A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Ballet
BALLET. The ballet is a more modern entertainment even than the opera, with which it has long been intimately connected. The name seems to have been derived from the Italian ballata, the parent of our own 'ballad'; and the earliest ballets (Ballets de Cour), which corresponded closely enough to our English masques, were entertainments not of dancing only, but also of vocal and instrumental music. M. Castil Blaze, in an interesting monograph ('La Dance,' etc.; Paris, Paulin), traces back the ballet from France to Italy, from Italy to Greece, and through the Greek stage to festivals in honour of Bacchus. But the ballet as signifying an entertainment exclusively in dancing dates from the foundation of the Académie Royale de Musique, or soon afterwards. In 1671, the year in which Cambert's 'Pomone,' the first French opera heard by the Parisian public, was produced, 'Psyche,' a so-called tragédie-ballet by Molière and Corneille was brought out. Ballets however in the mixed style were known much earlier; and the famous 'Ballet comique de la Royne,' the 'mounting' of which is said to have cost three-and-a-half millions of francs, was first performed at the marriage of the Duke of Joyeuse in 1581. [ Baltazarini.] The work in question consisted of songs, dances, and spoken dialogue, and seems to have differed in no important respect from the masques of an earlier period. Another celebrated ballet which by its historical significance is better worthy of remembrance than the 'Ballet comique de la Royne,' was one represented on the occasion of Louis XIV's marriage with Marie Thérèse, and entitled 'Il n'y a plus de Pyrénées.' In illustration of this supposed political fact half the dancers were dressed in the French and half in the Spanish costume, while a Spanish nymph and a French nymph joined in a vocal duet. Other ballets of historical renown were the 'Hercule amoureux,' at which more than 700 persons were on the stage, and the 'Triomphe de l'Amour' in 1681. Louis XIV took such a delight in ballets that he frequently appeared as a ballet-dancer, or rather as a figurant, himself. For the most part his majesty contented himself with marching about the stage in preposterous costumes, and reciting verses in celebration of his own greatness. Occasionally, however, he both sang and danced in the court ballets. When in 1669 the 'Great Monarch' assumed, ostensibly for the last time, the part of the Sun in the ballet of 'Flora,' it was thought that His Majesty's theatrical career had really come to an end. He felt, however, as so many great performers have since done under similar circumstances, that he had retired too soon; and the year afterwards he appeared again in 'Les Amants magnifiques,' composed by the king himself, in collaboration with Molière. In this work Louis executed a solo on the guitar—an instrument which he had studied under Francesco Corbetta, who afterwards went to England and obtained great success at the court of Charles II. It is indeed recorded of him that in connection with 'Les Amants magnifiques,' he played the part of author, balletmaster, dancer, mimic, singer, and instrumental performer. As Louis XIV did not think it beneath his dignity to act at court entertainments, he had no objection to his courtiers showing themselves publicly on the stage. In the royal letters patent granted to the Abbé Perrin, the first director of the French Opera, or 'Académie Royale de Musique' as from the beginning it was called, free permission was given to 'all gentlemen and ladies wishing to sing in the said pieces and representations of our royal academy without being considered for that reason to derogate from their titles of nobility, or from their privileges, rights, and immunities.' The right to sing seems to have been interpreted as including the right to dance; and several ladies and gentlemen of good birth profited by the king's liberality to appear in the ballets represented at the Académie Royale. The music of Louis XIV's ballets was for the most part written by Lulli, who also composed the songs and symphonies for the dance-interludes of Molière' s comedies. The dramatic ballet or ballet d'action is said to have been invented by the Duchesse du Maine, celebrated for her evening entertainments at Sceaux, which the nobles of Louis XIV's court found so exhilarating after the formal festivities of Versailles. With a passion for theatrical representation the Duchess combined a taste for literature; and she formed the project of realising on the stage of her own theatre her idea of the pantomimes of antiquity, as she found them described in the pages of her favourite authors. She went to work precisely as the arranger of a ballet would do in the present day. Thus taking the fourth act of 'Les Horaces' as her libretto (to use the modern term), she had it set to music for orchestra alone, and to the orchestral strains caused the parts of Horace and of Camille to be performed in dumb show by two celebrated dancers who had never attempted pantomime before. Balon and Mademoiselle Prévost, the artists in question, entered with so much feeling into the characters assigned to them, that they drew tears from the spectators.
Mouret, the musical director of the Duchess's 'Nuits de Sceaux,' composed several ballets, on the principle of her ballet of 'Les Horaces,' for the Académie Royale. During the early days of the French opera, and until nearly the end of the 17th century, it was difficult to obtain dancers in any great number, and almost impossible to find female dancers. The company of vocalists was recruited from the cathedral choirs, but for the ballet there were only the dancing masters of the capital and their pupils of the male sex to select from. There were no dancing mistresses, and ladies would not under any circumstances have consented to dance in public. On this point, however, the fashion was destined soon to change. Nymphs, dryads, and shepherdesses were for a time represented by boys, who equally with the fauns and satyrs wore masks. But at last ladies of the highest position, with Madame la Dauphine and the Princesse de Conti amongst them, appeared by express desire of the king in the ballets at Versailles; and about the same time several ladies of title taking advantage of the royal permission, joined the opera in the character of ballet-dancers. The first professional ballerina of note at the Académie was Mlle. Lafontaine, who with three other danseuses and a befitting number of male dancers, formed the entire ballet company. It is not necessary to relate the stories, more or less scandalous, told of various ballet dancers—of the Demoiselles de Camargo, of Mlle. Pélissier (who, expelled from Paris, visited London, where she was warmly received in 1734); of Mlle. Petit, dismissed from the opera for misconduct, and defended in a pamphlet by the Abbé de la Marre; of Mlle. Mazé, who, ruined by Law's financial scheme, dressed herself in her most brilliant costume, and drowned herself publicly at noon; or of Mlle. Subligny, who came to England with letters of introduction from the Abbé Dubois to Locke. The eminent metaphysician, who had hitherto paid more attention to the operations of the human mind than to the art of dancing, did honour to the abbé's recommendation, and (as Fontenelle declared in a letter on the subject) 'constituted himself her man of business.' We now, however, come to a ballerina, Mlle. Sallé, who besides being distinguished in her own particular art, introduced a general theatrical reform. In the early part of the 18th century—as indeed at a much later period—all sorts of anachronisms and errors of taste were committed in connection with costume. Assyrian, Greek, and Roman warriors appeared and danced pas seuls in the ballets of the Académie Royale, wearing laced tunics and powdered wigs with pigtails a yard long. The wigs were surmounted by helmets, and the manly breasts of the much-beribboned warriors were encased in a cuirass. Mlle. Sallé proposed that each character should wear the costume of his country and period; and though this startling innovation was not accepted generally in the drama until nearly a century later, Mlle. Sallé succeeded in causing the principles she advocated to be observed at the opera at least during her own time, and so far as regarded the ballet. Mlle. Sallé's reform was not maintained even at the Académie; for about half a century later Galates, in Jean Jacques Rousseau's 'Pygmalion,' wore 'a damask dress made in the Polish style over a basket hoop, and on her head an enormous pouf surmounted by three ostrich feathers.' It has been said that Mlle. de Subligny brought to London letters from the Abbé Dubois to Locke. Mlle. Sallé arrived with an introduction from Fontenelle to Montesquieu, who was then Ambassador at the court of St. James's. This artist was, indeed, highly esteemed by the literary society of her time. She enjoyed the acquaintance not only of Fontenelle, Montesquieu, and our own Locke, but also of Voltaire, who wrote a poem in her honour. In London Mlle. Sallé produced a 'Pygmalion' of her own, which, at least as regards the costumes, was very superior to the 'Pygmalion' of Rousseau brought out some forty or fifty years afterwards. In representing the statue about to be animated, she carried out her new principle by wearing not a Polish dress but simple drapery, imitated as closely as possible from the statues of antiquity. A full and interesting account of Mlle. Sallé's performance, written by a correspondent in London, possibly Montesquieu himself, was published on March 15, 1734, in the 'Mercure de France.' 'She ventured to appear,' says the correspondent, 'without skirt, without a dress, in her natural hair, and with no ornament on her head. She wore nothing in addition to her bodice and under petticoat but a simple robe of muslin arranged in drapery after the model of a Greek statue. You cannot doubt, sir,' he adds, 'the prodigious success this ingenious ballet so well executed obtained. At the request of the king, the queen, the royal family, and all the court, it will be performed on the occasion of Mlle. Sallé's benefit, for which all the boxes and places in the theatre and amphitheatre have been taken for a month past.'
Madeleine Guimard, a celebrated danseuse at the French opera during the Gluck and Piccinni period, is frequently mentioned in the correspondence of Grimm and of Diderot. Houdon, the sculptor, moulded her foot. Fragonard, the painter, decorated her rooms, until presuming to fall in love with her it was found necessary to replace him by Louis David—afterwards so famous as a historical painter in the classical style; Marie Antoinette consulted her on the subject of dress, and when by an accident on the stage she broke her arm, prayers were said at Notre Dame for Mlle. Guimard's injured limb. Marmontel, referring to her numerous acts of charity, addressed to her a flattering epistle in verse; and a popular divine made her munificence the subject of a sermon. The chronicles of the time laid stress on Guimard's excessive thinness, and she was familiarly known as the 'Spider,' while a wit of the period called her la squelette des Gráces. The French Revolution drove numerous French artists out of the country, many of whom visited London. 'Amongst them,' says Lord Mount-Edgecumbe in his Memoirs, 'came the famous Mlle. Guimard, then near sixty years old, but still full of grace and gentility; and she had never possessed more.'
Gaetan Vestris, the founder of the Vestris family, was as remarkable for his prolonged youthfulness as Mlle. Guimard herself—who, however, instead of being 'near sixty,' was not more than forty-six when she arrived in London). Gaetan Vestris made his debut at the French opera in 1748; and M. Castile Blaze, in his 'Histoire de l'Académie Royale de Musique,' tells us that he saw him fifty-two years afterwards, when he danced as well as ever, executing the steps of the minuet 'avec autant de grâce que de noblesse.' The family of Vestris—originally Vestri—came from Florence. Gaetan had three brothers, all dancers; his son Auguste was not less famous than himself ('Auguste had Gaetan Vestris for his father,' the old man would say—'an advantage which nature refused me'); Auguste's nephew was Charles Vestris, and Auguste's favourite pupil was Perrot, who married Carlotta Grisi, and who by his expressive pantomime more even than by his very graceful dancing, enjoyed in London an amount of success which male dancers in this country have but rarely obtained. Innumerable anecdotes are told of the vanity and self-importance of Gaetan Vestris, the head of this family of artists. On one occasion when his son was in disgrace for having refused, on some point of theatrical honour, to dance in the divertissement of Gluck's 'Armide,' and was consequently sent to Fort-l'Evêque, the old man exclaimed to him in presence of an admiring throng: 'Go, Augustus; go to prison! Take my carriage, and ask for the room of my friend the King of Poland.' Another time he reproved Augustus for not having performed his duty by dancing before the King of Sweden, 'when the Queen of France had performed hers by asking him to do so.' The old gentleman added that he would have 'no misunderstanding between the houses of Vestris and of Bourbon, which had hitherto always lived on the best terms.' The ballet never possessed in London anything like the importance which belonged to it in France, from the beginning of the 18th century until a comparatively recent time. For thirty years, however, from 1820 to 1850, the ballet was an attractive feature in the entertainments at the King's (afterwards Her Majesty's) Theatre; and in 1821 the good offices of the British ambassador at the court of the Tuileries were employed in aid of a negotiation by which a certain number of the principal dancers were to be temporarily 'ceded' every year by the administration of the Académie Royale de Musique to the manager—at that time Mr. Ebers, of our Italian Opera. Mlles. Noblet and Mercandotti seem to have been the first danseuses given, or rather lent, to England by this species of treaty. Mlle. Taglioni, who appeared soon afterwards, was received year after year with enthusiasm. Her name was given to a stage coach, also to a great coat; and—more enduring honour—Thackeray has devoted some lines of praise to her in the 'Newcomes,' assuring the young men of the present generation that they will 'never see anything so graceful as Taglioni in La Sylphide.' Among the celebrated dancers contemporary with Taglioni must be mentioned Fanny Ellsler (a daughter of Haydn's old copyist of the same name) and Cerito, who took the principal part in the once favourite ballet of 'Alma' (music by Costa). Fanny Ellsler and Cerito have on rare occasions danced together at Her Majesty's Theatre the minuet in 'Don Giovanni.' To about the same period as these eminent ballerine belonged Carlotta Grisi, perhaps the most charming of them all. One of her most admired characters was that of Esmeralda in the ballet arranged by her husband, the before-mentioned Perrot, on the basis of Victor Hugo's 'Notre Dame de Paris.' Pugni, a composer, who made ballet music his speciality, and who was attached as composer of ballet music to Her Majesty's Theatre, wrote music for Esmeralda full of highly rhythmical and not less graceful melodies. In his passion for the ballet Mr. Lumley once applied to Heinrich Heine for a new work, and the result was that 'Mephistophela,' of which the libretto, written out in great detail, is to be found in Heine's complete works. The temptation of Faust by a female Mephistopheles is the subject of this strange production, which was quite unfitted for the English stage, and which Mr. Lumley, though he duly paid for it, never thought of producing. In one of the principal scenes of 'Mephistophela' the temptress exhibits to her victim the most celebrated danseuses of antiquity, including Salome the daughter of Herodias. King David too dances a pas seul before the ark. Probably the most perfect ballet ever produced was 'Giselle,' for which the subject was furnished by Heine, the scenario by Theophile Gautier, and the music by Adolphe Adam. Adam's music to 'Giselle' is, as Lord Mount-Edgcumbe said of Madeleine Guimard, 'full of grace and gentility.' The 'Giselle Waltz' will long be remembered: but we must not expect to see another 'Giselle' on the stage until we have another Carlotta Grisi; and it is not every day that a dancer appears for whom a Heine, a Gautier, and an Adam will take the trouble to invent a new work. Beethoven's 'Prometheus' is perhaps the only ballet which has been performed entire in the concert room, for the sake of the music alone. The Airs de Ballet from Auber's 'Gustave' and Rossini's 'William Tell' are occasionally found in concert programmes, and those in Schubert's 'Rosamunde' and Gounod's 'Reine de Saba' have immortalised those operas after their failure on the stage.