Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre

This chapter recounts the accomplishments of the French composer, harpsichordist, and organist Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre (1665–1729). She was the first woman to have a work, her opera Céphale et Procris, staged at the Académie Royale de Musique, the prestigious opera house in Paris. An older contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Friedrich Händel, Jacquet de La Guerre had grown up in a family of active and respected musicians, and lived amid the rich cultural environment of Versailles and Paris. In a time when musical life flourished at the court of Louis XIV and among the French capital's urban bourgeoisie, Jacquet de La Guerre's life and art fit neatly into the prosperity, splendor, and turbulence of the grand siècle, when Louis, the “Sun King,” reigned (1643–1715) as an absolute monarch.