Jean Baptiste Edouard Dupuy

Ca. 1770 (CORCELLES) – 1822

Jean Baptiste Edouard Dupuy’s life reads like an adventure novel. He was born in circa 1770 in Corcelles-Cormondrèche in what is now Canton Neuchâtel but moved to Paris at the age of 14, where he studied composition with Johann Ladislaus Dussek and others. In 1787, Dupuy moved to just outside Berlin, where he continued studying and played the violin in the orchestra of Prince Heinrich of Prussia.

Dupuy was dismissed from his post for conduct unbecoming – apart from fathering an illegitimate child, he had also disrupted a church service one Sunday while out on his horse – and he now set off on a journey across Northern Europe. He stopped first in Stockholm where he set about composing, conducting and playing his violin. He also launched a new career for himself as a singer. This, however, soon proved to be his undoing, for he fell out of favour with Sweden’s King Gustav IV Adolf after singing a song in praise of Napoleon and had to leave the country. He moved to Copenhagen, where he began giving more and more performances as a singer with success.

Dupuy was a passionate admirer of Mozart’s music. In 1807, he sang the title role in the Danish first performance of Don Giovanni – a work that seems to have inspired him in his personal life too, for numerous scandalous affairs caused Dupuy repeated trouble. In 1809, for example, he was also expelled from Copenhagen after having an affair with Charlotte Friederike, the wife of Prince Christian Friedrich (later King Christian VIII). But he was at least allowed to return to Stockholm, where he was appointed Capellmeister in 1812 and thereafter organised the Swedish first performances of several operas by Mozart.

Dupuy’s lifestyle – and his love of Mozart – earned him the nickname “Don Giovanni of the North”. He enjoyed his biggest success as a composer with the Danish-language singspiel Ungdom oggalskab (“Youth and folly”). He was indirectly responsible for another Swedish Mozart première when that composer’s Requiem was given its first performance in the country at Dupuy’s Stockholm funeral in 1822.