Biography
Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny was born on 17 October 1729 in Fauquembergues near Saint-Omer in northern France and educated at the town's Jesuit college. In 1749 he moved to Paris with little money, working as a clerical employee while furthering his training in composition, partly under the double-bass player Pietro Gianotti. He made his debut as an opera composer in 1759 with "Les Aveux indiscrets" at the Théâtre de la Foire Saint-Germain and is regarded, alongside André Grétry and François-André Danican Philidor, as one of the founders of opéra comique. Following successes such as "Rose et Colas" (1764) and "Le Déserteur" (1769), he abruptly gave up composing for the stage in 1777 after the triumph of "Félix, ou l'Enfant trouvé". From 1800 he served as an inspector at the Paris Conservatoire, and in 1813 he became a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. He died in Paris on 14 January 1817.
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