The Woman Who Rewrote French Opera With a Sword at Her Hip

Julie d'Aubigny could not read music. She learned every role by ear, memorized it on the spot, and by 1690 was performing lead roles at the Paris Opéra — the most prestigious stage in Europe. The Marquis de Dangeau, after hearing her sing at Trianon, wrote in his journal that hers was "the most beautiful voice in the world."

She had arrived at the Opéra with a death sentence over her head.

The details of how she earned it are brisk. She broke a woman out of a convent by stealing a dead nun's body, planting it in her companion's bed, and setting the building on fire. The court in Provence, unable to conceive of a woman committing such a crime, tried her as a man and sentenced her — in absentia — to death by burning. She got a royal pardon. At a ball, she kissed a young woman, was challenged to duels by three of the woman's suitors, defeated all three, and returned to the party. Louis XIV pardoned her again, reportedly noting that the law against dueling said nothing about women.

Through all of this, she kept singing. And in 1702, the composer André Campra did something no one in French opera had done before: he wrote Tancrède with a female lead who was not a soprano. He built the role of Clorinde specifically around her range.

Every mezzo-soprano who has sung a lead since is, in a small way, her heir.