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dance-and-dancers большая опера
dance-and-dancers большая опера
MARIAN SMITH
My first conference with the director of the Grand Opera showed me that the introduction
of a ballet into Tannhauser, and indeed in the second act, was considered a sine qua non of its
successful performance. I couldn't fathom the meaning of this requirement ... 1
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94 Marian Smith
Table 6.1 The performance schedule at the Paris Opera, January 1843
a It was not uncommon for operas to be presented only in part. For instance, the last act of Auber's
Gustave III, with its popular ball scene, was often performed by itself; so was Act III of Rossini's Moise.
Thus did the Paris Opera offer both singing and dancing at every per-
formance. Table 6.1 shows this by reproducing the schedule for January
1843.
What were the artistic ramifications of throwing together, under one
roof, so many creative artists· expert in both opera and ballet, and having
singers and dancers perform together on a regular basis; of having the
choreography, sets, costumes and machines ofopera and ballet-pantomime
designed by precisely the same people; of having the librettos and scores of
ballet-pantomime created by artists experienced in both genres? For repre-
sentative examples, one might name the composers Adolphe Adam and
Ferdinand Herold, who were particularly adept with ballet and opera
comique, or the librettists Eugene Scribe and Vernoy de Saint-Georges,
who between them supplied librettos for more than twenty operas and
ballet-pantomimes at the Opera during the July Monarchy.4
Perhaps the most obvious consequence was that ballet-pantomime and
opera had a great deal in common. For example, both favoured complicated
plots, and usually set their action in Europe and its colonies in the medieval
and early modern periods. They relied on many of the same devices and
situations, such as nobles appearing in disguise, a man loving a woman
above his station, and so forth. They made frequent use of on-stage or off-
stage musicians and featured either the corps de ballet or the chorus quite
prominently, populating the Opera's stage with the same types of minor
characters: peasants, pilgrims, soldiers, courtiers, penitents, masquers and
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95 Dance and dancers
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96 Marian Smith
Figure 13 Lise Noblet had been appearing at the Opera professionally since 1819; here, wearing
the attributes of irrationality, she dances the role of La Folie (madness, eccentricity) in Auber's
Gustave III. Drawn by Wattier, engraved by Mme Konig, 1833.
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97 Dance and dancers
Mazilier) and Betty (1846, Mazilier). As the Opera's ballet-master from 1860
to 1868, Petipa contributed choreography to the operas Semiramis (the 1860
production ofRossini's opera), Tannhiiuser ( 1861 ), La Reine de Saba ( 1862),
Don Carlos (1867) and Hamlet (1868).
Marie Taglioni (1804-84), perhaps the most famous ballerina of the
nineteenth century, astonished audiences with her highly individual style
(developed painstakingly under the tutelage ofher father, Philippe Taglioni),
marked by a lightness that seemed to challenge the laws ofgravity. Historians
have focused mainly on her ethereal qualities in the title role of La Sylphide
and her breakthrough pointe technique (to dance en pointe - 'on point' -
is to dance on the extreme tip of the toe). This technique seems to have
begun in ballet shortly before 1820. At first, no special point shoes existed;
the modern point shoe (with toes stiffened with glue) began to appear in
the 1860s. Taglioni was also well-beloved for her great skills in 'national' or
'character' dance, a sort oftheatricalised folk dance (discussed below) that
was tremendously popular in ballet well into the twentieth century;6 her
gypsy dancing in La Gitana7 caused great sensations in St Petersburg and
London. At the Opera, she created leading roles in the ballet-pantomimes
La Sylphide (1832), Nathalie (1832), La Revolte au serail (1833) and La Pille
de Danube (1836) (all choreographed by her father), and in Auber's opera-
ballet Le Dieu et Ia bayadere ( 1830), which is discussed later. She also created
important solo roles in the grand operas Guillaume Tell and Robert Ie Diable,
where she danced as Helena, the mother superior in Act III, eliciting ecstatic
responses: see p. 346.
Later dancers of 'superstar' status at the Opera, however, instead ofjoin-
ing the regular casts of new operas, confined most of their opera perfor-
mances to their own debuts (which required presentations in three separate
works) and guest appearances. In this manner dancers added new inter-
pretations to established grand operas. Fanny EIssler (1810-84: see Fig. 18,
p. 155), for example, gave a debut performance at the Opera in Gustave III
in 1834, and went on to a brilliant career at the Opera (and across Europe
and in North America), gaining particular fame for her character-dancing
(especially the cachucha, a Spanish dance calling for a highly flexible torso
and the use of castanets) and her superb miming. Charles de Boigne's ac-
count ofher cachucha is reproduced on p. 106 below. Ofher 1837 rendering
of Fenella in La Muette de Portici, Theophile Gautier wrote as follows:
rejected by the guards of the chapel where her seducer's marriage is taking
place, she sits down on the ground and lets her head fall into her hands as
she dissolves into a flood of tears. She could have been a figure by
Bendemann, the painter of Jeremiah, or one of the Trojan women of
Euripides. She was as beautiful as an antique statue. Her Neapolitan
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98 Marian Smith
costume, which was completely authentic and severe, fell in large austere
folds that were incomparably stylish ... MIle Fanny plays her role without
any show of coquetry towards the audience, concentrating entirely on her
desperate situation ... 8
A woman who appears ... to pose before your opera glasses in the glare of
eighty footlights with no other purpose than to display her shoulders,
bosom, arms and legs in a series of attitudes that show them off to best
advantage seems amazingly impudent if she is not as beautiful as [the
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99 Dance and dancers
Ballets in operas
Every four- or five-act opera at the Paris Opera featured at least one ballet,
sometimes called a divertissement, created by one of the Opera's ballet-
masters and usually featuring both solo and ensemble choreography. No
fixed rules dictated where these ballets were placed within the opera. More-
over the ballets themselves, like vocal numbers, were subject to alteration,
and were sometimes shortened if deemed less than stageworthy. They were
also subject to the tastes ofthe ballroom (see below), so that their steps were
sometimes re-choreographed to accommodate the talents of debutants or
visiting dance luminaries. Therese EIssler, Fanny's sister, made her debut
as dancer and her own choreographer in a pas de deux in the ball scene
of Gustave III in 1834, for example; Lola Montez danced L'Qllia and Las
Boleras de Cadiz in the ball scene of Don Giovanni during a brief sojourn in
Paris in 1844.
Certain rules, however, did apply to the operatic ballet. First, because
of fairly strict ideas about verisimilitude, the dancing was always externally
diegetic, that is, perceived as actual dancing by other characters. Operatic
ballets therefore were designed to arise naturally from the action (celebra-
tions of battle victories, or masked balls, for instance). The dancers, more-
over, were always of a type supposed likely to dance in real life (gypsies,
slave girls, peasants celebrating weddings, ball-goers, hired entertainers).
One observer noted the consequent analogies between social and theatrical
dance, connections which are discussed in more detail below.
It is the same on stage as it is at our society balls; the attention there is
concentrated on the dancers. One doesn't ever pay attention to the
grandmothers and the old men, because they aren't dancing at all. And if
they did dance, they would be ridiculous. To make the heroes of modern
history jump around is utterly contrary to illusion. Serious medieval topics
lend themselves even less to pirouettes and entrechats. 15
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100 Marian Smith
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101 Dance and dancers
Ecossaise
Entree du corps de ballet
61stViolins '~I!I£
Mlle Eissler ... dances a tarantella which gladdens and excites you. In turn
coquettish, fiery, witty, she portrays with wonderful intelligence that
ardent character which is found only on the volcanic soil of Italy ... 17
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102 Marian Smith
characters. In La Muette de Portici the mute peasant girl's tragic love affair
with Alphonse, the viceroy's son, plays its part in the popular insurrection
against the Spanish in the Naples of 1647. In Auber's Le Dieu et la bayadere
a mute Hindu temple dancer falls in love with a mysterious stranger who
is being persecuted by a cruel despot; in La Tentation (officially styled a
'ballet-opera'), a spectacular retelling of the Temptation of 5t Anthony, the
four principal roles are· equally divided between singers and dancers. 19 In
order to maintain standards ofverisimilitude, some of the silent characters'
gesturing was carefully rationalised, whereas such precautions were deemed
unnecessary in the ordinary ballet-pantomime: thus, Auber's bayadere had
newly moved to a foreign country and could comprehend but not yet speak
its language; his mute girl of Portici was assumed to have been silenced by
'a terrible event' (see Chapter 9 n. 22).
Though the hybrid approach to casting taken in these popular works
is not typical of the Opera's output during the whole age of grand opera,
it is nonetheless noteworthy, for it helps demonstrate further the Opera's
responsiveness to trends in the Boulevard theatres, which had often fea-
tured mute characters alongside singing (and sometimes speaking) ones in
the casts of vaudevilles, melodrames and pantomimes in the 1820s: some
are mentioned in Chapter 9. 20 The influence of opera comique upon these
mixed-cast works is also apparent, silent characters having featured therein
for some time. Hybrid casting also demonstrates that ballet and opera
characters - who, after all, shared the Opera's stage at every performance -
were comfortably capable (occasionally, at least) of face-to-face 'conversa-
tions', in which phrases ofsung recitative alternated with mime accompanied
by pantomime music. Consider, for example, the dialogue in Example 6.2
between princess Elvire and Fenella, in which the latter is asked to identify
her betrayer. In this case the rhythm of the pantomime music offers the syl-
labification and expression of the text that the silent character is conveying
Example 6.2 Auber, La Muette de Portici, Act I scene 5: Fenella mimes: 'He who deceived me ...
he who gave me this scarf ... he who betrayed me ...' Elvire: 'Well? Who is the guilty one?'
Fenella (pointing): 'It is he!'
ELVIRE
FENELLA points out ALPHONSE
II ~ ~, ...
- ~
~
~
Eh bien? Le cou - pa - ble? C'est lui!
g .,..
~1±.
--:
GrebesITa l ~
.•. r.
~
r I
t
~ ....
t
//~
~
I
~ - ...
~ ~-i
['C'estlui!']
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103 Dance and dancers
in gesture ('C'est lui' ['It is he']), a musical tracing of unspoken text. This
technique was often used in ballet-pantomime.
Later, as the ballet-pantomime gave way to more abstract danced works,
and ballet characters broke away from the practice of conveying specific
words, they ceased to share a language with opera characters. So subsequent
opera-ballets (e.g., Rimsky-Korsakov's Mlada (1892) and Stravinsky's Le
Rossignol (1914)), though few in number, tended to cast ballet dancers
as other-worldly spirits, or birds, or shades; as creatures incapable of and
uninterested in language, instead ofas flesh-and-blood humans who readily
communicated with characters who intoned language. Yet, clearly, it still
made sense around 1830 at the Opera to create ballet characters who shared
a language with singing characters. The strong presence of mute characters
at the Opera - appearing every night in ballet or ballet-pantomime and
often using elaborate gestures to convey ideas - helped make this sort of
mixed casting feasible.
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104 Marian Smith
the great success obtained at the last Carnival [i.e. the appearance of the
four Spanish dancers in January 1834] gave rise to the idea of seeking a new
success with an array of national dances of the different peoples of Europe,
and in some local dances from our southern provinces. Thus we will see
[at a Carnival ball] the execution, by the top ballet dancers of the Opera,
led in turn by MIles Taglioni and Eissler, of the pas styrien, the mazurka,
the bolero and the fandango from Andalusia, Neapolitan tarantellas and
dances of the Languedoc region, las Treias and 10 Chibalet ... 24
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105 Dance and dancers
Figure 14 'A regular at the Opera' (anonymous artist, November 1844): as a season-ticket
holder he is permitted to go backstage and stands in the wings. Other images similarly
published in L'Illustration show regulars sitting in their boxes, armed with even bigger
binoculars.
the Jockey Club and other men, and frequently mentioned in the press.
Theophile Gautier memorialised the phenomenon thus:
And how attentive everyone is! Look at them levelling and focusing their
binoculars, not those light country binoculars that fit into a jacket pocket,
but large military binoculars, twin monsters, optical howitzers that will
make future generations think we were a race of giants!26
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106 Marian Smith
Even the gauzy below-the-knee Romantic tutu, the costume of sylphs and
Wilis which is often read today as a symbol of purity, served quite the
opposite purpose in some nineteenth-century erotic literature, as Tracy C.
Davis has pointed out. 27 (National' costumes, too, could strike the spectator
as erotic. Consider this description of Fanny EIssler's cachucha by Charles
de Boigne:
Those swayings of the hips ... those provocative gestures, those arms
which seemed to reach out for and embrace an absent being, that mouth
which asked to be kissed, the body that thrilled, shuddered, and twisted,
that seductive music, those castanets, that unfamiliar costume, that short
skirt, that half-opening bodice, all this, and, above all, EIssler's sensuous
grace, lascivious abandon and plastic beauty were greatly appreciated by
the opera-glasses of the stalls and boxes ... 28
In any case, the managers of the Opera capitalised on the sex appeal of the
danseuses by admitting members of the Jockey Club and sele~ted male pa-
trons (deputies, peers, upper ministerial employees, journalists, (in a word ...
all the people whose relationships could be useful or at least' agreeable' to
the Opera director29 ) to the foyer de la danse, the warm-up"studio where
the female dancers stretched their bodies before curtain-up. In this cosy
space, wealthy and powerful men could make the acquaintance of their
favourite danseuses, flirtations sometimes playing themselves out in more
private venues under a system of (prostitution legere'.
Indeed, many female dancers found prostitution ('legere' or otherwise)
tempting because, without outside income, many ofthem were too destitute
to pay for food, fuel and lodging. 3o Of the many dancers at the Opera, only
the (premier sujets' were paid well. So inadequate were the corps dancers'
salaries, in fact, that many of them suffered from malnutrition. (Most
dancers at the Opera came from the lower classes or from theatrical fam-
ilies and, sadly, were accustomed to such harsh working conditions.) As
Julie Daubie's famous study of poor women in France (La Femme pauvre
au XIX e siecle, 1869) had concluded, during the mid-nineteenth century
women could not achieve financial independence even when working full-
time, because they were so terribly underpaid. That women working on the
stage had an opportunity to attract patrons, and hence increase their income,
was widely recognised. Daubie even accused powerful French government
officials of habitually expending government funds (supporting the arts'
by patronising actresses and dancers, and accused dance teachers of telling
their young female students: (Your art consists of poses and provocations
which should have a powerful effect on the senses of the spectators: 31
Yet, no matter how repugnant the Opera's overt salesmanship of the
danseuse's sexuality, it need neither obscure the practical reasons for their
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107 Dance and dancers
sometime prostitution, nor suggest (as it did to Wagner) that ballet at the
Opera was meritless as art. For dancing and pantomime were as crucial to
the Opera's success as was singing. And if we wish to recapture from our
distant vantage point some sense of the spectators' experience at this house
during the age of grand opera, and their generally warm regard for dance, it
is crucial to recognise not only the prestige conferred upon ballet by long-
standing French tradition, and the dramatic power of ballet-pantomime
(a genre well appreciated by the Opera's audience), but the close kinship
between ballet and social dance - a kinship which could make the ballet
divertissements within grand opera familiar, accessible and welcome.
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