- Joseph Quesnel
Joseph Quesnel (
15 November 1746 –3 July 1809 ) was aFrench Canadian composer ,poet , andplaywright . Among his works were twoopera s, "Colas et Colinette " and "Lucas et Cécile "; the former is considered to be the first Canadian opera.Quesnel was born in
Saint-Malo ,France , where he attended the Collège Saint-Louis, in 1746. He travelled toNorth America on a French vessel in 1779, which was captured by the British. Quesnel was taken to Halifax, Nova Scotia and thenMontreal . He married Marie-Josephte Deslandes there and became partners in business withMaurice-Régis Blondeau , his mother-in-law's new husband.He died of
pleurisy at Montreal in 1809 several months after he had dived into theSaint Lawrence River to save a drowning child.Quesnel was the subject of the
comic opera "Le Père des amours", written byEugene Lapierre in 1942.Quesnel's son
Jules Maurice Quesnel travelled with Simon Fraser on his journey to thePacific Ocean ; the town ofQuesnel, British Columbia is named for him. Another son Frédéric-Auguste became a lawyer and politician; his daughter Mélanie married lawyerCôme-Séraphin Cherrier .External links
* [http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=2623 Biography at the "Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online"]
* [http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=U1ARTU0002905 Entry from the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
