Joseph Hansen Bale No Sec. 19

'The Great Hansen': An Introduction to the Work of Joseph Hansen, a Forgotten European
Choreographer of the Late Nineteenth Century, with a Chronology of His Ballets

Author(s): Jane Pritchard
Source: Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research, Vol. 26, No. 2
(Winter, 2008), pp. 73-139
Published by: Edinburgh University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263996
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The Great Hansen': An Introduction to the
Work of Joseph Hansen, a Forgotten European
Choreographer of the Late Nineteenth Century,
with a Chronology of His Ballets
JANE PRITCHARD
This feature on the choreographer, Joseph Hansen (1842-1907), falls into four parts. The
choreochronicle of works which outlines the ballets he created; an essay which contextualises
his work; a list of roles he performed after having officially forsaken the stage; discussion of
the content of the Hansen Archive at the Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra, Paris followed by
information on material relating to Hansen's ballets for the Alhambra, London, held in the
Theatre Collections, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
CHOREOGRAPHY BY JOSEPH HANSEN (1842-1907)

This choreochronicle draws on programmes and playbills in numerous archives
in collections in Belgium, Britain, France, Russia and U.S.A., reports in
contemporary newspapers and theatrical journals most notably L'Europe Artiste
published in Paris and the Era and the Stage in London. It also draws on primary
material at the Brussel's City Archive, the Theatre Collections, Victoria and
Albert Museum, London, and the Bibliothèque-musée dePOpéra, Paris. A few
productions in the 1870s are unconfirmed as being definitely choreographed
by Hansen as the challenges of finding conclusive evidence are considerable
in a period when a choreographer was considered of minor importance when
compared with the librettist or composer. Also included are operas staged while
Hansen was ballet master at the Royal Italian Opera, Covent Garden, in which
there was a dance element but it excludes those already extant unless there is clear
evidence of new choreography. To give a fuller picture of Hansen's impact the
choreochronicle includes both new productions of ballets in different venues and
production's of Hansen's ballets which were mounted by other choreographers,
for example by Georgio Saracco for La Scala, Milan.
The Hansen Archive at the Bibliothèque-musée de l'Opéra includes
material on a number of ballets and divertissement for which I have not
found performance details. These are Changé: La Belle Dzulmea; the dance and
pantomime, Les Deux font le paire (cl 896) for the Soirées de l'Elysées et des
74 JANE PRITCHARD
Date Title Description Composer Place/Theatre
1 5 / 1 0/ 1 869 Divertissement BRUSSELS,
Théâtre Royal de la
Monnaie
Une Théâtre Royal de la

11/01/1870 Fête Nautique, Ballet in 1 act Lagye BRUSSELS,
Monnaie
07/02/1870 Madone, La Ballet in 1 act, Oscar Stoumon BRUSSELS,
(unconfirmed) 2 tableaux by Théâtre Royal de la
M. Chapuis Monnaie,
29/11/1871 Coppélia Ballet Leo Delibes BRUSSELS,
Monnaie
Les Théâtre Royal de la

04/03/1873 Fleurs animées, Ballet in 1 act Lagye BRUSSELS,
Monnaie
21/12/1873 Nid d'amour, Le Divertissement- BRUSSELS,
Ballet Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie
25/01/1875 Favorite, La Divertissement in Gaetano Donizetti PARIS,
(unconfirmed) opera Opéra, Salle Garnier
1 act Théâtre Gaîté

1 6/08/ 1 875 Filles d'Eve, Les Divertissement in Rosenboam PARIS,
02/ 1 2/ 1 875 White Gat, The Three ballets in Congnard/ Leigh LONDON,
Grand Musical Queen's Theatre
Fairy Spectacle
15/04/1876 Fumeurs de Kiff, Ballet in 3 tableaux Emile Mathieu BRUSSELS,
Les by Gaston Bérardi Théâtre Royal de la
(unconfirmed) Monnaie
15/01/1877 Aida Ballets in acts I and Giuseppe Verdi BRUSSELS,
2 of opera Théâtre Royal de la
Monnaie
La Théâtre Royal de la
25/12/1877 Vision d'Harry, Ballet in 2 acts Balthazar-Florence BRUSSELS,
Monnaie
11/01/1878 Cinq-Mars Ballet in opera Charles Gounod BRUSSELS,
Monnaie
0 1 /06/ 1 878 Paul et Virginie Opera ballet Victor Massé LONDON,
(The Bamboula) Royal Italian
Opera, Covent
Garden
10/06/1878 Divertissement Divertissement LONDON,

presented after Royal Italian
operas Opera, Covent Garden
24/06/1878 Prophète, Le Divertissement in Giacomo LONDON,

opera Meyerbeer Royal Italian
'Pas des patineurs' Opera, Covent
Garden
09/07/1878 Alma L'incantrice Carnival ballet in act Signor Vianesi LONDON,

3 of opera (interpolated) Royal Italian
Opera, Covent
Garden
12/04/1879 Favorite, La Ballets interpolated Geatano Donizetti LONDON,

in acts 1 and 2 of Royal Italian
opera Opera, Covent Garden
'THE GREAT HANSEN1 75
Date Title Description Composer Place /Theatre
27/05/1879 Balloin Divertissement in Giuseppe Verdi LONDON,
Maschera, Un Act 3 of opera Royal Italian
Opera, Covent
Garden
Le Roi de Lahore Royal Italian

28/06/ 1879 Ré de Lahore/ II Ballet in opera Jules Massenet LONDON,
Opera, Covent
Garden
12/07/1879 Hamlet Ballet in opera Ambroise Thomas LONDON,

'La Fête du Royal Italian
printemps' Opera, Covent Garden
Bronze, Le Théâtre Royal

29/11/1879 Cheval de Ballet in opera Daniel Auber BRUSSELS,
de la Monnaie
Deva ada Bolshoi Theatre

16/11/1879 Fille de l'enfer/ La Ballet Nekur MOSCOW,
/Devâdâcy
1879 Huguenots, Les Ballet in opera Giacomo MOSCOW,
Meyerbeer Bolshoi Theatre
Le Lac des Bolshoi Theatre

13/01/1880 Swan Lake/ Ballet Piotr Tchaikovsky MOSCOW,
Cygnes
17/02/1880 Summer Festival, Comic ballet MOSCOW,
The/La Fête d'été/ Bolshoi Theatre
Un Fete d'été à
Paris
10/05/1880 Trovatore, II Ballet in opera Giuseppe Verdi LONDON,

Royal Italian
Opera, Covent
Le Royal Italian
Garden
26/06/1880 Pré-aux-Clercs, Ballet in opera Louis Joseph Hérold LONDON,
Opera, Covent
Garden
03/07/1880 Estella Ballet in opera Jules Cohen LONDON,

Royal Italian
Opera, Covent
Garden
08/02/1881 Aissa, Grand ballet d'action Yuly Gerber MOSCOW,

Pearl of Aden, in 4 acts Bolshoi Theatre
The
15/12/1881 Eglé/ La Bergère Mythological ballet Yuly Gerber MOSCOW,

Eglea,/ The in 1 Act (Student (music from Aissa) Bolshoi Theatre
Shepherdess production)
24/01/1882 Coppélia Ballet Leo Délibes MOSCOW,
Bolshoi Theatre
27/05/1882 Carmen Incidental Georges Bizet LONDON,

divertissement in Royal Italian
opera Opera, Covent Garden
opera Royal Italian

04/07/1882 Velleda Divertissement in Charles Lenepveu LONDON,
Opera, Covent
Garden
11/07/1882 Mephistofele Ballet in opera Arrigo Boïto LONDON,

Royal Italian
Opera, Covent
Garden
76 JANE PRITCHARD
28/10/1882 Swan Lake Ballet Piotr Tchaikovsky MOSCOW,
(revised staging) Bolshoi Theatre
The Burlesque Her Majesty's
01/01/1883 Yellow Dwarf, Three ballets in Antonio Moro LONDON,
Spectacular Theatre
Extravaganza (Pandora
Company)
31/05/1883 Gioconda, La Ballets in acts 1 & 3 of Amilcare LONDON,
opera. Including the Ponchielli Royal Italian
'Dance of the Hours' Opera, Covent
Garden
1883 Forest Tramp, Including a Mexican Yuly Gerber MOSCOW,

November The/ Divertissement, New Theatre
Le Vagabond des 'Resbalosa'
bois
/Lesnoy brodiaga
12/12/1883 Voyage dans la Ballets in féerie Jacques MOSCOW,
lune, Le Offenbach New Theatre
21/04/1884 Beggar Student3 Kermesse & Military Georges Jacobi LONDON,
Ballet in light opera Alhambra
opera Royal Italian
15/07/1884 Sigurd Divertissement in Ernest Reyer LONDON,
Opera, Covent
Garden
02/08/1884 Black-eyed See-usan Dances in burlesque Georges Jacobi LONDON,

Alhambra
01/12/1884 Swans, The Grand Ballet Georges Jacobi LONDON,

Divertissement Alhambra
22/12/1884 Melusine Ballet Georges Jacobi LONDON,
Alhambra
18/06/1885 Voyage dans la Ballets in féerie Jacques ST PETERSBURG,

lune, Le Pommes
21/07/1885 Offenbachd'Or
Kin Grust
ST PETERSBURG,
Kin Grust
Enchantress Alhambra
05/ 1 0/ 1 885 Nina, The Ballet in 2 tableaux Georges Jacobi LONDON,
21/12/1885 Bivouac, Le Grand Military Georges Jacobi LONDON,

Spectacle Alhambra
30/ 1 2/ 1 885 Nina, Ballet fantesie in 2 Georges Jacobi BRUSSELS,
L'Enchantresse acts Théâtre de la
Bourse
25/0 1 / 1 886 Templiers, Les Ballet in act 3 of Henry Litolff BRUSSELS,

opera Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie
18/03/1886 Pierrot Macabre Ballet pantomime Pietro Lanciani BRUSSELS,

Monnaie
1 6/04/ 1 886 Palais de Grand ballet Georges Jacobi BRUSSELS,

Mélusine, Le historique Théâtre de la
Bourse
01/05/1886 Joko, ou le singe Divertissement in M. Durieux BRUSSELS,
du Brésil mime production by Théâtre de la
Paul Martinetti Bourse
20/05/1886 Cygnes, Les Ballet divertissement Georges Jacobi BRUSSELS,
Théâtre de la
Bourse
24/05/1886 Cupid Grand allegorical Georges Jacobi LONDON,

ballet divertissement Alhambra
'THE GREAT HANSEIST 77
1 5/ 1 1 / 1 886 Dresdina Grand ballet Georges Jacobi LONDON,
divertissement Alhambra
20/12/1886 Seasons, The Ballet divertissement Georges Jacobi LONDON,
Alhambra
opera Grand Theatre

07/02/1887 Mynheer Jan Dances in comic Edward Jakobowski BIRMINGHAM,
opera Comedy Theatre

14/02/1887 Mynheer Jan Dances in comic Edward Jakobowski LONDON,
16/05/1887 Nadia Ballet divertissement Georges Jacobi LONDON,

Alhambra
11/07/1887 Algeria Ballet divertissement Georges Jacobi LONDON,

Alhambra
23/11/1887 Faust Divertissement in Charles Gounod PARIS,
revival of opera Opéra
Salle Gamier
Monsoreau, La Opéra
30/01/1888 Dame de Ballet in opera Gaston Salvayre PARIS,
Salle Gamier
28/11/1888 Roméo et Juliette Ballet in opera Charles Gounod PARIS,
Opéra
Salle Gamier
26/06/1889 Tempête, La Ballet fantastique Ambroise Thomas PARIS,
Opéra
Salle Gamier
opera Opéra
19/07/1889 Henry VIII Ballet in revival of Camille Saint Saèns PARIS,
Salle Gamier
opera Opéra
21/03/1890 Ascanio Divertissement in Camille Saint-Saëns PARIS,
Salle Gamier
09/06/1890 Rêve, Le Ballet in 2 acts Léon Gastinal PARIS,
Opéra
Salle Gamier
opera Opéra
1 6/03/1 89 lb Mage, Le Divertissement in Jules Massenet PARIS,
Salle Gamier
01/06/1891 Psyche et Divertissement Lulli, Gluck; Grétry, VERSAILLES,
l'Amour Rameau. Marais, Fête de Trianon
Noverre
28/12/1891 Thamara Divertissement in Louis-Albert PARIS,

opera Bourgault- Opéra
Doucoudray Salle Garnier
01/04/1892 Rêve, Le Ballet in 2 acts Léon Gastinal MARSEILLES,
Opéra
La Opéra
1 6/05/ 1 892 Salammbô Ballet in opera Ernest Reyer PARIS,
Opéra
Salle Garnier
19/05/1892 Vie pour le Tzar, Divertissement Mikhail Glinka PARIS,

Salle Garnier
23/11/1 892 Samson et Dalila Divertissement & Camille Saint-Saëns PARIS,

Bacchanal in opera Opéra Salle Garnier
December Théâtre de l'Opéra

1892 Carmen Ballet in opera Georges Bizet NICE,
December Théâtre de l'Opéra

1892 Cid, Le Ballet in opera Jules Massenet NICE,
24/02/1893 Maladette, La Ballet in 2 acts Paul Vidal PARIS,
Opéra
Salle Garnier
78 JANE PRITCHARD
February Opéra
1893 Deux Pigeons, Les Revised ballet André Messager PARIS,
Salle Gamier
Les 'au ministre de. . . c

80/04/1893 Belles et la Bête,. Ballet pantomime Paul Vidal PARIS,
opera Opéra
15/09/1893 Deïdamie Divertissement in Henri Maréchal PARIS,
Salle Garnier
24/10/1893 Fête Russe Divertissement Paul Vidald PARIS,

Opéra
Salle Garnier
16/03/ 1894e Thais Divertissement in Jules Massenet PARIS,

act 3 of opera Opéra
opera Opéra
Salle Garnier
25/05/1894 Djelma Divertissement in Charles Lefebvre PARIS,

Salle Garnier
tentation
Thais from
Salle Opéra
Garnier
01/07/1894 Ballet de la Independent ballet Jules Massenet PARIS,
opera Opéra
12/10/1894 Othello Divertissement in Giuseppe Verdi PARIS,
opera Opéra
Salle Garnier
08/02/1895 Montagne noire, La Divertissement in Augusta Holmes PARIS,
Salle Garnier
05/03/ 1 895 Maladetta, La Ballet reproduced by Paul Vidal MILAN,

Georgio Saracco La Scala
25/04/1895 Raseur, Un Pantomime dansée Louis Garnie PARIS,
Cercle de l'Union
Artistique
08/06/ 1 895 Importune, L' Change of title for Louis Ganne PARIS,
Un Raseur Théâtre du
Vaudeville
18/12/1895 Frédégonde Divertissement in Ernest Guiraud, PARIS,
lyric drama Camille Saint Opéra
Saëns & Paul Salle Garnier
Dukas
05/0 1 / 1 896 Cygnes, Les Ballet reproduced by Georges Jacobi PARIS,

Mme Mariquita Foliés-Bergère,
24/04/1896 Hellé Divertissement in Alphonse PARIS,
act 2 of opera Duvernoy Opéra
Salle Garnier
02/07/1896 Hommage au Divertissement in Handel, Lully, Grande Fête de

Dieu Phoebus spectacular Rameau, Gluck, Nuit au vercles des
Bach. Acaciasf
19/02/1897 Messidor Divertissement in Alfred Bruneau PARIS,
Opera-drame-lyrique Opéra
Salle Garnier
31/05/1897 Etoile, L' Ballet pantomime André Wormser PARIS,
Opéra
Salle Garnier
07/06/1897 Huguenots, Les Divertissement in Giacomo PARIS,
opera Meyerbeer Opéra
Salle Garnier
10/11/1897 Maitres-Chanteurs de Divertissement in Richard Wagner PARIS,

Nuremburg, Les opera Opéra Salle Garnier
'THE GREAT HANSEN' 79
opera Opéra
23/ 1 2/ 1 898 Burgonde, La Divertissement in Paul Vidal PARIS,
Salle Gamier
18/03/1899 Don Juan Independent Wolfgang PARIS,
divertissement Mozart Opéra
Salle Gamier
1 8/03/ 1 899 Bourgeois Divertissement for
Gentilhomme, gala performance
Le
1899 Revue Franco-Russian Massa PARIS,
La Artistiqueg
Retrospective, divertissement Cercle de l'Union
La lyric poem Opéra

15/11/1899 Prise de Troie, Divertissement in Hector Berlioz PARIS,
Salle Garnier
07/02/1900 Lancelot Divertissment in Victorin PARIS,
lyric drama Joncières Opéra
Salle Garnier
Revue Cercle de la rue

1900 Candide Fantasie Dances in revue PARIS,
Royale
de naguère Fête de 5 Août

1 0/08/ 1 900h Danse de jadis et Ballet Numerous1 PARIS,
29/12/1900 Maladetta, La Ballet reproduced by Paul Vidal BRUSSELS,
Georgio Saracco Théâtre Royale de
la Monnaie
opera Opéra
15/02/1901 Astarté Divertissement in Xavier Leroux PARIS,
Salle Garnier
opera Opéra
26/04/1901 Roi de Paris, Le Divertissement in Georges Hue PARIS,
Le Cercle de l'Union
Salle Garnier
13/06/1901 Baiser du Soleil, Ballet PaulVidaP PARIS,
Artistique
20/ 1 0/ 1 90 1 Barbares, Les Ballet of Camille Saint- PARIS,
thanksgiving in lyric Saëns Opéra
tragedy Salle Garnier
07/03/1902 Idole aux yeux Ballet Pantomime Fernand le ROUEN,
verts, L' Bourne Théâtre des Arts
26/11/1902 Bacchus Ballet Alphonse PARIS,
Duvernoy Opéra
Salle Garnier
10/02/1903 Maladetta, La Ballet in 2 acts Paul Vidal MARSEILLES,
opera Opéra
Opéra
06/03/1903 Statue, La Divertissement in Earnest Reyer PARIS,
Nations Salle du
Salle Garnier
06/06/1903 Ballet des Ballet Paul Vidal PARIS,
Trocadéro,
1 7/12/1903 Automobile Ballet (Piece Paul Vidal PARIS
Club Ballet d'occasion)
20/04/ 1 904 Fils de l'Etoile, Ballet in act 4 of Camille PARIS,
Le musical drama Erlanger Opéra
Salle Garnier
00/06/1904 Oberon Opera-féerie Carl-Maria von PARIS,
Weber Cercle de l'Union
Artistique
80 JANE PRITCHARD
1904 Trouvère, Le Ballet in revised Guiseppe Verdi PARIS,
production of opera Opéra
Salle Gamier
27/01/1905 Daria Divertissement in Georges Marty PARIS,
lyric drama Opéra Salle Gamier
Antiques Palais des Beaux

07/02/1905 Fresques Ballet William Marie MONTE CARLO,
Arts de Monte
Carlo
03/06/ 1 905 Nuit de Divertissement from Charles Gounod PARIS,
Walpurgis, La opera as Opéra
independent ballet Salle Gamier
Saisons, La Opéra
22/12/1 905 Ronde des Legendary ballet Henri Busser PARIS,
Salle Gamier
Opera Opéra
31/10/1906 Ariane Divertissement in Jules Massenet PARIS,
Salle Gamier
24/05/1907 Catalane, La Divertissement in Fernand PARIS,
Lek Opéra
Lyric drama Leborne Opéra
Salle Gamier
25/ 1 1 / 1 907 Lac des Aulnea, Ballet féerique Henri Maréchal PARIS,
Salle Gamier
Nations, Les Opéra

24/12/1907 Ballet des Ballet Paul Vidal PARIS,
Salle Gamier
Notes for the choreochronicle
aThis was probably choreographed by Aimé Bertrand and not Hansen, but Hansen is credited
as ballet master during later performances in the run. This credit probably denotes that he
had replaced Bertrand on the staff but precise information is not available. The date given is
of the premiere of the production.
b Hansen choreographed two versions of this opera-ballet using different music by Jules
Massenet. The second was premiered 03/04/91.
cThis is the information on the synopsis in Bibliothèque-musée del' Opéra, Paris. No further
details have been found.
dMusic arranged by Paul Vidal included the Entr'acte, Finale and Divertissement from La Vie
pour le Tzar by Mikhail Glinka, a polonaise by Piotr Tchaikovsky and Danse Circassienne by Anton
Rubinstein.
e Hansen choreographed a new version of this opera-ballet with Zambelli as ballerina, which
was first performed 13 April 1898. Thais divertissement was performed as an independent
item ljuly 1910.
fI have been unable to find the actual venue for this one-off event the programme for which is
in Joseph Hansen, Dossier d'artiste at the Bibliothèque-musée dePOpéra, Paris.
gThe Cercle de l'Union Artistique came into existence in 1860 to provide a place where artistic
and social worlds could meet. Membership was open to working artists and men of letters.
They presented a series of concerts and performances and these certainly included ballets
from 1872 when Mme Dominique choreographed Les Folies d'Espagne. Louis Mérante also
contributed to their presentations. Information on some of the concerts and productions by
the Cercle de l'Union Artistique may be found on the dossier on it at the Bibliothèque-musée
del'Opéra, Paris.
hThe date on the cover of the programme for the Fête du 5 Août 1900 is changed to 10
Août 1900. This ballet was then performed at the Trocadéro on 22 September 1900 for the
Universal Exhibition. It appears to have been first performed at the Paris Opéra, Salle Gamier,
on 1 1 October 1900 although some sources state that it was first presented on 30 October
1900.
Notes for the choreochronicle
'Composers whose work was incorpated into the ballet were Hector Berlioz, Louis-Albert
Bourgault-Ducoudray, Alfred Bruneau, Emmanuel Chabrier, Léo Delibes, Th. Dubois,
Alphonse Duvernoy, Léon Gastinel, Charles Gounod, Ernest Guirand, Augusta Holmes,
Victorin Joncières, Edouard Lalo, Charles Lefebvre, Charles Lenepveu, H. Maréchal, Jules
Massenet, André Messager, Paul Véronge de la Nux, Emile Paladilhe, Emito Pessard, Jean-
Philippe Rameau, Ernest Reyer, Samuel Rousseau, Camille Saint-Saëns, Gaston Salvayre,
Ambroise Thomas, Paul Vidal, Charles-Marie Widor, André Wormser.
JPaul Vidal's arrangement included music by Jules Massenet, Charles-Marie Widor, J.S. Bach,
Léo Delibes, and Hector Berlioz.
kHansen was involved in the planning of this ballet and may have undertaken some of the
choreography but he died before it was premiered and the choreography was all credited to
Varnana.
ministères, Paris; a divertissement, La Dêsirade - Danse Créole for which the sheet
music by Edmond Missa dated 19061 describes it as being staged by Hansen; the
pantomimes Flirt2 with music by R. de Lagarde and Qui trop embrasse mal éteint;
and a performance of the divertissement from Les Templiers by Henry Litolff for
the Cercle de l'Union Artistique, Paris.
Hansen's Archive also includes an annotated synopsis for La Vigne [The Vine).
The published score by Anton Rubinstein for the ballet in 3 acts and 5 scenes,
La Vigne {The Vine), notes that it was commissioned for Hansen in Moscow but
there is no evidence he ever produced this ballet.
There is also a mysterious list of ballets at the end of a notebook in
the Bibliothèque-musée de l'Opéra [B 905-2 in which Hansen worked out
the synopsis of Aissa. This appears to be a record of ballets that Hansen had
choreographed or staged at Brussels, Moscow and Antwerp (Anvers). As Assia
was choreographed in 1881 it is probable that these are all works he had some
involvement with before or around that date. All are independent ballets or
divertissements not opera-ballets. The complete list is:
1 . La Fête nautique
2. Les Fleurs animées
3. Le Rêve d'orée
4. Coppélia
5. Les Fumeurs de Kiff
6. La Fée contranandière
7. Les Scylraind [?]
8. Faune et Bergère
9. La Vision d'Harry
10. La Madone
11. La Fille de l'Enfer
12. Une Fête d'Eté à Paris
13. Après une Rose
14. Changé la Belle Djelma
15. Le Lac des cygnes
16. La Fille de Pharaon [?]
82 JANE PRITCHARD
17. Le marché de Innocents
18. Catharina
19. Koniok Gorbunok
20. Les noces de la Grande Mounna
21. La Flute enchantée
22. Giselle
23. La Esmeralda
24. Ondine.
What is not apparent is whether these are productions that Hansen created or
ones he had staged or rehearsed. I would suggest that it appears to be a list of
ballets he knew that he could mount on a company as it includes established
ballets as well as works he is known to have choreographed.
Apart from there being no reference in the list to Le Nid d'amour (1873) and
divertissements for which no specific title is known, it includes all the ballets
that have been identified as choreographed by Hansen up until 1881. Of this
list Hansen certainly choreographed La Fete nautique (1870) and Les Fleurs animées
(1873) at the Monnaie and La Fille del' Enfer (\%1% Une Fete d'Eté à Paris (1880) and
Le Lac des cygnes (1880 and 1882) at the Bolshoi. Coppélia he mounted at both the
Monnaie in 1871 and the Bolshoi in 1882 and he also later performed the role
of Dr Coppélius in Paris. He was also likely to have rehearsed the ballet in Paris
after he became ballet master at the Opéra. Les Fumeurs de Kiff was a ballet created
at the Monnaie 15 April 1876. In three tableaux by Gaston Bérardi, it was an
oriental work in which a penniless man under the influence of hashish dreams
that he has his own harem. The score was by Emile Mathieu and it remained
in the theatre's repertoire for two seasons.3 Reviews so far located in Belgian
newspapers do not name the choreographer. Similarly none of the references
to La Madone identifies a choreographer so again on the table this is listed as
unconfirmed. For La Vision d'Harry, created at La Monnaie in 1877, nine pages
of choreographic notes referring to a cast of dancers employed at the opera house
that year can be found in Hansen's archive [B 905-35 suggesting that Hansen was
probably responsible for the choreography of this ballet.
Change: la Belle Djelma is presumably a work Hansen choreographed as six
pages of choreographic notes showing groupings for the ballet are included in
the file, Joseph Hansen Daïta [B905-10 in the Bibliothèque-musée de l'Opéra.
However no other information has been located on this ballet. Three other titles
are for ballets performed at the Monnaie during the 1860s and 1880s. In respect
of these, Faune et Bergère by Lamy to music by Fievet was first performed on
21 January 1868, Le marché de Innocents was staged for the Monnaie by Lucien
Petipa on 14 October 1872 and the La Flute enchantée was first performed at the
Monnaie in 1880. Hansen was likely to have assisted the choreographers, or been
responsible for rehearsing these ballets rather than creating them.
The romantic ballets especially Giselle and Ondine were performed while
Hansen was ballet master at the Monnaie. Giselle was danced during the 1870-73,
1874-75 and 1881-82 seasons. Ondine was danced during 1873-74 and 1875-76.
Koniok Gorbunok [The Little Hump-backed Horse), the work listed sixteenth which
I think deciphers to be The Daughter of the Pharaoh, and Catarina were all in the
repertoire at the Bolshoi when Hansen was Ballet Master and La Esmeralda was
still performed widely. This only leaves five titles, Le Rêve d'orée, La Fée contrabandière,
Les Scylraind (?), Après une Rose, and Les noces de la Grande Mounna unaccounted
for. Unfortunately it has not yet been possible to find information on ballets in
Antwerp during the late nineteenth century and it is possible that this was where
they were performed.
'THE GREAT HANSEN'
The nineteenth-century, Belgian-born, choreographer, Joseph Hansen (1842-

1907), is remembered (if at all) for creating productions of Swan Lake in 1880
and 1882 for the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. These productions followed the
premiere by Wentzel Reisinger in 1877 and were succeeded by the 1894-5
landmark-staging by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov in St Petersburg. Hansen
has, therefore, secured a footnote in the history of the world's best-known ballet
but otherwise, like most of his contemporary colleagues, he is overlooked by
dance historians. Yet Hansen created a significant output and range of ballets
in both leading opera houses and major popular theatres and his talents were
sufficiently in demand that, for a decade from the mid- 1870s, he commuted
between Brussels, Paris, London and Moscow with a frequency that would be
surprising even today. Finally he made France the centre of his activities following
his appointment as maître de ballet at the Paris Opéra in 1887. In spite of the lack
of readily available information on his creations, it is clear that Hansen was a
prolific choreographer who willingly responded to commissions, but whose best
work was undertaken when he was able to collaborate closely with sympathetic
composers of ballet music, notably Georges Jacobi and Henri Busser. While not
claiming that Hansen was a choreographer of the stature ofjules Perrot or Marius
Petipa, an examination of his career and choreography gives an insight into ballet
in Europe outside Russia in the period between the creation of Coppélia in 1870
and the arrival of the Ballets Russes in Paris in 1909.
The title of this article is taken from a letter written by Marius Petipa to
Sergei Khoudekoff and has been used to provoke interest.4 One longs to hear
the Voice' behind the remark. Was it a serious observation? Was it written
'tongue in cheek' as a result of resentment for a rival who appeared to be
receiving favourable treatment for a brief period? Whatever Petipa's view of his
rival, Hansen was a leading ballet master of his day, an able workaholic, who
could respond efficiently to commissions. Never a media figure, Hansen's later
productions were nevertheless quite widely reviewed. He created independent
ballets, opera-ballets, and ballets in musical theatre for a considerable range of
theatres on an international basis. However, he is forgotten because not one of
his creations survives in performance - a problem shared with a number of his
contemporaries whose careers would be well worth investigating. But if historians
84 JANE PRITCHARD
Fig. 1. Cartoon of Hansen.
only look at the work of choreographers whose ballets continue to be danced in

some form, it surely leaves us with a distorted perspective of dance history.
As already noted, Hansen had a peripatetic career, often working in
two or three cities in one year. His appointments overlapped because of the
seasonal nature of opera in many late nineteenth-century cities. Consequently
he commuted between Brussels and London, London and Moscow. Both the
companies of the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, Brussels and the Imperial Ballet
in Moscow had long summer breaks while the season for the Royal Italian
Opera at Covent Garden, linked to the 'London Season', ran from April to July.
This enabled talented artists to be contracted to both London and Continental
theatres. Surely it is partly because his career is not neatly based at one theatre
that this prolific choreographer has become one of the 'disappeared' of ballet.
Even in the last two decades of his life, when he was ensconced as maître de ballet
of the Paris Opéra, Hansen found time to choreograph for the opera at Nice
1892-3, at the Casino at Royan (at the mouth of the Gironde on the Atlantic
coast) in 1893, as well as for the Théâtre des Arts, Rouen, and at Monte Carlo.
Hansen is one of a cluster of 'ghost choreographers' of his period who
have been ail-but written out of ballet history. Lynn Garafola coined the phrase
when writing about women choreographers at the turn of the nineteenth to
twentieth century5 but it is as apt for their male counterparts. There is very
little information available on Hansen in published secondary sources or on the
internet (although in 2007 he was given a brief Wikipedia entry), however by
trawling through contemporary newspapers and periodicals including leading
theatrical journals, and by investigating the holdings of major archival collections
for late nineteenth-century dance, it becomes possible to piece together the range
of productions he choreographed.
References in newspapers often need further corroboration as productions
were frequently reviewed without acknowledgement of who choreographed
the work. Caution has to be exercised as reference is sometimes made to a
theatre's ballet master. Was he or she always the choreographer of the production
particularly if the work had been created prior to that artist's appointment? With
opera-ballets continuing from one season to the next did the new ballet master
re-choreograph the production? Probably not if there were dancers available to
recall the production from the previous season, but the new ballet master may
have created a new variation for a visiting principal dancer. Equally, the leading
dancers might import and adapt choreography with which they were already
familiar. The ballet master may only have had an editorial eye in producing the
revival.
Primary archival material on Hansen's creations survives in major

collections in Paris and London. The first of these is Hansen's own archive of
production notes now located at the Bibliothèque-musée de l'Opéra, Paris. These
notes cover productions in Brussels, London, Moscow and Paris. They range
from meticulous records of the choreography for opera-ballets through to rough
diagrams showing the groupings of dancers or the synopses for other ballets and
are discussed in more detail in Appendix 2. In addition, the core collection of the
Bibliothèque-musée de l'Opéra includes original designs for sets and costumes
for Hansen's ballets created at the Paris Opéra as well as scores for many of
his works. The second important archive is the Georges Jacobi Collection in
the Theatre Collections, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, which includes
material relating to all nine of Hansen's independent ballets created for the
Alhambra with additional information relating to the transference to the Théâtre
86 JANE PRITCHARD
de la Bourse in Brussels of three of these productions, Nina, Melusine, and The
Swans. A small selection of documents detailing the creation of Nadia (1887) are
to be included in the new Theatre and Performance gallery at the Victoria and
Albert Museum opening in March 2009. Archival material in the London and
Paris collections may be 'married' to give a considerable wealth of material on
certain ballets. Further documentation for Hansen's career at the Monnaie may
be found in the Brussels City Archive.
Hansen's status at the end of the twentieth century was best summed up by
the fact that he was not deemed worthy of his own entry in the Oxford Encyclopaedia
of Dance although there are a few references to him in the six-volume work. The
entry on the 'Paris Opéra' by Marie-Françoise Christout, for example, notes that
'after Mérante's death the ballet was entrusted to the Belgian Joseph Hansen,
ballet master between 1887 and 1907 and choreographer of the mediocre La
Maladetta.'6 This dismissive remark might be balanced by noting that according
to the listing in Ivor Guest's Le Ballet de l'Opéra,1 La Maladetta remained in the
repertory in Paris for 34 years receiving 1 76 performances, making it the twenty-
first most popular ballet in the two and three quarter centuries of documentation
of productions at the Opéra. Longevity and commercial success may not be
indicators of artistic innovation or quality (indeed they rarely are) but surely the
time has come to reassess the career of a choreographer clearly recognised as a
major figure in his day.
In dictionaries of ballet published over the past fifty years entries concerning
Joseph Hansen's life and career have been muddled in the extreme; in several
his career and that of the Danish ballet master, Emile Hansen (1843-1927),
have become intertwined. In the latest edition of the Oxford Dictionary by Debra
Graine and Judith Mackrell,8 it is Emile (who contributed to the preservation
of August Bournonville's choreography) who wins the entry while the more
original, internationally acclaimed, choreographer, Joseph, is ignored. At other
times in the twentieth century the identity of Joseph Hansen has been confused
by identifying him as Peter or Olaf Hansen. It was Clive Barnes' survey of the
evolution and constant rewriting of entries in ballet dictionaries, for which Barnes
used Hansen as his leading example,9 which whetted my appetite to discover
more about the elusive choreographer.
The most significant secondary work relating to Joseph Hansen's
choreography is Knud Arne Jurgensen's admirable The Verdi Ballets10 in which
Hansen's notation for the ballets in Aida is reproduced and his choreography
for the ballets in Don Carlos are discussed in some detail. Ivor Guest has also
discussed some aspects of Hansen's career in a number of his books. These
books include Guest's monograph on The Alhambra Ballet, revised as Ballet in
Leicester Square, his biography of Virginia Zucchi (with whom Hansen worked in
both London and St Petersburg) and in his account of the Paris Opéra.11 Both
Jurgensen and Guest have only researched certain aspects of Hansen's career
and slightly muddled information emerges from their brief summaries of his
career. Of course they are not helped by the facts that theatre in the nineteenth
century is generally poorly documented in terms of cataloguing productions;
that opera house histories are generally more concerned with opera than ballet;
and that ballet in popular venues - music halls, variety theatres, pantomimes and
féeries - has rarely captured the interest of either historians of those genres or of
historians of dance. It should also be acknowledged, as Kerry Powell wrote in the
Preface to The Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre, it is only in
recent years that theatre historians have turned to that 'previously undervalued
phase of theatre history'.12
Finally the Russian phase of Hansen career has been briefly discussed in
histories of ballet in Russia, by Roland John Wiley in connection with the creation
of, and early performances of, Swan Lake,13 and most significantly by Elizabeth
Souritz in an unpublished conference paper (of which she generously gave me
a copy).14 Russian historians, however, have lacked the information to place
Hansen's employment in Moscow and St Petersburg into the context of his full
career. Natalia Roslavleva complained that in his work for the Bolshoi 'Hansen
relied on his previous music hall experience'.15 In fact most of his work prior to
his appointment in Russia appears to have been in opera houses. Nevertheless
Hansen seems to have been equally at home when serving as maître de ballet in
popular theatres and opera houses and he shifted (as did many of the dancers)
between the two. Like most choreographers, Hansen at times appears to re-use
material created for one ballet in subsequent works. He personally restaged some
of his successful productions at a second theatre but his acclaimed ballets were
also re-staged by other ballet masters. It would appear that Hansen's ballets
were not subject to the controls restricting the productions of ballo grande by
Hansen's contemporary, Luigi Manzotti,16 but, as they were often re-created by
Georgio Saracco, who had created roles for Hansen at both the Alhambra and
La Monnaie, they were probably undertaken with Hansen's approval. Saracco's
re-stagings were often for La Scala, Milan, although Wiley suggests that he also
planned to mount The Swans in St Petersburg.17
This essay cannot cover all aspects of Hansen's work. It will outline his early
career and then for convenience divide it into his activities in Brussels, Russia,
London and France. Hansen's Brussels career appears somewhat episodic, fitting
in with other activities. His Russian career covered not only work with the Bolshoi
but also in popular theatre in both Moscow and St Petersburg. Although the two
Swan Lakes are all he is remembered for, in terms of influence it was probably
his choreography for Kin Grust, notably his staging of Le Voyage dans la lune in
1885, which brought Virgina Zucchi (with whom he had previously worked in
London) to Russia, that had the longest-lasting influence. In London, Hansen is
a key figure in the restoration of independent ballets to the Alhambra, after a
period in which the theatre had favoured comic-operas, as part of what must be
regarded as the ballet-boom of the 1880s. By the time Hansen was appointed
to the Paris Opéra his more creative work seems to have been over. Certainly he
was not encouraged by conditions at the Palais Gamier which favoured the opera
over the ballet, and for many of his productions there he simply repeated and
enlarged on ideas he had used in earlier ballets. Hansen's success appears to have
been enhanced by his ability to respond to commissions. At both the Bolshoi and
88 JANE PRITCHARD
the Paris Opéra Hansen's first major task was to animate a production for which
sets and costumes were already in preparation - never the easiest way to start a
major appointment. Nevertheless, he balanced the demand for more spectacular
ballets, a result of the influence of the popular Italian ballo-grande at the Eden-
théâtre, Paris, (operational for a decade from 1883) with keeping the French-style
of post-romantic ballet alive at the Opéra.
Joseph Hansen was born in Antwerp in 1842 and died at Ansière, just
outside Paris, on 28 July 1907. According to an obituary clipped from an
unidentified source in the Rondel Collection in Paris, Hansen trained at the
Brussels conservatoire and made his stage debut aged six. Documents in the
archive of the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie (at Brussels City Archive) reveal
that by the 1864-5 season Hansen was listed as 'deuxième danseur comique'
and in 1 865 he was appointed régisseur du ballet and deuxième maître de ballet. In this
capacity he must have been responsible for overseeing rehearsals of ballet and
opera-ballets. Whether or not he choreographed or arranged any of the opera-
ballets at this date is not known. By and large little emphasis has been placed
on documenting who choreographed opera-ballets, indeed in Jules Salés' Théâtre
Royal de la Monnaie 1856 -1970™ even the choreographers of independent ballets
are often overlooked. The first choreography by Hansen which can be clearly
identified is the post-opera divertissement on 15 October 1869. According to
Jurgensen, Hansen was associated with the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie for
thirteen continuous seasons, first as a dancer (1865) and later as régisseur and
ballet master (from 1871), so presumably the period he refers to is 1 865-78. 19
However, Salés lists him as ballet master after 1870 for four seasons 1871-5; two
seasons 1877-9 and the 1885-6 season (the contract for this last season survives
in the City Archives in Brussels). During this last season he was not only maître de
ballet dit the Monnaie but also mounted ballets, which were revivals of his creations
for the Alhambra Palace of Varieties in London, at the newly opened Théâtre de
la Bourse.
Hansen was in his twenties in 1864 and probably well-established as a

dancer at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, Brussels, by the 1864-1865 season
when he appears on the company lists as one of five 'deuxième danseur comique'.
From 1868 his category as a performer was 'mime comique' suggesting that
Hansen had a presence on stage rather than notable technique. The 1864-1865
season was conspicuously busy for six new productions and eight revivals were
presented under the brief directorship of Hypolite Montplaisir, who seems
to have revitalised the ballet at the Monnaie. For the three seasons prior to
Montplaisir's appointment the Monnaie's ballet master had been the prolific
Henri Justamant whose career moved, like Hansen's, freely between opera house
and popular theatre. Justamant needs to be recognised as the master of the ballet
in the féerie20 and it is tempting to suggest that he may have provided a role model
for the young Hansen.
Throughout his career Hansen combined choreographing ballets with
occasional performances. Hansen was never a premier danseur, although he
could support ballerinas when necessary. Primarily he appeared in mime and
Fig. 2. Sketch from Ally Sloper's Half Holiday showing the costumes worn by the corps de
ballet in The Swans.
character parts resulting in a long stage career. Significantly, he did not perform
in ballets which had long runs, suggesting that hé regarded himself as a ballet
master rather than performer. After leaving regular employment at the Monnaie
in the 1870s there is no evidence that Hansen was officially employed again as
a dancer. Nevertheless in both Moscow and Brussels he filled in for indisposed
dancers at the premiere of his own creations: the Rajah in Devâdâcy (1879) at the
Bolshoi, Moscow, and Pierrot in Pierrot Macabre (1886) at the Monnaie. At the
Paris Opéra he occasionally created strong character-roles for himself (including
Caliban in La Tempête and Sakouma in Le Rêve). He also appeared as Dr. Coppélius
and Orion in the two great ballets, Coppélia and Sylvia, respectively, with scores by
Léo Delibes, and took on mime roles in guest appearances on special anniversary
performances.
Did Hansen have a third string to his bow? Did he contribute to the designs
of his ballets? What should be made of drawings of sets and costumes in his own
hand in his archives? Are they suggestions for the scene painter and costumier
90 JANE PRITCHARD
Fig. 3. Sketch from Ally Sloper's Half Holiday showing Sampietro and Matthews in The
Swans.
or aides-mémoire after the event? Are his elaborate sketches placing dancers
in settings ideas being worked out for the set or are they his suggestions to the
scenic artist who would paint the scenery? It must be remembered that in the late
nineteenth century it was still the man who realised the set, not necessarily the
one with ideas, who received the credit. Within the mass of papers on the ballet
Nadia (1887) created for the Alhambra, London, the sketch of the scene II grotto
suggests a draft for a scenic designer showing what the choreographer required.
Did Hansen also come up with the controversial black and white costumes for
The Daughter of Hell (La Fille d'Enfer) in Moscow and for Nina in London, which
some critics admired while others loathed? Two versions of these designs survive,
one is tipped intojacobi's music score for Nina,2] the other in a private collection
(see Figure 4). It should be acknowledged that certainly during his period at the
Alhambra that the collaboration between choreographer, composer and costume
designer (Lucien Besche22) was close.
Although none of Hansen's ballets survive in performance he left detailed
descriptions of some of his opera-ballets. These include written descriptions
of steps, sometimes indicating the bars of music being used, and including
some simple floor plans. As opera-ballets would only be performed a few times
during a season the notes would have assisted with the revival of the ballet
in subsequent seasons. Otherwise Hansen's sketches suggest the need to plan
Fig. 4. Costume design (?) by Joseph Hansen showing the 'male' corps de ballet in La Fille
de l'Enfer and Nina.
92 JANE PRITCHARD
elaborate processions or groupings. Hansen's notes relating to productions are
nothing like as complete as those by Henri Justamant23 but they do offer some
insight into his choreography and working process.
Hansen's career as a choreographer appears to begin in Brussels where
his appointment as an assistant ballet master led to his arranging ballets at
the Monnaie. Initially these appear to have been small-scale divertissement to
complete programmes and gradually he turned to short ballets. Most of Hansen's
ballets for the Monnaie were somewhat formulaic and the titles, Une Fête nautique
(1870) and Les Fleurs animées (1873), suggests their slight subject matter. In the
latter Adeline Théodore starred as the Rose and was joined by a garden-full
of dancing flowers; la Pensée (Mlle. Salaba), Marguerite, Tulip, Violet, Tuberose,
Jonquil, Wallflower, Iris and a Cupid-figure, l'Amour (Mlle. Carrère).
Hansen may have been accepted as a house-choreographer but, in the
nineteenth century the Monnaie constantly looked to Paris for productions,
ballerinas and choreographers. If Parisian talent was unavailable individuals
were sent to Paris to discover new productions. Thus Hansen was sent to Paris
to observe the newly successful Coppélia and in November 1871 the Monnaie
presented the first production outside Paris with Adeline Théodore as Swanilda.
In addition, Josephine (Pepa) Invernizzi, who had danced in the original Paris
production, was now promoted to Franz. This first Coppélia by Hansen was shorn
of the final (act 3) divertissement.24
Records for the Monnaie in the nineteenth century are not complete making
it something of a challenge to confirm for which periods Hansen was employed
there. Evidence suggests he choreographed ballets and operas there through to
1879. He then returned for a final season (1885-6) at the same time as mounting
three of his Alhambra successes at the newly-built Théâtre de la Bourse. This
was one of many European theatres which presented dance and spectacular
variety in the 1870s and 1880s, which were modelled on the Alhambra, London,
and Eden-théâtre, Paris. It is clear that some revisions were made to Mna,
UEnchantresse, Melusine (now called Le Palais de Mêlusine) and Les Cygnes {The Swans)
for Brussels although he took a few English soloists with him from the Alhambra
including Miss Clifton, possibly to assist with the staging of the works. In Brussels
Hansen was, of course, free from the story-telling restrictions of the British 1843
Theatres Regulation Act25 so could make the stories more elaborate. However,
his only completely original choreography for the Bourse was the divertissement,
'Une Fête à la Plantation', in which Hansen and partners Miles. Luliani and
Lucconi 'blacked' up. This was inserted in Paul Martinetti's 'modern pantomime'
entertainment, Joko; ou le Singe de Brésil The production of Joko was a typical
'monkey' work (a last vestige of which can be seen in the first scene of Pierre
Lacotte's 2000 staging of The Pharaoh's Daughter for the Bolshoi26). This staging of
Joko at the Bourse was typical of productions in the second half of the nineteenth-
century for which ballet and pantomime were combined. The pantomime troupe
would rework one of their touring productions for a specific venue and a local
choreographer added new dances to the production. Another famous example
of this was the re-working of Martinetti's The Duel in the Snow with the addition of
'THE GREAT HANSEIST 93
Fig. 5. Dresdina at the Alhambra.
a divertissement by Katti Lanner for the Empire, Leicester Square, in 1889. Joko
only appears to have run for a few weeks but the Martinetti troupe appeared
at the Bourse throughout its first season. After that season the Bourse itself
seems to have shifted to becoming a theatre focusing on jeerie-styXe productions
although ballet consequently remained a feature. The theatre had only a short
existence burning down in January 1 890 during a run of Rothomago in which
Pierina Legnani starred as ballerina.
A decade earlier, by 1875, Hansen was also working in both Paris and
London where his initial productions included ballets in Jeeries. His first work for
London was far from auspicious, although the failure of the The White Cat, cannot
be blamed on Hansen. Indeed his choreography for the three ballets, 'The Land
of Jewels,' 'The Land of Birds,' 'The Cage and the Ferns,' in which Margaritta
Roseri, Clara Geresh and Emily Allcroft danced, were considered among the
few genuine assets of the production. The White Cat had been adapted from the
1870 Parisian version (La Chatte blanche), which had also been acclaimed in Berlin,
Vienna, Brussels, Bordeaux, Marseilles, and South America. It was presented in
London at the Queen's Theatre, Long Acre, which operated between 1850 and
1879, but was not noted for spectacular theatre or Jeeries. When The White Cat
opened the theatre was gloomy and reviewers noted it was cold, obviously not
helped by the bitter snowy weather. Critics, such as the writer in the Supplement to
94 JANE PRITCHARD
the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, felt that the opening had been mistimed;
it should have been presented after Christmas.27 The production needed better
stage-management, the costumes were imported and threadbare and The White
Cat closed after the eighth performance when the musicians refused to continue
as they had not been paid. The failure of The White Cat in no way harmed
Hansen's reputation and within a year he was employed by the Royal Italian
Opera at Covent Garden and he was soon also commuting to Russia.
Hansen in Russia
Joseph Hansen appears to have been appointed ballet master at the Bolshoi,
Moscow, in December 1878 because he was prepared to work for a low salary,
similar to that of his predecessor, Reisinger, while the other ballet masters who
had been approached demanded considerably higher fees. Presumably Hansen
felt that in one season he could convince the Imperial authorities of his talents.
From sources available in English, both Reisinger and Hansen appear to have
had a poor press for their times in Moscow. It may be that this needs to be
treated with caution. Accounts of ballet at Moscow's Bolshoi draw heavily on
the recollections of the theatre's chief machinist, Karl Valtz, and it is conspicuous
that his scenic effects are always a triumph while the choreography, in his opinion,
is second rate. In 1995 Galina Chelombitko challenged the received view of
the career of Reisinger. Why, she asked, was an 'untalented' choreographer
whose works were always 'mediocre' and 'ordinary' constantly employed in
cities of central Europe (Prague, Leipzig, Moscow, Berlin) in which there was
a considerable appreciation for ballet28? Until a more complete picture of ballet
in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century emerges it is impossible to
assess the true status of many choreographers.
In the latter part of the nineteenth century the Bolshoi in Moscow was going
through a challenging period not helped by the reluctance of the authorities
to fund the Imperial theatre in Moscow to anything like the extent of that in
St Petersburg. Hansen's post with the Bolshoi was announced in the newspaper
Golic (The Voice) which noted that he was working in Brussels. In reporting this
Vera Krassovska observed that Hansen really worked in London but had a
'reserve engagement' in Brussels. The true situation is that at this point in time
Hansen was employed by the Royal Italian Opera at Covent Garden roughly
between March and July each year but he found employment elsewhere for the
remainder of the year. Just prior to travelling to Moscow, Hansen appears to have
mounted ballets for Auber's opera, Le Cheval de bronze {The Bronze Horse) at the
Monnaie.
On Hansen's appointment he found a new production in an advanced state
of planning. Sets and costumes had been prepared to enable Marius Petipa to
re-create his St Petersburg success of the previous year, La Bayadere. Petipa was
no longer available and, although Hansen had probably heard of La Bayadere (its
success was such that illustrations of the ballet were reproduced in the Illustrated
Sporting and Dramatic News*9), it was not a ballet with which he was familiar. In
Hansen's Archive a notebook lists the characters from La Bayadere, possibly this
was the list of costumes which he had to work around for his first production in
Moscow. Hansen therefore created a design-led work, The Daughter of Hell {La Fille
d'Enfer) - 'Wherever the ballet happens, in India or in a totally fantastic world,
costumes and sets stay the same'. Hansen's ballet had a plot in which the poor
Nella Tambi (Serguei Sokolov) sells his soul to the Indian Goddess Radomani
(Maria Satislavskaya), the titular Daughter of Hell, to whom he promises fidelity.
Nella Tambi is rejected by his beloved princess Saravastra (Pauline Karpakova),
who in turn loves Prince Kadour (Alfred Befeki). Bayaderes collapse of the temple
supervised by Valtz became the collapse of a palace as Nella Tambi supported by
Radomani seeks revenge; but as the young Hindu had been unfaithful he was sent
to Hell where he was suffocated by an enormous serpent. This last effect appears
to be similar to the serpent in the final scene, set in Hell, in Carlo Coppi's ballet,
Oriella, at the Alhambra, London in 1891 and indeed effects are preserved in
films by pioneer film-maker, Georges Méliès.
Critical response to The Daughter of Hell was mixed but the scenes in
this ballet which most impressed the critics appear to be those that are most
typical of his work. Among those singled out were an ensemble referred to as
'Bamboula' (possibly a reworking of a dance from Paul et Virginie which Hansen
had choreographed for the Royal Italian Opera the previous year) and a dance
for the bayaderes. Diagrams for the ballet in the Bibliothèque-musée de l'Opéra
show elaborate groupings of, in one instance 92 artists, most of whom hold
props -banners, flags, garlands -and some of whom pose on stools. Roslavleva,
drawing on information in Le Souffleur describes the Radomani's infernal maidens
wearing 'powdered wigs, black masks and black elbow-high gloves, [bringing]
into the Indian story the fantasy of French balls and costume parties'30. These
black and white costumes, and possibly some of Hansen's choreographic ideas
resurface six years later in the Alhambra ballet, Nina, set in an apparently
Hispanic world.
Souritz notes that The Daughter of Hell received ten performances in 1879 and
a further twenty five the following year attracting good houses. The management
of the Imperial Theatre appears to have been satisfied with Hansen during his
first season. In a letter to St Petersburg on 13 December 1879 the directors
reported that since Hansen's arrival he had found time not only to create
the replacement for La Bayadere but also to revise some variations from old
ballets as well as operas, without asking for further payment. He was clearly a
choreographer of talent and experience and he had improved the standards of
the company. Given this report, it is hardly surprising that Hansen was invited to
return to Moscow for the Spring season and in August 1880 Hansen's contract
was extended to 20 January 1882.
Hansen's most important contributions to the Bolshoi were his two revisions
of Swan Lake and his introduction of Coppélia into Russia. For some viewers
Hansen's Swan Lake was an improvement on Reisinger's original. 'The Modest
Observer' reported that it was 'now viewed without boredom thanks to new
96 JANE PRITCHARD
Fig. 6. Alhambra Dancers (probably Cormani and Paris) in The Seasons.
dances and groups of the corps de ballet'31 Mme von Meek was less impressed
for she wrote to Piotr Tchaikovsky, then on tour in France and Italy, that the new
version 'was ugly, and choreographically the ballet was poor.'
The beautiful music of the Russian Dance was quite lost in this mixture of French and
low urban dance, which was simply a conventional ballet solo with Russian characteristics
here and there. Best of all was the Hungarian Dance, and the public demanded its encore.
The theatre was quite full, although it was a benefit for the ballet master Hansen and the
prices were one-and-a-half times their normal price.32
•THE GREAT HANSEIST 97
Fig. 7. Alhambra Dancer in Le Bivouac.
A month after staging Swan Lake, Hansen created The Summer Fair {La Fete
d'été), essentially an up-to-date, one act, comic ballet the narrative of which reads
rather as a precursor of Léonide Massine's Le Beau Danube. The Summer Fair is set
in a fair at Bougival (a fashionable suburb of Paris) rather than in the Viennese
Prater. Two daughters of an English family are separated from their parents and
enjoy themselves in a number of comic situations. This ballet appears to have
been considered something of a novelty but it is hard to grasp if it was a novelty
specifically for the Imperial Theatre or more generally for the Russian stage.
98 JANE PRITCHARD
What is unexpected in reading descriptions of this work is that it was an 'up-to-
date' ballet33 and Hansen rarely created works in this genre, generally favouring
works which fitted into a post-romantic category.
Hansen also created a second new four-act ballet, Aissa, the Pearl of Aden
(1881), in which the action moves from exotic Arabia to Italy at carnival
time, allowing for colourful divertissements. The story has certain parallels with
Petipa's Don Quixote. A pair of lovers (Aissa, daughter of a café-owner played
by Pelegia Karpakova and Ali-Bakoum played by Alfred Befeki) elope as her
father (Geltzer) wishes to marry her off to the Grand Vizier (Kuenetsov). The first
scenes allowed for oriental dances and the Vizier attempts to seduce Aissa with
jewels and flowers. Souritz suggests that the dance of jewels may have resembled
a dance of jewels in Jules Perrot's Faust. In truth there were numerous jewel
and animated garden scenes in contemporary ballets and Hansen was simply
conforming to audience expectation. If the manuscript notes in the Hansen
Archive are a guide to the production, they confirm the impression given in
reviews that Hansen was trying to cram too much into one ballet.
Hansen also created Eglé, la Bergère (1881), a mythological ballet, for
students of the Imperial Ballet School. A synopsis and diagrams for groupings
of fauns, satyrs, bacchantes, nymphs and hunters survive in the Paris archive.
The following season Hansen's contract at the Bolshoi ended. The ballet was
reorganised in 1882-3 by the militaristic P. M. Pchelnikov who replaced Begichev
as head of the theatre. Pchelnikov reduced the size of the company so that
the dancers became simply an opera-ballet without their own evenings of
performances.
Nevertheless the end of his contract with the Bolshoi did not result
in an immediate break with Russia for Hansen. In 1882 the monopoly of
the Imperial Theatres was abolished enabling a new commercial theatre to
flourish. Given that Hansen was increasingly associated with popular theatre
and féerie productions it is not surprising that in 1883 he was invited to provide
choreography for the New Theatre under Mikhail Lentovsky. Lentovsky is
celebrated as the father of the music halls in Russia. Having begun his career as
an actor, he took over the Hermitage Gardens in Moscow in 1878 which, under
his management, acquired a reputation for respectability and for presenting
entertainments of quality. Souritz has confirmed that in November 1883 Hansen
choreographed The Forest Vagrant and a Mexican divertissement to music by
Gerber. He then, on 12 December, mounted (or re-choreographed) the two
famous ballets from the internationally successful féerie, Le Voyage dans la lune.™
The New Theatre had a corps de ballet of 30 Italians (apparently selected by
Hansen) and for Le Voyage dans la lune Lentovsky had purchased at least some
of the costumes and accessories from the Alhambra in London. These were
probably from the production that opened on 26 March 1883 at Her Majesty's
Theatre, employing many dancers from the Alhambra (then being rebuilt after
its destruction by fire), rather than those for the 1876 performances. This
production then formed the basis of the production at the summer theatre, Kin
Grust, outside St Petersburg in which Virginia Zucchi conquered and enthralled
•THE GREAT HANSEN1 99
Russian audiences. The most famous description of Virginia Zucchi's appearance
in Voyage dans la Lune is by the star-struck Alexandre Benois who recalled that
Zucchi's appearance was brief 'but those ten minutes were a revelation to me'.
Zucchi was dancing accompanied by a small corps de ballet and a very indifferent
partner; she represented some fantastic creature who could as well be imagined at the
bottom of a moonlit sea as in the garden of the Hesperides. The ballet had nothing in
common with the rest of the opérette. It was just a choreographic number, devoid of
subject or drama . . . Towards the end of her dance she rose on her points and, taking tiny
steps, began gliding backwards ... as though she were being wafted by a gentle breeze.35
Hansen in London
In London Hansen's work focused on two theatres: the Royal Opera House,
Covent Garden, and the Alhambra, Leicester Square. At Covent Garden he
worked on a seasonal basis for the Royal Italian Opera from 1876 or 1877
through to 1886. It appears that Hansen succeeded Henri Desplaces as maître
de ballet for the Royal Italian Opera under the management of Frederick Gye.
No maître de ballet is listed in the prospectus for 1876. Desplaces had held this
position from 1853 until 1873 and remained at the Royal Italian Opera as Stage
Manager (in modern terms producer) for the following three seasons, until his
death on 25 January 1877.36 Hansen is officially listed from that year but it is
unclear as to whether or not he was involved while Desplaces was in control.
Fifty-nine Operas were presented during Hansen's tenure at Covent Garden.
He certainly created new choreography for fourteen and would have supervised
groupings and movement in most of them. Hansen's work with the Royal Italian
Opera continued while Frederick Gye and, after his death, his son ran the
operation. He was not employed in 1885 when the opera season was under
Mapleson's management and Mapleson employed his regular ballet mistress,
Katti Lanner who was a prolific choreographer of opera-ballets.37 Hansen,
however, returned for the brief 1886 season when the Royal Italian Opera was
under the management of Largo.
It is, perhaps surprisingly, Hansen's opera ballets which are the best
documented of his work. This is because each production only received a handful
of performances during any season but it was necessary to be able to revive it
quickly a year later. As the ballets are notated in terms of the names of dancers
who first appeared in the work, Hansen's notes not only give an insight into
his choreography but also into the dancers who made up the ballet company
at Covent Garden. Although a different prima ballerina would be attracted to
Covent Garden each year the main company of British dancers was remarkably
stable and the trio of the sisters, Elise, Hélène and Laura Reuters returned
annually between 1877 and 1883.38
The circumstances under which Hansen was invited to become maître de
ballet for the Alhambra are unclear, although the success of his choreography
for The White Cat and The Yellow Dwarf (for the Pandora Company at Her
Majesty's Theatre in 1882-3) as well as at Covent Garden must have made
100 JANE PRITCHARD
him an attractive choice. When the Alhambra re-opened in 1883, rebuilt
after the devastating fire of 1882, Aimé Bertrand was still the theatre's ballet
master, yet within a year the theatre's programming had radically changed from
operetta-style productions to variety, including significant independent ballets,
and Hansen was firmly in control.
Just what motivated the Alhambra to reassume its music hall licence and
to restore independent ballets to the central position in their programmes in
1884 is not clear. Certainly the féerie-style: productions incorporating as many
as three ballets were costly. When the rebuilt Alhambra opened on 3 December
1883 it was still presenting^/emV/ operetta productions with Bertrand restored to
his former position as the theatre's maître de ballet. He remained at the theatre
to choreograph the ballets for both The Golden Ring and The Beggar Student. The
second of these, which was first performed on 1 2 April 1 884, marked Georges
Jacobi's return to the Alhambra as music director but, in the summer, Joseph
Hansen replaced Bertrand as the theatre's ballet master. It is tantalising to
speculate on the change of position of the two choreographers. Bertrand had
faithfully served the Alhambra since 1877 and after the Alhambra's fire he
had mounted the ballets (probably after Henri Justamant) for the revival of
Offenbach's A Trip to the Moon at Her Majesty's Theatre then leased to Mr. Leader,
a principal shareholder of the Alhambra. Bertrand also choreographed the two
ballets employing the Alhambra's corps de ballet at the Metropolitan, Edgware
Road, London,39 before bringing his 'company' home for the theatre's reopening.
Meanwhile Joseph Hansen's choreography became more familiar to
London audiences from his work with the Royal Italian Opera at Covent Garden.
The Pandora Company with which Hansen had worked on The Yellow Dwarf
was essentially the company that opened the Empire with Chilperic on 3 1 May
1 884 but it was Bertrand who choreographed the processions and ballets for the
production. Was Bertrand, a successful choreographer oï féerie-style ballets, head-
hunted by the neighbouring Empire, leaving a vacancy that Joseph Hansen filled?
Did the Alhambra management decide that, as Hansen was partially footloose in
London because the Imperial Ballet had decided to reduce the ballet and close
the school at the Bolshoi in Moscow, they should snap up the internationally
successful choreographer? Without further information it is impossible to say
whether Hansen stepped into the breach caused by Bertrand's defection or
whether he was chosen over the former resident choreographer, who quickly
found employment at the rival theatre. The situation is even more puzzling
as later in 1884 Bertrand staged London's first Coppélia. The Empire was then
licensed as a theatre so the narrative presented no problem. As Guest has noted,
Bertrand was in the original cast of the ballet in Paris in 1870 and may have
recalled and incorporated some of Saint Leon's choreography. But might not
Hansen, who had successfully staged the ballet at both La Monnaie and the
Bolshoi, been the more obvious producer for this ballet?40
It has also proved impossible to discover how far Hansen personally
influenced the decision to transform the Alhambra back from a venue for
light opera incorporating significant ballets to a palace of varieties in which
ballet became the main turn on the bill. What is certain is that the team of
choreographer, Joseph Hansen, and composer, Georges Jacobi, made a real
contribution to the success of the change in programming. Their collaboration
set the pattern for the Alhambra for the next quarter of a century with usually
two ballets providing the heart of the theatre's programmes. This approach to
programming also influenced the Empire which, after three not very successful
years following in the Alhambra's wake in presenting féerie-style operettas,
adopted the Alhambra's plan of presenting two ballets most evenings with a
supporting variety bill.
It is significant to mention that the Alhambra changed its policy just
prior to the first staging of Luigi Manzotti's Excelsior in London, and a year
after the Eden-théâtre opened in Paris. The Eden-théâtre was for a decade
the home of Italian ballet in Paris and the impact of the hallo grande generally,
and Excelsior in particular, on European and American ballet should not be
underestimated. Indeed, in the 1880s its popularity led to a distinct 'ballet-boom'.
The developments at the Alhambra were almost certainly a response to the
challenge of the Italians who provided star ballerinas for Hansen's productions.
Also, as a result of the hallo grande's use of virtuoso male dancers, Hansen was able
to introduce a male hero, Georgio Saracco41, to The Swans and Melusine although
at the Alhambra he usually presented his hero en travesti in accordance with the
fashion of the day.
Hansen's ballets had simple 'plots' which could easily be conveyed in balletic
language. His first creation at the Alhambra was The Swans (1884) which had
a single scene. The Swans showed a similar idea to that of Swan Lake Act II,
a ballet Hansen had twice staged in Moscow, with a Prince falling in love
with a swan-maiden while he was out hunting. Subsequent commentators have
criticised Hansen for not mounting Swan Lake with Piotr Tchaikovsky's score
at the Alhambra without appreciating the circumstances in which Hansen was
working. To have mounted a full-evening, four-act ballet would have been a
real novelty to the London stage; the opening of The Swans predates Excelsior at
Her Majesty's -the first full evening ballet presented in late nineteenth-century
London -by five months. However Swan Lake would hardly have fitted into a
mixed music hall programme; to introduce an extant score rather than to employ
the house composer would have been unusual; and, above all, to import a ballet
that told such a clear, if somewhat fanciful, story at the Alhambra operating
under a music-hall licence would have been illegal. Melusine, Hansen's second
Alhambra ballet, was based on a fairy tale that appears to have been a popular
source for ballets at that time in Europe.42 Nadia (set in Russia and an otherworldly
cave of animated stalactites) and Algeria (complete with north African pirates)
presented triangular relationships in which an evil person abducts the heroine
who is then rescued by the hero. Dresdina combined a scene of characteristic
colour and national dances (the ballet is set in Saxony) with a dream scene (here
of exquisitely presented porcelain and crystal). The Seasons showed the passage of
time -both the seasons of the year and the times of day. With a cast of birds and
flowers, a final grand march and apotheosis of labour, The Seasons was regarded
102 JANE PRITCHARD
Fig. 8. Programme for Cupid at the Alhambra illustrated by Lucien Besche.
as a 'poetical as a subject for dance ... the allegory of the four seasons of the year
could scarcely have been told more prettily or with greater charm'.43 Only Cupid,
the ballet created by Hansen at the Alhambra which came closest to a hallo grande,
was a challenge to follow and the more than usually elaborate working synopsis
in Jacobi Archive THM/ 140/ 1 3 is so full of changes that the creators themselves
may not have been completely clear as to what they were presenting.
It is conspicuous that London critics compared Hansen's creations
favourably with ballets mounted in Paris. In respect of Cupid, the critic of the
Daily Telegraph observed that the 'much-vaunted Eden Theatre [sic] in Paris has
never presented a more brilliant or effective stage picture than that in which
Signorina Bessone, in the most modern attire of the ballet is flanked by Cupids,
Spirits of the Night, mythological and quasi-mythological deities, and by ancient
Romans blowing trumpet notes of triumph from the lituus and the buccina'.44
With its apparent symbolism and elaborate settings, Cupid could be considered
as Hansen's response to the fashion for hallo grande. This was particularly true of
the last scene in which, after a transformation to the Realms of Love, the action
moves to a Grecian Temple of Mirth. Here Cupid summons representatives of
four continents in procession and dance. It is easy nowr to mock a procession
that brought together Zulus, North American Indians, Nautch girls, Turkish
warriors, and New Zealanders, but it was no odder a grouping than all the races
of the world on the banks of Suez in Excelsior. To an audience who came into
contact with similar mixes of indigenous peoples at the popular International
Exhibitions it would certainly cause no surprise. The Bat described Cupid as 'a
sort of mythological Round the World in Eighty Days', and it clearly tapped into
a number of cultural trends.
Whilst society is running after Greek and Roman Plays, when the toga is more fashionable
than the top coat, at a period when young ladies are never so happy as to be seen in sandals
pacing round a Dionysian altar, in an age when Liberty silks and classic draperies enchant
the female eye, it would never do for the best of our spectacular houses to be behind the
time. "Cupid," therefore, is just classic enough to be fashionable and not classic enough
to be precise or pedantic. Classicism is made fanciful and agreeable under the directing
eye of M. Besche and with the aid of the gorgeous stuffs supplied by M. and Madame
Alias.45
While choreographing at the Alhambra Hansen received consistently

favourable reviews for his ballets, not only in the British press but also in the
French theatrical paper, UArtiste Europe. In London his work was admired and,
in one of the few features describing his working process, the collaborators
Hansen andjacobi were described as 'the Gilbert and Sullivan of the ballet'.46
It is easy to dismiss this sobriquet as just an indication that composer and
choreographer worked closely together on light entertainment. However in the
1880s the collaboration between playwright/librettist/producer, W.S. Gilbert
and the leading British composer, Arthur Sullivan (under the guidance of
Richard D'Oyly Carte) was famed for the quality of its presentations and the
establishment of a particularly English musical entertainment. The title needs to
be considered seriously as it indicates that at the Alhambra the collaboration
between choreographer and composer enriched the audiences' perception of
ballet in Britain.
Material survives in the Hansen archive in Paris and the Georges Jacobi
archive in London to indicate how the collaborators worked. One, usually
Hansen, planned the scenario four or five months ahead of needing a new
104 JANE PRITCHARD
production and then both made suggestions for its improvement, for the casting
and for the effects they wished to achieve. This would then have been approved
by the management of the theatre, but it is striking that the choreographer and
composer experienced so little interference at this period, a situation that had
changed a decade later when members of the management team put forward
subjects and write the scenarios. In terms of Hansen's development it is clear that
in his first ballets at the Alhambra he re-used choreography and ideas he had
developed at the Bolshoi or when creating opera-ballets at Covent Garden. The
Swans, as has already been noted, was an adaptation of Swan Lake Act II, albeit to
new music by Georges Jacobi composed according to Hansen's direction. In Nina
Hansen appeared to incorporate a divertissement created for La fille de l'Enfer
(1879)47 in Moscow. But Hansen also drew on his work for the Royal Italian
Opera. Hansen asked that for The Seasons at the Alhambra the single set should
be as capable of transformation (at least partially by lighting) as that used in the
Walkyries scene in Ernest Reyer's opera Sigurd, for which Hansen had arranged
the dancers for its British premiere at Covent Garden in 1884. He also requested
that Jacobi's music should be in the style of Amilcare Ponchielli's 'Dance of the
Hours' from La Gioconda, which he choreographed for the same theatre a year
earlier.48 Hansen then re-used or expanded some material for his creations at the
Paris Opéra.
Hansen in Paris
Hansen's two decades as ballet master at the Paris Opera appears to have been
the most settled part of his life: he travelled less extensively and, although on
the surface it may appear that he was less productive, he also choreographed
for theatres in other French cities and for specific events. Hansen was invited
to the Opéra on the strength of his reputation at the Alhambra; his creations
in London received enthusiastic notices in l'Europe Artiste and he was a rare
choreographer in the 1880s still working in the French style, Italian hallo
grande and its influence dominated much of the ballet-world. It was probably
also his skill as an arranger of opera-ballets that made him attractive to the
management. Although Hansen is sometimes blamed for the 'decline' of the
ballet at the Opera and the diminishing number of ballet performances, it should
be noted that the theatre's manager, the former baritone, Pierre Gailhard, had
no interest in developing the ballet and in many respects the ballet company
was struggling to survive. This struggle, as Guest points out in The Paris Opera
Ballet, was compounded by the destruction in 1894 of most of the sets and
costumes for ballets in a fire of the scenery store in rue Richer. Thus in twenty
years Hansen only choreographed six ballets for the French flagship theatre.
Nevertheless, Hansen also created a further half dozen divertissements and at
least thirty-five opera ballets, some more than once, and some of sufficient merit
for the divertissement to be performed independently of the opera.
In addition Hansen also choreographed productions in Paris for private
organisations, societies, special events and soirées and many of these only
received a few performances. Some of these were small in scale but others such
as Psyche et l'Amour for Versailles in 1891, and the Automobile Ballet (for a special
performance at the Opéra for the Automobile Association) in 1903, drew on
the full resources of the Opera's ballet. For the Automobile Ballet the dancers
representing different nationalities entered in 'chars automobiles', these 'chars
électriques' being created by Dion Bouton. Among Hansen's creations for special
events were Fete Russe (1893) to a selection of music by Glinka, Tchaikovsky and
Rubinstein arranged by Paul Vidal, for a Russian state visit and his survey of
dance through the ages, Danse de jadis et de naguère for the 1 900 Exhibition. This
ballet, which fell into four parts, incorporated a number of highlights from the
Opera's greatest ballets and was in many respects more a divertissement than
a complete ballet. The fact that no less that thirty composers contributed to its
score is surely a record.
Hansen was fortunate in having great ballerinas at the Opéra. Rosita Mauri
created the roles in his first works and after her retirement in 1898 she was
replaced by the young Carlotta Zambelli, who had already been groomed for
the part. There were also a strong team of secondary dancers, many, but not all,
of whom had trained at the Opéra. Hansen has been criticised for embracing the
French tradition of travesty dancers but throughout his career he balanced the
use of women 'cross-dressing' with using male danseurs. Louise Mante did indeed
play Bacchus and Tancrède the 'hero' of La Ronde des Saisons but overall his policy
was similar to that of his predecessor Louis Mérante. The difference was that
Hansen himself took character roles, while Mérante (even as he aged) preferred
when possible to be the hero. Hansen did use the popular cross-dressing of roles,
a subject that needs more serious discussion, and audiences of the day would see
nothing odd that in Le Rêve Daïta's brother, Amanichi, was danced by Josephine
Invernizzi while her fiancé Taïko was played by Miguel Vasques.
Hansen's major ballets for the Opéra were headed by La Maladetta (1893),
which, as already noted, received 176 performances, and can be thought of as
a variant of Nadia. Both shared the same triangular relationship (although here
good and evil women are rivals for the hero rather than two 'men' being rivals
for the heroine) and the scene in the Cave of Gargas paralleled the scene in
the Stalactite Cave in the Silver Mines in Nadia. In La Maladetta, the story of
which is also reminiscent of Hans Christian Andersen's The Ice Queen but set in
the Pyrenees, the evil Fée de Neige vies with Lilia (Subra) the hero's fiancée for
the love of Cadual (Ladam). Maladetta is best known today on account of the
magnificent portrait of Emma Sandrini in the role of Lilia that was painted by
Edouard Debat-Ponsan in 1902, which hangs at the Salle Gamier, Paris.49 The
Fairy of the Snow (originally danced by Mauri), like the Ice Queen, appears as
both gypsy and fairy. In the guise of a gypsy, Mauri performed the Amphora
dance' with a pot on her head, similar to the 'Manu dance' in La Bayadere.
On arrival in Paris Hansen choreographed La Tempête in three acts and
six scenes which continued the transformation of Shakespeare's plays into new
theatrical forms by composer Ambroise Thomas. La Tempête was on a large
enough scale for it to be performed independently of an opera. This ballet
106 JANE PRITCHARD
Fig. 9. Programme for Nina at the Alhambra illustrated by Lucien Besche.
was well into its planning stage when Hansen arrived at the Opéra and it was
probably really for technical reasons that La Tempête was performed alone, without
even one act of an opera, at its first four performances. A mammoth, eighteen
ton, stage-ship, rigged in 'silk and silver', had been 'constructed to bear 200
persons'.50 This was originally planned for the opening storm but in the end was
kept as the pièce de resistance for Miranda's rescue from the enchanted isle. The
libretto was by Jules Barbier; there was no Prospero allowing for full focus on
Miranda (danced by Rosita Mauri), indeed early in 1889 the title of the ballet was
Fig. 10. Rosita Mauri in Maladetta from St Paul's 29 September 1894.
announced as Miranda.51 The absence of Prospero was not dictated by the absence
of male dancers for the cast included Hansen himself as Caliban, Vazquez as
Ferdinand, and Pluque and Porcheron as Stephano and Antonio, respectively.
La Tempête opened with the death of Miranda's mother and the
circumstances of her arrival on the enchanted isle before focusing on her meeting
with Ferdinand and departure. In spite of the casting of Mauri as Miranda and
Emilia Laus as Ariel, it was the corps de ballet who had the real opportunity to
dance. They performed as bat-like spirits of the night and in an insect ballet to
108 JANE PRITCHARD
Fig. 11. Hansen's notes arranging dancers in Astarté reproduced in L'Art du Theatre, April
1901.
evoke the enchantment of the isle. It was a ballet of effects. Dragonflies appeared
to hover over the sea at the opening of a cave (inspired visually, as were so many
nineteenth century stage caves, by the Blue Grotto of Capri). In fact they were
pulled along balanced on little platforms behind four ground-rows of waves. The
designer, M. Lavastre, was the hero of the production and periodicals had a
field day describing how many of the effects were achieved.52 Thomas' score, to
coincide with the ascent of the spirit of Miranda's Mother, included a chorus
similar to that which Tchaikovsky would use in the Snowflake scene in The
Nutcracker.
•THE GREAT HANSEN1 109
Later major ballets included L'Etoile, Le Rêve and Rondes des Saisons, all of
which were received favourably. UEtoile told how the street dancing of a young
girl, Zénaide (Mauri), whose sweetheart, Séverin (Ladam), was conscripted is
seen by Vestris (Hansen) who persuades her to train as a ballerina. Although
she achieves stardom at the Opéra, Zénaide abandons her career when Séverin
returns from war a hero. Le Rêve, with its Japanese setting, was immediately
compared with Louis Mérante's earlier Tedda although its narrative had more
in common with his La Farandole. Le Rêve was indeed one of many ballets in the
late nineteenth century that picked up on the fashion for Japan. Set in Takeno,
Taiko gives the beautiful and flighty, Daïta, a chrysanthemum from the garden
of the goddess Isanami to provide her with protection. Daïta dreams she is being
seduced by an evil nobleman, Sakouma, but on waking turns to Taïko to protect
her, and the bells peal to celebrate their betrothal.
La Ronde des Saisons had certain similarities with Hansen's The Seasons at
the Alhambra-both focus on the changing seasons of the year -but the Parisian
La Ronde des Saisons had a more specific narrative, based on a Gascon legend, for
which Hansen was recognised as co-author with Charles Lomon. In the ballet,
at harvest-time, Oriel, a sprite who appears at a village festival as a peasant girl
(Zambelli), attracts the love of Tancrède (Mante). He visits the sorceress (played
by M. Vanana). Tancrède is given four floral talisman representing the seasons
which he can conjure up. Through Spring and Summer Oriel is unattainable as
a butterfly and poppy but she resumes human form and the lovers come together
in Autumn. As they embrace the fourth flower falls and the couple freeze in a
winter storm. The critics found the narrative over-complex and indeed the ballet
was an excuse to show seasonal change through dances with divertissements
for rural harvesters, birds, butterflies and flowers. Most significantly there were
seven contrasting variations for Zambelli which were much admired. Overall
the ballet was successful receiving twenty-two performances within six months
and, if only as a vehicle for the reigning ballerina, it would have probably
continued in the Opera's repertoire had not the composer, Henri Busser, been
appointed a conductor of the orchestra in May 1906 and a regulation at the
theatre preventing house conductors performing their own works.
Hansen appears to have collaborated closely with Busser when La Ronde des
Saisons was created. Busser found him a demanding task-master as Hansen was
specific in his demands. This was probably to make amends for his less successful
previous project, which had been thrust upon the choreographer. Bacchus had
been planned as an opera but, when the narrative by Mermet was not taken
up, the management of the Opéra decided it could be used for a ballet. Bacchus
appears to have been just another ballet of spectacle and processions: a vehicle for
Emma Sandrini as Yadma, an Indian princess. Yadma is loved by King Darsatha,
whose kingdom is being invaded by Bacchus (Mante). Yadma is sent to poison the
god but is seduced by him. The dance highlight, however was not for Sandrini,
but came in the divertissement, 'The Birth of the Vine'. This was led by Zambelli
as Erigone and took advantage of her strong Italian pointe-work.
110 JANE PRITCHARD
Fig. 12. Louise Mante and Carlotta Zambelli in La Ronde des Saisons.
Hansen's career can not be described as one long success. He was

unfortunate in that both the Bolshoi and the Paris Opera were moving into
periods of decline when he took up his appointments. In London, at the
Alhambra, he was luckier as his tenure coincided with one of the theatre's richest
periods for ballet. With Hansen as ballet master the Alhambra was revitalised
and its productions moved away from the more standard music-hall to a style of
post-romantic ballet more frequently seen on the Continent. As a choreographer
Hansen's career is notable for its focus on fantasy ballets or ballets reflecting an
interest in history. He could create topical works with political resonance, for
example the celebration of Fete Russe (1893) or his only obviously political ballet
for the Alhambra, Le Bivouac (1885). This military work was the only ballet by
the Hansen-Jacobi team which was initiated by the management rather than the
artists and was clearly a response to the British campaign under General Gordon
in the Sudan.
Where Hansen was more fortunate was in the ballerinas for whom he
choreographed leading roles. Throughout his career he worked with a galaxy
of stars. In Moscow his choreography established the young Lydia Geiten; in
London he presented Virginia Zucchi and Maria Guiri at the Opera House and
two Emmas, Palladino and Bessone at the Alhambra; in Paris he had Mauri
and Zambelli to interpret his choreography. Indeed it is largely because of the
attention these ballerinas have attracted that Hansen's choreography has received
any discussion since his death.
Hansen was very much a choreographer of the late nineteenth century.
He was not an innovator but a competent craftsman. He could move between
venues, respond to commissions, and create ballets that fulfilled the audiences'
demand for spectacle and escapism. Given the long runs of his work in popular
theatres, his ballets were clearly often enjoyable entertainment. Hansen is only
one figure from his generation worthy of greater recognition. Others, including
Mariquita, Katti Lanner and Carlo Coppi, who had similar international
careers and whose work combined choreographing opera-ballets and for popular
theatres, also need serious study. Lanner, Hansen and Coppi died in successive
years (1906-8) immediately before Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes exploded
onto the Parisian dance scene, transforming the presentation of ballet in Western
Europe. Yes, the Ballets Russes did conveniently fill a vacuum, but the latter part
of the nineteenth century was not a void for ballet; ballet had become a vibrant,
popular, art.
NOTES
1 . La Désirade - Danse Créole [B905 (14) sheet music published by L. Grus & cie, Paris, copyright
1906 'Réglée par M. J. Hansen (Maître de ballet de l'Opéra), Dansée par Mesdemoiselles
Meunier & Lozeron de L'Opéra', the cover shows the dancers barefoot in a 'plantation'-
style dance both holding cymbals.
2. The detailed scenario for Flirt [B 905 (19) reveals that the pantomime, set in a tirst hmpire
ballroom, was performed by Beatrice Torri as 'Une grande dame' and M. Ladam as Un
officier des Hussards.
3. The ballet, first performed after Flotow's three-act opera, L Ombre is described in the Era
1 April 1877 p. 9 as a serf's dream under the effects of opium.
4. Clive Barnes 'Ballet Perspectives 32/1 Swan Lake , Dance and Dancers December lybJ.
Barnes was drawing on Yury Slominsky (trans Anatol Chujoy) 'Marius Petipa' Dance Index
VI 5, 6 May-June 1947 p. 116. The comment comes from a letter to Sergei Khoudekoff
that Petipa wrote after he had signed a contract with Ivan Vsevolojsky as Ballet-Master-in-
Chief of the Imperial Ballet. In Chujoy's translation it reads "The direction of the Imperial
Theatres respecting my services, has renewed my contract for three years. This proves
112 JANE PRITCHARD
that my talent is appreciated in spite of the many ballet-masters, as for instance, the 'great
talent - Hansen" '. According to Slominsky Petipa had been nervous while his position was
being reassessed.
5. Garafola, Lynn. 'Where are Ballet's Women Choreographers?', Legacies of Twentieth-Century
Dance Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan, 2005 p. 216.
6. Christout. Marie-Françoise. 'Paris Opéra' in Cohan, Selma Jeanne et al (ed) Oxford
Encyclopaedia of Dance Vol.5 Oxford: O.U.P. 1998 p. 94.
7. Guest, Ivor. The Paris Opéra Ballet Alton: Dance Books, 2006 p. 143.
8. Craine, Debra and Judith Mackrell. Oxford Dictionary Oxford: OUP, 2000 p. 223.
9. Barnes, Clive. 'Books', Ballet News 5. vi December 1983 p. 40.
10. Jiirgensen, Knud Arne. The Verdi Ballets Parma: Intituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, 1995.
11. Guest, Ivor. Ballet in Leicester Square The Alhambra and Empire 1860-1915 London: Dance
Books, 1992; 'Carlotta Zambelli', Dance Magazine February 1974 pp. 52-65 and March
1974 pp. 43-58; The Divine Virginia A Biography of Virginia %ucchi New York: Marcel Dekker,
1977.
12. Powell, Kerry. The Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre Cambridge: C.U.P.
2004 p. xiii.
13. Wiley, Roland John. Tchaikovsky's Ballets Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker Oxford: O.U.P.
1985.
14. Souritz, Elizabeth. 'Joseph Hansen' unpublished paper presented at a conference in

Belgium.
15. Roslavleva, Natalia. Era of the Russian Ballet 1770-1965 London:Gollancz, 1966 p. 139.
16. For discussion of Manzotti and choreographic copyright see Lo Iancono, Concetta.
'Manzotti & Manrenco. II diritto di due autori', Nuova rivista musicale Italiana 3 July-Sept
1987 pp. 421-446.
17. Wiley p. 245 notes that in June 1893 Swan Lake and Sita's Heart were announced for
production at the Fantasia Garden, a private theatre in Moscow. Sita's Heart (an Indian
legend in nine scenes) appears to be Coeur de Sita 1 89 1 created for the Eden-théâtre, Paris.
Swan Lake was not produced.
18. Salés, Jules. Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie 1856-1970 Brussels: Havaux, 1971. This draws on
the earlier volume, Isnadon, Jacques. Le théâtre de la Monnaie depuis sa fondation jusqu'à nos jours
Brussels: Schott, 1890. Frustratingly neither consider detailing the choreographer of ballets
important.
19. Jurffensenp. 338
20. Although information is sadly lacking on Henri Justamant in most histories of ballet and
his name frequently misspelled, thanks to the survival of much of his extensive archive his
career is well documented. The only entry for Justamant in a twentieth century dance
dictionary (Barbara Cohen-Stratyner's Biographical Dictionary of Dance 1982) claims that
'there is no solid data on Justament's [sic] birth, death, or training. . . '. However the
catalogue for the sale of his notation manuscripts following his death, Catalogue de Livres
Anciens et Modernes et des Manuscrits Originaux des Ballets et Divertissements de M. Henri Justamant
Paris, EM Paul, L. Huard et Guillemin, 1893, gives an outline of his career, revealing
that he was born in Bordeaux in 1815 and died at Pare Saint-Maur in 1890. His early
choreography was created for the Grand Theatres of Marseilles, Bordeaux and Lyons
(1843-60) and between 1861-64 he was ballet master at the Théâtre royal de la Monnaie,
Brussels. From the mid- 1860s he primarily worked at popular Parisian theatres including
the Porte Saint-Martin, the Varieties, Renaissance, Folies-Bergère, Châtelet, Gaîté and
Eden-théâtre he briefly choreographed at the Opéra in 1869. His most important and
influential creations were the ballets in Offenbach's Le Voyage dans la lune at the Théâtre
de la Gaîté in 1875 He also choreographed ballets and féeries in Berlin and the Alhambra,
London.
2 1 . Jacobi collection THM/ 1 40/23. One of the highlights of La Fille de l'Enfer was the ensemble
dance for the daughters of hell for which Hansen himself designed the black and white
costumes (some for women in travesty roles) with little black boots, black masks, black
elbow-length gloves, and white powdered wigs. These are illustrated by Lucien Besche
on the Alhambra's programmes for Nina and original designs for the costumes which Era
10 October 1885 p. 10 considered 'unspeakably hideous', but Entr'acte 10 October 1885
p. 6 considered 'very effective in the midst of a luxuriance of colour'.
22. Born in Paris in 1852, Lucien Besche became a pupil of the Ecole des Beaux- Arts when
fifteen. After serving in Paris during the Franco-Prussian War he was brought to England
by Minton and Co. to paint china. He left Minton for the studios of Messrs Copeland and
Sons, where he stayed nine years creating large mural decorations, as well as china painting
proper. He obtained medals at the Vienna, Philadelphia, and Paris (1878) Exhibitions. He
became involved in theatre as a baritone but continued to paint, exhibiting a portrait Myles
Kennedy at the Academy in 1882. By 1885 he was employed to design costumes with four
productions including Le Bivouac at the Alhambra opening in London in the last three
months of the year. He became costume designer at the Alhambra for the next five years
during which period his illustrations showing his costumes for the ballets became a feature
of the theatre's published programmes. Besche also designed costumes for pantomimes,
musical comedies and other productions.
23. Collections of notated scores of ballets by Henri Justamant include those at the
Bibliothèque-musée de l'Opéra, Paris, B 217 1-37 and at the Jerome Robbins Dance
Collection, New York Public Library, Lincoln Center Dance *MGRN-Res7 3-259.
24. For further information on Hansen's Coppélia see Guest, Ivor. The Two Coppélias London:
The Friends of Covent Garden, 1970.
25. Under clause 13 of the 1843 Theatre Regulation Act, narrative was prohibited under
the music and dancing licences issued to music hall managers by magistrates and local
government. Theatres which operated under the Lord Chamberlain jealously guarded the
right to present narratives. The best source of information for understanding the impact of
the Act is Schoch, Richard 'Shakespeare and the Music Hall' in Davis, Tracy C. and Peter
Holland The Performing Century Nineteenth-Century Theatre's History Basingston & New York:
Palgrave MacMillan, 2007 pp. 236-249.
26. Pugni, Cesare and Pierre Lacotte after Marius Petipa La Fille du Pharaon DVD Bel Air
Classiques 2004.
27. 'Our Captious Critic', Supplement to the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News 1 1 December
1875 pp. 257-258.
28. Chelombitko, Galina. 'Vaclav Reisinger', Ballet in Russia 1995 pp. 39-40.
29. Now well-known line-drawings showing the death of Nikiya (Act II) and the collapse ol
the temple (Act IV) were reproduced under the caption 'Scene from "The Bayadere," a
Rusian Ballet in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News 7 July 1877 p. 384 and 25 August
1877 d. 561 respectively
30. Roslavlevap. 139.
31. Russkie vedomosti 27 January 1880 p. 3
32. Letter from Mme von Meek to Ichaikovsky 14- 15 January quoted in Wiley, Kolandjonn.
Tchaikovsky's Ballets Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker Oxford: O.U.P., 1 985 p. 60.
33. An up-to-date ballet m the late nineteenth century was one presenting contemporary me
and society. These ballets paralleled the newly developing musicals (known as musical-
comedies). In London they featured strongly at the Empire under the management of
George Edwardes, who was also a key promoter of musical comedy.
34. The opera-féerie, Le Voyage dans la lune by Jacques Offenbach in four acts and 23 scenes was
first performed at the Théâtre de la Gaité, Paris, on 26 October 1875 when the two ballets
(of Chimères and of Snowflakes) were choreographed by Henri Justamant. Loosely based
on a novel by Jules Verne, it was a great success and restaged throughout Europe launching
the fashion for snow ballets (culminating in the 'Land of Snow' in The Nutcracker). It also
inspired Georges Méliès film of 1902.
35. Benois, Alexandre. Reminiscences oj the Russian Ballet London: Putnam, 1941 p. 74
36. Pritchard, Jane. 'Perfect Bagatelles' The Choreography ol Henri Desplaces in Brussels
and London in the mid-Nineteenth Century', Association of European Dance Historians,
2004.
37. Although Katti Lanner's career at the Empire, Leicester Square, is well documented,
her work as choreographer of opera-ballet has been largely overlooked. In 1871 she
first became involved with Colonel Mapleson's Her Majesty's Opera then appearing at
114 JANE PRITCHARD
Drury Lane Theatre as ballerina. She returned to Mapleson in 1875, the year before he
established her National Training School of Ballet. She served as ballet mistress for Her
Majesty's Opera for the remainder of the decade. She was ballet mistress at Covent Garden
1885 and 1890 and for the greater part of the 1880s (certainly 1883-7 and 1890) was also
ballet mistress for the Carl Rosa Opera.
38. Sisters Elisa, Hélène and Laura Reuters danced at the Royal Italian Opera for seven
consecutive seasons 1877 to 1883 when Joseph Hansen was maître de ballet. There is very
little material readily available about these dancers beyond the works in which they danced
in respect of their work at Covent Garden but fortunately they were also employed by
continental theatres where more details of their positions and contracts are publicised
annually in L'Europe Artiste. These sources make it clear that Laura danced as premiere
danseuse noble, Elisa as premiere danseuse demi-caractère, and Hélène as seconde premiere and premiere
travestie. When not involved in the Spring season Covent Garden they filled similar positions
for opera companies in France and Belgium. For example, before their final season with the
Royal Italian Opera, they headed the ballet company at the Théâtre d'Angers of which M
Rougiers was maître de ballet and premier danseur. This was a substantial company for listings
also identify a leading mime, names six soloists in addition to mentioning both coryphées
and corps de ballet. Subsequently the trio danced for three seasons (1884-87) at Liege,
Belgium.
39. Inca and Amalfi were both choreographed by Bertrand in 1883 at the Metropolitan
which was one of a series of large-scale suburban music-halls in London with a policy
of presenting ballet during the period 1866-1884.
40. Hansen had reproduced the Parisian production of Coppélia as carefully as possibly for the
Théâtre royal de la Monnaie with Adeline Théodore as Swanilda and Josephine (Pepa)
Invernizzi as Franz on 29 November 1871 (see Jacques Isnardon Le théâtre de la Monnaie
depuis sa fondation jusqu'à nos jours 1890 p. 521). He then staged the first Russian production
of Coppélia at the Bolshoi with Lydia Geiten as Swanilda, Anna Nicolskaya (a pupil of the
ballet school) as Franz, the Stuttgart trained Wilhelm Vanner as Dr. Coppélius and Vasily
Geltser as the Burgomaster. Hansen also played the role of Dr. Coppélius in 1890 at the
Paris Opéra where he restaged the ballet in 1896.
41. Georgio Saracco, Emma Bessone and Lillie Lee led the cast in the revised Swans on
6 July 1885 and he took over the role of the hero in Melusine partnering Emma Palladino.
Saracco also worked with Hansen when he created Arlequin in Pierrot Macabre in Brussels.
The interchanging of female and male dancers in roles is another subject which has
provoked little comment. In 1 889 Saracco returned to the Alhambra to play Elio in Astrea
until his sister was available to assume the role. Saracco's career encompases becoming
ballet master/ choreographer at La Scala Milan, the Fantasia Gardens in Moscow, the
Monnaie (1900-1904) and Monte Carlo (1910-1916).
42. Other ballets of the fairy tale Melusine were created by Wirgilius Caloriego at the Teatr
Wielki, Warsaw, 20 May 1873; by Théodore Marckhl for the Royal Swedish Ballet 5 June
1882 and with a libretto by Carl Telle after Moritz Ritter von Schwind to music by Franz
DoDoler at Vienna Ooera 4 October 1884.
43. Alhambra', Daily Telegraph 21 December 1886 p. 5.
44. Alhambra', Daily Telegraph 24 May 1886 p. 3. By this date the Eden-théâtre had
presented Excelsior (1883) and Sieba (1883) both by Luigi Manzotti, La Cour d'Amour (1884)
choreographed by Achille Balbiani and Luigi Danesi's magnificent Messalina (1885). The
lituus and buccina were Roman brass instruments, the lituus a form of curved trumpet
while the buccina was about twelve feet lone curline over the shoulder in a C-shape.
45. 'Alhambra', Daily Teleeraph 24 May 1886 p. 3.
46. 'Behind the Scenes. Costumes and Coryphees', The Bat 9 November 1886 p. 7 1 1 .
47. The floor patterns and groupings for the dance for the corps de ballet are included in the
file [B 905-33 which was misidentified at the Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra, Paris, as
'Sous les palmiers de A. Pellet'.
48. Jacobi Collection THM/ 140/27 'Ce seul décor à transformation dans le genre de celui
des Walkyries de l'opéra Sigurd. La musique dans le style et la coupe du divertissement des
24 heures Gioconda\
•THE GREAT HANSEN* 115
49. Sandrini seen in the full length portrait in tutu and shawl with a mountain in the
background, took over the role created by Julia Subra. This is reproduced plate 100 in
Mary Clarke and Clement Crisp Ballet in Art From the Renaisance to the Present London: Ash
and Grant, 1978, where it is misidentified as being a portrait of Rosita Mauri who danced
as La Fée de Neige. For the correct identification see Arsène Alexandre 'Les Salons de 1902
La Société des Artistes Français', Figaro Illustrée May 1902 p. 18.
50. The Drama in Paris. La Tempête', Era 29 Tune 1889 p. 9.
51. Le Matin \ March 1889.
52. Talansier, Charles. 'Machinerie Théâtrale, Les Décors du ballet de la Tempête', Le Génie
CM Vol XV No. 9 29 June 1889 pp. 157-159.
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S[olvay], L[ucienJ. Au théâtre de la Bourse , La Nation 1 January 1886 p. 1.
S[olvay], Lfucien]. 'Au théâtre de la Bourse', LaNation 2-3 January 1886 p. 1.
Sfolvay], Lfucien]. 'Les Cygnes au théâtre de la Bourse', LaNation 24 May 1886
P. i.
THE GREAT HANSEN1 119
S[olvay], L[ucien]. 'Robert Macaire au théâtre de la Bourse', La Nation 21-22
Tune 1886 p. 1.
Solvay, Lucien. 'Le Petit Poucet au théâtre de la Bourse', La Nation 26 August
1886 p. 1.
Sfolvay], Lfucien]. 'Patrie au théâtre de la Bourse', La Nation 1 January 1886 p. 1
Souritz, Elizabeth (trans. Irene Huntoon) 'Carlo Blasis in Russia', Studies in Dance
//wforyIV2Falll993.
Souritz, Elizabeth. 'Joseph Hansen' (unpublished paper) [2000] .
Stepanov, VI. Alphapet of Movements of the Human Body. A Study in recording the
movements of the human body by means of musical signs, trans Raymond Lister from
French edition 1892 Cambridge: Golden Head, 1958.
Studd, Stephen. Saint-Saëns a Critical Biography London: Cygnus Arts, 1999.
Talansier, Ch. 'Machinerie Théâtrale, Les décors du ballet de la Tempête', Le
Génie CivilXV. 9 29 Tune 1889 pp. 157-159.
Terrier, Agnès. Le billet d'Opéra Paris: Flammarion, 2000.
Tugal, Pierre. 'Carlotta Zambelli A Witness of a Glorious Past IV , Dancing Times
May 1953 pp. 472-473.
Vaillat, Léandre. Ballets dans les operas -Nouveaux Ballets Paris: Compagnie Français
de Arts Graphies, 1947.
Valabrègue, Albin. 'Les Théâtres', L'Illustration No. 2609 25 February 1893
p. 155, 141, 151.
Valabrègue, Albin. 'Les Théâtres' L'Illustration No. 2650 9 December 1893 p. 159.
Vita, Auguste. 'Chronique Musicale. Opéra. Le Rêve', Le Figaro 10 June 1890
p. 3.
Voirol, Sebastien. 'Rosita Mauri. The Passing of a star Dancing 1 imes January
1924 pp. 409, 411.
Vuillier, Gaston. La Danse Paris: Hachette et Cie, 1898.
Walker, Kathrine Sorley. 'Georges Jacobi and the Alhambra I heatre , 1 heatre
Notebook 1.6 January 1947 pp. 82-83.
Walsh, Thomas J. Monte Carlo Opera 1879-1909 Dublin: Gill and Macmillan,
1975.
Wicks, Charles Beaumont. The Parisian Stage Alphabetical Indexes of Plays and Authors
Part IV (1851-1875) Alabama: University of Alabama, 1967.
Wicks, Charles Beaumont. The Parisian Stage Alphabetical Indexes of Plays and Authors
Part V (1876-1900) Alabama: University of Alabama, 1979.
Wiley, Roland John. Tchaikovsky's Ballets Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Nutcraker Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1985.
Wild, Nicole. Catalogues de la Bibliothèque de l'Opéra II Les Arts du Spectacle en France
Affiches Illustrées (1850-1950) Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1976.
Wild, Nicole. Décors et Costumes du XIXe Siècle Tome I Opéra de Pans Pans:
Bibliothèque Nationale, 1987.
Wild, Nicole. Décors et Costumes du XIXe Siècle Tome II Theatres et Décorateurs Pans:
Bibliothèque Nationale, 1993.
Wilson, G. B. L. A Dictionary of Ballet Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957. Third
edition 1974.
120 JANE PRITCHARD
Wolff, Stéphane. L'Opéra au Palais Gamier 1875-1961 Les Oeuvres Les Interprètes,
Paris: Stéphane Wolff, 1962.
Wyndham, Henry Saxe. The Annals of Covent Garden Theatre from 1732 to 1897
London: Chatto & Windus, 1906.
Zarubin, VI. Bolshoi Theatre Ballet Premieres on the Russian Stage 1 825-1 997 Moscow:
Ellis-Luck, 1998.
Unsigned reviews and articles in
The Bat, Daily Telegraph, The Dramatic Review Era, Entr'acte, UEurope Artiste,
Illustrated London News, Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, L Independence, Journal
Hebdomadaire Illustré Artistique et Littéraie, The Interlude, Le Matin, Le Ménestrel, Music
Hall Gazette, Pall Mall Gazette, Penny Illustrated Paper, The Stage, The Times, Topical
Times, and La Vie Moderne.
APPENDIX 1
Preliminary List of Roles Performed by Joseph Hansen
Clearly this is only a partial listing as it has not been possible to trace Hansen's performances
early in his career at the Théâtre de la Monnaie. Nevertheless it indicates the range of roles he
undertook later in his career when primarily working as a choreographer.
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APPENDIX 2
Index to Material in the Hansen Archive in the

Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra, Paris
The following table analyses the material in the Hansen Archive in the
Bibliothèque-musée de l'Opéra, Paris, which is catalogued as 'Joseph Hansen
Notes, croquis et synopses [B905 1-37'. This is stored in two box files: Box 1 files
1-17 (Aida- L'Etoile) and Box 2 files 18-37 (Les Filles de l'enfer- Variations de J,
Subra, de Mlle, Zambelli, par Mlle, Zucchi et Mlle Reuters).
The first column, 'Production by Hansen', is the title of the ballet, opera-
ballet or divertissement by Hansen for which I have identified material in the
collection. It also indicates the venue for which the choreography was created.
The next two columns give the information on material as identified by the
Bibliothèque-musée de l'Opéra. The first gives the archive reference number
and the second specifies the titles given to the files, both on the file itself
and incorporates any additional information from the card catalogue in square
brackets. The final column gives a brief description of material and provides some
indication of the information available in the archive.
Given the lack of information on the career of Joseph Hansen the cataloguer
at the Bibliothèque-musée de l'Opéra was undoubtedly faced with a difficult task.
Unless there was a clear statement that a work was choreographed elsewhere
the cataloguer has assumed the papers relate to the Paris Opéra, or at least
France. Further confusion has been created as material identified as 'Variations
pour Mile Zucchi et Mlle Reuters' was removed from its correct position in
the choreographic notes for // Ré di Lahore presumably because the cataloguer
recognised the name 'Zucchi' as that of the great Italian dramatic ballerina.
The phrase 'variations Zucchi' actually notes the position of the variation for
the Virginia Zucchi while detailing choreography for the corps de ballet in Jules
Massenet's // Ré di Lahore for the Royal Italian Opera in 1879, so the catalogue
title is misleading.
Similarly the page catalogued separately as 'Variation de J. Subra' is one
of a sequence of nine pages of sketches in red and blue pencil that, along with
notes in a music score, document the dance (Thème et Variations) for Gourouli
and her eight friends in The Two Pigeons. Julia Subra took the role of Gourouli in
Hansen's revised staging of the ballet in 1893 (Rosita Mauri had created the part
in Merante's original production). The dance shows the women manipulating
lengths of fabric to create patterns similar to those used by Frederick Ashton in
his 1960 ballet, La Fille mal gardée.
It may well be that the papers arrived at the Bibliothèque-musée de l'Opéra
in a muddled state and the archivist may have tried to restore order although
no attempt appears to have been made to match the paper, ink and style of
each set of notes. The result of this is that material on one ballet may be found
in several different files. Also material was clearly never examined in detail so
where information on more than one production was included in a notebook only
the first, or the most clearly identified title, is catalogued. It may be added that
the archival numbering of pages keeps material within a folder in a disordered
124 JANE PRITCHARD
arrangement. Although I have been able to identify more of the material than the
cataloguer, a small proportion of material remains unidentified. This includes a
pyramidal grouping with a flying dancer marked 'Théâtre de la Gaîté', and five
unidentified costume designs or working drawings for costume designs.
In my chart three titles from the Paris catalogue no longer appear. Daita
[B905- 1 0 was the working title for Le Rêve and there is no logical division between
the files. There does not appear to be any material from Les Rondes des Saisons,
the notes in [B905- 32 appear to relate to the earlier work, The Seasons, for
the Alhambra. There was some similarity between the two ballets although Les
Rondes des Saisons for the Paris Opera has a more elaborate narrative. There is
no evidence that Joseph Hansen ever choreographed a ballet of the catalogued
title, Sous les palmiers, de A. Pellet Nimes 1877. The words, 'Sous les palmiers'
on the manuscript describes the setting for a scene in Nina and confirmation of
this attribution comes from the inclusion of the names of the characters 'Juanez'
and 'Manuelita' (roles created by Mile. Marie and Lilly Lee at the Alhambra).
More information on Nina may be found in the Theatre Collections, Victoria
and Albert Museum, London, Georges Jacobi Archive THM/ 140/23.
It should be noted that some of the dating of works in the card catalogue
is misleading. 1835 is the date of the first performance of Auber's Le Cheval
de bronze at the Opéra-comique, Paris, which had nothing to do with Hansen's
choreography unless Hansen's choreography for the Monnaie was inspired by
the old Paris production. Hansen's notes for Henry VIII appear to date from
his revival of the opera ballet in 1903 rather than the first Paris production
in 1883, although it is not inconceivable that this was an adaptation of Louis
Mérante's choreography for the first staging. It must also be acknowledged that,
although the notes are probably for original choreography by Hansen, some
could be aides-memoires for productions choreographed by others that he had
worked on. In The Verdi Ballets, Knud Arne Jurgensen categorically claims that
the choreographic notes for Aida document Mérante's production without fully
acknowledging that Hansen had been involved with two productions, in Brussels
(1877) and London (staged in 1876 but revived each season from 187 7 to 1884,
except 1880, while Hansen was ballet master for the Royal Italian Opera), prior
to Mérante's production for the Opéra, Paris, in 1880.
By way of summary the Hansen Achive includes the synopses for fifteen
ballets including two, Les Bacchantes and La Vigne, for which there is no evidence
that he ever choreographed. It, nevertheless, appears that Hansen contributed
to the planning and the synopses of these ballets. Les Bacchantes, a ballet in 2
acts and 3 tableaux, based on the tragedy by Euripides had a scenario credited
to Felix Naguet and Joseph Hansen. With music by Alfred Bruneau it was
choreographed by Ivan Clustine and first performed at the Opéra on 3 1 October
1912, five years after Hansen's death. The music for La Vigne appears to have been
commissioned from Anton Rubinstein when Hansen was in Moscow. Presumably
the two collaborated on ideas for the proposed production for Hansen receives a
credit with Paul Taglioni and Charles Granmougin on the published score for Die
Rebel La Vigne printed in Leipzig. (A copy of this score is in the Bolitho collection
in the Theatre Collections, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.)
The other thirteen synopses range from very rough working drafts in
Hansen's hand with many alterations (the synopsis for Assia, created in 1881 for
the Imperial Ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, being one example) through
to neat manuscripts that appear to have come from the publishers of synopses.
The latter are Ascanio (the synopsis for which is given the opera's working title,
'Benvenuto'), Les Deux font faire from 'Dupré 3, rue de Valois', and the scenarios
for UEtoile and La Maladetta. The synopses for Les Cygnes is by Hansen for Mme
Mariquita's production at the Folies-Bergère, taking into account the restrictions
on space and the reduced number of dancers available at that theatre. Again the
information in Paris is enhanced by studying it in conjunction with the score and
other material in thejacobi Collection, London (THM/ 140/40)
Music for only five productions is included in the Hansen Archive. There
is a published waltz (No. 8) by Cesare Pugni from Koniok Gorbonok, The Little
Hump-backed Horse, which was in the Bolshoi's repertoire when Hansen was in
Moscow although there is no evidence he ever choreographed a version of it.
The archive includes published sheet music for La Dêsirade by Edmond Missa,
and Nice-Saltarelle by Jules Cohen. Both appear to have been choreographed by
Hansen although details of these divertissements have eluded me. Similarly it
has not been possible to identify where the music, Amoureuse Valse' (1900) by
R Berger for Variation for Mile Zambelli (clipped from an unidentified periodical
from 1901) was used. A full published score for The Two Pigeons, signed and
dated, 'Hansen 1893', includes Hansen's revisions for the cast for the revival,1
his changes to the mime, and his arrangement of the, 'Thème et Variation'
p. 37 which links with the sketches of the groupings for Gourouli (Mile Subra)
and her friends2 already mentioned.
The choreographic notes vary enormously in the amount of information
they include. Some are pages of fairly detailed drawings showing full tableaux
and the positioning of dancers within the setting. Others are elaborate floor
plans documenting changing groupings. Some of these use colour apparently
relating to the costumes worn by the dancers. This is certainly true of Nina
where it is known that the dancers were in pink, blue, or black and white.3
These diagrammatic drawings also indicate properties carried by the dancers.
The most detailed notes are those for opera ballets which would only receive a
few performances (in Brussels and London) but may have needed to be revived
very quickly. These have a bar-by-bar breakdown of the steps using French
terminology. The productions for which there is information about the steps are,
Aida, Carmen, La Gioconda, Henry VIII, Messidore, Le Rêve and // Ré di Lahore. Of these
only Le Rêve is an independent ballet, the others are opera-ballets. For La Gioconda
there exists sufficient information to reconstruct the 'Dance of the Hours' at least
in respect of floor-patterns and groupings. It would, however, be a challenge to
achieve the correct style for the steps and the épaulement of the dancers. There is
1 Julia Subra and Emilia Laus replaced Rosita Mauri and Marie Sanlaville repectively for this revival.
2 According to Hansen's notes the Friends were Chasles, Treliéyer, Vanoni, Messais, Rat, Régnier 2e,
Parent 2e and Mante 2e.
3 'The Playgoer' The Penny Illustrated Paper 10 October 1885 p. 23 'the tasteful and charming blue and pink
and black and white costumes ... are exceptionally bewitching'. A more detailed description is given in
G[ustace] Frédérez 'Ouverture du théâtre de la Bourse', U Independence I January 1886 p. 2.
126 JANE PRITCHARD
clear information on the steps performed and the positioning of the dancers, but
there is little information for the upper body. All that is notated is the occasional
position of the arms or where their props should be held in relation to their
bodies4.
The collection includes a few costume sketches. The draftsmanship is fairly

crude and it is not clear whether Hansen was himself contributing designs
to productions, drawing rough ideas to discuss with designers or makers, or
recording what had been put on stage. Only one of the sketches in the Opéra
archive is labelled, 'Chasseuse suite de Diana J. Hansen'. Other unidentified
'designs' show a 'Star' in a blue tutu with low-cut bodice and stars decorating her
hair; a Demon holding a trident, his costume including suggestions of an insect
or fire; an oriental king; and an Eros figure. Similarly there appear to be sketches
for properties, for example an elaborate candelabra, which could be ideas for the
dream sequence in Dresdina.
The Hansen Archive clearly does not include all the notes Hansen ever
made as diagrams were published in his life-time, the originals of which are not
in the archive. The publication of such diagrams does make it clear that there is
a direct link between the notes and the productions.
4 The six dancers representing morning are dressed in pink and carry baskets {rose avec corbeille), for day
they are in yellow with fans (jaune avec évantait), for evening mauve with stars (mauve avec étoile) and for night
blue with flock (bleu from avec pignart).
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APPENDIX 3
Index to Material Relating to Ballets by Joseph Hansen Primarily in the Jacob!

Collection, Theatre Collections, Victoria and Albert Museum. London
There is no specific file in the Theatre Collections on Joseph Hansen although,

once familiar with the titles of his ballets, material is simple to find. The Georges
Jacobi Collection includes material concerning the creations on which Hansen
collaborated with the composer, Jacobi, at the Alhambra in London. This rich
archive came to the Victoria and Albert Museum as part of the London Archives
of the Dance which developed during and immediately after the Second World
War. Jacobi's scores and related material were sold in 1 944 by John Hoare,
Jacobi's eldest grandson, to the Ballet Guild which was establishing a dance
archive. This, in turn, was absorbed the following year into the newly formed
London Archives of the Dance. Hoare chose to sell the Archive during the War
as he was both afraid of its destruction and because the family needed space with
the birth of their first daughter.
The continuing lowly status accorded to the choreographer in the late
nineteenth-century is emphasised in the way the Jacobi Collection was described
in the early twenty-first century for the Backstage catalogue, available on
the internet (http://www.backstage.ac.uk). Although the Alhambra Ballet is
mentioned, neither Hansen, nor indeed any other individual choreographer,
is identified by name in spite of the collection including autograph material
in the form of working synopses, production notes and sketches in several
choreographer's hands. The range of material includes the manuscript scores for
the ballets and the piano répétiteur. In many instances these are marked up with
details of the mimed action and it is clear which dances are performed to what
music although there are no descriptions of the actual dances. For certain ballets,
such as Cupid, Jacobi composed alternative variations for successive ballerinas.
For the majority of ballets in the Jacobi Collection the synopsis for the ballet
survives. Often these go through a succession of versions, some hand-written by
Hansen or Jacobi, others typeset. In the 1880s when Hansen was working at
the Alhambra, because the theatre was operating under the regulations of the
1843 Theatres Regulation Act, the fiction had to be maintained that the ballets
were divertissements and not narrative works. The printed versions are therefore
marked up Tor Private Circulation'. It is tempting, however, to think that some
copies of these synopses fell into the hands of the press as reviews often include
detailed descriptions of the narrative.
The material that survives often includes working papers, various drafts
of casts and roles; in some instances the names of the characters go through
a succession of changes. The notes for some ballets include a break down of
running times required for each section of the ballet. The papers, such as those for
Nadia, include examples of Hansen drawing out what appears to be his proposal
for the set and others, such as Algeria, include notes of which elements of the
set could be painted and which had to be 'practical' and so built. Some of the
scores were re-used by Hansen and often there is information on the ballets'
transfers to other theatres. Not all the material with the scores relates to ballets
choreographed by Hansen. The scores for Le Bivouac and Dresdina were reused
by other choreographers and some material stored with them relates to the
subsequent ballets.
For all the Alhambra ballets additional information, including programmes
and press clippings are located in the core theatre, Alhambra box 1883-88. Some
of the material in the core collections of programmes and photographs appears
to have been moved from the Jacobi Collection. A futher source for the study
of Hansen's creations in the Theatre Collections is the Bolitho Collection of
published musical scores. This collection was acquired by the London Archives
of the Dance in 1945 and it is interesting that the London Archives of the Dance
recognised from the start the importance of acquiring musical scores, a source of
information too often overlooked by researchers into dance history.
Algeria (THM/ 140/2)

Manuscript piano score with outline of the action.
Manuscript conductor's score with mime-line describing the action and inserted
manuscript outline of the action with diagrams and notes for the sets.
Printed galleys of libretti Tor Private Circulation'.
Andante from Algeria' manuscript piano score.
Some manuscript band parts.
The Beggar Student - ballet music for the 'Grand Ballet of Fair Folk'
(Kermess) and 'Grand Military Ballet' (THM/ 140/42)
Manuscript piano score with some details of action and dancers.
Manuscript conductor's score bound 'Kermesse /Military 2-3'.
Also 'Kermess' (THM/ 140/34)
Manuscript piano score bound with Polish Military Ballet.
Le Bivouac (THM/ 140/34)

Bound manuscript piano score 'Military Divertissement'/ Army and Navy.
Bound manuscript conductor's score with inserted stage photographs of the ballet
at the Alhambra in its form by Eugene Casati as Our Army and Navy (1889),
manuscript synopsis, list of countries to be represented, dancers required.
Outline of scenes.
Printed list of The British Army and Navy Selection detailing the marches and
airs arranged by Jacobi in the score.
Cupid (THM/ 140/ 13)

Bound manuscript piano score with outline of action score signed 'E.Jesse copyist
24/5/86'.
Bound manuscript conductor's score with inserted drafts of scenario with many
emendations including a range of suggested titles for the ballet {Night and Day,
V Amour, Cupid) and the proposed cast.
Additional manuscript orchestra scores 'Var. [Adele] Zallio' and 'Var. [Emma]
Bessone'.5
5 Adele Zallio had previously starred in New York and at the Teatro Reggio, Turin, before taking over the
role of Hebe from Lillie Lee in August 1886. She subsequently created roles in Hansen's The Seasons and
138 JANE PRITCHARD
Dresdina (THM/ 1 40/ 1 5 and THM/ 1 40/ 1 6)
Bound manuscript conductor's score with outline of action.
Bound manuscript piano score with inserted credits, cast and scenario.
Manuscript band parts.
Manuscript scenario in Hansen's hand.
Galley of scenario annotated by Hansen and a further galley with his changes
and notes, printed scenario with credits, scenes and cast.
Photograph of Dolores by Bolossy Kiralfy which opened at the Chestnut Street
Theater, Philadelphia 1 September 1887 and revived for Niblo's Garden, New
York 2 April 1888, for which Tableau III of Dresdina, The Enchanted Palace of
Dresden China and Crystal' was reworked.
Melusine (THM/ 140/42)

Bound manuscript conductor's score with inserted synopsis and outline of scenes.
Manuscript notes on Melusine in Jacobi's hand.
Manuscript outline of scenes on Hansen's notepaper (7, Torrington Square,
London, WC)
Printed programme for Melusine at the Théâtre de la Bourse, Brussels 16 April
1886.
Nadia (THM/ 140/ 17, THM/ 140/23, THM/ 140/34)

Bound manuscript piano score with change of title from Demonio to Nadia, with
outline action and inserted programme copy, and illustration by Lucien Besche.
Bound manuscript conductor's score with printed credits, cast and scenario
leaflet.
Manuscript synopsis in Hansen's hand with additional notes in a second hand.

Parts for Suite Ballets Scenes Russes [Nadia] .
Proof (?) published Divertissement Slav [the peasant dance after the wedding in
Scene 1] Paris: Choudons, 1890.
Nina (THM/ 140/23)

Bound manuscript piano score with very detailed notes on the action.
Bound manuscript conductor's score with published images of dancers and
drawing of two dancers in pen and ink and white inscribed 'C'est mieux que
rien, n'est ce pas? à l'ami Jacobi, J. Hansen 1885'.
The Seasons (THM/ 140/27)

Bound manuscript piano score.
Bound manuscript conductor's score.
Manuscript synopsis in Hansen's hand entitled Idyll and signed at Herne Bay on
25 August 1886 with details for cast.
The costume design for Mile. Paris by Lucien Besche.
Algeria. The role of Cupid was Emma Bessone's first creation for the Alhambra.She had previously danced
in Hansen's The Swans and before that starred at La Scala, Milan; San Carlo, Naples; at the Bolshoi,
Moscow and in The Lady of the Ljocket at the Empire, London.
The Swans (THM/ 140/40)
Bound manuscript piano score heavily annotated with instructions that probably
related to all four productions that used the score.
Bound manuscript conductor's score with manuscript credits, cast details.
Scores for ballets choreographed by Joseph Hansen in the Bolitho Collection

Bourne, Fernand le. L'Idole aux yeux verts 1902 THM/99/19
Bruneau, Alfred. Les Bacchantes 1912 THM/99/13
Busser, Paul Henri. La Ronde des Saisons 1905 THM/99/4
Duvernoy, Victor Alphonse. Bacchus 1902 THM/99/1 1
Ganné, Louis. Un Raseur or U Importun 1895 THM/99/22
Gastinel, Léon. Le Rêve 1890 THM/99/22
Lanciani, Pietro. Pierrot Macabre 1886 THM/99/21
Maréchal, Henri. Le Lac de Aulnes 1907 THM/99/24
Marie, William. Fresques Antiques 1905 THM/99/21
Rubinstein, Anton. La Vigne /Die Rebe THM/99/ 1 3
Saint-Saëns Camille Ascanio 1980 THM/99/22
Thomas, Ambroise. La Tempête 1889 THM/99/
Wormser, André. L'Etoile 1897 GV1790E6
DOI: 10.3366/E0264287508000157

Joseph Hansen Bale No Sec. 19

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Joseph Hansen Bale No Sec. 19

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'The Great Hansen': An Introduction to the Work of Joseph Hansen, a Forgotten European

Choreographer of the Late Nineteenth Century, with a Chronology of His Ballets

CHOREOGRAPHY BY JOSEPH HANSEN (1842-1907)

Une Théâtre Royal de la

Les Théâtre Royal de la

1 act Théâtre Gaîté

10/06/1878 Divertissement Divertissement LONDON,

24/06/1878 Prophète, Le Divertissement in Giacomo LONDON,

09/07/1878 Alma L'incantrice Carnival ballet in act Signor Vianesi LONDON,

12/04/1879 Favorite, La Ballets interpolated Geatano Donizetti LONDON,

Le Roi de Lahore Royal Italian

12/07/1879 Hamlet Ballet in opera Ambroise Thomas LONDON,

Bronze, Le Théâtre Royal

Deva ada Bolshoi Theatre

Le Lac des Bolshoi Theatre

10/05/1880 Trovatore, II Ballet in opera Giuseppe Verdi LONDON,

26/06/1880 Pré-aux-Clercs, Ballet in opera Louis Joseph Hérold LONDON,

03/07/1880 Estella Ballet in opera Jules Cohen LONDON,

08/02/1881 Aissa, Grand ballet d'action Yuly Gerber MOSCOW,

15/12/1881 Eglé/ La Bergère Mythological ballet Yuly Gerber MOSCOW,

27/05/1882 Carmen Incidental Georges Bizet LONDON,

opera Royal Italian

11/07/1882 Mephistofele Ballet in opera Arrigo Boïto LONDON,

1883 Forest Tramp, Including a Mexican Yuly Gerber MOSCOW,

02/08/1884 Black-eyed See-usan Dances in burlesque Georges Jacobi LONDON,

01/12/1884 Swans, The Grand Ballet Georges Jacobi LONDON,

18/06/1885 Voyage dans la Ballets in féerie Jacques ST PETERSBURG,

21/12/1885 Bivouac, Le Grand Military Georges Jacobi LONDON,

25/0 1 / 1 886 Templiers, Les Ballet in act 3 of Henry Litolff BRUSSELS,

18/03/1886 Pierrot Macabre Ballet pantomime Pietro Lanciani BRUSSELS,

1 6/04/ 1 886 Palais de Grand ballet Georges Jacobi BRUSSELS,

24/05/1886 Cupid Grand allegorical Georges Jacobi LONDON,

opera Grand Theatre

opera Comedy Theatre

16/05/1887 Nadia Ballet divertissement Georges Jacobi LONDON,

11/07/1887 Algeria Ballet divertissement Georges Jacobi LONDON,

28/12/1891 Thamara Divertissement in Louis-Albert PARIS,

19/05/1892 Vie pour le Tzar, Divertissement Mikhail Glinka PARIS,

23/11/1 892 Samson et Dalila Divertissement & Camille Saint-Saëns PARIS,

December Théâtre de l'Opéra

December Théâtre de l'Opéra

Les 'au ministre de. . . c

24/10/1893 Fête Russe Divertissement Paul Vidald PARIS,

16/03/ 1894e Thais Divertissement in Jules Massenet PARIS,

25/05/1894 Djelma Divertissement in Charles Lefebvre PARIS,

08/02/1895 Montagne noire, La Divertissement in Augusta Holmes PARIS,

05/03/ 1 895 Maladetta, La Ballet reproduced by Paul Vidal MILAN,

05/0 1 / 1 896 Cygnes, Les Ballet reproduced by Georges Jacobi PARIS,

02/07/1896 Hommage au Divertissement in Handel, Lully, Grande Fête de

10/11/1897 Maitres-Chanteurs de Divertissement in Richard Wagner PARIS,

La lyric poem Opéra

Revue Cercle de la rue

de naguère Fête de 5 Août

Antiques Palais des Beaux

Nations, Les Opéra

Notes for the choreochronicle

'THE GREAT HANSEN'

The nineteenth-century, Belgian-born, choreographer, Joseph Hansen (1842-

Fig. 1. Cartoon of Hansen.

only look at the work of choreographers whose ballets continue to be danced in

Primary archival material on Hansen's creations survives in major

Hansen was in his twenties in 1864 and probably well-established as a

Fig. 5. Dresdina at the Alhambra.