Marie-Louise Desmatins
Marie-Louise Desmatins was a French soprano and creator of many roles in French Baroque opera. She performed in Jean Baptiste Lully's Persée, Armide, Achille et Polyxène, Thésée, Isis, Roland, Bellérophon, Alceste, as well as in Pascal Collasse's Enée et Lavinie and Thétis et Pélée, André Cardinal Destouches' Issé, Henri Desmarets' Didon, André Campra's Iphigénie en Tauride, and Marin Marais' Alcyone.
The absence of her name in subsequent cast lists remained unexplained until 2007, when a report on the novel La Musique du Diable confirmed her death. A satirical narrative of Desmatins' afterlife in Hades, the novel suggests that she died of complications of a primitive form of liposuction.
An extant portrait of her was painted by Robert Le Vrac de Tournières.
