Anne Françoise Elisabeth Lange

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Anne Françoise Elisabeth Lange
merveilleuse
Partner(s)Michel-Jean Simons
Children
  • Anne-Élisabeth Palmyre (daughter)
  • Son
Position heldSociétaires of the Comédie-Française (1788–) Edit this on Wikidata

Anne Françoise Elisabeth Lange (17 September 1772 – 25 May 1816,

Merveilleuse" of the French Directory. Her stage name
was Mademoiselle Lange.

Life

She was born in

Marguerite Brunet
's company.

On 2 October 1788, she made her official debut at the Comédie-Française in the role of Lindane in L'Écossaise by Voltaire. She next played Lucinde in L'Oracle by Saint-Foix.[1]

In 1791, the production of the anti-religious and anti-monarchical play Charles IX by Marie-Joseph Chénier divided the company of the Théâtre-Français, with Mlle Lange joining the "patriots" group under Talma, which set itself up at rue de Richelieu (the present home of the Comédie-Française).

However, thinking her talents were not being fully recognized there, she quickly moved to the "aristocrats" faction that had set itself up at the Théâtre du Faubourg Saint-Germain (renamed the Théâtre de la Nation, now known as the

Théâtre de l'Odéon
).

On 24 February 1793, she played Laure in Le Vieux Célibataire by

Nicolas-Louis François de Neufchâteau,[2] setting a fashion for straw hats known as "à la Paméla", but the play's royalist overtones led to this theatre being shut down and the author and actors arrested by the Committee of Public Safety.[1]

Mlle Lange was at first imprisoned in the

prison de Sainte-Pélagie until, after a few months in captivity, she managed to arrange her transfer to the pension Belhomme (along with her cook, her valet and her lady's maid). There she was able to maintain a large household thanks to funds from the banker Montz, filling the street outside with those coming to visit her. She also bought a hôtel particulier on rue Saint-Georges
.

In the wake of a denunciation,

9th Thermidor and rejoined her fellow actors at the Théâtre Feydeau
.

She continued to live the high life under the Directory, having a liaison with the rascally arriviste N. Lieuthraud, the self-proclaimed "marquis de Beauregard", who had made a fortune as supplier to the armies of the republic, but eventually disappeared, pursued by creditors.

Hôtel de Salm, one of the houses he had acquired, and maintained her there on an allowance said to be 10,000 livres a day.[4]

She was also the mistress of a rich banker from

La Fille de madame Angot
, in which Mlle Lange appears in a secondary role. Her final lover was Michel-Jean Simons, a Belgian supplier to the French army, with whom she had a son in December 1797. In 1798, Simons' father married her friend Julie Candeille. Simons recognized their son and married Mlle Lange, making her Madame Simons and putting an end to her theatrical career; she reappeared only for a few performances in 1807.[1] Ruined, Simons died in 1810 in his château de Bossey in Switzerland. Widowed, she assumed a solitary life in obscurity and far from her admirers until her death.

Portraits

Mlle. Lange sat for a number of artists, including two French artists of the

Girodet-Trioson created Le Sommeil d'Endymion
for the same event.

A few years later, Girodet would depict Mlle. Lange as Venus at the Salon of 1799. The sitter expressed her disapproval of the work in a written letter. The artist would then replace the Venus with Portrait of Mlle. Lange as Danae in what became a major scandal in art.

Robert Lefèvre did a portrait of her as Mme Simons, née Lange,[citation needed] as well as a portrait of her husband, Michel-Jean Simons.[5]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d Chisholm 1911.
  2. ^ The play was based on the epistolary novel Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740) by Samuel Richardson.
  3. ^ Biographie des hommes vivants, 1816, s.v. "Beauregard (Lieuthraud, dit)" vol. i, p. 254.
  4. ^ Eliakim Littell (1920). "Littell's Living Age". Living Age Company, Incorporated.
  5. S2CID 214472743
    .

Sources
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