Impressive People: Stories of Remarkable Lives - Sykalo Eugen 2025

Julie d’Aubigny (La Maupin) – Opera singer, duelist, cross-dresser, arsonist — and romantic chaos incarnate

One night in Paris, a woman in men’s clothing brawled her way through a ballroom, kissed a nobleman’s daughter mid-waltz, and dueled three outraged suitors before breakfast. She beat all three. Then she fled to a convent with the girl, faked her death, and set fire to a nun’s body in her own bed as cover.

Her name was Julie d’Aubigny. She sang opera like a goddess. She fought like a devil. She lived, mostly, like both.

If France in the late 1600s was a velvet box of etiquette, Julie was a dagger shoved inside it. She carved her way through high society with a rapier in one hand and a glass of Burgundy in the other, straddling the razor’s edge between legend and scandal. Some say she was the real-life inspiration for Dumas' d’Artagnan. Others call her history’s first bisexual icon. One thing is certain: La Maupin — as she came to be known onstage — made chaos look divine.

Born for Trouble

Julie was born around 1673, a few miles outside Paris, into a world that didn’t know what to do with a girl like her. Her father, Gaston d’Aubigny, trained the court pages of King Louis XIV — fencing, riding, and etiquette. Julie grew up sparring with aristocratic boys, beating them often, and soaking up the rhythms of court life with a cutthroat ear.

By 14, she’d become the mistress of her father’s boss, the Count of Armagnac — an influential courtier who may have had more silk robes than sense. He installed her in his house. When gossip got too loud, he married her off — hastily, pointlessly — to a distant cousin. Julie had no interest in being Madame Maupin, the provincial wife. So she vanished. Husband forgotten. Marriage abandoned.

Cue the Music. And the Mayhem.

With the Count’s favor and a stolen sword, Julie joined a traveling troupe of actors and duelists, singing for her supper and fighting in taverns from Marseilles to Lyon. Her voice — a lush contralto with whip-smart clarity — turned heads. But it was the rest of her that made people choke on their wine.

She dressed as a man not to pass but to provoke. Tight breeches, velvet coats, sometimes a powdered wig, sometimes nothing at all. If someone called her out — and they often did — she challenged them to a duel. It was illegal for women to fight in France. Julie didn’t care. She'd slice off a man’s belt buckle and leave his pants around his ankles just to make a point.

People called her a libertine. A scandal. A monster. But they came to see her sing.

By her late teens, Julie had reached Paris’s famed Opéra. She debuted in La Médée, singing with a voice described as molten gold poured over a blade. She was electric onstage — unpredictable, alive, somehow both regal and reckless. The crowds adored her. The critics didn’t know what to say. She sang alongside the greats of the time, rivaled only by her own reputation.

Love, in All Its Disguises

Julie loved women. Julie loved men. Julie loved anyone who dared match her hunger for life. One night she seduced the soprano Fanchon Moreau, famous for being aloof. Another time, she made eyes at a marquis, then humiliated him at a party by mocking his fencing form. But the great, tragic romance of her youth was the convent girl — name lost to time — whom she nearly burned the world down for.

Later, she fell for a fencing master, Séranne. The two cut a trail through southern France like Bonnie and Clyde with better tailoring and more recitativo. When they eventually parted, Julie wept — and then joined a new opera company.

Her most surprising love? The Count d'Albert — a man she once dueled, nearly killed, then nursed back to health. They became lovers, of course. "Of course" being Julie’s entire approach to morality.

The Duels. The Dress. The Drama.

Julie wasn’t just theatrical in opera houses. At a royal ball, she kissed a young woman in front of the entire court. Three noblemen demanded satisfaction. Julie beat them all — one after another — and left the dance floor with her boots bloodstained but unbothered.

The Sun King — Louis XIV himself — was reportedly amused. He pardoned her dueling charges more than once. She was, after all, the crown jewel of French opera. That helped. So did her charisma, which glittered even brighter than her scandal.

Still, her life wasn’t all swordplay and soprano arias. There were darker moments — violence, arrests, exile. At one point, she joined a convent not to find God, but to hide from the law. Her passion, while intoxicating, was often volatile. She hurt people. She was hurt in return. Her voice could thrill thousands, but her rage could leave scars.

The Curtain Falls

Julie’s final years are cloaked in something rare for her — silence. She retired from the stage around 1705, in her early thirties, and disappeared from public view. Some say she lived quietly with a woman she loved. Others say she died in a monastery. The details, like many parts of her life, are hard to pin down.

No death certificate. No fanfare. Just a sudden absence, like a candle extinguished in a storm.

But her legend burns on.

Why We Still Talk About Julie

In a time when women were property, Julie d’Aubigny rewrote the script. She blurred the lines between hero and villain, soprano and swordsman, lover and fighter. She was everything society told her not to be — openly queer, proudly dangerous, artistically brilliant, unapologetically alive.

She left behind no memoirs, no carefully curated legacy. Just a trail of bruised egos, broken laws, and arias that once left entire cities breathless.

Today, Julie d’Aubigny is rediscovered every few years — in historical fiction, in queer retrospectives, in feminist TikToks that reframe her as a rebel icon. She’s a cultural Rorschach: a bisexual trailblazer, a gender outlaw, an opera diva, a violent narcissist, a romantic martyr. Maybe all of it. Maybe more.

And maybe that’s the point. Julie defied categories. She was the fire. Not the ashes it left behind.

So next time someone tells you women in history were quiet, obedient, or refined — pour a glass of wine. Strike a match. And whisper her name.

La Maupin.