Fabled late 17th century contralto, duellist, gender iconoclast, Julie d’Aubigny — Mme Maupin or “La Maupin” as she was better known, her raffish stage name a mainstay of the scattered scandal-ridden reportage of the day — lived at the ravelled fringe of aristocratic French society, a ferociously independent architect of her own uniquely tumultuous destiny.

Premiered to a boisterously enthusiastic live audience at the Nancy and Ed Jackman Performance Centre last Saturday, La Maupin, a lush, passionately crafted opera-centric docudrama written, produced and performed by Camille Rogers, film directed by Lauren Halász, brings much of the throbbing scope of d’Aubigny’s turbulent world into sharp follow focus.

Historical accuracy is a tenuous proposition by any measure of chronicle, cinematic or otherwise, when dealing with Maupin’s outsized persona. The shortage of reliable, non-judgemental accounts of her numerous, invariably breathlessly related exploits, coupled with an abundance of often incomplete and/or contradictory firsthand viewpoints render any 21st century depiction of Maupin’s life more a product of creative story-telling than verifiable retrospection as Rogers hinted in a brief post Q & A session.

“The Maupin I know may not be real,” Rogers observes by way of on-screen Epilogue at the conclusion of their film, “but I still reach out to her, across the centuries. I have to believe in her, so I can believe in myself.”

Assuming double roles as both gender fluid real life mezzo-soprano and near mythical Baroque anti-hero, Rogers brings the full force of their restless imagination to bear, stepping into and out of character in crisp actorly fashion, donning and eventually shedding their featured non-conformist singing chevalier’s favoured male attire.

Neatly distilled into nine discrete segments, each relating a different installment in Maupin’s extraordinary personal narrative as gender warrior-cum-celebrated diva — appearing in both virago and tendre guise to great popular acclaim at Paris Opera — La Maupin, the film, quickly gathers momentum. A tangled tale of impossibly possible dimensions, all heated emotion and blistering derring-do overhung with triumphant accounts of dazzling swordplay and dangerously feverish duels, Rogers as librettist sets their title character against a frequently dark stormy backdrop.

A conceited baron and infamous backstage sexual predator at the Opera falls prey to Maupin’s vengeful pistol, grievously wounded.

An overtly eroticized encounter with a haughty, handsome young count in a country tavern — related with stop-frame cartoonish irreverence — results in a goodly degree of noble bloodshed. And a sizzling follow-up affair.

An irresistibly attractive young woman spied at the Opera becomes one of Maupin’s most infamous conquests, vaulting her to instant notoriety when d’Aubigny sets fire to the convent where her lover has been confined, a dead nun recently struck down by a fatal malady inserted into her bed, the two amorous schemers fleeing amid the confusion in best melodramatic fashion into the arms of night.

Music, needless to say, plays a vital role here, emphasizing story, summoning urgency and heartbreak, drama and pathos, composer Colin McMahon’s tremulous, highly tensioned score invariably defying simple description. This is not, most assuredly, music of the period. Shunning the strict, unyielding Baroque ideals of clarity of form and purity of expressiveness, McMahon leans heavily into the realm of swirling, contemporary demi-tonality, harmonies vibrant, audacious, tirelessly eclectic.

Much the same can be said of Rogers’ approach to singing. La Maupin’s quasi operatic soundtrack, largely built on wraparound recitative punctuated, on fleeting occasion, by flashes of arietta, is given emphatic voice. The general lack of ornamentation can prove disarming, as piercing at times as it is poignant. Scrupulously tracing the gentle contours of English Restoration poet Aphra Behn’s Sapphic ode, For lovely maid, wistfully set by McMahon for piano quartet, Rogers raises the metaphorical curtain on a startling diverse sonic landscape. Love and life, violence and pain share the cinematic musical stage.

Digitally filmed in stylish anamorphic 16:9 aspect ratio by director of photography Stephen Bell, Maupin ceaselessly delights the eye. Moodily shot on location in an astonishingly brief four days — the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields yielding garden scenes and interiors; historic Cameron House cunningly employed as L’Opéra de Paris — this urgent, intensely compelling OperaQ/Tapestry Opera/Coffeeshop Film and Creative collaboration positively glows with sensuality, texture and patina everywhere on display. A scattering of fallen rose petals. A soft dewy rouged cheek. Gleaming stained glass. Weathered wood. Smoke and sumptuous brocade.

Dissolve to Rogers’ study. Interior. Day.

Angle on: A black and white engraving of Maupin tacked to a storyboard. Snapshots of friends. Travel photos from France. A second period portrait. A note.

“I tell you, someone will remember us in the future.”

That future is today. Once introduced, La Maupin is not easily forgotten.

Camille Rogers in “La Maupin”, an OperaQ film presentation.

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La Maupin streams on Vimeo until April 14. Digital tickets here