Anne Marie Milan Desguillons

Infobox actor
name = Anne Marie Milan Desguillons


imagesize =
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birthname = Anne Marie Milan
birthdate = 1753
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deathdate = 1829 (aged c.76 )
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spouse = Joseph Sauze Desguillons

Anne Marie Milan Desguillons, (1753-1829), was a French actor active in Sweden. She also became director of the theatre school Dramatens elevskola and had great influence over the development of the Swedish theatre.

Biography

Anne Marie Milan debutated in Le Havre 1773, played in Lille 1774-1775 and arrived to Sweden from France in the French theatre troupe of Jacques Boutet de Monvel in 1781, who performed in the court theatres and, from 1783, for the public in the Bollhuset in Stockholm.

She remained in the French Theatre for eleven years. In 1789 married her colleague Joseph Sauze Desguillons, a French actor from the same troupe. She was not considered a beauty, but described as heavily overweight, but she was both respected and liked, especially by the royal court.She was foremost a tragedienne and performed in tragedys and mére noble-parts, such as Merope, Semiramis and Athalie, but she also did comedys, such as Madame Turcaret.

In 1792, the French Theatre of Stockholm was dissolved, and she ended her career as an actor. She remained in Sweden, and in 1793, she was appointed principal for Dramatens elevskola jointly with her husband; she was responsible for the female students, her husband for the male students, and together they developed many of the most known artists of the country's theatre-history. Though Dramatens elevskola had ben founded in 1787, six years before she and her husband had became it's prinicpals, the two Desguillons were responsible for organising the school. Their organization was kept by the later principal Sofia Lovisa Gråå.

The student was accepted at the age of nine or ten and performed as child-actors and at student-plays, and among them was many of the greatest talents of the time such as Jeanette Wässelius, Sofia Frodelius, Ulrika Wennerholm and Carolina Kuhlman. The two Desguillons was instructors in acting; for the song, Johann Christian Friedrich Hæffner and later L. Piccini was hired, for dance Julie Alix de la Fay and Jean-Rémy Marcadet.

When Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden hired a French troup to play in 1803, the Desguillons couple was given the responsibility for this troupe. She was one of the most successful of the many French actors employed in Sweden in the 18th century.

ee also

* Marie Louise Marcadet
* Marie Baptiste

References

* Carin Österberg "Svenska kvinnor" (1990).
* http://www.cesar.org.uk/cesar2/people/people.php?fct=edit&person_UOID=343490
* "Gustavianskt" Ingvar Andersson.