Lucile Grétry

Who was Lucile Grétry?

Lucile-Angélique-Dorothée-Louise Grétry was a French composer.

The second daughter of the famous composer André Grétry and the painter Jeanne-Marie Grandon, Lucile was trained by her father who introduced her to the court of Versailles where she made the acquaintance of Marie Antoinette. Lucile Grétry wrote two opéras comiques for the Comédie-Italienne theatre. The first, Le mariage d’Antonio, was written when she was just fourteen years old. It was a sequel to her father's most famous work, Richard Coeur-de-lion, and ran for 47 performances. Her father assisted her with the orchestral scoring. It was followed by Toinette et Louis in 1787, which was a failure. Lucile Grétry's marriage was an unhappy one. Her promising career was cut short by her death from tuberculosis at the age of seventeen.