Lainé or Lainez, Etienne (23 May 1753, Vaugirard; 15 September 1822, Paris), vocalist, was the son of a truck-farmer, and legend relates that Pierre-Montan Berton, director of the Opéra, heard him singing while he was selling his lettuce in a Paris street. Impressed, M. Berton arranged for him to take singing lessons. Young Lainé was tested at the Opéra in 1770 in a program of fragments. He was admitted in 1771 to the school of singing and declamation attached to the Opéra, and he made his…