Després, Jean-Baptiste-Denis
(1752–1832)> LIBRETTIST
Després, Jean-Baptiste-Denis (24 June 1752, Dijon; 2 March 1832, Paris), librettist, was an excellent student of the classics as a schoolboy at the collège Mazarin and later published translations of Horace and Velleius Paterculus besides earning his living as a political reporter. He was also attracted to the theatre and composed a series of vaudevilles, comic operas, and parodies of Alceste (1776), Armide (1777), and Lear (1783), He supplemented his income as a translator, reporter, and…