays, that did not conclude with dancing or singing, either of a popular character or else drawn from tragedies set to music by such famous composers as Peri, Crosi, Monteverde, Soriano, Emilio del Cavaliere, Marco Antonio Cesti and Giovanelli, Cavalli; these did then for the theatre what was done in the following century by Scarlatti, Pergolese, Jomelli, Piccinni, Paesiello, Cimarosa, and, in the nineteenth century, by Cherubini, Rossini, etc.
In the beginning of the sixteenth century—in 1526—La Barbera created a sensation in Italy. She was a Florentine, and she travelled from city to city at her own charges, accompanied by a chorus, with the support of which she gave those interludes, for which the taste amounted then to a veritable passion. Macchiavelli has a deal to say of her in his letters. “La Barbera should be at this moment in Modena,” he writes to Guicciardini, at the end of a long political letter, “and if you can serve her in any way I recommend her to you, for she engages my thoughts a deal more than does the emperor.”
Florence, Turin, Venice, Bologna, Rome and Naples were the first cities in which the Italian opera was established, and in which fame was achieved for the beauty of their voices by the Signore Catarina Martinella, Franceschina Caccini, Giulia and Vittoria Lulle, La Moretti, Adriana Baroni, Checca della Laguna, Margherita Costa, Petronilla Massimi, and Francesca Manzoni. All these virtuose, in addition to being singers, were actresses and performers upon several instruments: for in the Farsa or Festa Teatrale of Jacopo Sannazaro, performed in Naples at the palace of the Prince of Calabria, in 1492, an actress representing Joy sang, to her own accompaniment on a viol, whilst her three followers played the flute, the fiddle and the pipe. This custom of combining talents and of a singer’s sometimes being his or her own accompanist, continued in Italy down to the end of the eighteenth century.
The greater part of these operas were intermingled with improvised scenes, and farces performed by the characters of the Commedia dell’Arte. In L’Anfiparnasso—a harmonic opera by Orazio Vecchi, performed in Modena in 1594—Brighella, Pantaloon, a lackey named Pirolino, and the Captain, move as freely as in their own improvised farces.
“Pantaloon calls Pirolino. The greedy servant answers him from afar with his mouth full. Pantaloon cries: ‘Holla, Pirolino! Where are you then? Pirolino! Pirolino! Ah! thief, what are you doing in the kitchen?’ ‘I am filling my stomach with birds,’ says Pirolino, ‘with birds which used to sing: Pipiripi! cucurucu!’”
On the 14th December 1645, Cardinal Mazarin commanded a performance to be given in Paris at the Petit-Bourbon Theatre, of La Finta Pazza of Giulio Strozzi, with music by Francesco Socrati, and machinery by Torelli.
Margarita Bartolazzi was the Cantatrice in this troupe. Her voice, says a contemporary author, was so charming that it would be impossible worthily to praise her.
Luigia Gabriella Locatelli and Giulia Gabrielli were also included as Cantatrices in this same company, which continued its performances down to 1652.
In 1658, at the Petit-Bourbon, a great performance was held of La Rosaura, a lyric tragedy by Antonio Arcoleo, with music by Antonio Perti, originally given in Venice. The interludes were filled by Fiurelli (Scaramouche).
The word opera was then used in its true sense of “work.” It was customary to say opera musicale, opera tragica, sacra, comica, scenica, armonica, etc. Works such as La Rosaura, Orfeo, Ercole Amante and Serse were announced with the word Machines at the head of the bill, and the room in the Louvre where these Italian operas were performed bore the name of the Salle des Machines. The opera Serse (Xerxes), first given in November, 1660, was so long that it took more than eight hours to perform.
The players in this piece were Signora Anna Bergerotti, Signor Melone, who was an abbé, and who played feminine rôles, Bordignone, Atto, Tagliavacca, Zanetto, Chiarini, Piccinni, Assalone, Rivani and Augustino.
In the interludes, “Scaramouche (Tiberio Fiurelli) appeared in disguise, and danced between two Doctors; he was recognised by his companions, Trivelino and Pulcinella, who stripped and beat him.”
To the company of Italian singers Louis XIV. united for these performances that of the Italian buffoons as well as the French dancers and musical performers. Of these royal fantasies were soon born the French opera and the permanent installations of the French and Italian comedies.
After the demolition of the Petit-Bourbon, Louis XIV. lent the hall of the Palais-Royal to Molière and to the troupe of Italian comedians who also sang, but whose singing was confined to couplets.
In Gherardi’s collection we see that at the end of the seventeenth century some of the airs fitted to the comedies are Italian and others French. They are mostly melodies drawn from the old Italian operas of the beginning of the century, and from French rigadoons and Italian couplets, many of which have a deal of maestria. In the case of some pieces, however, like Les Originaux (1693), the music of which was written by M. Masse, the airs were specially composed for the occasion.
The rôle of La Chanteuse or Cantatrice was really a very limited one and demanded no more than a pretty voice and a pretty face. Such attributes were supplied by Elisabeth Danneret, known then under the name of Babet la Chanteuse, who made her début at the Italian comedy on 8th July 1694, in La Fontaine de Sapience. She was short of stature, but extremely well made and very pretty. Her duties consisted in appearing dressed as a shepherdess—as shepherdesses were dreamed of in those days—to proffer a cup of a miraculous water whilst singing:
And, at the end of the piece, when shepherds and shepherdesses have chosen one another with sapience and are dancing together, the cantatrice shepherdess returns, and sings:
In Le Départ des Comédiens (1694), Gherardi, as Harlequin, says to the Doctor: “As for you, sir, you are going to live on your rents. I should like to associate myself with you, but it is forbidden to an Italian comedian to go into retirement before the age of a hundred and twenty, and it was only out of kindness that Scaramouche was permitted to retire at ninety-four.”
Then, turning to Babet: “And you, mademoiselle, what are you going to do?” he would inquire. Babet answered him in song:
Babet hardly realised the truth of the fiction which she sang. After the death of Gherardi, with whom she had lived as a wife, and by whom she had had a son, she did indeed join the opera.
Sometimes Babet was dressed as a sibyl, as an ancient priestess, as Bellona, the goddess of war, as a Naïad, as an Egyptian, etc.
Some wits on the subject of the Cantatrice announced that an abbé formed part of the new company in the capacity of almoner. “They have a Cantatrice, a Doctor and an Almoner; therefore the company is complete.” We do not know whether an abbé did indeed accompany the comedians, but if so that would not have been the first case of its kind in an Italian troupe. The Italians frequently mingled religious practices with the most profane things. The first register of the new troupe was conceived as follows:—
“In the name of God, of the Virgin Mary, of Saint Francis, of Paul, and of the souls in Purgatory, we start our performances on this eighteenth of May, 1716, with L’Inganno Fortunato.”
A story related by the Président de Brosses, in speaking of a performance in the amphitheatre of Verona, in 1740, is no less curious.
“Let me not forget to tell you of a singular surprise I experienced at the comedy, on the first occasion that I went there. A bell in the city having sounded, there was so sudden a movement about me that I thought the amphitheatre was tumbling into ruins, particularly as I saw that the actresses were running away, and one of them notwithstanding that at the moment, in accordance with the prescriptions of her rôle, she was in a swoon. The real cause of all this was that the Angelus had just sounded, and that the whole assembly had knelt down facing the East, whilst the actors vanished into the wings and an Ave Maria was sung. After this, the swooning actress returned, very properly performed the usual obeisance after the Angelus, resumed her condition of unconsciousness, and the piece continued.”
In the performance of the company of 1716 we find Les Stratagèmes, music by Plagliardi (1716); Alcyone, a parody (1741), music by M. Blaise; La Serva Padrona (1756), music by Pergolese. Other musical composers of the Italian comedy were: Tarade, Kohot, Philidor, Gibert, Sodi, Monsigni, Chardini, Lamette, Duni, Clément, Grétry, Le Chevalier d’Herbain, Bambini, Gossec, Garnier, Desbrosses, etc.
Rosalia Astraudi made her début on the 30th April 1744. She was eleven years of age at the time, and she was engaged to sing in parodies and interludes, to play lovers and soubrettes and to dance in the ballet. She discharged all these offices to the satisfaction of the public, married a nobleman, and left the theatre in 1755.
Justine-Benoîte du Ronceray, known as Mademoiselle Chantilly, born at Avignon in 1727, was the daughter of Du Ronceray, sometime musician of the chapel of the King of France, and later choir-master to Stanislas, King of Poland. In 1744 she was a dancer in the service of this monarch, when she obtained leave to visit France, accompanied by her mother, Claudine Bied, who was also in the employ of the King of Poland as a musician. She made her début in the theatre of the Opéra-Comique at the fair of Saint-Laurent, under the management of Favart. Favart fell seriously in love with her, and married her at the end of that year. He was summoned later on by the Maréchal de Saxe, to undertake the management of the theatre which was to follow the French army into the Low Countries.
The marshal’s camp was never without its comic opera. It was from its stage that the battle orders were issued. In the interval between two pieces the principal actress—a part long filled by Madame Favart—would come to make such an announcement as: “Gentlemen, there will be no performance to-morrow as M. le Maréchal is delivering battle. On the next day we shall give Le Coq du Village, Les Amours Grivois.”
From principles both of taste and of system, the Maréchal de Saxe insisted upon gaiety in his armies. He said that the French never conducted themselves so well as when they were gaily led, and that what they most feared in time of war was boredom. Mademoiselle Chantilly, therefore, followed her husband to headquarters in Brussels. It was there that the Maréchal de Saxe fell in love with her (1746).
“Mademoiselle de Chantilly” (he wrote one day), “I take my leave of you. You are a more dangerous enchantress than the lady Armida. Now as Pierrot, now as Love, now as a simple shepherdess, you bear yourself so charmingly that you enchant us all. I, too, have beheld myself at the point of succumbing, I whose sinister art affrights the universe. What a triumph for you had you been able to subject me to your laws! I am grateful to you for not having exerted all your arts. For a young sorceress you contrive very well with your crook, which is no less, I think, than the wand by which that poor Prince Renaud was stricken. Already I have beheld myself surrounded by blossoms and petals, sinister equipment for a favourite of Mars. I tremble to think of it. And what would the King of France and Navarre have said if he had found me grasping a garland instead of the torch of vengeance? Notwithstanding the danger to which you have exposed me, I cannot bear you any grudge for my error; it is charming! But it is only by flight that so great a peril is to be eluded:
“Forgive, Mademoiselle, this rhymed prose which your talents inspire from the lingering remains of my intoxication; the liquor I have drunk lasts, it is said, often longer than we think.
“Maurice de Saxe.”
Madame Favart made her début at the Comédie-Italienne on the 5th August 1749. “There is no other instance of so great a success.” Grimm says that her celebrity was the result of the passion she had inspired in the hero of Fontenoy.
Her talents were variously appreciated. She had, we are assured, a frank and natural gaiety, an agreeable and piquant manner. Fitted for any character, she rendered all with a surprising truth: soubrettes, leading ladies, peasant girls, naïve parts, character parts, she made them all her own; in a word, she could multiply herself without end, and audiences were amazed to see her play on the same day, in four several pieces, four entirely different rôles. She was able so perfectly to imitate the various dialects that people whose accent she borrowed imagined her their compatriot.
“We emphatically assert,” wrote the brothers Parfait, in 1769, “notwithstanding the sentiments of those who are always greedy of novelty, that this amiable actress has not yet been equalled in these rôles; and to convince all who might doubt it there is no need to do more than to send them to witness the first performance of La Fée Urgèle, which is about to be given.”
In June of 1771 the first symptoms of the disease that was to kill her made their appearance; and although she was well aware of her desperate case she continued to play until the end of the same year, out of interest for her comrades. Of her death in 1772 Grimm wrote as follows, very harshly disparaging her talents:—
“The theatre of the Comédie-Italienne has just lost a celebrated actress in Madame Favart. Throughout all her protracted sufferings she showed a great deal of fortitude and patience. Upon recovering one day from a long swoon she perceived, among those whom her danger had hastily brought about her, one of her neighbours in grotesque accoutrements. She smiled, and said that she had thought to behold the Clown of Death (le Paillasse de la Mort)—a jest full of character from the lips of a dying actress. The priests were never able to induce her to renounce the theatre. She said that she would not be forsworn; that the theatre was her state; that if she were to recover she would be compelled to play again, and that consequently it was impossible for her to renounce her profession in good faith; she preferred to die without the sacraments. When, however, she felt herself to be expiring she exclaimed: ‘Oh! pour le coup, j’y renonce.’ Those were her last words. Madame Favart was somewhere about fifty years of age. She was a bad actress. Her voice was harsh and her manner coarse and ignoble. She was only endurable in exaggerated characters and not long in those; she was very superior in the part of the Savoyard Montrant la Marmotte: that was her great talent, and it made her fortune in the theatre at the time of her début in 1749. She was then called Mademoiselle de Chantilly; she danced and sang and her dancing sabots turned the head of all Paris.”
Between August 1752 and March 1754, Monelli, Guerrieri, Lazzari and the Signore Anna Tonelli, Catarina Tonelli and Rosa Lazzari were seen as singers on the stage of the Comédie-Italienne. They presented Pergolese’s La Serva Padrona, Il Maestro di Musica by Scarlatti, Serpilla et Bajocco by Ristorini, and other interludes set to music by Cocchi, Selleti, Rinaldo di Capua, Latilla, Jomelli, Ciampi and Leo. As these Italians sang only in opera buffa, the name of buffoons came to be given them. Hence it is that still to-day we speak of buffi in the Italian companies, although there is usually nothing of the buffoon in their performances.
In the middle of the eighteenth century war was declared between French music and Italian music. French music, with the King and Madame de Pompadour at its head, carried the day. The Italian singers quitted Paris, but the Comédie-Italienne seized upon their repertory, appropriated subjects and music, and translated all their pieces, such, for instance, as La Serva Padrona, which became a French comic opera under the title of La Servante Maitresse.
Laruette, Rochard, Bouret, Mesdames Favart, Rosalie Astraudi, Foulquier (Catinon), and Superville sang in French, and bolstered up the weakness of their singing by the liveliness and dash of their performances. This was the true cause of the failure in Paris of the Signora Deamicis on the 20th June 1758, when she made an attempt to restore to the esteem of the French public the Italian music which five years before had yielded so many comic operas.
After only one performance lasting four hours, and consisting of La Serva Padrona and Gli Raggieri della Femina Scaltra, the Signora Deamicis and her father understood that further efforts would be useless. She crossed to England, where she abandoned the line of prima comica and took up the serious music of Bach.
Mademoiselle Foulquier made her first appearance in 1753, in the rôles of Angélique, and was seen later on in those of Silvia. She added to circumspection of behaviour and natural graces in singing and in declamation, a superlative degree of talent as a dancer. Her elder sister, Madame Bognoli, was seen as Silvia in 1758.
On the 6th May 1761, Mademoiselle Piccinelli made her début as an Italian Cantatrice. Favart, in a letter to the Count of Durazzo, relates as follows the history of Mademoiselle Piccinelli:—
“Here is what is said: One day a poor village woman found a new-born child abandoned in a field; this was our Signora. The peasant woman took charge of her out of charity, fostered her, and brought her up as best she could as her own child until the age of eight. Then one of those women who seek in the youth and beauty of members of their own sex a means to their own fortunes chanced to pass through the village, saw the little one, was impressed by her natural graces, and proposed her purchase for a moderate sum. The bargain was concluded. This third mother spared nothing to give her adopted daughter an education suitable to the state of life which she had in view for her. The child profited beyond all the hopes that had been entertained. Already the matrone entertained visions of fortune; she caused the girl to enter the theatre; she arranged to procure for her an opulent protector; but the young actress, whose tastes did not incline to these dispositions, decided to choose for herself. This of course was opposed. To the end that she might have peace, the girl then left her third mother and voluntarily placed herself under the protection of another adoptive one, so that she might appear becomingly in the world; this last conducted her to Paris. There Mademoiselle Piccinelli was well received at the Comédie-Italienne, and her success was everywhere proclaimed. Thereupon the various mothers of the cantatrice sought her out and each one claimed her. The first one said: ‘She is mine, I gave her life.’ The second one said: ‘I saved that life; I fostered her; she belongs to me.’ The third one: ‘I bought her; I educated her; who can dispute my rights?’ The fourth one added: ‘She gave herself freely to me, and I am working daily to make her fortune, which is the best claim of all. I will tear out the eyes of any one of you that disputes her with me.’ Our Cantatrice, to make the peace amongst them, gave an equal sum of money to each. The first three withdrew; the fourth remained with her as her counsellor. La Piccinelli, fatigued by these little family vexations, ended by renouncing all her mothers, and placed herself under the authority of a husband. She chose M. Vezian, the brother of a very pretty girl who was with us at the Comédie-Italienne, and to whom he owes the considerable position which he fills.”
Mademoiselle Piccinelli added to a charming presence “a voice of great range and flexibility, of a silvery and pleasant timbre. She was able to please French ears. With this gift she combined that of playing comedy with great nobility.”
Mademoiselle Collet made her début on the 21st January 1721, in La Fille Mal Gardée.
“Her infantile performances obtained her the applause of the public, which was redoubled when she was seen in the rôle of Betzi in Le Roi et le Fermier. These are about the only characters in which she achieved distinction. Her voice was poor, and she replaced by mannerisms what she lacked in expression.”
In 1762, Signorina Colomba, a Venetian, successfully made her début at the Comédie-Italienne in Paris. An Englishman fell in love with her and attempted to carry her off. She left the theatre to escape from him, and did not return to it until 1772.
“Her début was of the most brilliant,” says Grimm in his correspondence. “She is no longer in her first youth; at least she has the air of being about thirty years of age. Her only fault is that she is invested with too much nobility and too much beauty for the rôles of comic opera; her carriage, her walk, her air, are those of a queen. Her glance is august, noble and tender; her great eyes, the most beautiful in the world, seem to suggest that the proper place for her is tragedy. Her play is not without mannerisms, but they are mannerisms that are pleasing.... She has a charming voice, and an excellent way of singing, full of that grace, sweetness and facility which French singers can never achieve. Speaking for myself, this is the first, and perhaps the last time that I have heard anyone sing in a Parisian theatre with such ravishing charm and grace.”
The Italian comedians, to repair the loss which they suffered in the retirement of Mademoiselle Piccinelli, and the death of Madame Savi—who had made her début in 1760 in the parts of leading lady—charged Colalto, who played Pantaloon parts, to go to Italy to find two actresses. He left in April of 1766 and returned in August with the Signore Zanarini and Bacelli, mother and daughter. They made their début as first and second ladies in Gli Amori d’Arlequino of Goldoni. Those who understood Italian applauded them heartily, especially the mother; the others withdrew but indifferently satisfied. Madame Zanarini was engaged to play leading rôles, and her daughter, Mademoiselle Bacelli, for those of soubrettes.
In 1770 Paris received Mademoiselle Mesnard, a young and pretty Cantatrice, who had begun life as a shopkeeper and then entered the theatre under the protection of the Duke of Chaulnes, who had her portrait painted by Greuze. It was she who was the mistress of Beaumarchais, and the cause of that scandalous rough-and-tumble between the “duc et pair crocheteur” and the author of Figaro. We know that, as a consequence of this affair, Beaumarchais, although acquitted by the tribunal of the Marshals of France, which had sent M. de Chaulnes to the prison of Vincennes under a lettre de cachet, was sent to Fort-l’Evêque by M. de la Vrillière for the sole reason that it was impossible for the son of a clockmaker to be in the right in a quarrel with a duke and peer.
Of Madame Ruette, Grimm writes on the occasion of her retirement in 1777:
“This charming actress united to the most engaging of voices and the finest of countenances, a tact that is infinitely rare, and a most naïve and delicate sensibility. It is hopeless to expect to see again the rôles of Isabella and Columbine played as they were played by her. The delightful scene of the Rose in Le Magnifique was entirely her own work; she diffused into it a mixture of propriety and interest whose magic is inexplicable. A singular saying, perhaps, but one full of truth, was that of Madame d’Houdetot when she declared that, ‘in that moment Madame La Ruette expressed modesty even in her back.’”
The theatres of the fair of Saint-Laurent took possession of the types, the pieces and the music of the Italians. They played and sang French recitatives with Italian music, French dance music and French romances. Down to 1721 we can find only couplets upon ancient airs, or those which already had been sung elsewhere.
In 1737, Monsigny wrote the music of On Ne S’Avise Jamais de Tout, and of several other comic operas. In 1759, Duni composed La Veuve Indécise, and Laruette wrote Le Boulevard in 1753. Other composers of music for the Opéra-Comique were MM. Lacoste, Gillier, Aubert, Delacroix, etc.
Since the Opéra-Comique manifested too great a development, and the Italian troupe fell short of what was necessary, the two companies united their forces in 1761. The troupe of the Opéra-Comique was then composed of Mesdemoiselles Deschamps, Rosaline, Nessel, Luzi, Arnoult, Dezzi, Florigny. The men were Laruette, Bourette, Delisle, Audinot, Parau, Saint-Aubert, Clairval and Guignes.
In the forain theatres the principal actresses singing in comic opera or in parodies were:
Mademoiselle Maillard, the daughter of a cook and a lace-mender. She began in 1696 with Bertrand, who perceived her talent and gave her an engagement in his company, in which she remained for eight years. She married a young man named Cavé, at Besançon. He took the name of Maillard and became an actor (see Scaramouche). She retired when Mademoiselle de Lisle entered the theatre in 1716. On the point of being confined, she was accidentally wounded, and died in September, 1721.
Mademoiselle de Lisle, born in 1684, was barely eleven years of age when she made her first appearance as a soubrette at the Opéra-Comique. She reappeared in 1716, played until 1740, and died in 1758.
Mademoiselle Bastolet, born in Paris, joined the Jeu de Bertrand in 1698, on a salary at the rate of tenpence a day. Afterwards she played with Dolet, with the Sieur Saint-Edme, with Lalauze in 1721, and with Honoré in 1724, and she married an Italian doctor in 1735. Later, in the company of the Sieur Pontau, she scored considerable success in the rôles of mothers.
Mademoiselle Lambert played leading parts and sang in vaudevilles; she married Dolet, who, before being a manager of the theatres at the fairs of Saint-Laurent and Saint-Germain, had filled an engagement in the Italian company of Constantini, and afterwards in that of Tortoretti. She left the theatre in 1709, became a modiste at the fairs of Saint-Germain and Saint-Laurent, but, failing to make a success of this business, she induced her husband to give up the theatre, and jointly with him opened a lemonade shop.
In 1700, Mademoiselle Babron, the daughter of a box opener at the Comédie-Italienne, sister of Babron (the forain Harlequin), appeared in rôles of Columbine and of women disguised as men, in Bertrand’s company. In 1707 she married the actor Prevost, and went with him into the country.
In 1710, Mademoiselle d’Aigremont, known under the name of Camuson, left her modiste shop to join the Opéra-Comique. She remained there until 1723.