Françoise Marie Antoinette Saucerotte

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Bust of Mlle Raucourt by Augustin Pajou , around 1789
Mlle Raucourt in the tragedy Mithridate by Racine, copperplate engraving by Jean Michel Moreau (1741–1814)

Françoise Marie Antoinette Josèphe Saucerotte , known under the stage name Mademoiselle Raucourt (born March 3, 1756 in Paris , † January 3, 1815 in Paris), was a French actress of the late 18th century and theater director of the Napoleonic era.

Life

family

Françoise-Marie-Antoinette Saucerotte was born on March 3, 1756 in the Parisian Rue de La Vieille Boucherie as the daughter of François-Elois Saucerotte and Antoinette de la Porte. The father was a comedian at the Comédie-Française . The mother was in the service of Stanislaus I. Leszczyński, who was exiled to Lorraine .

Theater career

Françoise-Marie-Antoinette Saucerotte is said to have appeared on Spanish stages at the age of 12. In Paris she received acting lessons from the tragedian Claire Clairon . She made her debut in 1770 in the role of Euphémie in Pierre-Laurent Buirette de Belloy's tragedy Gaston and Bayard at the theater of Rouen . After further acting lessons, she appeared in 1772 under the name Mlle Raucourt in Paris in the role of Didon in the tragedy of the same name by Jean-Jacques Lefranc de Pompignan . A theater career at the Comédie-Française followed. In 1776 she was imprisoned for an exorbitant debt of 400,000 livres, but gained her freedom through the personal use and protection of Queen Marie-Antoinette , which she used to travel to Berlin. An obscure relationship entered into with the same-sex oriented Heinrich von Prussia failed due to the intervention of Frederick II. In 1777 the court is said to have paid the debts. In 1777 Mlle Raucourt traveled to Germany via Brussels with her friend Jeanne Françoise Marie Sourques, known as Madame Souk, and two companions. In Hesse  - according to the Mémoires secrets , the incident occurred in Hamburg in July 1778  - Mlle Raucourt and Mme Souk were arrested and whipped on the orders of the Landgrave. Charles-Joseph de Ligne took care of the matter. After returning to France, Mlle Raucourt got her engagement at the Comédie-Française back in 1779 at the intercession of Marie-Antoinette. In 1782 she tried her hand at the drama Henriette in three acts without success as a playwright.

The Revolution could not get anything. She was imprisoned for six months in 1793 with other actors who had a royalist attitude. In 1799 she experienced a comeback and was generously sponsored by the first consul and later emperor Napoléon Bonaparte and provided with a pension. He transferred her from 1806 to 1814, the Milan management of occurring in Italy French comedian dance companies. Mlle Raucourt joined Napoleonic propaganda and turned against the conditions of the ancien régimes .

Catalog of the plants in the park of the Château des Hauts

Sexual preference

As a young comedian, Mlle Raucourt could not avoid relationships with influential patrons. In a letter to her childhood friend Richelieu at the end of 1772, Voltaire assumed that she had already entered into a relationship with a Geneva citizen in Spain. Richelieu allegedly committed the indiscretion to immediately show the letter to Mlle Raucourt, who was still considered virtuous, and who then passed out. In 1773 Voltaire tried in various letters to Mlle Raucourt to put the matter right: “Bientôt un mortel amoureux / Te fera partager sa flamme. / Heureux! trop heureux cet amant / Pour qui ton coeur deviendra tendre. ”In 1773, Madame Dubarry brought her as petite maitresse for King Louis XV. the "beloved" rumored.

Her sexual preference for women, openly admitted and exhibited as early as the 1770s, caused an ongoing scandal. Her relationship with Sophie Arnould became known . The Épître à une jolie Lesbienne attributed to Louis Petit de Bachaumont was dedicated to her. The Apologie de la secte Anandryne , published in 1784, is a pornographic work in the form of a fictional speech that Mlle Raucourt is said to have given in 1778.

Grave of Mlle Raucourt in the 20th division of the Père-Lachaise cemetery after removing the bust

End of life

In 1801 the actress rented the Château des Hauts in La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin, east of Orléans , and dedicated herself to growing exotic plants in the castle's extensive park. The park's catalog, published after Mlle Raucourt's death, lists 463 plants.

Mademoiselle Raucourt died on January 3, 1815 in Paris. She was denied a church funeral because of her previous work as a comedian and her public sexual preference. An angry crowd then broke the doors of the Saint-Roch church and forced the approval of King Louis XVIII. for burial. 15,000 Parisians are said to have followed her to the Père Lachaise cemetery . Her grave is in the 20th division.

Roles (selection)

  • Cléopâtre , Corneille
  • Euphémie , Belloy
  • Didon , Lefranc de Pompignan
  • Phèdre , Racine
  • Sémiramis , Voltaire

Own stage work

  • Henriette , drame en trois actes et en prose, Saugrain, Paris 1782 (originally La Fille déserteur , after others called La femme déserteur or La Fille soldat déserteur ).

literature

  • Anonymous: Mlle Raucourt traitée comme elle le mérite; par une jeune dame . Without imprint, 1797, 10 p.
  • Olivier Blanc: Les libertines. Perrin, 1997, pp. 51-71.
  • Patrick Cardon: Les Enfans de Sodome à l'Assemblée Nationale (1790) . Lille, Question de Genre / GKC 2005.
  • Hector Fleischmann: Le cénacle libertin de Mlle Raucourt (de la Comédie-Française). L'enfer de la galanterie à la fin de l'Ancien Régime. Bibliothèque des curieux, Paris 1912, 329 pages ( digitized version ).
  • Claude Hartman: Françoise Marie Antoinette Saucerotte, dite Mademoiselle Raucourt. Pp. 79-89 ( digitized version ).
  • Jean de Reuilly: La Raucourt et ses amies. Étude historique de mœurs saphiques au XVIIIeme siècle . Daragon, Paris 1909, 240 pp. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Mademoiselle Raucourt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Cf. Hector Fleischmann: Le cénacle libertin de Mlle Raucourt . Daragon, Paris 1912, pp. 9f.
  2. ^ Cf. Hector Fleischmann: Le cénacle libertin de Mlle Raucourt . Daragon, Paris 1912, pp. 68ff.
  3. ^ Cf. Hector Fleischmann: Le cénacle libertin de Mlle Raucourt . Daragon, Paris 1912, p. 81ff.
  4. ^ Voltaire: Oeuvres , Lefèvre edition, 1833, volume 68, p. 154, footnote.
  5. ^ Quote taken from Le dictionnaire des citations (online).
  6. ^ Cf. Hector Fleischmann: Le cénacle libertin de Mlle Raucourt . Daragon, Paris 1912, p. 18.
  7. ↑ Cf. Claude Hartman: Françoise Marie Antoinette Saucerotte, dite Mademoiselle Raucourt. Pp. 79-89.
  8. ↑ See Mlle Raucourt, on the website of the Association des Amis et Passionnés du Père-Lachaise
personal data
SURNAME Saucerotte, Françoise Marie Antoinette
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Saucerotte, Françoise-Marie-Antoinette (full name); Mademoiselle Raucourt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French stage actress
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1756
PLACE OF BIRTH near Paris
DATE OF DEATH January 3, 1815
Place of death Paris