Adrienne Lecouvreur

Adrienne Lecouvreur (5 April 1692 – 20 March 1730) was a French actress.

Born in Damery, she first appeared professionally on the stage in Lille. After her Paris debut at the Comédie-Française in 1717, she was immensely popular with the public, until her mysterious death.

She was credited with having developed a more natural, less stylized, type of acting.

She had a romance with Maurice de Saxe, which ended in tragedy when she was apparently poisoned by her rival, Maria Karolina Sobieska, Duchess of Bouillon. The refusal of the Catholic Church to give her a Christian burial moved her friend Voltaire to write a bitter poem on the subject.

Read more about Adrienne Lecouvreur:  Legagy