Jeanne-Marie Marsan

Jeanne-Marie Marsan (née Chapiseau) (1746 – 25 February 1807) was a French dramatic actress and an opera singer, active in France and Germany in Europe, and in the French West Indies and Louisiana. She was the leading actress and opera singer in Saint-Domingue (pre-revolutionary Haiti), and later in the first theatre in New Orleans in Louisiana.

Born in the Faubourg Saint-Germain of Paris, she married the actor Pierre Legendre Marsan, who was forced to flee from France to Martinique in 1765. Jeanne-Marie stayed in France and during the following ten years made herself famous on the stages of Paris, the French provinces, and Germany before travelling with her children to join her husband in Martinique in 1775, where she made a successful debut on the stage of the theatre in Saint-Pierre.

In 1780, Marsan and her family moved to Haiti, where she was hired at the Cap-Français theatre and became the leading actress and singer in the colony. She was renowned for her versatility, performing in tragedy as well as comedy, spoken drama as well as opera. A letter that appeared in a Port-au-Prince newspaper on 10 March 1787 praised her performance in the role of "Nina":

It is said that Mme. Dugazon's performance of this role is actually terrifying, and that she spent several months in the insane asylums in Paris in order to study it. . .Mme. Marsan, at the Cap. . .played this role before my eyes in such a lifelike manner that it actually made me suffer. Permit me, Sir, to take advantage of this opportunity to do homage to that adorable actress. If she were at the Théâtre Italien, her name would be as famous as that of Dugazon, the elder Sainval, Contat, and others like them; for Mme. Marsan possesses in an eminent degree the talent for high comedy and for comic opera. Let anyone try to name an actress who can, like her, play in a single night, and with such perfection, "Elmire" in Tartuffe and the title role in La Servante Maîtresse, "Babet" and the "Gouvernante," "Rosalie" in Jenneval and "Clémentine" in Le Magnifique.

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