Madame de Pompadour

Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, also known as Madame de Pompadour (29 December 1721 – 15 April 1764, French pronunciation: ​[pɔ̃.pa.duːʁ]), was a member of the French court and was the official chief mistress of Louis XV from 1745 to her death. She took charge of the king’s schedule and was a valued aide and advisor, despite her frail health and many political enemies. She secured titles of nobility for herself and her relatives, and built a network of clients and supporters. She was particularly careful not to alienate the Queen, Marie Leszczyńska. She was a major patron of architecture and decorative arts such as porcelain. She was a patron of the philosophes of the Enlightenment, including Voltaire. Hostile critics at the time generally tarred her as a malevolent political influence, but historians are more favourable, emphasizing her successes as a patron of the arts and a champion of French pride.

Early life

Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, otherwise known as Reinette ("little queen") to her friends, was born on 29 December 1721 in Paris to François Poisson (1684–1754) and his wife Madeleine de La Motte (1699–1745). It is suspected that her biological father was either the rich financier Pâris de Montmartel or the tax collector (fermier général) Le Normant de Tournehem. Le Normant de Tournehem became her legal guardian when François Poisson was forced to leave the country in 1725 after a scandal over a series of unpaid debts, a crime at that time punishable by death. (He was cleared eight years later and allowed to return to France.) Her younger brother was Abel-François Poisson de Vandières, who later became the Marquis de Marigny.

Madame Pompadour (film)

Madame Pompadour is a 1927 British silent historical drama film directed by Herbert Wilcox and starring Dorothy Gish, Antonio Moreno and Nelson Keys. The film depicts the life of Madame Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV of France.

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Madame Pompadour (operetta)

Madame Pompadour is an operetta in three acts, composed by Leo Fall with a libretto by Rudolf Schanzer and Ernst Friedrich Wilhelm Welisch. Conducted by the composer, it opened at the Berliner Theater in Berlin on 9 September 1922 and then at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna on 2 March 1923.

Translated into English, Madame Pompadour premiered at Daly's Theatre, London, on 20 December 1923. It was also translated into Italian and performed at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan on 15 January 1924. It was later given in French in an adaptation by Albert Willemetz, Max Eddy and Jean Marietti, in Paris at the Théâtre Marigny on 16 May 1930. With the extraordinary success of the operetta in Berlin, Vienna, London and elsewhere, Fall regained the international fame that he had enjoyed prior to World War I. He died of cancer two years later at the age of only 52.

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Synopsis

Married Count René is in Paris for Carnival, at an inn with his friend, the poet Josef. When René picks up an attractive girl, she is revealed to be Madame Pompadour, and he is placed under arrest. She gains him a reprieve, but she demands that he serve as her personal bodyguard and that Josef write a birthday play. She tells René to keep his distance – until midnight. Meanwhile, René’s wife arrives, in search of her missing husband, and Louis XV wants to catch his mistress together with her lover. But clever Madame Pompadour is able to avoid detection, as she presents René’s wife as her sister.