Adrienne Lecouvreur

Adrienne Lecouvreur , 1692-1730, French actress. With Michel Baron she helped change the traditional acting techniques of the French stage to a simpler, more natural style. She was extremely popular from her debut at the Comédie Française in 1717. Her love for Maurice de Saxe ended in tragedy; her mysterious death was ascribed to poisoning by her rival, the duchesse de Bouillon. The Church's refusal to grant Lecouvreur a Christian burial resulted in a bitter poem by her friend Voltaire. She is the subject of a play by Scribe and Legouvé and of the opera Adriana Lecouvreur by Francesco Cilea.

Bibliography: See biography by J. Richtman (1971).

Lecouvreur, Adrienne (1692–1730), French actress, who made her first appearance at the Comédie-Française in 1717 in the title-role of Crébillion's Électre. Her immediate popularity aroused much jealousy among her fellow actresses, but she continued to triumph with the public. She was better in tragedy than comedy and, disliking the declamatory style which had come down from Mlle Champmeslé, she succeeded, in the teeth of their opposition, in introducing a much simpler and more natural form of delivery. Her reign was a brief one, and she died suddenly after only 13 years. As an actress she was refused Christian burial, and was interred secretly by night in a marshy corner of the rue de Bourgogne. The English actress Anne Oldfield, who died in the same year, was buried in Westminster Abbey. Voltaire, in some of whose plays Lecouvreur had appeared, contrasted bitterly the respect shown to the English actress with the harsh treatment of her French counterpart.

Dean, Julia (1830–68), American actress, grand-daughter of Samuel Drake. With her father and stepmother she appeared as a child under the management of Ludlow and Sol Smith, and in 1846 made her adult début in New York as Julia in Sheridan Knowles's The Hunchback. A beautiful woman, with a gentle personality and great charm, she was at her best in roles of tenderness and pathos, such as Juliet, Scribe's Adrienne Lecouvreur, and Mrs Haller in Kotzebue's The Stranger. She made an unhappy marriage in 1855, and her acting declined. A tour of California in 1856 was a success, but she never regained her position in New York, where she returned after her divorce. She died in childbirth following her second marriage in 1867.