Beffroy de Reigny, Louis Abel
(1757–1811)> LIBRETTIST
Beffroy de Reigny, Louis Abel DIT Cousin Jacques (6 November 1757, Laon; 17 December 1811, Paris), librettist, went to school at the collège Louis-le-Grand with Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins. He quit the clergy to marry in 1780 and struck upon the bizarre idea of publishing a nonsensical journal he called Les Lunes; the balloonist Montgolfier was his first subscriber. A partisan of royalty and the church, he was dragged into the revolutionary movement in spite of himself on 14 July 1789…