Joseph-Marie-Armand-Michel Dieulafoy (1762, Toulouse – 13 December 1823) was a French librettist and playwright.

Michel Dieulafoy

Biography

edit

He was received lawyer in Toulouse and he seemed destined to the bar where he had started. In his relatives, owners of large properties in the colonies drew him to the New World, and he moved to Santo Domingo where fortunate speculations already promised him a brilliant fortune. But the upheaval and emancipation of the Haitian Revolution destroyed his hopes: his house was burned down and his plantations were devastated by those who had formerly been enslaved there. He escaped the massacre du Cap in 1793 and fled to Philadelphia where he stayed there for a while, then returned to France where he devoted himself to dramatic poetry, mainly the vaudeville genre.

The Théâtre du Vaudeville (which was then located rue de Chartres) saw his success since 1798, that is to say at the time of his greatest vogue. He also gave various plays to most theaters of Paris.

Dieulafoy was and remained a royalist, even under the imperial government.

Selected works

edit

References

edit
  1. ^ See: A Mademoiselle Joséphine Mézeray, première actrice du Théâtre-françois, en lui envoyant un cachet de bureau avec son chiffre, signed M. Grimod de La Reynière, 1797 [1]

Bibliography

edit
  • Jacques-Alphonse Mahul, Annuaire nécrologique, ou Supplément annuel et continuation de toutes les biographies ou dictionnaires historiques, 4 année, 1823, Paris : Ponthieu, 1824, p. 104-107 [2]
edit