Apollo’s Angels

by Jennifer Homans

15. AN, AJ13 44 XI.

  16. Ozouf, Festivals, 101–2. References to these groups of women in white abound. In September 1789, one Madame Moitte led twenty wives and mothers dressed in white into the chamber of the National Assembly to donate their jewels to the nation; see Bartlet, “The New Repertory,” 116. On July 11, 1791, to transport the remains of Voltaire to the Panthéon, David led a ceremonial procession that featured twenty young girls dressed in white robes, led by Voltaire’s adopted daughter crowned with laurels and carrying a golden lyre; see Ribeiro, Fashion in the French Revolution, 96, 146. On August 9, 1793, the Opera presented Fabius, in which there was “a ballet in the middle of one act showing the women of Rome giving patriotic gifts at the temple of Saturn,” a scene which was meant to recall “the offerings made by artists’ wives and children to the National Assembly in 1789.” See Hugo, “La Danse Pendant la Révolution,” 136. See also Affiche imprimé: L’Administration Municipale du onzième arrondissement à ses concitoyens: programme de la Fête du 10 Août au Temple de la Victoire, 23 Thermidor, an 7, AN, AJ13, 50: dossier Thermidor, 50; Carlson, Theatre of the French Revolution, 189; Agulhon, Marianne into Battle, 27–33.

  17. Image held at the Bibliothèque de l’Opéra de Paris, Fêtes et ceremonies, portef. 1, dossier 4.

  18. Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie, 203.

  19. Bruce, Napoleon and Josephine, 80; Mercier quoted in Ribeiro, Fashion, 127.

  20. Milon, Héro et Léandre. Sketches of dancers are in Bibliothèque de l’Opéra de Paris, Fonds Deshayes, pièces 6 (croquis de danses de Deshayes), 7 (croquis de danses de Despréaux), 7 bis.

  21. Gardel, La Dansomanie, 8. In the 1980s the Swedish choreographer Ivo Cramer reconstructed La Dansomanie, working from two scores from an 1804 production staged by the ballet master Deland, who had been sent to Paris by Gustav III to study with Pierre Gardel. In his reconstruction of the ballet, Cramer worked from musical scores held in various Swedish libraries, in which the action of the ballet (but not the steps to the dances) had been written down bar by bar.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Journal des Débats, 25 and 27 Prairial, an 8, regretted Gardel’s turn to “trivial” themes.

  24. AN, AJ13 72, pièce 45; letter from Lucay, first prefect of the palace, to M. Bonet, director of the Opera, 7 Brumaire, an 14, AN, AJ13 73, dossier XVII, pièce 425.

  25. Pélissier, Histoire Administrative, 117 (see also 124–26 on new regulations); Mercure de France, Messidor, an X [vol. 9], 78–79. The ballet Lucas et Laurette (1803) was the subject of an angry letter from Lucay, prefect of the palace, to Morel, then director of the Opera, in which Lucay excoriated this work for its “simplicity” and “triviality,” which were an affront to the “magnificence” demanded of the first theater of the capital city of France. He summarily prohibited further performances. See AN, AJ13 52, dossier Floréal.

  26. Souvenirs of Madame Vigée Le Brun, 337.

  27. On the school, AN, AJ13 62, dossier XII, pièce 341.

  28. These episodes are detailed in AN, AJ13 64, XIV, pièce 408; AN, AJ13 87, VI, rapport du 21 Thermidor, an 12, signed by Bonet; AN, AJ13 1039, rapport de Pierre Gardel, premier maître des ballets (probably 1813), reproduced in Archives Nationales, Danseurs et Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris, 54. Examples of insubordination and disputes over roles, steps, etc. abounded; see, for example, AN, AJ13 62, XII/XV, pièce 290, in which the director of the Opera wrote to the prefect of the palace noting that after the tenth performance of a new work a dancer no longer had rights to a given role and that it was up to the Opera administration to reassign it as they saw fit. On dancers refusing to perform in order to leverage concessions of one kind or another, see AN, AJ13 62, XV/XII, XXII/XII, XIV, pièces 426 and 427, and XV/XXIV, pièces 523–45.

  29. Mémoire to Napoleon from Gardel and Milon, reproduced in Archives Nationales, Danseurs et Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris, 63–64; Gardel and Milon to the first prefect of the palace, and the prefect’s notes on the case, AN, AJ13 64, XIV, pièce 408.

  30. Noverre, Lettres (1952), 299.

  31. Bonet de Treiches, De l’Opéra en l’an XII, 55; Papillon, Examen Impartial, 11. On Jan. 11, 1807, the Journal des Débats noted that “since the elder Vestris, ballet has been denatured under the pretext of perfecting it.”

  32. Henri letter, AN, AJ13 65, IV, pièce 132; Journal des Débats, Dec. 9, 1806, 1–4; Noverre, Lettres (1807), 328.

  33. Bournonville, My Theater Life, 1:47.

  34. Le Bal Masqué. Ballet en un acte, Pierre Gardel, ms., AN, AJ13 1023: Le Bal Masqué.

  35. Journal des Débats, Oct. 2, 1818, 3; see also Journal des Débats, June 22, 1820, 4. Paul was not the only one to seem like he was flying: in 1815 Albert had been hooked up with wires and, to the astonishment of audiences, flew across the stage in the ballet Zéphire et Flore, and August Bournonville, who studied in Paris with Vestris in the mid-1820s, explained that he too was consumed with an overwhelming desire “to be able to soar while dancing … of loosing the earthly bonds—freedom!” See Bournonville, My Theater Life, 3:451. For “eternal and unbearable,” see Journal des Débats, June 22, 1820, 1–4; for “new school,” see Faquet, De la danse, 14, and Bournonville, A New Year’s Gift, 16, 26; for “dislocated,” see Goncourt, La Guimard, 249–50, quoting from a letter from the dancer Despréaux to a friend in which he laments the decline of the noble style and argues that “these outlandish movements dislocate the body and are the enemies of grace.”

  36. Report of Gardel, Milon, and Aumer, maîtres des ballets, 1822, AN AJ13 113, dossier III, and response of the administration, AN, AJ13 113, dossier V; see also mémoire from ballet masters Gardel and Milon to the director of the Opera affirming and defining the three genres, AN, AJ13 109, I; exam from 1819, AN, AJ13 III, dossier III. For a considered and determined defense of the genres, see Deshayes, Idées Générales.

  37. Noverre, Lettres (1952), 224; Guillemin, Chorégraphie, 13. For an example of the breakdown of Feuillet’s notation and the mongrel mix of Feuillet with longhand and other forms of notation, see Auguste Ferrère, ms. 1782, Bibliothèque de l’Opéra de Paris, res. 68. See also commentary by Marsh and Harris-Warrick in Harris-Warrick and Brown, eds., The Grotesque Dancer; Marsh, “French Theatrical Dance”; and the choreographic notes of an anonymous ballet master at the Collège de Montaigne, 1801–13 (Anonyme, Choregraphies début 19eme siècle, Bibliothèque de l’Opéra de Paris, C. 515).

  38. Bonet de Treiches, L’Opéra en l’an XII, 56–57; Despréaux, Terpsichorégraphie, unpublished manuscript and notes, Bibliothèque de l’Opéra de Paris, Fonds Deshayes, pièce 4; notes and sketches, Fonds Deshayes, pièces 6 and 7 bis. Bournonville published Études Chorégraphiques in 1861, and there are three manuscripts held in Copenhagen at the Royal Library: ms. autograph (incomplete) dated Jan. 30, 1848 (DKKk, NKS 3285 4o, Kapsel 1, laeg C 6); ms. autograph dated Copenhagen, Mar. 7, 1855 (DKKk, NKS 3285 4o); ms. autograph dated Copenhagen, 1861 (DKKk, NKS 3285 4o, C8).

  39. Vestris’s classes in the foyer of the Opera attracted a colorful crowd of admirers, stage mothers, amateurs, and aspiring professionals. See AN, AJ13 116, dossier III; Bournonville, Lettres à la maison, 7–12. For comments and the ongoing debate over changes in training and the new school, see École de Danse, letter from Gardel dated 1817, AN, AJ13 110, I; Remarques sur l’examen des Écoles de danse le 16 Fevrier, 1822, signed by Gardel and Milon, AN, AJ13 113, VII.

  40. What follows is based in part on my own reconstructions of the steps and dances in these and other manuscripts. Jean Guizerix, formerly of the Paris Opera Ballet, also offered insights both in conversation and in his reconstruction of dances from Saint-Léon’s notebooks for his students at the Paris Opera Ballet School. See especially, Bournonville, Méthode de Vestris, Royal Library, Copenhagen, DKKk, NKS 3285 (1) 4, c5; Bournonville, Lettres à la maison, 7–18, 94–105; Bournonville, A New Year’s Gift, 16; Blasis, Elementary Treatise; Michel (père) Saint-Léon, Cahiers d’exercises, Bibliothèque de l’Opéra de Paris, Rés. 1137 (1, 2, 3) and
Rés. 1140 (choreographies de Pierre Gardel); Adice, Théorie de la Gymnastique de la Danse Théâtrale. This last source is from a later period but refers nostalgically back to the training of Albert, Montessu, Clotilde, and others. See also Hammond, “A Nineteenth-Century Dancing Master.”

  41. Bournonville quoted in Jürgensen and Guest, The Bournonville Heritage, xiii. Consider, for example, the following Vestris exercise, as recorded by Bournonville in his Méthode de Vestris (some of the steps differ from today’s but many are recognizable): “jeté en avant, assemblé, entrechat-huit, ronde [de] jambes en l’air en dehors, assemblé en arrière, entrechat-six, sissone, deux tours en tournant, grande pirouette, trois tours à gauche fini avec un ronde [de] jambe, petit balotté, assemblé devant, ronde [de] jambe en l’air, fini en attitude.”

  42. Bournonville, Études Chorégraphiques, 1848, 7–8; the ballet master recommending sweets was Trousseau-Duvivier, Traité d’education sur la danse, ou méthode simple et facile pour apprendre sans maître les elemens de cet art, 1821, AN, AJ13 1037, dossier IV; on machines also see Adice, Théorie de la Gymnastique, 59–60.

  43. “Perrot,” Galerie Biographique des Artistes Dramatiques de Paris, 1846, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Collection Rondel, 11798.

  44. Milon established a pantomime class in 1817. See AN, AJ13 110, I and II, and AN, AJ13 109, I.

  45. Journal des Débats, Dec. 20, 1823, 1–3.

  Chapter 4: Romantic Illusions and the Rise of the Ballerina

  1. Charles de Boigne, quoted in Levinson, André Levinson on Dance, 85.

  2. This music was later used by Mikhail Fokine in his sensual ballet Le Spectre de la Rose, performed by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1911.

  3. Brugnoli may not have been the first. Geneviève Gosselin, one of the few Frenchwomen who dared imitate the “crude” distortions of the men of the Vestris school, had tried this attention-grabbing feat in Paris in 1815, but to no lasting effect.

  4. Souvenirs de Marie Taglioni, Vienne, 1822–24, Débuts de théâtre, version 3; Bibliothèque de l’Opéra de Paris; Fonds Taglioni, R21.

  5. Taglioni’s shoes are in the Theater Museum, Copenhagen, and at the Bibliothèque de l’Opéra de Paris. Injuries and the dangers of pointe work are vividly described by Adice, Théorie de la Gymnastique de la Danse Théâtrale, 180–200.

  6. Figaro, Aug. 13, 1827 (“epoch-making”); Merle, “Mademoiselle Taglioni,” 14, 55 (“a radical revolution”); Jules Janin in Journal des Débats, Aug. 24, 1832, 1–3 (“knitting”), and Sep. 30, 1833, 2–3 (“Restoration”); and Anonyme, “L’ancien et le nouvel opéra,” Bibliothèque de l’Opéra de Paris, C.6695(10), n.d., 398 (probably a chapter from François Adolphe Loève-Veimars, Le Nepenthes: contes, nouvelles, et critiques, 1833).

  7. Figaro, Aug. 13, 1827.

  8. Heine quoted in Guest, Jules Perrot, 21; Véron, Mémoires d’un Bourgeois, 3:171.

  9. Crosten, French Grand Opera, 45–46.

  10. Pendle, Eugène Scribe, 444.

  11. Images held at Bibliothèque de l’Opéra de Paris: Robert le Diable, Scènes-Estampes, Décorations par Branche, #16 and lithograph #30. Also, engraving by Andreas Geiger of the Vienna production, 1833; and M. Guyot, E. Blaze, et A. Debacq, eds., Album des Théâtres, Robert le Diable, 1837. Quotes from Mise en Scène: Robert le Diable, held at the Bibliothèque de l’Opéra de Paris, B397(4).

  12. La Gazette de France, Dec. 4, 1831, 1–4; Journal des Débats, Nov. 23, 1831, 2 (“criminal women”).

  13. Le Globe, Nov. 27, 1831, 1323; Kahane, Robert le Diable: Catalogue de l’Exposition, 58 (“the hand of death”).

  14. Pendle, Eugène Scribe, 429.

  15. Kahane, Robert le Diable: Catalogue de l’Exposition, 58, 64 (“vulgar” and “revolting”); Journal de Paris, Nov. 25, 1831, 2.

  16. My description is taken from the original scenario for the ballet: Filippo Taglioni, La Sylphide, ballet en deux actes, musique de Schneitzhoeffer, held at the Bibliothèque de l’Opéra de Paris (C559); see also Castil-Blaze, La Danse, 346.

  17. See Bénichou, L’école du désenchantement.

  18. Journal des Débats, Mar. 1, 1833, 3.

  19. Rogers, “Adolphe Nourrit”; Macaulay, “The Author of La Sylphide,” 141.

  20. These sylphides on wires could also destroy the illusion they were meant to create. In 1838 Gautier complained, “We find nothing graceful in the sight of five or six unfortunate girls dying of fright, hooked up high in the air on iron wires that can so easily snap. Those poor creatures thrash their arms and legs about with the desperation of frogs out of water, involuntarily reminding one of those stuffed crocodiles hanging from the ceiling. At Mlle. Taglioni’s benefit performance, two sylphides became stuck in midair, and no one could move them up or down. In the end a stage hand took charge and climbed down a rope from the flies to rescue them.” Gautier on Dance, 55.

  21. Restif de la Bretonne, Monument du Costume Physique et Moral, 34; Delaporte, Du Merveilleux, 121.

  22. Fumaroli, Chateaubriand, 25 (“gigantic conception”); Cairns, Berlioz, 1:58–59 (“awash in passion,” “exaggerated love,” and “imagination is rich”).

  23. Fumaroli, Chateaubriand, 544–55.

  24. Chateaubriand, Mémoires D’Outre Tombe, 1:203–4.

  25. Ibid., 212–13.

  26. Clément, Chateaubriand, 463 (“white enigma”).

  27. de Staël, Corinne, book 6, chapter 1, 91.

  28. Karl Marx quoted in Furbank, Diderot, 467; Gautier, Janin, and Chasles, Les Beautés de l’Opéra, 1–22.

  29. Gazette de France, July 19, 1840 (“Religious symbol”); Psyché, Aug. 11, 1836 (“skeptical”); Gautier on Dance, 53 (“Christian” dancer and a “woman’s dancer”). In other examples, the Journal des Artistes, Oct. 9, 1831, called Taglioni a “Christian virgin” and noted that she had “christianized” dance; Anonyme, “Mademoiselle Taglioni,” 3–7, called Taglioni “a living dream” and an “angel.” “White virgin” is from a poem by Léon Lenir in L’Artiste, n.d.

  30. McMillan, France and Women, 48, 37–39.

  31. Le National, Apr. 24, 1837 (“Invaded”). On Taglioni as a “woman’s dancer,” see the following articles (held in the Bibliothèque de l’Opéra de Paris, Fonds Taglioni, R2, 3, 8, 13, 74); Journal des Débats, Aug. 22, 1836, and July 1, 1844; Tribune, Sep. 26, 1834; La France, Apr. 24, 1837; Le Nord, Dec. 2, 1860; Comtesse Dash, “Les degrès de l’échelle” (vol. 1, chapter 16) as transcribed by Taglioni into her notebooks, R74. Also, “Notice sur Mlle Taglioni,” Journal des Femmes, March (n.d.), 1834; Jacques Reynaud, Portraits contemporains, 155–65.

  32. Maigron, Le Romanticisme et la Mode, 31, 185.

  33. Cartier de Villemessant, Mémoires, 1:76–79.

  34. Souvenirs de Marie Taglioni, Bibliothèque de l’Opéra de Paris, Fonds Taglioni, R20 (“pulled the curtain”); Album de maxims et poèmes, St. Petersburg, Bibliothèque de l’Opéra de Paris, Fonds Taglioni, R14 (including the Bremer piece).

  35. Gautier on Dance, 53.

  36. Gautier, A Romantic in Spain, 113–15; also Garafola, ed., Rethinking the Sylph.

  37. Castex, Le Conte Fantastique, 216; Bénichou, L’école du désenchantement, 504.

  38. Fejtö, Heine: A Biography, 184; Gautier on Dance, 1–2.

  39. Smith, Ballet and Opera, 172; Guest, Jules Perrot, 67.

  40. Guest, Jules Perrot, 12 (“gnome-like,” “zephyr”); Monde Dramatique, July 7, 1841.

  41. This account draws on the original scenario for Giselle, reprinted in Smith, Ballet and Opera.

  42. Smith, Ballet and Opera, 234–35.

  43. Gautier, Janin, and Chasles, Les Beautés de l’Opéra, 20; Smith, Ballet and Opera, 225, 228.

  44. Richardson, Théophile Gautier, 48.

  45. Delaporte, Du Merveilleux, 121; Gautier on Dance, 205.

  46. Hugo, Preface de Cromwell and Hernani, 103.

  47. Le Corsaire (1856) is a distant relative of the ballet we know today: current productions derive from later Russian and Soviet versions of th
e ballet.

  48. Herbert, Impressionism, 130, 104.

  49. Nochlin, Realism, 82; Herbert, Impressionism, 44.

  50. Herbert, Impressionism, 130.

  Chapter 5: Scandinavian Orthodoxy

  1. Johnson, “Stockholm in the Gustavian Era.”

  2. Jürgensen and Guest, The Bournonville Heritage, xii–xiii; Bournonville, My Theater Life, 25.

  3. Bournonville, My Theater Life, 447–48.

  4. Ibid., 26.

  5. Ibid., 452.

  6. Jürgensen and Guest, Bournonville Heritage, xii–xiii.

  7. Mitchell, A History of Danish Literature, 108.

  8. Bournonville, My Dearly Beloved Wife.

  9. Bournonville, My Theater Life, 76.

  10. Windham, ed., “Hans Christian Andersen,” 154.

  11. Ibid., 160; Andersen, Hans Christian Andersen, 331.

  12. Windham, ed., “Hans Christian Andersen,” 143, 140, 152.

  13. Bournonville, My Theater Life, 43 (on Nourrit).

  14. Ibid., 78–79.

  15. Andersen quoted in Windham, ed., “Hans Christian Andersen,” 146.

  16. Andersen, Hans Christian Andersen, 516–22.

  17. Quoted from scenario of Napoli, reprinted in Bournonville, “The Ballet Poems,” Dance Chronicle 3(4):435–43.

  18. Bournonville, My Dearly Beloved Wife, 134. The Blue Grotto scene may also have been inspired by Salvatore Taglioni (Marie’s uncle), whose ballet Il Duca di Ravenna (performed at the San Carlo Theater) also featured a grotto and naiads.

  19. Bournonville, Études Chorégraphiques, ms. autograph (incomplete), 30 Janvier 1848, DKKk; NKS 3285 4o, Kapsel 1, laeg C 6, p. 5.

  20. Bournonville complained angrily that the Viennese were accustomed to “seeing this role interpreted as a she-devil, with wild hair, half-naked limbs and flesh color that exceeded even the strongest blush of the rose.” Bournonville, My Theater Life, 222.

  21. Kirmmse, ed., Encounters with Kierkegaard, 90; Bournonville, Études Chorégraphiques, 1848.

  22. Albert to Bournonville, Feb. 1831, DDk NKL 3258A, 4, #46; Albert to Bournonville, June 7, 1838, DDk NKL 3258A, 4, #48; Saint-Léon to Bournonville, probably Oct. 4, 1853, DDk NKL 3258A, 4, #138; Duport to Bournonville, May 17, 1837, DDk NKL 3258A, 4, #341; Blasis to Bournonville, Jan. 30, 1844, and Mar. 6, 1856, DDk NKL 3258A, 4, #445 and 444.