Luigi Riccoboni

Luigi Riccoboni (1 April 1676 – 6 December 1753)[2] was an Italian actor and writer on theatre, who was director of the Comédie-Italienne in Paris from 1716 to 1731.

[5] In 1699 Luigi Riccoboni established a commedia dell'arte troupe in the French style in northern Italy, since in his view the Italian tradition had become overly decadent.

[3] In the spring of 1716 the French Regent, Philippe d'Orléans, asked his cousin, the Duke of Parma, to send him a troupe of Italian actors to revive the Comédie-Italienne in Paris, which had been disbanded nearly twenty years previous.

He also began to produce plays by French playwrights, such as Pierre Rémond de Sainte-Albine, whose scenario L'Amante difficile was performed in Italian.

His son Antoine-François Riccoboni (1707–1772) was an actor who used the stage name Lélio fils and in 1734 married Marie-Jeanne de La Boras.