Jeanne-Marie Marsan

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Jeanne-Marie Marsan, née Chapiseau, (Paris, France 1746-New Orleans, Louisiana 25 February 1807), was a French actress and singer, active in France and Germany in Europe and the French Westindies. She was the leading actress in Saint Domingue in Pre-revolutionary Haiti and then in the first theatre in New Orleans in Louisiana.

[edit] Biography

Born in faubourg Saint-Germain in Paris, she married the actor Pierre Legendre Marsan, who was forced to flee from France to Martinique in 1765. Jeanne-Marie stayed in France and made herself famous on the stages of Paris, the French country side and in Germany the following ten years before she joined him in Martinique with her children in 1775, where she made a success upon her debute on the theatre in Saint-Pierre, Martinique.

In 1780, Marsan and her family mowed to Haiti, where she was hired at the Cap-Francais Theatre and became the leading actress of the colony until the 1790s. She was recomended for her versatility and performed in tragedy as well as comedy, drama as well as opera. Following is an extract of a letter that appeared in a Port-auPrince newspaper of March 10, 1787, praising her performance of the role of "Nina":

It is said that Mme. Dugazon's performance of this role is actually terrifying, and that she spent several months in the insane asylums in Paris in order to study it. . .Mme. Marsan, at the Cap. . .played this role before my eyes in such a lifelike manner that it actually made me suffer. Permit me, Sir, to take advantage of this opportunity to do homage to that adorable actress. If she were at the Théâtre Italien, her name would be as famous as that of Dugazon, the elder Sainval, Contat, and others like them; for Mme. Marsan possesses in an eminent degree the talent for high comedy and for comic opera. Let anyone try to name an actress who can, like her, play in a single night, and with such perfection, "Elmire" in Tartuffe and the title role in La Servante Maîtresse, "Babet" and the "Gouvernante," "Rosalie" in Jenneval and "Clémentine" in Le Magnifique.15

The date of her departure from Haiti is not known, but several actors of the Cap-Francais troupe, as well as it's director, left the colony when Cap-Haitien was attacked in 1793; many are believed to have ben in New Orleans in 1794, and in the 1795-1796 season, she was the leading actress and singer of the Theatre de la Rue Saint Pierre in New Orleans. She is believed to have sang the female main part in Silvain 22 March 1796, which is called the first Opera performed in New Orleans; she was famous for this role alredy in Haiti. When the order of the theatre was established in the contract of 1797, she was among the actors granted benefit performances and, together with Clerville and Delaure, the highest paid actor with a salary of §70.

When the theatre was closed in 1800, she retired from the stage and lived on the income from a property bought for her by the actor Jean Baptiste Le Sueur Fontaine, director of the New Orleans theatre and previoulsy director of the Cap Francais theatre, where she was earlier employed.

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