Henri Desmarets

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Henri Desmarets (February 1661 – 7 September 1741) was a French Baroque composer best known for his operas, but he also wrote sacred music, cantatas, songs and instrumental works. He came from a modest Paris family. His father died when he was eight and his mother remarried.

In 1674 Desmarets joined Louis XIV’s royal chapel as a page and choir boy, where he got musical training. He became a court musician and wrote works such as the Te Deum (1678). His first full opera, Endymion, premiered in 1686 and was very popular. Because Lully controlled Paris opera performances, Desmarets’ operas didn’t appear at the main Paris venue until after Lully’s death in 1687. He also composed the motet Beati quorum (1683) and other pieces.

In 1689 he married Elisabeth Desprez and they had a daughter in 1690. He became Chapel Master at the Jesuit college Louis-le-Grand in 1693 and premiered several operas at the Paris Opera: Didon (1693), Circé (1694), Théagène et Cariclée (1695) and Les amours de Momus (1695). After a difficult personal life, including an affair with Marie-Marguerite de Saint-Gobert, he fled to Brussels and was condemned to death in absentia in 1700. He later worked as a court composer in Spain for King Philip V and then at the Lorraine court in Lunéville. He was pardoned by the French Regent in 1720 but stayed in Lorraine. Desmarets died in Lunéville in 1741, aged 80. Some of his works and librettos have been lost, and only a few of his children survived him.