The youngest daughter of Claudine Duval – a dancer at the Académie royale de musique from 1713 to 1730 – and niece of a star vocalist of the same theatre, Marie Antier, Mlle Duval grew up in the wings of the Paris Opera. At age thirteen, she briefly sang alongside her eldest sister in the Opera’s choir. She was often mistaken for her sister, who was also a singer and was nicknamed “la Constitution,” just as she herself was nicknamed “le Bref” or “la Légende” in reference to their supposed father, Cardinal Cornelio Bentivoglio, who was the Pope’s Nuncio in Paris from 1712 to 1719. At age eighteen, Mlle Duval composed an opéra-ballet on a libretto by Jacques-Pierre Fleury, Les Génies, which comprised a prologue and four entrées (Les Nymphes ou l’Amour indiscret, Les Gnomes ou l’Amour ambitieux, Les Salamandres ou l’Amour violent, Les Sylphes ou l’Amour léger). Marie Antier played two roles in her niece’s opera. After a rehearsal at the home of the Prince de Carignan, inspector of the Paris Opera, the work was performed on 18 October 1736 at the Académie royale de musique. Only nine performances were completed, despite the critical acclaim bestowed on the young composer’s musical inventiveness. According to the Mercure de France gazette, she had accompanied the performance of her work on the harpsichord. Besides this opera, which was published with a dedication to the Prince de Carignan and reprised in Versailles in August 1738 at the Concert de la Reine, the only work attributed to Mlle Duval the younger with any certainty is a duet published in the Mercure in October 1736, “Du dieu qui fait aimer”. Her career after this early success is harder to piece together. Like her sister, she performed in various French musical institutions. We know that she sang at the Concert de Grenoble in 1745, and at the Académie royale de Lyon the following year as part Jean Monnet’s short-lived troupe. Mlle Duval was very likely the mother of composer, singer and harpsichordist Marie Michel, known first as Marie de Riancourt then as Mme Estienne d’Augny (1734-1793), who co-authored the music of two opéras-comiques.

– Raphaëlle Legrand, Professor of musicology, Sorbonne Université –


Dates: circa 1718 - circa 1775.

[Traduction en anglais : Raphaël Meyer]