Marguerite Morel

Marguerite Morel (Jeanne-Pierre-Marie-Marguerite Morel; 1737–1804) as married Marguerite Du Londel, was a French ballerina, and actress and opera singer. She was active in Sweden 1755–1771 and at that time counted as the perhaps notable star in the ballet in Sweden. She is also known for her relationship with king Adolf Frederick of Sweden.

Career

Morel performed in Copenhagen with her mother and her two sisters in the Du Londel Troupe until 1753, when the troupe was hired to perform in Sweden. The years later, they also followed the troupe to Sweden. At her debut in Sweden in August 1755, Louisa Ulrika of Prussia compared her to Barbara Campanini. After her marriage to Louis Du Londel in 1759, she was known as Madame Du Londel. She was appointed premier dancer and was counted as the star of the ballet in the advertisements on the public performances at Bollhuset in Stockholm alongside Louis Gallodier. Morel was also active as an actor and as a singer. In her capacity of a singer, she performed both in opera and at concerts at court and in public, and she was noted as the lead female star in the French Theatre alongside Marie Baptiste. In parallel with her husband Louis Du Londel and her husband's brother-in-law Pierre Lefevbre, who was the instructors in French and fencing for the royal princes, she was hired as the instructor in dance and in the French language of Princess Sophie Albertine of Sweden from 1757 until 1769.

Royal mistress

Morel was also the lover of the monarch, king Adolf Frederick of Sweden, from about 1760. She was not an official mistress, but their relationship was public knowledge. In Le Pientre amoreaux de son modéle by L. Anselme, which was performed in Bollhuset Theatre in the presence of the royal family, and where she had the line: "When I was young, I was the taste of a king", the audience burst in to laughter. This caused the queen to feel herself publicly insulted. She had a son by the king with the patronymicon Fredriksson, also called Frederici, something which deeply offended the queen The relationship ended when the King took the courtier Ulrica von Liewen as mistress, with whom he is said to have fathered Lolotte Forssberg. After the King's death in 1771, her son Frederici was taken care of by the Queen Dowager and by the new King, who declared that he was the late kings son. He died soon after, however.

Later life

The king had made his son, Crown Prince Gustav, promise to give her a pension when he became King. When the French troupe was fired by Gustav III of Sweden in 1771, the Du Londel couple was the only ones granted a royal pension. They left Sweden on 21 June 1771, and settled in Metz in 1778. In 1780, when some of the remaining French artists performed in the Swedish court, Gustav III said that the only thing preventing them from being a good theatre was the fact that the Du Londel couple was in Paris.

In 1792, the Du Londel couple returned to Sweden. Because her spouse was a royalist with noble ascendancy on his mothers side, the French revolution made them feel unsafe in France. Upon the death of her spouse in 1793, she lost her pension and was supported by friends, mainly her god daughter Marie Louise Marcadet, who however left for France in 1795. The year after, her daughter Marie Louise married Louis Gallodier, and she was thereafter supported by her son-in-law until her death.

See also

• Elisabeth Soligny

References

• Gidlunds förlag: Ny svensk teaterhistoria. Teater före 1800
• Anna Ivarsdotter Johnsson och Leif Jonsson : Musiken i Sverige, Frihetstiden och Gustaviansk tid 1720-1810
• Oscar Levertin: Teater och drama under Gustaf III. Albert Bonniers förlag, Stockholm. Fjärde Upplagan (1920)
• Gunilla Roempke (1994). Gunilla Roempke. ed. Vristens makt – dansös i mätressernas tidevarv (The power of the ankle - dancer in the epoch of the royal mistresses) Stockholm: Stockholm Fischer & company. ISBN 91-7054-734-3