Pierre Gaveaux

After a period in Montpellier, he moved to Paris where, on 26 January 1789, he took part in a performance of Giacomo Tritto's Le Avventure Amorose, which marked the inauguration of the Théâtre de Monsieur company in the Salle des Machines at the Tuileries Palace.

When the company moved to the Théâtre Feydeau, he was involved in a "folly in verse" called Le club des bonnes gens which was banned by the censor for being unpatriotic.

On 19 January 1795, his famous anti-Jacobin song[1] Le Réveil du peuple (The Awakening of the People), to words by Jean-Marie Souriguière de Saint-Marc, was first performed.

Notwithstanding the banning of the song on 8 January 1796 by the Directoire, he continued his career in opera, appearing in François Devienne's Les visitandines, and creating the role of Jason in Cherubini's Médée on 13 March 1797.

Gaveaux's first opera, L'amour filial (1792), was a success in Paris and was performed throughout Europe: Brussels, Cologne and Rotterdam in 1795, Bern and Moscow in 1809, Berlin and Hamburg (in a German translation) in 1796.