She was an opera star, but she also showcased her fencing skills, fell in love with a young girl whose parents had to hide her in a convent, stole corpses, fought in several duels, accumulated a handful of lovers, had to flee from justice, and her melodramatic life was chronicled by the Parnassian writer Théophile Gautier in his first novel, which he titled with the name of the character that inspired him: Mademoiselle de Maupin. Because, indeed, all these adventures were carried out by a woman.

An uncommon woman, indeed, especially for the era in which she lived, France between the late 17th century and the early 18th century. Gautier wrote his work much later, in the 19th century, publishing it exactly in 1835. Although he was already a writer of stories and poetry, Mademoiselle de Maupin established him in the literary world, not only for his style but also for the daring approach he made clear in the preface, written by him, challenging the moralistic and utilitarian corset of 19th-century Romanticism in favor of the idea of art for art’s sake.

The concept Gautier presents of the protagonist of his novel is that of a daring and unprejudiced woman, eager for romantic adventures, for which she does not hesitate to assume the identity of a man, adopting the name Théodore de Sérannes, wearing men’s clothing, skillfully wielding a sword, having fleeting affairs with individuals of both sexes, etc. All of this is narrated in epistolary form by a man in love with her named Albert, a seeker of perfect beauty in the Platonic sense of the word.

Gautier in 1857
Gautier in 1857. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

The problem is that, despite being based on real events, Mademoiselle de Maupin remains a novel, a work of fiction, which means that part of its plot also includes the multitude of legends about the tumultuous life of the character and of which there is no way to verify their dubious veracity. Other passages, such as cross-dressing or alleged lesbianism, were exaggerated by the French author, resulting in the book being censored in some places. Therefore, even though Gautier immortalized the character, what we are about to recount should be read with this in mind.

Despite Gautier giving her the first name Madeleine, Mademoiselle de Maupin was actually named Julie d’Aubigny and was born in Paris between 1670 and 1673. She was the only daughter of Gaston d’Aubigny, who was the secretary of Louis de Lorraine-Guise, Count of Armagnac, and Grand Écuyer (Master of the Royal Stables) to King Louis XIV. In this latter position, he was responsible for the education of the court pages and included his daughter in that training; thus, Julie not only acquired an uncommon education for girls of her time but also learned the art of fencing, becoming a magnificent fencer who outperformed her male peers from a young age.

This precocity extended to her love life as well, for at barely fourteen years old she became the lover of the Count of Armagnac. However, he preferred to save appearances by arranging a marriage for her with the Seigneur de Maupin in Saint-Germain-en-Laye (a commune located about twenty kilometers from Paris), from whom she took her surname and was thereafter known as Mademoiselle de Maupin, later shortened to La Maupin, following the French custom for singers. Her husband was sent shortly afterward to an administrative post in the south of France, leaving his wife alone and free to continue her relationship with the Count.

Illustration of Mademoiselle de Maupin, by Aubrey Breadsley (1897)
Illustration of Mademoiselle de Maupin, by Aubrey Breadsley (1897). Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

But this was not enough for Julie, who was already eager for stronger emotions. In the year 1687, the same year as her wedding, she began a romance with a certain Séranne, assistant to her fencing master (whose surname obviously inspired Gautier to give it to his protagonist). Séranne’s profession led him to be involved in duels quite often, despite them being banned, and in one of these duels, he killed his opponent. He had to flee from the guards sent to arrest him (the famous lieutenant general of the police appointed by Minister Colbert to professionalize the law enforcement forces, a task that would later be completed by Vidocq, and Julie went with him.

They headed to Marseille, and to survive along the way, they organized fencing exhibitions (in which she fought with him dressed in men’s clothing, though without hiding her condition as a woman) and sang in taverns and fairs, as it turned out that Julie had a beautiful contralto voice, the lowest female voice, between soprano and tenor. When they reached their destination, this unexpected artistic quality opened the doors of the municipal opera company directed by Gaultier de Marseille (not to be confused with the slightly earlier lutenist and composer Pierre Gautier).

Julie, who performed under her maiden name, caught the attention of the young daughter of a local merchant, and they fell in love, leaving Séranne behind as another burned stage. Upon learning of the romance, and to avoid a major scandal, the spectator’s parents, whose name has not been recorded, placed her in a convent in Avignon, possibly that of the Salesians. But the intrepid Julie showed up at the convent and joined as a postulant (the category immediately preceding that of novice), devising a plan to escape with her beloved. It was an imaginative and daring plan.

Mademoiselle de Maupin in another nineteenth-century illustration from Gautier's book.
Mademoiselle de Maupin in another nineteenth-century illustration from Gautier’s book. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

It involved exhuming the body of a recently deceased nun from the convent crypt and placing it in the girl’s bed, then setting fire to the cell and using the charred remains to simulate her death, while the two of them ran away to freedom without raising suspicion or being pursued. The plan was so bold that it succeeded; however, the relationship was short-lived: it lasted no more than three months, after which Julie returned alone to Paris to avoid the predictable accusations that would fall upon her, namely, kidnapping, corpse theft, and arson.

Given the limitations in communication in the 17th century, being a fugitive from justice nearly eight hundred kilometers away was not particularly concerning, so it is likely she was unaware she had been tried and sentenced to death in absentia. But they did so believing she was a man, and in the capital, she had resumed her former identity of Mademoiselle de Maupin. Therefore, she was safe and could continue with the activities she excelled at: singing and fencing.

Indeed, the latter almost cost her life, as she fought a duel, a real one, not an exhibition, with the young Count of Albert, whom she met in a tavern in Villeperdue and who, mistaking her for a man, challenged her. She won, wounding him and nursing him back to health while they became lovers. However, this relationship did not last long either, but they maintained their friendship forever. The gap in her heart was then filled by Gabriel-Vincent Thévenard, a famous baritone with whom she once again went to the capital.

Gabriel-Vincent Thévenard in an engraving by Georg Friedrich Schmidt
Gabriel-Vincent Thévenard in an engraving by Georg Friedrich Schmidt. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

He appreciated her voice and introduced her to the Paris Opera, since shortly before, in Poitiers, Julie had also received singing lessons from another prestigious performer named Maréchal. Thus, at seventeen years old, the young woman began a professional career in the operatic world, though it wasn’t easy at first because, despite the insistent recommendations from Thévenard and a friend, an old singer named Bouvard, the director Jean-Nicolas de Francine was reluctant to give her a contract.

Finally, in 1690, she debuted by playing the Greek goddess Pallas Athena in the play Cadmus et Hermione (Cadmus and Hermione), a musical tragedy composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully – who was, at the time, Francine’s father-in-law – with a libretto by the poet Philippe Quinault, Lully’s assistant. Interestingly, in her first performances, Julie sang as a soprano; later, they realized her tone was contralto and reassigned her. That phase lasted four years, with critics praising the beauty of her voice and she received a royal pardon for her pending sentence thanks to the mediation of her first lover, the Count of Armagnac.

By then, she was already established as Mademoiselle de Maupin, a customary title for divas of bel canto, and even made an international leap, performing at the Opéra du Quai au Foin in Brussels (the city’s first public theater, inaugurated in 1682 but reopened in 1694 under the joint direction of Gio Paolo Bombarda and Pietro Antonio Fiocco, where Lully had premiered several of his works). Some sources say Julie stayed in that city for eight months, performing other works by the Lully-Quinault duo, such as Amadis, Armida, and Thésée.

Fanchon Moreau in an engraving by Mattheus Seütter
Fanchon Moreau in an engraving by Mattheus Seütter. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

The reason for this long stay lies in an attempt to make people forget the altercations caused by her tempestuous character, as she alternated her musical delicacy with a string of duels (one of them with three nobles in the same night, after a dispute over a kiss from a young woman at a masquerade ball (where she was dressed as a man), threatened the Duchess of Luxembourg with death, assaulted her landlord, exchanged insults with other singers, and had a dispute with Louis Gaulard Dumesny, a controversial tenor because he couldn’t read sheet music – he learned it all by heart – and was also a libertine who often harassed women; with her, he met his match.

Sentimentally, she also couldn’t find peace or stability. For example, before taking refuge in Brussels, she fell in love with Fanchon Moreau, a beautiful singer who rejected her advances because she was the lover of the Dauphin of France. Julie didn’t take the refusal well and thought about committing suicide, although she ultimately carried on with her life, leading to the episode with the nobles she challenged and another equally dramatic one in which she once again considered taking her life, this time in Brussels, proving that escaping her own idiosyncrasy wasn’t easy for her.

This time, the cause was her determination to maintain a relationship with Maximilian II Emanuel of Bavaria, Prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire and patron of the arts. His rejection led her to stab herself with a real dagger, not a prop, during the performance of a suicide scene in the play Énée (Aeneas) by Johan Wolfgang Franck. Overwhelmed by her passionate behavior, he offered her forty thousand francs to leave him alone; Julie left, but not without throwing the money on the ground first.

Nineteenth century engraving showing the typical image of Mademoiselle de Maupin with male clothes and sword.
Nineteenth century engraving showing the typical image of Mademoiselle de Maupin with male clothes and sword. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

After leaving Brussels, she traveled to Madrid, working as a maid for the Countess Marino. They didn’t get along well, and Julie decided to end her contract with a mix of cheekiness and amusement: placing some radishes in her lady’s hair while helping her dress for a social event, so that everyone but the countess herself could see them. By the time the humiliated aristocrat realized the joke, Julie was already on her way back to her country; it was the summer of 1698.

She arrived at the Paris Opera just in time, as she was chosen to replace Marthe le Rochois, who despite a late debut has gone down in history as the first great French singer and had just retired with a generous royal pension. Le Rochois had been discovered by Lully and became famous singing Armida, so Julie seemed perfect for the replacement, although the composer’s death the previous year meant she had to expand her repertoire to the new works premiered by the new generation of musicians: Pascal Collasse, André Cardinal Destouches, and André Campra.

It was the latter who specifically wrote for her the character of Clorinde in Tancrède, a tragic opera premiered in 1702 with a libretto by Antoine Danchet based on the epic poem Jerusalem Delivered by Renaissance poet Torquato Tasso. It was the first role for a contralto in French music (experts say it would be more suitable for a mezzo-soprano today, but back then a lower tone was used) and it was such a success that Julie received an invitation to sing at the court of Versailles, before Louis XIV, repeating her performance several times. In 1701, even her husband Maupin reappeared in her life, although he remained in the background.

Mademoiselle de Maupin in full opera performance. Anonymous engraving
Mademoiselle de Maupin in full opera performance. Anonymous engraving. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

Her last performance was in 1705, as Isabelle in a comedy-ballet composed by Michel de La Barre and written by Houdar de La Motte, La Vénitienne. This retirement was prompted by the depression she suffered following the death of her partner, the Marquise de Florensac, considered the most beautiful woman in France (so much so that she had to flee to Brussels to escape the Dauphin’s advances). Julie not only retired from the stage but also from the world, entering a convent – probably in Provence – where she spent the remaining two years of her life.

The cause of her early death – she was only thirty-three – and the place of her burial are unknown – some biographies claim her body was thrown into a garbage heap – but it’s too tempting to end without quoting in her memory a defining paragraph from Gautier’s novel, put into the mouth – or pen, as it is a letter to Albert – of the protagonist:

This existence, although I have accepted it in appearance, is not made for me, or at least it very little resembles what I dream of and believe to be suitable (…) You know the powerful attraction that strange adventures have for me, how I adore everything that is singular, excessive, and dangerous, and with what avidity I devour novels and travel stories. Perhaps there is no wilder and more vagabond fantasy on Earth than mine (…) Love is painted with a blindfold over its eyes; it is Destiny that should be so painted.

This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on October 13, 2023: La transgresora vida de Mademoiselle de Maupin, la cantante de ópera que se batía en duelos vestida de hombre

Sources

Théophile Gautier, Mademoiselle de Maupin | Alan Westby, Julie d’Aubigny. La Maupin and early french opera | Kelly Gardiner, The real life of Julie d’Aubigny | Gabriel Letainturier-Fradin, La Maupin (1670–1707): sa vie, ses duels, ses aventures | Alfredo Arias, Mitos de la transgresión femenina | Vic Echegoyen, La voz y la espada | Wikipedia

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