Joseph Quesnel

Who was Joseph Quesnel?

Joseph Quesnel was a French Canadian composer, poet, and playwright. Among his works were two operas, Colas et Colinette and Lucas et Cécile; the former is considered to be the first Canadian opera.

Quesnel was born in Saint-Malo, France, the third child of Isaac Quesnel de La Rivaudais, a prosperous merchant, and his wife Pélagie-Jeanne-Marguerite Duguen. On completing his education at the Collège Saint-Louis he shipped on board a man-of-war, visiting Pondicherry and Madagascar, travelling in Africa, and after three years returned to France. After resting a few months, he set out for French Guiana, and afterward visited several islands of the Antilles and explored part of Brazil. In 1779, he travelled to North America on a French vessel which was captured by the British. Quesnel was taken to Halifax, Nova Scotia and then Montreal. He married Marie-Josephte Deslandes there and became partners in business with Maurice-Régis Blondeau, his mother-in-law's new husband.

He died of pleurisy at Montreal in 1809 several months after he had dived into the Saint Lawrence River to save a drowning child.

Quesnel was the subject of the comic opera Le Père des amours, written by Eugène Lapierre in 1942.