Julie d’Aubigny, AKA La Maupin, was an expert duelist and opera singer who garnered as much fame from her scandalous affairs as she did from her performances. She went on the run from the law with an assistant fencing master, posed as postulant to break a female lover out of a convent (using the dead body of a nun as a prop in the scheme), and once dueled three men in a row who challenged her after she kissed a woman at a ball. (She defeated, and perhaps killed, all three of them.) She would beat any man who threatened her or her fellow opera stars, and apparently had extraordinary powers of memory, as she could memorize an opera script in rapid order.
I am thinking this would be a good movie, if Scarlett Johansson could sing or Idina Menzel could do her own stunts…
Sources:
Clayton, Ellen Creathorne. Queens of Song. Smith, Elder & Co., 1863.
Cohen, Richard. By the Sword. Random House, 2003.
Gauthier, Theophile. Mademoiselle de Maupin. Trans. Helen Constantine. Penguin, 2006.
The Sketch Book of Character. E.L. Carey, 1835
That would make a phenomenal movie!
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I’ve never been a fan of opera, but I sure am a fan of her!
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I know, right?
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Emily Blunt! 🙂
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I love these women…
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You should mention Mary Diana Dods at some point . . .
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