Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne

Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, or Lemoyne, was a French composer, chiefly of operas. Born in Eymet, Dordogne, he first worked as a musician in Berlin and Warsaw, where in 1775 he produced his first opera, Le bouquet de Colette, starring his pupil Antoinette de Saint-Huberty. He returned to France and wrote the tragic opera Électre, which received its premiere in 1782. Lemoyne claimed his music was following the example of Christoph Willibald Gluck, then the greatest influence on French opera, but when Électre failed, Gluck rejected any association with the younger composer. Lemoyne turned to Gluck's rivals, Niccolò Piccinni and Antonio Sacchini, as musical models for his next two tragedies, Phèdre (1786) and the Egyptian-set Nephté (1789), which had more success. His later operas are less important. He died in Paris.