James Ward. Madame Chevalier in the Character of Virginia (after Ch. Henard). Coloured mezzotint. 1799

Louise Chevalier (1774 - died after 1801), was a French actor and opera singer. She was active in Russia in the French theater troupe of her spouse, the ballet dancer and playwright Chevalier [ru] (Pierre Peicam), from 1797 until 1801.

During her tenure in Russia, she was the lover of first the Master of the Stables, the court noble and emperor's favorite Ivan Kutaisov, and then of emperor Paul I of Russia. She was an important figure during the reign of Paul I, when she wielded great influence as a channel for supplicants to Kutaisov and the emperor, and reportedly accepted substantial sums as such, and attracted great animosity in St Petersburg.

After the fall of Paul I in March 1801, she was asked to leave Russia by tsar Alexander. It is not confirmed what happened to her after this, though conflicting reports place her as a courtesan and a spy in Paris, in Germany and in Poland.

References

.mw-parser-output .hidden-begin{box-sizing:border-box;width:100%;padding:5px;border:none;font-size:95%}.mw-parser-output .hidden-title{font-weight:bold;line-height:1.6;text-align:left}.mw-parser-output .hidden-content{text-align:left}You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Russian. (May 2017) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Russian Wikipedia article at [[:ru:Мадам Шевалье]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template ((Translated|ru|Мадам Шевалье)) to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.
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