Opera Singer. A soprano who performed the works of the leading composers of her day, she is remembered for her decade at the Paris Opera as well as for her rather colorful private life. Born Anne-Antoinette-Cecile Clavel to a respected family, she evidenced her musical talent from an early age and received her first instruction from her father, a stage manager of French Opera. Antoinette followed her father's work to Mannheim and thence to Warsaw where she spent four years in study with Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne in whose "Le Bouquet de Colette" she made her professional debut. She had success in Berlin where in 1775 she married Claude-Philippe Croiselles de Saint-Huberty who promptly swindled and abandoned her. After earning good reviews in Strasbourg, in 1777 Antoinette found her way to Paris where on September 23rd of that year she made her Paris Opera bow with two small roles in Gluck's "Armide". Professional success followed, but so did personal trouble when Croiselles de Saint-Huberty found his way to the French capital where he continued his old ways. While her singing was good, her acting was rough, though she worked hard to improve her skills and by around 1780 was well established as a star. Antoinette became a pain for the Opera's management, acting 'difficult', demanding high fees, undertaking tours that paid more than did the Opera, and forcing costuming changes to make her outfits conform to the fashion of the time in which the action takes place, a move that cost money but proved popular with audiences, though there was a mixed reception when one costume had her close to naked. In 1781 she was finally able to ditch her husband via an annulment, though she did keep her name for the stage, and continued a busy schedule, in retrospect ruining her voice by overuse. Antoinette has a major success at the October 16, 1783 world premiere of Niccolo Piccinni's "Didon", her costume for which is preserved at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York, and sang numerous other works, many of them now forgotten, including Gluck's "Iphigne et Aulide" and "Alceste", Lemoyne's "Phedre" and "Nephte", Piccinni's "Penelope", "Electre" and "Roland", and the world premieres of Luigi Cherubini's "Demophoon" and Antonio Salieri's "Les Danaides" and "Les Horaces". By 1786 her voice was in serious decline and by 1790 it was used-up; from the early 1780s Antoinette had carried on simultaneous affairs with Count Alfonso Maria Turconi as well as with Louis-Alexandre de Launay, Comte d'Antraigues, a man of high French political connections. Originally a supporter of the Revolution, by 1790 d'Antraiges had seen it's excesses and developed Royalist sympathies. Still possessed of enough power to avoid the chopping block, he was exiled to Lausanne, Switzerland and in early April of that year Antoinette left Paris to join him. On December 29, 1790 she and d'Antraigues were secretly married near Mendrisio in the Italian section of Switzerland; by this time her husband was deeply involved in counter-Revolutionary espionage and in 1791 she returned to Paris. After traveling to Milan, in June of 1792 Antoinette had a baby, though the child was passed-off as her maid's. The maid and her husband raised the boy, with financial support from d'Antraiges, who did acknowledge paternity on the Baptismal documents. Years of diplomatic intrigue followed, with the Count undertaking high-level missions in Venice for Spain and later Russia, though while the couple was in Italy his ancestral home at Juvinais was destroyed; luck ran out in 1797 when the Count was arrested in Milan and interrogated personally by Napoleon. Antoinette stood by her husband who finally acknowledged the marriage, making his wife a Countess. Antoinette had lost her voice but not her influence, and after she faced-down Napoleon the conditions of arrest became rather lax. The pair lived in Graz, Vienna, and Dresden before arriving in London in 1806. Apparently the Count continued his undercover activities as after the couple was murdered by a servant, whether out of personal pique or as a hired agent being unclear, a large cache of valuable papers was found. The graves of Antoinette and d'Antraiges were destroyed around 1860.