Marie François Louis Gand Leblanc, Bailli du Roullet

Marie François Louis Gand Leblanc, known as Roullet, bailiff and baron, was born in Normanville on 10 April 1716 and died in Paris on 2 August 1786. He was an officer of the Gardes Françaises and a commander of the Order of Malta, and he wrote without great distinction.

His first comedy, Les effets du caractère (1752), was a failure. As an attaché at the French embassy in Vienna, he met Gluck and became his leading champion in Paris. In 1774, with the support of Marie Antoinette, he adapted Racine's tragedy Iphigénie en Aulide for Gluck's opera at the Opéra, probably his only complete libretto. He is also credited with spurring the fashion for adapting seventeenth-century tragedies for the Opéra.

He promoted his work through prefaces in the Gazette de littérature, a Lettre sur les drames-opéras (1776) and, probably, articles signed by Gluck that he himself wrote. He prepared the French adaptation of Alceste (1776) and collaborated with Baron Tschudi on Les Danaïdes (1784), which was staged with music by Salieri without Calzabigi's permission and was partly advertised as Gluck's work.

Overall, his importance lies chiefly in his role as Gluck's promoter in France.