- Adrienne Lecouvreur
Adrienne Lecouvreur (
April 5 ,1692 –March 20 ,1730 ) was a French actress.Born in
Damery , she first appeared professionally on the stage inLille . After her Paris debut at theComédie Française in 1717, she was immensely popular with the public, until her mysterious death.She was credited with having developed a more natural, less stylized, type of actingFact|date=February 2007.
She had a romance with Maurice de Saxe, which ended in tragedy when she was apparently poisoned by her rival, Maria Karolina Sobieska, Duchess of
Bouillon . The refusal of the Catholic Church to give her a Christian burial moved her friendVoltaire to write a bitter poem on the subject.Her life became the inspiration for a tragic drama by Scribe and Legouvé on which
Francesco Cilea 's operaAdriana Lecouvreur and theoperetta "Adrienne" (1926) byWalter Goetze [cite web
url = http://www.operone.de/opern/adrienne.html
title = Adrienne, von Goetze
accessdate = 2007-10-28
author =
last = Goebel
first = Wilfried
publisher = operone
language = German] are based. In 1913Sarah Bernhardt played her in the silent movie "Adrienne Lecouvreur". [Imdb_title|0202209|Adrienne Lecouvreur|(1913)] In 1928,MGM Studios , filmedDream of Love , based on the Scribe and Legouvé play, "Adrienne Lecouvreur", starringJoan Crawford andNils Asther . At least six further films were made based on her life. [ [http://imdb.com/find?s=all&q=Adrienne+Lecouvreur Search IMDB for Adrienne Lecouvreur] ]References
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.