She represent parts where again to press the Tout

Q hen is a large company, it has no enemies, but there are some envy. The envy seek point lose you because you did poorly but because you are doing well. "Paris, November 1793. In the capital, the terror is. Every day, dozens of people are arrested, often on a mere suspicion and, for many, sent to the guillotine. Imprisoned in La Force prison, Marguerite Brunet, known as "the Montansier", wrote a long memory for his defence. What is it Have summer, at the time of its splendour, close to the Queen Marie-Antoinette, the infamous "Austrian", whose head rolled in the basket the previous October 16. And even more to have maintained relations with the General Dumouriez, the winner of Valmy, the enemy in April 1793. A charge is serious. "The father Duchesne", the map of Jacques Hébert, unleashed against the "citizen Montansier". "Learn that this old Sweeper of backstage was the first supplier of the Austrian Wolf." "At Versailles, it it was complacently candle when she encornaillait the ogre capet in his small lodge", burp the journal. The fall of Robespierre in July 1794, will save the Montansier a trial which had probably cost him life. But at the age of sixty-three former "Director of performances from the Court" had every opportunity to meditate on his amazing destiny.

Who would have thought that this daughter of blacksmith would become the great instructing of the performances of the Court, but also an astute businesswoman leader a true empire financial and artistic Born in Bayonne in 1730, Marguerite Brunet receives the most classic in the Ursuline education be placed by his mother, at fourteen, with a market aunt of fashion in Paris, which she will later resume name: Hyacinthe Montansier. Not really beautiful but full of charm and vivacity, the girl was quickly to find a galant in the person of Jean-Gabriel Hurson, an advisor to the Parliament of Paris in the promising future, making his mistress. When in 1750 the brilliant robin was appointed intendant of Martinique, Marguerite Brunet does not hesitate: she will accompany her lover in the Windward Islands. It will remain just three years. It is on the order of the Governor, embedded authority on board a vessel bound for the France, Lasse to be faithful to Hurson, who has yet installed it in a beautiful hotel on the harbour of Fort-Royal, lagging behind a sulphurous reputation after it is launched in the trade of young mulâtresses. The beautiful, who, at the age of twenty-three knows already on the world, carefully prepared his return. When she arrives in Bordeaux, dressed in a sumptuous velvet dress and gone to a cockatoo perched on his shoulder, she borrowed the name of his aunt Montansier, which she very cleverly added a particle. Marguerite Brunet called now mademoiselle Montansier. It was under this new identity that she settled in Paris, rue Saint-Honoré where it opens a game show.

For more than ten years, the Montansier will lead to Paris the life of a demimonde. Little fierce but sufficiently educated to be a style, posing as the daughter of a lawyer of the Midi, it very quickly of its game show the rendezvous point of Paris Golden youth, with all the discretion that befit the people of quality, providing beautiful, in exchange for a few favours, subsidies that allow it to live. There are some big names that many, indeed, not only of the charms of her conversation at the image of Louis Phélypeaux, comte de Saint-Florentin, then duc de Vrillière, Minister of State, the marquis of Souvré, master of the wardrobe of Louis XV, Prince of Nassau-Saarbrücken, the Duke of Choiseul or even of Louis-Philippe d ' Orléans, father of the future Philippe Egalité. Not to mention a cohort of seigneurs of lower rank but properly titled. That beautiful world, including the police, who discreetly monitors the Marguerite show as all places of pleasure of the capital, is meticulously list. In worthy adventurer, Marguerite soon realized that the quality of relations depended his good fortune and its future. Fans and lovers found in Marguerite to fine dinners that extend until dawn. When cases are less well, as during the last years of the seven years war which depleted momentarily the ranks of the aristocracy, Marguerite is not loath to use the services of a few "appareilleuses", in other words the mothers maquerelles.

This is, in one of these "small houses", as it then called brothels that Marguerite is the knowledge of the young man from Saint-Contest, son of the Minister of Foreign Affairs to Louis XV. Rich, in love with Marguerite who began to make his education, the young man cannot refuse anything to his lover. However, for some time, is tired of his existence of demimonde. It lives in a dream: the theatre. Not as an actor. The beautiful is there is tried once or twice social evenings, receiving compliments of politeness. What she wants, is having his own troupe. The circumstances are favourable. Since the Regency Theatre is fury. Everywhere in France, troops of actors to create some very ephemeral. To respond to the request of the public, many cities to establish a theatre. Some players have become real stars, in the image of Préville, pertussis of Paris and of the Court. Saint-Contest money offers Marguerite a unique opportunity to become owner of a company. It is not the first to take the step. Guidelines troupe women - often of older actresses - there are so many. But Montansier, with relationships, go much further in that direction, becoming a true entrepreneur of performances.

Of the of the Barry at Marie-Antoinette

In the 1760s, is to

the head of a troupe that it produces in Nantes, Amiens and Rouen. Served by players of quality, its performances meet a great success. When it is not in Paris where she heals his relations, the short Montansier province, travelling in a car with four horses who serves as its Office, and where it has installed a small table of work to write his mail or annotate the countless pieces that make it reach the authors for glory. By the duc de Choiseul, who was her lover when she was fair game and prevailing now on Foreign Affairs, war and Navy, she was opening the doors of the great Royal houses for private performances. By the faithful Saint-Contest, including the stock market, when it comes to content with his mistress, seems inexhaustible, it incorporates several troops of province. It is with the two men again, but also through first gentlemen of the House of the King for which she once had with kindness, that in 1768, she finally makes its debut at Versailles. That year, it is indeed the direction of the small théâtre de rue Satory, obtaining very coveted load of Director of the performances from the Court in the wake. Court, soon the King and Queen to urge its performances it manages real professional, choosing carefully its repertoire and its actors. Intuitive, demanding, Marguerite there means to identify and train actors of talent. Many will subsequently be successful careers, in the image of Fleury. His troops are to be the nursery of the Comédie-Française, the Italian comedy and Opera. This reputation earned him many enemies, starting with Préville, as soon as possible, he puts sticks in the wheels. But its relations are too firmly ensured. In addition to Choiseul and some great lords of the Court, it enjoys the support of madame of the Barry, the last favourite of Louis XV.

A time yet, the Montansier think past his moment of glory. In 1774, Louis XV died. The new King, Louis XVI, and even more the Queen Marie-Antoinette, hated Madam of the Barry, asked to leave Versailles. The Court, some are not expensive for the future of Marguerite, whose name is associated with the reign of the late King and his favorite. Relations, once, to save development. Not only the Montansier retains his Office of Director of the performances from the Court, but it gets even of the King, in 1775, the exclusive privilege of hosting the dances and performances of Versailles.

Two years later, thanks to the support of the Queen of fun-loving and that she was able to seduce, it gets a more important privilege still: the King granted for twenty years the régie and the direction of the theatres of Versailles, Fontainebleau, Saint-Cloud, Marly, Compiègne, Rouen, Caen, Orléans, Nantes and le Havre. A true empire, which brings him hundreds of thousands of books a year, and that it manages in real business woman, with single help of her lover of the time, the actor Honoré Bourdon said "of Neuville", that she will eventually marry on the later. An empire, above all, which continues to expand new rooms, thus in Brunoy, Alençon, Angers, Saumur, Vendôme, Lorient or Rennes, not to mention his "beloved child", the beautiful room that it build at Versailles reservoir Street, soon renamed "théâtre Montansier", inaugurated in 1777 in the presence of the King and Queen. Overwhelmed, Marguerite creates a small company, entrusting the day-to-day management of its rooms to directors carefully selected with Neuville.

The French Revolution lays down this magnificent building. All had yet begun so well! Returned to Paris at the same time as the King and Queen, the Montansier had in fact succeeded, in 1790, to take possession of the theatre of the Beaujolais under the arcades of the Palais-Royal. Like Versailles tanks Street, room of the Palais-Royal was quickly became the rallying point for the Tout of the time. Located above the stage, the apartment of the two lovers saw scroll every evening deputies and Ministers. Fabre of Eglantine was one familiar, like Danton and Robespierre. But the climate gradually worsened. It is rumored in Paris that her salon became the location of all the intrigues. "A citizen, it is argued that the French spirit took refuge in your theatre.". "Believe me, do not be taunting me," wrote one day Robespierre. Marguerite give wages of patriotism, up to organize tours of propaganda in the Belgium conquered by Dumouriez, it smacks too of the former regime to not be concerned. Arrested in 1793 despite the protection of Danton, all his property confiscated, is his salvation to the fall of Robespierre.

Released in 1794, Marguerite is constantly rebuilding the empire built before the revolution. Strong relationships it maintains with the members of the Executive Board, and particularly with Barras, the new strong man of the regime, she gets to significant financial compensation to create in 1801, at the Olympic Theatre in the rue de La Victoire, a new troupe of Italian singers. But the time is less favourable to him. In 1803, having never managed to reconstruct his past fortune, she is imprisoned a few weeks for debts. The projects of Napoleon, which wants to limit to eight the number of Parisian rooms, include it a harsh blow. Required by decree to leave the Palais-Royal, she sweeps the Emperor permission to build a new theatre boulevard Montmartre. Probably Napoleon I ' is remembered to have crossed the Montansier in his Parisian salon, a day of 1792, when it was that Napoleon Bonaparte... Varieties of the Montmartre boulevard are the ultimate refuge of Marguerite. She represent parts where, again, to press the Tout. With delegated the direction of his room to the actor Mira Brunet, she died peacefully in July 1820, at the age of ninety years.

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