Mime, Music and Drama on the Eighteenth-Century Stage: The Ballet d'Action

Mime, Music and Drama on the Eighteenth-Century Stage The Ballet d’Action The ‘ballet d’action’ was one of the most su...

Author: Edward Nye

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Mime, Music and Drama on the Eighteenth-Century Stage The Ballet d’Action

The ‘ballet d’action’ was one of the most successful and controversial forms of theatre in the early modern period. A curious hybrid of dance, mime and music, its overall and overriding intention was to create drama. It was danced drama rather than dramatic dance, musical drama rather than dramatic music. Most modern critical studies of the ballet d’action treat it more narrowly as stage dance, and very few view it as part of the history of mime. Little use has previously been made of the most revealing musical evidence. This innovative book does justice to the distinctive hybrid nature of the ballet d’action by taking a comparative approach, using contemporary literature and literary criticism, music, mime and dance from a wide range of English and European sources. Edward Nye presents a fascinating study of this important and influential part of eighteenth-century European theatre.

edward nye is Fellow of Lincoln College and Lecturer in French at the University of Oxford. His research centres on the eighteenth century and on artistic aesthetics in particular, and he is also interested in the history of ideas across centuries and national borders. He is the author of Literary and Linguistic Theories in Eighteenth-Century France (2000), the editor of a volume of literary reflections on dance, Sur Quel Pied Danser? Danse et Littérature (2005) and the editor of a scholarly anthology on the literature of cycling, A` Bicyclette (2000).

Mime, Music and Drama on the Eighteenth-Century Stage The Ballet d’Action

edward nye

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107005495 c Edward Nye 2011

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2011 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Nye, Edward. Mime, music and drama on the eighteenth-century stage : the ballet d’action / Edward Nye. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-107-00549-5 (hardback) 1. Ballet – Europe – History – 18th century. 2. Theater – Europe – History – 18th century. 3. Pantomime – Europe – History – 18th century. 4. European drama – 18th century – History and criticism. 5. Music – Europe – 18th century – History and criticism. I. Title. GV1643.N94 2011 792.8094209033 – dc22 2011009504 ISBN 978-1-107-00549-5 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For Fanny

Contents

Acknowledgements [page ix] A note on references [xi]

Introduction [1] part i. the ballet d’action in historical context [7] 1. The voice and the body in the Enlightenment [9] Sign language and the dogma of the voice [11] ´ ee’s innovations [17] L’Ep´ Theories of the origin of language [22] Warburton and hieroglyphs [24] Condillac’s action language [27] Rousseau’s language of the passions [30] Herder, hearing, and the gateway to the soul [34]

2. A revival of ancient pantomime? [38] Differences and misunderstandings [39] The balance between mime and dance [43] The appeal to heart and mind [49] Thematic affinities [53] Origins [59]

3. No place for Harlequin

[62]

Generic differences [63] The French foire [69] The ‘arte’ of expressive body language [72] The influence of reformed Commedia [76] The mixed backgrounds of choreographers [81]

4. Decroux and Noverre: Distant cousins? [84] Eighteenth- and twentieth-century renewal [84] Use of the body [87] Mask and face [89] Mime and dance [92] Mime and language [95]

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Contents

Deprioritising language [100] Objective and subjective mime [102] Towards a vocabulary of the passions [106]

part ii. the ballet d’action in close-up: dramatic principles [113] 5. Character and action

[115]

An early innovator: Françoise Prévost [116] Weaver, Sallé, and connected character [120] Later developments and problems [123] Literary reflections of dance and character [127] The poverty of instruction books [132]

6. Dialogues in mime

[140]

The challenges [141] The expectations [144] The methods [147] Performative language [150] Operatic ensemble singing [154]

7. Choreography is painterly drama

[162]

‘Chorégraphie’: a metaphor for drama [163] ‘Die Corographie’: a plot synopsis [168] Angiolini and Noverre’s quarrels [170] From painterly to graphic [177]

8. The admirable consent between music and action (co-author ruth d. eldredge) Synchronising music and movement Beyond synchronised music [193] Médée et Jason [194] Médée et Jason in context [204]

9. Putting performance into words

[188]

[208]

Programmes are controversial [209] Multi-purpose programmes [211] Programmes as paratexts [216] Programmes are inherently controversial [225]

Conclusions: What is dance? What is mime? Appendix [233] Select bibliography [305] Index [324]

[229]

[185]

Acknowledgements

The research for this book is based on a wide range of library and archive material from various countries which I would not have been able to gather without two generous and invaluable sources of funding: a British Academy Travel Grant, and a series of research grants from the Michael Zilkha Fund, Lincoln College, Oxford. Chapter 8 would have been impossible without the expertise and shrewd insights of my co-author, Ruth D. Eldredge, Brigham Young University. My thanks go to Ilona Svetlikova of the Russian Institute of History of Art, St Petersburg, Russia, who was my guide through St Petersburg libraries, and to Susanne Scheiblhofer and Geoffrey Gosby for their assistance with Viennese sources. Thanks, also, to Dr Claudia Nitschke with whom conversations on the subjects involved in this book always proved enlightening. I am grateful for permission to reproduce parts of the following articles: Edward Nye, ‘Choreography is narrative: The programmes of the eighteenth-century ballet d’action’, in Dance Research, 26.1 (2008), pp. 42–59. Edward Nye, ‘Dancing words: Eighteenth-century ballet-pantomime wordbooks as paratexts’, in Word and Image, 24.4 (2008), pp. 403– 412. Edward Nye, ‘The eighteenth-century ballet-pantomime and modern mime’, in New Theatre Quarterly, 25.1 (2009), pp. 22–43. Edward Nye, ‘Le petit-maˆıtre dansant et le caractère de la danse: Les héritiers de la Bruyère au dix-huitième siècle’, in Sur Quel Pied Danser? Danse et Littérature, ed. Edward Nye (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2005), pp. 137–156. Edward Nye, ‘De la similitude du ballet-pantomime et de l’opéra a` travers trois dialogues muets’, Voltaire Foundation, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (2005: 06), pp. 207–222. I am also grateful to the following institutions: The University of Warsaw Library, for permission to reproduce Louis Boquet, ‘Lutteurs’, costume design for Jean-Georges Noverre’s ballet

ix

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Acknowledgements

d’action La Mort d’Hercule, in Louis Boquet, Habits de Costume pour L’Exécution des Ballets de M. Noverre, dessinés par Mr Boquet, dessinateur des menus plaisir du Roi de France, Royal Collection, Vols 795–805 (801), costume no. 31 The Bibliothèque Nationale de France for permission to reproduce JeanBenjamin de La Borde, ‘Ballet pantomime’, from Ismène et Isménias (Paris: Lemarchand, 1770), Act II, pp. 15–47.

A note on references

Reference to Noverre’s Lettres sur la Danse are either to the first edition, Lettres sur la Danse, et sur les Ballets (Lyon: Delaroche, 1760), or, when quoting from later editions that Noverre published during his lifetime, to the modern edition, Lettres sur la Danse et les Arts Imitateurs (Paris: Lieutier, 1952). Attribution of anonymous works to Ange Goudar, or works published under the name of his wife, Sara Goudar, is made according to the findings of Francis L. Mars in ‘Ange Goudar, cet inconnu’, Casanova Gleanings, 9 (1966), pp. 1–64.

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Introduction

Eighteenth-century spectators found the ballet d’action slightly bizarre. It was a wordless performance, lasting sometimes more than an hour, of some of the greatest works of literature, theatre, and mythology staged, not in the street fairs where the bizarre was cheek-by-jowl with the conventional, but in the most revered theatres of Europe. The musical accompaniment was sometimes complex and unmelodic, and the more conventional dance scenes did not always provide enough relief from the effort of understanding the mimed scenes. And yet spectators and theorists were thrilled that at last dance had become ‘expressive’, that it was more than ‘motion without meaning’, and that it had joined the pantheon of so-called ‘imitative’ arts, those arts which were a reflection of something profound within us and which therefore had something to say about human nature. The ballet d’action was, for the eighteenth century, ‘modern dance’. The ballet d’action was very much an Enlightenment phenomenon, produced in the context of the eighteenth-century intellectual, cultural, and artistic concern with the importance of reason, sentiment, and the need to question conventions. It thrilled audiences because it seemed to make rational sense of otherwise meaningless dance steps, because it was powerfully emotive, and because it challenged established practices of stage dance. Throughout this book, therefore, the practice and reception of the ballet d’action is placed in the context of contemporary ideas about the aesthetics of the arts. Given the scale of the eighteenth-century phenomenon of what was variously known in different countries as ‘pantomime ballet’, ‘ballet d’action, ‘ballo pantomimo’ or ‘Ballettpantomime’, it is odd that it is omitted from modern histories of mime. As a rule, they start with ancient Greek mime and Roman pantomime, continue with medieval ‘jongleurs’, then go on to the tradition of the Court Masque and the Commedia dell’arte in the early modern period, at which point they leap to the famous nineteenthcentury white-faced Pierrot, before reaching the father of modern mime ´ in the twentieth century, Etienne Decroux. Perhaps it is one half of this hyphenated art, the ‘ballet’, which has encouraged historians of dance rather than historians of mime to claim it as their own. Most forms of mime,

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Mime, Music and Drama on the 18th-Century Stage

however, are conceptually hyphenated, even if the name they conventionally go by does not necessarily reveal as much, so there is no reason to exclude the ballet d’action on the grounds that it is not ‘pure’. Part I of this book rectifies this omission. Part II is the corollary of Part I, since it explains the ballet d’action primarily in terms of drama rather than dance. The underlying hypothesis is that the ballet d’action emphasised drama in the manner of twentieth-century luminaries such as Martha Graham or Pina Bausch, rather than prioritising dance in the style of seventeenth-century ‘ballet de cour’ or nineteenthcentury Romantic ballet. The difference of emphasis was manifest in many ways, not the least of which was the persistent and novel contemporary tendency of referring to performers as ‘actors’ rather than ‘dancers’, and to compliment their acting skills as well as their dance technique. As with many innovations, there was, and still is in modern criticism, a certain ambiguity about where it starts and stops. From our point of view, this makes the object of study sometimes difficult to define precisely. This is most evident in the range of names for the genre in different countries which we mention above, and also in the bewildering variety of permutations of these names used in contemporary reviews and in subtitles to works. ‘Heroic ballet’ is the most well known to modern critics, but there are dozens more, such as ‘tragic ballet’, ‘tragi-heroic ballet’, ‘heroic pantomime’, ‘tragedy in pantomime’, ‘drama-ballet-pantomime’, and so on. On closer inspection of the works and their reception, however, there is more similarity than the terminology might suggest. The eighteenth-century propensity to invent a variety of names arose from a tendency to try to make the ballet d’action fit into a concept of the arts based on genre, when in fact it was not so much a genre in itself as a dramatic practice. It would be better to understand it as a translation of works from different literary, theatrical, or mythological genres into the language of mime and dance. In this sense, it was an artistic parasite, and like the most successful parasites it was capable of adapting to different hosts: spoken drama, opera, poetry, history, or ancient mythology. Original themes were rare. In order to shed light on common aesthetic principles which could become obscured by the bewildering contemporary terminology, I have chosen to use the French contemporary term which spread to a certain extent to other countries, and is frequently used by modern critics: the ballet d’action. Not only does the object of study appear unclear for terminological reasons, but the extant evidence is, from some points of view, thin. It is unlikely that the ballet d’action was ever transcribed, as the noble dance of court and theatre was transcribed in Beauchamp–Feuillet notation. The

Introduction

only evidence to the contrary is a manuscript of a series of works by Auguste Ferrère, dating from 1782, but the unique nature of this manuscript means that it is a moot point whether it represents common or idiosyncratic practice.1 With this one exception, therefore, it is impossible to reconstruct the ballet d’action, and impossible to adopt a narrowly empirical method of study. It was an intensely visual, physical art which nevertheless left almost no evidence of exactly how it was performed. This may be a blessing in disguise, since it was based on a matter of principle as much as practice. It prioritised ‘expression’ and ‘meaning’ over and above technique, and it is therefore important to understand the underlying principles of the genre, not only how, in practice, it was performed. At the heart of eighteenthcentury reforms was the rejection of a purely ‘mechanical’ conception of dance which would reduce it to steps and movements easily catalogued and reproduced. Hence, even if more transcriptions or even instruction books came to light, they would not necessarily be the best means to do justice to the spirit in which the ballet d’action was conceived and performed. The iconographic evidence is more problematic than useful. In the first place, it is scarce in comparison with other visual, physical arts such as the Commedia dell’arte for which researchers have an embarrassment of iconographic riches. Secondly, it brings with it interpretative difficulties common to much early modern theatrical iconography. It tends to depict static moments, which is especially unenlightening in the case of an art such as the ballet d’action which was characterised mostly by speed and movement and only partly by static poses. It is an interesting and challenging task to hypothesise on the basis of the picture of a moment what the sequence of movement might have been, or whether the moment depicted was ever part of a sequence in the first place, but this is a complex issue worthy of independent study, and quite beyond the subject of this book. There are too many existing studies of historical dance that take too much for granted on this subject, and too many specialised studies of theatrical iconography which have shown how much space one needs to do justice to it.2 A 1

2

Auguste-Frédéric-Joseph Ferrère, ‘Partition et Choreographie Ornée des figures et habillements des Balets donnee Par Auguste, frederick, Joseph, ferrere. A Valenciennes en 1782’ [sic throughout], Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Opéra, Rés 68 MSS. See Marian Hannah Winter, The Pre-Romantic Ballet (London: Pitman, 1974), p. 164; and Chapters 7, 8, and 9 in The Grotesque Dancer on the Eighteenth-century Stage. Gennaro Magri and his World, ed. Rebecca HarrisWarrick and Bruce Alan Brown (University of Wisconsin Press, 2005). See Thomas F. Heck (ed.), Picturing Performance: The Iconography of the Performing Arts in Concept and Practice (University of Rochester Press, 1999), particularly Chapter 3.4, ‘Theatre iconography: Traditions, techniques, and trends’, by Robert Erenstein, who discusses the challenge of interpreting iconography in terms of Benedetto Croce’s three steps to evaluation: ‘verify, contextualise, be well versed’ (p. 139).

3

4


contemporary example will serve to make the point. When Noverre’s star pupil, Charles Le Picq, performed the part of Apollo in London in 1782, a reviewer compared one particular moment in the performance to the painting by Joshua Reynolds of David Garrick standing between the figures of Tragedy and Comedy.3 The reference is presumably to Reynold’s Garrick Between Tragedy and Comedy (1760–62), one of the artist’s allegorical portraits of actors which was not primarily intended to reflect Garrick’s stage practice. If the reviewer was aware of this, then he meant to draw an analogy between Le Picq and the principles of painting set out in Reynold’s Discourses. If he was not, if he thought like so many of his contemporaries that Garrick was a model for mime dancers, then he meant to draw an analogy between the acting styles of Le Picq and Garrick. The ambiguity means that a modern researcher could choose either to make an in-depth interpretation of the reviewer’s analogy based on cultural context and the conventions of painting, or else make a straightforward comparison between the poses in Reynold’s painting and Le Picq’s stage performance. The first option would be beyond the scope of this book, and the second would clearly be inadequate. What evidence is there, then, which allows us to study the ballet d’action? The most closely related to performance is annotated musical scores, usually in manuscript, used by composers and choreographers to time the music to the action. Given the difficulties inherent in using some other evidence of performance such as iconography, given the almost complete absence of choreographic transcriptions, it is curious that annotated scores have not received more attention by modern critics. One can more easily understand why modern critics have made relatively little use of the largest source of performance-related evidence: performance programmes. They often contained a synopsis of the plot, but they were written in so many different styles, and used in so many different ways by choreographers and critics, that it is hard to judge which styles and uses are a reliable insight into the ballet d’action. This difficulty, however, turns out to be an important sign of how innovative the ballet d’action really was. The diverse styles and uses of programmes suggest that a lot of effort was made to explain and justify the ballet d’action. Programmes were attempts to bridge the gap between an innovative form of fast-moving, visual theatre and the sometimes more conventional expectations of spectators. 3

See the Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser, Monday 6 May 1782, column ‘Operatical intelligence’. Le Picq was dancing in Noverre’s Apollon et les Muses at the King’s Theatre.

Introduction

In contrast to these two under-used sources, the writings of certain choreographers or theorists have been over-used, notably Noverre’s Lettres sur la Danse and Cahusac’s La Danse Ancienne et Moderne. Both have received disproportionate attention in modern criticism, as if the ballet d’action were purely a French phenomenon, and as if Noverre’s pronouncements in particular could be taken for granted. The gap between what Noverre wrote and what he and others performed is not a new observation. At the height of the Europe-wide success of the ballet d’action, Johann Friedrich Schink commented that ‘traditional pantomime’ was disappointing after reading Noverre’s book, but then so too were Noverre’s productions.4 Even though Noverre’s book was a landmark in many ways, it needs to be interpreted alongside other contemporary material, notably the writings of his rival Gasparo Angiolini and, most importantly, the profusion of writing by spectators in books, periodicals, journals, and private letters all over Europe. This book therefore draws substantially on contemporary reception in a number of countries. We are lucky in the sense that the ballet d’action was sufficiently controversial that it provoked a great deal of contemporary discussion. Controversy, however, brings its own difficulties of interpretation. As Sonnenfels pointed out in 1768, the problem with eighteenth-century criticism was that it often followed a herd instinct,5 and it is difficult in retrospect to judge the extent to which the consensus was justified. The ballet d’action also attracted the opposite problem of maverick critics such as Ange Goudar, who took manifest pleasure in mocking and satirising contemporary dance and music. His comments often touched a contemporary nerve, but they were also frequently idiosyncratic. Whether consensual or maverick, contemporary criticism can obviously not be taken at face value. Comments by individuals are best judged in the context of comments by as many other contemporaries as possible, making the need to go beyond prominent figures such as Noverre and Cahusac all the more necessary. The evidence for the ballet d’action would only be thin, therefore, if we were to insist on a fairly empirical methodology, the kind often applied to ‘danse noble’ for which the scholar can refer to contemporary transcriptions in Beauchamp–Feuillet notation. On the contrary, it is rich if we take an 4 5

Johann Friedrich Schink, Dramaturgische Fragmente. Erster Band (Graz: mit von Widmannstättenschen Schriften, 1781), pp. 61 and 74. Joseph von Sonnenfels, Briefe u¨ ber die Wienerische Schaubühne, ed. Hilde Haider-Pregler (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1988), p. 294 (entry for 17 December 1768).

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approach more common to the study of the history of ideas, comparing and contrasting available sources of different kinds and different provenances in order to identify the underlying concepts of the ballet d’action rather than the physical practice of it. Thus, we can understand some of its principles by considering it in the light of contemporary developments in acting, theatre, opera, music, and the aesthetics of the arts in general. In this way, we can discuss motives and intellectual driving principles of the ballet d’action, even if we can hardly discuss what they actually did on stage. Although this is less straightforwardly empirical than some schools of research, it is nevertheless different to the approach taken by researchers in the field of cultural studies, who have brought about a renewal of interest in dance research since the 1980s. This book is mostly about aesthetic history rather than ideology or socio-political agendas. It is about how the mute body in motion was admitted into the pantheon of high arts rather than how that same body might have borne the marks of contemporary ideology. It does not contradict the primary premise of cultural studies, which is that culture is not neutral and that the arts do not exist in a sociopolitical vacuum. It would be a brave early modernist indeed who would deny any complicity between art and politics in the Ancien Régime, and Chapter 1 does, in fact, suggest some of the ideological background to the ballet d’action. Nevertheless, this book sets out to do what cultural studies often chooses to avoid: to discuss the object of study as much as possible in terms of what mattered to contemporary eighteenth-century observers rather than what matters to us. Studying the past is a little like translating into another language: similar-looking words in different languages do not necessarily have the same meaning, and neither do similar-looking artistic phenomena. Before we translate the word or phenomenon into our own language, we need to ask the question ‘what did it mean to them?’. There is a tendency not to do this in many cultural studies approaches to mime and dance; too many conclusions are based on undetected faux-amis. This book emphasizes the need above all to consider the object of study in its contemporary context and in its historical perspective. In other words, it is important to understand the ballet d’action in terms of its intimate contemporary relations and in terms of its antecedents and successors. Studying the ballet d’action in both a diachronic fashion in Part I and a synchronic fashion in Part II is a way of identifying its particular aesthetic characteristics and the particular reasons why contemporaries thought it was an important new form of artistic expression.

part i

The ballet d’action in historical context

1

The voice and the body in the Enlightenment

The ballet d’action was one of those artistic phenomena which was as popular as it was controversial. It is easy to attribute its popularity to a heightened contemporary interest in the expressive body, but less easy to explain the controversy it provoked. There are analogous trends towards the expressive body in related arts, such as Garrick’s physical acting, or in different arts, such as the libertine novel, or in different domains, such as Diderot’s philosophical materialism.1 Such is the momentum of interest in the body and its expressive potential in the eighteenth century that the popularity of a new somatic art, the ballet d’action, seems trivial. It would seem to be part of an obvious tendency. The ballet d’action may indeed be part of a conventional contemporary interest in the body, but it was also acutely controversial because it did something which no other somatic art form did: substitute the body entirely for the voice. No matter how expressive body language seemed to some, others thought that eliminating the words from classics of contemporary theatre fundamentally undermined them. It turned great theatre into a dumb show. The ballet d’action presented an audience with the almost unique spectacle in theatre and literature of mute heroes and heroines. Unlike literary blindness, there are few examples in art or literature of heroic muteness. The ballet d’action was unusual in that it muted the greatest heroes and challenged the spectator to watch them with undiminished appreciation. For some spectators, voiceless heroes and heroines seemed deprived of their fundamental characteristics. Don Juan was less of an atheist freethinker without his calculated eloquence. Medea was not quite the witch that she could have been if she could not verbally curse her unfaithful lover and his mistress. The Elder Horace did not have the same uncompromising sense of honour if he could not verbally wish his son had died in defence of Rome. Mute heroes seemed dispossessed of their heroic qualities.

1

For a survey of the subject, see Angelica Gooden (ed.), The Eighteenth-century Body: Art, History, Literature, Medicine (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2002).

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The underlying reason why mute heroes challenged the aesthetic preconceptions of the eighteenth century was because they also challenged ideological principles. There was, perhaps always had been, and arguably still is a considerable tendency to associate the spoken word with the rational mind, as if one were a necessary and unique sign of the other. The folk metaphysics of the voice as an ‘expression’ of a rational mind is persistent and powerful, partly because it often goes unnoticed, disguised as the more abstract-sounding ‘language’ when in fact the examples we tend to give of ‘language’ are almost always articulated language. What other grip could we get on language if not its external manifestation in articulation? The problem with this is that it leaves those without articulated language also without reason. They are ‘dumb’, in more senses than one. In order to understand that the resistance in the eighteenth century to mute drama was ideological as well as aesthetic, we will draw a parallel in this chapter between the ballet d’action and the contemporary development ´ ee. He was by no means the of sign language for the deaf by the Abbé de L’Ep´ first in his field, but his pedagogical approach was unparalleled for its openmindedness and freedom from ideological distortion. He recognised that the improvised system of manual signs used by untutored deaf mutes (what modern deaf signers call ‘home sign’) was a genuine language. He learnt it in order to converse with deaf mutes in their own terms; subsequently used it as the basis of his more elaborate, ‘artificial’ system of signs which he taught to his deaf pupils; and, in the process, dispensed almost entirely with the need to teach lip-reading or articulation. He thus challenged his contemporaries to consider the humanity of a dumb signer, just as the ballet d’action challenged audiences to consider the virtues of a dumb hero. ´ ee’s challenge was refuted by some of his most eminent contempoL’Ep´ raries. Kant, whose succinct essay ‘Was ist Aufklärung?’,2 is doubtless one of the most forceful eighteenth-century statements of the ‘intellectual maturity’ which modern philosophical man had reached, also claims elsewhere that the deaf mute can never reach intellectual, enlightened maturity; he or she can only attain an ‘analogue’ of reason, not reason itself. Without speech, he or she is not entirely human.3 Herder concurs, relating an unsubstantiated anecdote about a deaf mute, incapable of the most basic rational 2

3

Immanuel Kant, Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? (1784). Translated in James Schmidt (ed.), What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996). Immanuel Kant, Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, ed. Reinhard Brandt (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 2000), p. 45. Translated by Robert B. Louden, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (Cambridge University Press, 2006).


reflection, who sees a butcher killing a pig, and later, in imitation, dispassionately disembowels his own brother.4 Like many others in the eighteenth century, Kant and Herder did not accept that a language of manual signs, ´ ee, was a true language, and they therefore refused such as that taught by L’Ep´ to believe that it could be the expression of a rational mind. In the process, they dispossessed deaf mutes of their humanity. The ballet d’action, sign language, and also contemporary theories of the origin of language have often been interpreted by modern scholars as symptomatic of eighteenth-century intellectual support for somatic expression. They are, in fact, double-edged, revealing as much about the ideological primacy of the voice as they do contemporary interest in the body. Sign language and the ballet d’action are two powerful ways of challenging what Derrida calls ‘phonocentrism’.5 They do so implicitly by affirming that spoken words are no different from written words and somatic language: all are representational gesturing. They also do so explictly by claiming for themselves some of the authenticity and naturalness which is so often associated with oral language. In effect, they have their cake and eat it: they would deprive the dogma of the spoken word of its defining characteristic, and at the same time claim that the principle of naturalness defines their somatic languages.

Sign language and the dogma of the voice The analogy between mime and sign language in the eighteenth century ´ ee’s system tended to be used to criticise rather than endorse them. L’Ep´ of manual signs was mocked by his major contemporary rival in France, Jacob Rodrigues Pereira (often known by the French spelling of his name, ‘Péreire’), who called it ‘comic pantomime’, with the clear implication that his own emphasis on articulation was a more serious method.6 Ange Goudar, who wrote more extensively on the ballet d’action than almost any of his contemporaries did, compared it unflatteringly with sign language, 4

5 6

Johann Gottfried Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, ed. Martin Bollacher, in Werke, 10 vols (Frankfurt am Main: Deutsche Klassiker Verlag, 1985), Vol. VI, p. 139. Translated by T. Churchill, Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man (London: J. Johnson, 1800). ´ Jacques Derrida, De la Grammatologie (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1967). ´ ee, Institution des Sourds et Muets par la Voie des Signes Méthodiques: See Charles-Michel de l’Ep´ Ouvrage qui Contient le Projet d’une Langue Universelle, par l’Entremise des Signes Naturels Assujettis a` une Méthode (Paris: Nyon l’Ainé, 1776), p. 119.

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contending that mime dancers are more mute than deaf mutes who have developed a sign language.7 The unfavourable analogy continued into the nineteenth century. The 1824 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica contends that the crude, imprecise native language of the deaf is the ‘language of pantomime’, and that it cannot be relied upon to express abstract ideas or to cultivate the intellect of the deaf.8 In contrast, practitioners of sign language and of the ballet d’action ´ ee rejected Péreire’s comrefused to see any analogy between the two. L’Ep´ parison and substituted for it one with more noble contemporary implications: the proficient signer uses gesture with as much subtlety and dignity as ´ ee’s sign language is a system a pulpit orator.9 Noverre pointed out that L’Ep´ of conventional symbols which needs to be taught, and therefore has no theatrical application unless one were to provide classes for spectators to ´ ee and Noverre learn the meaning of the signs.10 It is no surprise that L’Ep´ did not seek mutual support, since they were equally under siege from those who believed in the fundamental primacy of the voice. It is as if the deaf signer and the mime dancer shared the stigma of muteness, and each feared association with the other’s stigma. They, along with Péreire, Goudar, and the author of the Encylopaedia Britannica article are in effect agreed that sign language and the ballet d’action ought to be different. When we explore the relation between these two somatic arts more objectively, however, we find that there are significant parallels. There are potential similarities in technique. It is impossible to make a detailed comparison, since there is so little extant evidence, but even a ´ ee’s seminal eighteenth-century book on teaching cursory reading of L’Ep´ the deaf brings to light suggestively theatrical aspects of sign language. The sign for ‘love’, for example, would work on stage: ‘the right hand is placed strongly on the mouth, while the left is on the heart, and the right hand 7

8

9 10

[Ange Goudar], Supplément au Supplément sur les Remarques de la Musique et de la Danse, ou Lettres de Mr G . . . . a` Milord Pembroke (n.p.: n.p., 1774), pp. 82–83. Goudar often wrote anonymously, semi-anonymously (as he does here), or under the name of his wife, Sara. ‘Deaf and Dumb’, Supplement to the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 6 vols (Edinburgh: A. Constable & Co, 1824), Vol. III, pp. 467–479. John Rée suggests that the author, whose initial is given in the article as ‘W.’, may be Thomas Watson, the founder of the first charitable school for the deaf in England, and an opponent of manual signs. See Jonathan Rée, I See a Voice: A Philosophical History of Language, Deafness and the Senses (London: Harper Collins, 1999), p. 224n. ´ ee, Institution des Sourds et Muets, p. 123. L’Ep´ Jean-Georges Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse et les Arts Imitateurs (Paris: Lieutier, 1952), p. 16. This letter appears in the St Petersburg edition (1803–04, Vol. II, letter 7), and the last Paris edition (1807, Vol. I, letter 9), but not in the first edition of 1760. Translated by Cyril Beaumont, Letters on Dancing and Ballets (Alton: Dance Books, 2004).


´ ee based his is then strongly placed on the heart, over the left hand’.11 L’Ep´ systematic sign language on the readily understandable manual expression which deaf mutes developed for themselves, their ‘home sign’, so one might expect it to share some features with the somatic language of the ballet d’action which, according to choreographers, also derived to some extent from customary or ‘natural’ gesture. The biggest difference would have been that mime dancers used the whole body, while deaf mutes, according ´ ee’s descriptions, used hands and face. to L’Ep´ Most significantly of all, the ballet d’action and sign language shared an important, fundamental principle: somatic expression is autonomous; body language can be rendered fully meaningful without the support of articulated words. The raison d’être of the ballet d’action, according to its major practitioners and many contemporary critics, was to transform the ‘meaningless’ movements of contemporary stage dance into a meaningful dramatic art by incorporating mime and narrative principles into it. The contention was that a complete narrative action could be recounted without the use of words. In effect, mime dancers forcefully asserted the creation of a new theatrical language, or at least its recreation, since they were aware of precedents. The critical opposition they encountered was almost always based, fundamentally, on the belief that somatic expression was an inadequate substitute for the articulated language of theatre, including opera. It could not convey anything like the same complexity of meaning, and it hardly deserved the name ‘language’ at all. The dogma of the voice was not usually made explicit, but it is implicit in the comments of many critics cited in this book that a story cannot properly be recounted without words. For such critics, the success of the ballet d’action must be measured in terms of its ability to achieve whatever is possible in spoken theatre; no more, no less. If it could not match the effects achievable by speech, it was considered weak. If it created effects which speech could not, they were considered redundant. Not surprisingly, the ballet d’action suffered by the ´ ee derives from the same comparison. Much of the criticism directed at L’Ep´ implicit assumption. The prejudice in favour of the voice has a long history. It has philosophical roots which one can appreciate most succinctly in the meaning and use of a key term in ancient Greek philosophy, ‘logos’. The basic, non-technical meaning relates to speaking, but ancient philosophers attached a variety of more abstract meanings to it. For Heraclitus in the sixth century BC, it was the divine order of the cosmos; for Aristotle, it meant an argument 11

´ ee, Institution des Sourds et Muets, p. 73. L’Ep´

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from reason (rather than from emotion or ‘pathos’, or on moral grounds, ‘ethos’); for the Stoics in the two centuries before Christ, it meant the active reason pervading the universe and present in all matter.12 In these and many other cases of modern as well as ancient philosophy, it is speech which has a privileged relation to mind, spirit, or whatever we like to think of as those abstract, non-material faculties with which humans and gods are usually thought to be uniquely endowed. The assumption is often made unquestioningly by even the most thoughtful of philosophers. In the early modern period which concerns us here, Thomas Hobbes devotes a chapter to speech in his Leviathan, in which he proposes a unique relationship between speech and the mind, ‘understanding being nothing else, but conception caused by Speech’. Implicitly, he excludes deaf humans as well as explicitly animals from understanding: ‘If Speech be peculiar to man (as for ought I know it is), then is Understanding peculiar to him also.’13 The dogma of the voice is also religious. If speech is considered a divine gift, all human beings may be thought to need it in order to fulfil the creator’s plan, and indeed the Catholic Church’s will that its members should confess their sins, orally, to a priest. If speech is considered one way in which man is made in God’s image, God who, according to the Hebrew and to most translations of the Old Testament Bible, ‘said “Let there be light”’, and ‘said “Let there be a firmament”’, creating the world in a series of oral commands, then human beings must speak, also. Those who are speechless are defective divine images, less than human, closer to the ‘dumb animals’ than to God’s elect. It is the shared fate of sign language and the ballet d’action at the hands of this dogma which makes a comparison of the two mutually revealing. Until the eighteenth century, the ultimate aim of teachers of the deaf was ´ ee made almost invariably to teach them to speak. When, in the 1760s, L’Ep´ sign language the primary aim of his teaching, he unwittingly defied two centuries of oral methodology. In the process, he undermined the dogmatic idea held, implicitly or explicitly, by his predecessors that mental under´ ee himself never standing and speech are intimately, uniquely related. L’Ep´ put it in these terms, perhaps because he did not seem to be aware, as far as we can tell from his published pronouncements, of the dominant oral methodology in the history of deaf teaching. Others did put it in these terms

12

13

‘Logos’, in F.E. Peters, Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon (New York University Press, 1967); K.F. Johansen, ‘Logos’, in Encyclopedia of Classical Philosophy, ed. Donald Zeyl (London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997). Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London: Penguin, 1985), p. 109.


for him. De Gérando, the French philosopher and prototypical anthropologist who wrote a report on the national school for the deaf founded by ´ ee, comments on the history of deaf teaching that: L’Ep´ It has been supposed that speech and the sounds of the human voice are endowed with a mysterious virtue which makes them the living and natural expression of thought and feeling. Vague concepts from Plato on the relation between language and ideas have been deployed. The old metaphor, or rather equivocation, which gives the word ‘logos’ the dual sense of speech and reason, has been treated by some as if it were deeply meaningful.14

He goes on to point out that misconceptions about the voice are evident, not only in the word ‘logos’, but in modern words in French such as ‘langue’, meaning both ‘tongue’ and ‘language’, as if language were a product solely of the tongue. This polysemic fusion of what are arguably two distinct meanings is at least as old as the Latin ‘lingua’ from which French ‘langue’ (and English ‘language’) is derived, but the confusion is more widespread than the Romance languages: English ‘tongue’, Russian ‘iazyk’, and Hebrew ´ also carry both meanings. ‘lashon’ Such misconceptions have a long pedigree in the history of deaf teaching. The first innovator in the modern era in teaching language to the deaf and dumb was the sixteenth-century Spanish Benedictine monk, Pedro Ponce Leon, who encouraged his pupils to use senses other than hearing to develop a preliminary awareness of language (they could watch speakers and touch their throats to feel the vibrations of speech), but the final objective was that they should learn to articulate words.15 In the seventeenth century, his compatriot Juan Pablo Bonet published the first ever book on the education of the deaf in which he made a crucial contribution to the field by defining a ‘finger alphabet’ or dactylology, allowing the deaf to spell out words. Bonet’s intention, however, was not to teach manual signs as the primary language of the deaf. His dactylology was intended only as a secondary system of language for pupils who could not write, in order, in the end, to teach them to vocalise. Even teachers who had less confidence than Leon and Bonet did in the oral method did not, as a result, prioritise sign language. The Scottish linguist George Dalgarno had a healthy suspicion of vocalisation as a primary objective, but as a result he limited his teaching of the deaf to 14 15

´ Joseph-Marie de Gérando, De l’Education des Sourds-Muets de Naissance, 2 vols (Paris: Méquignon l’Ainé Père, 1827), Vol. I, p. 16. For a general history of the teaching of the deaf and dumb which discusses de Leon and others we mention below, see Rée, I See a Voice (1999), particularly pp. 97–206 for the history up to the end of the eighteenth century.

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reading the written word from the page and spelling using his own form of dactylology. The fundamental linguistic flaw in the oral method was inadvertently pointed out by Dalgarno’s contemporary John Wallis, Oxford Professor of Geometry. His pupil Daniel Whaley could articulate, read the written word, and, most revealingly, imitate the speech of a Polish speaker. Wallis never claimed that his pupil could understand the sense of the Polish he repeated, which begs the question of how much Whaley understood of the English he articulated. He was never able to speak or argue on his own account. The question did not seem uppermost in many people’s minds, however. An English doctor visiting the school of the seventeenth-century Dutch speech therapist Johann Conrad Amman was very impressed with the ability of one of his congenitally deaf pupils to speak and read out from Dutch and Latin texts, but did not stop to consider whether the pupil understood all that she said or read. The oral method dominated the eighteenth century as much as it did the seventeenth. Thomas Braidwood established a successful academy for ´ ee, his direct the teaching of the deaf in Edinburgh in 1760. Like L’Ep´ contemporary, he made considerable efforts to learn the untutored sign language, or ‘home sign’, of his pupils, but his subsequent objectives were to teach written and articulated language. In 1792, his nephew, Thomas Watson, established the first charitable school for the deaf in England, ´ ee’s rival in Paris, the basing his pedagogy on his uncle’s principles. L’Ep´ Portuguese Jew Péreire, was a confirmed oralist. We know this from the autobiographical essay published by his star pupil, Saboureux de Fontenay (the first ever publication by a deaf mute) in 1764, in which he explains that his master’s method depended on a strict rule forbidding the use of gestures and obliging pupils to express themselves in French.16 The obsession with articulation meant that some teachers of the deaf in the eighteenth century would go to extraordinary lengths to avoid a manual system of signs and to focus all their attention on the mouth. ´ ee engaged in a long and intense correspondence with Samuel Heinicke L’Ep´ in Leipzig, who never explained his methods in great detail, but who seems to have taught ‘sounds’ by relating them to taste, using a feather to put different tastes on the tongue: sharp vinegar for the letter ‘i’, extract of 16

Saboureux de Fontenay, ‘Lettre de M. Saboureux de Fontenay, sourd et muet de naissance, a` Mademoiselle ∗∗∗ , Versailles, le 26 décembre 1764’, in Suite de la Clef ou Journal Historique sur les Matières du Tems [Journal de Verdun] (1765), pp. 284–298, 361–372. Translated and reproduced by Harlan Lane and Franklin Philip in The Deaf Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), pp. 14–27.


wormwood for ‘e’, pure water for ‘a’, sugar water for ‘o’, olive oil for ‘u’, and mixtures for diphthongs.17 Curiously, Heinicke claimed that this allowed him to teach speech ‘directly’, without reference to signs or writing. He must have thought that stimulating the tongue would stimulate language at the same time. For all their apparent eccentricity, Heinicke’s methods are indicative of the widespread oral prejudice in the teaching of the deaf and dumb. The least one can say of the oral principles of teaching of the deaf and dumb is that they were persistent, despite the manifest flaw that producing the physical, articulated word does not in itself constitute more linguistic ability than a parrot has. Even though one has to recognise that Ponce de Leon’s first steps in the sixteenth century were a phenomenal recognition for the first time that it was possible to educate the deaf and dumb at all, there are indications that the oral method was a dogma rather than solely a practical pedagogy. It is in this oral linguistic culture that the ballet d’action developed in the eighteenth century. It is perhaps not surprising that the ballet d’action provoked a strong critical reaction.

´ ee’s innovations L’Ep´ The dogma of the voice inspired the first ‘querelle’ or public debate about the relative merits of articulation and signing, and the first ever published ´ ee’s most writings by the deaf. The star pupil, Saboureux de Fontenay, of L’Ep´ high-profile contemporary rival, Péreire, published an autobiographical essay in 1765 in which he expressed a great deal of scepticism about the exclusive use of sign language. He recounts how, before being taught by Péreire, he was taken under the pedagogical wing of a certain Father Vatin who used signs and drawings to teach him the rudiments of the Christian religion. It was only later, under Péreire’s tuition, that de Fontenay realised how ineffective Vatin’s use of visual and manual signs had been: I thought that God the Father was a venerable old man residing in the sky, that the Holy Ghost was a dove surrounded by light, that the Devil was a hideous monster who lived beneath the earth, and so on. My ideas about religion were concrete, physical, and mechanistic.18

17 18

Heinrich Stötzner, Samuel Heinicke. Sein Leben und Wirken (Leipzig: n.p., 1870), pp. 53–54. Saboureux de Fontenay, ‘Lettre de M. Saboureux de Fontenay, sourd et muet de naissance’, in Lane, The Deaf Experience, p. 25.

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Pictures and visual signs in general are apparently ineffective because they convey physical rather than abstract ideas. De Fontenay argues at some length that abstract meaning is the hardest aspect of language learning for the deaf, and his experience convinces him that it is not best served by a system of manual signs. It is Péreire’s emphasis on articulation which led de Fontenay to be able to understand, in retrospect, what such abstract notions as ‘God’ or ‘Holy Spirit’ meant. Although de Fontenay does not mention ´ ee explicitly, his scepticism with regard to visual signs is likely to be a L’Ep´ veiled criticism of him. ´ ee responds in his seminal Institution des Sourds et Muets par la Voie L’Ep´ des Signes Méthodiques, published a decade later. In his view, de Fontenay and Péreire significantly underestimate the linguistic nature of the sign ´ ee sought language which deaf mutes invent for themselves, and which L’Ep´ to systematise. He devotes a chapter, ‘Article IV’, to the issue raised by de Fontenay of abstract ideas in sign language: ‘How metaphysical ideas are expressed in methodical signs.’ His method was to teach signs for abstract ideas by reference to their simpler component ideas. He analysed abstract ideas into their constituent meanings. In order to teach the word ‘belief’, for example, he divides it into four components: the mind says ‘yes’, the heart says ‘yes’, the mouth says ‘yes’, the eyes have not seen.19 The proficient, dexterous signer could express this four-part sign in ‘the blink of an eye’.20 ´ ee If the pupil did not understand one of the constituent signs, then L’Ep´ would analyse it, too, into its component parts. In theory, he could continue this process of semantic analysis until he reached those basic sensory signs which deaf mutes had already invented for themselves, although he states he never had to go this far.21 ´ ee’s analytical approach is partly what he meant in the title of his L’Ep´ work by ‘methodical’ signs. He sought a systematic semantic approach which would not only teach deaf mutes to use signs, but teach them their meaning clearly. Philosophically and linguistically, he is certainly ambitious, perhaps even na¨ıve, to assume that he would accomplish one of the most difficult and enduring tasks in the philosophy of language, clarifying language usage; more specifically, clarifying the meaning of words for abstract ideas. Relative to his critics, however, who never seemed to question whether they had adequate understanding of language use in their own, articulated languages, ´ ee was anything but na¨ıve. If his critics had taken more account of L’Ep´ 19 20 21

´ ee, Institution des Sourds et Muets, p. 79. L’Ep´ ´ ee, Institution des Sourds et Muets, p. 81. L’Ep´ ´ ee, Institution des Sourds et Muets, p. 78. L’Ep´


contemporary philosophers such as Condillac, or indeed seminal ones such as Locke, or Ancient ones such as Plato and Aristotle, they would not have ´ ee, in taken for granted that speakers understand abstract language. L’Ep´ contrast, had all the suspicion of language and the intellectual humility that Locke recommended in his two chapters on the clarity of language in ´ ee’s principles of breaking An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. L’Ep´ down complex ideas into their component simple ideas is exactly the solution proposed by Locke in most of the instances he cites of the obscurity of language: ‘the precise collection of simple ideas [must be] settled in the mind, with that sound annexed to it, as the sign of that precise determined ´ ee resolved to break down complex ideas as collection, and no other’.22 L’Ep´ far as they would go if this was what was needed to make their meaning clear. This is also Locke’s objective, but because he was a Sensationist philosopher, he proposed to go one step further, as far as the sensation which is the origin of each simple idea: ‘the only sure way of making known the signification of the name of any simple ideas, is by presenting to his Senses that subject, which may produce it in his mind and make him actually have the idea, that word stands for’.23 Locke is also aware of the common prejudice in favour of articulated ´ ee is of articulated language, language. He is just as suspicious as L’Ep´ since complex ideas often seem to us to have been mastered by the mere fact that abstract words appearing to stand for them can be confidently pronounced: Wisdom, glory, grace etc. are words frequent enough in every Man’s Mouth; but if a great many of those who use them, should be asked, what they mean by them? they would be at a stand, and not know what to answer: A plain proof that though they have learned those Sounds, and have them ready at their Tongues end, yet there are no determined ideas laid up in their minds.24

´ ee’s between the ‘tongue’ There is no confusion in either Locke’s mind or L’Ep´ in our mouths and ‘tongue’ in the sense of ‘language’; the physical mastery of the first is no guarantee that the second is intellectually mastered. The first often disguises the fact that abstract ideas are not understood, or indeed difficult to express, and produces what Locke calls ‘noise without any Sense or Signification’, ‘nothing but bare sounds’.25 One imagines that he would 22 23 24 25

John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), Book 3, Chapter 11, §14 (p. 515). Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book 3, Chapter 11, §14 (p. 515). Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book 3, Chapter 10, §3 (p. 491). Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book 3, Chapter 10, §26 (p. 505).

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have found absurd Heinicke’s obsession with stimulating the tongue to encourage speech – even dangerous, given the harm he thinks is done by the wilful and ideological distortion of language. According to Locke, speech gives the impression of rational discourse by a rational mind, but it is sometimes an ‘abundance of empty unintelligible noise’.26 He would not be taken in by the equivocal use of ‘logos’, meaning simultaneously ‘speech’, ‘language’, and ‘reason’. Speech has no privileged relationship to ideas; Locke is not an ‘oralist’. ´ ee’s contemporaries, the philosopher Etienne ´ The most Lockeian of L’Ep´ ´ Bonnot de Condillac, attended L’Epée’s public demonstrations incognito in order to question both teacher and deaf pupils.27 He emerged from the experience convinced not only that sign language is the equal of articulated language, but that it is intellectually superior because it is a philosophical education in itself. Condillac felt vindicated, because he had speculated thirty years earlier that a purely gestural language was possible. In his essay inspired by Locke’s Sensationist philosophy, Essai sur l’Origine des Connaissances Humaines, he had proposed that the first language to develop in primitive human societies must have been an ‘action language’. He had also pointed out, as Locke had done before him, the semantic failings and abuse of language, and the need, therefore, to analyse ideas closely.28 Far from being incapable of expressing abstract ideas, therefore, Condillac thought that sign language was better at it than articulated language. Evidently, Condillac did not regard himself as an oralist. The criticism that sign language was inherently physical and could not ´ ee’s express complex, abstract ideas nevertheless continued, despite L’Ep´ book, and despite the intervention of Condillac. It is in the nature of dogma to be immune to rational argument and practical demonstration. In 1779, ´ ementaire the Abbé Claude-François Deschamps published his Cours El´ ´ d’Education des Sourds et Muets after a number of years’ experience of teaching the deaf and dumb in Orléans. According to Deschamps, the only way to equip the human soul with the means to understand the abstract ideas in religion and morality was to teach reading, writing, and speech. There was no other way to eternal salvation. He strongly disapproved, therefore, 26 27

Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book 3, Chapter 10, §4 (p. 492). ´ ´ Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, Cours d’Etudes pour l’Instruction du Prince de Parme, in Œuvres

28

Philosophiques de Condillac, ed. Georges Le Roy, 3 vols (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1947–51), Vol. I, pp. 429n–430n. ´ Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, Essai sur l’Origine des Connoissances Humaines (1746; Paris: ´ Editions Alive, 1998), seconde partie, section seconde, Chapter 2 (pp. 277–287). Translated by Hans Aarsleff, Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, 2001).


´ ee’s emphasis on sign language on the grounds that it confined the of L’Ep´ deaf to a purely physical, sensory experience of the world.29 ´ ee’s pupils, Deschamps’s criticism provoked a reply from one of L’Ep´ Pierre Desloges, whose essay in 1779 was only the second publication by a deaf mute (after Saboureux de Fontenay’s fifteen years earlier). He takes Deschamps to task for a number of inconsistencies, but is most incensed at his refusal to believe that the abstract concepts involved in religion are beyond sign language. Deschamps had claimed that the deaf mute will confuse the signs for ‘firmament’ and ‘God’, because the sign for both involves indicating the sky. Desloges is adamant, however, that the two would never be confused in sign language, since the sign for ‘God’ also involves a facial air of adoration and respect. In modern linguistic terminology, we would say that Deschamps mistakenly assumed that semantically non-essential or ‘paralinguistic’ devices in his own language (such as facial expression), are similarly paralinguistic in other languages. An uninformed European might make the same mistake with regard to Chinese intonation. The manualist–oralist debate which began in the eighteenth century has never really abated. For much of the twentieth century, oralist teaching of the deaf and dumb dominated. There was a great revival in the fortunes of sign language after William C. Stokoe published his seminal article in 1960 in which he argued that deaf and dumb home sign is a genuine language, albeit with many different characteristics to articulated languages.30 Since then, sign language has been taught widely as the primary means of communication for the deaf, but not without significant controversy. The prejudice against somatic language and in favour of oral language manifested itself in its own way in the arts, or at least those in which using spoken words was an option. Arguably the main reason why stage dance had never been considered to be a ‘high’ art in the early modern period was because it did not fit into the dominant theory that art is an imitation of nature. No one was able to explain convincingly what the object of imitation was. The same difficulty frequently arose in the case of instrumental music, but music in general was saved from aesthetic oblivion by its alliance with words in forms such as opera. As long as the relationship between the music and libretto of an opera were sufficiently close, the words could be said to validate the expressive music. Music could thus be said to ‘imitate’ whatever 29 30

´ ementaire d’Education ´ Abbé Claude-François Deschamps, Cours El´ des Sourds et Muets (Paris: Debure, 1779), pp. 59–67. William C. Stokoe, ‘Sign language structure: an outline of the visual communication systems of the American Deaf’, Studies in Linguistics: Occasional Papers, 8 (1960), Buffalo: Department of Anthropology and Linguistics, University of Buffalo.

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the words expressed. This is particularly true of French operatic music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Lully and Rameau are well known for their efforts to compose music which evoked the sense of the words sung. More than this, however, they endeavoured to imitate the prosody of spoken language. Instead of their own ‘voice’, instruments were sometimes made to imitate the intonation and rhythm of the human voice.31 Lully and Rameau were, in their own ways, oralists, like most contemporary teachers of the deaf and dumb. The option of using supporting words was open to certain forms of stage dance, such as the seventeenth-century Court Masque in which dancers would be accompanied by singers. It was not open to the eighteenth-century ballet d’action, however, which was fundamentally based on the principle that the body did not need spoken words to express itself. In fact, the mimetic meaning of the ballet d’action was doubly problematic, because wordless movement was combined with wordless music; two of the most aesthetically indeterminate arts were combined so that if the spectator did not understand the sense of the music, he or she had recourse only to the equally mysterious language of the body. Almost with wilful abandon, choreographers of the ballet d’action claimed their wordless productions were as much ‘high art’ as any other stage art, and yet they made a principle out of refusing aesthetic support from the most obvious and effective source: the spoken word. If they had shown more regard for the contemporary prejudice in favour of the voice, if they had paid it a little lip service, as it were, by including some spoken words in the performance, the reception of the ballet d’action would have been less controversial. There is, therefore, a telling parallel between the ballet d’action and sign language which we can best appreciate if we acknowledge the extent of oral prejudice in art and in our conception of language. The eighteenth-century culture in which the ballet d’action developed was a culture of the body, but the body subordinated to the voice. This helps to explain both the success of the genre and the controversy it provoked.

Theories of the origin of language The same phenomenon is discernible in eighteenth-century theories of the origin of language. Since the nineteenth century, the subject has largely been 31

See Paul-Marie Masson, L’Opéra de Rameau (Paris: Henri Laurens, 1930), Chapter 3, ‘Le Récitatif’, and Chapter 4, ‘Les Airs’, who describes in detail the rhythmic and melodic ways in which Rameau and Lully imitated in music the conventions of declamation, both in recitative and in the aria.


excluded from philology and linguistics, but in the early modern period, and especially in the eighteenth century, it was part of the nascent study of anthropology, a field which arguably first became a scientific discipline in the Enlightenment.32 Eighteenth-century writers on the origin of language were interested in variations in language across time and space which might shed light on the history and processes of society and culture. Language was thought to provide particularly useful insights because its development must have been a long-term human process which could shed light on the pre-modern history of humans, and, by implication, on the nature of modern society, culture, and more specific domains such as politics, law, and religion. The methodology used to investigate the origin of languages was often admirable for its forensic attention to detail but surprising by its tendency towards speculation. Whether or not we find particular theories convincing in their primary object of uncovering the origins of language is less important, however, than their fundamental anthropological principle that civilisation is a natural, not a supernatural, phenomenon, and that it can be observed and understood; that we need a ‘natural history’ of humanity as much as we do a natural history of the fauna and flora around us. The most influential writing in the eighteenth century on the origin of language proposed that the first, most primitive human languages must have been gestural or in some sense physical. In some ways, therefore, this makes the eighteenth century a fertile period for the development of a body-based art form like the ballet d’action. Advocates of the ballet d’action often sought support for its techniques by relating them to a hypothetical original language of gesture lying dormant in modern language which can be uncovered and developed. The Viennese critic and playwright J.F. Schink was sometimes critical of the essential features of the ballet d’action, but he wrote fervently about its potential relation to the origins of language, which he thinks lie in a gestural expression of the richness of sense experience.33 The Italo-Spanish opera critic and historian Stefano Arteaga was also critical at times of the obscure plots of some ballets d’action, but he

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Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Finn Sivert Nielsen, A History of Anthropology (London: Pluto Press, 2001), p. 10. Among the supporting examples they give to argue that modern anthropology begins in the eighteenth century are Montesquieu’s De l’Esprit des Lois, a comparative, cross-cultural study of legislative systems from which Montesquieu derived general legal principles, and Diderot’s Encyclopédie, which gives detailed descriptions of farming tools and craftsmen’s techniques in such a way as to suggest for the first time the intellectual legitimacy of a study of everyday life. Johann Friedrich Schink, Dramaturgische Fragmente. Erster Band (Graz: mit von Widmannstättenschen Schriften, 1781), pp. 62–63.

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too was intrigued by its relation to the primitive origins of language in body language.34 Intentionally or not, however, they overlooked a less supportive aspect of almost all theories of the origin of language, which is that the first primitive, physical language developed by humans was superseded by other modes of communication, most obviously speech and writing. In this sense, these theories of the origin of language are typical of contemporary primitivist theories of culture: they all chart the advancement and progress of civilisation in which the primitive starting point has a value as only that, a starting point. In other words, primitive origins were regarded as significant in as far as humanity went beyond them. This is even true of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who gained a certain notoriety among his contemporaries because his second discourse appeared to be written in praise of the ‘noble savage’ and in condemnation of progress towards modern society.35 With hindsight, one can argue that his later essay, Du Contrat Social, demonstrates that he believed that we should surpass not only our primitive origins, but our contemporary state, too.36 In this sense, he had an even greater belief in progress than those who criticised him for having a na¨ıve attachment to a primitive era. In this context, therefore, the eighteenth century is not such a fertile ground for the ballet d’action to spring from, because, to its critics, the priority it gave to the body, over and above anything else, seemed to be an example of art regressing rather than progressing.

Warburton and hieroglyphs Bishop William Warburton is often credited with overturning the established view of Egyptian hieroglyphs as a symbolic system invented by a priestly caste for the purpose of concealing wisdom, and arguing instead that they were the original, abridged, and public form of communication. He powerfully challenged the theories of Porphyry, Clement of Alexandria, and the entire school of Christian exegesis. The chapter he wrote on this subject 34

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Stefano Arteaga, ‘Ragionamento sopra il ballo pantomimico’, in Le Rivoluzioni del Teatro Musicale Italiano dalla sua Origine Fino al Presente, 3 vols (Venice: Carlo Palese, 1785), Vol. III, pp. 153–157. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discours sur l’Origine et les Fondements de l’Inégalité parmi les Hommes (Amsterdam: Marc-Michel Rey, 1755). Translated by Franklin Philip, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (Oxford University Press, 2009). Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du Contrat Social (Amsterdam: Marc-Michel Rey, 1762). Translated by Christopher Betts, The Social Contract (Oxford University Press, 2008).


in The Divine Legation of Moses, subsequently translated into French and published as a separate, best-selling monograph, does, indeed, constitute an important advance, before Champolion deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs at the beginning of the nineteenth century and definitively disproved the cabalistic view.37 A less explicit but equally innovative aspect of Warburton’s theories, however, is the set of assumptions on which they were based. In essence, he accepted that pictural representations of physical actions could constitute a ‘real character’, a language. Concreteness was not incompatible with language; an image could simultaneously be a text. This is to go one step further than to make the relatively unproblematic claim that a material medium is capable of ‘expression’, since it would be hard to disagree that the arts such as sculpture or painting do not ‘express’ something merely because they work through a material medium. To argue that visual images carved into stone constitute a veritable language, however, was something that Warburton was the first systematically to propose. He argues that we should accept that a language can be based on the smallest possible gap between an object and its representation, that there be minimal abstraction away from the nature of the object. He is not so na¨ıve as to suppose that hieroglyphs are only pictures, in the most straightforward sense, of real objects; he acknowledges that the gap between object and image widened as hieroglyphs developed. Nevertheless, he argues that this process of ‘abbreviation’ of images, by metonymy, synecdoche, and allegorical symbol,38 was still based on the observation of natural forms. These forms were simply combined through the agency of ‘wit’. When hieroglyphs were ‘abbreviated’ through figurative ‘wit’, their common foundation remained the quintessential picture conveying information directly to our eyes. The principles underlying Warburton’s study of hieroglyphs must have made thought-provoking reading for those of his contemporaries who were interested in the aesthetics of the arts. The early modern period is dominated by the doctrine of the mimesis according to which art is believed to imitate nature. Quite what ‘imitation’ and ‘nature’ meant was often unclear, but Warburton’s theories impinge on both in challenging ways. There is no 37

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William Warburton, The Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated on the Principles of a Religious Deist, 2 vols (London: Fletcher Gyles, 1737–41), Vol. II, Book 4, section iv, ‘The high antiquity of Egypt proved from their hieroglyphics’. This section was translated by Léonard Des Malpeines and published separately in France as Essai sur les Hiéroglyphes des Egyptiens (Paris: Hippolyte-Louis Guérin, 1744). Champolion published his discovery in Lettre a` M. Dacier relative a` l’alphabet des hiéroglyphes phonétiques (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1822). Warburton, The Divine Legation of Moses, Vol. II, p. 71.

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evidence that Diderot read Warburton’s works, or the Traité des Hiéroglyphes which was published under his name in France, but his most well-known elaboration on the theme of the poetic hieroglyph is close to Warburton’s principles. They understand ‘hieroglyph’ in the same way: mysterious but decipherable, legible symbols. Diderot applies the principle of legible mystery to poetry in particular, and the arts in general, to conclude that, no matter how obscure it is, there must be a precise and identifiable explanation for the way a given artistic medium allows an artist to express himself. In poetry, the legible mystery may be the evocative use of sound and prosodic rhythm; in music, it may be the evocative use of rhythm and harmony.39 Diderot acknowledges that artistic expression is, for most people, beyond understanding: ‘there are a thousand times more people able to understand the most abstruse geometer than a poet’;40 there must nevertheless be a way of deciphering the ‘hieroglyph’ of art. There are contingent reasons why Warburton’s idea of legible mystery would have appealed to Diderot. He wrote Lettres sur les Sourds et les Muets partly in response to Charles Batteux’s Les Beaux-Arts Réduits a` un Même Principe (1746) which simplistically defines art as an ‘imitation of nature’ while complacently omitting to explain what ‘nature’ is and how it is ‘imitated’. Diderot’s hieroglyphic theory is intentionally more demanding; it supposes that we need to expend a great deal more intellectual energy on the most unsuspected aspects of art in order to understand artistic expression. There is more than this contingent reason, however, to consider the aesthetic implications of Warburton’s hieroglyph which Diderot draws out. For Diderot, poetry is like Egyptian hieroglyphs in its blend of the physical and the spiritual. It is almost as if Diderot gained confidence from Warburton’s description of the meaning of physical hieroglyphs to propose in turn the meaning of the physical articulations of the voice reading poetry. In effect, Warburton and Diderot reassess the spiritual value of physical expression. Just as Egyptian hieroglyphs are a pictural language, so, too, according to Diderot, is poetry which uses physical articulation (prosody and evocative sound) to vocally inspire images in the mind of readers or listeners to poetry. Thus, Diderot shows how we underestimate the symbolic meaning of articulated sounds; Warburton shows how we underestimate the linguistic meaning of physical pictures.

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Diderot discusses these techniques at length in Lettre sur les Sourds et les Muets, ed. Paul Hugo Meyer, in Diderot Studies (Geneva: Droz, 1965), Vol. VII; see p. 72 for an example from Virgil’s verse, and p. 84 for an anonymous musical extract portraying the death of Dido. Diderot, Lettre sur les Sourds et les Muets, p. 78.


Diderot is not original in discussing the evocative nature of certain prosodic or phonetic characteristics of poetic language. The subject is at least as old as Latin poetry, as is clear from the examples he gives from Virgil and others. What is original, however, is that Diderot should contend that it is more than an ancillary technique; it is instead the very essence of poetry. He thus radically re-evaluates the importance of the physicality of language and poetry. The ballet d’action was in some senses ‘hieroglyphic’. Its choreographers were the Warburtons and Diderots of the stage who contended that a physical medium such as the body could be the agent for a kind of language, what we idly refer to now as ‘body language’, but which would seem problematic to us if we were to take the expression simplistically to mean that anything which can be communicated using the voice can be communicated equally well through the body. We would still, today, find difficulties in the notion that concreteness is no barrier to abstraction. Much of the contemporary debate provoked by the ballet d’action sprang from the consequent question of whether it was a strength or a weakness for the ballet d’action to be ‘hieroglyphic’ in this sense, to use the most familiar physical medium, the body, to express what many thought were the most unfamiliar, obscure and mysterious meanings.

Condillac’s action language Condillac is in some ways the Locke of the French Enlightenment. His Sensationist theories owed a great deal to those that John Locke devised in his seminal Essay Concerning Human Understanding, but in addition to borrowing wholesale some of Locke’s ideas, he adapted Sensationism to suit French philosophical, cultural, and artistic expectations. Locke is largely uninterested in two matters which loom large in Condillac’s writing: the origin of language, and the implications of Sensationism for contemporary art and literature. Thus, although the first half (‘Première Partie’) of Condillac’s first and most well-known work, Essai sur l’Origine des Connaissances Humaines (1746) is devoted to Sensationism, to understanding humans as primarily sensory beings who owe all aspects of their nature and mind to their sensory perception of the world, the second half (‘Deuxième Partie’) begins with the origin of language and extends far into contemporary debates about the arts. His Essai would seem, therefore, to endorse or promote those arts which cultivate a close relationship to the senses and to somatic expression. Many contemporary critics and practitioners of the ballet d’action deployed

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Sensationist arguments, and many also cited in particular the hypothesis which Condillac pursues that the first language developed by human beings was a body language, a ‘langage d’action’. What they overlooked or chose not to consider, however, is that Condillac charts an evolution in which early sensory modes of being and early language are superseded, or at least overshadowed, by subsequent developments. The most interesting point in Condillac’s theory of the origin of mind and language, as it relates to the arts and to the ballet d’action, is the moment at the beginning of his Deuxième Partie when human beings communicate for the first time.41 Communication begins with empathy, develops into a basic form of language which is part gesture and part unarticulated vocal ‘cry’ (both of which, together, constitute ‘action language’), and then develops further in two separate directions. On the one hand, it develops into articulated language, and on the other into dance, by which Condillac means a symbolic body language. He gives an Old Testament example: Jeremiah who breaks an earthenware vessel before the gathered masses.42 This form of action language, argues Condillac, creates a greater and more lasting impression on the imagination; it speaks more profoundly to the heart. With time and the progress of civilisation, this symbolic dance is codified, rendered more graceful, expressive, and varied, and spawns what he calls ‘the dance of steps’. Thus, there are now two varieties of somatic expression: the dance of gestures, which serves to communicate thoughts (like Jeremiah breaking the pot), and the dance of steps, whose purpose it is to communicate states of mind, for example joy. In the terms of his contemporaries, he would seem, here, to be distinguishing between an oratorical function, or ‘actio’, and dance. The way in which Condillac discusses the latter is grist to the mill of contemporary dance reformers such as Noverre and Angiolini. He acknowledges that there are many different kinds of dance in modern times and that they all have merit of one kind or another, on condition that they ‘express’ something in a varied and imaginative way, so that they form a kind of dialogue either with the spectator or with other participants. Grace and nobility are virtues, but in themselves they are insufficient. Technical virtuosity is also admirable, but lacks emotion, which was the primary reason why the ‘dance of steps’ developed in the first place.

41 42

Condillac, Essai sur l’Origine des Connaissances Humaines, Part II, Chapter 1 for the following account of the development of language. See Jeremiah 19 in which God inspires Jeremiah to use this visual symbol in order for his followers to understand God’s wrath.


So goes Condillac’s story of the origin of language. It culminates in the creation of dance, which derives from the earliest action language. ‘Action’ has a similar sense for Condillac as it did for mime dancers: meaningful movement. The crucial semiotic step which Condillac identifies, when human beings first attached a semantic value to an otherwise meaningless symbol, is analogous to the crucial principle of eighteenth-century dance reforms, which is that beautiful but meaningless dance steps must be endowed with meaning. For both Condillac and contemporary mime dancers, movement is a potential symbol waiting to be rendered meaningful. Given the widespread currency of Condillac’s theories in particular and gestural theories of language in general, there is a linguistic and anthropological context to eighteenth-century dance reforms which lent them philosophical credibility. Like Warburton’s, Condillac theories would seem to support the idea that physical expression can constitute a ‘language’. Condillac supposes, however, that there was a rapid and decisive evolution away from the primitive, gestural origins of language. He is not a primitivist who proposes that we should revive early, gestural language for modern use, artistic or otherwise. Quite the opposite, in fact; the importance he attributes to the development of articulated language suggests that he is as much of an ‘oralist’ as contemporary opponents of sign language, for ´ ee’s sign language, which the deaf, despite his professed admiration for L’Ep´ we mention above. He has an oralist’s belief that speech superseded body language. At the outset of linguistic development, Condillac supposes that the first semiotic steps were taken by humans who vocalised at the same time as gesturing, and that the first linguistic signs were therefore a combination of the two.43 The only reason that somatic language developed more quickly was that it was far easier for human beings to make use of the face, arms, and the rest of the body than it was to learn control of the vocal organs. He regards the ease with which somatic language was learnt, in fact, to have been ‘a great obstacle’ to subsequent linguistic development.44 Once humans learnt to master their vocal organs, somatic movement was replaced by its oral equivalent, prosody. There is therefore a moment in Condillac’s history of the development of language when ‘movement’ ceases to mean movement of the body, and means instead the rise and fall of intonation.45 Early articulated language, he argues, must have been prosodically very varied, in imitation of the form of language which directly preceded it and 43 44 45

Condillac, Essai sur l’Origine des Connaissances Humaines, p. 164. Condillac, Essai sur l’Origine des Connaissances Humaines, p. 166. Condillac, Essai sur l’Origine des Connaissances Humaines, p. 209.

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which depended on physically visible movement of the body. Even this kind of ‘movement’ diminishes as articulated language finds other, less primitive and more complex, ways to express meaning.46 In Condillac’s chronology, therefore, ‘movement’ of either a physical or a prosodic nature is gradually eliminated from language. This sheds a different light on what might appear in his schema to be the pre-eminent position of dance and the physical arts. Although they are part of a long process of development, they are not the culmination. Instead, they become a repository for linguistically redundant semiotic modes.

Rousseau’s language of the passions The priority of the voice over the body is even clearer in Rousseau’s theory of the origin of language than it is in Condillac’s. He boldly opens his Essai sur l’Origine des Langues with the statement that speech defines humanity and its local variants define nations: ‘Speech distinguishes man among the animals; language distinguishes nations from each other.’47 The only other viable semiotic system in his view is music, which uses quasi-linguistic ‘signs’ for our ‘passions’: ‘the sounds of a melody do not affect us merely as sounds, but as signs of our affections, of our feelings’.48 It is a moot point which belief produces the other: either his well-known predilection for music causes him to prioritise the oral dimension of language, or his prejudice in favour of oral language causes him to value music and its aural nature. What is nonetheless clear from this opening sentence is that Rousseau does not attribute primary linguistic value to the mute language of the body. As the Essai progresses, he acknowledges a gestural dimension to the first primitive developments of language, but insists on the pre-eminence of articulation and the musicality of linguistic prosody. His acknowledgement of the power of actions is confined to the first few pages. He appears to take a balanced view of gestural and articulated language, firstly by according equal importance to the two possible mediums of communication, vision and hearing, and secondly by enumerating the many examples from the ancient world which suggest that visual language has an impressive pedigree. Thus, the ancient Egyptians ‘did not 46 47

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Condillac, Essai sur l’Origine des Connaissances Humaines, p. 212. Rousseau, Essai sur l’Origine des Langues, in Œuvres Complètes, 5 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), Vol. V, p. 375. Translated by John H. Moran and Alexander Gode, On the Origin of Language: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Gottfried Herder (University of Chicago Press, 1986). Rousseau, Essai sur l’Origine des Langues, p. 417.


say it, but showed it’ with hieroglyphs.49 Or again: the King of Scythia sent a message to Darius consisting of a frog, a bird, a mouse, and five arrows, and the ‘terrible harangue’ was perfectly understood.50 After a number of further examples of the effectiveness of action language, he ends his enumeration with the contention that ‘one speaks more effectively to the eye than to the ear’.51 He is convinced that society could function at many levels without articulated language: ‘we would be able to constitute laws, to choose leaders, to invent arts, to establish commerce, and to do, in a word, almost as many things as we do with the help of speech’.52 One of his examples of the communicative potential of visual action language is the efforts of eighteenth-century teachers such as Péreire to engage with the deaf and dumb by learning their native, self-taught ‘home sign’.53 Despite the tribute he pays to the history and practice of non-articulated language, he contends that it is fundamentally, intrinsically deficient in the most important respect, a point he makes explicitly in the resounding opening to his second chapter: ‘It seems then that need dictated the first gestures, while the passions stimulated the first words.’54 In Rousseau’s terminology, the expression of the ‘passions’ is the essential spiritual faculty of mankind, which is historically and logically prior to other faculties such as reason.55 Thus, in an echo of critics of sign language for the deaf, Rousseau claims that non-articulated language is good only for the expression of physical needs. It is not up to the task of expressing the spiritual dimension of the human mind and experience. Given the importance that Rousseau attributes to the passions throughout this essay and all his other writings, this order of priorities undermines the value which he appeared to attribute to action language in the opening pages of the Essai. Even if action language is a potential medium for a range of social activities, it is inadequate if it cannot give full and proper expression to the passions. Later in his Essai, he makes clear the unique status of the voice as the only authentic medium

49 50 51 52 53 54 55

Rousseau, Essai sur l’Origine des Langues, p. 376. Rousseau, Essai sur l’Origine des Langues, p. 373. Rousseau, Essai sur l’Origine des Langues, p. 377. Rousseau, Essai sur l’Origine des Langues, p. 378. Rousseau, Essai sur l’Origine des Langues, p. 378. Rousseau, Essai sur l’Origine des Langues, p. 380. See, for example, his second discourse in which he states that passion creates reason: ‘Whatever moral thinkers say, human understanding owes a great deal to the passions [. . .] It is through their action that our reason perfects itself.’ Rousseau, Discours sur l’Origine et les Fondements de l’Inégalité parmi les Hommes, in Œuvres Complètes, 5 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), Vol. III, p. 143.

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through which to express one’s humanity: alone and wandering in the desert, ‘as soon as vocal signs strike your ear, they announce to you a being like yourself. They are, so to speak, the voice of the soul.’56 Like Condillac, Rousseau’s interest in the origin of language in general and the voice in particular is not only linguistic or anthropological. He, too, is motivated by aesthetic, artistic concerns. His interest in this respect is evident even more quickly, in fact, than is Condillac’s. Whereas Condillac devotes half his Essai to purely philosophical and linguistic matters before turning to their implications for modern artistic expression, Rousseau affirms them almost from the outset. Having acknowledged the role of action language, he contends that its major weakness is that it is made up of linguistic signs which are not sufficiently sequential. Action language uses visual, pictural signs which reveal their meaning in an instant; they have limited or no duration. In contrast, the inevitable sequential nature of articulated signs leads to a much more powerful expression of the passions, because they ‘strike a redoubled blow’.57 The first example he gives is theatre: It is solely in this way that the scenes of a tragedy produce their effect. Pantomime without discourse will leave you nearly tranquil; discourse without gestures will wring tears from you. The passions have their gestures, but they also have their accents; and these accents, which thrill us, these tones of voice, which cannot fail to be heard, penetrate to the very depths of the heart, carrying there the emotions they wring from us, forcing us in spite of ourselves to feel what we hear.58

Rousseau contrasts tragedy with ‘pantomime’, which suggests he means the latter term in its theatrical sense, as well as less specifically in the sense of the gestural expression first developed by primitive humans. He would appear, therefore, to be reacting against the contemporary trend towards mute theatre, or mute moments in theatre. Nothing here is remotely supportive of the ballet d’action. He discounts exactly that feature of visual language which most appealed to many contemporary critics: its promptness. From choreographers, to journalists, to philosophers like Diderot, the nature of a visual image, charged with many meanings and implications which made an immediate impact on the viewer or spectator, was a virtue. It was one of the most frequently mentioned characteristics of the ballet d’action cited in support of its innovative nature. For Rousseau, it is a fatal weakness which means that visual language is inadequate. The passions are better expressed through ‘accents’ or prosody rather than ‘gestures’. Like Condillac, the most 56 57 58

Rousseau, Essai sur l’Origine des Langues, p. 421. Rousseau, Essai sur l’Origine des Langues, p. 377. Rousseau, Essai sur l’Origine des Langues, p. 378.


expressive ‘movement’ in language is the rise and fall of the voice. He goes further than Condillac, however, to suggest what one might call an articulatory ‘character’ of the voice, a taxonomy of different expressions of the passions produced by different articulatory effects, almost an oral equivalent of the famous ‘character of the passions’ described by Charles Le Brun in his lectures in painting:59 With the first voices came the first articulations or sounds formed according to the respective passions that dictated them. Anger produces menacing cries articulated by the tongue and the palate. But the voice of tenderness is softer: its medium is the glottis [. . .]. It may occur with ordinary or unusual tones, it may be more or less sharply accented, according to the feeling to which it is joined.60

Rousseau thus imagines that the articulatory organs are a highly refined apparatus for the expression of that fundamental characteristic of humans, the passions. Visual, action language is, in comparison, unsophisticated. Since Rousseau regards language as fundamentally oral and aural, it is closely related to music rather than to the visual arts. As such, he thinks it is wishful thinking, or worse still a flight of intellectual fantasy, to imagine that it can be somehow translated into another medium. Diderot’s hieroglyph would probably seem to him to border on such fantasy, because it is based on the principle that the sounds of poetry are interpreted into a visual image or painting in the mind of the reader or listener. Rousseau would doubtless object if we were to go too far towards the idea that outside the mind of the reader one could also create a direct correspondence between the oral–aural nature of one art and the visual nature of another. A painter could not paint the exact equivalent of a poem. Music cannot be translated directly into colours. Not surprisingly, Rousseau has no time for synaesthesia, as he demonstrates on a number of occasions when he criticises the wellknown synaesthetic experiments of Louis Castel, the mathematician who apparently adapted a harpsichord so that it played coloured filters at the same time as music. Unlike Diderot, who is intensely interested in Castel in his Lettres sur les Sourds et Muets,61 Rousseau emphatically rejects the idea that his experiments reveal anything about the real nature of our experience of art: they give a false impression that it is possible to ‘put the eye in the place of the ear, and the ear in the place of the eye’; they ‘presume out of ignorance to paint for the ears and sing for the eyes’, when in fact ‘each 59 60 61

See Picart’s 1698 edition of Charles Le Brun’s lectures republished in L’Expression des Passions, ed. Julien Philipe (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, Dédale, 1994). Rousseau, Essai sur l’Origine des Langues, p. 410. Diderot, Lettre sur les Sourds et les Muets, pp. 50–51.

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sense has its proper domain’.62 These are very similar arguments to those put forward by contemporary critics of sign language for the deaf. They are, in fact, quite characteristic of a widespread Enlightenment prejudice in favour of confining language proper to the oral–aural domain. They are an example of the intellectual and cultural obstacles faced by contemporary mime dancers. Although one of the prime virtues of the ballet d’action was said, by some critics and all choreographers who expressed an opinion, to be its ability to ‘speak’ to the eyes, the demotion of articulated language that this involved undoubtedly underlies a great deal of adverse reaction. Since ballets d’action were so often based on an existing text from spoken theatre, opera or a literary source, its prime objective had to be exactly what Rousseau and other like-minded contemporaries found most difficult to accept: that it was possible to translate from one sensory medium to another, from the oral–aural medium of articulated language to the visual medium of body language.

Herder, hearing, and the gateway to the soul ¨ Herder opens his Uber den Ursprung der Sprache with what appears to be a strong case for language as fundamentally a system of mental signs, not specifically articulated signs. For much of his essay, the reader is led to assume that any signs, visual or articulated, can constitute language proper, as long as they are genuine representations of a mental idea. As Herder charts the development of language, however, from its primitive origins, he accords the same exclusive status to articulation as we have seen in other contemporary writing. The principle of language as first-and-foremost a mental phenomenon is one which Herder presents as a key innovation of his essay, and one which he claims many previous studies of language have overlooked. Language development begins, according to Herder, the moment a distinguishing mark of a given object in nature is identified, permanently associated in the mind with that object, and used to recall a memory of the object in its absence. Thus, the bleating of a sheep will become the sign for ‘sheep’ in the primitive human mind if it can be recalled at will. There is no need for the sign for ‘sheep’ to be physically articulated: ‘The sound of bleating perceived by a human soul as the distinguishing mark of the sheep became [. . . ] the 62

Rousseau, Essai sur l’Origine des Langues, p. 420.


name of the sheep, even if his tongue had never tried to stammer it.’63 By implication, even those, like deaf mutes, who cannot articulate can be regarded as linguistic human beings: ‘It is not an organization of the mouth that made language, for even one who is mute for life, if he is human and if he reflects, has language lying in his soul. The point here is that [. . . ] it is not a breathing machine but a reflective being who invented language.’64 This affirmation of the essential linguistic capacity of deaf mutes stands in stark contrast to contemporary ‘oralist’ critics of sign language, whose fixation with physical articulation led them to conclude that deaf mutes cannot exercise the essential human faculty of reason, and, by implication, to exclude them from humanity. Their mistake, according to Herder, was to think that language makes mind, whereas Herder supposes that the mind makes language. He is in this sense more faithful to the Enlightenment belief in reason as the ultimate distinguishing characteristic of human beings, since he does not subordinate it to a single symptom, articulated language. There is, then, potential in Herder’s theories for a more balanced view of language than we sometimes find elsewhere. Once Herder begins to chart the progress of language beyond its origins in mental signs, however, articulation dominates because of the paramount importance he attributes to the sense of hearing, ‘the gateway to the soul’. The perception of the world that it provides is, he thinks, a happy median between sight, which of all the senses is most likely to flood the mind with an excess of perceptual information, and touch, which is the poorest source of perceptions. Vision ‘casts us by great distances outside ourselves’.65 It is so ‘over-brilliant’ that ‘the soul appears crushed under the multiplicity [of perceptions]’.66 At the other perceptual extreme, touch gives a ‘narrow’ and ‘vague’ sense of the world easily overridden by the other senses. Sight leaves us over-stimulated, touch under-stimulated. Herder imagines a creature that is ‘all eye’, and exclaims ‘how inexhaustible is the world of its beholdings! [. . . ] In what infinite multiplicity is it dispersed! Its language – we cannot form an idea of it – would be a kind of infinitely refined pantomime; its script an algebra built on colours and strokes’. At the other perceptual extreme, a creature

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¨ Herder, Uber den Ursprung der Sprache, ed. Ulrich Gaier, in Werke, 10 vols (Frankfurt am Main: Deutsche Klassiker Verlag, 1985), Vol. I, p. 724. Translated by John H. Moran and Alexander Gode, On the Origin of Language: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Gottfried Herder (University of Chicago Press, 1986). ¨ Herder, Uber den Ursprung der Sprache, p. 725. ¨ Herder, Uber den Ursprung der Sprache, p. 746. ¨ Herder, Uber den Ursprung der Sprache, p. 747. Subsequent quotations in this paragraph are from the same page.

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with only the sense of touch would ‘build for itself a language as an insect builds a web’: localised, limited, and inadequate. The richness of a visual language, therefore, would be its fatal flaw, as fatal as the poverty of a tactile language. Like Rousseau, Herder thinks the promptness of a visual language presenting us with more than the mind can properly process means that it cannot be properly, rationally analysed. In a reference no doubt to Castel’s colour harpsichord, he exclaims that a visual language of colour would be unbearable: ‘who could forever stare attentively at a colour harpsichord without soon going blind?’67 The priority Herder gives to hearing over sight and touch (and indeed smell and taste, which he does not mention) is not original. In the long history of writing on the hierarchy of the senses, vision and hearing are most often regarded as superior.68 Of these two, vision is usually considered to be the most important, but there are often specific circumstances in which it is outclassed by hearing. Thus, although Aristotle regards sight as the superior sense for ‘the supply of the primary wants of life’, he gives an intellectual priority to hearing: ‘for developing thought, hearing incidentally takes precedence’.69 Aristotle does not specify what exactly we need to hear in order to develop thought, but presumably he means speech, articulated language. Implicitly, then, he associates thought with articulated language, as if there were an exclusive relationship between the two. If unoriginal, Herder’s oral–aural definition of language does at least make clear what is never stated openly by proponents of oral teaching methods for the deaf: the ‘oral’ method is inevitably the ‘hearing’ method. By definition, therefore, it is entirely inappropriate for teaching the deaf (or at least, the congenitally deaf).70 An oral–aural conception of language was exactly the principle which many critics applied to the ballet d’action, as if speech were the sole measure of the expressive value of mime. By this measure, they almost inevitably found it wanting. They held it to task for not being able to do what speech does, or, conversely, they criticised it for doing what speech cannot do. They tended to recognise the ballet d’action as theatrical, even highly theatrical in its effects, but did not accept that it had its own theatrical 67 68

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¨ Herder, Uber den Ursprung der Sprache, p. 748. On the history of discussion of the hierarchy of the senses, see Robert Jütte, A History of the Senses: From Antiquity to Cyberspace, trans. James Lynn (Cambridge: Polity, 2005), particularly Chapter 3, ‘Classifications: The hierarchy of the senses’, pp. 61–71. Aristotle, Sense and Sensibilia, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, 2 vols (Princeton University Press, 1995), Vol. I, pp. 693–713 (694). This is a point made by Susan Plann: ‘the “oral method” might be more accurately called the “hearing method”’, in A Silent Minority: Deaf Education in Spain 1550–1835 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977), p. 49.


‘language’ in the full sense in which they understood the word. Both sign language for the deaf and the ballet d’action challenged these deep-seated oral–aural preconceptions which are so evident in contemporary theories of the origin of language. They were substitutes for speech which demanded to be understood in their own terms rather than according to conventional criteria. From the perspective of the modern scholar, it is important to bear in mind the dogma of the voice in order to avoid the pitfall of taking contemporary criticism of the ballet d’action at face value. The principles of the ballet d’action were often portrayed as extravagant; in fact, they were ´ ee’s, which proved their worth in practice. no more extravagant than L’Ep´ More extravagant, in fact, was the degree of prejudice in favour of the voice. When somatic expression was confined to the vulgar street theatres or to the Commedia dell’arte, or when it was dignified by the accompaniment of words, as Diderot contended it should be, it did not offend artistic sensibilities to the same extent as when it entirely replaced the words of the greatest classics of stage and literature in the ballet d’action. Equally, sign language for the deaf was acceptable to most teachers as long as it was confined to the early stages of teaching, as long as it was a means to an end: teaching the deaf to articulate. In the same manner, somatic language is an important part of many theories of the origin of languages, but a primitive part which is superseded by speech. The primacy of the voice goes to the heart of the contemporary criticism of the ballet d’action: what antagonised the critics was not somatic expression as such, but the contention that it could carry a heavy load of meaning, subtle or abstract meaning, and the idea that it could constitute a veritable ‘language’ which expressed as much, albeit through different means, as could the voice.

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A revival of ancient pantomime?

Whatever contemporary texts one reads concerning the ballet d’action (or indeed contemporary mime in general), from performance reviews to discursive essays, practical instruction to polemical tirades, one can expect to encounter references to ancient pantomime, usually Roman pantomime. In essence, the purpose of these references is simple: to put an unusual modern form of art into a respectable Classical context. In an age when the Classical legacy was generally felt to be beneficial, even essential, this tendency is not unusual. However, as anyone who has studied the nature of early modern ‘Classicism’ knows, the ancient ancestry claimed for one art form or another is often problematic. It is often inspired by cultural interests much closer to the contemporary era than by historical interest in the ancients alone. The ballet d’action is typical in this respect: its roots are not as deep as contemporaries sometimes claim them to be. However, even if early modern Classicism is problematic, it nevertheless provides valuable insights into the ballet d’action. From the way eighteenthcentury writers pursued their interest in Classical models, we can judge what they thought were the primary characteristics of the ballet d’action. A Classicist might be interested in looking at the relationship in reverse: eighteenth-century comments on contemporary stage practice help us to understand something about the Roman art of pantomime by virtue of certain variables and invariables. In either case, an indirect approach to an object of study, an ephemeral stage art which no longer exists, is inevitable; one cannot study the object, so one must study the impact it made in a cultural milieu that, in contrast, we do understand relatively well. This task turns out to be relatively easy in the sense that the age of Classical revival in which the ballet d’action developed was a controversial one. The merits of the ancients were by no means taken for granted. The ‘Battle of the Books’ in England and the ‘Querelle des anciens et des modernes’ in France, as well as the enduring tension between ancient and modern in Italy since Petrarch in the fourteenth century, made the process of mapping the 38


ballet d’action onto Roman pantomime an acutely delicate, yet necessary matter.1 This concern is what distinguishes eighteenth-century interest in Roman pantomime from earlier interest. In seventeenth-century France, the two most widely circulated histories of stage dance are both expressly concerned with the legacy of the ancients, but neither of them perceives its relation with seventeenth-century practice to be problematic. In Idée des Spectacles Anciens et Nouveaux, Michel de Pure treats a range of ancient and modern performance arts mostly in isolated succession, confining each to a separate chapter, doing very little to explain how they might be related.2 ClaudeFrançois Ménestrier seems to take completely for granted that Roman pantomime was a precursor to contemporary ballet. He refers anachronistically and without explanation to the eminent Roman pantomime performer Pylades as ‘an excellent maker of tragic ballets’.3 This could have been the occasion for Ménestrier to observe that dramatic dance is, in fact, part of contemporary ballet, that there are instances in Molière’s comédies-ballets or Lully’s opéras-ballets which could, arguably, bear comparison with the Roman art of pantomime. The argument would admittedly be thin, since these examples are questionable.4 Yet Ménestrier seems unaware or uninterested in the case he could make. He is more concerned to bring together all respectable forms of dance or mime under the umbrella of the genre he is promoting: ‘ballet’, or, more specifically, French court ballet.

Differences and misunderstandings The major difference between ancient Roman pantomime and the ballet d’action, one which does not seem to provoke much discussion in the eighteenth century, is that the former was a solo performance, albeit with 1

2 3 4

On the dispute between partisans of the ancients and the moderns in Italy and France, see Marc Fumaroli, ‘Les abeilles et les araignées’, in La Querelle des Anciens et Modernes: XVIIe–XVIIIe Siècles (Paris: Gallimard, 2001), pp. 7–218. On the Battle of the Books, see Richard Jones, Ancients and Moderns: A Study of the Background of the the Battle of the Books (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1965). Michel de Pure, Idée des Spectacles Anciens et Nouveaux (Paris: Michel Brunet, 1668; Geneva: Minkoff reprint, 1972). Claude-François Ménestrier, Des Ballets Anciens et Modernes selon les Règles du Théaˆ tre (Paris: René Guignard, 1682; Geneva: Minkoff reprint, 1972), p. 125. Philippe Hourcade concludes that what appear sometimes to be dramatic ballets were often, in fact, performances consisting mostly of song, and that it was the song, not the choreography, which provided the dramatic structure. See Mascarades et Ballets au Grand Siècle (1643–1715) (Paris: Desjonquères & Centre National de la Danse, 2002), pp. 63–65.

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music and a chorus.5 For a spectator in the Roman world, the sense of the suffix ‘pan’ in ‘pantomime’ meant only partly that ‘everything’ can be represented by mute use of the body; it also meant that everything can be represented by a single performer, sometimes with the help of a single additional ‘actor’.6 Part of the skill of a Roman pantomime performer was to create the illusion of the presence on stage of another character or characters, or else to change masks and become a different character when the story required. In contrast, the ballet d’action was never solo, except in the case of the mime equivalent of a soliloquy. Productions often involved a large cast of leading and secondary roles. In this sense, eighteenth-century commentators would have done better to compare the ballet d’action to ancient Greek mime, which usually employed more than one performer. This fact, combined with the necessity of a chorus in Roman mime which sang a dramatically relevant text and the general absence of a chorus in the ballet d’action, makes the two genres quite different at least in the basic, constitutive elements of the staging. The idea of a single performer holding forth would have been anathema to early modern expectations of high theatre staged in renowned state and commercial venues, and the use of a chorus was becoming more and more old-fashioned and a subject of criticism in one of the ballet d’action’s related arts, opera. Despite basic differences, eighteenth-century critics and choreographers made frequent reference to certain key texts and examples from the ancient world. There are two major ancient texts on Roman pantomime: Lucian’s second-century The Dance and Libanius’s fourth-century ‘Reply to Aristides on behalf of dancers’ (Orations 64).7 The former is almost a cliché in eighteenth-century criticism, whereas the latter was hardly ever mentioned. Almost everyone in the eighteenth century took for granted that The Dance is a straightforward account of Roman pantomime. No one suspected the degree of irony that some modern scholars perceive: partly praise of pantomime, partly flattery of the Emperor, and partly satire on both.8 5

6 7

8

See C.P. Jones, Culture and Society in Lucian (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 69; and Ismene Lada-Richards, Silent Eloquence: Lucian and Pantomime Dancing (London: Duckworth, 2007), pp. 40–41. The only source confirming the presence on stage of more than a single performer is Lucian. See Jones, Culture and Society in Lucian, pp. 73–74. Lucian, The Dance, trans. A.M. Harmon, in The Works of Lucian (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936), Vol. V, pp. 209–289; Libanius, ‘A Reply to Aristides on behalf of dancers’ [i.e. Orations 64], trans. Margaret E. Molloy, in Margaret E. Molloy, Libanius and the Dancers (Hildesheim and New York: Olms-Weidmann, 1996), pp. 113–176. As well as Libanius’s text, Molloy provides a close study of the work. For interpretation as complex satire, see Marie-Hélène Garelli, Danser le Mythe: La Pantomime et ´ sa Réception dans la Culture Antique (Leuven: Editions Peeters, 2007), pp. 265–267. For emphasis on historical authenticity, see Jones, Culture and Society in Lucian, pp. 42–43, and p. 73.


John Weaver, the earliest innovator in the eighteenth century, expresses a trust in Lucian which is characteristic of the whole century: ‘Lucian [. . . ] has put in nothing Hyperbolical, or with an Affectation of Difficulty: He was an eye-witness of their performances, and knew the general subjects of their art.’9 Since he detects no hyperbole or affectation, Weaver reproduces unquestioningly Lucian’s well-known and very long list of the virtues and erudition necessary to perform pantomime, sometimes known as Lucian’s repertoire.10 One reason why the repertoire deserves questioning is that Lucian does not make clear whether we should interpret it as the repertoire of a single performer or of the genre as a whole. He begins with ‘What qualifications the dancer on his part ought to have’, and ends ‘These are a very few themes [. . . ] for the dancers themselves to present.’11 If the repertoire is for a single performer, the objective reader, not to mention some modern scholarship, is entitled to be sceptical. The Dance has much in common in this respect with one of the most intriguing texts on pantomime in the eighteenth century, Diderot’s Le Neveu de Rameau. An alert reader quickly becomes suspicious reading Diderot’s description of virtuoso mime performances, because they are so extravagant as to be impossible. If Weaver and others were not equally suspicious of Lucian, it is probably because they were less interested in reading closely than they were in lending support to their stage works. What is surprising is that Weaver, as a performer, shows no signs of being downcast at the prospect of having to live up to Lucian’s expectations. Angiolini, who has almost as much trust in Lucian as Weaver does, feels decidedly humbled.12 Weaver and Angiolini were in good (and plentiful) company. Cahusac’s apparent intention in publishing La Danse Ancienne et Moderne was to do justice to developments in stage dance in the 1730s and 1740s in France, particularly with regard to Marie Sallé’s choreographies for Rameau’s ballets, 9

10 11 12

John Weaver, An Essay towards an History of Dancing (London: Jacob Tonson, 1712), p. 140; reproduced in Richard Ralph’s modern edition and biography, The Life and Works of John Weaver. An Account of his Life, Writings and Theatrical Productions, with an Annotated Reprint of his Complete Publications (London: Dance Books, 1985). Lucian, The Dance, pp. 247–265. See also the helpful summary of the repertoire in Molloy, Libanius and the Dancers, pp. 282–287. Lucian, The Dance, p. 247 and p. 265. Gasparo Angiolini [and Calzabigi?], Dissertation sur les Ballets-Pantomimes des Anciens pour Servir de Programme au Ballet-Pantomime Tragique de Sémiramis, reproduced in Ranieri de’ Calzabigi’s complete works, Scritti Teatrali e Letterari, ed. Anna Laura Bellina, 2 vols (Rome: Salerno, 1994), Vol. I, pp. 155–156. The authorship of this text is not clear. It was originally published in Angiolini’s name (Vienna: Jean-Thomas de Trattnern, 1765). Calzabigi claims it as his own in his correspondence, but Kathleen K. Hansell argues that this single piece of evidence is not in itself sufficiently convincing. See Kathleen K. Hansell, Opera and Ballet at the Regio Ducal Teatro of Milan, 1771–1776, doctoral dissertation, Ann Arbor, MI, 1979, p. 767.

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by demonstrating their ancient heritage. He, too, has complete confidence in the transparency of Lucian’s text, presenting him as ‘an author beyond suspicion’ before reproducing the same long passage from Lucian as Weaver did.13 Lucian’s text in general, and this passage in particular, became a journalistic commonplace in performance reviews from the early days of Weaver’s innovations to the high point of the genre in the 1770s and 1780s. The Universal Journal in London uses it to praise probably Weaver’s work in 1724,14 and Johann Friedrich Schink refers to it in his discussion of Noverre’s works.15 A further sign of contemporary attachment to Lucian is doubtless the publication in 1779 of the first translation into Italian of The Dance.16 For all the confidence in Lucian that eighteenth-century authors had, this was also the period in which suspicions began to be aroused. The first edition of Lucian’s text in which he is not interpreted at face value is Thomas Francklin’s in 1780.17 It may be more than coincidence that he published this edition at the end of the most controversial decade for the ballet d’action, the 1770s, when heated debate on the continent concerning what exactly it is possible to perform in mime may have moved him to examine Lucian more carefully.18 Lucian’s unimpeachable reputation, however, meant that only two contributors to this debate voiced the same doubts as Francklin: Ange Goudar and Antonio Piazza. They agreed on scarcely anything save that Lucian cannot be taken literally. Goudar was the playboy adventurer who travelled extensively in northern Italy and Austria – and whose acerbic, satirical pamphlets probably caused the querelle in the first place – and his adversary was Antonio Piazza, editor of the Gazzetta Urbana Veneta, playwright and promoter of Italian theatrical reform. Goudar plainly considered Lucian a cliché, prefacing his remarks with a rather weary ‘since one is obliged to cite this author’. He does not believe Lucian’s image of the savant pantomime performer: ‘it is inconceivable that so many qualities and talents were necessary for an art whose purpose was only to entertain spectators for 13

14 15 16 17 18

Louis de Cahusac, La Danse Ancienne et Moderne ou Traité Historique de la Danse, 3 vols (The Hague: Jean Neaulme, 1754), Vol. I, p. 144 for this quotation, and the following Chapter 4 for Lucian’s repertoire. Universal Journal, London, 11 March 1724. Johann Friedrich Schink, Dramaturgische Fragmente. Erster Band (Graz: mit von Widmannstättenschen Schriften, 1781), pp. 65–66. Lucian [Luciano di Samosata], Della Danza, Dialogo di Luciano, con Annotazioni, trans. anon. (Florence: Gaspero Pecchioni, 1779). Lucian, The Works of Lucian, ed. Thomas Francklin, 2 vols (London: n.p., 1780), Vol. II, 26. On the quarrel in the 1770s between Angiolini, Noverre and their respective supporters, see Chapter 7.


a few hours’.19 In Piazza’s Dialogo sul Ballo, the author stages a conversation between a supporter and a critic of the ballet d’action. Unexpectedly, it is the supporter who sees through Lucian: ‘I will grant you anything you like, but not that dancers knew all that Lucian claimed.’20 However, the scepticism of Francklin, Goudar and Piazza is the exception which proves the rule; for most people interested in the ballet d’action, Lucian was the touchstone. Their attitude to him is a sign of the perceived importance in the eighteenth century of the ancient heritage of the ballet d’action.

The balance between mime and dance The most frequent reason in the eighteenth century for citing the ancients is to resolve the thorny issue of how much dance there should be in the ballet d’action and how much mime. All the contemporary terms for the genre make explicit that it is a hybrid: ‘ballet-pantomime’, ‘ballet d’action’, ‘ballo pantomimo’, ‘pantomimische Ballett’, ‘choreodramma’, and others. Except in some isolated and specific cases, however, it is impossible to know exactly what the balance was. Attitudes towards the ancients do nevertheless demonstrate that the balance was important. Supporters of the ballet d’action tended to regard Roman pantomime as a mix of dance and mime equivalent to their own practice, and they were prepared to press the point rather than take it for granted as Ménestrier and de Pure did in the seventeenth century. Their task was made harder by those in the eighteenth century who thought that Roman pantomime was neither dance nor a combination of dance and mime, but solely mime. In his seminal Réflexions Critiques sur la Poésie et sur la Peinture, Jean-Baptiste Dubos rejects a simple analogy between the contemporary and the Roman stage. Cahusac later summarised Dubos’s view as: ‘he claims that their singing wasn’t singing at all, and that their dance wasn’t dance at all’.21 Dubos’s point is partly a philological one: it 19 20

21

Ange Goudar, Remarques sur la Musique et la Danse, ou Lettres de Mr G . . . a` Milord Pembroke (Venice: Charles Palese, 1773), p. 74. Antonio Piazza, ‘Dialogo VI, sul Ballo’, in Il Teatro, ovvero Fatti di una Veneziana che lo Fanno Conoscere, 2 vols (Venice: G.B. Costantini, 1777), Vol. II, pp. 120–128 (124); republished as L’Attrice (Naples: Guida Editore, 1984), pp. 190–194 (192). Cahusac, La Danse Ancienne et Moderne, Vol. I, p. vi. He refers to Sections 6 and 13 of Volume III of Jean-Baptiste Dubos’s Réflexions Critiques sur la Poésie et sur la Peinture (Paris: J. Mariette, 1719; Geneva: Slatkine, 1993), subsequently translated as Critical Reflections on Poetry, Painting and Music. With an Inquiry into the Rise and Progress of the Theatrical Entertainments of the Ancients (London: John Nourse, 1748).

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is reductive to translate as ‘dance’ or ‘ballet’ the wide range of terms used by the Greeks, such as ‘orchesis’ and ‘mime’, and the Romans, such as ‘saltatio’ and ‘pantomime’.22 A consideration of the kind of performance to which these and other ancient terms refer precludes a straightforward correlation with the eighteenth-century sense of the word ‘dance’. It is not meaningful in eighteenth-century terms to translate Apulleus as writing of one performer that ‘he “danced” with his eyes’, or of another that ‘he “danced” like a rock’. Dubos thought that ‘dance’ in its prevalent eighteenth-century sense was plainly an inappropriate term.23 Dubos may have overstated his case by assuming that, since ancient commentators seem most interested in the use of the hands and arms by pantomime performers, since the rest of the body would seem to have been therefore redundant, then pantomime must have consisted of mime rather than dance.24 It is likely, in fact, that ancient commentators were selective in their observations, that they focussed on the upper body because it seemed to be the primary medium for expressing specific meanings, not because it was the only medium. As modern scholars have pointed out, pantomime performers used the whole body, and part of their technique was acrobatic and akin to what we might, in fact, call ‘dance’.25 Dubos was probably unaware of this; his radical distinction between dance and mime is one of a number of his perceptions of the ancients which we would now no longer accept. His contemporaries seem similarly unaware; even when they disagree with Dubos, they are unable to demonstrate from evidence that Roman pantomime was a hybrid genre. Dubos is not, therefore, intentionally manipulating the evidence, but his conclusions are nevertheless grist to his Modernist mill, since his objective is often to undermine what he perceives as a na¨ıve recourse to Classical artistic models by those in the traditionalist camp of the querelle des anciens et des modernes. The challenge for supporters and practitioners of the ballet d’action in the eighteenth century was to enlist the ancients in support of their art in a sophisticated, non-na¨ıve way. All of them felt this need, including 22 23 24 25

On the panoply of terms used in Ancient Greece and Rome, see Molloy, Libanius and the Dancers, pp. 81–85. Dubos, Réflexions Critiques sur la Poésie et sur la Peinture, Vol. III, pp. 234–235. Dubos, Réflexions Critiques sur la Poésie et sur la Peinture, Vol. III, pp. 233–234. There were three parts to ancient pantomime: ‘phora’, which was wholly dance and used the whole body, ‘schema’ or static poses, and ‘logos’, a kind of sign language for the hands and arms. See L.B. Lawler, ‘Phora, schêma, deixis in the Greek dance’, Transactions of the American Philological Association, 85, pp. 148–158. Jones points out that Lucian avoids discussing the full extent of pantomimic movement because it inflamed the critics. See Jones, Culture and Society in Lucian, p. 73.


the first major innovator, John Weaver, who made clear his intentions in the full titles of his major works. Thus, The Loves of Mars and Venus is subtitled: A Dramatick Entertainment of Dancing, Attempted in Imitation of the Pantomimes of the Ancient Greeks and Romans.26 In the preface to the published text, he claims that his work ‘is the first Trial of this Nature that has been made since the Reign of Trajan, as far as I have been able to trace it’. In his History of Dancing published a few years earlier, he seems to define Roman pantomime as more of an actor’s than a dancer’s art.27 If this is an indication of his own style of performance, then it would seem to suggest that the balance of his productions tipped towards mime rather than dance. It is probably closer to the truth, however, to conclude that he cites the ancients for exactly the same reasons as other choreographers and commentators do: to justify the use, rather than the exclusive use, of mime on the stage. Both dance and mime seem important to him; he does after all refer to ‘dancing’ in his titles. His line of reasoning seems to be that both actors and dancers could benefit from studying Roman pantomime, suggesting that he sees no necessary radical divide between the two as Dubos does. Dubos seems to have become aware of Weaver’s innovations, or at least those of one of his collaborators, by the time he published the second edition of the Réflexions in which he extended a paragraph on the Italian players to argue that there is a better example of the expressivity of pantomime: Pantomime companies have been formed in England, and some of their actors have performed mute scenes which everyone understood at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. Even though Roger did not open his mouth, one could easily understand all that he meant to say.28

He obviously has equal admiration for the pantomime skills of Anthony Francis Roger, Weaver’s French collaborator, as he does for the English 26

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John Weaver, The Loves of Mars and Venus, performed at Drury Lane in 1717 (London: W. Mears, J. Browne, 1717). For similar subtitles, compare his other major works: The Fable of Orpheus and Eurydice, Attempted in Imitation of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, performed at Drury Lane in 1718 (London: W. Mears, J. Browne, W. Chettwood, 1718), and The Judgment of Paris. A Dramatic Entertainment in Dancing and Singing, After the Manner of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, performed at Drury Lane in 1733 (London: J. Tonson, 1733). All are reproduced in Ralph, The Life and Works of John Weaver. Weaver, An Essay towards an History of Dancing, in Ralph, The Life and Works of John Weaver, p. 632. Dubos, Réflexions Critiques sur la Poésie et sur la Peinture, Vol. III, p. 312. This paragraph and the following paragraph on the performance in mime of a scene from Corneille’s Les Horaces by Françoise Prévost and Balon are not in Dubos’s first edition of 1719.

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pantomime companies to which he refers.29 Although Weaver never worked in Paris, Roger was choreographer at the Opéra-Comique and worked frequently in London throughout the 1720s.30 It is more than likely that Roger brought over English performers to work at the Opéra-Comique during the 1720s, and that these are the performers to which Dubos refers. By 1754, when Cahusac’s La Danse Ancienne et Moderne was published, Dubos’s contention that Roman pantomime was purely mime, with no danced component, appeared to rob contemporary innovative performers such as Marie Sallé of their Classical pedigree. Sallé’s style was dramatic dance in the sense that she constructed a narrative based on characterful movements and expressive gesture in a way which must have reminded spectators of painterly techniques for depicting the passions.31 Cahusac’s underlying principle seems to be that it was sufficiently different to the noble dance of court and theatre to merit comparison with the Roman art of pantomime. Hence, Cahusac calls Sallé the modern incarnation of the famous Roman dancer Tyméle.32 Cahusac sees numerous other signs that Roman pantomime bears comparison with eighteenth-century stage practice: in the images of dance on ancient pottery, in Homer’s description of Achilles’s shield, in the Imagines of Philostratus.33 He meets Dubos on his own philological ground and argues that Latin ‘saltatio’ is a word used by Latin authors to refer to social ‘dance’ as well as stage ‘dance’. If stage dance resembled social dance, it must have been an activity we would recognise as ‘dance’. The alternative would be to imagine that Romans indulged in pantomime at social gatherings.34 These arguments are central to Cahusac’s purpose: to demonstrate that eighteenth-century ‘danse en action’, epitomised by Sallé, was the pinnacle of a historical development which had its roots in the finest traditions of Roman pantomime. He can only achieve his objective, however, if he can convincingly show that Roman pantomime was a blend of mime and dance. Cahusac’s ambition is the unspoken assumption of one of the most important Italian writers on opera, Francesco Algarotti. The chapter he writes on dance in his Saggio sopra l’Opera in Musica is devoted to promoting

29

30 31 33 34

Sarah Yuill McCleave establishes the full name of Roger in Dance in Handel’s Italian Operas: The Collaboration with Marie Sallé, PhD dissertation, Department of Music, King’s College, University of London, 1 October 1993, p. 56n. On the collaboration between Roger and Weaver, see Ralph, The Life and Works of John Weaver, pp. 74–75. See Chapter 5, pp. 122–3. 32 Cahusac, La Danse Ancienne et Moderne, Vol. I, pp. 140–141. Cahusac, La Danse Ancienne et Moderne, Vol. I, pp. xii–xiii. Cahusac, La Danse Ancienne et Moderne, Vol. I, p. xiv.


greater use of dramatic dance in Italian intermezzi instead of danced interludes which had no dramatic connection with the plot of the opera. He argues against a long-standing Italian convention; not surprisingly, then, the examples of dramatic dance he gives are not Italian, but French: ‘the ballets of the Rose, or Ariadne, and of Pygmalion’.35 Algarotti does not name the dancer or choreographer, perhaps because they are famous works danced by Marie Sallé, whom he assumes his reader will know.36 Of these ballets, Algarotti writes that ‘they approached very closely the art of Pylades and the most noble ancient pantomimes’.37 His assumption, then, is that the reform of Italian intermezzo dancing should be modelled on the French practice of dramatic dancing, because it is a perfect hybrid of dance and drama, equalled only by ancient pantomime. Sallé never published her views on this subject, or indeed on any subject relating to her performances. It is one of the injustices of history that women do not write books, or even enter artistic debate as men do. It was left to her male successors to express an opinion. Noverre regarded himself in many ways as continuing her legacy. The reasons are doubtless partly to do with bolstering his own reputation, but to a degree there is a plausible lineage. Noverre worked with Sallé at the Paris Opéra-Comique; he may even have parodied her famous Rose choreography under her direction.38 Even though we do not know how close their artistic minds really were, it is not hard to imagine that Sallé would have agreed with Noverre’s general principle that the ballet d’action is a blend of mime and dance, and that both are equally important. He did not broach the issue in his famous monograph Lettres sur la Danse until the penultimate edition published in St Petersburg in 1803, more than four decades after the work first appeared. At this late stage, he cannily acknowledges Dubos’s point, that the words used by the ancients referred to a range of types of performances, not only to ‘dancing’ as understood by the eighteenth century, but he then proceeds to use this

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Francesco Algarotti, Saggio sopra l’Opera in Musica [1755] (Livorno: M. Coltellini, 1763), p. 55. Marie Sallé dances the part of ‘La Rose’ in Les Fleurs, the third Entrée of Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes, first performed at the Paris Opéra, 23 August 1735 (Les Fleurs was added on 11 September). Sallé danced the part of Ariadne at Covent Garden in her dramatic danced entertainment Bacchus and Ariadne, first performed 26 February 1734. See the long description by the English correspondent of the Mercure de France, April 1734. Sallé first performed her choreography Pygmalion at Covent Garden, 14 February 1734. See, again, the report in the Mercure de France, April 1734, pp. 770–772. For more detail on Sallé’s career, see McCleave, Dance in Handel’s Italian Operas. Algarotti, Saggio sopra l’Opera in Musica, p. 55. See Edward Nye, ‘L’allégorie dans le ballet d’action: Marie Sallé a` travers l’écho des parodies’, in Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de la France, 2 (April–June 2008), pp. 289–310 (299).

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point to his advantage to argue that his choreographies are therefore closer to ancient practices, precisely because they are a blend of mime and dance. He conveniently ignores Dubos’s crucial contention that the two did not mix in Roman pantomime.39 He, like many before him, finds the ancients an important ally in his struggle to justify his own particular mix of mime and dance. Noverre’s struggle is with those who regarded his appeal to the ancients as fraudulent. He draws particular criticism from the German playwright and theatre critic Johann Schink, who deploys Dubos’s argument of a radical distinction among the ancients between dance and mime to discredit Noverre’s claim that he has revived an ancient art. Schink’s comments are particularly interesting, since they are a long and detailed reaction apparently to watching Noverre’s productions in Vienna.40 Although he acknowledges that Noverre has a reputation for introducing drama into dance, or, as Schink puts it, ‘he puts the kothurnos on the dancers’,41 his choreographies are still not comparable to Roman mime, which ‘claimed an absolute right to be drama’.42 Hence, Pylades and Batyllus abided meticulously by dramatic rules, had the clearest exposition, the finest peripeteia, and the most natural untying of the knot, so that everyone was deceived in the same way as would be during the performance of a play.43

What Schink means by the ‘absolute’ dramatic nature of pantomime may have a great deal to do with a fairly conservative application of Aristotle’s poetics. His arguments have much in common with those of Noverre’s chief rival, Angiolini, who writes at length on the need to apply Aristotelian dramatic rules to any art which claims to be a dramatic art. In aligning himself with Angiolini in this way, Schink’s comments are part of the intellectual reverberations of the heated debate in northern Italy during the 1770s which pitted Angiolini against Noverre on precisely this kind of subject.44

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Jean-Georges Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse et les arts imitateurs (Paris: Lieutier, 1952), pp. 25–29. The three letters Noverre adds to the St Petersburg edition concerning specifically the ancients are Vol. II, letters viii, ix, and x. Schink’s comments on Noverre’s staging are so detailed as to suggest he was a spectator in Vienna, although it is unclear when exactly he was in Vienna. Schink, Dramaturgische Fragmente, p. 61. It sounds as if he has read Noverre’s preface to Agamemnon Vengé (first performed Vienna 1772), in which Noverre claims that ‘I am the first to have dared [. . .] to make my dancers wear the kothurnos.’ See Agamemnon Vengé, p. 16, in the anthology of his performance programmes, Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre, Maˆıtre des Ballets de la Cour Impériale et Royale (Vienna: Joseph Kurzböck, 1776). Schink, Dramaturgische Fragmente, p. 64. 43 Schink, Dramaturgische Fragmente, p. 66. See Chapter 7, pp. 170–177.


The appeal to heart and mind Not all comparisons between Roman pantomime and the ballet d’action were as controversial as the matter of the balance between mime and dance. There was more consensus concerning the simultaneous appeal to both heart and mind, which was thought as characteristic of Roman pantomime as it was of the ballet d’action. Both arts were thought to place equal emphasis on the mental and the emotional aspects of performance; they were conceived as more rational than a dumb show, and more emotional than the gesturing of physical oratory. The combination of these, reason and emotion, was an important way in which both Roman pantomime and the ballet d’action sought the status of liberal arts. It is Lucian’s chief purpose in The Dance to justify the art of pantomime in culturally acceptable ways by arguing that it is notable for its wisdom as well as its emotional evocativeness. In the latter days of Roman pantomime, Augustine conceived of the genre in the same terms as an appeal both to the senses and to the rational mind. He seems to have disapproved of the pagan themes in the pantomime repertoire, but did not entirely object to the genre on certain conditions. His argument is interesting, because it emerges in the course of elaborating the semiotic theories for which he has become well known by later scholarship. In De Ordine, he proposes that if what appears to be beautiful but meaningless body movements in pantomime are in fact, for those who know how to interpret them, clear signs for specific things, then one can say of the body movements that they are rational. We can still find them beautiful, but they do not only ‘appeal to the senses’; being meaningful, they also speak to the mind.45 Thus, Augustine implicitly places pantomime on a par with the other liberal arts. In the eighteenth century, the combination of rational and sensual appeal was often expressed in terms of the need for stage dance to signify something as well as provide visual pleasure. It was a mantra for all contemporary supporters of the ballet d’action that, in Colley Cibber’s words, ‘motion without meaning’ has no artistic purpose.46 On this principle, Diderot proposes to reform contemporary stage dance by integrating it with mime. To demonstrate, he devises an elaborate and meaningful mime and dance plot at the end of his Entretiens sur le Fils Naturel.47 Noverre and Angiolini 45 46 47

Augustine, De Ordine, 2, 11, 34; in Œuvres de Saint Augustin (Paris: Desclée, de Bouwer et Cie, 1939–), Vol. IV, p. 425. Colley Cibber, A Critical Edition of an Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, Comedian, ed. John Maurice Evans (New York: Garland, 1987), p. 299. Denis Diderot, Entretiens sur le Fils Naturel, in Œuvres Complètes, 33 vols (Paris: Hermann, 1975–), Vol. X, p. 152. See Chapter 6.

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were rivals in many ways, but they at least agreed that dance must be meaningful.48 There is a conscious intention on the part of choreographers to appeal to the mind as well as the senses in order to distinguish their work from much more exclusively visual genres such as Jean-Nicolas Servandoni’s so-called ‘pantomimes’,49 and also from the comic, unedifying ambitions of what they considered more vulgar arts, such as the Commedia dell’arte or the French foire. The most salient way in which Roman pantomime and the ballet d’action achieved the ambition of appealing both to the mind and the senses was to cultivate both a logocentric and an expressive aesthetic. In other words, the genre was rational by virtue of being at some level a fairly direct translation into mime of a written text, and it was at the same time emotional by virtue of the performer’s ability to act out convincingly a wide range of powerfully moving human passions. In the eighteenth century, this combination was often explained by analogy with the combination in opera of recitative and aria.50 Both Roman pantomime and the ballet d’action were logocentric; both relied to a degree on translation into mime and dance of what one might call a libretto. This text, in turn, was usually an adaptation of an existing work from the repertoire of spoken theatre. This fact distinguished both Roman pantomime and the ballet d’action from their immediate predecessors or rivals, Greek mime and the Commedia dell’arte. The frequent reliance on a text from the repertoire of spoken theatre confronted choreographers with many challenges, including the question of what to do with the ‘récit’. Classical as well as early modern tragic theatre prefers to recount certain actions rather than show them. This constitutes an avowedly narrative moment which could be problematic in mime. In fact, it appealed enormously to both Roman and eighteenth-century choreographers, who translated the reported action into visible action on stage.51 The adaptation of spoken plays leads to a further shared logocentric characteristic: certain scenes were what we might call discourses in gesture 48 49

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See Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse (1952), p. 12; Angiolini [and Calzabigi?], Dissertation sur les Ballets-Pantomimes, pp. 156–157. Staged at the Salles des Machines in the Tuilleries from 1738 to 1742, and 1754 to 1758. For a description of one of Servandoni’s productions, La Fôret Enchantée (inspired by Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata), see Annonces, Affiches, et Avis Divers, 15 [‘Quinzième feuille’], 10 April 1754. For a general discussion, see Angelica Goodden, Actio and Persuasion: Dramatic Performance in Eighteenth-century France (Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 96–97. See Chapter 8, p. 189. For the approach of Roman pantomime to the contemporary canon in general, and the récit in particular, see Garelli, Danser le Mythe, pp. 165–168.


in which there was an isomorphic relation between the text and the mime. The ancients valued the use of hands and arms to express specific meanings; pantomime was in part understood as a form of chironomy, a ‘literal’ translation of words into a gestural language.52 There are many accounts from the eighteenth century of similar efforts, though it is hard to judge how important this principle was, since the evidence we have tends to come from unsympathetic critics who may overstate the phenomenon. However, the way certain scenes were sometimes compared to recitative in opera, combined with constant references in plot synopses to characters who ‘speak’ to one another, along with recurrent complaints that mime dancers spent too much time walking or gesturing rhythmically,53 all this suggests a logocentric aspect to eighteenth-century performance. One of the logocentric techniques of which Noverre was most proud was in fact closely related to the principles of Roman pantomime. He recounts on a number of occasions how he hid members of the chorus in the wings so that they could not be seen, synchronising their singing with specific action on stage.54 This innovation is analogous with standard practice in Roman pantomime: the chorus would not be hidden, but the performer would strive to interpret its words as precisely as possible, ceasing his movements as soon as the chorus ceased singing. Logocentrism, then, was a way in which both Roman pantomime and the ballet d’action appealed to the mind. Movement had to signify something, it had to be marshalled into quasi-semiotic signs, as Augustine would have it. Both genres, however, made efforts to appeal just as much to the senses. Spectators responded with admiration for the ability of performers to give a stirring rendering of the distinctive passions of their characters. An anonymous epigram in The Greek Anthology describing the performer Xenophon of Smyrna is typical of the way spectators felt awed by the evocative power of pantomime: We thought we were looking on Bacchus himself when the old man lustily led the Maenads in their furious dance, and played Cadmus tripping it in the fall of his years, and the messenger coming from the forest where he had spied on the rout of the Bacchants, and frenzied Agave exulting in the blood of her son. Heavens! how divine was the man’s acting!55

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See Garelli, Danser le Mythe, p. 6. 53 For all three critical issues, see Chapter 7. Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse (1952), Chapter 20, ‘Des Coryphées’. The Greek Anthology, trans. W.R. Paton, 5 vols (London: Heinemann, 1918), Vol. V, p. 333 (no. 289 of the Planudean appendix).

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The obvious difference between this performance and an eighteenthcentury performance is that Xenophon of Smyrna is playing all four parts. Nevertheless, there is common ground. Eighteenth-century spectators liked mime dancers for their ability to create a powerful psychological illusion of character, a captivating depiction of the passions. It is for this reason that the reviewer in the Mercure de France writes with a degree of hyperbole unusual for his staid journal when he describes at great length Anne Heinel performing the part of Medea in Vestris’s version of Jason et Médée.56 The same kind of phenomenon leads the reviewer in the London daily newspaper The Public Advertiser to deploy an interesting neologistic term, this time for Dauberval’s performance of ‘Old Age’: ‘impersonification’. The word is a hybrid of ‘impersonation’ and ‘personification’, as if Dauberval’s role were so powerfully characterised or ‘impersonated’ that it seemed to be a veritable embodiment or ‘personification’ by the performer.57 It would be equally fitting in the epigram above to describe Xenophon of Smyrna’s performance. In the eighteenth century, this skill was almost synonymous with the English actor David Garrick, who was renowned for his ability to display a gamut of nuanced physical indications of the feelings and thoughts of his stage character, sometimes contradictory yet always convincingly symptomatic.58 Mime dancers often admired Garrick and sought to emulate his principles of physical acting. It may be that Garrick’s invitation to Noverre to perform at Drury Lane in 1754 – and his subsequent hospitality at his home, where Noverre could take advantage of his extensive library – was a turning point in Noverre’s career.59 He certainly expresses his admiration for Garrick on many occasions. Garrick is a touchstone for the expressive ambitions of mime dancers all over Europe. A footnote in the first Italian translation of Lucian’s The Dance in 1779 makes a point that few would have disagreed with, that Garrick is the modern incarnation of the great Roman actor and tutor to Cicero, Roscio, and that he ‘made the spectator understand the action he performed, even to those who did not speak his language, with the sole use of gesture and his Protean face’.60 56 57

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Le Mercure de France, February 1776. The passage is quoted in full in Chapter 4, p. 109. The Public Advertiser, 19 March 1784. The name of the work is not specified. This use is fifteen years earlier than the earliest use given by the Oxford English Dictionary in 1799, and is the earliest use one finds when searching the digitalised version of the British Library’s Burney collection of British Newspapers. See Jean Benedetti, David Garrick and the Birth of Modern Theatre (London: Methuen, 2001), Chapter 5. See Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse (1952), p. 11. Lucian, Della Danza, Dialogo di Luciano, con Annotazioni, p. 64n.


Given the seminal Classical work he is translating – and especially given the purpose of his translation, which seems to be to contribute to the contemporary quarrel in Italy between Noverre and Angiolini – his footnote makes Garrick as much an ideal model for mime dancers as for actors.

Thematic affinities It is not easy to generalise about the themes of the ballet d’action, given that the genre was popular for nearly a century, that it spread to a number of different countries, and that it was produced by a great many choreographers, each with their own artistic tendencies. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify some general principles, particularly with regard to the forms of ballets d’action which were often considered the most characteristic and most notable innovations: ‘tragic’ and ‘heroic’ pantomime ballet. If we believe the subtitles used on performance programmes, then tragic or heroic works made up about two-thirds of the repertoire.61 Both these terms were used in the same way as they were in the context of spoken theatre. ‘Heroic’ was a particularly useful term for a hybrid genre such as the ballet d’action which tended to cross boundaries easily. At least since Corneille used it in the subtitle of Le Cid, it meant an attenuated treatment of the subjects of high tragedy, a blurring of the boundaries, through manipulation of tone, style of portrayal, or content. The appeal of these two concepts is corroborated by choreographers’ comments. Noverre remarked near the end of his life that deciding in the 1750s to concentrate on ‘la pantomime héro¨ıque’ was a turning point in his career.62 Angiolini commented that tragedy is the most sublime genre in dance.63 When one compares the themes of heroic or tragic ballets d’action with the themes of Roman pantomime, the most notable similarity is that both were predominantly derived from myth or history. Roman mime was almost exclusively so.64 In neither case were original stories invented by what we might call the librettist. The precise source of the historical– mythological subject is difficult to identify in the case of Roman pantomime, 61

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On the selective but representative basis of our research in French, Italian, Austrian, Belgian, and Russian libraries, there are a bewildering forty-one different permutations of subtitles of ballets d’action, but two-thirds of these titles use the words ‘tragic’ or ‘heroic’ in their subtitles. Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse, opening of letter VII in Vol. II of the St Petersburg edition (1803), reproduced in the modern edition (1952), p. 11. Angiolini [and Calzabigi?], Dissertation sur les Ballets-Pantomimes, p. 154. See Garelli, Danser le Mythe, p. 249.

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but ballets d’action performance programmes are sometimes specific in this regard, doubtless to lend literary authority to the work. Thus, Muzzarelli declares that he derives La Generosità di Scipione from Livy, Plutarch, ‘and others’.65 When famous adaptations of a theme already existed, choreographers may have found it useful to cite their sources in order to distinguish their version from those of their rivals. This may be why Gioia writes explicitly that his Gli Orazi ed i Curiazi was inspired mostly by Livy and partly by Corneille, and implicitly, therefore, not at all by Noverre’s famous version.66 When ancient sources are cited, it is not always the ones we might expect. Clerico’s La Conquista del Vello d’Oro, for example, is derived from Gaius Valerius Flaccus’s Argonautica, not from Apollonius of Rhodes, who was the more common inspiration for ancient Roman versions.67 The themes of ballet d’action were predominantly mythological or historical, but the source text did not need to be ancient. Choreographers were inclined, also, towards what one might call modern myth, such as Tasso’s epic Gerusalemme Liberata, adapted by Onorato Vigano` for his Rinaldo ed Armide.68 Tasso’s epic is one example of the source material shared by opera and the ballet d’action. Given the generally close relationship between these two genres (ballets d’action were often part of an operatic performance), it is curious that there was not more thematic common ground between them. The ballet d’action had only an occasional tendency to adapt from opera, and it was usually Italian choreographers adapting the libretti of the lyric poet regarded by many contemporaries as the Racine of opera, Metastasio. Clerico’s Issipile, from the opera of the same name, is one example.69 In contrast, French operas were not a common source, even for French choreographers, perhaps because, as Angiolini remarks, they were too episodic and fantastical.70 65 66 67

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Antonio Muzzarelli, La Generosità di Scipione, performed Rome, Teatro a Torre Argentina, carneval 1790; performance programme published Rome: Gioacchino Puccinelli, 1790. Gaetano Gioia, Gli Orazi ed i Curiazi, performed Rome, Teatro a Torre Argentina, carneval 1812; performance programme published Rome: Crispino Puccinelli, 1812. Francesco Clerico, La Conquista del Vello d’Oro, performed during the opera Adrasto Re d’Egitto, Milan, La Scala, carneval 1792; performance programme published Milan: Gio. Battista Bianchi, 1792. ` Rinaldo ed Armide, o sia la Conquista di Sionne, performed Rome, Teatro a Onorato Vigano, Torre Argentina, carneval 1788; performance programme published Rome: Michele Puccinelli, 1788. Francesco Clerico, Issipile, performed Rome, Teatro delle Dame, carneval 1788; performance programme published Rome: Gioacchino Puccinelli, 1788. Angiolini [and Calzabigi?], Dissertation sur les Ballets-Pantomimes, p. 168.


Like Clerico, choreographers often adapted works of contemporaries. There are a number of adaptations of Voltaire’s plays, some celebrated such as Angiolini’s Semiramis,71 others less well known such as Beretti’s Andromico e Ramira from Irène.72 Thematically speaking, therefore, the common ground between Roman pantomime and the ballet d’action lies in their predominantly mythological and historical subjects. There is an important similarity, also, in their respective approaches to these subjects: neither abided by the Classical principle of telling a story in a better or more intelligent way than before, perhaps by using an unusual source to modify or even contradict other versions.73 Their intention was more simply to recount the story in the very different media of mime and dance. This may be why sources are usually not specified in ballet d’action performance programmes, or indeed anywhere else; they do not seem to matter very much to choreographers or spectators. The examples we mention above, in which sources are, in fact, specified in the performance programmes, are the exception rather than the rule. More often than not, establishing the thematic source involves a great deal of detective work. Even then, however, the conclusion one draws is the same: choreographers did not try to improve on existing versions of myths. Weaver’s plot for Orpheus and Euridice is derived entirely from Charles Estienne’s Classical dictionary, and there is no evidence in the synopsis that he fine-tuned it or supplemented it with other sources of the myth.74 This is neither a matter of idleness nor plagiarism: it is translation (of words into mime and dance). Inevitably, translation sometimes involves modification, but this still does not constitute an intention to tell a story in a better, more intelligent way. Noverre acknowledged Euripides and the eighteenth-century tragic playwright Guymond de la Touche as sources for his Iphigénie en Tauride, but also remarked that he could not follow either of them faithfully because of the particular nature of performance.75 He argued for translator’s licence,

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Gasparo Angiolini, Semiramis, performed Vienna, Burgtheater, 1765; performance programme published Vienna: Jean-Thomas de Trattnern, 1765. Beretti, Andromico e Ramira, performed Milan, La Scala, carneval 1793 during the opera Egilina; performance programme published Milan: Gio. Battista Bianci, 1793. On this un-Classical aspect of Roman pantomime, see Garelli, Danser le Mythe, pp. 308–309. See Ralph, The Life and Works of John Weaver, p. 765, who establishes Weaver’s source as Charles Estienne [‘C. Stephanus’], Dictionarium Historicum, Geographicum, Poeticum, ed. N. Lloydius (Oxford, 1670). Jean-Georges Noverre, preface to Iphigénie en Tauride, Ballet Tragique (first performed Vienna 1772–73), p. 7, in the anthology of his performance programmes, Recueil de Programmes. Claude Guymond de la Touche’s version was performed in Paris, June 1757, and provided the

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not poetic licence. He did not argue that by making such modifications he thereby told a better version of the myth. His objective was not literary, it was performative. Since the essence of the ballet d’action was not literary, it is not surprising that there were almost no famous librettists. The exceptions are rare: Calzabigi wrote for Angiolini, and Sumarokov collaborated with Hilverding.76 Generally speaking, however, scenarios were anonymous. One can only assume that they were written by the choreographer. This is a further point of similarity with Roman pantomime. Although it recruited some established poets, the phenomenon was confined to the early development of the genre, and was probably caused by the decline of spoken tragedy and the need for lyric poets to find a way to earn a living.77 Otherwise, libretti were written by minor poets or else were anonymous. Despite the non-literary nature of the art, the ballet d’action did follow and contribute to literary developments, and it was more thematically adventurous than its affinities with Roman pantomime would suggest. A notable thematic development of theatre of the second half of the eighteenth century was the search for a middle way between tragedy and comedy. Instead of confining itself to the two extremes of recounting either the drama of great figures of history or myth or the comic day-to-day life of ordinary people, theatre should be able to make non-comic drama out of the everyday life of ordinary people. In spoken theatre, this intention was fundamental to the ‘drame bourgeois’, and on the musical stage it was recurrent in opéras-comiques. Jean-Michel Sedaine was accomplished in both genres, and the success of his works attracted attention from choreographers. Gallet adapted Le Déserteur for his Il Disertore,78 and Angiolini adapted Le Roi et le Fermier for his La Caccia di Enrico IV.79 Thematically speaking, the latter is particularly notable for its controversial depiction of earthy peasant life and kingship bound together in the same scenes, and with the benefit

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basis for the libretto of Gluck’s opera. See Robert R. Heitner, ‘The Iphigenia in Tauris theme in drama of the eighteenth century’, in Comparative Literature, 16.4 (Autumn, 1964), pp. 289–309. Calzabigi and Angiolini collaborated on Orfeo ed Euridice and Don Juan (music in both cases by Gluck); for the collaboration between Sumarokov and Hilverding, see n. 82. See Garelli, Danser le Mythe, p. 311. Sébastien Gallet, Il Disertore, performed Milan, La Scala, 1785 during the opera La Quakera Spiritosa. Performance programme published Milan: Gio. Battista Bianchi, 1785. Gasparo Angiolini, La Caccia di Enrico IV, first performed Venice, San Benedetto Theatre, 1772–73. Performance programme published Milan: Gio. Battista Bianchi, 1773. Adapted from the opéra-comique by Sedaine, Le Roi et le Fermier, first performed Paris, 1762. See Chapter 6, pp. 141–142 for a discussion of the dialogistic qualities of the programme for this work, published a year later in French in Vienna.


of hindsight can be seen as a significant questioning of royal authority in pre-Revolutionary France. This was a thematically daring choice for Angiolini. The original French stage play by Charles Collé, pre-dating Sedaine’s opéra-comique, was banned for twelve years until the death of Louis XV in 1774.80 Angiolini’s adaptation of this theme is an early sign of his sympathies with political reform, which emerged in Italy in the 1790s.81 The ballet d’action is thematically adventurous in other ways. In Russia, the foundation of a national ballet based on Russian themes begins with the collaboration between Hilverding and Sumarokov on L’Asile de la Vertue and Les Nouveaux Lauriers.82 The latter is aesthetical as well as thematically bold, since it is the first Russian ballet in which common Russian men and women participate in the action alongside the Olympian gods, mythological characters, and allegorical figures. Hilverding is thus contributing to Sumarokov’s well-known efforts to found and promote Russian national literature and theatre. One of the founding plays of Russian Classicism is Sumarokov’s tragedy Semira. Angiolini adapted this work in 1772 as a parting gesture to Catherine the Great after six years as court choreographer.83 It was doubly flattering, because not only did he choose a landmark in contemporary Russian theatre, but in the process he staged the first thematically Russian tragic ballet. His teacher and predecessor at the Russian court, Hilverding, preferred to stage exclusively pastoral or ‘galant’ themes drawn from Classical mythology rather than tragic or heroic works.84

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Charles Collé, La Partie de Chasse de Henri IV, first performed in 1762 at the private theatre of the Duc d’Orléans, but not performed by a state-sponsored theatre until 1774 at the Comédie Française. Both Collé and Sedaine’s works are inspired by Robert Dodsley’s play The King and the Miller of Mansfield (1737). See Lorenzo Tozzi, Il Balletto Pantomime del Settecento: Gaspare Angiolini (L’Aquila: L.U. Japandre, 1972), Chapter 7. Frantz Anton Christoph van Wewen Hilverding, L’Asile de la Vertue, an opera-ballet with music by Raupach and Starzer, probably performed 5 September 1759. Les Nouveaux Lauriers, performed St Petersburg, 5 September (or 6?) 1759 (or maybe only in 1764). These dates are those of the Russian calendar, which was eleven days behind the Gregorian calendar used in Western Europe. The libretti for both were printed without publishing details; see the copies in the St Petersburg National Library, respectively 19.113a.3.269–277 and 19.113a.3.270. See the entries in R.A. Mooser’s inventory, Opéras, Intermezzos, Ballets, Cantates, Oratorios, Joués en Russie durant le XVIIIe Siècle, avec l’Indication des Œuvres de Compositeurs Russes Parues en ´ Occident, a` la Même Epoque. Essai d’un Répertoire Chronologique et Alphabétique (Geneva: A. Kundig, 1945). Gasparo Angiolini, Semira, first performed St Petersburg 1772. The performance programme was published undated (see the copy in the St Petersburg Public Library, 18.169.2.85). According to Mooser’s inventory, none of Hilverding’s productions in Russia was based on a tragic or heroic theme. See Opéras, Intermezzos, Ballets.

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If Hilverding and Angiolini contributed to the Russification of the eighteenth-century repertoire, then Didelot made an important contribution to the Russification of the Romantic repertoire when he staged an adaptation of Pushkin’s poem The Caucasian Captive in St Petersburg in 1823.85 This work is interesting not only for thematic reasons, but for ideological ones. It is one of the ballets produced by Didelot during his last, decade-long stay in St Petersburg, which captures the spirit of liberal reform and the anti-tyrannical, anti-repressive mood of Russia between the end of the Napoleonic wars and the Decembrist uprising in 1825. Like Angiolini, Didelot’s politics can be discerned through his choice of themes relevant to contemporary political moods. Notwithstanding the novelty of some eighteenth-century themes, the general thematic similarities between Roman pantomime and the ballet d’action were strong. This may have contributed to the demise of the genre, or at least its themes, as the early nineteenth century progressed. The only ballet d’action from this period which is still in the repertoire of modern dance companies is Dauberval’s Le Ballet de la Paille, otherwise known as La Fille Mal Gardée. It is perhaps no coincidence that this work had an unusual source. It was not inspired in any of the ways we have so far mentioned, but instead from a contemporary painting by Pierre-Antoine Baudouin, ‘Une Jeune Fille Querellée par sa Mère’.86 It was very unusual for a painting to inspire a ballet d’action, a fact all the more surprising given how often contemporaries drew analogies between the two genres.87 Modern mime companies do not perform eighteenth-century works, either. Perhaps this is not surprising, given that they do not have the continuity of repertoire that dance companies have. It is nevertheless telling that one of the most accomplished mime performers of the twentieth century, Jean-Louis Barrault, was able to stage a work called ‘La Fontaine de Jouvence’ apparently without any awareness that it was the theme of an early and successful work by Noverre.88

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Charles Didelot, The Caucasian Captive, first performed St Petersburg, 15 January 1823. The libretto was printed without publishing details; see the copy in the St Petersburg National Library, 18.171.2.162. See Ivor Guest, The Ballet of the Enlightenment: The Establishment of the Ballet d’Action in France (London: Dance Books, 1996), pp. 386–387. For examples of painterly analogies, see Chapter 7, pp. 177–179. For discussion of the limited examples of paintings inspiring French theatre, both spoken and mimed, see Gooden, Actio and Persuasion, Chapter 3, especially pp. 75–78. Jean-Louis Barrault, La Fontaine de Jouvence, first performed in Paris, 1947, scenario by Boris Kochno, music composed by Georges Auric and performed and directed by Pierre Boulez. See ´ ´ Guy Benha¨ım, ‘Etienne Decroux, ou la chronique d’un siècle’, in Etienne Decroux, Mime


Origins Although Roman pantomime and the ballet d’action both had distinctive and characteristic features, they were, like most arts, the product of a network of influences rather than a single source. Their phenomenal success, however, has encouraged different parts of their respective networks to claim rights over their origins. In the case of Roman pantomime, there is disagreement concerning the degree to which it is an invention of the Italian peninsula or of the Eastern Empire.89 The celebrated Classical performer Pylades probably came to Rome from the oriental part of the Empire, drew on existing traditions of Greek mime, and exploited well-known tragic works from the repertoire of Greek and Latin spoken theatre. Although he is the only person we know to have brought together the particular combination of elements which made up first-century Roman pantomime, it would be simplistic to regard it as simply his invention, or as simply Roman. There is therefore a danger in simplifying the complicated origins of a genre such as this. One should be similarly sceptical of claims of radical originality in the eighteenth century. Unfortunately, they abound. Carlo Ritorni coined a new word, ‘coreodramma’, to do justice to what he thought was the unique ` works, yet Vigano` was taught by the French nature of Salvatore Vigano’s choreographer Dauberval, who was in turn taught by Noverre.90 This does not make him an heir only to Noverre, however. He was also taught by his father, Onorato, who danced in Hilverding’s productions in Vienna.91 It is hardly surprising that a form of art such as the ballet d’action should have

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´ Corporel: Textes, Etudes et Témoignages (Saint-Jean-de-Védas: L’Entretemps, 2003), pp. 241– 268 (260). E.J. Jory stresses the origins in the eastern part of the Roman Empire in ‘The literary evidence for the beginnings of Imperial pantomime’, in Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London, 28 (1981), pp. 147–161. Vincenzo Rotolo thinks that pantomime was invented primarily in the Italian peninsula; see Il Pantomimo: Studi e Testi (Palermo: Presso l’Academia, 1957), pp. 18–48. For an overview of the beginnings, development, and demise of Roman pantomime, see Molloy, Libanius and the Dancers, pp. 52–65. ` Commentarii della Vita e delle Carlo Ritorni uses the word in his biography of Salvatore Vigano, Opere Coredrammatiche di Salvatore Viganò e della Coregrafia e de’ Corepei (Milan: Guglielmini e Redaelli, 1838). The word is in fact an exact etymological synonym for French ‘ballet d’action’, but was probably intended to make the dramatic component more explicit. Perhaps we can attribute Ritorni’s perception of the uniqueness of coreodramma to his fervour for ` Later scholars, however, are not necessarily more objective. Giannadrea Poesia S. Vigano. ` coreodrammi as unique in ‘Vigano, ` the coreodramma and the similarly regards Vigano’s language of gesture’, in Historical Dance, 3.5 (1998), pp. 3–8. The cast list to Hilverding’s Les Amants Protégés par l’Amour (Vienna: Jean-Thomas de ` Trattnern, 1765) includes O. Vigano.

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had strong intercultural influences, since, of all the arts, it could travel most easily across national and therefore cultural boundaries. Salvatore Vigano` is himself a demonstration of the diverse geographic origins and stylistic influences which can contribute to what was subsequently considered (by Ritorni) a unique form of theatre. He started his career in the early 1780s in northern Italy and Rome, continued it in Madrid, where he met Dauberval, moved to Bordeaux and London with Dauberval, returned to northern Italy, went on to Vienna and central Europe (Prague, Dresden, Berlin, Hamburg), and subsequently divided his time between Vienna and northern Italy, before finally settling at La Scala in Milan in 1811 for the remaining decade of his life.92 The influences on his work, therefore, are likely to be complex. For the same reasons, we should not take at face value Noverre’s claims to have invented the genre. He was doubtless influenced by the evolution of physical acting, most notably Garrick’s style. He was also an admirer of Sallé’s work, which itself was a product of the context of the 1720s in which she worked in London with Weaver and in Paris with Françoise Prévost and Michel Blondy. Hilverding, whom Angiolini claims as the founder of the genre, was influenced by his training in Paris under Blondy and doubtless his knowledge of Sallé’s style. Even Weaver, who chronologically at least is the first innovator in the field, acknowledged the influence of the Italian players.93 They, in turn, were likely to have been influenced by Molière’s style in general and his notion of ‘character’ in particular when they shared the stages of the Petit-Bourbon and Palais royal theatres in Paris with his company from 1658 until Molière’s death (and indeed Molière’s company continued to share stage space with the Italians until 1680 and the establishment of the Comédie Française).94 There would be very little substance to the ballet d’action without the notion of ‘character’, yet the Molièresque roots of the principle are too distant to be regarded as the major source of the genre. Thus, the intercultural origins of the ballet 92 93

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For biographical details, see the entry for Vigano` in Dictionnaire de la Danse, ed. Philippe Le Moal (Paris: Larousse, 1999). See his description of his first work, The Tavern Bilkers: ‘The first Entertainment that appeared on the English Stage, where the Representation and Story was carried on by Dancing, Action and Motion only, was performed in Grotesque Characters, after the manner of the Modern Italians, such as Harlequin, Scaramouch, &c’, John Weaver, The History of the Mimes and Pantomimes (London: J. Roberts, 1728), p. 45, in Ralph, The Life and Works of John Weaver, p. 721. Since little evidence about The Tavern Bilkers exists, it is possible Weaver exaggerated its merits, but there seems no reason for him to invent the influence of the Italian players. Critics usually highlight the influence of the Italian players on Molière, but there is evidence that the influence was mutual. See for example Marcello Spaziani, Don Giovanni dagli Scenari dell’Arte alla Foire: Quattro Studi con Due Testi Forains Inediti e Altri Testi Italiani e Francesi (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1978), pp. 138–140.


d’action are complex. They are analogous in this respect to the origins of Roman pantomime. We are fortunate in knowing more about the former than the latter, and we understand much about its nature by studying the network underlying its development rather than by focussing narrowly on individuals or individual cultures as many modern critics have done. When one considers generally the relation between Roman pantomime and the ballet d’action, it is arguably the balance between mime and dance in each of them which reveals the most about the nature of our object of study. It is just as impossible to define this balance for Roman pantomime as it is for the ballet d’action. In both cases, this may be because the evidence is now lacking, but it is also more than likely to be because the balance was not stable in the first place; it varied according to choreographer, place, and time. Nor should we expect it to be stable. The essence of a form of art defining itself expressly as a hybrid is that it does not easily fit into a generic box, or even create a new one for itself. This should not surprise a modern spectator who knows that modern dramatic dance is an unpredictable mix of drama and dance. Kurt Jooss, Pina Bausch, or Lloyd Newson are all different blends of the two. Neither should it surprise modern scholars, but for some reason almost all of them assume that the likes of Weaver, Noverre, and Angiolini were fundamentally dancers, without begging the question what, then, is dance? Can it be partly mime, and, if so, to what extent? It is to the credit of eighteenth-century discussion that they do not take this question for granted, but discuss it.

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No place for Harlequin

For many modern as well as contemporary critics, the ballet d’action is overshadowed by a much greater, more influential, and in the end longerlasting form of theatre specialising in mime: the Commedia dell’arte. It is often assumed that the Commedia was such an immense phenomenon, prominent all over Europe for most of the early modern period, that other forms of theatre which shared some of its features must, naturally, have been inspired by it.1 Sometimes the notion of inspiration is much more specific, and what is meant is that the ballet d’action borrowed or ‘quoted’ from the movement vocabulary, the costumes, or the characters of the Commedia. This is a quantitative approach which leaves unanswered the question of qualitative differences.2 It is quite possible that the ballet d’action was stimulated directly by the Commedia, but that it quickly became a qualitatively different kind of theatre, with wholly different defining principles and objectives. In other words, influence does not necessarily entail similarity. If it were otherwise, there would be no real change. There is no doubt that the Commedia did have an enormous influence on early modern theatre, and there are signs that the ballet d’action was, in some ways, no exception. However, most contemporary choreographers and performers denied any similarity, and we can probably only partly attribute this to their desire to avoid association with what they would have regarded as a less dignified form of theatre. It probably also derived from 1

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In Marian Hannah Winter’s otherwise remarkable book, The Pre-Romantic Ballet (London: Pitman, 1974), the author comments without further elaboration that the ballet d’action ‘could scarcely have developed at all without the Italian comedians as a motivating force’ (p. 13). Kathleen K. Hansell makes a similar comment in ‘Theatrical ballet and Italian opera’, in The History of Italian Opera, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli, 2 vols (University of Chicago Press, 2002), Vol. II, p. 183. Rebecca Harris-Warrick and Carol G. Marsh have written convincingly on the way that eighteenth-century French pantomime dance made use of the Commedia, but it is beyond the remit of their article to discuss the qualitative difference between the Commedia and the ballets d’action of Noverre, Angiolini and others in the second half of the eighteenth century. See their article ‘The French connection’, in The Grotesque Dancer on the Eighteenth-century Stage: Gennaro Magri and his World (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), pp. 173–198.


a contemporary feeling that, no matter what the original influences were, the ballet d’action was qualitatively different. Even allowing for a degree of promotional rhetoric in the way adherents presented the ballet d’action, there does seem to have been a widespread perception that it was a genuine departure from existing theatrical conventions. It is not always easy to measure the extent of this departure, however, since the question arises: which ‘Commedia’ are we talking about? Perhaps we should compare the ballet d’action to certain generic principles which manifest themselves across the range of incarnations of the Commedia during its long existence. Perhaps certain incarnations were more influential than others: the established companies who constituted the ‘Théaˆ tre Italien’ in eighteenth-century Paris, or else the eighteenth-century French fairground theatres (the ‘foire’) which pillaged the Italian repertoire. Perhaps we ought to take account of a major cleavage between two types of Commedia, the ‘traditional’ and the eighteenth-century ‘reformed’ Commedia. The history of the Commedia is so rich that a comparison with another form of theatre, such as the ballet d’action, deserves clarification. The purpose of this chapter is to show how the ballet d’action had very little in common with the generic forms of the Commedia as it had existed until the late seventeenth century, and did not share much common ground with the eighteenth-century theatre of the French ‘foire’. It did, however, resemble in some ways the eighteenth-century reformed Commedia by, amongst others, Luigi Riccoboni and Carlo Goldoni at the Théaˆ tre Italien and elsewhere. If it is possible to demonstrate a relation between the Commedia and the ballet d’action, therefore, it is on the principle proposed by some modern scholars that the ‘reformed’ eighteenth-century Commedia was quite different from earlier Commedia; so different that reform arguably brought about the demise of traditional Commedia. From this perspective, traditional Commedia was not so much an ‘influence’ as a victim of change, a victim of genres such as the ballet d’action.

Generic differences Only in one case does a choreographer of the ballet d’action cite the Commedia explicitly as an influence, and even this case is problematic. John Weaver, often considered the first important innovator in the field, claims that the Italian players inspired his Tavern Bilkers, but it is not clear that The Tavern Bilkers was ever performed, since there is no evidence other than

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Weaver’s own account.3 Later choregraphers and performers never cite the Commedia as an influence. Noverre and Angiolini hardly refer to it at all. Both take a dim view of the ‘vulgar’, ‘simplistic’, and ‘meaningless’ art of the ‘buffoni’ or ‘bouffons’,4 by which they could mean Commedia players, intermezzi mime dancers, mountebanks, or indeed all of these things combined, in a reiteration of the kind of slur made on the Commedia ever since its origins in the sixteenth century.5 It would appear that their intention was either to denigrate or to ignore the Commedia. Given the candid expression of admiration for the Commedia from other theatrical innovators such as Molière or Garrick,6 their attitude deserves explanation. There are a number of key aesthetic features of the Commedia which contrast quite markedly with the theory and practice of the ballet d’action. Angiolini and Noverre would have had quite reasonable grounds to wish to distinguish themselves from it. Some of these features were conspicuous enough to inspire the names for this genre before Goldoni coined the term ‘Commedia dell’arte’ in the eighteenth century.7 One of the earliest terms, ‘la Commedia all’improvviso’, draws attention to a well-known and important characteristic. The performance was not based on a pre-existing script to which performers were required to remain faithful. Instead, performers each interpreted a brief plot synopsis according to their own talents, stage experience, and innovative tendencies. There was, in effect, no single ‘author’ of a definitive and binding text. Each performer was to a large extent author of his or her own role, and could, to some degree, adapt it from one performance to the next. It was in this sense that the Commedia was ‘improvised’, although this English word gives the misleading impression that performance was unprepared or unrehearsed, that performers

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Weaver refers to the Commedia in his The History of the Mimes and Pantomimes (London: J. Roberts, 1728), p. 45, reproduced in Richard Ralph, The Life and Works of John Weaver (London: Dance Books, 1985), pp. 677–732. See Jean-Georges Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse, et sur les Ballets (Stuttgart, Lyons: Delaroche, 1760), p. 263, and Gasparo Angiolini, Lettere di Gasparo Angiolini a Monsieur Noverre sopra i Balli Pantomimi (Milan: Gio. Battista Bianchi, 1773), p. 82. For the recurrent slur associating the Commedia with all kinds of street performers, see M.A. Katrisky, The Art of Commedia: A Study in the Commedia dell’Arte 1560–1620 with Special Reference to the Visual Records (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006), p. 35. On the influence of the Commedia on Molière, see Philip Wadsworth, Molière and the Italian Theatrical Tradition (Birmingham, AL: Summa Publications, 1977); Richard Andrews, ‘Molière, commedia dell’arte, and the question of influence in early modern European theatre’, in The Modern Language Review, 100.2 (April 2005), pp. 444–463. For Garrick, see n. 38. Goldoni uses the name, in the plural, for the first time in 1750 in his programmatic play Il Teatro Comico, with an implicit contrast to his reform concept of comedy of manners. See Cesare Molinari, La Commedia dell’Arte (Milan: Mondadori, 1985), p. 67.


appeared before their audience without knowing what they would say and do. In fact, performers devoted years to developing the skills and routines necessary for their roles. They made up for the absence of a single author by rigorous training. Contemporary commentators often remarked on the ‘industry’ with which individual performers prepared their roles.8 They were only spontaneous in the sense that they could choose at any given moment of a performance to draw on a fund of accumulated techniques and material in order to adapt in unexpected ways to their fellow performers or to the audience’s reactions. There is no evidence to suggest that the ballet d’action was ‘improvised’ in this sense. Performers do not seem to have had the kind of creative autonomy that Commedia actors had. There is no comparable phenomenon in the ballet d’action to the Commedia actor’s autonomous repertoire of physical ‘lazzi’ or verbal ‘concetti’.9 On the contrary, the eighteenth-century modification of the term ‘choreographer’ to mean ‘author’ of a ballet d’action rather than user of the Beauchamp–Feuillet system of transcription10 suggests that Noverre, Angiolini, and others exercised overall, authorial control over their productions. Moreover, the repetitive nature of Commedia set pieces would have seemed uncomfortably reminiscent to ballet d’action choreographers of what they disliked most about contemporary stage dance: instead of being driven by dramatic concerns defined by an author, it was an excuse for performers to do the dances and steps they liked best, the ones the public applauded the most, causing spectators to go to the theatre to see the stars of the stage rather than for the dramatic action recounted. Although the ballet d’action was by no means immune from the consequences of the star status of some of its performers, the extended dramatic plot must have made them less prominent than they otherwise would have been. By contrast, a Commedia plot was very much at the service of the actors performing it. As one critic has commented, it was ‘arranged’ rather than ‘composed’, in the sense that non-dramatic factors such as the repertoire of one actor 8

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Angelo Ingegneri, the ‘director’ of the inaugural performance at the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, attributed the success of the Commedia performers to their ‘long industry and continuous training’. See his Della Poesia Rappresentativa e del Modo di Rappresentare le Favole Sceniche (Ferrara: Vittorio Baldini, 1598), p. 9. For a modern inventory of lazzi, see Mel Gordon, Lazzi: The Comic Routines of the Commedia Dell’Arte (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1983), some of which is based on the information in the seminal study of the Commedia by the playwright and librettist Andrea Perrucci, Dell’Arte Rappresentativa, Premeditata e all’Improvviso (Naples: Michele Luigi Mutio, 1699), trans. Francesco Cotticelli, Anne Goodrich Heck, and Thomas F. Heck (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008). See Chapter 7, pp. 165–168.

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or another took precedence over any overall narrative objective.11 There is nothing in the concept of improvisation, then, which relates the Commedia to the ballet d’action. The ‘commedia degli zanni’ is another early, sixteenth-century term which highlights one of its most visibly distinctive features: its use of stock characters. The ‘zanni’ were not the only stock characters, of course, but it was perhaps their pivotal role in the progress of the action which caused them to stand, through synecdoche, for the Commedia genre as a whole. There are two zanni in each play. The ‘first zanni’ is the cunning schemer, the most well known of whom are ‘Brighella’, ‘Mezzetino’, and ‘Scapino’; the ‘second zanni’ is the more slow-witted ‘Arlecchino’, ‘Truffaldino’, or ‘Francatrippa’.12 The character ‘Pulcinella’ can fulfil the function of either first or second zanni. All of them are in general gluttonous cowards. Depending on their precise role in the play, they help or hinder the lovers, known by a host of names such as ‘Isabella’ and ‘Leandro’, ‘Celia’ and ‘Valerio’, who struggle to overcome the opposition of a father figure such as ‘Pantalone’ or the ‘Dottore’, or the attentions of a rival lover such the ‘Capitano’. Each has a characteristic costume.13 The first zanni has a half-mask and a cape, the second zanni a black half-mask and the famous multicoloured costume we associate with Harlequin. Pulcinella is dressed in white and wears a halfmask with a long hooked nose. Pantalone has a pointed beard, trousers, a red jacket, and wears a half-mask with a hooked nose. The Dottore is dressed all in black with a white collar. Only the lovers are dressed in day-to-day clothes without any distinctive features. Even they, however, are identifiable by their Tuscan accent, contrasting with the rival Capitano’s Spanish accent, Pantalone’s Venetian accent, the Dottore’s Bolognese accent, the zanni’s Bergamask accent, and Pulcinella’s Neapolitan accent. Although there are a great many variations in the names and precise attributes of Commedia character ‘types’, more than we have space to enumerate here, the function of each is consistent enough for the spectator to identify them quite easily. This is, in fact, an important source of comedy, since Harlequin, for example, will be identifiable even when he plays an incongruous or unusual part. Although he often plays the part of the servant, he could almost play any part, from king’s advisor to pastoral shepherd, 11 12 13

See Claude Bourqui, La Commedia dell’Arte: Introduction au Théaˆ tre Professionnel Italien entre le XVIe et le XVIIIe Siècles (Paris: SEDES, 1999), p. 29. For a brief inventory of the most well-known Commedia roles, see Bourqui, La Commedia dell’Arte, p. 50. The best single volume of Commedia iconography showing the costumes is Molinari, La Commedia dell’Arte.


as long as his role as second zanni and his attributes, such as his Bergamask accent or perhaps part of his colourful costume, remain recognisable. Characters can, thus, play different parts while nevertheless remaining somehow true to type. Not only does this open many comic possibilities, but it makes the practice of performing stock types much less limiting than it might be, since they are less fixed than one might think. Commedia actors specialising in one character type could therefore play a variety of parts within the play, but they could not easily change role. A lover could not easily become a Harlequin, and vice versa. It would have required a radically new repertoire of dialogues, lazzi, postures, and the like which for many were the work of a lifetime. Francesco Andreini, a member of the Gelosi company invited to Paris by Henry IV of France, was one of the few to manage this (in his case, performing as lover and subsequently as Capitano).14 No matter how impressive in their own terms the Commedia character roles proved to be, they were never designed for the realistic, psychological and emotional portrayal of character. In this lies a major difference with the ballet d’action, and in fact with theatrical trends in many kinds of eighteenth-century theatre. It is difficult to see how the Commedia’s complex but unrealistic role play could have appealed to the likes of Noverre, Angiolini, or Hilverding. Any hope of dramatically credible characters was buried under several layers of personality. The part of a servant, for example, was played by the role of Harlequin, who in turn was played by an actor who may, himself, have been a celebrity. Thus, the fixed role of Harlequin and the celebrity status of, say, Biancolelli, hindered the realistic portrayal of the part. It would be impossible to analyse the character of the servant in a particular Commedia play in the same way that we would analyse the character of, say, Ersilia in the myth of the Rape of the Sabine Women adapted for opera by Metastasio and for the ballet d’action by Le Picq.15 The notion of a stock type with no psychological dimension who cannot therefore evolve during the fictional stage time, and who cannot so much as fall in love on stage (a phenomenon entirely absent from Commedia plays), was foreign, not to say antithetical, to the ballet d’action. Choreographers wanted very much for their performers to ‘act the part’, or to use an English neologism from the 1780s, they wanted them to ‘impersonify’ a character, to ‘impersonate’ the part so well that the actor seemed truly to embody or ‘personify’ it.16 In effect, they wanted their 14 15

See Bourqui, La Commedia dell’Arte, p. 47. See Chapter 5, pp. 123–125. 16 See Chapter 4, note 95.

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performers to emulate the best of contemporary serious actors, such as Garrick.17 Spectators were enraptured by the convincing depiction of the passions. Nothing like this was ever possible in the Commedia. An Italian player’s vocation was not usually to ‘act the part’ in this sense, and the point of a Commedia production was not usually to cultivate verisimilitude, or to be ‘moving’ in any substantial sense. In terms of character psychology and dramatic verisimilitude, therefore, the ballet d’action and the Commedia were two very different forms of theatre. Related to the question of realistic or emotionally moving character portrayal is the issue of the stage mask. It was one of the most visible and memorable features of the Commedia, to the extent that another of the common alternative names in the sixteenth and seventeenth century for this genre was the ‘commedia delle maschere’. This, like ‘commedia degli zanni’, is a case of synecdoche: part of the cast (the masked roles) stands for the whole cast, who did not all wear masks, as if the masks were a defining feature of the genre. This contrasts markedly with the attitude of ballet d’action choreographers for whom the very absence of the mask was a defining feature of their work. Only in this way could their mime dancers make full use of the expressive face. Noverre puts it the most eloquently when he argues that it is as important to remove the mask as it is to raise the curtain at the beginning of the performance.18 Once again, then, a distinctive feature of the Commedia is entirely at odds with the fundamental practice of the ballet d’action. There were other features of the Commedia which conflicted just as much, even if they did not inspire yet more names for the genre. The most evident is in the repertoire. Although the subjects treated by the Commedia were more varied than is often assumed, most were comic. In contrast, the most influential, popular, and critically significant ballets d’action were serious. Even those Commedia plays whose subtitle suggests that they are not comic, such as ‘pastoral’, ‘tragedy’, ‘royal opera’, or ‘heroic opera’,19 are often, in fact, serious subjects treated in a partly comic manner. They are mixed mode works, partly comic, partly serious: Harlequin finds himself transported to a pastoral paradise, and his buffoonery contrasts with the graciousness of 17

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` technique of the expressive face is compared to Garrick’s acting in the Maria Medina Vigano’s Gazzetta Urbana Veneta, 4 February 1792, pp. 73–75. The comment is part of a debate which starts in the 18 January edition and continues in the 25 January edition. Jean-Georges Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse et Les Arts Imitateurs (Paris: Lieutier, 1952), p. 22. The whole of Letter IX concerns the inadequacy of masked performance and the virtues of the mobile, expressive face. These types are all to be found in Flaminio Scala, Il Teatro delle Favole Rappresentative, ed. F. Marotti, 2 vols (Venice: Gio. Battista Pulciani, 1611; Milan: Il Polifilo, 1976).


the shepherds; or he is the servant of a tragic hero, constantly undercutting tragic developments with his antics. Contrasts like these, which one critic has convincingly argued are at the heart of the aesthetics of the Commedia,20 were entirely absent from the ballet d’action which, on the contrary, sought legitimacy through tonal consistency. The dominant serious mode in the ballet d’action lent its non-verbal techniques a significance that was wholly different from those of the Commedia. Serious mime, used in the staging of the most elevated forms of serious theatre, was altogether more surprising and more incongruous than comic mime used in comic theatre. The point is made in typically ironic manner by one of the shrewdest observers of the ballet d’action, Ange Goudar. In his opinion, ‘it is better to be a genuine Pierrot than a false Pyrrhus’,21 as if mime was simply not credible in serious fiction, as if its natural arena should be exclusively comic. Not withstanding its ironic intention, his remark encapsulates the very novel intention of ballet d’action performers: to be a genuine Pyrrhus in mime, or indeed a genuine Medea, a genuine Semiramis. In other words, they wanted to make mime a credible medium for the representation of the most serious and esteemed characters and subjects. With hindsight, this is doubtless the major innovation of the ballet d’action. While Molière advanced the cause of somatic expression by making it integral to high comedy rather than only farce, the ballet d’action took body language beyond comedy altogether. Vis-à-vis the Commedia, this amounts to a radical departure.

The French foire There was a native French form of Commedia which is sometimes assumed to be the foundation of subsequent forms of mime in the period, but which in many respects is as different from the ballet d’action as the traditional Italian Commedia was. The theatre of the French foires, or ‘fairs’, was so creative and attracted so many talented performers and writers that it is tempting to 20 21

See Ferdinando Taviani, ‘Un vivo contrasto. Seminario su attrici e attori della commedia dell’arte’, Teatro e Storia, 1 (October 1986), pp. 25–75. Sara [Ange] Goudar, Lettres de Madame Sara Goudar, in Œuvres Mêlées de Madame Sara Goudar, Angloise, 2 vols (Amsterdam 1777), Vol. I, second ‘Lettre’, p. 28. One can discern the same underlying idea behind a comment in the London Public Advertiser on Charles Le Picq: ‘Such, at least in Dancing, is the Power of Hilarity over Heroism, that the gay Movements of Le Picq on Saturday Night were more favorably thought of than his graver Gesticulations’ (7 May 1782).

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see subsequent developments in somatic theatre as derivatives.22 On closer inspection, however, it is clear that there was no more room in the ballet d’action for a French foire Arlequin than there was for an Italian Commedia Arlecchino. The theatre of the Parisian fairs existed before the eighteenth century, but it grew to prominence after the expulsion of the Italians from Paris in 1697. Foire theatre companies plundered the newly de-monopolised Commedia repertoire and were enriched by the abundance of skilled, experienced Italian players in need of employment. Such was the success of the foire that it was not long before it was subject to legal restrictions in order to protect rival state theatres from stiff competition for audiences. It is a combination of these two factors which makes the theatre of the foire so remarkable: the richness of Commedia techniques, stock types, and scenarios, together with legal restrictions which, ironically, inspired great creativity. It is the very same factors, however, which make it quite different to the ballet d’action. Even though it is in some ways an obvious precedent in terms of mute theatre, even though it was probably fertile ground for a fusion of styles, the gulf separating it from the ballet d’action was as great as it was with the Italian Commedia. The first legal restrictions on the foire were imposed in 1707 when it was decreed that only state theatre could stage scenes of dialogue. The foire was therefore restricted to monologue, but found ingenious ways of circumventing the law, such as the use of an off-stage interlocutor, or of a parrot which replied to an actor’s monologue.23 Another technique was employed by Piron in his Arlequin Deucalion, in which the monologue is enlivened by a great deal of dancing, acrobatics, and music.24 The choice of somatic and musical arts in this play makes it look in some ways like a prototypical ballet d’action, but there are even closer analogies when we consider the subsequent response to censorship: when even monologue was banned, there was a brief period when the foire only survived by staging mute pantomimes.

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Nathalie Rizzoni remarks that the foire was the inspiration for all subsequent mime in France in the eighteenth century. See ‘Le geste e´ loquent: la pantomime en France au XVIIIe siècle’, in ´ Musique et Geste en France de Lully a` la Révolution: Etudes sur la Musique, le Théaˆ tre et la Danse, ed. Jacqueline Waeber (Berne: Peter Lang, 2009), pp. 129–148 (140). See Isabelle Martin, Le Théaˆ tre de la Foire: Des Tréteaux aux Boulevards, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 2002: 10 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2002), p. 162. Alexis Piron, Arlequin Deucalion, first performed at the Foire Saint-Germain in Paris, 17 February 1722. See Le Théaˆ tre de la Foire au XVIIIe Siècle, ed. Dominique Lurcel (Paris: ´ Union Générale d’Editions, 1983).


However, pantomimes at the foire were based on a fundamentally different premise. The fact that foire performers had no option but to mute their performance is not a trivial difference with the ballet d’action, which chose mime freely. For choreographers of the ballet d’action, mime was not a last resort, but an expressive, dignified, autonomous artistic medium. They endured a great deal of criticism in order to continue to perform mime and dance. In contrast, the foires used mime in desperation, and quickly abandoned it in favour of other methods, such as the use of billboards (‘écriteaux’) descending from above the stage; or texts on rolls of paper which the actor would take out of one pocket, hold up to spectators to read it aloud (perhaps aided by stooges in the audience), and then put away in another pocket.25 As elaborate as this may sound, it was obviously felt to be easier to understand than entirely non-verbal mime. There was, then, a significant difference in attitude to pantomime between the foire and the ballet d’action. There was also an important thematic divide. The foire was quite unlike either the Commedia or the ballet d’action in this respect. Its strengths, and also one of the most fascinating features for a modern scholar, lay in the way it dealt with contemporary social and contemporary affairs, commemoratively, parodically, and polemically. It is particularly the latter two modes which have most interested modern scholars. Parody entered the Commedia repertoire company in the latter years of the seventeenth century,26 but the foire developed it enormously, targeting particularly the repertoire of the Comédie Française and the Opéra so closely that a contemporary spectator would almost regard seeing the parody at the foire as a necessary or inevitable sequel to the original.27 The foire was polemical in that it could reflect and enter public debate of all kinds. It could ridicule defenders of the ancients in the ‘querelle des anciens et des modernes’, the French ‘battle of the books’ in which the relative importance of ancient Greek and Roman artistic models was measured against modern, innovative practices. In Fuzelier’s Arlequin Défenseur d’Homère, Arlequin is so enamoured with his copy of Homer that he licks it.28 The foire could 25 26 27

28

See Martin, Le Théaˆ tre de la Foire, p. 164. Donald Jay Grout, ‘Seventeenth-century parodies of French opera’, in The Musical Quarterly, 27.2 (April 1941), pp. 211–219 for Part I, and 27.4 (October 1941), pp. 514–526 for Part II. See Edward Nye, ‘L’allégorie dans le ballet d’action: Marie Sallé a` travers l’écho des parodies’, in Revue de l’Histoire Littéraire de France, 2 (2008), pp. 289–309 (292–295), for the notion of the ‘hypo-work’, an overarching concept encompassing both the parody and parodied text. Louis Fuzelier, Arlequin Défenseur d’Homère, first performed in 1715 at the Foire SaintLaurent, published in Alain-René Lesage and Jacques-Philippe d’Orneval, Le Théaˆ tre de la Foire, ou l’Opéra Comique. Contenant les Meilleurs Pièces qui ont été Représentées aux Foires de S. Germain et de S. Laurent, 10 vols (Paris: Ganeau, 1721–37; Geneva: Slatkine, 1968), Vol. II.

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poke fun at current affairs, such as the new legal control of tax collecting.29 Again, the Paris Commedia had experimented with this kind of satire on contemporary affairs at the close of the previous century. It was probably after Gherardi’s company staged a version of a novel parodying Mme de Maintenon, Louis XIV’s wife, that his company was finally expelled.30 Nevertheless, the foire developed it to a high degree. It is totally foreign to the practice of the ballet d’action choreographers. The foire, like most other theatres of the period (and including the ballet d’action), explored other themes, such as the exoticism of the recently translated 1001 Nights, or contemporary taste in ‘chinoiserie’,31 but this does not point to a special relationship between the foire and the ballet d’action. It also indulged in unique fantasies which are almost impossible to categorise, with allegorical characters such as ‘Absence’, ‘Lottery’, ‘Dénouement’, and many others.32 The ballet d’action was sometimes based around fantastical themes, but treated them more in the manner in which opera staged them. It did not live up to standards set by the joyful absurdities of the foire. The foire shared few of its characteristic themes and subjects, therefore, with the ballet d’action. The strength, not to say most controversial feature, of the ballet d’action was that it took its themes from the established repertoire of myth and history staged in spoken theatre and opera. Its objective was to challenge aesthetic assumptions about how these great themes could be staged.

The ‘arte’ of expressive body language There is much, then, that separates the practice of the ballet d’action from either the Commedia or the foire: improvisation, masks, repertoire, sentiment, principles of character, and indeed the attitude to mime itself. We 29

30

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Jacques-Philippe d’Orneval, Arlequin Traitant, first performed at the Foire de Saint-Germain in 1716, published in Alain-René Lesage and Jacques-Philippe d’Orneval, Le Théaˆ tre de la Foire (1968), Vol. II. ˆ de For a discussion of this event, see Jan Clarke, ‘The expulsion of the Italians from the Hotel Bourgogne in 1697’, in Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 14 (1992), pp. 97–117; and William Brooks, ‘Louis XIV’s dismissal of the Italian Actors: the episode of “La Fausse Prude”’, in The Modern Language Review, 91.4 (October 1996), pp. 840–847. For an extended discussion and categorisation of the themes of the foire, see Martin, Le Théaˆ tre de la Foire, Chapter 6. See Nathalie Rizzoni, ‘Quand L’Absence apparaˆıt . . . L’allégorie au théaˆ tre au dix-huitième siècle’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 2003: 07 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2003), pp. 429–443.


have to look for common ground elsewhere, at the level of first principles. There is one fundamental principle that the ballet d’action did share with the Commedia and with the foire, which is that there is no necessary priority of verbal expression over body language as there tends to be in high theatre, the ‘commedia erudita’ in Italy, or the ‘théaˆ tre régulier’ in France. In the case of the Commedia and the foire, this led to according equal importance to both. In the case of the ballet d’action, of course, it led to the creation of an entirely mute art. The importance of body language is perhaps the idea which Goldoni aimed to capture when he coined, or at least gave currency to, the term ‘Commedia dell’arte’. He presumably meant ‘arte’ in the sense that his contemporaries would have understood it, to mean ‘technique’ or ‘craft’. As such, it reflects the origins of the genre in the sixteenth century when companies of actors were granted legal status equivalent to guilds of skilled, professional craftsmen, confraternities who were accorded an exclusive privilege to produce certain goods, and ownership of the materials and tools needed to produce them.33 Goldoni may have meant the term ironically, since he was a reformer of the Commedia who made clear what he thought were its inadequacies. Nevertheless, his new term highlighted an aspect which may have been a source of inspiration for other forms of contemporary theatre, especially the ballet d’action. The ‘arte’ of the Italian players was analogous to that of other guilds of craftsmen in that it involved a significant degree of physical skill. Mime, dance, acrobatics, and somatic expression in general were probably as important to performance as spoken words. This is the point made by the seventeenth-century Commedia actor Flaminio Scala in the preface to his scenario for Il Finto Marito (1619). The preface takes the form of a dialogue between a ‘stranger’ who argues that the quality of the text of a play is important, and an actor who contends that in the case of the Commedia, ‘azzione’, or stage action, is as important as ‘dicitura’, or the verbal formulations employed.34 Even a casual consideration of the wealth of iconography of the Commedia suggests the importance of physical action. Muscular, agile performers are often depicted in supple positions, appearing to communicate with their interlocutors through gesture and body language, sometimes in poses reminiscent of dance positions, sometimes in more uncommon or strained

33

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On the subject of Commedia contracts, see Ferdinando Taviani and Mirella Schino, Il Segreto della Commedia dell’Arte: La Memoria delle Compagnie Italiane del XVI, XVII e XVIII Secolo (Florence: La Casa Usher, 1982), Chapter 4. See Scala, Il Teatro delle Favole Rappresentative, Vol. I, pp. cix–cxviii.

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poses.35 This is true even of roles which would not ostensibly seem to require such physical versatility, such as the old man Pantalone.36 The technique of the lazzo also suggests the relative importance of physical action. Although, as we have remarked, the autonomy with which individual actors used lazzi was very different from the authorial control exercised in the ballet d’action, there are parallels we can draw with the techniques themselves. A large proportion of Commedia lazzi served to indicate emotional states or reactions of characters. Lazzi are referred to in Commedia plot synopses in a number of relatively unspecific ways. Sometimes a character ‘does a lazzo’, or ‘does the lazzo of the fly’, sometimes the lazzo is implicit in the description of characters as ‘happy’, ‘unhappy’, ‘angry’, and so on.37 It is especially in this last case that we can draw an analogy with the physical expression of the passions in the ballet d’action. Almost everyone, modern scholars and contemporary critics alike, seems to agree that the expression of the passions was a fundamental and admirable aesthetic of the ballet d’action. Choreographers are likely to have had knowledge, even working knowledge, of the Commedia, as we shall see below, and so it may be that the technique of the lazzo was part of their inspiration for a quite fundamental feature of their art, the expression of the passions. The physical techniques of the Commedia would have been even more important when companies performed in non-Italian-speaking countries where they could not rely on being understood verbally. The alternative would have been to perform in the local language, but there is no evidence that they commonly did this. The exceptions were the Commedia companies resident in Paris in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who, gradually, performed more and more in French.38 This phenomenon doubtless owed

35 36

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For Commedia dell’arte iconography, see Molinari, La Commedia dell’Arte. The most comprehensive study of the iconography is Katrisky, The Art of Commedia. Iconographical evidence nonetheless needs more conservative interpretation than it sometimes receives from modern scholars. In itself, a quantity of iconography is not necessarily an indication of the importance of action in the Commedia. There is no iconography for other contemporary forms of theatre, such as Elizabethan theatre or Spanish Golden Age theatre, yet few would disagree that action and visual qualities were important to them. In addition, iconography is inevitably of limited use in understanding dynamic techniques, such as mime and dance, because the images are, of course, static. These and other problems of interpretation are discussed in Thomas F. Heck (ed.), Picturing Performance: The Iconography of the Performing Arts in Concept and Practice (University of Rochester Press, 1999). For these implicit lazzi, see Molinari, La Commedia dell’Arte, p. 45. The Commedia were resident in Paris from 1653 until their expulsion in 1697. From 1668, French passages were introduced into their performances; from the 1680s, French authors wrote the plays; and, from 1692, all plays were written entirely in French. See Bourqui, La Commedia dell’Arte, p. 122.


a great deal to their unique institutional status, and patronage by the King of France. Otherwise, it was in the nature of the Commedia to be performed by travelling companies for whom there would be no point in specialising in one foreign language. Thus, not only was physical expression an integral part of performance, but it was probably a key to the international success of the Commedia dell’arte, and an especially striking feature to innovative artists in non-Italophone countries. The ability of Commedia performers to make themselves understood without recourse to words was often remarked upon. The seventeenthcentury French novelist Charles Sorel comments in La Maison des Jeux that ‘since they are very given to gesticulation [fort gestueux], and express many things through action, even those who do not speak their language understand a little of the subject of their plays’.39 In Jean-Baptiste Dubos’s seminal 1719 publication on the theory of the arts, Réflexions Critiques sur la Poésie et sur la Peinture, the author cites the Commedia as possible proof that mute performance can be as expressive as words. He singles out one English practitioner in particular, Roger, of whom he writes that ‘although he never opens his mouth, one can easily understand everything he says’.40 It was not only writers and theorists who were impressed. The English actor David Garrick seems to have admired Carlo Bertinazzi, who managed to express without a word, and facing away from the audience, his displeasure and anger at being beaten, causing Garrick to exclaim ‘look what expression there is in Carlo’s back!’.41 Bearing in mind how much Garrick’s techniques of physical acting were admired by choreographers of the ballet d’action, he effectively constitutes a link between the ballet d’action and the Commedia. One can argue in this way that somatic expression was a salient feature of the Commedia, important enough to have influenced the development of other somatic arts such as the ballet d’action, without, nonetheless, overstating the case. It would be misleading to understand the Commedia too narrowly as only a physical ‘craft’, since it was simultaneously a verbal ‘craft’. The first theatre critic to give an extended account of the Commedia, Angelo Ingegneri, defined the actors’ art as a matter of voice as well as 39

40 41

Charles Sorel, La Maison des Jeux, où se Trouvent les Divertissements d’une Compagnie, par des Narrations Agréables et par des Jeux d’Esprit, et Autres Entretiens d’une Honeste Conversation, 2 vols (Paris: Sercy, 1642), Vol. I, pp. 445–447. Jean-Baptiste Dubos, Réflexions Critiques sur la Poésie et sur la Peinture, 3 vols in 1 (Paris: J. Mariette, 1719; Geneva: Slatkine, 1993), Vol. III, p. 312. ´ Emile Campardon, Les Comédiens du Roi de la Troupe Italienne pendant les Deux Derniers Siècles, 2 vols (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1880), Vol. I, p. 57.

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gesture.42 A century later, playwright and librettist Andrea Perrucci devoted as much time in his groundbreaking publication on Italian theatre to the verbal characteristics of the Commedia as he did to its somatic techniques. He, like most commentators of the period, understood the characteristic lazzi of the Commedia to be as much a matter of words as of action.43 Commedia characters all have what one might call a ‘verbal mask’, verbal characteristics and mannerisms which characterise them. The Dottore uses long, pretentious words and rhetorical figures, often producing spoonerisms such as ‘teribil orinal’ for ‘tribunale’.44 Biancolelli’s parrot-like voice for Harlequin became so popular that other Harlequins copied it.45 Other characters have their particular forms of ‘concetti’, or set verbal pieces: the lovers for romantic effusion, despair, or jealousy;46 the Capitan for his bravado.47 All the characters have a particular Italian regional accent. The Commedia’s reputation for physical action should not, therefore, lead us to underestimate the other dimensions of performance. The equal status it gave to somatic and verbal expression, however, must have been striking in comparison to the priority accorded to verbal expression in much early modern high theatre, and it is in this sense that it could have been a source of inspiration for the ballet d’action.

The influence of reformed Commedia The somatic first principles of the Commedia and the foire were therefore related to those of the ballet d’action. Perhaps the strongest relation, however, lies, not with traditional Commedia, but with the eighteenth-century reformed variants. In 1716, Luigi Riccoboni established the first Italian Commedia company in Paris since the Italian players had been expelled in 1697, and took the opportunity to introduce some of his own reforms into traditional Commedia. One of the most significant was to limit the use of

42 43 44 45

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Ingegneri, Della Poesia Rappresentativa, pp. 76–78. Perrucci, Dell’Arte Rappresentativa, Premeditata e all’Improvviso, p. 181. See, for example, Perrucci, Dell’Arte Rappresentativa, Premeditata e all’Improvviso, pp. 134–135. Pierre-Louis Duchartre, La Comédie Italienne: L’Improvisation, les Canevas, Vies, Caractères, Portraits, Masques des Illustres Personnages de la Commedia dell’Arte (Paris: Librairie de France, 1924), trans. Randolph T. Weaver as The Italian Comedy. The Improvisation, Scenarios, Lives, Attributes, Portraits and Masks of the Illustrious Characters of the Commedia dell’Arte (New York: Dover Publications, 1966), p. 154. Perrucci, Dell’Arte Rappresentativa, Premeditata e all’Improvviso, p. 106. Perrucci, Dell’Arte Rappresentativa, Premeditata e all’Improvviso, pp. 145–148.


the mask, eliminating it altogether in some cases,48 in order to encourage the expressive face and more psychological development of character. As a result, some of his works are hybrids. In Il Filosofo Deluso,49 the stock Commedia type of the Dottore plays the eponymous ‘philosopher’, but unlike the Dottore of the traditional Commedia, the philosopher has a family, colleagues with whom he discusses philosophy, students whom he teaches, and in general a social context which contributes to understanding him in terms of character. He is a more complex character than the Commedia traditionally allowed, and is as capable of creating an emotional impact on the spectator as he is a comic one. He has a strength of character which is not only striking in itself; it is the pivotal dramatic component of the play on which the action depends. It is in this sense that the play is a Molièresque comedy of character, although there are enough antecedents in Italian comic theatre, such as Macchiavelli’s satirical comedies, for Riccoboni to have been inspired by non-French sources. As we discuss in Chapter 5, the principle of character is important to the ballet d’action, and in this respect it bears comparison with Riccoboni’s reformed Commedia. In addition to principles of dramatic coherence around a well-rounded character, Riccoboni was interested in bringing an emotional, touching dimension to reformed Commedia.50 He was assisted in this respect by Thomaso Visentini (or ‘Vicentini’, whose stage name in France was ‘Thomassin’), who, by contemporary accounts, was not only one of the best Harlequins in the history of the Commedia,51 but also brought to the role a new, touching quality which moved spectators to tears.52 The playwright and diarist Collé sensed the achievement and unusual amalgam that this represented when he commented that Visentini managed to produce an emotional response in the spectator while still nevertheless retaining his 48 49

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ˆ Irène Mamzczarz, Le Masque et l’Ame. De L’Improvisation a` la Création Théaˆ trale (Paris: Klincksieck, 1999), p. 52. Luigi Riccoboni, Il Filosofo Deluso, first performed 1719 at the Théaˆ tre-Italien, Paris. For a modern edition of the scenario, see Luigi Riccoboni, Discorso della Commedia all’Improvviso e Scenari Inediti, ed. Irene Mamzczarz (Milan: Il Polifilo, 1973). ´ See Ola Forsans, Le Théaˆ tre de Lélio: Etude du Répertoire du Nouveau Théaˆ tre Italien de 1716 a` 1729, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 2006: 08 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2006), Chapter 9. See J.-E. Gueullette, Notes et Souvenirs sur le Théaˆ tre-Italien au XVIIIe Siècle, Publiés par J.-E. Gueullette (Paris: E. Droz, 1938), p. 28, in which the author reports that many spectators who had seen the great Domenico Biancolelli perform in the seventeenth century did not hesitate to compare Visentini very favorably with him. See entry for ‘Vicentini’ in Parfaict, Claude et Francis, Dictionnaire des Théaˆ tres de Paris, 7 vols (Paris: Rozet, 1767).

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trademark mask.53 Visentini lent his soulful, pensive Harlequin to Marivaux’s innovative fusion of French and Italian theatre. In the second scene of Marivaux’s La Surprise de l’Amour, for example, Arlequin, played by Visentini, bemoans to Lélio (Riccoboni’s stage name) his unrequited love in a long scene which opens: Lélio: It’s a grey day, today. Arlequin: Well, the weather is as melancholy as we are.54

Lélio sympathises with Arlequin’s ‘melancholy’ and does his best to revive his spirits. For much of the scene, however, Arlequin is inconsolable. The concept of a Harlequin lost in unrelenting ‘ennui’ is at odds with the conventions of the Commedia until this time, but it is in keeping with Marivaux’s well-known desire to explore the nuances and psychology of behaviour and feelings. Contemporaries remarked on the same feature of Visentini’s performance in a number of Marivaux’s plays.55 The depth of character which Marivaux sought is one of the well-known features of his writing, in prose as well as in drama. What he brought to the Commedia, the ballet d’action sought to bring to stage dance. There is a much closer parallel, then, between the ballet d’action and adaptations of the Commedia by Marivaux and Riccoboni than there is with traditional Commedia. Luigi Riccoboni withdrew from the stage in 1729, perhaps because his efforts to adapt to the expectations of his Parisian audience did not translate into box-office receipts.56 Under the direction of his son, Antoine-François Riccoboni, and Antoine Romagnesi, the repertoire of the Théaˆ tre Italien evolved in ways which were partly different and partly similar to the subsequent development of the ballet d’action. It relied increasingly on parodies (usually of productions at the Comédie Française and the Opéra), a tendency which developed at least as early as the resounding success of Legrand’s Agnès de Chaillot in 1723, a parody of La Motte’s Inès de Castro. There is no real equivalent to these parodies in the repertoire of the ballet d’action. There is, however, a close analogy to be drawn with another development 53

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Charles Collé, Journal et Mémoires de Charles Collé sur les Hommes de Lettres, les Ouvrages ´ enements les plus Mémorables du Règne de Louis XV (1748–1772), 3 vols Dramatiques et les Ev´ (Paris: Firmin Dido, 1868; Geneva: Slatkine, 1967), Vol. I, p. 328 (entry for June 1751). Marivaux, La Surprise de l’Amour, Act I, scene 2. ˆ des Esclaves, ‘and others’. See his Journal et Collé mentions La Double Inconstance, Timon, L’Ile Mémoires, Vol. I, p. 328 (entry for June 1751). Although the accounts are missing for a number of years in the 1720s, reports in journals and elsewhere suggest that the repertoire of the Théaˆ tre Italien was not always well received. See Forsans, Le Théaˆ tre de Lélio, p. 357ff., in which the author briefly describes in her ‘Conclusion’ the repertoire of the Théaˆ tre Italien after Luigi Riccoboni’s departure.


at the Théaˆ tre Italien after Luigi Riccoboni’s retirement, which was the increasing use of dance and music. The dancing talents of performers such as François Riccoboni, Jean-Vincent Visentini (or ‘Vicentini’, Thomaso’s son), Catherine Roland, Carlo Bertinazzi (‘Carlin’), Louis Balletti, and still others drew significant praise from contemporary critics.57 It is clear that dance (as well as music and singing) was a much larger part of their performances than it was in traditional Commedia. By 1750, there were as many dancers in the company as there were actors, and a decade later dancers were in the majority.58 The resulting blend of dance and traditional Commedia mime techniques is much closer to the principles of the ballet d’action as it subsequently developed than the traditional Commedia was. The choreographer at the Théaˆ tre Italien from 1738 developed further this blend of dance and mime over the next two decades. Dehesse was the acknowledged master of pantomime ballet in France before Noverre.59 He excelled particularly in the role of a Harlequinesque valet character which he took on for the first time in 1734.60 Most of the fifty-eight balletspantomimes he subsequently choreographed for the Théaˆ tre Italien were on comic themes, and their dramatic structure was too episodic to bear much comparison with the dramatic coherence sought by later ballet d’action choreographers. Nevertheless, the frequent praise he received for the quality of acting, as distinct from dancing, in his works suggests that Dehesse did, in fact, promote the dramatic component of stage dance.61 One ought, also, to consider his repertoire outside the Théaˆ tre Italien. The smaller number of works he produced for Madame de Pompadour’s Petits Appartements were mostly tragedies, tragi-comedies, or pastorals, and were thus much closer to the repertoire of later choreographers of the ballets d’action.62 Perhaps the most telling sign that Dehesse’s ballets-pantomimes were important in the development of the ballet d’action is that numerous performers who later 57 58

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See, for example, their entries in Parfaict, Dictionnaire des Théaˆ tres de Paris. See Nathalie Lecompte, ‘Jean-Baptiste François Dehesse: chorégraphe a` la Comédie Italienne et au Théaˆ tre des Petits Appartements de Madame de Pompadour’, in Recherches sur la Musique Française Classique, 24 (1986), pp. 142–191 (149). See for example François Antoine Chevrier, who remarks of Dehesse that ‘before Noverre appeared, he was reputed to be the greatest maˆıtre de ballet in Europe’, in Almanach des Gens d’Esprit par un Homme qui n’est pas Sot, Calendrier pour l’Année 1762 et le Reste de la Vie, Publié par l’Auteur du ‘Colporteur’ (London [The Hague]: Jean Nourse, 1762), p. 36. Claude-François Boulenger de Rivery makes similar remarks in the preface to his history of ancient Roman pantomime, Recherches Historiques et Critiques sur Quelques Anciens Spectacles, et Particulièrement sur les Mimes et sur les Pantomimes (Paris: Jacques Mérigot Fils, 1751). See Lecompte, ‘Jean-Baptiste François Dehesse’, p. 153. See Lecompte, ‘Jean-Baptiste François Dehesse’, p. 172. See Lecompte, ‘Jean-Baptiste François Dehesse’, p. 179.

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performed in ballets d’action owed at least part of their early training in dramatic dance to Dehesse: Pitrot, Puvigné, Dupré, Gougy, Lepy, Balletti, and Marcadet.63 The most famous reformer of the Commedia, and contributor to the repertoire of the Théaˆ tre Italien, was probably Carlo Goldoni. He shared Luigi Riccoboni’s interests in character, dramatic coherence, and poignancy, and was an admirer of the way Molière achieved these aims. His programmatic play Il Teatro Comico frequently presents Molière as a model playwright, as much for the French as for others: ‘For the French, a single character is enough to sustain an entire comedy. Around a single well-handled and well-developed passion, they wrap a multitude of events.’64 Thus, in La Locandiera (1753), often considered one of Goldoni’s masterpieces, the central character is an independent woman surrounded by suitors who runs her own social and love life without allowing herself to be dominated by men. The drama of the play is driven by her independence of mind and her character traits. Or, again, the drama of Il Mercante Fallitto and L’Uomo Prudente (both 1749) revolves around the two eponymous merchants, who inhabit a socio-professional context and manifest independent character traits which lend them socio-psychological interest quite beyond what was possible in traditional Commedia, but quite analogous with the ambitions of the ballet d’action choreographers. None of these characters are ‘types’; all have psychological depth which is quite remote from the traditions of the Commedia. Goldoni’s interest in adapting the stock roles of the Commedia is particularly manifest in his treatment of Pantalone, who is often not the bad-tempered, lascivious old man with an immoral private life that he is in the Commedia. Instead, he has a merchant’s common sense combined with a good deal of paternalistic moral rectitude. Sometimes, he almost loses his comic mode altogether, as in Le Donne Curiose, when he is preoccupied with political and free-thinking ideas. Ballet d’action characters are not usually politically or ideologically aware in this manner, but Goldoni’s underlying reason for creating such characters, his misgivings about stock roles, is very much shared by the choreographers of the ballet d’action. Like Riccoboni, Goldoni took the radical step of writing out the complete parts for some or all of the roles in each play, thus removing the principle of improvisation so important to the traditional Commedia, and increasing the authorial status of the playwright. Although he did not take this step for all his plays, probably because it was not always commercially the most financially rewarding, the practice is evident from his earliest reform 63 64

See Lecompte, ‘Jean-Baptiste François Dehesse’, pp. 164, 185–186. Goldoni, Il Teatro Comico, Act II, scene 1.


plays such as Momolo Cortesan (later called L’Uomo di Mondo), in which the title role of Momolo is entirely written out (the other roles are only sketched out so that the actors could improvise around them). The control Goldoni, and indeed Riccoboni,65 sought over their work is part of an eighteenth-century phenomenon which modern scholars recognise, which is the rise of the author and playwright as an aesthetically and financially autonomous individual.66 Choreographers of the ballet d’action assumed a similar authorial position vis-à-vis their works, making it much more akin to the reformed than to the traditional Commedia.

The mixed backgrounds of choreographers The eighteenth century was therefore a period of reform of the Commedia, and theatrical practice was a melting-pot of a variety of different tendencies. The rather mixed personal and professional backgrounds of early ballet d’action innovators show the extent to which they were part of this meltingpot, and suggest that they could have exploited its rich potential to devise new forms of stage dance. Marie Sallé is a case in point. As a child, she danced for the London Harlequin, John Rich, and for her uncle, Francisque Moylin, himself a famous Harlequin. It has been suggested that she probably learnt a great deal about mime and gesture from both.67 Rich and Moylin performed respectively English and French styles of Commedia, but Sallé’s career began just in time for her to be influenced more directly by Italian players. She was in Paris for the 1717–18 season, a year after Luigi Riccoboni’s Italian players were invited back to Paris by the regent. Sallé must have been in an ideal position to bring together the gestural techniques of the Italian players and her training in contemporary stage dance. She developed a close relationship with Riccoboni’s Théaˆ tre Italien throughout her career. It was arguably as important a venue for her as the Paris Opéra. When her choreographically innovative work Pygmalion was rebuffed by the Opéra, she planned to perform it at the Théaˆ tre Italien, partnered by Luigi Riccoboni’s son, François. As rehearsals progressed, the Opéra objected to 65

66 67

See Molinari, La Commedia dell’Arte, p. 235, where it is pointed out that Riccoboni very much sought authorial status, not only by writing out in full some of the parts, but also by stipulating in his contract that he controlled the repertoire in certain important ways. ˆ ´ See, for example, Alain Viala, Naissance de l’Ecrivain: Sociologie de la Littérature a` l’Age ´ Classique (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1985). Sarah Yuill McCleave, Dance in Handel’s Italian Operas: The Collaboration with Marie Sallé, PhD dissertation, Department of Music, King’s College, University of London, 1 October 1993, pp. 48–49.

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her appearance on a stage other than the Opéra, and she left for London, where the work was premiered. Even though her initial plans were thwarted, her confidence in the ability of the Théa` tre Italien to stage innovative mime and dance is telling. So, also, is the fact that a few months after the London premiere, François Riccoboni staged what was apparently a fairly faithful version of the choreography at the Théa` tre Italien, performing opposite Catherine Roland.68 The background and repertoire of other famous choreographers were often as mixed as Sallé’s. Franz Hilverding – who was, according to his pupil Angiolini, the originator of the ballet d’action – came from a long line of marionette masters.69 His father, Johann, was arguably one of the driving forces behind the invention of the German version of Harlequin, Hanswurst, since it was he who gave Stranitzky, the creator of this character, essential support and financial backing. They formed a travelling theatre company together, and became such close friends that Stranitzky was the godparent of Franz Hilverding and a number of his siblings. Nothing is known of Hilverding’s early training, but it is plausible that he learnt something from at least seeing his father and godfather in performance. Perhaps he also learnt the art of courtly dance from his father-in-law, the dancing master Anton Coblet. By curious coincidence, he seems to have had no profession aged eighteen, when he married Coblet’s daughter in 1729, but is recorded as being a ‘Tanzmeister’ two years later. The wedding may have been a necessity, since Hilverding’s first child was born suspiciously soon afterwards. In which case, it has been suggested that Anton Coblet took the jobless eighteen-yearold Hilverding under his wing as an apprentice dancing-master. At the risk of speculating, then, Hilverding’s dance reforms may have derived from a combined experience of marionette theatre, Hanswurst, and courtly dance. Franz Hilverding’s ambitions were very different from his father’s, to the point where he tried his best to expunge the stage of the German Theatre in Vienna (which he leased in 1766) of popular genres in general, and the Hanswurst character in particular. This was his opportunity to contribute to reforms of German spoken theatre and to promote a more serious, ‘regular’ style reflecting trends elsewhere towards a less burlesque kind of popular theatre. Ironically enough, when this failed to interest Viennese spectators, Hilverding fell into substantial debt, and he applied for permission to stage 68 69

This well-known series of events is recounted, for example, by Winter, The Pre-Romantic Ballet, p. 85. For this and following information on Hilverding, see Gustav Gugitz, ‘Die Familie Hilverding und ihre theatralische Sendung’, in Jahrbuch des Vereines für Geschichte der Stadt Wien, 11 (1954), pp. 71–103.


marionette theatre on Vienna’s Judenplatz, thus returning to the profession of his father and forefathers. The tradition which produced Hanswurst, therefore, seems to have returned to his repertoire. Hilverding left no record of his own concerning his training and inspirations; we rely on his most famous pupil, Angiolini, for much of what we know. Angiolini does not mention in his writings that he or his master were influenced by the Commedia, but it is revealing of the mixed repertoire of the early part of his own career that in the same year, 1761, he choreographed one of the most groundbreaking ballets d’action, Don Juan (music by Gluck), and also Le Tuteur Dupé, ou l’Amant Statue with a cast list strongly reflective of Commedia traditions: two Lovers, an Old Tutor, Harlequin, and Scaramouche.70 The radical departure which Don Juan represents, therefore, does not preclude a knowledge and respect from the Commedia, even if Angiolini was not prepared to admit this. It is best to think of the traditional Commedia dell’arte as qualitatively different from the ballet d’action, as part of the background of its development rather than a direct influence. The notion of influence is in any case problematic in an era of fusion of styles and techniques across international borders when direct, linear relationships are less realistic than a complex, promiscuous combination of practices and principles from a variety of sources. It is far easier to gauge the influence of these permutations in France, where companies had a strong institutional basis in Paris, than in their native Italy. It may be that the Commedia, reformed or otherwise, was not the greatest influence on the ballo pantomimo in Italy. Recent scholarship has suggested that operatic intermezzi dancing in seventeenth-century Italy, particularly in Venice, produced conventions of narrative stage dance and mime which could have contributed to the development of the Italian ballo pantomimo.71 There is therefore a double danger in exaggerating the influence of the Commedia: not only may it lead us to underestimate the changes that the Commedia went through in the eighteenth century, but it may also cause us to overlook other important influences on the ballet d’action which had little to do with the Commedia. 70 71

See Bruce A. Brown, Gluck and the French Theatre in Vienna (Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 288. See Irene Alm, Wendy Heller, and Rebecca Harris-Warrick, ‘Winged feet and mute eloquence: dance in seventeenth-century Venetian opera’, in Cambridge Opera Journal, 15.3 (November 2003), pp. 216–280. Kathleen K. Hansell reviews this subject in ‘Theatrical ballet and Italian opera’, pp. 178–199.

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Decroux and Noverre Distant cousins?

´ Etienne Decroux was in some senses the purest of all mime artists of the twentieth century, but he nevertheless regretted not exploring more fully the hybrid genre of the ballet d’action and its most famous practitioner and advocate, Jean-Georges Noverre. In Words on Mime, Decroux writes: In the French edition of this book, I did not pay tribute to the memories of the Frenchman Noverre, nor to the German Jooss. Was this regrettable omission caused by their belonging to the world of dance? Certainly. But in their case, this cannot be considered a good reason. Noverre [. . .] was primarily a dancer. But he worked with both theory and practice to build up a type of pantomime the character of which had previously been unknown. Jooss, also a dancer, placed himself outside dance and old-style pantomime. [. . .] One day I hope to write further on the contribution made by these two ‘brothers’.1

Decroux never did publish his thoughts on Noverre or Jooss. Other writers on mime have occasionally discussed Jooss in the context of Tanztheater,2 but Noverre is never mentioned. Nor, for that matter, are a host of other ballet d’action choreographers. Decroux’s eminent position in the development of modern mime and the regrets he expresses that Noverre has been left out of the history of mime ought to give us pause for considerable thought. It seems appropriate, therefore, to evaluate the eighteenth-century missing link in the history of mime according to its relation to a modern touchstone, Decroux. The comparison reveals as many differences of technique and principle as it does similarities between the two, but it also shows that they shared a sense of what the challenges are.

Eighteenth- and twentieth-century renewal The roots of Decroux’s mime lay in a reaction against theatrical conventions perceived as affected, conformist, and lacking expression. He owed 1 2

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´ Etienne Decroux, Words on Mime, trans. Mark Piper (Claremont, CA: Mime Journal, 1985), p. 154. This is a translation of Decroux’s Paroles sur le Mime (Paris: Gallimard, 1963). One of the few critics to bring Jooss into the fold of mime performers is Ariane Martinez, La Pantomime: Théaˆ tre en Mineur, 1880–1945 (Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2008), pp. 196–198.

Decroux and Noverre

his first radical inspirations to his teacher, Jacques Copeau, whose theatre school, Le Théaˆ tre du Vieux Colombier, was founded in 1913 with the ambition of revitalising the art of acting through an eclectic pedagogical programme, including a strong emphasis on physical, non-verbal expression. Decroux’s epiphany came while watching a theatrical production staged by his more advanced classmates at the end of his first year at the school in June 1924: Sitting comfortably in my seat, I saw an astonishing performance. It consisted of mime and sounds. Not a single word was spoken, no make-up was used, there were no costumes, no special lighting, no props, no furniture, and no scenery. The progression of the plot was so intelligent that several hours were compressed into a few seconds, several different locations into one. The gesture was moving, understandable, plastic, and musical.3

From Copeau’s, and subsequently Decroux’s, point of view, all the most abused aspects of theatre were absent from this performance:4 there was no affected diction, the body was not disguised with make-up or costume, and the actor’s movements were unencumbered by scenery or stage props. All that was left was clear, structured (‘musical’), emotive movement. The entire focus was on the actor’s art. The physicality of acting which this necessitated was taught by Copeau in the exercise he called ‘the mask’ in which pupils wore expressionless masks and were obliged to channel their expressive efforts through the body rather than the face.5 It is an interesting choice of name, derived from the means rather than the objective of the exercise. Decroux was inspired by this exercise, but christened his own art specifically according to its objective, ‘corporeal mime’, thus making a priority what was only one aspect of Copeau’s training: the expressive body. Like so many radical artistic innovators, Decroux’s creative energy derived to a significant extent from the view that fossilised institutions need revitalising and hardened conventions need challenging. Eighteenth-century mime dancers were no different in this respect. Of all eighteenth-century choreographers, Noverre’s voice is heard most loudly today because he published a monograph, but the ardent desire for change which he constantly 3 4

5

Decroux, Paroles sur le Mime, p. 18. Copeau expressed his dissatisfaction with contemporary theatrical practice in numerous reviews and writings; see for example ‘Un essai de rénovation dramatique’, in Registres 1: Appels, ed. Marie-Hélène Dasté (Paris: Gallimard, 1974), pp. 19–32. ´ For Copeau’s use of the mask, see Marie-Hélène Dasté, Registres VI: L’Ecole du Vieux-Colombier (Paris: Gallimard, 2000), pp. 298–310.

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expressed is genuinely representative of many of his contemporaries. It was no doubt Noverre’s book which inspired Decroux with the ambition to write about him. The fundamental tenets of Lettres sur la Danse are that the body has untapped expressive potential, that it expresses some things better or faster than words can express them, and that mechanical, formalistic dance can be made meaningful by freeing the body from the constraints of convention. The best way to challenge the conventions of dance, according to Noverre, is to integrate them with the art of acting. In his characteristically strident manner, however, he claims few choreographers are up to the task: ‘it is hard to find a ballet master who feels; there are so few who are excellent actors and who possess the art of painting with gesture the movements of the soul.’6 Noverre complains that dance without drama is soulless, that too many dancers ‘spend all their time studying the movement of the feet and legs, and, far from using their minds and their souls, they overlook the language of the passions, the animated and expressive action which gesture must have’.7 His major contemporary rival, Gasparo Angiolini, agreed, as did a host of critics militating for the reform of stage dance. There was in fact a contemporary surge of interest in the expressive body which went beyond stage dance. The English actor David Garrick is a model mentioned frequently by Noverre. He also discusses Denis Diderot, whose diverse and complex writings on practical as much as theoretical matters of somatic expression are a good measure of the breadth of contemporary interest.8 There was, then, a momentum, an impulsion towards reform in the second half of the eighteenth century which is analogous to the desire for change in theatrical practices in the early twentieth century. Each period constitutes an equivalent point in the historical cycle of theatrical theory and practice when verbal expression wanes and physical expression (somatic or material) takes precedence. The following series of seven principles shows how Decroux and eighteenth-century choreographers asked themselves similar questions and had similar priorities, even if they did not necessarily find the same answers.

6 7 8

Jean-Georges Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse, et sur les Ballets (Stuttgart, Lyon: Delaroche, 1760), pp. 15–16. Jean-Georges Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse et les Arts Imitateurs (Paris: Lieutier, 1952), p. 37. Diderot’s interest in somatic expression is a recurrent topic in many studies of the author’s work; see especially Angelica Gooden, Diderot and the Body (Oxford: Legenda, 2001).

Decroux and Noverre

Use of the body One of the most important principles of Decroux’s mime derives from Copeau’s ‘mask’ exercise: meaningful movement should not depend on the use of the periphery of the body, the face and the hands, as it did in nineteenth-century mime. Instead, the entire body, and especially the torso, should be engaged. To this end, Decroux sometimes performed in a body stocking or little more than a loin cloth, covering the face with an expressionless mask or even a more rudimentary stocking. He pointed out on numerous occasions that this created a gulf between his corporeal mime and nineteenth-century mime. It would have been impossible, for example, for a nineteenth-century mime to perform with his back to the audience, as Decroux did in L’Usine.9 It is in some ways paradoxical for a somatic art to be so mistrustful of certain parts of the body, but in other ways it is entirely consistent with Decroux’s belief in the untapped expressive potential of the whole body. Part of his rationale for excluding the face is fundamental to his concept of corporeal mime: we interpret faces in uncompromising ways which can undo the expressive efforts of the rest of the body. Thus, the natural low brow of an actor may be an impediment when playing roles which suit a high brow. Or again: a young man can never play an old man. Recourse to stage make-up solves the problem in some ways, but is also an implicit admission of the limits of the actor’s art. Decroux regarded the actor as a creative artist with the same right as any other artist to create what he wants to create rather than create what he happens to be.10 It is therefore a major underestimation of the actor’s art to assume that he or she is destined always to play the same kind of roles merely because of his or her given facial features. Better, according to Decroux, to exclude or marginalise the face. The other part of Decroux’s rationale for marginalising the face is based on the moral observation that most people live their lives in the periphery of their body, the face and hands, which is trained to lie, to obscure the truth much more than is the rest of the body.11 The socio-cultural codes

9

10 11

This is a remark made by Decroux to his students and collated with others in an imaginary ´ ´ interview in Patrick Pezin (ed.), Etienne Decroux, Mime Corporel: Textes, Etudes et Témoignages ´ (Saint-Jean-de-Védas: L’Entretemps Editions, 2003), p. 61. His work L’Usine is available on a DVD entitled Enfin Voir Decroux Bouger, in Le Silence des Mimes Blancs (Montreuil: La Maison ˆ e, 2006). d’à Cot´ ´ Pezin, Etienne Decroux, p. 135. ´ This is a remark reported by one of his students, Thomas Leabhart, in Pezin, Etienne Decroux, p. 376.

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and conventions imprinted on us all and sustained in daily life are so unyielding that mime artists face a stark choice between incorporating or at best adapting them to their art, or excluding them altogether. In characteristically resolute fashion, Decroux chose to exclude the face and to subordinate the hands to the arms and torso. In contrast, the ballet d’action has a reputation for making a great deal of the arms and the face. The repeated assertions by Noverre in Lettres sur la Danse that the face is a vital channel of expression seems to render Decroux’s admiration problematic. Noverre’s faith in the artistic truth of the face seems limitless: ‘it is the soul alone which imprints on the facial features in energetic characters the sentiments, affections, passions, pleasures, and pains that it experiences.’12 He contends that it is as important to remove the masks from stage dancers as it is to raise the curtain before a performance.13 Even if these remarks are in part posturing by Noverre intended to promote his questionable claim to have been the inventor of contemporary mime technique, reports from contemporary spectators tend to confirm that he sought to emphasise the face. Thus, a London spectator expressed admiration for the French dancer and actress Mme Simonet in the 1782 performance of Noverre’s Rinaldo and Armida, because of ‘that rapid and strong marked Transition of Counternance for which she has unrivalled Commendation’ (the emphasis is original).14 So many other contemporary spectators remarked on the expressive power of the face in the works of so many different choreographers that the technique does not seem to have been a particular characteristic of Noverre’s productions. Probably the most famous Italian woman dancer of the period ` wife of the even more famous Salvatore Vigano. ` is Maria Medina Vigano, The Gazzetta Urbana Veneta writes flatteringly of her that her dancing is a mirror of the passions of the soul, and that she demonstrates that the art of dancing lies not only ‘in the mechanics of the feet, in the agility of the legs, [but] in the ability to make the face and arms speak’.15 Gaëtan Vestris, ‘the god of dance’, made an impression on the journalist Louis de Bachaumont at the Paris Opéra precisely because he danced without a mask and used the mobile face as an actor might: ‘[Vestris] is without a mask, and surprised the audience by the energy of his performance, not only as a dancer, but also as an actor.’16 12 13 14 16

Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse (1952), p. 20. Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse (1952), p. 22. The whole of Letter IX concerns the inadequacy of masked performance and the virtues of the mobile, expressive face. Public Advertiser, 25 February 1782. 15 Gazzetta Urbana Veneta, 18 January 1792, pp. 39–40. Louis Petit de Bachaumont, Mémoires Secrets pour Servir a` l’Histoire de la République des Lettres en France, depuis MDCCLXII, ou Journal d’un Observateur, Contenant les Analyses des Pièces de

Decroux and Noverre

When the face and arms were, on the contrary, immobile and inexpressive, this also caused comment. Ange Goudar criticised the daughter of the eminent dancer and choreographer Jean-Baptiste Pitrot for her lack of expression, despite her technical talents: ‘she has good legs and arms, but her face is worthless, being all of a piece’.17 He seems to sum up a widespread view about eighteenth-century mime when he writes in the context of an article on one of the most famous and groundbreaking contemporary works, Angiolini’s Semiramide, that ‘the arms and the face [. . . ] are the tongue [langue] of pantomime’.18 There seems, therefore, to be a great deal of reliance on what Decroux calls the periphery of the body, which would suggest that the ballet d’action made significant use of the face and the arms.

Mask and face The prominence given to face and arms by contemporary commentators is arguably, however, relative to the strong and particularly emblematic status of the mask in the specifically French stage tradition. Such was its status that removing it caused a stir which may have obscured other aspects of the performance and other expressive uses of the body, for both contemporary and modern critics. Some idea of the extent of the stir it caused can be gathered from the fact that it seems only to have been the most famous dancers in exceptional circumstances who dared to abandon the mask at the Opéra. Marie Sallé and Antoine Laval in 1729 are thought to have been the first, but their innovation took place in an after-piece, ‘Les Caractères de la Danse’, rather than in the main performance of the evening, Molière’s La 19 ´ As far as we know, the next person to perform without Princesse d’Elide. a mask at the Opéra is Gaëtan Vestris in 1770 in his version of Noverre’s Médée et Jason. In the meantime, the status of Parisian masked dancing was such that other major cultural centres adopted the same practice. In Vienna, even Franz Hilverding, a founder of the ballet d’action, is reported to have ‘imitated’ Paris in this respect.20

17 18 19 20

Théaˆ tre qui ont Paru durant cet Intervalle, les Relations des Assemblées Littéraires, 36 vols in 18 (London: John Adamson, 1783–89), Vol. 19, pp. 245–246 (entry for 8 December 1770). The ballet d’action takes place in the middle of Act II of the opera Ismène et Isménias, music by La Borde. See Chapter 8. Anon. [Ange Goudar], Lettre d’un des Petits Oracles de M. Campioni au Grand Pitrot (n.p.: n.p., 1774), p. 16. [Goudar], Lettre de Madame Sara Goudar sur le Carnaval de Toscane a` Monsieur L∗∗∗ (n.p.: n.p., 1776), p. 28. See Mercure de France, 17 February 1729. ´ Journal Etranger, Ouvrage Périodique, ed. A.F. Prévost d’Exiles et al., 45 vols (Paris: April 1754–September 1762), May 1760, p. 104: ‘[The shepherds and the Roman soldiers] wore

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Given the contemporary status of the mask, therefore, it is probably unsafe to conclude on the basis of hyperbolic spectators’ responses that the face was the primary medium of expression in the ballet d’action. Their hyperbole may derive more from the novelty of unmasked dancing than from the importance per se of the face. Other sources suggest that the face was only one of many mediums. Even the most vociferous advocate of facial expression, Noverre, regards it, in fact, as the ‘hallmark’ part of the genre,21 which is not the same as claiming it is the main channel of expression. He refers more often to ‘le jeu’, a term coined in the mid eighteenth century to mean the actor’s use of the whole body.22 The importance of ‘le jeu’ is evident from the way Noverre describes the first time he sees a performance by David Garrick, the famous English physical actor. If Noverre had an epiphany equivalent to Decroux’s in 1924, then it was during the 1755–56 season watching Garrick perform at Drury Lane.23 Noverre’s repertoire shows a marked change after this date which would seem to confirm the extent to which this was a defining moment.24 In the eight pages Noverre devotes to Garrick, he dedicates more space to expression by the whole body than by the face or arms in particular. When describing Garrick playing a dying tyrant, Noverre describes first the voice, then the face, and then describes in much greater detail the way in which Garrick uses his body. When the moment of death comes, it is ‘the convulsive movements of physiognomy, the arms and the chest’ which impress Noverre. The chest is as important in this moment as the face (‘physiognomy’) and arms. Perhaps it is this kind of comment which led Decroux to feel Noverre was a kindred spirit, given Decroux’s emphasis on the torso. Perhaps also Decroux was impressed by Noverre’s quite remarkable chapter on anatomy, which sets him apart from any other contemporary choreographer, except for John Weaver.25 Noverre must have been interested in more than the face and arms to have written in such detail about the

21 22 23

24 25

masks, and this is the first time they have been used on the Viennese stage, in imitation of the Paris Opéra.’ Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse (1952), p. 20. See Sabine Chaouche (ed.), Sept Traités sur le Jeu du Comédien et Autres Textes: De l’Action Oratoire a` l’Art Dramatique (1657–1750) (Paris: Champion, 2001), p. 12. For Noverre’s admiration of Garrick, see Lettres sur la Danse (1760), pp. 209–217. For biographical details on Noverre’s relations with Garrick, see Deryck Lynham, Father of Modern Ballet: The Chevalier Noverre (London: Dance Books, 1972), Chapter 2. Noverre’s first substantial innovation in mime and dance was arguably La Toilette de Vénus ou Les Ruses de l’Amour, first performed in Lyons in 1757. Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse (1952), Chapter 8. See also John Weaver, Anatomical and Mechanical Lectures upon Dancing, wherein Rules and Institutions for that Art Are Laid Down

Decroux and Noverre

anatomy of the dancer. The implications of this chapter are that the body is an instrument which we can refine and use as a tool of artistic expression, a principle which is certainly in keeping with Decroux’s approach.26 The detailed practical application which Noverre makes of the latest or most distinguished anatomists such as Borelli (considered the father of modern biomechanics) or Winslow (who wrote the first treatise of descriptive anatomy) would doubtless have struck Decroux as evidence that Noverre was intensely interested in the possibilities of expression by the whole body, not just the face and arms. Diderot makes a fleeting comment on Noverre which would seem to confirm that Noverre’s mime techniques were far from limited to the face and arms. The comment comes in what must be one of the most fascinating contemporary literary explorations of mime, Le Neveu de Rameau. The eponymous Nephew is explaining the ‘pantomime of the human species’, mime as a social art of survival. The poor man does not walk like others, his gait is sycophantic: ‘he jumps, he crawls, he wriggles and he creeps, he spends a lifetime choosing and executing different positions’. When asked ‘what is a position’, the Nephew replies: ‘go and ask Noverre. There are far more in the world than his art can imitate.’27 The Nephew’s point is that the social art of mime is endless, everyone participates, even the King who would stoop and crawl for the pretty nose of a princess. The nearest analogy the Nephew proposes is the range of movement used by Noverre. If Noverre’s dancers moved in anything like the agile manner of the Nephew’s poor man, jumping, crawling, wriggling, and creeping, then the face and arms did not dominate his choreographies. The same point is even more evident when we consider the ballet d’action beyond Noverre and the French school he exemplifies. The Italian school of groteschi dancers were renowned for their combination of feats of physical virtuosity and mime. The extent to which the whole body was used in the Italian ballo pantomimo emerged during the polemical exchange of letters between Noverre and his major Italian rival, Gasparo Angiolini.28 The substance of Angiolini’s argument in Lettere a Monsieur Noverre is that there are dramatic rules, such as the dramatic unities, which apply

26 27 28

and Demonstrated (London: J. Brotherton and W. Meadows, 1721). Weaver died in 1760, the year Noverre first published his Lettres sur la Danse. ´ See Pezin, Etienne Decroux, p. 65 in which Decroux is reported as saying ‘the human body is like a keyboard, a keyboard on which one can play in one key at a time, or else in more than one’. Denis Diderot, Le Neveu de Rameau, in Œuvres Complètes, 33 vols (Paris: Hermann, 1975–), Vol. XII, p. 189. See Chapter 7, pp. 170–177 for a fuller treatment of their debate.

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as much to stage dance as they do to spoken drama. He comments at one point that, within these rules, any kind of physical movement can be deemed to constitute dance: ‘I know of no gesture, no movement which does not constitute dance, when all is subject to the rules of the art.’29 His contemporary compatriot Gallini makes essentially the same remark, that dancing is not only about the legs, hands, and face, but that ‘expression should be pantomimically diffused through the whole body’.30 In practice, what they mean is sometimes evident in Magri’s seminal treatise: a pas de bourrée fallito is used for the expression of grief, a salto dell’impiccato for drunkards.31 The fact that the whole body is implicated in grottesco dance led one contemporary to argue that the ballet d’action is the most complete form of physical exercise. All other activities develop isolated parts of the body at the expense of the rest of the body: horse-riding strengthens the haunches but weakens the legs, fencing develops one arm and one foot. In contrast, the ballet d’action ‘exercises the feet, the arms, the face and the whole body [. . . ], and provides what all other gymnastic exercises combined cannot’.32 Again, there is no sign of dominance by the face or arms. On the contrary, Italian ballo pantomimo had a holistic approach to the body, a gymnastic physical aesthetic reminiscent of the importance of sport to Decroux, who thought that the central role of the torso in many sports made it a better inspiration for his form of mime than any existing stage art.

Mime and dance Decroux made categorical distinctions between his art of mime and the art of dance, in contrast to Noverre, who incorporated one with the other. The nucleus of Decrouxian mime from which derive many of its distinctive characteristics is the way it seeks to highlight the body’s relation to weight.33 Weight, gravity, is in fact the source of the drama of mime, the force which 29 30 31 32 33

Gasparo Angiolini, Lettere di Gasparo Angiolini a Monsieur Noverre sopra i Balli Pantomimi (Milan: Gio. Battista Bianchi, 1773), pp. 95–96. Giovanni-Andrea Gallini, A Treatise on the Art of Dancing (London: printed for the author and sold by R. and J. Dodsley, T. Becket, and W. Nicholl, 1762), p. 96. See Gennaro Magri, Theoretical and Practical Treatise on Dancing (Naples, 1779; London: Dance Books, 1988), pp. 101–102 and p. 165. See the anonymous translation of Lucian’s treatise on dance, Della Danza, Dialogo di Luciano, con Annotazioni, trans. anon. (Florence: Gaspero Pecchioni, 1779), p. 9n. My remarks here are a brief summary of Decroux’s view in the chapter ‘Danse et mime’ in his Paroles sur le Mime.

Decroux and Noverre

demands effort and engenders a physical and psychological struggle. The drama it provokes is one in which man is in conflict with the world, resisting it, defending himself against it, attacking it. The conflict is not only between man and the rest of the world, but it is also internalised so that man is in conflict with himself, because the feeling of weight acting in one way on the body is at odds with the force of the will which acts on the body in another way. Decrouxian mime is in some ways a dramatisation of a radical, Cartesian mind–body distinction. Dance seems to Decroux to be based on different principles. It disguises weight so that, for example, the force of rebound as a body responds to contact with the floor, wall, or other material is not revealed. The movement tends to be continuous, as if there had been no impact, or as if it were an inanimate rubber ball rebounding rather than a flesh-and-blood body.34 The conflict between the body and the world is not emphasised in dance, and there is therefore no consequent internal, mental conflict between mind and body as there is in mime. On the contrary, the dancer’s mind is in harmony with his body. This is why, according to Decroux, it is possible to dance spontaneously, but not to mime spontaneously. The mime artist’s mind is not in harmony with the body; he does not give over his mind to his body. Instead, his mind remains independent, wholly rational. Decroux illustrates this difference by contending that, unlike a dancer, a mime artist could solve a problem in arithmetic while performing.35 Movement for the dancer is rest from the mind–body distinction. For the mime artist, movement is a dramatisation of it. What are the grounds, then, for Decroux’s admiration of Noverre’s combination of mime and dance? Perhaps it lies in the acute sensitivity felt by Noverre and other choreographers to the manner in which the combination should be achieved. Noverre draws a very clear distinction between the ‘mechanical’ part of performance and ‘pantomime or dramatic dance’.36 The first is effectively synonymous with the Baroque dance of his day and constitutes what he calls the ‘material’ part of performance, while the second is ‘the soul’. Like Decroux, Noverre’s way of formulating the sharp distinction between dance and mime, ‘material’ and ‘soul’, each with its discrete nature, is quasi-Cartesian in its radical divide. The Cartesian overtones are especially noticeable when Noverre condemns those ‘soulless’ performers

34 36

´ Decroux, Paroles sur le Mime, p. 73. 35 Pezin, Etienne Decroux, p. 108. Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse (1952), pp. 37–38. For a similarly clear distinction between dance and mime, see also the preface he writes for the programme of his Eutimo ed Eucari (Milan: Giovanni Montani, 1775), p. 4.

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who cultivate only the ‘material’ side of performance as machine men, ‘des hommes machines’.37 It is a provocative term, made infamous in the eighteenth century by Joseph de la Mettrie’s atheist–materialist treatise which uses the phrase in its title. It is Noverre’s way of expressing an unambiguous distinction between dance and mime. Provocative as it was in atheistmaterialist terms, it was a distinction commonly made by choreographers and critics. Angiolini’s distinction between ‘il pantomimo’ and ‘la danza materiale’ is conceptually identical.38 This distinction is not only a conceptual one, but is manifest in performance. When Gaëtan Vestris staged Noverre’s Médée et Jason at Choisy in 1770, the editor of the influential Correspondance Littéraire, Melchior Grimm, remarked that Vestris had not maintained Noverre’s trademark distinction between dance and mimed scenes: In Noverre’s ballets, dance and rhythmic walking are quite distinct; dance is reserved for the great movements of the passions, the decisive moments; in the transitional scenes [les scènes], the walking is done to the rhythm of the music, but there is no dancing. The change between rhythmic walking to dance, and from dance to rhythmic walking is as essential to this performance as is, in Opera, the change from recitative to aria and aria to recitative.39

The roles Noverre apparently reserved for dance and for mime are not incompatible with Decroux’s understanding of each: dance is for spontaneous eruptions of emotion, while mime (‘rhythmic walking’) is the equivalent of recitative in opera, the technique of rhythmic speaking intended to advance the action. A sharp distinction between dance and mime was not only a characteristic of Noverre’s work. A comment by Ange Goudar on Angiolini’s L’Orphelin de la Chine suggests the same use of ‘rhythmic walking’ distinct from dancing, even if Goudar was clearly not impressed. He writes that the work could be renamed ‘Le Ballet des Promenades’, because most of the performance is walking with short breaks for acrobatic grotteschi dancers to ‘show their behind to the audience’.40 Whether Noverre and Angiolini always separated dance from mime is debatable. Noverre probably did so much more than Angiolini.41 Other 37 38 39 40 41

Noverre frequently used this term; see for example Lettres sur la Danse (1760), p. 28. Angiolini, Lettere di Gasparo Angiolini a Monsieur Noverre sopra i Balli Pantomimi, p. 82. Friedrich Melchior Grimm, Correspondance Littéraire, Philosophique et Critique, 16 vols (1753–82; Paris: Garnier Frères, 1877–82), Vol. 9, p. 237 (January 1771). [Ange Goudar], Œuvres Mêlées de Madame Sara Goudar, Angloise, 2 vols (Amsterdam: n.p., 1777), Vol. I, p. 47. Kathleen K. Hansell argues that Angiolini’s practice later evolved towards a more integrated approach than Goudar suggests he had in the early stages of his career. See Kathleen K. Hansell,

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influential choreographers such as Angiolini’s mentor Franz Hilverding probably did the opposite, cultivating an integrated approach.42 Whatever style spectators were presented with, however, they did not take for granted the relation between dance and mime. In fact, it was often the focus of specific debates concerning the merits of the the ballet d’action. It was apparently one of the key questions which Noverre’s Milanese critics asked him: ‘What do you know about ballet? [. . . ] What do you know about pantomime? When did you learn how to marry one to the other?’43 The issue was also raised in probably the most extended contemporary analytical study of the genre, by the Milanese playwright and critic Matteo Borsa. One of his reasons for general scepticism about the ballet d’action was that he thought mime and dance so far apart as to make them very difficult to combine in the same work. The only solution, in his opinion, would be to confine each to specific kinds of dramatic moment: dance for moments of spontaneity and joy, mime for plot progression.44 The ballet d’action need not, therefore, be anathema to Decrouxian mime; it is not entirely foreign to his principles by virtue of being a less ‘pure’ form of mime. Decroux did not, in any case, value pure mime for its own sake. He did not object in principle to other arts ‘accompanying’ mime, as long as mime was aesthetically independent, autonomous.45

Mime and language The issue of the purity and aesthetic autonomy of mime is especially controversial in relation to language. To what extent can mime include vocalised or written language, and, more profoundly, should mime be in some sense

42 43

44

45

‘Theatrical ballet and Italian opera’, in The History of Italian Opera, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli, 2 vols (University of Chicago Press, 2002), Vol. II, pp. 177–308 (240). On Hilverding’s integrated approach, see Bruce A. Brown, Gluck and the French Theatre in Vienna (Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 177. Anon., Memorie per Servire alla Storia degli Spettacoli del Teatro di Milano degli Anni 1774, e 1775. Ossia Lettere Controcritiche del Marchese N . . . al Cavaliere K . . . (Brescia: Fratelli Pasini, 1776), p. 5. According to the catalogue of the Ambrosiana library in Milan, this book is by Giuseppe Carpani, the Milanese librettist, musical critic, and biographer of Haydn and Rossini. Other libraries do not attribute this book to him. Matteo Borsa, ‘Saggio filosofico sui balli pantomimi’, Lettera Prima, in Opuscoli Scelti sulle Scienze e sulle Arti, Tratti dagli Atti delle Accademie, e dalle Altre Collezioni Filosofiche e Letterarie, dalle Opere più Recenti Inglesi, Tedesche, Francesi, Latine, e Italiane, e da Manoscritti Originali, e Inediti (Milan: Giuseppe Marelli, 1782–83), Vol. V, Part III, pp. 137–151 (142–144). The second and third letters are published in Vol. V, Part IV, pp. 311–321, and Vol. VI, Part II, pp. 153–169. ´ Pezin, Etienne Decroux, pp. 101–102.

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a ‘translation’ of language? Decroux’s mime was silent and made no use of written language, but he did not consider silence an absolute principle. Rather it was a necessary stage in the development of a new theatrical language. His vision was that, after twenty years of developing corporeal expression in isolation from other mediums (‘one must first cut oneself off from everything else’),46 mime could then gradually be allied to vocal language. After thirty years, it could be allied to all the other arts.47 In this way, he did not seek the independent practice of mime so much as an independent aesthetic. In other words, he had no objection in principle to mixing corporeal expression with other modes of expression, including speech, but he was nevertheless acutely concerned that mime should not be aesthetically derivative, that it should not ‘translate’ what can be said in language. This was one of the reasons he disliked nineteenth-century mime which in his opinion ‘sought to communicate in gesture what could so easily be said using words’.48 It also constitutes his major criticism of many kinds of contemporary spoken theatre: ‘here is an art which claims to be a performance art but which starts by writing’.49 There was therefore an underlying caution in the way Decroux approached the subject of mime’s relation to language, an implicit recognition of the insidious way in which language infiltrates the way we practise the arts as well as the way we think about them. His attitude to language was similar to that of his like-minded contemporary, the playwright Antonin Artaud: ‘we need to put an end to this superstition about texts and written poetry [. . . ] Beneath the poetry of texts, there is just poetry, without form and without text.’50 The ‘poetry’ of non-verbal expression is the reason for Decroux’s determination that mime should be aesthetically independent of language. The ballet d’action had the same ambitions. Many of the opinions of Decroux or Artaud on the hegemony of language which obscures the existence of poetry elsewhere would sit comfortably alongside the ideals of eighteenth-century advocates of the ballet d’action. Noverre’s attitude to language is simply that he does not need it: ‘a well-made ballet can easily do without the aid of words.’51 The only ‘speaking’ is done by the body: ‘everything will be eloquent, each movement will articulate a sentence; each attitude will paint a situation; each gesture will reveal a thought; each look 46 47 49 50 51

´ Pezin, Etienne Decroux, p. 102: ‘il faut d’abord faire le vide’. ´ Decroux, Paroles sur le Mime, p. 42. 48 See Pezin, Etienne Decroux, p. 59. ´ See Pezin, Etienne Decroux, p. 69. Antonin Artaud, ‘En finir avec les chefs-d’œuvre’, in Le Théaˆ tre et son Double (1938; Paris: Gallimard, 1964), p. 119. Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse (1760), p. 121.

Decroux and Noverre

will declare a new sentiment’.52 Noverre was not unusual in his attitude to language. Angiolini applied the same principles when he criticised the use of printed programmes sold to spectators before performances. He argued that, the ballet d’action derives in the final analysis from our ability to interpret body language; that, even if language and writing had never been invented, physical semantic ‘signs’ would exist; and that the ballet d’action was therefore a highly developed but ‘natural’ art with no need for speech or writing: ‘an art [. . . ] which emerges directly from nature [. . . ] has no need of speech, nor writing, nor performance programmes to express itself ’.53 The ideal of making language redundant is borne out by the comments of many spectators. The Gazzetta Urbana Veneta’s praise for Maria Medina Vigano` is typical. Speech in mime is as ‘superfluous’ as it would be in a visual art such as painting, or a three-dimensional art such as sculpture: How can I describe the rapid movements, the eloquent groupings which, at every moment, inspire the feeling of the most felicitous inventions of painting and sculpture, and that expressive magic which manages to ennoble nature, to cause our sense of sight to replace our sense of hearing, and to express in visual terms, with such clarity, the most profound feelings of the heart, such that the use of language seems superfluous?54

Analogies between mime and painting or sculpture abound in contemporary reports, precisely because the ballet d’action was considered to be closer to the visual and plastic arts than to the linguistic ones.55 Perhaps the most telling symptom of the visual, non-linguistic qualities of Noverre’s productions is not from the realm of painting, however, but from the advice given by a silk-dyer, Houbert de l’Hiberderie, to his students to look to his productions for compositional inspiration.56 Silk-dying is a long way indeed from the linguistic arts, and suggests that the ballet d’action did not have to depend much on language. Dramatic practice often confirmed a high degree of independence from language. Dialogue is the very stuff of spoken theatre, but Noverre famously 52 53

54 55 56

Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse (1760), p. 122. Gasparo Angiolini, Riflessioni di Gasparo Angiolini sopra l’Uso dei Programmi nei Balli Pantomimi (London [sic]: n.p., 1775), pp. 11–13. There is some debate whether Angiolini co-wrote this text with Ranieri de’ Calzabigi. Gino Tani in his article ‘Angiolini’, for the Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo, ed. Silvio d’Amico (Rome: Casa Editrice Le Maschere, 1954–65), argues convincingly that it is by Angiolini. Gazzetta Urbana Veneta, 18 January 1792, pp. 39–40, regarding a performance of Salvatore ` Creature di Prometeo. Vigano’s For the relation of the ballet d’action to painting, see Chapter 7, pp. 177–179. ´ Joubert de l’Hiberderie, Le Dessinateur pour les Fabriques d’Etoffes d’Or, d’Argent et de Soie (Naples: 1733; Paris: S. Jorry, 1765), p. 112.

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found an alternative to it in a crucial moment of his Les Horaces. During Camille’s imprecation scene, the victorious Horace must tell his sister Camille that he has killed her lover, one of the Curiace brothers. Noverre’s solution is for Horace to pull from inside his breastplate the now bloodied scarf that Camille gave her lover before he departed for battle. This emotive use of a stage prop had a powerful effect on spectators, precisely because it was physical and visual rather than linguistically derived.57 Sometimes, however, the ideal of making language superfluous is much less manifest. The ballet d’action provoked a great deal of debate on the subject of mime and language, and this may mean that we should not accept uncritically statements of intent from choreographers; that we should balance praise by some spectators with criticisms from others. The most evident way in which language intruded into mime was through the presence of written words on stage, presumably to make up for the inadequacy of mime at certain dramatic moments. The technique is found in the works of all kinds of choreographers whose styles are otherwise quite different. Even though Noverre and Angiolini were rival choreographers divided on many practical and theoretical issues, even though in the 1770s they were the centre of what must be the most significant public debate about the aesthetics of dance in the whole early modern period, they nevertheless had in common the same technique of introducing written words into their productions. In Act I of Angiolini’s Semiramide, the eponymous heroine awakens from a nightmare to see a hand writing on the wall: ‘My son, avenge me: tremble, perfidious spouse!’ In Act III, Ninias sees words appear on his father’s tombstone: ‘Come, run, avenge your father.’58 Angiolini’s pupil Antonio Campioni added to the use of stage words in his version of Semiramide in the recognition scene when Semiramide realises that Ninias, the man she is about to marry, is in fact her son. Goudar explains how this crucial moment was staged: ‘a panel can be seen at the back of the stage with the words: Stop, perverse mother; he is your son.’59

57 58

59

See Chapter 7, pp. 174–175 for discussion of the visual staging of Noverre’s Les Horaces. Gasparo Angiolini [and Calzabigi?], Dissertation sur les Ballets-Pantomimes des Anciens pour Servir de Programme au Ballet-Pantomime Tragique de Sémiramis, reproduced in Ranieri de’ Calzabigi’s complete works, Scritti Teatrali e Letterari, ed. Anna Laura Bellina, 2 vols (Rome: Salerno, 1994), Vol. I, pp. 165 and 167. Neither of these lines is from Voltaire’s Sémiramis. The first bears some resemblance to Crébillon’s Sémiramis, Act III, scene 6: ‘son sang va me venger’. Anon. [Ange Goudar], Lettre de Madame Sara Goudar sur le Carnaval de Toscane a` Monsieur L∗∗∗ (n.p.: n.p., 1776), p. 19. According to Antonio Piazza, it is Campioni’s version of Angiolini’s Semiramide which Goudar has seen. See Antonio Piazza, Discorso all’Orecchio di

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Noverre used staged words in relation to a dream scene. In Iphigénie en Tauride, Thoas’s nightmare is seen in his expression of terror as he sleeps and in the red, silhouetted hand of Atropos, one of the three Fates of Classical mythology, writing on the wall of the bedchamber ‘Your reign will end.’60 Noverre’s detailed footnote in the programme of the ballet suggests that the effect was achieved with lighting, filters, and a translucent canvas. One of Noverre’s most famous pupils, Charles Le Picq, uses staged words in his version of the legend of Castor and Pollux. At the end of Act II, the sign from the gods to Pollux that he should descend into Hell to find his dead brother comes in the form of written words: ‘Go: descend to hell, renounce the light, / It is fate’s will that you should save your brother.’61 Many lesser-known choreographers mix mime and written words with alacrity. The more one reads contemporary reports and plot synopses, the more one learns to expect the use of written language on stage. Although it did not dominate the mime and dance components, it was used at crucial junctures, clarifying the narrative. Before we conclude too quickly, however, that use of written language on stage is symptomatic of a failure in mime language, before we accept the merciless derision from the likes of Goudar of what may seem to be implausible staging, we ought to bear in mind the context of early modern theatre in which choreographers worked. All the examples above concern dramatic moments which would have been both a great challenge to translate into mime and also impossible for the choreographer to exclude. The supernatural in Angiolini’s Semiramide and Le Picq’s Castor et Pollux, the dream sequence in Noverre’s Iphigénie en Tauride, the recognition scene in Campioni’s version of Semiramide, not to mention the complex blood relations which infuse them all, are the very stuff of early modern drama, but they are arguably unsuited to mute performance. The most intractable difficulty of all is the recognition scene, an essentially linguistic moment arguably beyond mime.62 How is it possible to mime specific deictic meanings and the blood relations of off-stage characters, such as ‘Ninias is your son’? Almost as acute a problem is the récit of

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Monsieur Louis Goudar (London [Venice]: n.p., 1776), p. 50 (Piazza confuses Ange with his grammarian younger brother, Louis, whose Grammatica Francese was widely used in Italy). Jean-Georges Noverre, Iphigénie en Tauride, Ballet Tragique, Act II, scene 1, in Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre, Maˆıtre des Ballets de la Cour Impériale et Royale (Vienna: Joseph Kurzböck, 1776). Charles Le Picq, Castor et Pollux, Ballet Héroique-Pantomime en Cinq Actes (St Petersburg: Imprimerie Impériale, 1803). On recognition scenes and their relation to narrative, see Terence Cave, Recognitions: A Study in Poetics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).

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early modern tragedy. Especially in the French tradition, action on stage is reported rather than shown directly. It is an irredeemably wordy genre. Eighteenth-century choreographers usually translated the récit into stage action, but this risked confusing the spectator when the récit was an account of a dream: how would the spectator distinguish it from the rest of the stage action? Noverre avoided confusion by beginning the dream sequence with the silhouetted hand so that when subsequently a ghost entered the stage, the spectator could guess that it is part of Thoas’s dream. Although the ballet d’action depended more on language than Decroux would doubtless have liked, although it would seem to be an example of a visual art resorting to language for the purposes of complex deictics, we need to see the phenomenon in context. In the neoclassical early modern age, all drama, including the ballet d’action, was heavily based on the principle of adaptation from an existing repertoire of works, themes and mythological tales. No genre had a great deal of artistic freedom to invent new narratives more appropriate to its particular techniques. Given the frequency with which recognition scenes, the récit, dreams, or supernatural scenes occur in the repertoire of early modern theatre, it would have been almost impossible for eighteenth-century choreographers to progress very far in their careers without tackling them in mime, even though they are arguably not the kind of scenes a mime artist would naturally want to tackle. Decroux did not have to face this challenge, since his mime dramas were largely based on his own narratives. Perhaps he would consequently have allowed a little latitude to those he thought of as his eighteenth-century forebears.

Deprioritising language It is probably more important to judge the ballet d’action by the extent to which it deprioritised language. A good example is Noverre’s use of the chorus: he hid it in the wings so that it could not be seen, synchronising the singing with specific action on stage.63 He claimed to have devised the idea in collaboration with Gluck in rehearsals for the opera Alceste, but he subsequently used the same technique in autonomous works such as Les Dana¨ıdes, L’Enlèvement de Proserpine and Agamemnon Vengé. Thus, he did not exclude the words of the chorus; on the contrary, he introduced the chorus into his autonomous works which, unlike the opera Alceste, did not initially include them. He introduced them, however, on condition that 63

Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse (1952), Chapter 20, ‘Des Coryphées’.

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they be one component of the dramatic whole rather than the dominant factor. The ‘most terrifying effect’ he sought was an equal balance of four components: the action, the orchestra, the mime, and the chorus.64 The audience would have heard the chorus as it did the musicians: without seeing them. Thus, the dramatic contribution of each to the overall effect was not impeded by the jarring implausibility of their physical presence on stage. The singing bonded more closely to the action, promoting Noverre’s ideal of a unified dramatic effect. In conjunction with elaborate scenery which spectators frequently comment upon,65 this constituted a particular characteristic of Noverre’s productions. Far from detracting from the quality of Noverre’s mime, this combination would arguably have enhanced it, as long as we do not take an unduly narrow view of what mime should be. Decroux certainly did not. His understanding of mime was that it is a somatic art which can be ‘accompanied’ by many things: ‘whether it is done with music, musical sounds, scenery, words recited by a narrator or even by the mime himself, it is still mime’.66 Not only is the linguistic component in Noverre’s chorus not dominant, but in some senses he meant it to be scarcely linguistic. Noverre specifies that he does not want the chorus to sing in fully formed verse, but ‘broken words, cries of despair and pain, and exclamations’.67 Thus, in Les Dana¨ıdes, before the curtain rises to reveal the dying brothers, their ‘plaintive cries and painful accents’ are sung by the chorus.68 Later, the populace rebels against the tyrant Dana¨ıs, and their ‘cries of indignation’ are again sung by the chorus.69 In contemporary terms, this kind of semi-inchoate vocalisation is reminiscent of the ‘cry of nature’, the primitive emotional energy which, according to the likes of Diderot, should underpin all artistic expression, particularly opera.70 Unlike most advocates of ‘le cri de la nature’, however, Noverre seems to have found an effective way to put the principle into practice. In modern terms, the combination of mime and such vocalisation is congruent with Decroux’s conviction that, when used appropriately, the voice is part of mime: ‘diction is mime, vocal mime’.71 By ‘vocal mime’, 64 65

66 68 70 71

Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse (1952), p. 176. See for example Anon., Due Lettere Scritte a Diversi Soggetti (Naples: n.p., 1774), p. 35; or Pietro and Alessandro Verri, Carteggio di Pietro e di Alessandro Verri, dal 1766 al 1797, ed. Francesco Novati, Emanuele Greppi, Alessandro Giulini, and Giovanni Seregni, 12 vols (Milan: L.F. Cogliati, 1910–), Vol. VII, p. 9 (3 August 1774). ´ Pezin, Etienne Decroux, p. 103. 67 Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse (1952), p. 172. Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse (1952), p. 172. 69 Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse (1952), p. 174. Denis Diderot, Entretiens sur le Fils Naturel, in Œuvres Complètes, 33 vols (Paris: Hermann, 1975–), Vol. X, p. 157. ´ Pezin, Etienne Decroux, p. 70.

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Decroux meant the physical, audible voice, as opposed to the meaning of the words spoken. The former is in some sense primary, since the audience are aware of it before the meaning of the words registers in their minds. Arguably, deprioritising language is the best way to judge all mime, eighteenth-century or modern, since, with a few notable exceptions (such as Jean-Gaspard Deburau in the nineteenth century and Marcel Marceau in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries), mime has always been more than a mute use of the body. More than a somatic art, it is an art of the physical which explores the physical world related to the body as well as the body itself. It would be an impossibly narrow view of the Commedia dell’arte tradition to regard only the mute, corporeal movements as mime.72 In our own time, it would be an impoverished view of mime to exclude the profusion of ‘physical theatres’ which have developed since the 1970s. The common feature uniting them is that language is radically unseated from its dominant role. It unites them, also, to the ballet d’action. Relative to the pervading neoclassical culture, the ballet d’action downgraded enormously the importance of language. It made mime a medium for the most serious themes and the highest forms of tragedy. The same cannot be said of the Commedia dell’arte, which rooted mime in a comic repertoire occupying the lower echelons of a very stratified neoclassical canon. Despite the key place usually reserved for the Commedia in histories of mime, therefore, its lack of dignity creates a deep gulf between it and Decrouxian mime. Perhaps this is a feature which attracted Decroux to Noverre: he used mime to interpret the most serious and revered subjects, dignifying it.

Objective and subjective mime One of the defining features of Decrouxian mime is the distinction it makes between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ mime, and indeed the principle that the first can be a means to produce the second. ‘Objective’ or ‘indicative’ mime creates the illusion of objects in space, ‘showing’ them to the spectator. If the object is an envelope, for example, then the mime will reproduce the movement of the hands necessary to give the illusion that an envelope really is being opened and that a letter is being taken out and read.73 Objective mime is thought to have been a distinctive characteristic of nineteenthcentury performers, and was subsequently developed to remarkable levels of virtuosity by Marcel Marceau. In contrast, subjective mime depends on 72

See Chapter 3, pp. 75–76.

73

´ Decroux gives this example in Pezin, Etienne Decroux, p. 117.

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indirect evocation. Decroux’s collaborator Jean-Louis Barrault explained the distinction with the example of throwing an imaginary stick into the air: if it is the throwing gesture which is mimed, this constitutes objective mime, but if it is the movements of the stick once it is in the air and our feelings about those movements, then this is subjective mime.74 The indirect nature of this mime is vital to the Decrouxian principle that ‘what interests us about the world is not things, but Man’.75 Or, in Barrault’s terms, the stick is less interesting than our feelings or thoughts about it. What the spectator sees, therefore, is not necessarily a simulation of throwing a stick, but the subjective, emotional, mental, psychological, or other such ‘subjective’ response to the stick. Hence, subjective mime uses the physical to represent the metaphysical, the turning of the stick in the air to represent the internal ‘state of the soul’. Subjective mime is potentially an extremely rich concept, since there are myriad different ways in which the physical world can be used to express our internal world. Physical objects may provoke an insight into internal states by implication and by inference; the association may be more or less oblique, more or less contingent on contextual matters; it may lie deeply imbedded or on the contrary in the shallows of the memory; it may be taboo or customary, and so on. As soon as we accept that the purpose of mime is to provoke a subjective feeling or thought, then the range of ways in which the physical world can be related to these thoughts and feelings is enormous. This is a hard act for the eighteenth century to prefigure. It is a Modernist aesthetic which properly belongs to the Modernist era; there is no direct equivalent of Decroux’s subjective mime in the eighteenth century. It is also a difficult subject to discuss, since we know very little in practice about the movement vocabulary used by eighteenth-century mime dancers. It is effectively impossible to take an example of a particular objective mime and enquire to what extent it engendered subjective mime. The specific movement vocabulary we do know about tends to be discussed by unsympathetic contemporary critics who may choose their evidence selectively. If there is a degree of truth in their observations, however, then we can assume that some choreographers overused objective gesture some of the time, with the result that their performances lacked the evocative, subjective dimension that modern mime strives for. 74 75

Jean-Louis Barrault, ‘Le corps magnétique’, in Cahiers Renaud Barrault, 99 (1979), pp. 71–135 (110–111). ´ Pezin, Etienne Decroux, p. 116.

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Ange Goudar gives a series of examples from his experience as a spectator in northern Italy of what he considers to be the impoverished ‘diction’ of mime dancers. To express ‘I am awaiting my mistress’, the mime dancer points to where he is standing. To convey that he is struck by a woman’s beauty, he draws two fingers of the right hand across his chin as if he needed to shave. To communicate his intention to marry her, he joins the finger tips of the two first fingers of each hand. To refer to the woman’s old father, he takes the measure of the distance from his chin to the middle of his chest, as if stroking his beard. To tell his mistress that they can talk freely, he places one hand over his ear, inclining his head, meaning that the father or chaperone is sleeping. To indicate ‘let us flee’, he raises both arms to the horizontal, lowering and raising them alternately. To express contempt for the woman who rebuffs him, he puts his thumb into his mouth and pushes forward his top front teeth with his thumbnail. In conclusion to this litany of examples, Goudar writes ‘this is more or less the grammar of pantomime performance’.76 He extends his criticism with an analogy suggesting that what he thinks is lacking in these performances is a more evocative, less literal idiom: mime dancers are more mute than deaf mutes who have developed a sign language ‘which renders their ideas as clearly as if they were using articulated language’.77 He knew, as many knew all over Europe in the eighteenth ´ ee, effectively century, that the sign language invented by the Abbé de L’Ep´ the founder of the National Institute for the Deaf in Paris, was remarkably adaptable to the expression of abstract meaning, feelings and thoughts. ´ ee is discussed more fully in Chapter 1, but his relevance here is that L’Ep´ he developed a series of systematic, ‘methodical’ signs which were only distantly related to the more-or-less untutored gestures we tend to use every day to express our emotions, thoughts, or circumstances. It is hard to underestimate the importance of the system he developed in psychological as well as semiotic terms. So Goudar sets a difficult challenge for the language of the ballet d’action: it must match the levels of abstraction possible in sign language for the deaf. It will not meet this challenge if it relies too much on everyday gestures. If Goudar’s observations on specific mime vocabulary are reliable, then the performances he saw in northern Italy do seem to have 76

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Ange Goudar, Supplément au Supplément sur les Remarques de la Musique et de la Danse, ou Lettres de Mr G . . . a` Milord Pembroke (n.p.: n.p., 1774), pp. 80–82. Mars indicates that these remarks are probably inspired by performances of ballets d’action in Bologna and Florence. See Francis L. Mars, ‘Ange Goudar, cet inconnu’, in Casanova Gleanings, 9 (1966), pp. 1–64, item 102. Goudar, Supplément au Supplément sur les Remarques de la Musique et de la Danse, pp. 82–83.

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relied to an extent on everyday gesture. Some of the vocabulary he mentions is, in fact, listed in Andrea de Jorio’s Gesture in Naples, the first ethnographic study of gesture.78 The Milanese playwright and critic Matteo Borsa is as critical as Goudar is of the simplistic gesture used in by mime dancers. In the most intellectually dense essay of the period on the ballet d’action, he devotes substantial space to the question of the semiotics of the genre. He gives an example from an unidentified source which could, given earlier references, be Noverre’s version of the story of Dido and Aeneas:79 how does the mime dancer render the meaning ‘the Queen has fainted in her chamber’? The answer, according to Borsa, is that he divides the proposition into two parts: ‘Queen’ and ‘fainted’. To render the first part, he circles the right hand above the head to signify a crown, while standing as tall and straight as possible and puffing out his chest to signify ‘majesty’. Borsa comments ironically that this is nothing if not precise. In other words, he thinks this is very basic and uninspiring objective gesture based on self-evident body language. To render the second part, ‘fainted’, he holds out his hand and turns it over, lowering it to signify ‘fall’. A faster and more emphatic movement of the hand would signify ‘die’.80 Borsa remarks that this is anything but precise: how are we to know whether the queen ‘falls’ into a chair, onto a bed, or into a divan? At what point does the speed of the hand gesture change its meaning from ‘fall’ to ‘die’? The two parts of this mime demonstrate the pitfalls of the genre: objective gesture can become so precise as to lose all artistic value, or so ambiguous as to be incomprehensible. Borsa’s point is that the ballet d’action focuses too much on objective mime because it tries too hard to recount a narrative instead of acknowledging that it is a thoroughly ‘representational’, visual art like painting, which ‘does not narrate an action, but shows it’.81 It would therefore do better to show on stage whatever is necessary for the progress of the plot rather than digress into objective mime.

78

79

80 81

Andrea de Jorio, La Mimica degli Antichi Investigata nel Gestire Napoletano (Naples: Fibreno, 1832), translated by Adam Kendon as Gesture in Naples and Gesture in Classical Antiquity (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000). Compare Goudar’s signs for ‘marriage’ and ‘sleep’ with Jorio’s signs for ‘love’ and ‘sleep’ (p. 83 and p. 201 respectively in the English translation). Borsa, ‘Saggio filosofico sui balli pantomimi’, p. 313. In the mostly identical 1800 edition of this text, p. 112, just before the example of Dido, Borsa refers to Sébastien Gallet, a pupil of Noverre’s who would have been able to restage Noverre’s version of the Dido myth, Les Amours d’Enée et Didon, ou Didon Abandonée (first performed between 1768 and 1773 in Vienna). Borsa, ‘Saggio filosofico sui balli pantomimi’, p. 316. Borsa, ‘Saggio filosofico sui balli pantomimi’, p. 317.

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These critics are harder on mime dancers than Decroux may have been, perhaps because they underestimate its difficulties. Decroux acknowledged the amount of effort required to make clear the kind of deictic matters which Goudar and Borsa refer to: ‘let’s take the example of a letter announcing very bad news: so much mime is needed for someone to get across the idea that the man at the door is a postman with a letter to deliver, and not a Carol singer holding sheet music’.82 Borsa’s suggestion would probably have been to dress the actor in a postman’s uniform and give him a real envelope to hold, but Decroux would have found this unsatisfactory.83 There were some critics in the eighteenth century who were sympathetic to the semiotic difficulties of mime. In response to criticism of Noverre’s Médée et Jason that the transition between scenes was sometimes difficult to follow, Grimm wrote that there is only so much clarity that can be expected of mime: ‘these weaknesses derive from the inherent limits of the art form’.84 On behalf of Noverre, an anonymous contributor to the heated Milanese debates of the 1770s responds with a rhetorical question to critics of mimed tragedies who complain that they do not have the clarity of spoken tragedies: ‘But is this really the fault of the artist?’85 The implied answer to this question is potentially ambiguous. Are we to assume that ‘artist’ means ‘author’ or ‘choreographer’, and that the blame did not, therefore, lie with them, but with the performers who did not manage to interpret the work properly? This is unlikely, given that Noverre mostly employed his former pupils who could be relied upon to perform in the manner that he expected.86 The anonymous contributor must be suggesting that the fault lies with the interpretative skills of spectators unused to the new language of mime. Spectators should make more effort to understand a new form of stage language.

Towards a vocabulary of the passions The severity of eighteenth-century criticism may derive not only from an underestimation of the difficulties of mime, but from a selective approach 82

83

84 85 86

´ Pezin, Etienne Decroux, p. 117. I have translated freely from the French: ‘il en faut du mime pour faire comprendre qu’un monsieur est un facteur et non pas un garçon boucher, et qu’il apporte vraiment une lettre et non pas un calendrier’. There would have to be an additional reason to use a real object, such as an envelope. In Petits Soldats, for example, Decroux used real plates, but only because he wanted something with ´ which he could make noise. See Pezin, Etienne Decroux, pp. 117–118. Grimm refers to the 1780 Paris production; see Correspondance, Littéraire, Philosophique et Critique, Vol. XII, p. 368. Anon., Memorie per Servire alla Storia degli Spettacoli del Teatro di Milano, p. 15. Hansell, Opera and Ballet at the Regio Ducal Teatro of Milan, 1771–1776, pp. 831–832.

Decroux and Noverre

to evidence. Observations by Borsa and Goudar suggest that the main idiom of the ballet d’action was based on vocabulary borrowed from everyday gestures, but there are clearly other dimensions of the genre which they chose not to discuss. The most conspicuous absence in both their writings on the subject is the depiction of the passions. Its function in the ballet d’action was not so much theatrical as painterly, not so much related to Aristotelian principles of catharsis as to the imitation of physical ‘symptoms’ of mental ˆ (1649) or emotional states, as defined by Descartes in Les Passions de l’Ame and adapted to artistic expression by the seventeenth-century Academy painter Charles Le Brun, particularly through the posthumous publication of Méthode pour Apprendre a` Dessiner les Passions (1698). The translation of philosophical ideas on the passions into fine art initiated by Le Brun gathered pace in the eighteenth century and spread to all the arts.87 At the same time, philosophical enquiry into the passions waned considerably, as if understanding the passions had become a matter solely for the arts. The ballet d’action was part of this phenomenon, and it is a major oversight on the part of Goudar and Borsa that they did not acknowledge it in some manner. The aesthetic of the passions was not based on everyday gesture. It was the formalisation of physical ‘symptoms’ of mental or emotional states and their development into a recognisable system of artistic signs. There are three main sources of evidence which suggest that this was a major part of the aesthetic of the ballet d’action, if not the primary aesthetic: it is a major part of the published plot synopsis, of the musical accompaniment, and of the spectators’ response. The reliability of the plot synopsis is disputed in many ways,88 by both contemporary and modern critics who question the exact relation between the words on the page and the action on the stage, but their criticism never concerns the elaborate rhetoric of the passions in these texts. This would suggest that the concept is at least uncontroversial and probably in fact a good indication of the aesthetics of the genre. It is such a common aspect of the plot synopsis that one could take almost any example. Given Decroux’s specific interest in Noverre, however, it is instructive to take a famous moment from one of his most famous works. Below is the moment from Act II of Médée et Jason describing Médée’s vain attempts to disguise her jealousy and her subsequent outburst:

87

88

On Le Brun’s influence, see Jennifer Montagu, The Expression of the Passions: The Origin and the Influence of Charles Le Brun’s Conférence sur l’Expression Générale et Particulière (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), especially Chapter 4, ‘The tradition of expression in the other arts’. See Chapter 9, pp. 209–211.

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She acts the passion of fury, but she is skilled in the art of deception, so she hides her rage beneath a veil of candour, she runs to Créuse and holds her tenderly in her arms; Jason, whose passion blinds him and who has eyes only for Créuse, forgets the respect he owes to Médée. She, the sorceress, is by degrees overcome with the effects of jealousy, and finding it more than her life can bear to tolerate the ingratitude and unfaithfulness of her husband, she falls lifeless into her arms; Créuse hastens to tend to her; but when Médée opens her eyes and sees her rival, she flees from her in horror. Since jealousy is powerless, she abandons herself to fits of vengeance, she draws her dagger, lunges at Créuse; Jason fends off the mortal blow, he disarms Médée, who, in desperation at being prevented from assuaging her rage, leaves, making threats and expressing the most frightening hate and fury. Créuse is greatly distressed at the danger she has just faced, and she leaves Jason while assuring him of the constancy of her sentiments.89

There is at least as much emphasis here on passions as plot; this is a passion synopsis as much as it is a plot synopsis. Jason’s all-consuming ‘passion’ for Créuse causes him to ignore Médée. In response, Médée deceitfully tries to appear gracious and tender, but in fact is alternately furious, horrified, jealous, vengeful, despairing, threatening, hateful, and frightening. Créuse is shocked, but remains devoted to Jason. We do not know exactly what techniques were used to render these passions, but our discussion above concerning the ‘use of the body’ suggests that it was probably the whole body, not only the mobile, expressive face we see, for example, in Le Brun’s illustrations of the passions. Médée’s mixture of fury and despair when she is repulsed by Jason, for example, may have been expressed in part with a ‘pas de bourrée tombé’. According to the contemporary Italian dancer and choreographer Gennaro Magri, this step can express impotent fury and was much used by Noverre.90 However it was done, the plot synopsis suggests that the intention was not only to relate simple actions in a narrative, but to render a gamut of internal mental and emotional states. François de Chevrier, an early promoter of Noverre’s Lettres sur la Danse, called this dual intention ‘rendering physical and metaphysical nature’.91 It is this relation between the ‘physical’ and the ‘metaphysical’, the internal and external, which is analogous with Decroux’s balance of objective and subjective mime. It is what is meant by supporters

89 90 91

Noverre, Médée et Jason, in Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre. The synopsis is also reproduced as an appendix in Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse (1952). Magri, Theoretical and Practical Treatise on Dancing, pp. 101–102. François-Antoine de Chevrier, L’Observateur des Spectacles ou Anecdotes Théaˆ trales: Ouvrage Périodique, 3 vols (The Hague: H. Constapel, 1762–63), Vol. III, p. 37.

Decroux and Noverre

of the ballet d’action when they assert that dance must ‘mean’ something, that it cannot only be a matter of aesthetic appeal.92 Music is a key ingredient in the representation of the passions. It is often specially composed to follow closely the way the plot unfolds. The intimate nature of the relationship between passions and music is evident from the annotated musical scores which survive, notably a printed one of Noverre’s Médée et Jason which makes interesting reading in conjunction with the plot synopsis.93 Critics such as Goudar and Borsa who focus attention on the simplistic objective mime based on conventional gesture do not take into account the expressive music. The third kind of evidence suggesting a selective approach on the part of Goudar and Borsa is the reaction of other spectators who made no mention of everyday gestures, nor of objective mime, but who were manifestly impressed with the expression of the passions. So impressed was one spectator of Vestris’s version of Médée et Jason that the tone of his review for the quasi-official journal Le Mercure de France is uncharacteristically informal, even breathless. Usually, articles in the Mercure are written in a moderate, measured tone which makes it sometimes difficult to distinguish polite approval from real praise, or indeed polite disapproval from real criticism. This is certainly not the case with the following hyperbolically passionate extract replete with the same kind of references to the passions as we find in the plot synopsis and in the music to this work. The reviewer explains why the work ‘was a great success’: The inconstancy of Jason who abandons Médée to marry Créuse, the expression of his love, Médée’s contempt, the efforts she makes to awaken the tenderness of her unfaithful husband by bringing forward their children; the fury of this jealous woman, her magic spells, Créuse’s wedding celebrations, Médée’s insidious conciliatory approach to her rival, the poisoned gifts she makes to her; the agony and death of Créuse; Jason’s despair, the furies which torment him, Médée’s hateful rage as she flies away in a chariot pulled by dragons; the murder of her children whom she stabs under the eyes of their father; a rain of fire and the burning of the palace; all of this action and spectacle made the greatest of impressions. But what is most admirable is Mademoiselle Heynel’s talent for expressing the energy of the most conflicting passions and sentiments; her dancing, her gestures, her attitudes, her facial features make a rapid and imposing tableau which the spectators found moving and stirring, such is the power of the art of pantomime when it is executed with precision and naturalness.94 92 94

See for example Diderot, Entretiens sur le Fils Naturel, p. 152. Mercure de France, February 1776.

93

See Chapter 8.

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According to this report, the depiction of the passions enraptured the audience, and Anne Heinel dancing the part of Médée had a particular talent for expressing an impressive gamut of passions. The action was ‘precise’ yet ‘natural’, which sounds as if meaning was distinct without relying excessively on simplistic and unconvincing objective mime. There are many examples of this kind of reaction to the works of choreographers of all kinds. Even if Goudar and Borsa seem not to have been impressed by this aspect of performance, others clearly were. As we mention in Chapter 2, the London daily newspaper The Public Advertiser even deployed a neologistic term for it: ‘impersonification’, used to describe Dauberval’s performance of ‘Old Age’.95 One imagines that this hybrid word was coined to convey Dauberval’s powerful ability to characterise or ‘impersonate’ a role, as if he were truly embodying or ‘personifying’ it. Even if there were sceptics such as Borsa and Goudar, there was obviously more to the ballet d’action than they claimed. It is a significant underestimation of its objectives not to take into account the aesthetics of the passions. In contemporary terms, representing the passions gave it the status of an ‘art of imitation’, an art with genuine insight into the nature of man. In the modern context, it constitutes not a direct equivalent of Decrouxian subjective mime, but what we can regard as a corresponding cultural coordinate, the eighteenth-century way to represent subjective states of mind and heart. Decroux’s regrets at having omitted to write further on Noverre are understandable in many ways, since Noverre in particular, but also the ballet d’action in general, clearly deserves a place in the history of mime. It is not surprising to find important differences, but they are not so numerous or so significant as to justify excluding the genre altogether from the broad school which is mime. One would not expect, for example, Decroux’s highly innovative principles of the ‘contrepoids’ (‘counterweight’) or of the segmentation of movement to be compatible with classical notions of grace, and indeed there is nothing like them in the eighteenth century. On numerous occasions, however, we find quantitative differences rather than qualitative ones. On still other occasions, we find eighteenth-century mime dancers struggling with recognisable challenges, some of which were doubtless harder to meet then than now. The most salient difficulty in

95

The Public Advertiser, 19 March 1784. The name of the work is not specified. This use is fifteen years earlier than the first use given by the Oxford English Dictionary in 1799, and is the earliest use one finds when searching the digitalised version of the British Library’s Burney collection of British Newspapers.

Decroux and Noverre

mime, then as much as now, is to deploy a mutually comprehensive language, to ensure that performers are communicating clearly to spectators. In the eighteenth century, this challenge was recognised by John Weaver, who comments in the preface to his pioneering Loves of Mars and Venus that it was difficult for the audience as well as the mime dancers to learn a wholly new language.96 In the twentieth century, Jacques Lecoq highlighted the same issue by referring obliquely to one of the most comic episodes in the works of the Renaissance writer Rabelais: the conversation in mime between Panurge who improvises absurd gestures and the English theologian Thomast who wrongly assumes that they must be deeply meaningful.97 According to Lecoq, this episode is indicative of the need for a mutually comprehensible language of mime: ‘everything depends [. . . ] on the intentions of those who produce such gestures, the effect they intend to have and the state of those who observe them’.98 Lecoq’s task was made easier than Weaver’s, however, since Lecoq could draw on the twentieth-century spectator’s familiarity with a wider range of visual languages and forms of representation, from cinema and television to animated cartoons and advertising. A modern spectator is consequently primed by experience to engage with an innovative and potentially disorientating visual experience. An eighteenth-century spectator was inevitably more na¨ıve in his approach, and a choreographer consequently more limited in what he could do. Not withstanding this factor, not withstanding also the different aesthetic and cultural expectations associated with two eras separated by two centuries, there is a great deal to suggest that Decroux and Noverre are more distant cousins than faux-amis. 96

97 98

John Weaver, The Loves of Mars and Venus (London: W. Mears and J. Browne, 1717), p. xiii, reproduced in facsimile by Richard Ralph, The Life and Works of John Weaver. An Account of his Life, Writings and Theatrical Productions, with an Annotated Reprint of his Complete Publications (London: Dance Books, 1985). François Rabelais, Pantagruel, Chapter 19. Jacques Lecoq, Theatre of Movement and Gesture (1987; London and New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 21.

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part ii

The ballet d’action in close-up Dramatic principles

5

Character and action

The term ‘ballet d’action’ was the most widely used generic term in the eighteenth century, as indeed it is now among modern critics, but it obscures one of the most important matters of principle at the heart of the genre: was it a dramatic or an oratical art? Was ‘action’ meant in the sense of ‘actio’, typically the fifth part of rhetoric which concerns the physical delivery of a speech, or was it used in the sense of its Greek synonym, ‘drama’? Was the ballet d’action a hybrid of dance and oratory, or of dance and drama? Although some modern critics have argued the former, a close examination of the practice and theory of the genre strongly suggests the latter. There are some reasons why one might view the ballet d’action as a rhetorical, or more specifically an oratorical art. Generally speaking, the art of rhetoric seems to have underpinned many contemporary assumptions about how the arts functioned, and the ballet d’action did not escape its wide influence. More specifically, there was a strong tendency in the early modern period to relate acting of many kinds to oratory. These two reasons, however, may lead to a major misunderstanding of the ballet d’action, since in fact it manifestly did its best to undermine rhetorical assumptions and oratorical practices. This is most evident in the way the principle of ‘character’ in the ballet d’action replaced oratorical principles. ‘Character’ is the consistent and coherent psychological interpretation of a dramatic role throughout an entire narrative. It is quite different from the isolated use of oratorical gestural devices to persuade an audience of a particular point at hand. ‘Character’ is a matter of ‘staying in character’, and concerns expressive use of the whole body. It is inconceivable that it should have been derived from oratory. Yet without ‘character’ the ballet d’action could not have functioned. The principles and practice of ‘character’ were relatively new to stage dance. Seventeenth-century French ballet was made up of themed ‘entrées’ which were not intended to have a ‘plot’ in which characters could be developed beyond simple, static ‘types’. There is some evidence of a more developed sense of character in the danced intermezzi of seventeenth-century 115

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The ballet d’action in close-up

Italian opera,1 but not on the scale of the extended and independent narratives of the ballet d’action. The importance of ‘character’ makes the ballet d’action quite unlike the art of oratory, and much more akin to acting in spoken theatre. They shared certain innovative tendencies. In theoretical texts on spoken acting, as well as in discussions of stage practice, ‘character’ displaced the concept of oratorical ‘action’, and the role of the expressive body relative to diction became more important. What makes this change especially significant is that it was promoted by professional actors. In France, the eighteenth century is a key period when actors, rather than rhetoricians, began to write about the art of acting, and when they started to define an art of stage gesture distinct from oratorical gesture. To this end, they sought substitutes for the term ‘action’, and ‘character’ was perhaps the most important of them. Poisson is an early example; he uses ‘action’ interchangeably with ‘character’.2 Rémond de Saint-Albine and Antoine-François Riccoboni, the son of the great Italian actor Luigi, use ‘character’ fairly consistently.3 The novelty of the ballet d’action lies, therefore, in its dramatic concept of ‘character’ rather than in any oratorical principles. The manifest importance of ‘character’ throughout the development of the ballet d’action demonstrates the extent to which it was an actor’s art as much as a dancer’s art, and that it was scarcely an orator’s art at all.

An early innovator: Françoise Prévost Given the novelty of expressing character in dance, it is not surprising that the first endeavours were tentative. One of the earliest, often cited as a significant precursor to the ballet d’action, was the performance by Françoise Prévost and Jean Ballon in 1714 of a scene from Corneille’s Horace (IV, 5). The earliest surviving report is Dubos’s brief account in Réflexions Critiques sur la Poésie et sur la Peinture, in which he notes that the plot was recounted in gesture and that the use of conventional dance 1

2

3

See Irene Alm, ‘Pantomime in seventeenth-century Venetian theatrical dance’, in Creature di Prometeo. Il Ballo Teatrale. Dal Divertimento al Dramma. Studi Offerti a Aurel M. Milloss (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1996), pp. 87–102. Jean Poisson, Réflexions sur l’Art de Parler en Public (n.p.: n.p., 1717). See the modern edition by Sabine Chaouche in Sept Traités sur le Jeu du Comédien et Autres Textes: De l’Action Oratoire a` l’Art Dramatique (1657–1750) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2001). Rémond de Sainte-Albine, Le Comédien (Paris: Desaint & Saillant, 1747); Antoine-François Riccoboni, L’Art du Théaˆ tre (Paris: Simon and Giffart, 1750). See Chaouche, Sept Traités sur le Jeu du Comédien for a modern edition of both texts.


steps was inconspicuous.4 One assumes, therefore, that the performance was at least as much a matter of acting as dancing, that Prévost and Ballon subordinated conventional dance to the portrayal of the characters of the murderous brother and the murdered sister. No matter how innovative the performance, it nevertheless amounted to only one scene from Corneille’s play, and it is no doubt telling of contemporary expectations that it was a semi-private performance at the Château de Sceaux. Adaptations of the entire story were later to become an important item in the repertoire of choreographers such as Noverre, Charles Le Picq, and Gaetano Gioia, who performed their versions all over Europe. A year after Sceaux, Prévost composed and performed one of her most famous choreographies, Les Caractères de la Danse. The score, composed by Jean-Féry Rebel, is made up of fourteen distinct musical movements: Prélude, Courante, Menuet, Bourrée, Chaconne, Sarabande, Gigue, Rigaudon, Passepied, Gavotte, Sonate, Loure, Musette, Sonate.5 Except for the opening Prélude and the Sonate, all are established forms of dance music with distinctive musical forms. Edith Lalonger has shown how the characteristics of each of these dance types are likely to have contributed to Prévost’s performance of a series of character types. The Loure, for example, is slow, with long, asymmetric phrases and a dotted rhythm which creates a disjointed effect. The Courante is an old-fashioned dance by this time, whereas the Menuet is more modern and was eagerly learnt by the young.6 A remarkable verse parody of the performance in the Mercure journal suggests how Prévost used music, mime, and dance to create distinct theatrical character types. The high praise reserved for this choreography by the reviewer makes it unlikely that this ‘parody’ was meant to ridicule Prévost’s performance. The musical context suggests we should understand ‘parody’ in its contemporary musical sense: a ‘borrowing’ of the techniques and motifs of the original, equivalent in literary terms to a pastiche.7 It

4 5 6

7

Jean-Baptiste Dubos, Réflexions Critiques sur la Poésie et sur la Peinture, 3 vols in 1 (Paris: J. Mariette, 1719; Geneva: Slatkine reprint, 1993), Vol. III, pp. 312–313. J.-F. Rebel, Les Caractères de la Danse, ed. Marie-Françoise Bloch (Lyon: Notissimo, 1997). Edith Lalonger, ‘J.F. Rebel’s Les Caractères de la Danse: interpretative choices and their relationship to dance research’, in Dance and Music in French Baroque Theatre: Sources and Interpretations, ed. Sarah McCleave (London: Institute of Advanced Musical Studies, 1988), pp. 105–123 (106). See Michael Tilmouth and Richard Sherr’s article, ‘Parody (i)’, Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, www.oxfordmusiconline.com. Jean-Jacques Rousseau defines ‘parodie’ in his Dictionnaire de la Musique in the following manner: ‘in well-composed music, the melody is composed for the words; and in parody, the words are composed for the melody’. This would suggest that the poem in the Mercure would have been written to be sung to the original music.

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appears, therefore, to be a sustained literary interpretation of the choreography, following exactly the order of dance types specified in the score and extending over several pages. The mere fact that it was possible to write a pastiche in verse, to translate the performance into literary language, is unprecedented. It is very far indeed from conventional expressions of admiration for the ‘beauty’, the ‘expressiveness’, the ‘skilfulness’ or other such indefinite term to which contemporary journalists and observers tended to resort. The author of this pastiche attributes a specific character type to each musical number. The most telling stanza is for the Chaconne, which is clearly intended to evoke the figure of the ‘petit-maˆıtre’, the fop, a well-established literary and stage character.8 This verse portrait is highly revealing of the extent of Prévost’s theatrical character dancing: I am handsome, a fine figure, I’ve wit and repartee; I am handsome, a fine figure, I am playful, I am whimsical, I put on the air of a dreamer, My clothes are chosen with care: My face is powdered, I often pretend to be a busy man Yet jealous rivals Say That I am a figure of fun Everywhere I go: Though I publish I do not always look happy. My beautiful eyes are Blue; My talents are Great I have teeth And brown ribbon; However 8

5

10

15

20

´ The likeness between this stanza and the petit-maˆıtre was first noticed by Pierre Aubry and Emile Dacier, in Les Caractères de la Danse: Histoire d’un Divertissement pendant la Première Moitié du XVIIIe Siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1905), p. 15. For a general study of the ‘petit-maˆıtre’ ´ which makes this likeness clear, see Philippe Laroch, Petits-Maˆıtres et Roués: Evolution de la Notion de Libertinage dans le Roman Français du XVIIIe Siècle (Laval University Press, 1979).


I am unlucky in love. Cupid, Show off my attractions, I am content Without winning hearts And favours, As long As I am thought welcome.9

25

Everything about this verse is redolent of the character of the fop we find in contemporary literature and theatre. He is vain, admires himself as if in a mirror, and congratulates himself that he has all the necessary qualities of mind, body, and dress to appeal, especially to the opposite sex. His conceit is such that he begins nearly half of his lines with ‘I’, and his main concern is not so much to be ‘lucky in love’ (l. 22), but at least to cultivate the reputation for it, to be ‘thought welcome’ (last line). The rhythm of the versification is itself evocative of this character. It is irregular, skipping, and capering in unpredictable ways, particularly with respect to the erratic alternation in the original French between vers pair and impair (odd and even syllable lengths). The exception is the opening, in which there is a regularity of sorts in the see-saw rhythm as the fop recites to himself a poetic ‘blason d’amour’ or display of his excellencies, as if he were strutting with his typically boastful gait. Later, the enjambements of the verse and the very short lines evoke something of the perpetual and fitful motion of this character. The fitful versification is easier to interpret some times more than others. In lines 16, 18, and 19, it serves to draw attention to the fop’s distinctive charms: blue eyes, talent, and white teeth. This may be the poet’s way of translating for the reader the leaps, looks, and smiles of Prévost imitating the deportment of the fop. Why, however, are words such as ‘say’ or ‘however’ given emphasis in the versification? Perhaps this is deliberate incoherence and affectation to reflect the fop’s infamous tendency to treat serious matters lightly and frivolous matters seriously.10 We will never know how Prévost performed these fitful motions; perhaps a change of direction, or an exaggerated or erroneous gesture. The rhyme in the original French is slightly more coherent than the rhythm, but it is nonetheless somewhat relentless: four rhymes on [e] (‘fait’ 9 10

Anon., Le Mercure, July 1721, pp. 67–68. See Appendix for the complete poem in the original French. See Laurent Angliviel de la Beaumelle’s posthumous publication, L’Esprit (Paris: Favre, 1802), p. 186: the fop ‘speaks seriously of mere bagatelles and gallantly of serious matters’.

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etc.), six on [i] (‘dit’ etc.), three on [ə] (‘lieux’ etc.), five on [˘a] (‘grand’ etc.), interspersed with rogue, non-rhyming lines such as 7 and 8, or a couplet, such as 23 and 24. The overall effect is a foppish tendency towards excessive ornamentation. Perhaps Prévost repeated her choreographic ornaments to the same excess. If this pastiche is anything to go by, then the title of Prévost’s Caractères de la Danse is apt; there is more theatrical ‘character’ evoked in this poem than there is oratorical ‘actio’. It is akin to Molière’s recommendations for acting the fop, and utterly remote from oratorical theory and practice.11 Even though this choreography is made up of a series of dramatic vignettes rather than constituting a complete dramatic plot, it is a precursor to subsequent, more extended forms of dramatic dance. It was also highly successful in itself. Not only did Prévost stage it on a number of occasions, but she taught it to her two most famous pupils, Marie Sallé and Marie-Anne Camargo, who performed it to acclaim.12

Weaver, Sallé, and connected character The success of Prévost’s choreography is indicative of changing tastes in stage dance, not only in France, but elsewhere. The first complete dramatic action told in dance is generally thought to be John Weaver’s The Loves of Mars and Venus, performed at Drury Lane in London in 1717. Quite apart from the importance of this performance in the history of dramatic dance, Weaver’s ability to present a traditionally lewd subject in an inoffensive, noble manner amounted to a bold statement of the probity of his genre in the context of recurrent moral condemnation of dance. Perhaps aware that his technical and moral innovation needed bolstering, he promoted his performance with the first printed performance programme for a danced entertainment, in which he describes in some detail the gestural techniques he used in order to express the character of jealous Vulcan, his fickle wife Venus, and her bold lover Mars. In his edition of the works of Weaver, Richard Ralph retells the choreography using Weaver’s specified gestural language in a way which demonstrates lucidly the nature of theatrical character dancing in this work. After a danced overture in scene 1, the drama proper starts with scene 2: 11 12

Molière outlines the diction and manner of ‘Le Marquis’ in L’Impromptu de Versaille, scene 3. For performance history and related matters, see Aubry and Dacier, Les Caractères de la Danse.


Vulcan begins in admiration which ‘rises to’ astonishment when he observes Venus’s affected, coquettish airs. Her scornful neglect occasions her husband’s jealousy and upbraiding which she answers with contempt, making Vulcan angry and threatening; this only increases her abhorrence of him, inducing him to remind her of his authority over her. Vulcan then loses patience; she replies with detestation, and he with indignation. [. . .] Vulcan’s feelings are mostly emphatic; Venus’s are blithely and delicately infuriating, at least to begin with. Vulcan’s violent thrusting, suspending, throwing forward and agitation of his arms, his beating, shaking, and smiting of his hands, with his generally frenetic motions, are foiled by Venus’s insouciantly affected airs, her scornful turning of her neck and wrist, and scornful smiles. She rises above apathy only to reinforce her contempt by tossing her head, to gesture Vulcan away in distaste, thrust him away in detestation, and finally to fling off the stage in an ultimate display of revulsion.13

Ralph’s prose version of this scene demonstrates how much Weaver’s programme has in common with ballet d’action programmes in the second half of the century, when they are de rigueur for many choreographers. As we point out in Chapter 4,14 these programmes are as much a passion synopsis as a plot synopsis. Given the prevalent contemporary reluctance to discuss physical expression in theatre, Weaver’s programme is remarkably detailed. The characters of Venus and Vulcan derive, according to the programme at least, from body language rather than dance steps. The priority is plainly that the plot should progress according to the way in which a given character should react in a given circumstance, not according to a priori principles of dance choreography. The plot is propelled by a catalogue of passions in such a way as to make each role a coherent character which can be sustained for the remaining four scenes of the drama. The manager of Drury Lane, Colley Cibber, made plain that the development of character in this performance was a sign of distinct progress in contemporary dance: ‘to give even Dancing therefore some Improvement, and to make something more than Motion without Meaning, the fable of Mars and Venus, was form’d into a connected Presentation of Dances in Character’.15 It is the fact that these ‘dances in character’ are ‘connected’ which makes this work so innovative. It goes beyond the dramatic vignettes danced by Prévost in Les Caractères de la Danse, and it makes Weaver’s techniques qualitatively different from oratorical actio. Even if it would be 13

14 15

Richard Ralph, The Life and Works of John Weaver. An Account of his Life, Writings and Theatrical Productions, with an Annotated Reprint of his Complete Publications (London: Dance Books, 1985), p. 61. See pp. 107–109. Colley Cibber, A Critical Edition of an Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, Comedian, ed. John Maurice Evans (New York: Garland, 1987), p. 299.

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wrong to imagine that dance was absent (the overture, for example, specifically involves a Pyrrhic dance), it is not the most salient feature. It seems to have been displaced by the priority of drama. The theatrical nature of the performance is doubtless why Weaver chose established actor-dancers for some of the key roles rather than specialised dancers: Hester Santlow in the part of Venus, and Mrs Bicknell and Miss Elizabeth Young dancing two of the Graces. They would have been proficient at bringing the skills of character acting to what Weaver calls in his programme ‘a dramatick entertainment’. What the programme does not tell us, of course, is the reaction of spectators to the spectacle of a mime dancer expressing the psychology of a mythological character for the duration of an extended narrative. One can only imagine that some, at least, were as impressed as the anonymous author of the pastiche of Prévost’s Caractères de la Danse. No contemporary reviews of Weaver’s Loves of Mars and Venus have come to light. There is plenty of evidence with regard to later mime dancers, however, that spectators were impressed by the construction of coherent character. Louis de Cahusac is one of many contemporaries who extolled the dramatic dancing of Marie Sallé. What he admired most was firstly her ability to devise danced episodes which somehow related to the plot of the accompanying opera, thus correcting what was often perceived to be a fault of French contemporary opera, and secondly Sallé’s ability to act a theatrical role. In his description of her choreography for L’Europe Gallante, in which she danced the role of a lowly odalisque aspiring to become the concubine of the Sultan, Cahusac is impressed with the way she danced a series of alluring manners, and then suddenly changed demeanour when she realised her efforts were in vain: This dancer appeared amid her rivals with the grace and desires of a young odalisque with designs on the heart of her master. Her dance was composed of all the pretty attitudes that can paint such a passion. She animated her dance by degrees: one could read in her expressions a series of sentiments: one could see her vacillating between apprehension and hope; but the moment the Sultan gave his handkerchief to his favourite, the Sultana, her face, her eyes, her whole bearing rapidly changed. She tore herself from the stage with the despair of those vital and tender souls who can only express themselves by an excess of desolation.16

This kind of rapid change and contrast of countenance and body language, by actors and dancers alike, is remarked upon time and again by spectators 16

Louis de Cahusac, La Danse Ancienne et Moderne, ou Traité Historique de la Danse, 3 vols (The Hague: Jean Neaulme, 1754), Vol. III, Book 1, pp. 154–155.


throughout the eighteenth century. It became an essential principle in Garrick’s acting technique17 and in Noverre’s conception of dramatic dance, and was intended to give a powerful impression of the violent mood swings and shifts between states of mind. Sallé’s sudden transformation is from hope to despair, from amorous aspirations to desolation at having been rejected. Unlike what we might expect from other contemporary themed entrée dances, she performs more than one affect, connecting them to create a motive for her movements, a ‘character’ which defines her dancing. This is what Colley Cibber meant when he wrote that dancing ought to be more than ‘motion without meaning’, that it ought to be based on ‘connected character’. Sallé accordingly ‘stays in character’ as an actor would. Her acting skills made such an impression that she was compared favourably with the most admired contemporary actors on the spoken stage, Adrienne Lecouvreur in France and Ann Oldfield in England.18

Later developments and problems Prévost, Weaver, and Sallé are early example of techniques which became the trademark of later mime dancers. The plot synopses published as programmes for ballets d’action take for granted that performers should enact a consistent character. The intention of performers could hardly have been otherwise, given that productions were often adaptations of well-known stories from history and myth which themselves had well-defined characters. Performers and choreographers assumed that dramatic character could be portrayed in dance and mime, that dancers can be proficient actors. Almost any performance programme would serve to demonstrate this point, but it is instructive to consider one which is testimony to the Europewide appeal of dramatic dance and the pan-European nature of the ballet d’action. Le Picq’s Il Ratto delle Sabine is such an example. Le Picq was a pupil of Noverre’s, but he also performed in Italy for thirteen years until 17

18

Thomas Wilkes comments on Garrick’s performance of the Archer in The Beau Stratagem: ‘how readily does he run through the several artful transitions which the author of the Stratagem has thrown into his character, from one passion to another’. See John Hill, The Actor, a Treatise on the Art of Playing, Interspersed with Theatrical Anecdotes, Critical Remarks on Plays, and Occasional Observations on Audiences (London: R. Griffiths, 1750), p. 21. Dr Fordyce’s remarks on Garrick’s King Lear: ‘such a perceptible yet rapid gradation, from those dreadful feelings to the deepest frenzy’. See James Boaden, Memoirs of the Life of John Philip Kemble Esq., 2 vols (London: n.p., 1825), Vol. I, p. 157. Mercure de France, April 1734, p. 772.

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he left to become ballet master in London at the King’s Theatre in 1782.19 The Italian programme for the first performance of this work in Naples shows that Le Picq followed Metastasio’s adaptation of the myth in his opera Romolo ed Ersilia to make the character of Ersilia a major focus of the dramatic action, when in contrast she has a lesser role in Plutarch’s version, and is entirely absent from Livy’s. By the time Le Picq’s version was first staged in Naples in 1780, it was axiomatic in many people’s minds that it should be possible to integrate drama and dance as successfully as Metastasio integrated drama and music. Whatever opera can do, the ballet d’action can do, too. Like Metastasio’s operas, therefore, the drama of the ballet d’action often revolves around a select group of characters in order for protagonists to have enough stage time to develop psychological plausibility and to sensitise the spectator to their individual fates.20 In Le Picq’s version, Ersilia acts the strong-willed character on whom the outcome of the drama depends. Of all the Sabine women, she is the one who confronts Romulus and demands an explanation for his betrayal: ‘Ersilia enters surrounded by guards; she advances impetuously towards Romulus, confronts him with his treachery, and asks him what he intends to do with them’ (Act II).21 She alone is not seduced during the dramatic dance between the Roman men and the Sabine women. She stubbornly refuses Romulus’s approaches: ‘She clearly tells him [Romulus] that he can never hope to obtain her hand in marriage’ (Act II). In Metastasio’s version, Ersilia refuses out of a sense of duty, but nevertheless feels strong inclinations towards Romulus. This battle between love and duty, so characteristic of tragic drama, is also a feature of Le Picq’s choreography: ‘Ersilia appears agitated by two feelings: her love for Romulus and her duty which makes her resist’ (Act III). When subsequently war breaks out between the Sabine and Roman warriors, she implicitly resolves her conflicting passions by leading the Sabine women to stand between the opposing armies and plead with them to draw back from killing their lovers and their fathers. The truce allows Ersilia an honourable resolution of her dilemma when she asks permission from her father to marry Romulus. Such is Ersilia’s role in this work that it is more a drama of character than of situation. It is her character which drives the action. When Le Picq 19

20 21

For a summary of Le Picq’s career, see Kathleen K. Hansell, ‘Theatrical ballet and Italian opera’, in The History of Italian Opera, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli, 2 vols (University of Chicago Press, 2002), Vol. II, pp. 177–308 (218–220). For Metastasio’s dramaturgy, see Patrick J. Smith, The Tenth Muse: A Historical Study of the Opera Libretto (London: Gollancz, 1971), Chapter 6. See Appendix for the Italian text of Le Picq’s Il Ratto delle Sabine.


took the production to London in 1782, critics devoted special attention to her role. They agreed that Madame Rossi’s performance as Ersilia was ‘the most masterly Piece of Acting which Pantomime can be susceptible of’.22 They highlighted the series of passions which she expressed in what Colley Cibber would have called ‘connected character’ to produce an outstanding performance: ‘her virtuous indignation against the treacherous Romans; her inward struggles between anger, love, and duty, to herself and country; were, in our opinion, the most accomplished chef d’œuvre of dumb acting, that ever graced heroic pantomime’.23 Contemporary critics nevertheless observe that there were fundamental problems with the principle of expressing character in dance. In fact, this principle, along with the aim of choreographers to tell a complete story in dance, was one of the most frequent targets of criticism. Despite the widespread popularity of the ballet d’action by the end of the eighteenth century, therefore, there was no shortage of sceptics who did not believe it to be a successful dramatic art. In Italy, Borsa argued that character is sometimes implausible when expressed in the mute medium of body language. A king or a military officer, for example, is by nature poised and dignified, and is only likely to express emotions physically in a limited, self-possessed way: ‘apart from certain more animated and brisk gestures, apart from a slightly more lively look in the eyes and greater colour in the face, the body of a general, or king, or minister would betray nothing’.24 The desire to express character physically could lead to over-acting in roles such as these, with a consequent lack of verisimilitude. Perhaps this is why unsympathetic critics commonly found the ballet d’action inclined towards hysterical and incomprehensible gesticulation, or else they found it reminiscent of the comic Commedia dell’arte which made no pretence of verisimilitude.25 Ange Goudar had similar doubts about the effectiveness of danced character. His point is that the need to make a role the driving force of a narrative can backfire, because the role risks becoming an exaggerated and contradictory character. Of an unspecified performance by Thérèse Banti in northern Italy, he comments:

22 23 24

25

London, The Public Advertiser, 17 December 1782. London, English Chronicle or Universal Evening Post, 12 December 1782. Matteo Borsa, ‘Saggio filosofico sui balli pantomimi’, Lettera Prima, in Opuscoli Scelti sulle Scienze e sulle Arti, Tratti dagli Atti delle Accademie, e dalle Altre Collezioni Filosofiche e Letterarie, dalle Opere piu Recenti Inglesi, Tedesche, Francesi, Latine, e Italiane, e da Manoscritti Originali, e Inediti (Milan: Giuseppe Marelli, 1782–83), Vol. V, Part III, pp. 137–151 (145). See Chapter 3, pp. 67–68.

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The first dancer plays a fickle role, so much so that she changes lover three times in two minutes. When one plays a part in pantomime, it is important not to confuse the characters. A woman who throws herself so quickly into the arms of three men, a woman who is charged with the major part of the plot, is more a prostitute than a fickle role.26

Perhaps if he had seen Le Picq’s Il Ratto delle Sabine he would have said of Ersilia’s prominent role that it, too, suffers from being ‘charged with the entire plot’, overstated and contradictory. Even critics who acknowledged the merits of the principle of character in dance wondered about its limits. Schink in Vienna accepted that, for pragmatic reasons related to the challenging viewing conditions in the theatre, stage arts like the ballet d’action need to amplify certain features such as emotions or movements on stage. It is a natural tendency, therefore, to display ‘powerful characters and contrasts’.27 He qualifies this, however, with the assertion that the ballet d’action is incapable of representing the finer, psychological aspects of character which one would expect from actors, that its strength is really to express broad character types or passions: Foot and hand, eye and muscles may work as much as they can: pantomime can express quick, successively flushing emotions, progressing sentiments, fleeting reflections, but no reasoning, no gradually evolving concepts. Only tones [in painting] and words can bring the latter about.28

Schink touches on a persistent uneasiness concerning the ballet d’action, as much in any era as in the eighteenth century: can it, should it express what it is possible to express in the other arts? Perhaps ‘character’ is really a matter for the actor or the painter. In an implicit reference to Noverre’s work Les Dana¨ıdes, Schink writes of the enormity of the task for mime dancers: ‘Hence, what pantomimes seek to express means undertaking the work of the Dana¨ıdes’, a reference to the fifty sisters instructed by their father to murder their husbands on their wedding night. Schink means that the ambition of mime dancers is just as aberrant and prodigious.29 26 27 28 29

Ange Goudar, Supplément au Supplément sur les Remarques de la Musique et de la Danse, ou Lettres de Mr G . . . a` Milord Pembroke (n.p.: n.p., 1774), p. 76. Johann Friedrich Schink, Dramaturgische Fragmente. Erster Band (Graz: mit von Widmannstättenschen Schriften, 1781), p. 72. Schink, Dramaturgische Fragmente, pp. 79–80. Schink, Dramaturgische Fragmente, p. 80. Noverre’s Les Dana¨ıdes was first performed during the 1760s in Stuttgart or Ludwigsburg. See Deryck Lynham, The Father of Modern Ballet: The Chevalier Noverre (London: Dance Books, 1972), Appendix B.


Literary reflections of dance and character Exactly what movements and gestures mime dancers used is largely a mystery. There is some evidence in the writings of contemporary literary moralists that recognised dance steps were used, but their writings should be treated with caution, as we shall see. What is certainly revealed by their writing is that character dancing is fashionable to a degree which previously it was not. In the seventeenth century, the kind of authors who could have exploited the possibilities of dance and character in fact did not. The most conspicuous example is La Bruyère, who makes only fleeting reference to dance in Les Caractères.30 Despite the fact that Les Caractères is a conscious elaboration on the principle of character, even though La Bruyère’s portraits of the vices and virtues of his contemporaries often depend on expressive body language, almost none of his ‘caractères’ are expressed through dance or mime. The reason is almost certainly that character expressed through body language was less important in the stage dance of La Bruyère’s era than character expressed in costume, scenery, and props. This is the overriding impression we have when reading works on dance by La Bruyère’s contemporaries, De Pure and Ménestrier.31 Given how irrelevant seventeenth-century dance and mime must have been to La Bruyère’s concept of somatic expression of character, it is not surprising that he almost entirely ignored them. The Chevalier de Méré went further, indicating unequivocally that dance is an inadequate expression of the internal workings of the mind and soul. In De la Conversation, he uses the analogy of expressive dance only once. He compares the art of social grace with the art of the ancient pantomime performer whose strange, almost spiritual powers allowed him to be understood without speaking. The purpose of the analogy is to assert that the modern art of social grace is even more exacting than the ancient art of pantomime.32 Like La Bruyère, he is not interested in the relation between dance and expressive body language. 30

31

32

La Bruyère, Les Caractères, ou, Les Mœurs de ce Siècle, ‘Du mérite personnel’, 34; ‘Des femmes’, 33; ‘Des grands’, 32. Only in the last case is the topos of dance the primary means of delineating a character. Michel de Pure advises an iconographic approach in Idée des Spectacles Anciens et Nouveaux (1668; Geneva: Minkoff, 1972), pp. 285–286, as does Claude-François Ménestrier in Des Ballets Anciens et Modernes selon les Règles du Théaˆ tre (Paris: René Guignard, 1682; Geneva: Minkoff, 1972), p. 150. Philippe Hourcade’s study confirms the contemporary preference for character in costume, scenery and props rather than body language. See Mascarades et Ballets au Grand Siècle (1643–1715) (Paris: Desjonquères & Centre National de la Danse, 2002), p. 143ff. Antoine Gombaud, Chevalier de Méré, De la Conversation, in Œuvres Complètes du Chevalier de Méré, ed. Charles-H. Boudhors, 3 vols (Paris: Fernand Roches, 1930), Vol. II, pp. 107–108.

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This changed quite radically in the following century when moralist writing manifestly in the tradition of La Bruyère and De Méré transformed expressive, theatrical dance into a satirical topos. A favourite ‘character’ was, in fact, the petit-maˆıtre, the same figure we find in Prévost’s Les Caractères de la Danse. The treatment by eighteenth-century moralists of this character is reminiscent of La Bruyère’s famous clockwork courtier, Narcissus, whose sense of self-importance is such that he spends each day in constant activity, but does not actually do anything. Like the hands of a clock, he always comes back to where he started from.33 Unlike La Bruyère, however, eighteenthcentury moralists deploy the figure of the dancer. In the case of LouisAntoine de Caraccioli’s Dictionnaire Critique, Pytoresque et Sentencieux, expressive dance is in fact the very emblem of the art of writing a moral ‘character’. This is evident both from the prevalence of the dancer in his Dictionnaire as a whole and from certain specific entries such as ‘Step’ (‘Pas’): Step: A person is revealed by the way he walks. The steps of a scatterbrain manifest his nature, just as those of the vain are the sign of vanity. The steps of the fop sometimes sway [Le pas du petit-maˆıtre est tantôt balancé], always with affectation. He cannot seem to walk without dancing.34

This is effectively a definition of the art of a moral ‘character’, sketched according to the principle that personality is revealed through nuances of physical, dance-like behaviour. The danced element is suggested, not only directly in his last sentence, but also by referring to the gait of the fop as ‘balancé’, the term for a particular kind of dance step: starting on point, the dancer moves from first position to second or fourth, and often to and fro from one position to the other with a rapid transfer of weight. Compan remarks in his 1787 dictionary of dance that this is a particularly graceful step.35 Caraccioli’s fop is so intent on appearing graceful, however, that he overdoes this step and looks ‘affected’. The more effort Caraccioli’s fop makes to appear graceful, the more affected he becomes. He embellishes the basically simple minuet step so much that it becomes ridiculous. Contemporary instruction manuals tend to regard this step as the most elegant of all, partly because there are so many 33 34 35

La Bruyère, Les Caractères, ‘De la cour’, 65. Louis-Antoine de Caraccioli, Dictionnaire Critique, Pytoresque et Sentencieux, Propre a` Faire Connoˆıtre les Usages du Siècle, ainsi que ses Bizarreries (Lyon: B. Duplain, 1768), entry for ‘Pas’. Charles Compan, Dictionnaire de Danse (Paris: Cailleau, 1787; Geneva: Minkoff, 1979), article ‘Balancé’.


subtle variations or ‘agréments’.36 The error of Caraccioli’s fop is to overstate the ‘agréments’ so that they become garish rather than subtle ornaments: Minuet: Dance whose steps are composed of a ‘coupé’, a rise, and a ‘balancement’; the music is similarly called the minuet. This is where the elegance of the fop reaches perfection. Mélidor sways [se balance], leans, rises, and seems to dance two feet above the floor, such is his agility and lightness. No one can take their eyes off him, everyone admires him, and he has hardly finished before they applaud him. This is perhaps the only time when Mélidor thinks himself first among men, when he feels he exists.

Mélidor’s lack of moderation is manifest in his aerial style entirely out of keeping with the terre-à-terre nature of the minuet. His evident pleasure in overstepping the bounds of acceptable comportment is typical of the fop’s desire to show disdain for convention. This is Versac’s advice to his young pupil, Meilcour, in Crébillon’s Les Egarements du Cœur et de l’Esprit. Regardless of the fear of appearing ridiculous or arrogant, it is necessary to ‘contrive grace’ as a statement of the fop’s audacious independent spirit.37 Similarly exaggerated is the fop’s use of the rigaudon step in Caraccioli’s entry for ‘To walk’ (‘Marcher’): To walk: this is no trivial matter for a character who wants to be elegant from head to toe. Hence, it is thought stylish to appear to walk on tip-toe. Admire Mylerte; his walks only to be admired. He does not so much walk as leap. He does not so much take steps as rigaudon steps.

Writers of contemporary instruction manuals such as Pierre Rameau note that the rigaudon step is ‘very singular’ and ‘ebullient’, because it is a blend of rapid and varied movements performed ‘en place’ or on the spot.38 It is a lively and high-spirited step, but also a very frivolous way of walking, since a great deal of energy is spent with no forward progress. This is no impediment to the fop, however, who walks to be seen rather than to go anywhere in particular. It would be in character with Crébillon’s Versac, 36

37

38

Pierre Rameau, Le Maˆıtre a` Danser (1725; New York: Broude Brothers, 1979), Chapters 21, 23, and 24. Rameau devotes twice as many pages to the variations on the minuet step as to the step itself (sixteen and eight pages respectively). In French, ‘forcer les grâces’; see Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (‘Crébillon fils’), Les ´ ´ Egarements du Cœur et de l’Esprit, ed. Etiemble (Paris: Gallimard, 1977), p. 242; translated by Michael Clancy as The Wanderings of the Heart and Mind: Or Memoirs of Mr de Meilcour (London: John Nourse, 1751). Rameau, Le Maˆıtre a` Danser, Chapter 35.

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who always makes a ‘noisy’ entry, diverting attention from anyone else and seeking above all to make an impression with his verbal acrobatics.39 The pirouette is described in Caraccioli’s Dictionnaire as the fop’s step par excellence. It is a social as well as a physical manoeuvre which allows him to avoid answering the awkward questions which his impertinent and frivolous remarks tend to provoke. Caraccioli describes the character of the pirouette as follows: Pirouette: the fops’ reply to all the criticism and arguments with which one can confront them. Performing a timely pirouette is a great art form which allows them to dispense with a pressing objection. Hence they never miss an opportunity to pirouette when dealing with an erudite man.

One can imagine Versac using this technique. Either he does not listen to, or he pays no attention to, objections to his bold remarks. On the contrary, he repeats himself again and again in a perpetual whirl of mischievous comments. Rameau notes in his instruction book that the pirouette is an unusual step in that it is not performed ‘en présence’ or facing the spectator. What more unseemly social etiquette could there be than turning one’s back on one’s interlocutor? Rameau also points out that the pirouette, like the rigaudon, is performed on the spot. What could be more vain than this self-contained movement without a gesture towards others? The pirouette is just the opposite of the respectful attitudes and carefully described bowing advocated by Rameau in which the eyes are fixed on one’s interlocutor while one foot slides forward and the other bends slightly, thus ensuring attention is focussed respectfully on one’s interlocutor.40 For Diderot, the pirouette is emblematic of ‘le persiflage’, or bewildering mockery.41 Thus, Sélim describes his dream in Les Bijoux Indiscrets in which he is a fop who pirouettes while conversing in bafflingly precious jargon to one interlocutor after another, leaving no time for any of them to unravel what he means, let alone reply. His interlocutors suspect they are being mocked, but the physical and verbal pirouettes prevent them from finding out. The fop’s words and meaning are scattered as he pirouettes so that only spectators of the conversation can appreciate the mockery.42 The use of dance in the depiction of character is quite common in eighteenth-century French literature, especially in relation to the previous 39 40 41 42

´ In French, ‘entrer en fracas’; see Crébillon, Les Egarements du Cœur et de l’Esprit, pp. 133, 154. Rameau, Le Maˆıtre a` Danser, Chapter 32. For a study of ‘persiflage’, see Elizabeth Bourguinat, Le Siècle du Persiflage (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999). Denis Diderot, Les Bijoux Indiscrets, in Œuvres Complètes, 33 vols (Paris: Hermann, 1975–), Vol. III, pp. 239–240.


century. The Dutch-born francophone journalist Justus Van Effen devotes fifteen pages in his periodical Le Nouveau Spectateur to an elaborate depiction of a number of characters, including the fop.43 Each embodies a particular intellectual flaw manifested in his style of dance, and each is inadequate in comparison to Van Effen’s ideal of intellectual conversation: the contredanse, a quadrille danced by four or more which Van Effen considers emblematic of free but well-ordered discourse. Van Effen’s defective dancers all offend in one way or another. The false wit ‘tries his hardest to cram as many sallies, bons mots, nuanced or clever thoughts into his conversation’, like a fop who gratuitously inserts halfturns, ‘pas de bourrée’, ‘tours de jambe’ or ‘cabrioles’ into his dancing.44 The pedant spends too long searching for the most appropriate expression, then correcting it, until no one is listening to him anymore, like a dancer who is incapable of feeling that he has taken a step and has to stop to examine his feet.45 A novice conversationalist and dancer are stiff, lacking in grace.46 Authors such as Van Effen and Caraccioli seem to take a delight in making the most of a new ‘character’ in the moralist’s armoury, one which their predecessors in the seventeenth century did not use. The sense of their satires is analogous to La Rochefoucauld’s maxim ‘One never looks so ridiculous by virtue of the qualities one has, as one does by virtue of the qualities one affects to have’,47 but the topos of the dancer is new. There appears to be a fresh interest in expressive dance. The novelty is made explicit in the works of other authors. In Pannard’s Les Tableaux, a play he wrote for the Paris foire, the allegorical role La Peinture complains to a student of Terpsichore that dance cannot represent character: Dance consists of one attitude or another Without object and without character. If it were not for the costume Faun, Sailor, Wizard Roman, Sarmatian, Greek Would all look the same. Costume is the only actor.48

43 44 46 47 48

Justus Van Effen, Nouveau Spectateur François, ou Discours dans lesquels On Voit un Portrait Na¨ıf des Mœurs de ce Siècle (The Hague: J. Neaulme, 1725–26), no. 7, pp. 99–114. Van Effen, Nouveau Spectateur, p. 100. 45 Van Effen, Nouveau Spectateur, pp. 103–104. Van Effen, Nouveau Spectateur, p. 105. La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, no. 134: ‘On n’est jamais si ridicule par les qualités que l’on a que par celles que l’on affecte d’avoir.’ Charles-François Pannard, Les Tableaux, scene 6, in, Théaˆ tre et Œuvres Diverses de M. Pannard, 4 vols (Paris: Duchesne, 1763), Vol. I.

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In her opinion, expressive dance is still a matter of iconology and costume. The student of Terpsichore proves her wrong by dancing a Saraband to express majesty, La Niaise to portray a foolish young girl, and La Furie to portray a demon. La Peinture is impressed and retracts her remark, and the conclusion we are supposed to draw is that dance is now one of the select arts which can express ‘character’.

The poverty of instruction books When read in conjunction with dance instruction books, authors such as Caraccioli, Van Effen, and Pannard hint at the ways in which performers danced in character, but this evidence should be treated with caution. The familiarity of these authors with the vocabulary of social dance and their extended literary use of it may be as much a reflection of the fashion and popularity for instruction books as an indication of stage practice. Instruction books, and perhaps the experience of learning to dance with a dancing master, may have provided wonderful source material for moralist writers, but instruction books are also a reductive recipe for a full-length danced drama. From the remarks of choreographers and spectators alike, it is clear that steps alone were not sufficient to make drama. As we remark above, Dubos suggests that one of the most salient aspects of Prévost’s early experiments was that specific dance steps were ‘inconspicuous’, and Noverre argues at length in his Lettres sur la Danse that the steps or ‘mechanics’ of dance can in fact be an impediment to dramatic expression.49 The value of Caraccioli, Van Effen, and other contemporary writers who exploit the topos of danced character is not necessarily that they tell us exactly how character was danced, but that they demonstrate the extent to which the concept is common currency, recognisable by a wide readership. They are a measure of the degree of development of character dancing in the eighteenth century. It would be problematic to use instruction books alone to understand the ballet d’action, without literary or other mediation. Modern critics have sometimes used instruction books for actors and orators in this way, with questionable results. The critical instinct is in some ways understandable, since it is otherwise impossible to reconstruct the gestural techniques which mime dancers used.50 Weaver’s programme for The Loves of Mars and Venus 49 50

Jean-Georges Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse et les Arts Imitateurs (Paris: Lieutier, 1952), p. 37. The exception which proves the general rule is the Ferrère manuscript, which is sufficiently detailed to permit reconstruction up to a point. See Chapters 7, 8, and 9 in The Grotesque


is unique in the detail it gives, but even this source is patently incomplete, since the specified gesture vocabulary could not in itself take up the whole performance time. There must have been more to his performances than what is spelt out in the programme. It is therefore tempting to fill the gap with the very precise movement vocabulary in oratorical and acting instruction books. The assumption from which this temptation derives is that instruction books for oratory and acting are replete with the same terminology of the passions as we find in plot synopses of the ballet d’action, and that the precise specifications in instruction books therefore tell us how mime dancers moved. On this principle, Ingrid Brainard uses a range of instruction books to suggest how Angiolini’s Don Juan and Semiramis may have been performed.51 Judith Chazin-Bennahum relied on instruction books to restage Noverre’s Médée et Jason.52 There are many reasons why such critics are attracted to this approach. The ballet d’action is a close relation to acting, mime dancers sometimes discussed the relation of their work to oratory, and rhetoric is in any case a cornerstone of much neoclassical thinking about the arts in general. There are more numerous reasons, however, why it is misleading. Firstly, it inevitably leads to the conclusion that the ballet d’action was an oratorical art. This is true whether it is oratorical or acting instruction books which are used as sources, since the latter draw much of their material from the former. It is incongruous to interpret the ballet d’action as an oratorical art in an era when the art of acting liberated itself from oratory. It would be much more apt to understand it through one of the liberators of eighteenthcentury acting, Riccoboni, and his seminal L’Art du Théaˆ tre. The reasons why modern critics do not choose such texts is that they do not provide

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Dancer on the Eighteenth-Century Stage. Gennaro Magri and His World, ed. Rebecca Harris-Warrick and Bruce Alan Brown (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005). Given that this manuscript is unique, it is a moot point whether the mime and dance techniques it evinces are typical of contemporary practice. Ingrid Brainard, ‘The speaking body: Gaspero Angiolini’s “rhétorique muette” and the ballet d’action in the eighteenth century’, in Critica Musica: Essays in Honor of Paul Brainard, ed. John Knowles (Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1996), pp. 15–56. She uses material brought together by Dene Barnett in The Art of Gesture: The Practices and Principles of Eighteenth-Century Acting (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1987), but Barnett has elsewhere pointed out that his book is not a good way to interpret eighteenth-century dance. See Dene Barnett and Ian Parker, ‘Finding the appropriate attitude’, in Early Music, 8.1 (January 1980), pp. 65–69 (67). Judith Chazin-Bennahum restaged Médée et Jason at the Department of Theatre and Dance, University of New Mexico. A VHS recording is available: Jean-Georges Noverre’s Medea (Hightstown, NJ: Dance Horizons, 2000). She describes her use of eighteenth-century instruction books in an interview included on this video, and in ‘The making of a Baroque ballet, Medea’, in Early Music News, 25 (January 2001), pp. 1, 19–22.

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as much concrete detail concerning manner of expression as one finds in instruction books for actors, such as Engel’s Ideen zu einer Mimik or Austin’s Chironomia.53 This very fact, however, may be a better reflection of the new, non-normative art of acting and the ballet d’action than the conservative tradition of instruction books. It is also incongruous to assume that the ballet d’action was fundamentally oratorical when ancient orators themselves warned against confusing oratory with acting and dance. For Quintilian, ‘the orator should be as unlike a dancer as possible’, and by ‘dancer’ (‘saltatore’) he doubtless meant performers of ancient pantomime who were pre-eminent at his time of writing.54 He comments to some extent on acting, but concludes that its techniques are not appropriate to oratory: Oratory [. . .] consists of serious pleading, not mimicry. There is, therefore, good reason for the condemnation passed on a delivery which entails the continual alteration of facial expression, annoying restlessness of gesture and gusty changes of tone. [. . .] There is too much ‘business’ in such delivery.55

Cicero makes a similar point.56 It would need some explanation, therefore, if we were to assert that eighteenth-century dancers and actors applied ancient principles of body language, while at the same time disregarding clear injunctions from the ancients not to do so. Even without such specific statements, it is easy to see why oratorical principles are often unsuited to the stage. An example cited by Aaron Hill in England and Denis Diderot in France is Quintilian’s axiom for proper oratory, often repeated in ancient and early modern writing, that the hand should not be raised ‘above the level of the eyes or lowered beneath that of the breast’, which would be an odd limitation on the expressive potential of an innovative eighteenthcentury actor.57 It would be just as limiting on the expressive potential of a contemporary mime dancer. It is true that some eighteenth-century mime dancers compared their art to the art of the orator, but they were on the defensive when they did so. Weaver’s tendency to do this is arguably symptomatic of the period in the beginning of the eighteenth century when

53 54 56 57

Johann Jacob Engel, Ideen zu einer Mimik (Berlin: A. Mylius, 1785–86); Gilbert Austin, Chironomia: or, A Treatise on Rhetorical Delivery (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1806). Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, XI, iii, 88–89. 55 Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, XI, iii, 183. Cicero, De Oratore, 3, 220. Aaron Hill, The Prompter, no. 64 (20 June 1735), pp. 82–83; Denis Diderot, ‘Réponse de M. Diderot a` la Lettre Précédente’ [letter to Mme Riccoboni], in Œuvres Complètes, 33 vols (Paris: Hermann, 1975–), Vol. X, p. 442.


proponents of expressive body language had to tread carefully.58 Weaver’s approach is reminiscent in this respect to that of Poisson, who has the courage to be the first practising actor in France to write on his art, but who also pays appropriate homage to the idol of oratory. The second reason why instruction books are misleading is that they would suggest that the ballet d’action was a conservative art form. It is implausible that mime dancers would define themselves and be defined by their contemporaries as innovative artists, and yet use expressive techniques nearly two thousand years old. All contemporary instruction books in oratory and acting rely to a greater or lesser extent on ancient oratory, notably Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria and Cicero’s De Inventione. This is immediately obvious, for example, in Bulwer’s Chironomia simply by casting one’s eye down the margin where the author references the impressive panoply of ancient authors from whom he draws the material for what he intended to be a comprehensive anthology of body language.59 Not only is it implausible that such remote models were important to practising performers, but it is also a moot point whether these models were ever related to performance, even in Cicero’s time. De Inventione was probably written while Cicero was studying the elements of oratory, and is hardly more than ‘an elaborate note-book’ in which he recorded the dictation of his teacher.60 Similarly, early modern instruction books were likely to have been put to pedagogical rather than professional use.61 Ancient and eighteenth-century performers probably needed these instruction books less than schoolboys did for their study of oratory and for the school plays they performed. For this reason, such manuals often seem simplistic or artless in the advice they give. As Fantham has argued, we have to put them in the context of a culture,

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60 61

John Weaver, Anatomical and Mechanical Lectures upon Dancing, wherein Rules and Institutions for that Art Are Laid Down and Demonstrated (London: J. Brotherton and W. Meadows, 1721), p. 144; in Ralph, The Life and Works of John Weaver, p. 1018. John Bulwer, Chironomia, in Chirologia, or, The Naturall Language of the Hand: Composed of the Speaking Motions, and Discoursing Gestures thereof: Whereunto is Added, Chironomia, or, The Art of Manual Rhetoricke, Consisting of the Naturall Expressions, Digested by Art in the Hand (London: Henry Twyford, 1644). Chirologia and Chironomia are effectively two books: the first is intended to be a comprehensive account of natural gesture, the second is its conscious deployment. Both were sources of material for subsequent writers of instruction books. Bulwer is not alone in his dependence on ancient sources; Dene Barnett writes in The Art of Gesture, p. 15, that it was the norm for writers of instruction books to ‘reapply to the art of their day the classical precepts of Quintilian’. See H.M. Hubbell’s introduction to Cicero’s De Inventione in the Loeb Classical Library (1949; London: Heinemann, 1960). See Jean Benedetti, David Garrick and the Birth of Modern Theatre (London: Methuen, 2001), p. 48.

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ancient or early modern, in which ‘every scion of the governing class aimed to become an orator’, and when ‘professional teachers would have to give advice that seems to us elementary’.62 Such manuals would doubtless have seemed simplistic and inadequate to mime dancers, too. The more one explores ancient and early modern instruction books in oratory and acting, the more one comes to the conclusion that they borrow extensively from each other and that they are a self-sustaining genre of writing, with less relation to practice than one might think. It is ironic that Dene Barnett should acknowledge this in his extensive anthology of the eighteenth-century art of gesture, since it undermines the whole point of his book to describe contemporary stage practice.63 Brainard is right that Weaver’s ‘Detestation’ is similar to Austin’s, but this does not necessarily tell us about performance; it may simply mean that Weaver and Austin had a common source: they may both have read Bulwer, for example, who describes this passion in a similar way.64 There is a third and even more fundamental way in which over-reliance on oratorical and acting instruction books may misrepresent the ballet d’action. They would tend to give a very normative picture of the ballet d’action, as if its vocabulary were as easy to classify as the steps of noble dance catalogued by numerous contemporary dancing masters in Beauchamp–Feuillet notation. Or as if the ballet d’action were taught in the institutionalised way noble dance was, or indeed as oratory was. This seems often to be the unspoken assumption of some dance historians who would like to find the same empirical certainties in the ballet d’action as they can in noble dance. Unlike noble dance, however, the ballet d’action was not taught in institutionalised schools such as the French Académie Royale de Danse, and was not taught to private individuals by a syndicate of dancing masters. Although mime dancers often began their careers with formal training in noble dance, they received their specialised instruction as a member of a choreographer’s company where learning would have reflected the much less normative experience of rehearsals and performance. The lack of institutional training may seem anomalous in comparison to noble dance, but it is consistent with contemporary acting practices. No school was ever founded to teach the new style of English acting in the 62 63

64

Elaine Fantham, ‘Quintilian on performance: traditional and personal elements in “Institutio” 11.3’, in Phoenix, 36.3 (Autumn 1982), pp. 243–263 (261). Barnett, The Art of Gesture, ‘Sources’, entry for Jelgerhuis, in which the author writes of the Dutch tragedian, teacher, and painter (probably Barnett’s single most important source) that ‘he frequently based his descriptions on those of earlier writers, without suggesting modernisations or any but small, ornamental changes to the advice of his forebears’. Bulwer, Chironomia, p. 52.


eighteenth century; Aaron Hill’s attempt to persuade the Prince of Wales to found a ‘tragic academy’ in 1732 failed, as did Garrick’s attempt ten years later.65 Too much modern critical attention on formal instruction books for actors and orators is therefore likely to distort our impression of eighteenthcentury stage practice. Like the great orators whom Quintilian and Cicero admired, for whom existing rhetorical traditions provided scant theoretical guidelines, eighteenth-century physical actors and mime dancers probably reached a peak of accomplishment not through any formal method or art, but through ‘practice and innate flare’.66 Or, in the terms used by Diderot and Noverre, mime dancers and actors had to be ‘intelligent performers’.67 They did not mean that performers should dutifully study physical and visual techniques in treatises on acting or oratory, but that they should apply their own independent imaginative faculties to a dramatic situation, while drawing on a deep well of stage experience. A last way in which instruction manuals can give the wrong impression is because of the manner in which critics tend not to recognize the implications of ‘natural’ gestures, those which are related to body language in everyday use. Hall has demonstrated how Quintilian relies a great deal on natural gesture, and concludes that ‘Quintilian’s discussion of hand gestures [. . . ] is in fact little more than a catalogue based upon the existing practices of conversational gesticulation in Rome’,68 which he thinks explains how the Roman spectator acquired his understanding of the orator’s supposedly complex system of gesture. Like Quintilian, Bulwer often corroborates his gestures by reference to common practice, such as the following gesture for ‘avaunt’: To locke the thumbe betweene the next two fingers, is an ironicall vulgarisme of the Hand used by Plebeians when they are contumeliously provoked thereunto, and see that they cannot prevaile by vieing words, their spleene appealing to their Fingers for aid, who thus armed for a dumbe retort, by this taunting gesture seem to say avaunt.69 65

66

67

68 69

For Aaron Hill’s attempt, see Shearer West, The Image of the Actor (London: Pinter Publishers, 1991), p. 111. For Garrick, see Benedetti, David Garrick and the Birth of Modern Theatre, p. 71. Hall points out that rhetorical traditions prior to Quintilian and Cicero did not provide strong guidelines concerning physical gesture. Jon Hall, ‘Cicero and Quintilian on the oratorical use of hand gestures’, in Classical Quarterly, 54.1 (2004), pp. 143–160 (155). For Diderot’s ‘intelligent actor’, see De la Poésie Dramatique, in Œuvres Complètes, 33 vols (Paris: Hermann, 1975–), Vol. X, p. 391. Noverre thought this kind of performer rare but essential; see Jean-Georges Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse, et sur les Ballets (Stuttgart, Lyon: Aimé Delaroche, 1760), p. 474. Hall, ‘Cicero and Quintilian on the oratorical use of hand gestures’, p. 149. Bulwer, Chirologia, p. 183.

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Even Austin, the first writer of an instruction book to invent a class of a priori signs for expressive use, follows Engel closely in his catalogue of natural signs, and concludes ‘the catalogue may be enlarged at pleasure’.70 If mime dancers took these instruction books seriously, then they would have taken ‘pleasure’ in inventing their own expressive body language. Normative rule books are not so much a limit on practice as a licence to do as one pleases. Modern criticism could, but does not, interpret them in this way. If they did, they would understand the ballet d’action less as a formally regulated genre and more as an inventive art demanding what Diderot and Noverre call an ‘intelligent’ performer. It is odd, therefore, to describe innovative use of body language in the ballet d’action or in acting by reference to the well-worn conventions we find in oratorical or acting instruction books. The most innovative writing on body language in the eighteenth century recognized that a catalogue of body language would be endless. Thus, Antoine-François Riccoboni prefaces a list of ways to say ‘hello’ with the remark, ‘there are a thousand ways to say hello, according to the character and the situation’, and concludes the list with the qualification ‘one would have to describe all the characters of humanity, and all the situations in life if one wanted to explain the infinite variety of ways there are to express a single word’.71 So no instruction book would be big enough to account comprehensively for the expression of all possible ‘characters’. Part of the skill of contemporary physical theatre was to select within the multitude of possibilities the gesture or movement which would surprise and convince the spectator of a psychological truth. Spectators who remarked on the startling depiction of character do not sound as if they could have guessed what was coming by prior consultation of an instruction manual. It seems a major underestimation of the innovations of physical performance in the eighteenth century, therefore, to try to define it according to closed catalogues of conventions. The important conclusion to draw from the development of character is that the ballet d’action was much more a theatrical genre than a rhetorical one. The difference is crucial to contemporary commentators, who were pleased, almost relieved, to see that stage dance had joined the realm of the imitative arts, those that were said to capture something of human experience. Until this moment, dance was largely considered in the early modern period as non-imitative; simply a body moving on stage whose value derived 70 71

Austin, Chironomia, p. 485. He expresses his debt to Engel on p. 482. Riccoboni, L’Art du Théaˆ tre, pp. 32–34. See Chaouche, Sept Traités sur le Jeu du Comédien et Autres Texts, pp. 730–731.


from technique and iconography of costume or staging scenery. The ballet d’action transformed it into a body moved by a mind with all its psychological and socially generated attributes. Not surprisingly, contemporary observers often referred to performers as ‘actors’ rather than ‘dancers’. In the language of contemporary English critics, they ‘impersonified’ their roles, such was their imitative ability. As a consequence, stage dance became a viable object of aesthetic study and carved out for itself an independent existence; independent from the themed entrée dances of contemporary opera, independent from the farce of the Commedia dell’arte, and liberated from the reputation for indecency which plagued dance. This new-found dignity may be why there are so many reflections of expressive dance in contemporary literature. In the process, however, the ballet d’action also freed itself from a normative, institutional framework, the kind which produced instruction books for dance as well as acting and rhetoric. The ballet d’action was the product of individuals and companies rather than conventions or established organisations. This is one reason why it is pointless to spend too much time trying to reconstruct the precise details of stage practice. We will probably never know exactly what mime dancers did on stage, because what they did was based on the idea of tapping ‘natural’ body language, and called on performers and choreographers to seek inspiration from the limitless possibilities of the expressive body. As Riccoboni writes, there are a thousand ways for an actor to say ‘hello’. A boundless subject such as this will not fit between the covers of a treatise or an instruction book.

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Dialogues in mime

A two-line review in the London Times of an unnamed work encapsulates the bizarre subject of dialogue in the ballet d’action. ‘The dialogue of the new pantomime, says a morning paper, is but mediocre – The truth is not a word of dialogue has been yet written for it.’1 The reviewer was obviously bemused by the tendency of his journalist colleagues to refer to ‘dialogue’ in a mute, non-verbal performance. His puzzlement is understandable, since, of all the dramatic attributes of the ballet d’action, dialogue is the most problematic. ‘Dialogue’ is usually understood to be verbal rather than mute interaction. If there can be such a thing as mute dialogue, then there needs to be some explanation of how the functions we normally expect of dialogue can still operate. The challenge of mute dialogue is too great for these functions to be taken for granted, as The Times implies they were. In the first place, dialogue means, both etymologically and in terms of the practice of spoken theatre at least since Shakespeare, an interaction between individuals, not simply a juxtaposition of speakers. It is a close encounter of minds and personalities affecting and transforming their thoughts and feelings by a kind of communicative osmosis.2 In this sense, it is ‘interpersonal’, occurring between the minds of the two interlocutors, not ‘intrapersonal’, or internal to each mind.3 Dialogue manifests the character of the interlocutors. It is clear from Chapter 5 that character is an important concept in the ballet d’action, so the question now is whether it is developed in the ballet d’action through that quintessentially theatrical manner: dialogue. If it can, then one would expect to find in mime and danced dialogues a contrast of styles between interlocutors, a contrast between the act of ‘speaking’ and ‘listening’, and a logic of continuity as interlocutors each speak in turn. Some things would have to be left ‘unsaid’; there would be a ‘subtext’ as well as a text. Or on the 1 2 3

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London, The Times, 7 September 1785, p. 2. ‘Osmosis’ is the figurative term used by Andrew K. Kennedy in Dramatic Dialogue: The Duologue of Personal Encounter (Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 19. ‘Interpersonal’ and ‘intrapersonal’ are distinctions made by Peter Szondi in Theory of the Modern Drama, trans. Michael Hayes (Cambridge: Polity, 1987), p. 45.

Dialogues in mime

contrary, mime dancers would sometimes have to speak the unspeakable, to break taboos. One could enumerate other features and expectations of dialogue, but even by the standards of a fairly loose definition there are considerable complications in adapting it to a mute medium. To some extent, these are practical complications. There are also issues of principle. If dialogue is inherently linguistic in nature, it sits uncomfortably alongside the anti-verbal concepts underlying the ballet d’action frequently expressed by choreographers and critics alike. As we remarked in Chapter 4, they are, at times, as adamant in this respect as the most anti-verbal dramatist of the twentieth century, Antonin Artaud. It is curious, then, that they should show a clear interest in a verbal feature of theatre like dialogue, which is arguably the rival, even the enemy, of visual and somatic principles of expression.

The challenges When one considers the texts that choreographers chose to translate into ballets d’action, often successful works from the repertoire of spoken theatre, rendering the original dialogue looks like a challenging task. Angiolini’s Le Roi et le Fermier is adapted from Sedaine’s opéra-comique of the same name, which itself was adapted from Collé’s La Partie de Chasse de Henri IV. The plot interest derives from the incongruously close encounter between the King and a game keeper, the key feature which caused Collé’s play to be banned from the French stage for twelve years until the death of Louis XV in 1774.4 The theatrical effect of this encounter derives largely from the quality of the dialogue. Collé and Sedaine capture the spirit of the play in a single scene (Act II, scene 9 for Collé; Act II, scene 3 for Sedaine), when the King is questioned by his game keeper as if they were equals. The scene also brings out the royal character, because the King shows discretion by not revealing his identity, and he shows dignity by refusing to give in to the game keeper’s forthright manner. The way in which these two characters converse expresses a great deal about who they are, the levels of society they come from, and also the direction the plot is subsequently to take. The encounter is brimming with interactive qualities. The game keeper, Richard, first upbraids, then 4

Charles Collé, La Partie de Chasse de Henri IV, first performed in 1762 at the private theatre of the Duc d’Orléans, but not performed by a state-sponsored theatre until 1774 at the Comédie Française. Both Collé’s and Sedaine’s works are inspired by Robert Dodsley’s play The King and the Miller of Mansfield (1737).

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invites the stranger home in his blunt but generous manner, and the King stands up for himself resolutely but tactfully. The dialogue also has interpersonal qualities, since everything Richard says contributes to the King’s perception of his royal status and his relationship with his subjects. Did Angiolini manage to convey in mime and dance the complexity of what is expressed in the dialogue of Collé and Sedaine’s works? Angiolini’s plot synopsis shows he was aware of the various dimensions of this scene, and gives some clues as to how he performed it on stage: Richard [. . .] treats him harshly, convinced as he is that this is the person who fired the shot he heard; and he asks him sharply who he is and what he is doing here? The King, who has covered up the marks of his status to avoid being recognised, prays him softly to lead him to a place of shelter, and offers him money, which Richard refuses; however, stirred by the Prince’s friendly demeanour, he takes him roughly by the arm and leads him to his own house, on condition that he eat and drink heartily.5

Angiolini’s use of reported speech suggests that his aim was to create in mime the interactive to-and-fro of verbal dialogue. One way he aims for an equivalence is to take from Sedaine’s version not so much what is said, but how it is said, thus translating verbal into more physical interaction. The adverbial phrases suggest this: Richard treats the King ‘harshly’, speaks ‘sharply’, and takes the King’s arm ‘roughly’, while the King speaks ‘softly’. So, too, does the emphasis on the feelings of the interlocutors: Richard is ‘convinced’, then ‘stirred’ by the King’s ‘friendly’ demeanour. Angiolini seems to retreat from the words of the dialogue to the motives of the speakers, presumably on the principle that the motives themselves are not inextricably bound to language for their expression. The result, on paper at least, is a concise version of the original, ‘condensed’ like light rays passing through a convex lens.6 We do not know how well this worked on stage, but the plot synopsis at least suggests that there was an intention to translate dialogue into mime and a rationale for doing it. However, for every occasion like this, when there is evidence of an attempt at dialogue, there is another showing that choreographers avoided 5

6

Gasparo Angiolini, Le Roi et le Fermier, Ballet Héro¨ı-Comique, Act II; performed in 1774 in Vienna, performance programme published Vienna: n.p., 1774. See Appendix for the complete synopsis in French. It is almost identical to the Italian one published a year earlier in Venice for the first performance of this ballet d’action, which we refer to in Chapter 2, pp. 56–57, but includes two additional adverbs which are germane to our point here. Gasparo Angiolini (and Calzabigi?) uses the analogy of a lens to describe adapting a plot in Dissertation sur les Ballets-Pantomimes des Anciens pour Servir de Programme au Ballet-Pantomime Tragique de Sémiramis, reproduced in Calzabigi’s complete works, Scritti Teatrali e Letterari, ed. Anna Laura Bellina, 2 vols (Rome: Salerno, 1994), Vol. I, p. 168.

Dialogues in mime

it. Angiolini effectively admits as much in his first extended essay about the ballet d’action. In the Dissertation sur les Ballets-Pantomimes, published as a preface in 1765 to the programme for one of his most famous works, Sémiramis, he candidly acknowledges that in the course of adapting Voltaire’s play of the same name he made many changes, but he does not spell out the changes in question.7 Dialogue was evidently one of them, as is apparent in the fuller synopsis of the play published in 1773 under its Italian title, Semiramide. In the key scene in which the Babylonian queen Semiramide realises that the man she wanted to marry, Ninia, is in fact her son, dialogue in Voltaire’s version (Act IV, scene 4) is replaced in Angiolini’s adaptation by a banner descending from the heavens on which can be read the words ‘Stop, perverse mother, he is your son!’ Realising his error, Ninia kneels in submission to Semiramide, who responds by showing her respect for Ninia, the rightful heir to the kingdom. She hands him a dagger to kill her and avenge her appropriation of the throne, but Ninia refuses it and repeats his act of submission.8 There is little evidence in Semiramide that Angiolini sought an equivalence of Voltaire’s dialogistic recognition scene. Many of the dramatic, dialogistic qualities of Voltaire’s original scene are lost in Angiolini’s version. There is none of the dramatic irony that Voltaire exploits in his play when Semiramis declares her love to Ninias without realising that he has found out that she is his mother and that she murdered his father. On the contrary, Angiolini’s banner instantly and publicly clarifies the situation for everyone, leaving no room for privileged knowledge. Neither is there any sense in Angiolini’s version of a crescendo before the shocking revelation. In Voltaire’s play, the time taken for Semiramis to realise that Ninias holds an incriminating letter in his hand, and to convince him to give it to her, leaves Ninias (and the audience) under intolerable pressure. Nor is there the same sense of catastrophic loss of authority when she reads the letter; all is revealed, and Ninias then dominates their stichomythic exchange. This, in turn, means that in Angiolini’s version Ninias does not suddenly grow in royal stature as he does in Voltaire’s play. Dialogue obviously brings a dramatic richness which the ballet d’action had to work hard to emulate. There was bound to be a loss of some kind when the ballet d’action could not compete. This is true even in cases when choreographers compensated with innovative devices. Noverre made 7 8

Angiolini [and Calzabigi?], Dissertation sur les Ballets-Pantomimes, p. 164. Gasparo Angiolini, Semiramide, Ballo Tragico-Pantomimo, Act III. Performed San Benedetto Theatre, Venice, 1773, performance programme published in Venice the same year by Modesto Fenzo. First performed in Vienna, 1765.

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remarkable use of a scarf in his adaptation of Corneille’s Horace, and many Parisian spectators admired the theatrical effect,9 but it was a substitute for Corneille’s powerful dialogue rather than an equivalent. The key dilemma of the play is the contradiction between love and patriotic duty. In Corneille, Curiace presents Camille with the imperative of doing his duty, while Camille seeks to persuade him that he does, in fact, have a choice. This gives rise to a complex interaction of dialogistic, persuasive techniques.10 In contrast, Noverre avoids the need for dialogue and persuasion altogether, because Camille cannot see a way out of the dilemma, and does not seek to persuade Curiace to go against his sense of patriotic duty. She gives Curiace her scarf as a token of their love, essentially endorsing his decision rather than challenging it.11 As a result, Noverre’s Camille is portrayed from the outset of the play as a powerless, ineffectual character with none of the potency of Corneille’s Camille. Perhaps it was Noverre’s intention to turn Camille into a typical eighteenth-century sentimental female character of the type we often find in contemporary novels, a character who is more of a passive victim of circumstances than an active participant. Perhaps, also, he baulked at the complexity of the dialogue.

The expectations Despite the evident difficulties involved in translating dialogue into mime and dance, performance programmes encouraged spectators to expect it. Choreographers, who probably wrote the plot synopsis, must have intended to create this expectation, given the explicit use of dialogue in these programmes. Thus, Noverre in the programme for the premiere in Vienna of Agamemnon Vengé refers to a ‘dialogue’ sequence involving all the major protagonists during the celebrations to mark the return of Agamemnon: This general celebration [fête] is briefly interrupted by a dramatic dance [un pas en action] with Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Aegisthus, Electra, Iphise, and Cassandra; this dialogue scene [cette scène dialoguée], by developing the character of the passions of each actor [acteur], advances the plot [le nœud de l’action].12 9 10 11

12

See Chapter 7, pp. 181–183 for discussion of the visual staging of Noverre’s Les Horaces. Corneille, Horace, Act II, scene 5. Jean-Georges Noverre, Les Horaces, Act I, scene 2, in Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre, Maˆıtre des Ballets de la Cour Impériale et Royale (Vienna: Joseph Kurzböck, 1776). First performed in Vienna, 1774. Jean-Georges Noverre, Agamemnon Vengé, Act II, scene 3, in Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre. First performed in Vienna, 1772. See Appendix for full text in French.

Dialogues in mime

The terminology Noverre uses implies that a danced choreography, ‘une fête’, gave way to a more mime-based sequence, ‘un pas en action’, suggesting that the dialogue took place in mime rather than in dance. The twofold function of this scene, to develop character and plot, is consistent with what we tend to think of as the purpose of dialogue. Without knowing more about how the dialogue was staged, however, it is impossible to know whether we should add it to the various techniques we discuss in Chapter 5 used by choreographers to create character and action, or whether we should consider it a product of Noverre’s wishful thinking. Neither this scene nor direct reference to ‘dialogue’ appear in the shorter programme he published for the subsequent performance of Agamemnon in Milan, perhaps because of the adverse critical reaction to what some regarded as his speculative style of writing programmes.13 When programmes did not explicitly state that a ‘dialogue’ was to take place, they suggested as much through the use of direct and indirect speech. This was, in fact, one of the early signs that mime dancers in the 1750s tried to innovate. Their use of direct and indirect speech in their programmes reflected their intention to recount a complex, extended narrative. Antoine Pitrot’s programme for Télémaque is typical in this respect. In scene 17, Telemachus is curious when he hears the sound of carpenters at work: Telemachus asks what is the meaning of this; Calypso replies that it is a ship to send Mentor home. Can this be true, he cries? What, Mentor would abandon me, woe is me. Oh! Eucharis, if Mentor leaves me I will only have you. What do you say, Telemachus, you cruel ingrate, replies Calypso? I swear by the Styx that you will leave my island.14

Calypso effectively tricks Telemachus into revealing that he prefers Eucharis to her. The dialogue is, at least on paper, interactive, and also interpersonal in that Telemachus’s reaction to the news that Mentor is leaving causes Calypso to give in to her jealousy and banish Telemachus from her island. It also constitutes a linchpin in the plot, since Telemachus will indeed leave, bringing to an end this episode in the epic journey of Odysseus’s son, inspired by Fénélon’s highly successful contemporary novel, Télémaque. Whether or not the dialogistic nature of this scene translated successfully from paper to stage is a moot point, however. Ange Goudar, in the first of many satires on the ballet d’action, thought it did not. He was bemused 13 14

Jean-Georges Noverre, Argomento de’ Due Balli Agamennone Vendicato ed il Giudizio di Paride (Milan: Gaetano Motta, 1775). Antoine Pitrot, Télémaque dans l’Isle de Calipso, Ballet Sérieux, Héro¨ı-Pantomime, first performed in Paris, 1759; programme published Paris: Ballard, 1759.

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by the interactions between the performers in Pitrot’s work, and belittled the steps and movements used in the dialogue. His account of the scene we quote above is the following: [Telemachus] asks with several interrogatory postures what is the meaning of this, and he is told, using the same attitudes [attitudes], that it is a ship being constructed to send Mentor away. Can this be true, he cries with two or three entrechats? What, Mentor would abandon me, woe is me. Oh! Eucharis, he continues with a pas grave, if Mentor leaves me I will only have you. At these words, Calypso becomes furious again without losing the beat. She swears by the Styx that Telemachus will leave her island.15

Goudar refers to well-known contemporary dance steps, but his flippancy undermines the idea that they, alone, are sufficient to construct a fully interactive and above all comprehensible dialogue. He found himself continually obliged to consult the programme to understand the action.16 Many choreographers approached the problematic nature of dialogue more cautiously in their programmes than either Noverre or Pitrot did. Rather than take dialogue for granted by deploying direct or reported speech, they implied it. The dialogistic intention is nevertheless still discernable. Hilverding was especially notable in this respect, at least in the few performance programmes he published during a long and eminent career. Instead of using direct or reported speech, Hilverding’s characters ‘seem’ to say something. Thus, in scene 3 of Les Amants Protégés par l’Amour,17 the two lovers know Tyrcis is pursuing them, and, fearing they are doomed, Thémire asks Daphnis to carve their names in the bark of a tree as an everlasting sign of their love: ‘Go (she seems to say to Daphnis), go, but let your name be joined to mine, let them be united after death, just as our hearts have been during our lives.’ Later in the same scene, she hopes for the best: ‘my dearest lover (she seems to say to him), may you escape the barbarous clutches of an odious persecutor; may you avoid his blows!’ There are many variations on this form of words: characters ‘make it understood that . . . ’, or ‘make it known that . . . ’, ‘convey’, ‘put across’, or ‘suggest that . . . ’. Hilverding’s style of language in his programmes highlights dialogical moments, marking them out as difficult to stage. 15

16 17

Anon. [Ange Goudar], Observations sur les Trois Derniers Ballets Pantomimes qui ont Paru aux Italiens et aux François: Sçavoir, Télémaque, Le Sultan Généreux, La Mort d’Orphée ([Paris]: n.p., 1759), pp. 18–19. Goudar, Observations sur les Trois Derniers Ballets Pantomimes, p. 41. Franz Anton Christoph Hilverding van Wewen, Les Amants Protégés par l’Amour, Ballet Pantomime, probably first performed in Vienna, 1765 (performance programme published Vienna: Jean-Thomas de Trattnern, 1765). See Appendix for the plot synopsis.

Dialogues in mime

The methods The primary way of staging dialogue in mime must inevitably have been physical action. We know very little about this, of course, since there are virtually no extant records of how performers moved on stage. However, a parody by Goudar of Angiolini’s Semiramide shows the degree to which Goudar, at least, felt that he was watching a dialogue in mute action.18 His four-page translation of the scene between Semiramide and the ghost of her dead husband, Ninus, is arranged on the page as an interaction between two characters in a spoken play. It is intended as a burlesque, because Goudar found absurd the idea that an insubstantial, shadowy ghost should converse in the physical language of mime and dance and bring the exchange to a conclusion by physically dragging a corporeal being, Semiramide, into his tomb. According to Angiolini’s programme for the premiere in Vienna in 1765, this scene was inspired by the only two lines of dialogue between the Babylonian queen and the ghost of her husband in Voltaire’s play Sémiramis.19 The Queen’s efforts to placate the ghost are cut short by his threat: Semiramis:

Shadow of my husband, Allow me, in this tomb, to kneel before you, That my sorrow . . . The Shadow (at the entrance to the tomb): Stop, and respect my ashes. The time will come when you are led below (The Spectre returns to the tomb which closes)20 At this point in Voltaire’s play, only the priest, Oroès, knows the Queen’s secret, that she murdered her husband. The ghost’s interruption of her expression of allegiance in this dialogue thereby raises the first public suspicions of her culpability. His rejection of her attempt to express regret constitutes an accusation of duplicity. Thus, the Queen inadvertently provokes the ghost’s threat to kill her. This short and unique exchange between the two of them is consequently a key moment in the plot and the depiction of the Queen’s character. Angiolini’s plot synopsis indicates that he translated this dialogue into extended action in which the Queen carries out her 18 19

20

See Appendix for Goudar’s parody. Gasparo Angiolini, Sémiramis, Act III, first performed Vienna, 1765; performance programme published Vienna: Jean-Thomas de Trattnern, 1765; reproduced in Calzabigi’s complete works, Scritti Teatrali e Letterari, ed. Anna Laura Bellina, 2 vols (Rome: Salerno, 1994), Vol. I, p. 166. Voltaire, Sémiramis, Act III, scene 6.

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intention to kneel before the ghost and express regret, and the ghost carries out his threat to drag her into his tomb: ‘Semiramis tries her hardest to escape the ghost; he continues to pursue her, and orders her into the tomb. She struggles as much as nature will allow. The spectre finally seizes her and drags her.’21 Goudar’s parody of this scene indicates not only the elaborate stage action, but the impression given of dialogue. He describes how the Queen rushes across the stage twice to evade the pursuing ghost. When she is eventually cornered, she ‘struggles furiously’ but in the end unsuccessfully to avoid being dragged into the tomb. There is interactive dialogue throughout the parody in which the exchanges depend on typical dialogistic techniques, such as asking and answering questions, picking up on specific words and phrases of the other interlocutor, or assuming them elliptically. Aspects of the Queen’s character emerge. She has worldly ambitions which she says prevent her from following the ghost beyond this world, but the ghost rejects this as mere ‘reasoning’, the cunning of a devious manipulator. She has a sense of her own tragic destiny when she apostrophises to the gods about the tragic irony of her situation, but the ghost takes her apostrophe as merely a stalling technique. Goudar’s intention in this parody is not to mock Angiolini’s dialogistic action as such. In fact, Goudar regards some form of dialogue as necessary: There must, therefore, be a dialogue between the Shadow of Ninus and Semiramis, and this dialogue must be a coherent and consistent one, as much on one side as the other, or else it would contradict the action; since, when the Shadow says one thing, Semiramis would not understand and would do something unrelated.22

There is indeed no sign in the parody that Goudar is mocking the dialogistic techniques we mention above which allow the Queen and the ghost to ‘understand each other’. Goudar’s criticism is that it should be a ghost who engages in the kind of dialogue we would expect of a living human being: ‘he makes it speak to Semiramis as if it were alive’.23 In effect, he means that Angiolini’s dialogistic techniques are so successful, so naturalistic, that they are implausible for a ghost. Goudar goes on to give what he calls ‘a history of shadows’ in which he contends that, prior to Shakespeare, dramatists contrived some kind of ‘barrier’ between beings inhabiting different worlds: 21 22 23

Act III of Angiolini’s Sémiramis, reproduced in Calzabigi’s complete works, Scritti Teatrali e Letterari. [Ange Goudar], Lettre de Madame Sara Goudar sur le Carnaval de Toscane a` Monsieur L∗∗∗ (n.p.: n.p., 1776), p. 20. [Goudar], Lettre de Madame Sara Goudar sur le Carnaval de Toscane a` Monsieur L∗∗∗ , p. 20.

Dialogues in mime

stage machinery might allow ghosts to hover above the ground, or a veil might hide their face.24 According to Goudar, Voltaire is responsible for breaking with convention by dressing the ghost of Ninus in breeches, thus implicitly making it part of the real world. Goudar makes a wry point that ghosts are no more human than animals are: ‘these days, theatrical ghosts are just like human beings; if only they could speak!’25 For Goudar, then, the use of naturalistic dialogue is analogous in its implausibility to the well-attested custom on the eighteenth-century stage of dressing historical characters in the fashions of the eighteenth century. In effect, Goudar acknowledges Angiolini’s success at creating a dialogistic, cooperative exchange, a verbal mimesis in theatre of the ‘turns’ of natural conversation, but thinks that ghosts are not from the ‘natural’ world, and therefore should not dialogue naturalistically, just as they should not wear breeches. To judge from performance programmes, one of the most prevalent techniques was the use of stage props and objects in general which acted as an intermediary between participants in dialogue who effectively interacted with the object in the first instance, and only indirectly with their interlocutor. Sometimes, the object is integral to the plot and needs no invention by the choreographer. The mythological story of the Judgement of Paris was a popular theme among choreographers, perhaps partly because it centres on an object, the golden apple, a linchpin for the plot as well as a catalyst for dialogue. In principle, the tale of three goddesses quarrelling over who is the fairest of them all, and attempting to persuade Paris to judge in their favour, has clear dialogistic potential. In practice, however, dialogue was avoided in the ballet d’action, since, rather than address each other or Paris, the goddesses first attempt physically to take possession of the apple, and when this fails they each offer Paris lavish bribes to persuade and seduce him. The action revolves around objects used to bribe Paris, not dialogistic exchanges. When props such as these are not already integral to the traditional story, choreographers introduced their own in order to facilitate interaction between protagonists. An outstanding example is Jean Dauberval’s Le Ballet de Paille, better known since its premiere in Bordeaux in 1789 by the title La Fille Mal Gardée. Anything one says about this work is especially noteworthy, since this is the only eighteenth-century work still in the repertoire of modern ballet. Unless this is simply a historical accident, something about 24 25

Goudar, Lettre de Madame Sara Goudar sur le Carnaval de Toscane a` Monsieur L∗∗∗ , p. 25. Goudar, Lettre de Madame Sara Goudar sur le Carnaval de Toscane a` Monsieur L∗∗∗ , p. 27.

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this work must have endowed it with the longevity lacking in all other contemporary ballets d’action. The extensive use of props to provide a structure for encounters between protagonists may be a feature which contributed to its success. Most of the scenes revolve around props in one way or another. In Act I, for example, Colas and Lise have at last escaped the prying eyes of Simone. Colas declares his love by kissing the ribbon which he had previously taken from Lise. She refuses his advances, but when he goes to leave she stops him, holding on to the ribbon, which is now attached to his staff. He offers his coat, to which she attaches the ribbon, catching Colas’s hand in the knot and pressing his hand to his heart, effectively entwining the lovers together.26 These amorous negotiations between a persistent lover who in the end despairs, and a tentative object of his affections who resists only to take the decisive move is a recognisable, even clichéd scene which was staged in verbal dialogue in countless contemporary spoken plays before and since. Its translation into mime and dance in La Fille Mal Gardée relies substantially on the use of props which give the impression of interaction between the hearts and minds of the two protagonists. Whether the reliance on a prop to create the interpersonal interaction militates against regarding this scene as ‘dialogue’ is debateable,27 but it may be more important to consider what the spectator implicitly felt was happening. The ballet d’action, as we propose in our introduction, is better understood as a translation of other genres into its own language rather than a genre in its own right, and, as with all translation, the original is still somehow present in the new version, underlying it for all those who know it. This kind of love scene was the staple of comic love stories, and all the spectator had to do was read into the use of props what he or she knew well from spoken theatre. An appropriate interpretation of the use of props in La Fille Mal Gardée, therefore, could readily lead a spectator to perceive the work as very much dialogically based.

Performative language Although certain stylistic aspects of a plot synopsis, such as direct references to ‘dialogue’, speech, and reported speech, must have encouraged audiences to expect some form of mute dialogue, one very prevalent stylistic aspect 26

27

See the Appendix for the programme published by Eugène Hus (who danced the role of Colas in the 1789 premiere) for his 1803 production in Paris: La Fille Mal Gardée, ou Il n’est qu’un Pas du Mal au Bien (Paris: Fages, 1803). Kennedy argues that dialogue in its modern, post-Shakespearian form, excludes ‘above all the world of objects’, in Kennedy, Dramatic Dialogue, p. 3.

Dialogues in mime

would have substantially distracted their attention from the subject: the use of what philosophers of language now call ‘performative language’. It is perfectly compatible with a dialogistic situation, but can also happily exist without it. In fact, it is designed to function as independently of dialogistic interaction as any kind of language is. Since a performative utterance is itself the event to which it refers, since it is self-reflexive, it does not require a response. Or, at least, it does not require a verbal one; there may well be a physical reaction to a performative utterance, and this makes the concept all the more suitable to the physical art of the ballet d’action. The prevalent use of this kind of language in plot synopses may be a sign that, on stage, choreographers avoided dialogue in the full, interactive sense. Formulated primarily by J.L. Austin in How To Do Things With Words, the concept of performative language has proved fertile in other areas of study as well as the philosophy of language. It has been much debated and reformulated in various attempts to support it, undermine it, or extend it to domains, such as literature and the performing arts, which Austin specifically excluded.28 Austin’s core principle, which has proved so thoughtprovoking, is that the business of language is not only to state facts, and thus to be ‘true’ or ‘false’, but also to perform actions. Performative utterances perform an act in saying something, in contrast to ‘constative’ language, which is the act of saying something. Thus, ‘I promise to wash the dishes’ is not a descriptive or factual statement which can be proved true or false, but an act of promising. Some cases of performative language, such as promising, apologising, judicial sentencing, declaring war and so on, are explicitly performative. Others are implicitly so, such as ‘Go!’, which is implicitly a command and therefore neither true nor false, or ‘milk’ on a shopping list, which is implicitly a promise to buy the product, as opposed to the same word on a till receipt, which constitutes a description of one’s purchase. As the last example shows, context is essential to performative language. One of the most important consequences of Austin’s concept is that the meaning of a given utterance depends a great deal on its use in a specific context, and much less on its putative relation to absolutes such as what is ‘true’, or spiritual judgements such as the ‘inner feelings’ or ‘thoughts’ of the speaker. Most ballets d’action programmes contain some amount of performative language, and some are infused with it. Collectively, we find in them a profusion of greetings, oaths, commands, demands, invitations, assents, forgiveness, warnings, protests, ceremonial pronouncements, apologies, calls 28

J.L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), p. 22.

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to attention, challenges, assertions, congratulations, expressions of gratitude, and the like. Even when they are phrased as a report of stage action rather than in direct speech, we are asked to imagine the stage action as if a character were expressing him- or herself in the first person indicative, as it were. Thus, the synopsis may state that ‘Character X promises to do it’, and we are to imagine a character on stage who somehow ‘says’ in the language of mime and dance ‘I promise to do it.’ To take a more extended ` La Morte d’Agamennone (which, according example, in Onorato Vigano’s to the preface, owes nothing to Noverre’s version), a messenger announces that Agamemnon has returned, leading Clytemnestra to ‘order’ her attendants to come to her, and to ‘promise’ Aegisthus that her heart belongs to him. Aegisthus throws himself at her feet and ‘swears’ the same.29 When Agamemnon first appears, Aegisthus trembles with anger, but Clytemnestra ‘exhorts him to compose himself’.30 Agamemnon ‘invites’ Clytemnestra to be seated next to him. She feigns a faint in order to create a diversion from Aegisthus’s anger, leading Agamemnon to ‘call for help from her attendants’. On Clytemnestra’s bidding, they ‘tell Agamemnon to leave’. Later, Agamemnon takes pity on Cassandra and unchains her, causing her to ‘thank’ Agamemnon. Clytemnestra enters, considers that Agamemnon and Cassandra are in a compromising situation, and assumes that he is being unfaithful. Agamemnon ‘swears at her feet his innocence’.31 In the final murder scene, Agamemnon is grateful to Aegisthus for having governed his country in his absence, and ‘invites him to be seated next to him’. Aegisthus stabs him, leading Electra to ‘urge members of the court to avenge her father’s death’. Aegisthus ‘orders’ all Agamemnon’s sons to be killed, and ‘orders’ Electra to be brought before him.32 What would spectators have expected of the stage performance after reading a synopsis written in this style of language? They would almost certainly have agreed with Austin that this language has a special ‘force’, even if they would not have been able to specify in Austin’s terms that it was an ‘illocutionary’ force.33 It has force by virtue of constituting an action in itself; by promising, swearing oaths, ordering, and so on, the characters have effectively done something, not only articulated words or described something. Spectators reading the plot synopsis would thus have expected powerful expression of some kind, but not powerful by virtue necessarily of 29 30 32 33

` La Morte d’Agamennone, Part 2. First performed Venice, Teatro Giustiniani di Onorato Vigano, San Moisè, 1777. Programme published the same year with no publisher’s details. ` La Morte d’Agamennone, Part 3. 31 Vigano, ` La Morte d’Agamennone, Part 4. Vigano, ` La Morte d’Agamennone, Part 5. Vigano, Austin, How To Do Things With Words, Lecture VIII.

Dialogues in mime

being dialogistic. The force of this language comes not from interaction with others, but from its relation to social and political context. Clytemnestra can ‘order’ her attendants to come to her, and her order is powerful, because she has the authority expected of the queen. Agamemnon’s ill-fated ‘invitation’ to Aegisthus to be seated next to him has force because Agamemnon is sovereign in the circumstances, court, to which he invites him. In this sense, one might say that choreographers took a given plot from whatever source and gave it force by capitalising not on the dialogistic interactions, but on the circumstances in which events take place. The ballet d’action is in some sense ‘situational’ rather than dialogistic. A spectator reading the plot synopsis would also surmise that, since the language used by characters constitutes an action in itself, it is unlike contributions to dialogue in that it does not require a reply. In fact, plot synopses sometimes read like a series of self-contained moments of expression – promising, swearing, ordering, and the like – in which characters carry out actions rather than interactions. When we say ‘interaction’ and ‘reply’, however, we do not mean that the language is so self-contained that it does not ` La Morte d’Agamennone, cause a reaction. In the summary above of Vigano’s language constantly causes others to react: Clytemnestra promises, causing Aegisthus to swear an oath. Austin would say that Clytemnestra’s illocution has a ‘perlocutory’ effect. In other words, through a use of language, others are caused to think or act in certain ways.34 This is no accident, since some kinds of performative language are designed to be followed by a course of ` text, Clytemnestra orders her attendants to come to her, action. In Vigano’s and they do indeed come. Any kind of language, performative or otherwise, can have a perlocutory effect, but performative language of the emphatic kind above has a greater effect than most would in the circumstances. A spectator’s expectation after reading a synopsis, therefore, would be that the plot is full of action and reaction, but not full of dialogue. A further likely expectation created by this use of performative language is one which Austin would have said proves the need for a theory such as his. One of the main prejudices he wanted to undermine was the notion that language is the external ‘expression’ of a speaker’s ‘feelings’ or ‘thoughts’. In the case of performative language, this need not be the case. Even if Clytemnestra is not sincere in her promise to Aegisthus above, her promise is still a promise. Even if Aegisthus does not really want Agamemnon’s sons to be killed, his order is still an order. Since performative language exists by virtue of certain social, cultural, traditional, or other set of conventions, it exists 34

Austin, How To Do Things With Words, p. 115.

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if it fits the appropriate convention, regardless of the speaker’s underlying intentions. If the speaker does not have the appropriate intention, thought, or feeling, then the performative is ‘infelicitous’ in Austin’s terms,35 but it is still a speech act. Characters have still acted. Eighteenth-century spectators would arguably have been more victims of the ‘inner–outer’ fallacy concerning language than are modern readers for whom Austin wrote, but this would probably have led them to enjoy performative language in the ballet d’action all the more, and distracted them at the same time from the need for dialogue. In addition to appreciating the powerful (illocutory) style of expression of the characters, and the powerful (perlocutory) effects they often had on other characters, the spectator would probably have relished the impression (a false one, according to Austin) that performative language is a manifestation of the inner passions of the characters. This is not meant to be a condescending view of an eighteenth-century spectator’s na¨ıve powers of interpretation (Austin is keen to point out that none of us is immune from the inner–outer prejudice), but a recognition of the influence and the prevalence in the eighteenth century of the neoclassical idea of the expression of the passions, which we discuss in Chapter 4.36 Such was the currency given to the expression of the passions by the seventeenth-century painter Charles Le Brun, such was the popularity throughout the following century caused by its application, not only to painting but to other art forms such as sentimental literature (especially novels), that one can only assume the principles to have been firmly established in contemporary minds. A contemporary spectator was therefore likely to interpret the performative language in a plot synopsis as an indication that mime dancers would express themselves by reproducing the physical ‘symptoms’ of internal passions, feelings, thoughts, and the like. Performative language is a dominant stylistic aspect of plot synopses which could easily have distracted a spectator from dialogistic aspects. It seems to demote dialogue to a lesser matter. Perhaps this is one reason why there was so little critical debate about dialogue in mime dance: it was simply not considered the most important aspect of the genre.

Operatic ensemble singing The ballet d’action was not the only kind of theatre for which dialogue was a challenge. Opera, too, tells a story in which characters interact in ways which may call for dialogue, but its musical dimension complicates matters. These 35

Austin, How To Do Things With Words, p. 45.

36

See pp. 107–109.

Dialogues in mime

complications were controversial, and the debates they provoked reflect interestingly on the ballet d’action. The performance in Paris by a visiting Italian company of Pergolesi’s comic opera La Serva Padrona in 1752 rekindled long-standing differences of opinion concerning the relative merits of Italian and French opera. A central issue of the diverse features of this debate37 was the cultivation in French opera of varied forms of singing, from declamatory recitative to full aria, via a range of intermediary forms which were thought by some to allow for a nuanced and varied range of dramatic emotions. Italian opera, in contrast, tended to draw more marked contrasts between ‘recitativo secco’ and the aria. One of the most contentious issues was the question of ensemble singing. The duo, trio, and quatuor sung in unison by performers each of whom was nevertheless supposed to have his or her own individual dramatic character provoked the most acute debate concerning the dramatic plausibility of operatic performance. Supporters of French opera tended to argue that one had to accept implausible features such as characters singing in unison, since there would always be a certain lack of verisimilitude in a stylised genre such as opera. Critics argued that it undermined the dramatic dimension of opera. The most common form of ensemble singing in French opera was the duo, and a frequent proposal to render it more plausible was to orchestrate it as a ‘duo dialogué’, in which characters sung alternating rather than simultaneous parts.38 The foremost French composer of the period, Jean-Philippe Rameau, exploited the dialogistic possibilities of alternating ensemble singing a great deal. The musical techniques he deployed have led some modern critics to make flattering comparisons between his dialogue scenes and those of the playwrights of the most renowned spoken theatre.39 Exchanges proceed with minimal musical time between the interlocutors, perhaps a single beat. Replies are marked musically with syncopation, interruptions by unresolved harmony, questions and exclamations by harmony with the dominant, caveats with a fourth interval drop.40 Even when Rameau composed simultaneous rather than alternating ensembles, he tended to use polyphonic harmony to give each part a certain individuality, each character singing 37

38 39

40

For a general treatment of this debate, known as the Querelle des Bouffons, see Cynthia Verba, Music and the French Enlightenment: Reconstruction of a Dialogue, 1750–1764 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). For a detailed discussion of the duo in French opera, see Paul-Marie Masson, L’Opéra de Rameau (Paris: Henri Laurens, 1930), pp. 254–279. See for example Masson, L’Opéra de Rameau, p. 174: ‘Rameau’s most beautiful recitatives are probably in Castor and in Dardanus. They come close to the greatest dramatic dialogues by the greatest tragic playwrights such as Corneille and Racine.’ Masson describes these techniques in more detail in L’Opéra de Rameau, p. 140, pp. 164–168.

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his or her own, independent melody. He usually reserved the alternative technique of counterpoint in which the two parts are the same melody sung at an interval (usually a third or a sixth) for dramatically plausible moments when characters express the same sentiment or idea.41 Since the ballet d’action often formed part of an operatic performance, the analogies with operatic dialogue must have been manifest and appealing. Diderot was one of those who explored the ways in which operatic dialogue could be a model for mute dialogue. The plot synopsis of a ballet d’action in his Entretiens sur le Fils Naturel is different from the other synopses we have so far discussed in that it is dreamt up by a fictional character, Dorval, and not (as far as we know) related directly to an actual performance. Yet it is arguably more significant, since it is a statement of Dorval and Diderot’s ambitions for the reform of stage dance written in the decade, the 1750s, when the ballet d’action first gathered considerable momentum. The synopsis is noteworthy for its interactive ensembles (duos and quatuors) and the consequent implication that the practice and innovations of French opera were thought by Diderot to be a model for mute dialogue in the ballet d’action. Dorval’s plot synopsis is the pastoral story of a young woman and a young man who rehearse a dance they plan to perform, but who are interrupted and frightened by friends disguised as ghosts.42 The first scene consists of a mimed interaction which Dorval calls ‘a recitative’, in which the man persuades the woman that they should rehearse. When they hear mysterious and alarming off-stage noises in the second scene, they argue whether to continue the rehearsal in what Dorval calls ‘a very lively duo’. Given their opposing feelings, one imagines that the young woman and man perform more of a mutually antagonistic interaction than a complicit one, more of a ‘duo divergeant’ (in which characters express opposing feelings) than a ‘duo unanime’ (in which they would express similar feelings),43 and the most likely form of exchange in this case would be a ‘duo dialogué’, in which the characters’ lines alternate in the normal manner of dialogue. Two ghosts enter the stage in scene three and together they perform another ‘duo’, which terrifies the young man and woman. The ghosts being complicit in their practical joke, one imagines their duo to be a ‘duo unanime’ in which they simultaneously express the same terrifying

41 42 43

Masson, L’Opéra de Rameau, p. 173, p. 267. Denis Diderot, Entretiens sur le Fils Naturel, in Œuvres Complètes, 33 vols (Paris: Hermann, 1975–), Vol. X, pp. 152–155 for the synopsis. These are Masson’s terms in L’Opéra de Rameau, pp. 268–270.

Dialogues in mime

actions. They chase their victims in what Dorval calls ‘a very lively quatuor’, which presumably is meant to be a ‘quatuor divergeant’, since the ghosts are intimidating and the young man and woman are terrified. It is at this point that Diderot’s interest in the expressive potential of French ensemble singing goes beyond normal practice, since the quatuor in French opera was rare, and a quatuor divergeant was unheard of. Interestingly, a rare example of a quatuor (unanime) was performed during the third act of Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes, a work famous partly for Sallé’s choreography.44 It may be that there are particular affinities between the musical and the choreographic concept of four different parts interacting together in a quatuor, affinities exploited by Diderot in this plot synopsis and by Sallé in her famous choreography. One can readily understand why a quatuor divergeant of four voices singing up to four different parts was uncommon in opera, since it is potentially very confusing for the audience. Diderot seems to suggest in his synopsis that it is conceivable in the ballet d’action. In effect, he turns a rare and exceptional operatic technique into a principle of reform of stage dance, as if the ballet d’action could be the pre-eminent dialogistic form on the musical stage. The second, last act proceeds according to the same kind of operatic principles, ending in a ‘general chorus’, by which Diderot presumably means a group choreography in which the performers dance in unison, nondialogistically. The ballet d’action often ended in a collective contredance of this kind. Diderot’s extended formal analogy with opera suggests on the one hand that the ballet d’action can be dialogistic, but on the other hand that the best model is not the dialogue of spoken theatre. In other words, the ballet d’action belongs specifically to the musical stage, and the best inspiration comes, therefore, from other forms of musical theatre. Implicitly, this is recognition of both the strengths and weaknesses of mute dialogue. By analogy with opera, the ballet d’action would seem capable of a high degree of interactive expression, but not the same kind of expression possible in spoken drama. What opera and the ballet d’action lack relative to the semantic, psychological, and dramatic complexities of spoken drama, they make up for by the use of music and (in the case of the ballet d’action) movement. Hence it may be appropriate to acknowledge that the ballet d’action cannot stage ‘dialogue’, if by that we mean dialogue as we know it from spoken theatre, but on the other hand it may be fitting to argue 44

Masson cites this example and another: the scene of the three furies in Salomon’s opera Jason et Médée (1713; revived 1727). See Masson, L’Opéra de Rameau, pp. 284–285.

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that it can stage a ‘duo’, a ‘trio’, or a ‘quatuor’. A non-verbal medium such as music or movement is arguably, in fact, a more effective context for complex interaction with more than two participants, since contributions can be made in unison as well as alternately. Alternation is probably an inevitable characteristic of, and limitation on, verbal dialogue, since words spoken simultaneously would quickly become incomprehensible. Simultaneous melodies in operatic song, or simultaneous movements in mime and dance, are likely to be much more intelligible. Music can communicate through more than one acoustic channel at a time, because of harmony. So, too, can movement, because of our ability to take in more than one activity in our visual field. Perhaps this means that dialogue when properly adapted to the medium of musical and physical expression should, in fact, lose some of the qualities in has in its verbal form in order to gain others which are more natural to it. One wonders to what extent Diderot’s exploration of this analogy with operatic ensembles is representative of the contemporary view of the ballet d’action. He had few peers who could match his degree of explorative aesthetic thinking, and few, perhaps, who searched for what might be considered a distant analogy between opera and the ballet d’action. In fact, it cannot have seemed so distant to his contemporaries, since it did not elude the comic playwright Louis de Boissy, nor, presumably, the wide range of spectators who appreciated his popular style of theatre at the Théaˆ tre Italien and the Comédie Française. In writing for a popular audience, Boissy could not afford to indulge an idiosyncratic taste in explorative, intellectual analogies as Diderot tended to do. He had to write with immediate relevance to the audience’s knowledge of contemporary theatre and society. His parody of Les Fêtes d’Hébé, ou Les Talents Lyriques includes a scene in which a ‘duo dialogué’ and the final ‘divertissement’ of Rameau’s opera are combined, as if each were as much a matter of dialogue as the other. Act III, scene 7 of Boissy’s Les Talens a` la Mode is a parody of two scenes in the last act of Rameau’s opera: the recitative in scene 5, in which Mercury persuades Eglé (both performed by opera singers) of the constancy of his love, and the divertissement in scene 7, in which Terpsichore (danced by Marie Sallé) confirms their union by proclaiming Eglé to be the nymph of dance.45 In Boissy’s version, the divine Mercury becomes the stock

45

Jean-Philippe Rameau, Les Fêtes d’Hébé, ou Les Talents Lyriques, Ballet en Trois Actes et un Prologue, first performed Paris 21 May 1739, in Œuvres Complètes de Rameau, ed. C. Saint-Saëns, 18 vols (Paris: Durand et Fils, 1895–1924; New York: Broude Brothers, 1968), Vol. IX; Louis de Boissy, Les Talens a` la Mode, first performed Paris 17 September 1739 at the

Dialogues in mime

Commedia dell’arte lover, Léandre, and the pastoral Eglé becomes a commonplace ‘Mélanie’. The burlesque scene is partly verbal, like Rameau’s recitative, and partly danced, like Sallé’s divertissement. Léandre and Mélanie mix verbal persuasion with a vocabulary of dance steps in what Léandre calls ‘a conversation’, and ‘a discussion’ (‘un entretien’). In words and steps, he tries to convince Mélanie to trust his declaration of love, while Mélanie finds his declaration ambiguous, and toys, also in words and steps, with her suitor to oblige him to commit himself to constant love rather than to an equivocal desire. Léandre begins his persuasive rhetoric with a ‘développement’ (a slow raising of the straight leg), but this has the unintended effect of perturbing Mélanie.46 He tries again with a slow, gentle ‘pas de Loure’, but this is still not enough to mollify her. Unconvinced of his sincerity, she replies with mocking minuet steps. Léandre is piqued that she should not believe him, and expresses his feelings more forcefully with a pirouette and several ‘jetés battus’. These ostentatious steps simply serve to frighten Mélanie, who tries to escape, imitating the flight of the skylark. Léandre blocks her path with one of the most acrobatic steps, the ‘gargouillade’. Both subsequently calm down, and Mélanie asks him for a more gentle demonstration of his love, to which he responds by imitating the flight of the butterfly. She thinks that the butterfly is more suggestive of inconstancy than love, but Léandre replies that he will flutter only around her. The scene ends when their differences are resolved and they dance complex floor patterns, hand in hand. There is nothing in this parody to suggest that Boissy intended to satirise the technique of danced or musical dialogue in itself. If this had been his intention, one might have expected the structure of the dialogue to break down, or to have led in the wrong direction, whereas in fact it progresses in exactly the same way that it does in Rameau’s scene. In both cases, the dialogue is cooperative: two interlocutors collaborate to find a mutually acceptable resolution, the suitor trying to express his love, and the object of his attentions wanting him to express it in certain ways. Boissy’s simultaneous parody of the opera’s recitative and divertissement suggests that Sallé’s style of dance was somehow analogous to an operatic

46

Théaˆ tre Italien, in Boissy, Œuvres de M. de Boissy, Contenant son Théaˆ tre Français et Italien. ´ Nouvelle Edition, Revue, Corrigée et Augmentée de Plusieurs Pièces Nouvelles, 7 vols in 5 (Amsterdam and Berlin: J. Neaulme, 1768), Vol. VI. For technical descriptions of this and the following steps, see Pierre Rameau, Le Maˆıtre a` Danser (1725; New York: Broude Brothers, 1979); Gennaro Magri, Theoretical and Practical Treatise on Dancing, trans. Mary Skeaping (Naples, 1779; London: Dance Books, 1988); and Charles Compan, Dictionnaire de Danse (Paris: Cailleau, 1787; Geneva: Minkoff, 1979).

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duo dialogué. Since there is no extant record of exactly how Sallé danced, it is impossible to say quite where the similarity lay. Nevertheless, the analogy was probably not lost on spectators at the Théaˆ tre Italien. Playwrights had been staging parodies there of the Opéra repertoire for half a century, and they were adept at finding parodic techniques which the spectators would readily understand. Sallé’s dialogistic talents may partly explain why her style appealed so much to contemporary critics, who complimented her with words which are in themselves not very specific: they liked her ‘evocative’ and ‘expressive’ dancing. Perhaps, if they felt that her choreographies somehow ‘spoke’ to them, it was because of their dialogistic qualities. Perhaps, also, this is what provoked Cahusac to coin a new phrase to describe Sallé’s style of mime and dance: ‘la pantomime noble’.47 The term was clearly intended to distinguish Sallé’s style from the more vulgar forms of comic pantomime. Sallé’s choreographies may have been ‘ennobled’ by the dialogistic characteristics they shared with the operatic duo. On the whole, the evidence suggests that sometimes choreographers intended to stage dialogistic scenes in the ballet d’action, sometimes they did not, and that in any case it constituted one of their greatest challenges. The mixed picture this gives of their practice is reflected in their sometimes contradictory statements on the subject. As we point out above, Noverre refers in the plot synopsis of Agamemnon Vengé to a group action as ‘cette scène dialoguée’. In the preface to the same work, however, Noverre explains that dialogue is one of the features of drama which mime dancers cannot reproduce, along with other strictly verbal styles such as description, figurative language, reported action, and the like.48 Angiolini’s is just as confusing. In the preface to his first and perhaps most famous work, Le Festin de Pierre, he argues that there is no time for dialogue in the ballet d’action, since action is all.49 Yet, as we have discussed, there is evidence of dialogistic qualities in his works. What they implicitly seem to mean, however, is not so contradictory. Some kinds of verbal dialogue are more suited to the medium of mime and dance than others. Noverre makes a remark along these lines in a 47

48 49

Louis de Cahusac, ‘Ballet’, in Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers, ed. Denis Diderot and Jean D’Alembert, 28 vols (Paris: Briasson et al., 1751–65; Neufchâtel: 1765–72), Vol. II, p. 42. Noverre, Agamemnon Vengé, p. 7 of the preface, in Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre. See Appendix for full text. Angiolini, preface to Festin de Pierre, reproduced in Calzabigi’s complete works, Scritti Teatrali e Letterari, ed. Anna Laura Bellina, 2 vols (Rome: Salerno, 1994), Vol. I, pp. 149–150.

Dialogues in mime

letter he writes to Voltaire to ask his permission to adapt Canto Nine of La Henriade: ‘le dialogue tranquil’ is impossible in the ballet d’action, but he thinks that the scene in Voltaire’s epic poem in which Henry IV falls in love with Gabrielle d’Estrée ‘would offer all the pleasures of dialogue dictated by sentiment and passion’.50 The love scene in Voltaire’s epic contains no explicit dialogue, but it does describe the feelings of the two characters, their ‘sentiments’ and ‘passions’, and it is these which Noverre thinks will translate well into his medium of mute action. Other, more ‘tranquil’ exchanges in the epic when Cupid has not stolen from the King his incomparable wisdom and level-headedness have less potential. Reasoned dialogue, then, is less conducive to Noverre than passionate dialogue. Perhaps this is why Noverre does not lend Camille the oratorical prowess she has in Corneille’s Horace. She is submissive in order to amplify the heroic passions of the story rather than undermine them. Dialogue, then, is a revealing aspect of the ballet d’action, partly because it shows how much choreographers felt they had to compete with spoken drama, partly because choreographers sought other models such as opera, and partly because they tried to avoid it altogether, as if they knew that it was not inherently best suited to mute action. Their approach to the issue is testimony to the hybrid nature of the ballet d’action, the tendency for choreographers to be inspired by diverse sources, and their capacity sometimes to claim independent territory for the genre, to carve out a niche for the ballet d’action which would allow it to do what it does best without necessarily trying to do what other forms of theatre, notably spoken theatre, do best. 50

Jean-Georges Noverre to Voltaire, 1 September 1763 (Letter D11394), in Correspondence and Related Documents, ed. Theodore Besterman (Voltaire Foundation, 1973); Electronic Enlightenment, ed. Robert McNamee et al., version 1.3, May 2009. University of Oxford, www. e-enlightenment.com. Noverre had made the same point about ‘tranquil’ dialogue three years earlier in Lettres sur la Danse, et sur les Ballets (Stuttgart, Lyon: Aimé Delaroche, 1760), p. 20.

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7

Choreography is painterly drama

Raoul Auger Feuillet coined the word ‘chorégraphie’ in 1700 in the title of ´ his seminal publication on dance notation, Chorégraphie, ou l’Art d’Ecrire la Danse, par Caractères, Figures et Signes Démonstratifs. It was nevertheless a hesitant neologism, since the word does not appear in the body of the text, nor in the ‘privilège du roy’. Neither did his many translators find a direct equivalent in their respective languages. John Weaver, for example, opted for ‘orchesography’, Thoinot d’Arbeau’s sixteenth-century French word, which itself was perhaps inspired by Lucian’s well-known dialogue Peri Orcheseos, ‘Of Dance’. ‘Chorégraphie’ is nevertheless a word which has since proved durable by its very adaptability. Not only do we still use it today in many languages, albeit with a slightly different meaning, but it has spawned a cluster of related terms which seek lexical legitimacy by association with what has come to be regarded as the root word. Even when Serge Lifar sought to bury what he regarded as the menial connotations of ‘choreographer’ by inventing a new word, ‘choréauteur’, devoid of any residual sense of ‘notator’, the lexical root is still evident in his alternative.1 So it was, also, when Rudolf von Laban went far beyond anything Feuillet could have imagined and christened his wide-ranging study of mind, body, and spirit through dance ‘Choreutik’.2 Readers of this book may be ‘choreologists’ of one kind or another, and if they are choreologists of the Rudolf Benesh kind, then they will deal in ‘choremes’ or minimal units of movement.3 Although the underlying inspiration for these and other dance-related words is the Greek, of course, they would arguably neither have been coined nor achieved a certain currency without Feuillet’s original neologism. What is remarkable, therefore, is the way the word has lent itself to morphological variation, and the way each variation is testimony to specific contemporary concerns in dance.

1 2 3

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Serge Lifar, La Danse (Paris: Denoël, 1938), Chapter 5, ‘Le choréauteur’. Rodolf Laban, Choreutics (1939; London: Macdonald & Evans, 1966). Rudolf Benesh founded the Benesh Institute of Choreology in London in 1962, but the word ‘choreology’ has been used with a range of senses, including the more general one of ‘the study of dance’ by whatever means, aesthetic, historical, sociological, or other.


Given the evolution of dance and mime in the eighteenth century, one would expect to see some kind of morphological or semantic shift almost as soon as Feuillet’s title made its lexical mark. The innovations in mime by John Weaver in England at the beginning of the century, by Marie Sallé in England and France a little later, and by a host of others all over Europe during the development of the ballet d’action in the second half of the century changed the way people thought about dance and mime in general and about ‘chorégraphie’ in particular. The most salient sign of this is that Feuillet’s system of dance notation was simply not used to transcribe the ballet d’action; it was presumably inadequate to represent the variety of body postures and the intricacy of the communicative mime action.4 This apparent aversion to Feuillet’s notation is all the more striking in the second half of the century when there was in fact a revival of interest in his system.5 Despite the aversion to his system, there was a marked fondness for his word, ‘chorégraphie’, which was adapted to suit the dramatic nature of the ballet d’action. Dance historians invariably claim that it was in the nineteenth century that the word ‘choreography’ acquired its twentiethcentury meaning,6 but this is a simplification which obscures the semantic permutations in the previous century and may cause us to overlook the importance of dramatic qualities of the ballet d’action.

‘Chorégraphie’: a metaphor for drama Louis Petit de Bachaumont’s Mémoires Secrets reported on a wide range of artistic, political and social events mainly in Paris from 1762 to 1789. It is an especially interesting publication by virtue of the fact that Bachaumont was probably its instigator and chief editor rather than its sole author; for 4

5

6

The only extant evidence is a manuscript by Auguste-Frédéric-Joseph Ferrère in which the action is transcribed using a mixture of Feuillet notation and Ferrère’s own symbols. See Chapters 7, 8, and 9 in The Grotesque Dancer on the Eighteenth-Century Stage. Gennaro Magri and His World, ed. Rebecca Harris-Warrick and Bruce Alan Brown (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005). Manuals and treatises using and discussing Feuillet notation published in the second half of the eighteenth century include: C.J. Von Feldtenstein, Die Kunst nach der Choregraphie zu tanzen und Tänze zu schreiben, nebst einer Abhandlung u¨ ber die a¨ usserliche Wohlanständigkeit im Tänzen (Braunschweig: n.p., 1767); M. Magny, Principes de Chorégraphie (Paris: Duchesne, 1765); Malpied, Traité sur l’Art de la Danse (Paris: Boüin, [1770?]). For further details, see J.L. Schwartz and C.L. Schlundt, French Court Dance and Dance Music: A Guide to Primary Source Writings 1643–1789 (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1987). ´ ementaire An important early example of the modern use of the word is in Carlo Blasis’s Traité El´ Théorique et Pratique de l’Art de la Danse (Milan, 1820; Rome: Gremese, 2007), p. 137.

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forty years he was a regular guest at the salon of Mme Doublet, and he almost certainly solicited the views of a large entourage of contemporaries. This makes his lexical innovations more than idiosyncratic. In his review in 1770 of the first ballet d’action performed at the Paris Opéra, Gaëtan Vestris’s version of Noverre’s Médée et Jason in La Borde’s opera Ismène et Isménias,7 ‘chorégraphie’ is his word for what struck him most: the dramatic construction of the ballet. To appreciate this, it is necessary to take into consideration most of a paragraph of his review in order to understand that ‘chorégraphie’ at the end refers to the description of the dramaturgy throughout: This pantomime, which lasts nearly twenty minutes and constitutes an entire play [un poëme entier], received the warmest applause. Mlle Allard plays the part of Medea, Dlle Guimard Creusa, and Sr Vestris plays Jason. The latter is without a mask, and surprised the audience by the energy of his performance, not only as a dancer, but also as an actor. He gives his character all the sublime qualities that one could wish for. The passions are painted on his face with a nobility, a truth, a diversity that is inexpressible, and which shows he has a singular talent for the stage. [. . .] Mlle Allard, for her part, has an energetic leap [une vigueur de jarret], has hard and fiery eyes which characterise quite well the fury of a jealous woman, and the depravity governing every movement of Mlle Guimard’s indicates the extent of her desire to please and to seduce. This choreography [chorégraphie] was devised [imaginée dans le principe] by Noverre, the man who has greatest genius in this genre.8

It has already been observed that this performance was perhaps the first time dancers appeared at the French Opéra without stage masks.9 What has not been remarked upon is that the maskless Vestris inspired Bachaumont to use ‘chorégraphie’ to refer to the dramaturgical implications of maskless performance. For Bachaumont, the ballet was more than a ballet, because it was ‘un poëme entier’, by which he probably means ‘a stage play’. The dancers were more than dancers, because they were also ‘actors’ who conveyed the ‘passions’ of their ‘characters’ through facial expression. These dramatic qualities were the ‘choreography devised’ by Noverre. Thus, 7

8

9

The audience in 1770 may have seen the production of the same ballet by Vestris when it was performed before the Court, at Choisy on 13 June 1763, and shortly afterwards at Fontainebleau and Versailles. Louis Petit de Bachaumont, Mémoires Secrets pour Servir a` l’Histoire de la République des Lettres en France, depuis MDCCLXII, ou Journal d’un Observateur, Contenant les Analyses des Pièces de Théaˆ tre qui ont Paru durant cet Intervalle, les Relations des Assemblées Littéraires, 36 vols in 18 (London: John Adamson, 1783–89), Vol. XIX, pp. 245–246 (entry for 8 December 1770). See Ivor Guest, The Ballet of the Enlightenment: The Establishment of the Ballet d’Action in France, 1770–1793 (London: Dance Books, 1996), pp. 50–52.


Bachaumont uses ‘chorégraphie’ by analogy with Feuillet’s usage to suggest that dramaturgy is as much a defining feature of the ballet d’action as a transcription of the steps is for danse noble. His emphasis on drama over and above other components of the ballet suggests we ought to think of the ballet d’action as danced drama rather than dramatic dance. In Bachaumont’s terms, the composer of the dramatic action is naturally the ‘chorégraphe’. Of Noverre’s Les Caprices de Galathée, he comments: ‘a number of scenes express and develop what the choreographer [chorégraphe] wanted to paint’. The job of a ‘chorégraphe’ is in some sense a ‘painterly’ one, as we shall discuss later, but overall a dramaturgical one: First, the flighty girl likes the shepherd; soon afterwards she does not like him, and the joy of happiness that he had felt changes to sadness and bitterness: in a fit of anger, he throws his hat to the ground, which becomes a plaything for the shepherdess; she tires of it as soon as he reappears. He renews his attempts to woo her and make her decide; he offers her a bouquet: she accepts it, then tramples it under foot, and picks it up again after the lover has left; she holds it close; he suddenly appears; she would prefer him not to see how she is holding it; finally, she throws it back to the ground and destroys it. A bird in a cage and a drum are also props used to enact her character [mettre en jeu son caractère] . . . 10

and so on until Cupid brings the lovers together at the end of the ballet. Although Bachaumont’s descriptions seem often to be lifted from printed programmes of ballets,11 the last words in the passage above sound like his own. He mentions stage props which serve a very specific dramatic purpose, to ‘mettre en jeu son caractère’. This terminology is as clear a sign as any of the dramatic nature of this performance. The dramatic importance of the concept of ‘caractère’ (see Chapter 5) is reinforced by the reference to ‘le jeu’, which was a term coined in the second half of the eighteenth century to refer to physical acting technique, as distinct from oral delivery or else the oratorical gesturing of actio.12 Hence, Bachaumont is referring to the way Guimard acted the role of Galathea, not specifically the way she danced it. The bird in a cage suggests vulnerable virginity and the drum sexual consummation, which together characterise her capricious nature.13 10 11 12 13

Bachaumont, Mémoires Secrets, Vol. IX, p. 269 (entry for 22 November 1776). See Bachaumont, Mémoires Secrets, Vol. IX, p. 231 (entry for 7 October 1776), where he specifically quotes at length Noverre’s programme for Alexandre et Campaspe. See Sabine Chaouche (ed.), Sept Traités sur le Jeu du Comédien et Autres Textes: De l’Action Oratoire a` l’Art Dramatique (1657–1750) (Paris: Champion, 2001), p. 12. A caged bird is a frequent symbol in the ballet d’action theatre to signify virginity. See Maximillien Gardel’s La Rosière, first performed Paris 29 July 1783 (Paris: n.p., 1783), scene 2; and Noverre’s Les Petits Riens, as described by Joseph von Sonnenfels in Briefe u¨ ber die

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In 1780, Noverre staged Médée et Jason, thus providing Bachaumont with the opportunity to compare this production with Vestris’s performance ten years earlier. He dubs Vestris ‘le chorégraphe imitateur’ and proceeds to enumerate the reasons, all of which relate to the dramatic structure of the ballet: It was observed that the principal pantomime tableaux in question have been faithfully copied by the choreographic imitator [chorégraphe imitateur], and that changes to the original were only made to secondary matters such as the festivities at the court of Creon, or the role of Creon which today [in Noverre’s version] is not foreign to the action.14

These points show once again that Bachaumont was interested in the dramaturgy of the ballet d’action, as well as painterly features suggested by his reference to ‘tableaux’. We find a similar use of these terms by the dramatist, novelist, and satirical journalist François-Antoine de Chevrier. Having fled Paris for Brussels to escape police action against him for his acerbic publications, he published a fortnightly bulletin of events mainly in the Low Countries. The propensity to speak his mind which got him into trouble in Paris makes L’Observateur des Spectacles all the more interesting for its candid treatment of theatre, literature, politics, and personalities of all kinds. Chevrier uses ‘chorégraphie’ and its related terms not only in the same way that Bachaumont does, but often in the context of related terms such as ‘maˆıtre de ballet’ and ‘compositeur’. The result helps us to understand the distinguishing characteristics of a ‘chorégraphe’. Jean-Baptiste Pitrot, the younger brother of the better-known Antoine, began a season in the Hague as maˆıtre de ballet and principal dancer in May 1762.15 His first productions provoked a long commentary by Chevrier, who is more complimentary of Pitrot’s abilities as a dancer than as a ‘compositeur’ or ‘corégraphe’, terms which are approximately synonymous in Chevrier’s vocabulary (the following italics are Chevrier’s):

14 15

Wienerische Schaubühne, ed. Hilde Haider-Pregler (Vienna, 1768; Graz: Akademische Drucku. Verlagsanstalt, 1988), p. 733. Diderot highlights the use of the same symbol in his description of Greuze’s painting ‘L’Oiseau Mort’ in the Salon of 1765 in Denis Diderot, Œuvres Esthétiques, ed. Paul Vernière (Paris: Garnier, 1988), pp. 533–537. For drum symbolism, see Mikhail Bakhtin’s interpretation of Rabelais’s Chicanous episode in Rabelais and his World (Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 1984), p. 205, and the entry for ‘Tambouriner’ ´ in Alfred Delvau’s Dictionnaire Erotique Moderne (Basle: Kurt Smidt, 1850), p. 348. Bachaumont, Mémoires Secrets, Vol. XV, p. 43 (entry for 8 February 1780). For biographical details of Pitrot, see Jean-Philippe van Aelbrouck, Dictionnaire des Danseurs, Chorégraphes et Maˆıtres de Danse a` Bruxelles de 1600 a` 1830 (Brussels: Mardaga, 1994).


Having done justice to Sr Pitrot as Dancer, we will judge him as Composer [Compositeur]; we may be too harsh, but this Choreographer [Corégraphe] is sufficiently talented to have no need of favours which would degenerate into flattery.16

There are three synonyms or related terms in Chevrier’s vocabulary: composer, choreographer, and maˆıtre de ballet. The latter presumably refers to Pitrot’s official post as director of the ballet at the theatre in the Hague, while the other two refer to his attendant duties. The nature of these duties, and therefore the meaning of ‘chorégraphe’ and ‘compositeur’, becomes clear from Chevrier’s suggested revisions of Pitrot’s ballet Le Vieillard Rajeuni: The story [sujet] of the Vieillard Rajeuni was weakened by its Choreography [Corégraphie] which was not clear [nette] enough, and by the pantomien [pantomine]17 which was under-developed. In Paris and elsewhere, I have given a number of Ballet stories [sujets] to Composers [Compositeurs], but I was always careful to establish the story with the same precision that an author in the protasis would recount that of a tragedy. [. . .] A Poetic idea as necessary to the painter as to the choreographer [chorégraphe] would have led the old man bent under the weight of his years into a bright meadow where a young shepherdess is busy looking after her flock or picking flowers . . . 18

Chevrier improves on Pitrot’s ‘chorégraphie’ by making it ‘clearer’, as clear, in fact, as the protasis or exposition of the action at the beginning of a tragedy. By extension, what protasis is to tragedy, choreography is to the ballet d’action: a synopsis of events, relations between protagonists, ambitions, obstacles, duties, and desires, all the essential ingredients which make the subsequent action possible. And whereas the subsequent action in tragedy is obviously spoken, in the ballet d’action it is ‘pantomien’; it ‘develops’ the ‘chorégraphie’, just as in tragedy the spoken word develops the protasis. This terminology continues throughout Chevrier’s L’Observateur des Spectacles. Even when the precise sense of ‘chorégraphie’ is not clear from the immediate context, the most plausible interpretation, based on his usage elsewhere, is nevertheless dramatic composition. Thus, when Chevrier summarises Laurent Felicini’s qualities as ‘premier danseur, excellent chorégraphe et pantomime admirable’, the most likely interpretation of 16 17

18

François-Antoine de Chevrier, L’Observateur des Spectacles ou Anecdotes Théaˆ trales: Ouvrage Périodique, 3 vols (The Hague: H. Constapel, 1762–63), Vol. II, p. 131. Interestingly, ‘pantomine’ was a common variant spelling in eighteenth-century French of ‘pantomime’, as ‘pantomino’ was in Italian. Russian performance programmes are faithful to the variant by translating it phonetically. The origin of this word was probably not just a typesetting error, since it exists, semantically speaking, in English contemporary texts as ‘pantomien’. Perhaps it suggests the importance of facial expression in the ballet d’action. Chevrier, L’Observateur des Spectacles, Vol. II, p. 132.

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‘chorégraphe’ as it relates to a well-known mime dancer is, by a process of elimination, dramatic.19 After ‘danseur’ and ‘pantomime’, what other aspect of the ballet d’action could, in fact, ‘chorégraphe’ refer to?

‘Die Corographie’: a plot synopsis Feuillet invented the word ‘chorégraphie’ to mean a system of notation which produced a physical document. Bachaumont and Chevrier in the examples above appear to extend his meaning metaphorically to refer to an aspect of the ballet d’action which is as important to it as a Feuillet transcription is to danse noble. However, the new sense of ‘chorégraphie’ was not only metaphorical. It also referred to something much more tangible. A striking example is from the diary of the Viennese court official Count (and later Prince) Johann Josef Khevenhüller-Metsch, dated 10 September 1775: In the evening Noverre’s ballet Les Horaces et Curiaces was restaged in the Burgtheater. Monsieur Gallet, who had previously danced the part of Horace and had been asked by the impresario [Impresa] to return a short while ago, had taught the dancers from memory (since Noverre had taken the choreography [die Corographie] with him) and although he cannot be regarded as the composer [qua Compositore] but, so to speak, as a copyist [Copiste], his work was received with such exultation and with general applause, as if one saw it for the first time. He even received curtain calls repeatedly and had to show himself to the audience, which he did with all decency and a lot of modesty. [. . .]20

Given Khevenhüller’s frequent tendency to mix French words and phrases (such as ‘Copiste’) with his native German, ‘Corographie’ is likely to be a French loan word.21 It has very puzzling implications in this passage, since he seems to be referring to a physical document which Noverre took away with him (when he left for Milan in 1774 after seven years in Vienna) and which Gallet therefore could not use to restage his production. If Khevenhüller is using ‘Corographie’ in Feuillet’s sense, it contradicts all the evidence we 19 20

21

Chevrier, L’Observateur des Spectacles, Vol. II, p. 251. Elisabeth Grossegger (ed.), Theater, Feste und Feiern zur Zeit Maria Theresias, 1742–1776. Nach den Tagebucheintragungen des Fürsten Johann Josef Khevenhüller-Metsch, Obersthofmeister der ¨ Kaiserin (Vienna: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1987), p. 335. ‘Corographie’ is an unusual word in contemporary German; it is not found in Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s comprehensive sixteen-volume Deutsches Wörterbuch (Leipzig: S. Hirzel 1854–1960).


have that Noverre did not use Feuillet notation. Noverre devotes a whole chapter in his Lettres sur la Danse to this matter in order to refute its artistic value. As a creative instrument he regards it as sterile, and as a means to revive past dances it is a drag on the progress of dance which relies on ceaseless correction, improvement, and creation afresh.22 He maintained this opinion in the face of much criticism from Angiolini in the 1770s, whose view was that it is vital to preserve for posterity something of the works of masters such as Hilverding (even though there is no evidence that Angiolini or indeed anyone else put this principle into practice).23 Alternatively, perhaps Khevenhüller means ‘Corographie’ in the general sense of ‘system of notation’ without any specific reference to Feuillet, in which case we are to presume that Noverre devised his own system. It is plausible, not to say inevitable, that Noverre did not rely entirely on memory during a career spanning half a century during which he restaged countless ballets. And yet there is no record of any system of notation. It is more likely that ‘Corographie’ refers to a kind of detailed plot synopsis, something akin to ballets d’action performance programmes, the printed scenarios published and sold to spectators before a performance, subsequently circulated widely among critics and dancers, and still to be found in large numbers in libraries all over Europe. Chevrier’s terminology sometimes has the same, very tangible sense to it as Khevenhüller’s. For Chevrier, ‘chorégraphie’ is a distinct feature and real component of the ballet d’action, not simply a vague transfer of meaning with some figurative or otherwise intangible sense. In a review of SaintLéger’s comic ballet Les Savetiers, he comments that the dancer’s ‘study of choreography’ augurs well for his future works: The dancing of Sr Saint-Léger in the comic style is well known, and we have spoken of it several times when his talents graced Sr Joubert’s Ballet in the Hague, but we are assured that he is applying himself very seriously to Choreography [Corégraphie], and that if the study he is making of this art, which has become nowadays the principal part of the spectacle as opposed to the secondary part that it was in the past, furnishes him more success, and encourages the creative genius he is developing, then he can hope in time to be rated one of the most celebrated Choreographers [Corégraphes].24 22 23 24

Jean-Georges Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse, et sur les Ballets (Stuttgart, Lyon: Aimé Delaroche, 1760), p. 233 and generally Chapter 25. See Gasparo Angiolini, Lettere di Gasparo Angiolini a Monsieur Noverre sopra i Balli Pantomimi (Milan: Gio. Battista Bianchi, 1773), p. 62. Chevrier, L’Observateur des Spectacles, Vol. II, p. 185.

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Chevrier wrote this in the year that Saint-Léger became maˆıtre de ballet in Amsterdam after a season with Noverre in Stuttgart.25 Whatever it might mean to ‘study choreography’, it may well have something to do with Noverre. It is inconceivable that Chevrier should mean here that Saint-Léger is studying Feuillet notation; it would be baffling if he meant to say that Feuillet notation had developed from being a peripheral to ‘the principal part’ of the ballet d’action. It makes more sense to interpret his words to mean ‘study of the dramatic art of the ballet d’action’. This in turn explains why the related word ‘corégraphes’ is used here and elsewhere with a marked complimentary sense: if ‘choreography’ is the essential feature of a great art form, then naturally, a ‘choreographer’ is a great artist in a way that a ‘compositeur’ or ‘maˆıtre de ballet’ is not. The general point we take from the terminology of Chevrier, Khevenhüller, and Bachaumont is that drama is essential to the ballet d’action, and by implication that the performance programme constitutes a choreography because it has performative value. This being so, the consequences for our understanding of the ballet d’action are numerous. It means that a written description of the plot, in conjunction with the musical score and the accumulated performance experience of the dancers, was enough to know how to stage a ballet d’action; or in fact how to restage it even in the absence of the original choreographer.

Angiolini and Noverre’s quarrels If the ballet d’action was a dramatic art, the question is, how dramatic? Wordless performance is by nature different in some respects to spoken theatre, and therefore both cannot be ‘dramatic’ in the same sense. This question is the major cause of protracted public debate between Noverre and Angiolini in Milan in the 1770s which provoked the first artistic ‘querelle’ about dance of the early modern period. Before the 1770s, feelings had frequently been expressed about the moral implications of dancing, or the strengths or weaknesses of this or that style of dance or dancer, the merits of one national tradition over another, or the artistic value of dance in one context or another, and these feelings were frequently published and well known, even influential. But a ‘querelle’ was different. It was a conflict of personalities as well as principles centred on a particular issue at a particular time and place which somehow blew up out of all expected 25

For biographical details of Saint-Léger, see Van Aelbrouck, Dictionnaire des Danseurs.


proportion, provoking contributions from amateurs as well as from those with a professional interest, from anonymous critics as well as famous ones with a name and reputation to protect. The medium of ‘querelles’ was usually a mixture of printed pamphlets, longer theoretical texts, gossip, and, in the case of stage arts, the performances themselves. They were a product of a society in which the arts and artistic criticism were in some sense the backbone of the way people lived, and also a society in which reputation or public image was a valuable commodity. Dance did not seem to matter enough to early modern society to provoke a querelle until the 1770s in Milan. What changed perceptions in this decade was doubtless the manifest intention of mime dancers to distance themselves from conventional stage dancers and instead ally themselves to performers of the other dramatic arts, thus availing themselves of the respected aesthetic attributes of spoken theatre or opera and making dance a more sensitive issue. The public altercation between Noverre and Angiolini was provoked partly by their rivalry. In 1774, Noverre left Vienna after seven years as court choreographer and replaced Angiolini for two years at Milan’s most famous theatre, the Regio Ducal. Angiolini left Milan to replace Noverre in Vienna. Before they exchanged positions, Angiolini published his longest piece of writing on the ballet d’action, Lettere a Monsieur Noverre, provoked, he claims, by the performance programmes which Noverre gave him personally the year before when Angiolini visited Vienna.26 The focus of his criticism is, firstly, that Noverre was not the inventor of the ballet d’action as he claimed he was, secondly that he used performance programmes fraudulently to prime the audience with the details of the story before they actually saw it in performance, and lastly that Noverre did not abide by the accepted conventions of drama. All three matters are related, since they all concern the dramaturgy of the ballet d’action: Angiolini claimed that his teacher, Franz Hilverding, was the first to devise a complete dramatic action in dance, that Noverre’s loose application of dramatic conventions made his performances difficult to understand, and that it was for this reason that spectators had to rely on a supporting text, a performance programme. 26

Angiolini refers to these three programmes in the opening sentence of Lettere di Gasparo Angiolini a Monsieur Noverre sopra i Balli Pantomimi. Kathleen K. Hansell thinks that Ange Goudar’s Remarques sur la Musique et la Danse, published in June 1773, also galvanised Angiolini’s thinking. See her chapter ‘Theatrical ballet and Italian opera’ in The History of Italian Opera, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli, 2 vols (University of Chicago Press, 2002), Vol. II, p. 225. Hansell describes in detail the quarrel between Noverre and Angiolini (pp. 225–241).

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Of the three performance programmes Noverre gave to Angiolini, the most aggravating seems to have been Agamemnon Vengé, because it did not have unity of action or time, two of the three dramatic unities (the other being unity of place) defined by Aristotle and widely recognised in the early modern period as essential to esteemed spoken drama. They are arguably more than a matter of convention, since the physical confines of the theatre make it more difficult than it would be, say, in prose narrative for the spectator to make an imaginative leap in time or subject. Agamemnon Vengé, however, disregards both these unities. According to the programme, it is an account in five acts not only of Agamemnon’s death at the hands of his wife Clytemnestra, but also of the vengeance of his son Orestes, who returns from Athens to murder his mother and her lover Aegisthus, and of the subsequent madness of Orestes as he is pursued by the Furies.27 There is the material here for more than one play or ballet d’action. Angiolini regarded these events as constituting three ‘actions’ which are unconvincing when combined into one production.28 It detracts from the momentous nature of each of these actions – regicide, matricide, and the haunting of the Furies – to make none of them the single focus of the performance. This is certainly the implicit principle applied by the three ancient sources to which Noverre obliquely refers in his preface to the programme for Agamemnon Vengé,29 Seneca, Sophocles, and Aeschylus. Seneca and Sophocles only wrote about one action in their plays Agamemnon and Electra, and Aeschylus wrote a trilogy of plays, the Oresteia, in which each action is treated separately. Not only is there no unity of action in Noverre’s Agamemnon Vengé, but there is no unity of time, since ancient sources indicate that some ten years passed between the murder of Agamemnon and Orestes’s vengeance. In terms of the contemporary conventions of drama, therefore, not to mention the ancient ones, it is debatable whether Noverre’s Agamemnon Vengé belongs to the tradition of tragedy. Noverre’s amalgamation of the Oresteia trilogy into one work is unique until Sergei Taneyev premiered his opera Oresteia in 1895,30 and opera as a genre has in any case always been allowed an elastic approach to dramaturgy. Since then, there have been

27

28 29 30

Jean-Georges Noverre, Agamemnon Vengé, in Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre, Maˆıtre des Ballets de la Cour Impériale et Royale (Vienna: Joseph Kurzböck, 1776). See the Appendix for the complete text in French. The work was first performed at the Kärntnerthor Theater in Vienna, 1771. Angiolini, Lettere a Monsieur Noverre, pp. 29–32. See p. 3 of Noverre’s programme for Agamemnon Vengé, in Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre. Marinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, 17 October 1895.


many seminal interpretations of the trilogy, including Martha Graham’s dance play Clytemnestra.31 Noverre anticipated criticism in the performance programme he published for Agamemnon Vengé. He justifies his unconventional dramaturgy on the grounds that ‘a ballet is not a play [un drame], and that the ballet d’action does not have the resources to stage many essential features of spoken drama such as choice words, beautiful diction, sententia, description, and reported action.32 He argues that Aristotle’s rules are too ‘narrow’ for the ballet d’action, and that until someone writes an ‘art poétique’ for the genre, choreographers should be free to experiment.33 There is a good deal in this preface which is problematic, not least because many contemporaries would assume that a poetics of dance did, in fact, exist, and that Noverre had written it, the Lettres sur la Danse. Noverre does not state explicitly in the Lettres that he is writing a ‘poetics’ of dance, but he does intimate that he was provoked into writing because he thought his subject should not be left to non-performers, such as Cahusac, who did, in fact, assert he was writing a ‘a sort of poetics of the art’.34 The preface to Agamemnon Vengé is problematic for other reasons. Most notably, Noverre’s bold statement that ‘a ballet is not a play’ contradicts the many analogies in his Lettres between the ballet d’action and spoken drama.35 He did not radically change his principles in the intervening years, and throughout his career his work retains dramatic qualities which we discuss on numerous occasions elsewhere in this book. Noverre often seems to make emphatic statements which are not strictly accurate, but which nevertheless make a basic point. In the case of the preface to Agamemnon Vengé, his point seems to be that the ballet d’action is

31

32 33 34

35

For a discussion of twentieth-century stage interpretations of the Oresteia myth, including Martha Graham’s, see John Chioles, ‘The “Oresteia” and the avant-garde: three decades of discourse’, in Performing Arts Journal, 15.3, Classics Contemporary (September 1993), pp. 1–28. Noverre, pp. 6–7 of the preface to Agamemnon Vengé, in Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre. Noverre, p. 16 of the preface to Agamemnon Vengé, in Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre. Louis de Cahusac, La Danse Ancienne et Moderne, ou Traité Historique de la Danse, 3 vols (The Hague: Jean Neaulme, 1754), avant-propos, p. 21. Noverre intimates that Cahusac is one motive for his own writing in Lettres sur la Danse (1760), p. 381. For Noverre’s dramatic understanding of the ballet d’action, see for example his Lettres sur la Danse (1760), pp. 19–20: ‘Since ballets are theatre [des représentations], they should consist of all the components of a play [du drame] [. . .] In general, it is essential to submit oneself to certain rules. Every ballet should have an exposition of the action, a climax, and a dénouement [exposition, nœud, dénouement].’ For most contemporary readers, these last three terms would have been associated with the Aristotelian principle of unity of action.

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not exclusively or purely a dramatic art. Later in his preface, he describes at some length his five-act Agamemnon Vengé as a series of five paintings, composed as a painter might represent the Oresteia myth.36 Noverre’s answer, therefore, to the question of the nature of the ballet d’action is that it is a hybrid of drama and painting. Noverre’s response to Angiolini’s Lettere came quickly. On New Year’s Day 1774, when Noverre knew he was to replace Angiolini in Milan, he circulated in Vienna and Milan the programme to one of his most famous works, Les Horaces, with a preface responding to his rival’s criticism of Agamemnon Vengé. It is a brusque and even disrespectful preface contesting Angiolini’s views and professional acumen. He accuses Angiolini of ‘leaning’ on Aristotle for support, and claims that theatrical rules are like any other principles: ‘One must know them, follow them, leave them behind, return to them. Composition is determined by taste, genius, the needs of the time, the necessity of the moment.’37 The issue of the relation of the ballet d’action to drama and painting resurfaces in most of the subsequent pamphlets, letters, and long treatises published in the course of this querelle during the subsequent decade. Only weeks after Noverre published his preface to Les Horaces, an anonymous pamphlet echoed in its title one of Noverre’s high-handed phrases, ‘Angiolini and his little oracles’: Lettre d’un des Petits Oracles de M. Angiolini au Grand Noverre.38 The author is critical of the lack of unities in Agamemnon Vengé, not on principle, but because Noverre over-stepped the bounds of acceptability. ‘Great playwrights’ can include ‘irregular’ elements in their works, but unity of time and action cannot be diluted too much without losing overall verisimilitude.39 Like many contemporaries, however, he agrees with Noverre that there are analogies between the ballet d’action and painting. To demonstrate, he describes how the sacrificial scene from Racine’s Iphigénie could be staged in a painterly fashion: Calchas would stand with his sword ready to strike his victim; Iphigenia would be dragged to the altar, bedraggled and half dead, by the soldiers; Agamemnon would veil his eyes; Achilles would threaten Calchas and the Greeks, Clytemnestra would 36 37 38 39

Noverre, p. 17ff. of the preface to Agamemnon Vengé, in Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre. Noverre, pp. 6–7 of the preface to Les Horaces, in Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre. Noverre uses this phrase in his preface to Les Horaces, p. 4, in Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre. Anon., Lettre d’un des Petits Oracles de M. Angiolini au Grand Noverre (Milan: Bianchi, 25 January 1774), p. 6.


kiss the knees of Achilles, and the army’s loyalty would be divided between the hero and the priest.40

Although critical of Noverre, the author nonetheless accepts that the ballet d’action is not only a dramatic art, and that choreographers can be permitted a certain licence to balance painterly techniques with dramatic conventions. Three months later, a second anonymous pamphlet takes a similarly critical yet conciliatory approach to the controversy. In the estimation of its author, Angiolini has demonstrated that the ballet d’action can conform to Aristotle’s three unities, and Noverre has shown that it can do without them, but neither has argued convincingly that it should be composed exclusively one way or the other.41 Angiolini’s principles are too inflexible, and Noverre’s stage practice is too confused.42 The following summer, in 1775, Angiolini published his second major contribution to the querelle, Riflessioni di Gasparo Angiolini sopra l’Uso dei Programmi nei Balli Pantomimi.43 As the title suggests, the main subject at issue is Noverre’s use of performance programmes, but the implication of Angiolini’s criticism is a dramaturgical one: Noverre is incapable of staging a complete dramatic action in mime and dance, because spectators need a printed plot synopsis to understand the stage action. He devotes several pages to what he regards as Noverre’s confusion between ‘narrative’ and ‘representational’ arts, elaborating on a forthright footnote in his previous publication, the Lettere: ‘Poetry is narration, and the ballet d’action [ballo pantomimo] never has been, is not now, and never shall be narration. It is representational, that is to say it is dramatic, it is a staged action.’44 On this basis, he reiterates his contention that the regular rules of drama apply to the ballet d’action. He agrees that it can be painterly, but regards Noverre’s use of the analogy as fundamentally flawed by the fact that painters do not publish a plot synopsis for viewers.45 Every good querelle causes intellectual ‘fall-out’: more scholarly contributions from intellectuals who abstract themselves from the conflict of 40 41

42 43 44

45

Anon., Lettre d’un des Petits Oracles de M. Angiolini au Grand Noverre, p. 17. Anon., Riflessioni sopra la Pretesa Risposta del Sig. Noverre all’Angiolini, p. 55, in Discussioni sulla Danza Pantomima. Vedi Lettere sulla Danza di Mr Noverre e del Sig. Angiolini (Milan: n.p., 1774). Anon., Riflessioni sopra la Pretesa Risposta del Sig. Noverre all’Angiolini, p. 67. Angiolini, Riflessioni di Gasparo Angiolini sopra l’Uso dei Programmi nei Balli Pantomimi (London [sic]: n.p., 1775). The footnote is in Angiolini, Lettere di Gasparo Angiolini a Monsieur Noverre, p. 33n; the extended argument is in Riflessioni di Gasparo Angiolini sopra l’Uso dei Programmi nei Balli Pantomimi, pp. 11–13. Angiolini, Riflessioni di Gasparo Angiolini sopra l’Uso dei Programmi nei Balli Pantomimi, p. 13.

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personalities and practices on the front line of the dispute and who are more concerned with a systematic, conceptual investigation of the fundamental issues. Matteo Borsa, a respected medical doctor, mathematician, philosopher, and literary and operatic critic is one such intellectual. He extends many of Angiolini’s arguments, but he so criticises the very concept of a mute language of signs that he implicitly undermines the analogies his compatriot made between spoken drama and the ballet d’action. Words can express so much which is beyond expression in gesture that the two means of communication seem to Borsa to be beyond analogy.46 By implication, a strict adherence to the dramatic conventions of spoken drama is untenable. In this sense, his views on the shortcomings of the ballet d’action are similar to Noverre’s. He is nevertheless very critical of the recourse to painterly analogies which Noverre and many others made, partly because the two arts are fundamentally different in that one depicts a single moment in time while the other has duration, and partly because choreographers were not consistent in the way they applied the painterly principle. If they were, then they would resign themselves to their incapacity to represent what is not physically visible on stage. This is a ‘fundamental law’ in painting which ought to apply equally to the ballet d’action.47 He draws an example probably from Sébastien Gallet’s version of Noverre’s interpretation of the Dido and Aeneas story, contending that the final scene in which Dido decides to kill herself when she sees Aeneas’s fleet of ships sailing away is impossible unless the fleet is visible to the spectator and unless Dido holds a dagger in her hand.48 Staging of this kind is conceivable, but not in every case when off-stage action or an idea in the mind of a protagonist needs to be expressed. The ‘sequence of paintings’ would be impossibly fast,49 cinematographic as we might say. Borsa’s general conclusion about the ballet d’action is that it has pretensions beyond its means. Perhaps the most realistic assessment of the dramaturgical nature of the ballet d’action comes in the summary of the querelle between Angiolini

46

47 48

49

Matteo Borsa, ‘Saggio filosofico sui balli pantomimi’, Lettera Seconda, in Opuscoli Scelti sulle Scienze e sulle Arti, Tratti dagli Atti delle Accademie, e dalle Altre Collezioni Filosofiche e Letterarie, dalle Opere piu Recenti Inglesi, Tedesche, Francesi, Latine, e Italiane, e da Manoscritti Originali, e Inediti (Milan: Giuseppe Marelli, 1782–83), Vol. V, Part IV, pp. 311–321 (319). Borsa, ‘Saggio filosofico sui balli pantomimi’, Lettera Seconda, p. 315. Borsa, ‘Saggio filosofico sui balli pantomimi’, Lettera Seconda, p. 313. In the mostly identical 1800 edition of this text, p. 112, just before the example of Dido, Borsa refers to Sébastien Gallet, a pupil of Noverre’s who would have been able to restage Noverre’s version of the Dido myth, Les Amours d’Enée et Didon, ou Didon Abandonée (first performed between 1768 and 1773 in Vienna). Borsa, ‘Saggio filosofico sui balli pantomimi’, Lettera Seconda, p. 311.


and Noverre published anonymously. In his view, the ballet d’action cannot itself stage a complete dramatic action, but it can use an existing complete dramatic action to ‘reform modern theatre by providing a plot, a course of action and a structure to [mime dance] performance’.50 The reform replaces Aristotle’s unities with what one critic calls ‘dependencies’.51 In the case of Noverre’s Agamemnon Vengé, the events are interdependent without being unified in an Aristotelian sense. Although choreographers need not feel constrained by the conventions of drama, therefore, there needs to be some kind of dramatic rigour in their works.

From painterly to graphic ‘Choreography’ means drama for many contemporary commentators, but most of them did not conclude from this that scrupulous application of Aristotelian conventions was necessary. Angiolini’s stricter views may reflect his own particular style of performance. In contrast, Noverre made his name in the 1750s with his painterly as well as his dramatic skills. The visual qualities of his Fêtes Chinoises performed in Paris in 1755 were commented upon by many, including the song-writer, playwright, and diarist Charles Collé, who remarked that he had always disliked stage dance until he was positively overwhelmed by Noverre’s ‘varied and novel tableaux’. Noverre is ‘new and rich, varied and a painter’.52 The visual qualities of Les Fêtes Chinoises were such that a contemporary silk-dyer advised apprentices in the trade to model their compositions on Noverre’s work.53 The same year, the Affiches de Paris remarked that Noverre’s Réjouissances Flamandes was ‘an excellent painting by Teniers, but a moving painting [tableau mouvant] in which all the parts moved one after another, developing by degrees’.54 Noverre’s set designer, and future painter to Louis XV, François Boucher doubtless deserved some 50

51 52

53 54

Anon., Memorie per Servire alla Storia degli Spettacoli del Teatro di Milano degli Anni 1774, e 1775. Ossia Lettere Controcritiche del Marchese N . . . al Cavaliere K . . . (Brescia: Fratelli Pasini, 1776), p. 41. As we point out in Chapter 4, note 43, this anonymous text may be by a young Giuseppe Carpani, before he became a well-known Milanese librettist, musical critic, and biographer of Haydn and Rossini. Anon., Memorie per Servire alla Storia degli Spettacoli del Teatro di Milan, p. 34. Charles Collé, Journal et Mémoires de Charles Collé sur les Hommes de Lettres, les Ouvrages ´ enements les plus Mémorables du Règne de Louis XV (1748–1772), 3 vols Dramatiques et les Ev´ (Paris: Firmin Dido, 1868; Geneva: Slatkine, 1967), Vol. I, p. 428. ´ Joubert de l’Hiberderie, Le Dessinateur pour les Fabriques d’Etoffes d’Or, d’Argent et de Soie (Naples: 1733; Paris: S. Jorry, 1765). The reference is added to the later French edition, p. 112. Affiches de Paris, 20 August 1755, p. 136.

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of the credit for Noverre’s visual effects in the 1750s.55 But later productions were praised in the same way. Apelles et Campaspe, Noverre’s first production as choreographer at the Paris Opéra in October 1776, was apparently remarkable for its dynamic painterly qualities, leading the reviewer in the Mercure de France to write one of the longest, most sustained comparisons between the ballet d’action and painting, remarking particularly on the dynamic qualities of Noverre’s sequential tableaux, and concluding that ‘the ballet d’action [danse pantomime] is the closest art to painting’.56 Even if the subject of this myth, in which the painter falls in love with his model, lends itself to painterly staging more than most, more comments of the same kind are elicited by subsequent Paris productions. The same season, Melchior Grimm noted similar cinematic painterly qualities in Noverre’s Médée et Jason: The different scenes composing the performance follow swiftly on from each other with great speed; every single moment in the action displays the richest of spectacles each of which would translate onto the canvas of a grand and magnificent painting.57

Observations such as these on the cinematic qualities of Noverre’s style are sufficiently common to call into question Borsa’s scepticism, which we mention above, concerning the painterly qualities of the ballet d’action. Noverre is by no means the only choreographer apparently to have developed the painterly potential of the ballet d’action. The observation is so common, in fact, that Ange Goudar parodied it by reversing the analogy, referring to the painter Raphael as ‘the foremost ballet master of painterly expression’.58 Perhaps Angiolini did not regard painterliness as essential, because his style did not require it to the same degree. He had a notable tendency towards condensing a plot so much that there may not have been as much time for painterly tableaux as there was in works by others. He argued on numerous occasions that existing myths and stories need to be condensed a great 55

56 57 58

There is some uncertainly on this subject. In the Annonces, Affiches et Avis Divers, 29 (17 July 1754), p. 116, Boucher is said to be responsible for scenery and costumes. In Jean-Auguste Jullien’s Histoire du Théaˆ tre de l’Opéra Comique, 2 vols (Paris: Lacombe, 1769), the entry for Les Fêtes Chinoises specifies that the set was designed by Guillet et Moulin ‘peintres de l’Académie Royale de musique’. Mercure de France, October 1776, p. 170. Friedrich Melchior Grimm, Correspondance, Littéraire, Philosophique et Critique, 16 vols (1753–82; Paris: Garnier Frères, 1877–82), Vol. 12, p. 368. Sara Goudar [Ange Goudar], Remarques sur la Musique Italienne (Venice: C. Palese, 1773), p. 58.


deal.59 Hence, his highly successful version of Voltaire’s Sémiramis was only twenty minutes long.60 Recourse to painterly or in some sense visual staging is arguably inevitable in a mute genre such as the ballet d’action, but there is a fine line in some spectators’ minds between pleasing painterly qualities and shockingly graphic effects. Many contemporaries would have agreed with Borsa’s example from the Dido myth that the spectator cannot properly understand her suicide without seeing her dagger and Aeneas’s fleet leaving. But they also found sickening the graphic portrayal by some choreographers of this kind of moment. Their response may have stemmed in part from the contemporary convention in tragedy that, for reasons of decorum and dramatic plausibility, the most vivid actions should be reported in a ‘récit’ rather than being staged. A récit in mime, however, is impossible, as most choreographers agreed. It is impossible without words to communicate offstage action with the same precision as it can be recounted in a récit. The only solution in the ballet d’action is to translate it into real action. Even spectators who knew well the repertoire of mythological and tragic themes adapted for the ballet d’action were sometimes surprised by the results. The assumptions they thought could safely be made about tragic drama were upset, and they reacted to graphic visual techniques with a mixture of shock and hilarity. Such is Pietro Verri’s account of the audience reaction to Noverre’s Agamemnon Vengé: The extreme horror of four people slaughtered on stage and a son who slaughters his mother appalled the parterre so much that out of disgust it felt the scene to be ridiculous. Perhaps we Italians are too sensitive, or rather the English are too insensitive; we want these things to be suggested, not inflicted on us. This kind of mustard or horseradish is too strong for our palates.61

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See for example his comments in the performance programmes for his version of Voltaire’s Alzira, performed at the Scala in Milan in 1782 during the opera Olimpiade (performance programme published Milan: Gio. Battista Bianchi, 1782), and for his version of Metastasio’s La Sagrificia de Dircea, performed at the Regio-Ducal Theatre in Milan in 1773 during the opera L’Incognita Perseguitata (performance programme published Milan: Gio. Battista Bianchi, 1773). See Angiolini’s preface (possibly written or co-written with Ranieri de’ Calzabigi), Dissertation sur les Ballets-Pantomimes des Anciens pour Servir de Programme au Ballet-Pantomime Tragique de Sémiramis, reproduced in Calzabigi’s complete works, Scritti Teatrali e Letterari, ed. Anna Laura Bellina, 2 vols (Rome: Salerno, 1994), Vol. I, p. 164. Pietro and Alessandro Verri, Carteggio di Pietro e di Alessandro Verri, dal 1766 al 1797, ed. Francesco Novati, Emanuele Greppi, Alessandro Giulini, and Giovanni Seregni, 12 vols (Milan: L.F. Cogliati, 1910–), Vol. VII, p. 183 (7 January 1775).

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The ballet d’action was hardly an English phenomenon at all at Verri’s time of writing, but the growing success of productions of Shakespeare in France and Italy may explain his perception that the ballet d’action derived from an unsavoury English tradition of performing action which could more tastefully be recounted. For this Milanese audience, Agamemnon Vengé is gratuitously graphic, not painterly as Noverre claimed in his performance programme. The same audience reaction is reported when Le Picq restaged Noverre’s Médée et Jason in Milan in 1773: they laughed at the most poignant but graphic moment of the performance when Medea murders her sons.62 As one of Noverre’s foremost pupils, it is perhaps not surprising that Le Picq gained the same reputation in Italy as Noverre did, such that Ange Goudar was positively relieved to find in one of Le Picq’s Neapolitan productions that he did not have to suffer any scenes of violence or death.63 Even choreographers who were not Noverre’s pupils were associated with him if they had a similar approach to staging. The reviewer in the La Donna Galante ed Erudita warned its presumably female readership that Muzzarelli’s L’Impostore Punito performed at the San Samuele Theatre in Venice was not for the faint-hearted: How on earth can dance, whose sole object should be entertainment, represent death, murder etc. etc? The Sharif of Mecca is killed by his own son. Mohamed then poisons the son, whose death is wonderfully convulsive, and then Mohamed himself is killed by an arrow. Noverre, Noverre! You have greatly improved stage dance, but you have murdered tragedy!64

If Noverre deserved the blame for killing off tragedy, it was not because he taught Muzzarelli. It must be because his graphic style was imitated, even by mime dancers of the Italian school who were not his pupils, such as Muzzarelli. For many, Noverre was the model of graphic, violent staging. Even after his death his name was invoked in this respect. In the course of trying to convince the director of the French Imperial theatres to perform Méléagre, Pierre Gardel defended the ‘excessively sombre and tragic’ theme 62

63 64

Anon., Memorie per Servire alla Storia degli Spettacoli del Teatro di Milan, p. 82. Although the choreographer is not specified, Le Picq is known to have restaged Médée that year in Milan. See the ‘Catalogo dei balletti di Noverre’ in Elena Randi, Pittura Vivente. J.-G. Noverre e il Balletto d’Action (Venice: Corbo e Fiore, 1989), pp. 150–161 (153). Sara Goudar [Ange Goudar], Œuvres Mêlées de Madame Sara Goudar, Angloise, 2 vols (Amsterdam: n.p., 1777), Vol. I, p. 7. La Donna Galante ed Erudita, Giornale Dedicato al Bel Sesso (Venice, 1786–87), no. 9, pp. 279–280.


of his ballet by pointing out that Noverre’s most successful works, Médée et Jason, Les Horaces, and Les Dana¨ıdes, were far more harrowing.65 Some Parisian spectators felt just as strongly as Milanese spectators did that Noverre’s visual aesthetics went too far. After two years in Milan, Noverre opened his first season at the Paris Opéra in 1776 with the eminently painterly work Apelles et Campaspe, and followed it only weeks later with an eminently graphic work, Les Horaces et les Curiaces, adapted from Corneille’s play. A young Antoine de Piis, destined to become a successful writer of vaudeville theatre, wrote a typically satirical song highlighting the simultaneously shocking and ridiculous impression left on him by Les Horaces. The key pun on French ‘cul’ means that it is untranslatable. Chanson Air: Palsambleu Mr le Curé. Tout le monde est convaincu Que le ballet des Horaces En même temps est le Ballet des Cu . . . Le Ballet des Curiaces. Quel spectateur n’est point e´ mu En voyant l’ainé des Horaces Prendre courage et pourfendre trois Cu . . . Pourfendre trois Curiaces. Ah, juste ciel! tout est perdu Dit Camille au fier Horace: Je suis ta sœur et tu perces mon Cu . . . Tu perces mon Curiace! A l’instant son frère bourru, Vous la poignarde avec grâce. Camille tombe et montre encor son Cu . . . Montre encor son Curiace. Vous, a` qui Noverre est connu, Jettez des fleurs sur ses traces. A l’Opéra j’aime a` claquer les Cu . . . A claquer les Curiaces.66 65

66

Letter from Pierre Gardel to Comte de Rémusat, Director of the Imperial theatres under Napoleon, concerning the misgivings expressed by the director of the Paris Opéra, Louis-Benoˆıt Picard. See Paris, Archives nationales de France, AJ13 1023. Gardel’s Méléagre remains unperformed. The poem appears anonymously in Bachaumont, Mémoires Secrets, Vol. X, p. 54 (22 February 1777). The manuscript version is signed: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, N.A.F. 3043, f. 102–103.

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The ‘ballet des Cu . . . ’, or ‘ballet of the arses’, is a graphic way of mocking a graphic stage production. Piis puns on the first syllable of the name of one of the warring families, the Curiatti, and the French for ‘arse’, ‘cul’. Propriety and theatrical convention would require that certain actions simply should not be seen. Piis clearly thinks that to do otherwise is as disgraceful as the hero of the tragedy dropping his trousers on stage. The second stanza suggests that one such moment is the heroic victory of the lone Horatius over the three Curiatti brothers. In Corneille’s play, it is recounted rather than shown (Act IV, scene 2), while in Noverre’s version of the story, the battle is staged (Act II). The third and fourth stanzas refer to the imprecation scene in which Horatius tells his sister, Camille, that he has killed her lover in battle, one of the Curiatti brothers, causing Camille to curse him and Rome, provoking Horatius to kill her. Piis ridicules Noverre’s staging of this scene, but it is clear from other contemporary accounts that it was powerful. Noverre found a striking visual way for Horatius to tell his sister that he has killed her lover: he pulls from inside his breastplate the now bloodied scarf that Camille gave her lover before he departed for battle. He holds it forth proudly as his hard-earned war trophy, but Camille snatches it away from him. La Harpe considered this a gratuitous cruelty, as much for Camille as for the spectator.67 The Journal de Paris thought, on the contrary, that the terror inspired by the use of this visual device was appropriate to an adaptation from Corneille. The Journal de Paris is arguably right. La Harpe did not seem to take into account that Corneille’s Horatius also seems to take gratuitous pleasure in telling his sister the news, elaborating an extended metonym on the theme of his victorious arm which one could imagine could be underscored physically by the actor flaunting his arm and his sword before Camille (opening of Act IV, scene 5). Inhumanity is arguably part of his heroic identity, and the bloodied scarf in Noverre’s adaptation is an attempt to translate a verbal effect into a visual one. In principle, therefore, there are good reasons for this visual device. One can imagine that the confrontation between the brother and sister would lend itself to painterly principles of balanced composition and body language, as would the striking burst of red when the bloodied scarf is suddenly revealed and held aloft. For Piis, however, it is too explicit, and in the context of dramatic conventions lends itself to ridicule. Like the Milanese, he finds the final effect ridiculous. 67

Jean-François de La Harpe, Correspondance Littéraire, Adressée a` S. A. I. Mgr le Grand Duc, Aujourd’hui Empereur de Russie, et a` M. le Comte André Schowalow, [. . .] depuis 1774 jusqu’à 1789 (Paris: Migneret, Imprimeur, 1801–07), Letter LXII, Vol. I, p. 404.


The fourth stanza of Piis’s poem ridicules the high point of the drama, when Camille falls dead after her brother has killed her. Noverre may have taken pains to choreograph her fall and her final position on stage in particularly striking, painterly ways, but Piis seems only to notice that once again, a female dancer has revealed too much beneath her costume. Piis, like La Harpe and Verri, was plainly unconvinced by Noverre’s painterly principles of staging drama. His tendency towards violent realism seemed to them tasteless and aesthetically crude. When we balance their criticism, however, with the more favourable reaction of others such as Collé, Grimm, and the Mercure de France reviewer, the debate appears quite evenly balanced and begins to resemble the controversy provoked by Baroque theatre in the seventeenth century. Corneille, André Mareschal, and others argued for creative freedom and the importance of theatre as a visual experience, while D’Aubignac argued for closer application of Aristotelian rules and a sense of visual decorum.68 Even if graphic Baroque theatre seemed in many ways to have lost the struggle against regularising Classicism, the success of the ballet d’action is an example of how buoyant this kind of theatre was. Visual aesthetics may have sunk below the surface of the most esteemed drama during the French Classical period, but it floated into view again with the advent of the ballet d’action in the eighteenth century. Despite criticism from some quarters, there was also important theoretical support from the writings of Dubos, for example, who argues at length in his seminal Réflexions sur la Poésie et sur la Peinture that tragedy affects the spectator in fundamentally visual ways, and that ‘the playwright presents us with a sequence, as it were, of fifty paintings which lead us by degrees to that heightened emotion, causing us to shed tears’.69 Diderot, too, regarded painting as essential to theatre, essential to the actor’s art: ‘an actor who knows nothing of painting is a poor actor; a painter who knows nothing of physiognomy is a poor painter’.70 The principle both he and Dubos applied is effectively an extension of the sister arts theory: not only are painting and poetry related, but so are all the arts; they can all benefit from cross-fertilisation. For all the fervour with which Noverre often claims uniqueness for his art, he realised that the ballet d’action is a hybrid art

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For an overview of these debates, see Giovanni Dotoli, Temps de Préfaces: Le Débat Théaˆ tral en France de Hardy a` la Querelle du Cid (Paris: Klincksieck, 1997). Jean-Baptiste Dubos, Réflexions sur la Poésie et sur la Peinture, 3 vols (1719; Geneva: Slatkine, 1993), Vol. I, p. 424. Denis Diderot, Essai sur la Peinture, in Œuvres Complètes, 33 vols (Paris: Hermann, 1975–), Vol. XIV, p. 371.

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that lends itself to cross-fertilisation: ‘History, myth, poetry, and painting all open their arms to the ballet d’action.’71 Given that stage dance in the early modern period had never really been seen as part of the family of imitative, high arts, the close relationship of the ballet d’action to painting and to drama amounted to a strong claim to aesthetic legitimacy. In other words, the aesthetics of the ballet d’action were supported by yet more hybridisation: not only was dance combined with mime, but it was combined with various features of other arts. This sort of free hybridisation was bound to cause controversy. It has done so even in modern twentieth- and twenty-first-century dance, despite the fact that the concept seems to have been cemented by such luminaries as Martha Graham or Kurt Jooss, William Forsyth, and many others. These forms of theatre, along with the ballet d’action, cannot be understood exclusively as stage ‘dance’. Their nature cannot be reduced to a system of notation, Beauchamp–Feuillet ‘chorégraphie’ for the eighteenth century, Benesh or Labanotation for the twentieth century. Notation of whatever kind, however, is a good metaphor to convey the importance of the visual and dramatic components of all these hybrid stage arts. For the ballet d’action, ‘chorégraphie’ is painterly drama. 71

Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse (1760), pp. 3–4.

8

The admirable consent between music and action (co-author ruth d. eldredge)

When one reads surviving musical scores composed to accompany ballets d’action, one can understand what the writer, poet, and composer Christian Friedrich Schubart meant when he commented on Toeschi’s music for Bouqueton’s ballets: ‘one can see the dancers in his scores’.1 His remark was meant to be flattering, and it echoes the principles of choreographers such as Noverre and Angiolini that music and action ought to be intimately linked. His remark is unusual, however, since his contemporaries did not ponder the nature of the musical accompaniment as much as one might think, or as much as he seems to have done. Innovative and highly effective music of the ballet d’action did not provoke the same level of debate as other aspects of performance, or as much as other contemporary dramatic music such as Gluck’s. Gluck composed for Angiolini, but his music did not stir much critical reaction until he recycled some of it to form part of his reform operas. The relative silence of contemporary critics may be a result of their experience of the music, listening to the stage performance when it blended with the action. Schubart, on the other hand, seems to have seen the music on paper (‘in seinen Partituren’) when its particular qualities would have been more salient. The lack of controversy provoked by the music is arguably a sign of its success: like modern film music, its success depends on not drawing attention to itself, on supporting and highlighting the action in subtle ways without taking centre stage as concert music would. It is difficult but not impossible for the modern critic to view the music of the ballet d’action from Schubart’s perspective, on paper. Eighteenthcentury scores are rare, and scores annotated with stage action are rarer still, but the extant evidence does nevertheless demonstrate the importance of the intimate collaboration between choreographer and composer. It confirms the overriding dramatic principles we have so far discussed in this book. It is in some ways surprising that modern critics have not shown more interest in the annotated scores for ballets d’action. Perhaps, as Marian Smith has suggested, it is because the annotations largely concern mime rather than 1

Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst (1806; Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1969), p. 139.

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dance scenes, and dance historians have for the most part been interested in music specifically for dance.2 Given that these scores are the ‘hardest’ evidence we have of an ephemeral art, and given that they shed light on a central aesthetic characteristic, the union of music and movement to express a dramatic action, they deserve attention. In this chapter, we shall discuss one of the most interesting: the score for Noverre’s Médée et Jason used by Gaëtan Vestris for his production in 1770 in Paris. This is a particularly interesting example, not only because it concerns one of the most famous ballets d’action from the perspective both of Noverre’s contemporaries and modern scholars, but also because it was printed.3 It is thus indicative of the popularity of the ballet d’action in general, or else the success of this performance in particular, the first ballet d’action at the Paris Opéra. Perhaps it was intended as a commemorative score, or perhaps it was intended for some kind of performative use. It is hard to identify its intended purpose, but there are analogous and suggestive cases elsewhere. Angiolini’s engraved scores were available to the public.4 So were those composed for the most famous husband and wife ballet d’action ` a piano reduction performers, Salvatore Vigano` and Maria Medina Vigano: of the music to their pas de deux from Muzzarelli’s Diana und Endymion was a favourite of every café orchestra in Vienna.5 In itself, it was not unprecedented for published scores to include annotated stage directions. What makes the Jason et Médée score almost unique is that the annotations do not only concern technical stage directions (entrances, exits, etc.), but dramatic, emotional matters of affect.6 Whoever was responsible for the publication of the Médée et Jason score, presumably La Borde and perhaps also Vestris, apparently thought a faithful

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Marian Smith, ‘The earliest “Giselle”? A preliminary report on a St Petersburg manuscript’, in Dance Chronicle, 23.1 (2000), pp. 29–48 (47). Published in Jean-Benjamin de La Borde, Ismène et Isménias (Paris: Lemarchand, 1770), Act II, scene 5 (see Appendix for a reproduction of the score). Angiolini’s music for Didone was advertised by the Venetian printers ‘Antonio Zatta e figli’ on the back page of the Giornale delle Belle Arti e della Incisione Antiquaria, Musica, et Poesia (Rome, per il Casaletti), no. 46 (13 November 1784), p. 367. See Rossana Dalmonte, ‘“Une e´ criture corporelle”: la musica e la danza’, in Il Sogno del Coreodramma. Salvatore Viganò, Poeta Muto, ed. Ezio Raimondi (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1984), pp. 145–240 (155–156). The only precedent is Rousseau’s published score for Le Devin du Village (1753). See Jacqueline Waeber, ‘Décor et pantomimes du Devin du Village: une e´ tude didascalique’, in Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les Arts Visuels, Annales de la Société Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Actes du Colloque de Neuchâtel, 20–22 September 2001, ed. Frédéric S. Eigeldinger (Geneva: Droz, 2001), pp. 131–166 (148). She regards the annotation ‘affliction de Colette’ in scene 1 as an unprecedented case in Académie Royale de Musique scores of an annotation for an actor’s emotional affect.

The admirable consent between music and action

representation on paper of the performance necessarily had to include annotations denoting these matters. This score thus reflects the importance of meaningful movement in the ballet d’action, the importance of the somatic expression of emotions, passions, and ideas. Vestris’s Médée et Jason is all the more interesting because the manuscript rehearsal score is extant.7 It is almost identical musically with the printed version, but the annotations are slightly less expansive. Along with other extant annotated rehearsal scores, it is a clue to one of the most intriguing aspects of the ballet d’action, which is the unprecedented and widespread phenomenon of restaging of ballets d’action all over Europe without the participation (or necessarily the assent) of the original choreographer, composer, or author of the scenario. In the right hands (such as those of an experienced performer or choreographer), a copy of the plot synopsis and an annotated rehearsal score would have been sufficient to mount a close imitation of the original production. A case in point would be Vestris himself, since it was probably a rehearsal score which he brought back from Stuttgart (where he had performed in Noverre’s 1763 production) which allowed him to restage Médée et Jason the same year at Choisy, and subsequently in Paris in 1770. The use of rehearsal scores for the purpose of restaging ballets d’action is one of the important conclusions reached by David Day, who has written the only extended study on the subject. One example he gives is La Fête de Mathurine, choreographed by Pierre Gardel and set to music by Rodolphe Kreutzer. Day points out that the copies of the rehearsal scores now in Bordeaux and Brussels are identical to the one in Paris, and that they even include the names of the dancers who performed the work in Paris. He concludes that copies were made in Paris and sent to different venues where the work was restaged.8 Although this work was first performed more than half a century after the premiere of Médée et Jason, the rehearsal score or ‘violon répétiteur’ is annotated in a very similar way, suggesting that the use in restaging productions might also have been similar. There is a ring of truth, therefore, to Noverre’s complaint (or boast?) that his former pupils used copies of his scores to mount independent productions of their own in a variety of countries.9 Perhaps he meant specifically copies of annotated 7 8

9

Anon. [Jean-Benjamin de La Borde], Médée et Jason, Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Opéra de Paris, ms A.236.a. David Day, The Annotated Violon Répétiteur and Early Romantic Ballet at the Théaˆ tre Royal de Bruxelles (1815–1830), doctoral dissertation, Department of Music, New York University, January 2008, p. 163. Jean-Georges Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse, et sur les Ballets (Stuttgart and Lyons: Delaroche, 1760), p. 45.

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scores. Perhaps this is the implication of reports by contemporary journals that close imitations of Hilverding’s works were performed in Italy where Hilverding never worked himself.10 Perhaps annotated scores were used in this case, too. Our conclusions in this chapter concerning Vestris’s score are broadly similar to those reached by Day. He highlights the accuracy of the annotations, placed exactly over relevant bars and phrases of the music, and explains that manuscript ‘violons répétiteurs’ scores were intended for the purposes of rehearsals (as the name suggests), and for the violin conductor during performances.11 The amount of over-writing, the number of cuts and additions, different hands and different inks suggests that these manuscripts were indeed an integral part of rehearsals, and that they were not designed for musicians, other than the first violinist, to actually play from. They are better understood as blueprints for collaboration between musicians and stage performers.

Synchronising music and movement Although contemporary critics devoted less energy to the music of the ballet d’action than we might have anticipated, there is one issue which exercised many minds: the synchronisation of music and action. In dance, as opposed to mime, this is a relatively uncontroversial matter, since generic musical rhythms and standardised dance steps ordered the dancers’ movements in inevitable ways. In the case of mime, however, there is no necessary or predetermined formal relationship with the music. Neither was there much of a precedent for keeping the formal relationship going for so long, for the duration of an entire performance. Annotated scores reveal something of how this was achieved in the ballet d’action. Both Noverre and Angiolini commented on the importance of close synchronisation of movement and music. Angiolini was particularly proud of the rigorous musical timing of the action in his Petersburg production of Telemaco in 1770, of which he writes that ‘every step, every gesture, every 10

11

See for example the Journal Encyclopédique, 15 September 1757, p. 129, referring to Hilverding’s works: ‘One can say that his are almost the only ballets performed in all of Germany and Italy. We know for certain that the most renowned ballet masters in all kinds of theatres adopt his ideas, and even his music with slight changes, and that they do not blush to perform them in their entirety as if they had composed them themselves.’ No annotated rehearsal scores for Hilverding’s works, however, have yet come to light. Day, The Annotated Violon Répétiteur, pp. 7 and 165–166.


turn of the eyes was made to correspond exactly with the rigorous timing and variety of the music’.12 Noverre contends that mime can no more do without music than operatic recitative can.13 The analogy with recitative was adopted both before and after him. It is the fundamental basis of the reforms of stage dance proposed by Diderot in which the interaction between performers has all the nuances of different forms of French operatic recitative.14 This analogy must have been inspired by enduring contemporary debates concerning the role and nature of recitative in opera, but the analogy was more than a cliché. It seems to have appealed to so many commentators because it expressed a common feeling that the movements of mime developed into a coherent language when structured by the music. Melody lent it a syntax and harmony a paradigmatic structure. Musical arrangements for ballets d’action inevitably varied considerably according to composer, choreographer and the period concerned, but the concept of synchronised mime and music was commonly expressed in all kinds of contexts. Not much is known of Grimaldo Nicolini’s company of child performers who travelled extensively around Europe in the 1740s, but it provoked considerable contemporary interest.15 Diderot cites it as an important model of reformed stage dance.16 After Nicolini’s company performed for the Stuttgart court in 1746, an article in the Frankfurt Literarische Korrespondenz praised the children for their ability to perform the gestures of their ‘silent language’ in time to the musical accompaniment.17 A decade later in St Petersburg, it is probably Hilverding’s works which led the weekly journal Le Caméléon Littéraire to make a similar comment. Adopting the fictional guise of a visiting Persian, the author exploits his faux-na¨ıf perspective on court entertainments in order to explain to his Persian correspondent the nature of ‘ballets’: A number of men and women who are trained to perform certain movements with grace and agility measure their steps and attitudes to the sound of the music which is more lively, faster, and more extended than it is in the recitative. As a consequence, 12 13 14 15 16 17

Gasparo Angiolini, Lettere di Gasparo Angiolini a Monsieur Noverre sopra i Balli Pantomimi (Milan: Gio. Battista Bianchi, 1773), p. 103. Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse (1760), p. 142. See our discussion of Diderot’s Entretiens sur le Fils Naturel, Chapter 6, pp. 156–158. Marian Hannah Winter provides some information on Nicolini’s company in The Pre-Romantic Ballet (London: Pitman, 1974), pp. 37–40. Denis Diderot, Entretiens sur le Fils Naturel, in Œuvres Complètes, 33 vols (Paris: Hermann, 1975–), Vol. X, p. 155. Quoted in Margaret Therese Gajewski, The Language of Movement: A Critical Study of the Development of the Ballet d’Action and its Promotion by Selected German Courts during the Enlightenment, doctoral thesis, University of London, 2005, p. 29.

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the postures of the dancers have the same effect as speech, and their actions and gestures become a mute language which is nevertheless meaningful.18

Amongst modern scholars, Bruce A. Brown has gone further than most to shed light on the music of Hilverding’s works. The manuscript scores in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin, and in the Schwarzenberg family archive at ˆ y Krumlov in Bohemia which he has studied are not annotated, but Cesk´ their close relation to mimed action is sometimes clear. The best example of what Brown calls ‘flexible music for pantomime’ occurs in Starzer’s score for Hilverding’s Acis et Galatée, performed in Vienna some time during 1752 or 1753. The raging movements of the Cyclops Polyphemus are mirrored in frequent changes of tempo and metre, his greats strides depicted with dissonant leaps between notes, and the fearful scurrying of his prey in semiquavers.19 It is just this kind of tailoring of the music to the action which led eighteenth-century critics to draw an analogy with the way that recitative music is adapted to the rhythm and sense of the sung words. Three decades later, Stefano Arteaga reflected on the considerable phenomenon that the ballet d’action had become, noting the contribution which synchronised mime and music made to its success. Music gives to mime ‘determinate values, a duration to gestures, quickening and slowing them according to the laws of rhythm, adjusting them to secondary movements and giving to movements of the body a structured and harmonious continuity’.20 Arteaga’s contemporaries in London at the time were relative newcomers to the ballet d’action, since it had been a far smaller and more recent phenomenon in England than it had been elsewhere. They too, however, noted the importance of synchronised music and mime when Noverre mounted his productions at the King’s Theatre in the 1780s. The Public Advertiser quotes John Locke in a review of Rinaldo ed Armida: If there was any doubt of Mr Locke being in the right, when in his Essay on the Understanding, he talks of ‘the admirable consent between the legs of a dancing master and the fingers of the musician’, after the performance of Noverre’s ballet, that doubt could exist no longer.21 18 19 20

21

Le Caméléon Littéraire, 2.25 (St Petersburg; unpaginated). Bruce A. Brown, Gluck and the French Theatre in Vienna (Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 166. Stefano Arteaga, ‘Ragionamento sopra il ballo pantomimico’, in Le Rivoluzioni del Teatro Musicale Italiano dalla sua Origine Fino al Presente, 3 vols (Venice: Carlo Palese, 1785), Vol. III, p. 155. The Public Advertiser, London, 25 February 1782, p. 3. The quotation from Locke is from Of the Conduct of the Understanding, Section IV, ‘Practice and habits’ (London, 1706; Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1993), p. 17.


Two months later, the Public Advertiser wrote approvingly of Noverre’s Jason and Medea that ‘the music and the dance groove together’, like fine joinery which ‘dove-tails’.22 From the analogy with recitative to the analogy with joinery, therefore, synchronisation of music and mime made a significant impression on spectators. Even those who disliked it confirm by the very attention they accorded to the phenomenon that it was an outstanding characteristic. Ange Goudar returns to the subject several times in the course of his acerbic letters on opera and dance written during his travels in northern Italy in the 1770s. It is one example of his bête noire: a lack of verisimilitude in musical theatre. He describes with characteristic derision the scene in an unspecified version of the Iphigenia in Tauris myth in which Orestes dreams in time to the music of the orchestra: ‘a dream set to music in which an actor enveloped in the deepest slumber sleeps in time to the music, dreams in tempo, is an absurd scene. Orestes does not hear the demons, but he hears the violins.’23 His second sentence undermines the whole concept of rhythmic mime, since, according to him, as soon as characters respond to the music, spectators have the impression that the source of the music lies within the fiction, not outside it in the orchestra pit. Music intended to be non-diegetic becomes, in the spectator’s mind, diegetic, rendering the drama implausible according to Goudar. Too much in the ballet d’action, he thinks, is done ‘in time to and accompanied by the violins’, from a duel with a resuscitated corpse in a work by Noverre, to a parrot flapping its wings in a work by Pitrot.24 Whether Noverre and Pitrot merited Goudar’s criticism is hard to judge, but in general one has to be careful not to let Goudar’s flippancy detract from the uncommon insight he often has. He is alone amongst his contemporaries in questioning whether a frequently cited example of rhythmic mime from Classical times is really a surviving pantomime ‘script’ from ancient Rome. Many of his contemporaries cite the Judgement of Paris in Apuleus’s Metamorphoses (10.29) in support of the concept of rhythmic mime, but Goudar, like some modern scholars, suggests it may not be.25 In his view,

22 23 24 25

The Public Advertiser, London, 12 April 1782, p. 3. [Ange Goudar], Lettre Seconde de Madame Sara Goudar sur le Carnaval Toscane a` Monsieur L∗∗∗ (n.p.: n.p., n.d.), p. 2. [Ange Goudar], Lettre de Madame S.G.A.M. L∗∗∗ au Sujet du Divertissement du Théaˆ tre del Cocomero et de la Comédie Françoise du Théaˆ tre Sainte Marie (n.p.: n.p., 1776), pp. 9 and 12. Ange Goudar discusses the passage from Apuleus in Remarques sur la Musique et la Danse, ou Lettres de Mr G . . . a` Milord Pembroke (Venice: Charles Palese, 1773), p. 70. For a modern scholarly view in accord with Goudar’s, see Marie-Hélène Garelli, Danser le Mythe: La Pantomime et sa Réception dans la Culture Antique (Leuven: Editions Peeters, 2007), p. 316.

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this mistaken interpretation of Apuleus is evidence that eighteenth-century interest in rhythmic, synchronised mime is obsessive. Whether one liked or disliked the final effect on stage of synchronised mime and music, the rehearsals must have required an unprecedented degree of collaboration between composer and choreographer. This is one of the evident conclusions we can draw from the Médée et Jason rehearsal score we discuss below. There are important precedents for this kind of close collaboration between composer and choreographer, notably the Lully– Beauchamp partnership a century earlier,26 but they are isolated examples, and the collaboration was not integral to the very nature of the genre as it was in the case of the ballet d’action. A ballet d’action was almost inconceivable without it. By implication, this gave dance and mime a relatively high status, putting them on a par with music rather than making them a tributary of it. The collaboration must have been a challenging prospect. Some chore` evidently felt that the only ographers, such as Angiolini or Salvatore Vigano, certain way to ensure a close fit between music and action was sometimes, in fact, to compose the music themselves. Angiolini’s extant scores are not, from a purely musical point of view, terribly impressive,27 but it is impossible to judge their full value as ballet d’action music without the accompanying action for which he wrote them. Certainly some contemporaries regarded his music as a closer fit to the action than Noverre’s was.28 It is true, however, that his first notable success came, not with his own musical compositions, but when he collaborated with Gluck (even if he regretted the occasions when he could not change a note of Gluck’s music).29 Others, like Noverre, obviously regarded the musical dimension of their work as so important that they sought out composers who, in retrospect, were some of the most talented and innovative of their generation, such as Starzer or Rodolphe. 26

27

28

29

See Le Cerf de la Viéville, Comparaison de la Musique Italienne et de la Musique Françoise (Bruxelles, 1704–06), in Pierre Bonnet and Jacques Bourdelot, Histoire de la Musique et de ses Effets, 4 vols (1715; Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1966), Vol. III, pp. 209–210. Kathleen K. Hansell comments on Angiolini’s ‘serious deficiencies as a composer’ in ‘Theatrical ballet and Italian opera’, in The History of Italian Opera, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli, 2 vols (University of Chicago Press, 2002), Vol. II, p. 224. Pietro Verri wrote to his brother Alessandro in 1775, discussing Noverre and Angiolini’s strengths and weaknesses, commenting that ‘Angiolini makes the music and the movements correspond closely, because he composes both of them’, in Carteggio di Pietro e di Alessandro Verri, dal 1766 al 1797, ed. Francesco Novati, Emanuele Greppi, Alessandro Giulini, and Giovanni Seregni, 12 vols (Milan: L.F. Cogliati, 1910–), Vol. VII, p. 175 (3 June 1775). See Angiolini, Lettere di Gasparo Angiolini a Monsieur Noverre, p. 17, in reference to La citera assediata. Lorenzo Tozzi shows how Angiolini sometimes cut the music Gluck provided for his choreographies. See Lorenzo Tozzi, ‘Appunti in margine alla partitura’, in Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi Musicali ‘Gluck et la Cultura Italiana nella Vienna del suo Tempo’, 1–4 September 1973, Chigiana, nuova serie 9–10 (1972–73), pp. 555–564.


Beyond synchronised music Goudar seemed not to take into account the degree of collaboration involved in staging a ballet d’action. He saw movement synchronised with music and assumed that the performers were responding to the music, as dancers would. In our analysis of the Médée et Jason score below, we have sometimes assumed the opposite, that the music responded to the performers, and otherwise we have assumed that there was mutual influence between the two, because they had a common purpose: to express a given subject, myth, character, or the like. As both Noverre and Angiolini point out, the choreographer and the composer are both ‘slaves’ to the dramatic subject of the ballet d’action, because dramatic unity is the overriding ambition.30 There are various ways in which the music served the drama. At its most imitative, music could mimic action on stage, underlining it, or making it significantly more perceptible to the spectator. A recurrent example of what we might call musical mime is storm music. Contemporary opera favoured it as much as the ballet d’action did. Without it, the sight of Telemachus and Mentor clambering onto the rocky coast of Calypso’s island in Gardel’s Télémaque would not be immediately clear to the spectator, and would doubtless lack dramatic impact. Hence, Gardel gives explicit instructions to the orchestra: ‘the overture should paint the whistling of the high winds, the roaring of the enraged sea, the most terrible storm, and then by degrees the most voluptuous calm’.31 There are many other examples of musical imitation of the natural elements. Gluck composed what Brown calls ‘aquatic passages’ for Angiolini’s Le Naufrage in which the rhythmic motion of the water is evoked by the strings,32 and Cannabich created a similar aquatic effect for Bouqueton’s Renaud et Armide to evoke the river on which Renaud arrives in his boat.33 Musical imitation could be much more specific than this, however. Pierre Gardel indicates in his plot synopsis for Le Bal Masqué what the orchestra should be doing when the aging tutor sings to his young pupil: ‘the horn, played in a pounding manner [avec quelques martèlements], can imitate quite well the voice of the old man’.34 30

31 32 33 34

Angiolini thinks of music as the ‘slave’ of the subject in Lettere di Gasparo Angiolini a Monsieur Noverre, p. 75n. Most of Letter VIII of Noverre’s Lettres sur la Danse (1760) concerns the priority of the subject over the other constituent parts of the work: music, dance, mime, scenery, costumes, and machinery; see particularly p. 158. Pierre Gardel, Télémaque dans l’Isle de Calypso, scene 1. First performed Paris, 23 February 1790; programme published Paris: Delormel, 1790. See Brown, Gluck and the French Theatre in Vienna, pp. 298–299. Gajewski, The Language of Movement, p. 161. Pierre Gardel, scene 1 of the plot synopsis for Le Bal Masqué, Paris, Archives Nationales de France, AJ13/1032.

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The orchestra effectively ventriloquises as the performer stands and mimes the song. There are many examples, also, of the orchestra imitating the sound of an instrument played by a character on stage. In Ulysse et Orphée, the pizzicato violins in Cannabich’s score for an unknown choreographer imitate Orpheus playing his lyre.35 This is diegetic music as well as musical mime. At its most suggestive and associative, music went far beyond these examples of imitation of the dramatic action. The Médée et Jason score demonstrates a wide range of effects, such as the manipulation of musical motifs to express depth of character, focussing the spectator’s attention on a particular character as a modern cinematic close-up would, halting the action and producing a kind of tableau or cinematic freeze-frame of the entire action, expressing dramatic irony, and clarifying crucial elements of the plot. These are some of the effects which lie behind the rather bland statements by contemporary critics that the music was ‘touching’ and ‘very beautiful’,36 that it ‘did ample justice to every situation in which the characters found themselves’,37 or on the contrary that it ‘might have been rather more analogous to the subject’.38 Scores such as that for Médée et Jason provide an insight into the musical aesthetics of the ballet d’action which is scarcely available from any other source, and, at the same time, allow us to test against relatively hard evidence the conclusions we have reached elsewhere in this book concerning the dramatic principles of performance.

Médée et Jason The music for the 1770 Paris production of Médée et Jason is so similar to Rodolphe’s score for the 1763 Stuttgart production that one can only assume that the principle mime dancer on both occasions, Gaëtan Vestris, brought the score from Stuttgart and gave it to La Borde so that he could shorten it and adapt it in minor ways.39 The first two scenes of the original work, 35

36 37 38 39

Ulysse et Orphée dans l’Isle des Syrènes, music Cannabich, choreographer unknown, extracts of the music on p. 3 of the second Annex of Rudolf Kloiber, Die dramatischen Ballette von Christian Cannabich (Munich: Kutzner, 1928). A comment on Angiolini’s music in Journal du Comte Charles de Zinzendorf et Pottendorf (ms) (Haus- Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Vienna), entry for 22 September 1762. A comment on Noverre’s Cupid and Psyche in The Times, London, 26 January 1788, p. 2. The Prompter, London, no. XIV (1789), p. 82, in reference to Le Déserteur, presumably Noverre’s, since he was ballet-master at the King’s Theatre at this time. Catherine Mercier has established convincingly the close similarities between the two scores. See Catherine Mercier, Le Ballet Médée et Jason d’après Noverre de 1763 a` 1804 a` l’Opéra de


choreographed by Noverre, were cut from the 1770 version.40 Presumably, the work needed to be shortened to fit within the confines of La Borde’s opera Ismène et Isménias, where it constitutes Act II, scene 5. The Noverre– Rodolphe independent ballet d’action was thus adapted to form part of the plot of La Borde’s opera: at the end of Act II, scene 4, a priestess shows the unhappy fate of Medea, Jason, and Creusa to the two young lovers Ismène and Isménias, in order to warn them of the dangers of love. The annotations on the score fall into a range of categories. Some are stage directions for entrances and exits. Others are indications of actions, such as Medea lacing a wedding gift for Creusa with poison, or Creusa subsequently suffering its effects. Yet others are directions concerning the intentions of characters: threats, refusals, orders, and desires. And the last category one can discern is emotional or psychological affect: fear, despair, pity, anguish, and the like. Although there are annotations placed between the staves on almost every page, there is plenty of space between each annotation, suggesting that each is placed specifically where it corresponds to the music. From these four categories of annotations spring a wide variety of dramatic effects: monologue, dialogue, cinematic ‘close-ups’, emotional and psychological affect, dramatic irony, and dramatic atmosphere. Usually, the music parallels the sense of the annotation, supporting, clarifying, and intensifying it. Sometimes, however, the relationship is what is sometimes called in the context of modern film music ‘counterpoint’, such that, for example, an ostensibly neutral image like a sleeping face is accompanied by nightmarish music. In this case, music is essential to interpreting the image. Overall, the music can justifiably claim to be a crucial means through which the drama is conveyed. The most effective way of demonstrating this is to tell the story of Médée et Jason through the music and the annotations, starting from the beginning. Because we are particularly interested in the relation between the music and the annotations, we shall not refer to music without annotations, unless particularly relevant. In the opening scene, ‘the theatre represents the peristyle of Creon’s palace’. After two bars, the annotations tell us ‘Creusa enters with her attendants’. At bar 9, ‘Jason enters’. Creusa’s courtiers subsequently leave and she and Jason begin their ‘pas de deux’ at bar 17.41 At bar 29, where the tripartite

40

41

Paris: Du Divertissement au Ballet Autonome, MA thesis, Paris, Sorbonne, 2005. I am grateful to her for having brought this score to my notice. For a modern edition of Rodolphe’s score, see Hermann Abert (ed.), Ausgewählte Ballette Stuttgarter Meister aus der 2. Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts. Florian Deller, Johann Joseph Rudolph (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel; Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1958). La Borde, Ismène et Isménias, Act II, p. 15.

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musical form might have dictated a restatement of the first theme (the one to which Creusa and Jason entered), ‘Medea enters’.42 The restatement does indeed occur, but in a dramatically modified form: it is preceded by a loud tonic chord, the first time in the score that all instruments play at once, and also the first time a forte marking is used. The presence of the chord also necessitates a rhythmic shift that renders the phrase weaker than before the shift occurred. The unstable melody only lasts two bars before being interrupted by a flurry of semiquaver arpeggios that send the amorous music into further disarray. The flurries, marked forte in contrast to the main theme’s piano, end with a rather abrupt perfect cadence that robs the music of the blithe character it had for the entry of Creusa and Jason. Already, in these opening bars, the music has notable dramatic functions. Entry motifs like these are used throughout the score, drawing the spectator’s attention to the character entering, much as a camera close-up would in cinema. Recurring motifs, whether for entries or not, are also commonly used to suggest character. In these opening bars, the strident, alarming motif is in itself suggestive musically of Medea’s character, but it is especially so in comparison with the same motif played more gaily for Creusa and Jason’s entry. Thus, the spectator with minimal background knowledge of the myth would be in no doubt as each character enters the stage that ‘this is Creusa’, ‘this is Jason’, and ‘this is Medea’. This deictic function of the music arguably goes some way to compensating for the deictic limitations of mime which contemporary critics discussed.43 Jason is caught red-handed between Medea, whom he promised to marry, and Creusa, who was unaware she had a rival. He attempts to pacify the two jealous women, but both forcibly reject his approach. The annotations for Jason appear under the oboe staff, while those of the two women appear under the violin staves, highlighting the dialogue between the instruments which parallels the dialogue between the characters: ‘he goes to Medea; she rejects him; he goes to Creusa; she rejects him; he cries’.44 Each side of the musical dialogue in this nine-bar sequence has its own musical character to match the action and attitudes of the characters on stage: Jason’s approach to the two women is more delicate than the preceding music, reflecting his attempt to calm or charm the women, while the two women both reply with sudden, fast ascending runs. The semitone pairs that begin and end Jason’s line, a motif commonly known as the interrogatio, or musical question mark,

42 44

La Borde, Ismène et Isménias, Act II, p. 16. La Borde, Ismène et Isménias, Act II, p. 16.

43

See Chapter 9, p. 210.


further reveals the pleading nature of Jason’s actions.45 After he is rebuffed, Jason’s ‘cry’, either a desperate plea to the women or a self-regarding lament, is expressed with the musical cliché of a rising semitone pair. In this case, however, it is all the more noticeable because it places the least stable of all intervals, an open tritone, on the first, strongest beat of the metre. By the end of this nine-bar sequence, the music suggests strongly Jason’s weakness in the face of the two, strong female characters. This is one of many occasions in the score when dialogue is strongly suggested by attributing specific instruments to specific characters, each ‘listening’ silently while the other ‘speaks’. Given the difficulties posed by mute dialogue,46 suggestive orchestration like this must have been invaluable. Jason thus fails to forestall the ensuing quarrel over him, but still tries to mediate: ‘they vie for him; he tries his hardest to persuade them to make peace; Medea refuses; she threatens; she exits’.47 The orchestration of these twenty-two bars is consistent with the dialogistic principles of the previous passage: the violins are the voices of Medea and Creusa, the oboe is the voice of Jason. Though violins portray both women, the sense of dialogue is maintained by alternating the same melody between high and low registers, as in bars 45–48; the effect of using the same melody reminds the audience that both women have claims on Jason. The quarrel reaches a climax in bars 49–50, where note-by-note dynamic alternations create a syncopated effect and jar any sense of melody from the music. Jason attempts to ‘make peace’ with a return to the theme from the opening scene, but Medea’s refusal stops him abruptly with a firm unresolved dominant chord from the winds. Her subsequent threat and exit are a musical hapax legomenon: they constitute one of the very few musical lines in the score which is not repeated elsewhere, even in modified form. The fast, scalar lines portray Medea’s rage, and the solo line contrasted with the full instrumentation before and after emphasises that she is the centre of attention and is very much alone in her actions and emotions. This is another occasion when the musical effect is analogous to the cinematic close-up, highlighting an individual and her emotions. The music next expresses one of the archetypal passions, fear, when Creusa understandably reacts to Medea’s actions: ‘Creusa is frightened by the threats.’48 Her fear is most obvious in the extended transition to a new key by way of chords descending chromatically through a perfect fourth, 45 46 48

Dietrich Bartel, Musica Poetica (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), p. 315. See Chapter 6. 47 La Borde, Ismène et Isménias, Act II, p. 17. La Borde, Ismène et Isménias, Act II, p. 18.

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the near-timeless musical symbol of mourning, sadness, or lament,49 and a dramatic method of extending harmonic modulation.50 The music holds on a D minor chord for four bars (bars 76–79) while a new motif, made of semitone pairs, is traded between the instruments, underscoring Creusa’s fear before the harmonic descent begins again. The descent finally ends in E major, a major seventh lower than the previous descent, and the farthest possible harmonic pole from the tonic B major. In these moments of harmonic fury, Medea returns and attempts emotional blackmail: ‘Medea returns with her children.’51 The running scale and rising inversions of the E major chords have the effect, again, of creating a cinematic close-up on Medea as she takes the stage. The ensuing music gives a convincing idea of the father, Jason, gazing at his progeny and beginning to doubt his choice to abandon Medea. The A major minuet represents a new key and a new musical character which is slower harmonically and more subtle melodically than the preceding section. The slow triple metre and strong downbeats, hallmarks of the minuet, provide a calming regularity to the scene as ‘Jason is moved to tenderness.’ But though the regularity of the minuet might pacify Jason, it simultaneously represents Medea’s process of emotional blackmail. The melodic sequence of descending semitone pairs supports this reading as they echo Jason’s earlier cries for mercy. Coupled with similar suspensions in the continuo, the harmonic effect betrays the benignity of the scene in a moment of dramatic irony. Two apparently false annotations appear in this scene, both from the engraved score. Firstly, immediately after Creusa is ‘frightened by the threats’ (bars 71–87) and only halfway through the chord sequence, she exits the stage, and ‘someone enters to offer Jason the crown’. This musical sequence is all of a piece, which presumes that the music was meant to highlight the emotional drama of the fear and attempted reassurance rather than an offer of the crown to Jason. The manuscript annotation, by contrast, collaborates better with the musical mood: Creusa stays on stage and, after her fright, ‘Jason reassures her.’52 It is possible that the ‘crown’ annotation was added to the printed score in recognition of the political dimensions which the myth of Jason and Medea normally has. Noverre’s original 1763 version 49

50 52

Peter Williams has tracked the use of the chromatic fourth across the genres of Western music; its use in ballet scores, however, is heretofore unmentioned. See his Chromatic Fourth During Four Centuries of Music (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), especially Chapter 3 on opera and Chapter 5 on the eighteenth century. Williams, Chromatic Fourth, p. 48. 51 La Borde, Ismène et Isménias, Act II, p. 18. In the printed score, bar 8 of Act II, p. 18; in the manuscript score, bar 7 of f. 5, Médée et Jason, ms A.236.a.


of the ballet elaborates on this in the two first scenes, when Creon offers his throne to Jason, but these were cut from Vestris’s version, presumably for reasons of time. The ‘crown’ annotation on La Borde’s printed score, therefore, seems to have the reader in mind more than the performance. The second musical mismatch is after Medea’s entrance with her children. Where the manuscript indicates that Jason is moved to tenderness at the sight of his children, the engraved score makes no mention of Jason’s reaction, focussing instead on Medea, who ‘wants to kill herself ’. Yet the deliberate, measured minuet can hardly be called suicide music, especially in comparison to the high drama and tension that accompanied all of Medea’s previous actions, nor is the attempted suicide coherent with Medea’s ostensible intention of using her children, not her own life, as persuasive tools. Whether Jason was moved by tenderness towards his children or by the potential loss of Medea’s life, by bar 100 Jason is in her arms.53 Creusa enters soon thereafter, borrowing Medea’s dramatic scalar-run motif. The key shifts from A minor to its relative C major, with a harmonic affect as shocking as finding Jason in the arms of her rival. Both the scale and the bright key54 produce another cinematic close-up effect, this time on Creusa. Jason responds, and immediately ‘[he] goes to her’. Creusa remains in control of the scene through her command over Jason, first ‘tell[ing] him to send Medea away; Jason tells Medea to leave; he leaves with Creusa’. The rising violin line accompanying Creusa’s orders is commanding and forceful. Though not different in affect, the manuscript annotations are not the same here: ‘Creusa refuses Jason’ when he first comes to her; then, instead of demanding Medea’s departure, she simply ‘scolds’. In the end, both yield the same effect: in both scores ‘Jason sends Medea away.’ His orders end with an octave leap downward that invites no response, suggesting a ruthless approach in his dismissal (bars 112–114). Here Jason refuses to engage in the sort of musical dialogue which the three characters had had on earlier occasions. Even if there were a possible musical phrase which could have followed his command, there would not be time for it to be played, since Jason and Creusa leave the stage to a pair of scurrying, descending scales: a quick, if not cowardly, exit. Left alone on stage, Medea wavers unsteadily between lifeless anguish and volatile fury. The annotations on the manuscript score are closer to

53 54

La Borde, Ismène et Isménias, Act II, p. 19. C major is in many musical traditions seen as a happy, bright, or triumphant key because of the clarity of its tuning in eighteenth-century instruments. See Rita Steblin, A History of Key Characteristics in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (University of Rochester Press, 2002), p. 226.

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the mood of the music in this passage than those on the printed score. The music wavers between slow C minor scales and frantic A major arpeggios. The annotations follow in mood: ‘Medea is lost in pain’; ‘her spirits revive’; ‘she falls again’, and finally ‘becomes enraged’. The only annotation in the printed version, ‘she calls upon the demons’, belongs to the Air des Furies on the following page, where it is located in the manuscript version. It is in the air that Medea finally resolves on revenge, whereas in this preceding passage she seems too distraught to know what to do. The way the music and annotations alternate between dejection and fury exemplifies the way that the music embodies Medea’s emotions. While the three conjured Furies dance, ‘Medea poisons the jewels.’55 One wonders how clear the mime action in itself would be, whether it could have unambiguously communicated to the spectator that the ingredient added to the stones was poison, that the stones were a wedding gift for Creusa, and that the intention, therefore, was to murder Creusa. This may be one of those occasions which eluded contemporary spectators who reverted to the printed programme to understand the action. It may be the kind of action ´ which the twentieth-century seminal mime Etienne Decroux regarded as difficult, because it involves disambiguation of the use of polyvalent objects (precious stones and an unidentified ingredient) and identification of specific, personal intentions.56 One can imagine certain special effects would help clarify the meaning, perhaps a puff of smoke as Medea laces the jewels with poison, but the action would still have potential for misinterpretation. The music cannot entirely resolve these matters, but it does signal to the spectator that the scene is ominous. It does this using unresolved open seventh chords and augmented seconds, both of which are strident to the ear and are still commonly used in music meant to evoke fright or fear. They are especially disturbing here because they never resolve to a more stable harmony as the rules of the musical style dictate. The ‘wrong’ music creates the feeling that something is wrong in the plot. Relatively indeterminate mime actions are thus given a more determinate, sinister sense by the music. The effect is analogous to what is sometimes called in the context of film music the ‘contrapuntal’ relationship of an indeterminate action or image with suggestive music, such as a sleeping face and nightmarish music.57 This passage is therefore unlike most of the music in the score, which has a parallel rather than a contrapuntal relation to the action. It may 55 57

La Borde, Ismène et Isménias, Act II, p. 21. 56 See Chapter 4, p. 106. See Siegfried Kracauer, The Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 139–142.


be that the objects involved, the jewels and the poison, are so instrumental to the plot that they needed as much disambiguation as the music could provide. Later, Medea unexpectedly appears at Jason and Creusa’s wedding feast: ‘the celebrations are interrupted; Medea returns with her children and brings a gift of jewels’.58 Medea’s entry is marked by a sudden key change from F major, the key for the celebration, to A major. The key choice is strategic: to this point in the ballet the keys of A major and minor have only been used in music referring to Medea. The key change signals that Medea has taken charge of the scene, but without the fierce pomp of her previous entries: here her presence is subtle and measured. The music retains the dignified character of the preceding celebration music, even when she presents Creusa with the poisoned stones: one even wonders if the other wedding attendants noticed her arrival. One musical moment reveals Medea’s true intent, however. At first she blesses the couple, but before exiting she threatens them behind her back. Here the music makes a striking shift from triple to duple metre, and from A major to A minor. Three forte chords are struck as she issues the threats, and her exit is accompanied by a prolonged cadential motif.59 After Medea’s departure, instead of returning to the cheery F major of the original wedding dance, the A major theme of Medea’s entry is played again, suggesting that though Medea has departed, she is still in control of the scene. The next sequence, Creusa’s death scene, is as interesting in what it suggests about the intended reader of the printed score as it is from a dramaturgical point of view. The annotations on the printed score are adapted to tell a better story from the reader’s point of view. That is to say that they are different, but they are not errors as some earlier annotations almost certainly were. Either they interpret the meaning of the physical action, or they elaborate on it, as if to give the reader the feeling of being a spectator in the theatre. The two different versions compare interestingly in tabular form (Table 8.1). The second and third annotations are interpretations of what Creusa must be experiencing, while the fourth and last annotations indicate her emotional attachment to other characters. The engraved score is not entirely, therefore, a commemorative publication, if by that we mean a faithful reproduction of the music and action intended to celebrate a performance and preserve it for posterity. It is also intended to be a reading experience in itself, providing the reader with more than the bare bones of the action. 58

La Borde, Ismène et Isménias, Act II, p. 33.

59

La Borde, Ismène et Isménias, Act II, p. 34.

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Table 8.1: The death of Créuse, from the manuscript and engraved scores to Gaëtan Vestris’s version of Noverre’s Medée et Jason Manuscript rehearsal score

Engraved score

The poison takes effect; Creusa stumbles; She circles the stage; She loses strength; Her spirits are revived; She falls.∗

The poison takes effect; Creusa feels unwell; Her pains increase; She falls into Jason’s arms; Her spirits are revived; And she falls into the arms of her attendants.∗∗

∗

∗∗

Médée et Jason, Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Opéra de Paris, ms A.236.a, f. 24. La Borde, Ismène et Isménias, Act II, pp. 34–36.

The music to Creusa’s death scene illuminates both sets of annotations. At bar 35, ‘the poison takes effect’. The triple metre and A minor mode of Medea’s exit returns, this time at a tempo largo. The continuo plays a long descending scale, suggesting the sinking of Creusa’s health or consciousness. Creusa ‘feels unwell’ and according to the manuscript score she ‘stumbles’ to music in the violins which itself limps downward, paradoxically in a sequence of rising thirds. Lest Medea’s influence on this scene be forgotten, this pain-filled motion cadences in A major, her harmonic sign (bar 40). An abrupt presto section in Creusa’s key of F major interrupts as her ‘pains increase’ and ‘she circles the stage’. The music then slows again to largo, as Creusa ‘loses her strength’ and ‘falls into the arms of Jason’. Here the oboe plays a falling motif in parallel sixths, often considered the most graceful interval. Unlike the first largo sequence, there is nothing dark or foreboding about Creusa’s fall; its gentle music characterises the way Creusa is portrayed in this version of the myth as a young, innocent victim of circumstance. The fall motif passes from the oboes to the strings as Creusa falls into Jason’s arms. She briefly ‘revives’, accompanied by a flurry of arpeggios from the violins. But again she falls, this time into the arms of her attendants; the tempo largo returns as the instruments play a low, menacing progression of semitones. As Creusa expires the chorus sings a brief lament, accompanied by the instruments in a solemn, chorale-like style. Alternating piano and forte dynamics on the consonant and dissonant harmonies give an unstable and disturbing effect as Creusa gasps for her last breaths.


Following the lament, ‘Medea appears on her chariot with her children, one of whom has its throat cut.’60 The key changes to a deathly D major, another strident, lamenting key; the change is introduced by tremolos and running scales and dissonant chords which evoke the traditional French musical sign for storms, called the orage or tempête.61 The chromatic chords and sudden crescendos add to the effect and climax as ‘Medea stabs her son.’ At the stabbing, the music slows drastically from très vif to largo. Two thrusts of the knife are enacted in the music by a huge jump in the first violin from c to a . The large interval creates a syncopation in these bars that accentuates the stabbing. These three largo bars, which are preceded and followed by faster music, are like a cinematographic slowmotion sequence focussing all attention on Medea’s actions. The sparse harmony and orchestration – only violin and continuo, in unison, with only two notes to harmonise the stabbing motif, isolates this action all the more. Only one of the remaining annotations has a specific musical correlate, and though the others are placed at important points in the musical structure it would seem that they are included mainly for the reader’s benefit. During the second Air des Furies ‘the Furies torment him [Jason]’,62 but all the music in this section sounds as if Jason is being tormented, not only the bars where the annotation appears. There is no specific musical mime for ‘Medea throws her torch to Vengeance’,63 nor is there one during the subsequent chorus for ‘Vengeance’s attendants set light to Creon’s palace’,64 and ‘Medea exits when the palace is destroyed.’65 It is perhaps not surprising that the music for the chorus is not especially indicative of the action specified in the annotations, since this is music for singing rather than acting. Yet the penultimate annotation of the ballet does make musical sense: ‘Jason faints and falls; he picks himself up.’66 His fall is accompanied by the musical mime of a fast descending line in the first violin, and his recovery is accompanied by an ascending line a few bars later. Jason subsequently dies with the very last notes of the ballet which, curiously, do not reflect the action in any specific way: ‘Vengeance gives him [Jason] a dagger; he kills himself and falls into the wings.’67

60 61

62 64 66

La Borde, Ismène et Isménias, Act II, p. 36. Caroline Wood, ‘Orchestra and spectacle in the “tragédie en musique” 1673–1715: oracle, “sommeil” and “tempête”’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 108 (1981–82): pp. 25–46, esp. pp. 40–46. La Borde, Ismène et Isménias, Act II, p. 39. 63 La Borde, Ismène et Isménias, Act II, p. 39. La Borde, Ismène et Isménias, Act II, p. 41. 65 La Borde, Ismène et Isménias, Act II, p. 45. La Borde, Ismène et Isménias, Act II, p. 46. 67 La Borde, Ismène et Isménias, Act II, pp. 39–47.

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Médée et Jason in context Médée et Jason is a compelling example of the dramatic unity sought between music and action, or what the Public Advertiser in London described as the ‘admirable consent’ between the two. The score is only one example from the repertoire of one choreographer and one composer, hence it is unlikely to be representative of all contemporary practice. But there is evidence to suggest that the score does nevertheless represent a strong, important trend. Gajewski identifies many similar features in her study of ballet d’action compositions for the Mannheim court of the 1760s. Cannabich, for example, creates musical affect in his music for Bouqueton’s choreography Renaud et Armide, in which Armide’s fury is expressed by a forceful allegro of rhythmic variety, trills, and sforzando accents. He creates musical mime with tremolo chords to mirror Armide’s body trembling with fury as she finds herself unable to kill the sleeping Renaud. He uses entry motifs associated with specific characters.68 Marita McClymonds has also pointed out that Cannabich selects the keys in Renaud et Armide with a dramatic purpose in mind: G is associated with Armide’s nymphs, D major is associated with the knights Ubald and Canud, F is reserved for Armide’s hold on Renaud’s affections, and keys with sharps depict enchantment (E), or love (A).69 Hansell has discussed comparable techniques in Starzer’s compositions for Noverre. Her summary of the features of his music for Adèle de Ponthieu could equally be that of the score for Médée et Jason we discuss above: ‘adventurous harmonic style, frequent chromatism, fondness for minor mode episodes, driving and irregular rhythms and phrasing, concern for motivic development and considerable use of independent voices’.70 The remarkable features she highlights in Starzer’s score for Noverre’s Les Horaces are comparable to those in Médée et Jason: the musical affect to portray firstly Camille’s anger when she realises her lover is dead and then her brother’s anger as he listens to her revile Rome; the musical mime to mirror Camille’s brother stabbing her; and the brightening mood as Horace is released from his dark prison.71 68 69

70 71

Gajewski, The Language of Movement, p. 161. Marita P. McClymonds, with Patrick M. Keady, ‘Renaud et Armide’, in Ballet Music from the Mannheim Court, ed. Paul Corneilson and Eugene K. Wolf (Madison, WI: A-R Editions, 1996), Part IV, p. xi. Kathleen K. Hansell, Opera and Ballet at the Regio Ducal Teatro of Milan, 1771–1776, doctoral dissertation, Ann Arbor, MI, 1979, p. 833. Hansell, Opera and Ballet at the Regio Ducal Teatro of Milan, pp. 900–902.


Hansell regards Starzer as part of the contemporary avant-garde,72 and Brown writes of his compositions that they ‘inhabit a different world from the baroque dance suites of a Handel or a Rameau’.73 The same must be said of Rodolphe/La Borde’s Médée et Jason. The world they inhabit is Gluck’s world of reformed dramatic music. The techniques Gluck developed for Angiolini and Hilverding’s ballets d’action were often analogous to those we have seen in the Médée et Jason score. His use of recurring motifs in Angiolini’s Sémiramis, for example, creates connections in the plot with significant consequences for the way the spectator interprets the character and action.74 The affinity between ballet d’action music and Gluck’s reform music is all the more evident in cases where Gluck recycled music. One of the key moments in his opera Iphigénie en Tauride, for example, is the dramatic irony and psychological complexity of Orestes singing ‘Le calme rentre dans mon cœur’ when Orestes is, in fact, deeply traumatised by the realisation that he has murdered his mother. Gluck borrowed this music from his score for Angiolini’s Sémiramis, in which the Queen struggles with a comparable guilty secret, the murder of her husband the King, a secret which she, like Orestes, cannot begin to express to her attendants.75 The ballet d’action seems, in retrospect, to have been a testing ground for Gluck’s concept of dramatic music, a domain in which he was freer to experiment than he was in opera. Perhaps his freedom derived from the fact that the ballet d’action was a mute medium, without articulated words, and the composer did not have to abide by the technical expectations of the singers as he did in opera. Gluck did not admit to the evident affinity there was between his dramatic music for opera and for the ballet d’action, but one Parisian critic noticed it in the midst of the Parisian controversy caused by his reform operas. Marmontel disliked Gluck’s music because he found it ‘sharp and rough [. . . ], broken and incoherent [. . . ], mutilated and jagged, almost pantomime music’.76 What he plainly disliked was that the musical beauty

72 73 74 75

76

Hansell, Opera and Ballet at the Regio Ducal Teatro of Milan, p. 893. Brown, Gluck and the French Theatre in Vienna, p. 164. Brown, Gluck and the French Theatre in Vienna, p. 339. Brown, Gluck and the French Theatre in Vienna, p. 339. On Gluck’s recycled music, see also Gernot Gruber, ‘I balli viennesi di Gluck e lo stile drammatico della sua musica’, in Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi Musicali ‘Gluck e la Cultura Italiana nella Vienna del suo Tempo’, 1–4 September 1973, Chigiana, nuova serie 9–10 (1972–73), pp. 501–512. See also, in the same edition of Chigiana, the article by Lorenzo Tozzi, ‘La poetica angioliniana del balletto pantomime nei programmi viennesi’, pp. 487–500. Jean-François Marmontel, Essai sur les Révolutions de la Musique en France, in Querelle des Gluckistes et des Piccinnistes, ed. François Lesure, 3 vols (1781; Geneva: Minkoff, 1984): Vol. I, pp. 173 and 179.

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of operatic music should be subordinate to the dramatic action, just as it was in the ballet d’action. More study of annotated scores is needed to place the Médée et Jason score fully in the context of other choreographers, composers, periods, and national traditions. Even a relatively close relation to Noverre’s style can manifest major differences as well as similarities. In Ernest Müller’s score for Pierre Gardel’s Psyché, there are many times when the plot is as much a controlling factor as it is in Médée et Jason. The music pauses with a fermata for ‘tableau’ moments in the action when a painterly scene is held motionless for a short period of time, perhaps several seconds.77 Yet, on other occasions, Psyché is based on quite a different conception of what the ballet d’action should be. At times, the score is a patchwork of borrowed music, fragments of popular airs intended to bring to the spectator’s mind a ready-made interpretation of the action, and is more reminiscent of a contemporary vaudeville than the Médée et Jason score composed especially for the ballet d’action.78 Performers do not speak or sing in Noverre’s works, but they do so on two occasions in Psyché when the two inscriptions announcing Psyché’s fate appear on Venus’s temple in Act I. The inscriptions are written out between the staves of what is clearly operatic recitative music, and at the top of each page is the instruction to ‘read’ (‘Lisés’), a direction presumably to the performers to recite the inscriptions.79 Neither is there any silent action in Noverre’s works, but there is in Psyché: on one crucial occasion, at the end of Act I, the music stops as Psyché is snatched from certain death by Zephyr.80 Different musical practices are probably even more noticeable in the ` late Italian ballo pantomimo tradition. Extracts from Salvatore Vigano’s eighteenth-century scores published by Rossana Dalmonte have markedly different features.81 They would seem to confirm Hansell’s view that Italian performers could mime to standard dance forms, meaning that composers

77

78

79 80 81

Psyché, choreography Pierre Gardel, music Ernest Müller (first performed Paris 1790), sixteen-part manuscript orchestral score, Lyon, Archives municipales, 74WP 118. See the violon répétiteur part for many annotations. Fermatas are used when the annotations specify that performers ‘group’ together in one way or another. See the series of tableaux and fermatas on pages 18–19 of the violon répétiteur. Marian Smith lists the musical borrowings in Psyché in her article ‘Borrowings and original music: a dilemma for the ballet-pantomime composer’, in Dance Research, 6.2 (Autumn 1988), pp. 3–29 (22). Gardel/Müller, Psyché, p. 17, and p. 18 of the violon répétiteur. Gardel/Müller, Psyché, p. 23 of the violon répétiteur. Dalmonte, ‘Une e´ criture corporelle’, pp. 145–240.


did not need the formal innovations we find in the work of the northern European avant-garde.82 Notwithstanding differences like these, the Médée et Jason score is a further reflection of the essential feature which has emerged in every chapter of this book, which is that the ballet d’action is a dramatic art, conforming to dramatic principles which underlie even its musical dimension. These dramatic principles are so prominent that it would be misleading to regard the ballet d’action as wholly or purely an art of dance. ‘Action ballet’ is as much a matter of theatrical ‘action’ as it is ‘ballet’. The Médée et Jason score is also an indication of how much the ballet d’action needed music. As we have discussed in other chapters, choreographers were interested in theatrical features, such as dialogue and character, which are a challenge in mute mime. On the evidence of Médée et Jason, the music was an invaluable way of meeting this challenge. It must also have been invaluable in providing a mood for the action. Time and again in the Médée et Jason score, the music is a powerful source of atmosphere, influencing the spectator’s interpretation of the stage action. One wonders, therefore, whether the intention of the ballet d’action, to tell a complete dramatic action, could possibly have been realised without music to structure the action. Even the shortest works, lasting twenty minutes or so, would have benefited from what Arteaga thought of as the form and shape of music. Given the importance of the relationship between music and action, it is perhaps no coincidence that in France, at least, the oldest known annotated score, in this case for an opera, coincides with the early era of the ballet d’action: Campra’s Tancrède, performed at Versailles in 1748.83 Nor is it a coincidence that someone as interested in innovations on the musical stage as Jean-Jacques Rousseau should be the composer of another early example of an annotated score: Le Devin du Village, published in 1753 with almost exactly the same annotations for stage action as those which appear on the manuscript rehearsal score for the premiere a year before.84 Annotated scores would seem to be symptomatic of an era when greater value came to be attached to the expressive possibilities of dance, mime, gesture and stage movement in general. 82 83

84

Hansell comments on Angiolini’s ‘serious deficiencies as a composer’ in ‘Theatrical ballet and Italian opera’, p. 191. See Antonia Banducci, ‘Du jeu scénique et de son effet dramatique: l’apport des didascalies manuscrites scéniques dans les livrets et partitions’, in Musique et Geste en France de Lully a` la Révolution, ed. Jacqueline Waeber (Berne: Peter Lang, 2009), pp. 115–128 (116). See Jacqueline Waeber, ‘Décor et pantomimes du Devin du village’, p. 150.

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9

Putting performance into words

One of the most difficult issues in the study of the ballet d’action has emerged tangentially from time to time in this book, but deserves to be met head on: what should we make of the remarkable phenomenon that was the performance programme? This is likely to be one of the first questions that anyone studying the ballet d’action will ask themselves, since these programmes are by far the most abundant vestige of an ephemeral art which has, by nature, left little trace. It is unlikely, however, to be the first question that we are able to answer. Even if these performance programmes are easily accessible in libraries all over Europe, it is difficult to know how to interpret them. They offer little technical information on choreography or staging, and instead are mostly devoted to recounting the version of the mythological, historical, literary, or sometimes original story on which the performance was based. It is safe to assume that they correspond in some way to the stage action, but the nature of the correspondence is hard to judge. Interestingly, this is not only a problem faced by the modern researcher, since eighteenth-century commentators discussed at great length the nature of these performance programmes and their relation to the stage action. This suggests that the problem of knowing how to read them is not a historical one. It would not help, even if it were possible, to go back in time and take a seat in the theatre to watch a performance and compare it with the plot synopsis, which one could buy like a modern-day programme, before, during, or after the performance. Since contemporary readers experienced the same problems as we do, eighteenth-century criticism is a good place to start in order to understand the nature of the relation between programmes, performance, and spectators. As has already been convincingly argued by Jacky Bratton, programmes and playbills are enormously underrated documents. More than sources for factual information on performance dates, venues, and so forth, they help us to understand ‘those most difficult and evanescent aspects of theatre history – the expectations, and dispositions of the audience, their personal experience of theatre’.1 208

1

Jacky Bratton, New Readings in Theatre History (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 39.


Programmes are controversial Thankfully, from the modern researcher’s point of view, there was widespread debate about performance programmes in the eighteenth century. The most frequent complaint was that the action on stage and the synopsis in the programme did not correspond. Either the language of mime was considered to be at fault because it was incapable of expressing what was spelt out in the programme, or the elaborate, literary style of the programme was considered unperformable. In 1759, when the new style of ballet d’action was only just beginning to emerge, an avant-garde work by Jean-Baptiste Hus,2 La Mort d’Orphée ou Les Fêtes de Bacchus, was ridiculed by Ange Goudar for these reasons. He quotes Hus’s programme at length and then remarks: There is nothing more beautiful nor more magnificent, Sir, than the plan of this Ballet; but nothing is more ridiculous and badly conceived as the realisation of it. It is confusing from beginning to end; we would understand nothing if we did not search constantly in the little book what such and such a posture means, or such and such a step.3

Goudar’s need to keep looking at the programme to understand the stage action leads him to allege that programmes are an artistic fraud, that they prime spectators to interpret action in certain ways, that they encourage them to read meaning into stage action which, objectively, is not there. The same point was later made in the extended exchange of pamphlets between Jean-Georges Noverre and his major rival, Gasparo Angiolini. In addition to the matters of dramatic structure which we discussed in Chapter 7, Angiolini has much to say about the misleading nature of the language used in Noverre’s performance programmes. In the longest pamphlet of the querelle, Angiolini gives many examples of verbal descriptions he regards as unperformable. Perhaps the most persuasive are the most irreducibly language-specific examples arising from the grammatical precision of programmes. In Angiolini’s opinion, such grammatical precision is entirely foreign to mute performance. He quotes from Noverre’s Agamemnon Vengé and asks how it is possible to represent in mime the past and future tenses which Noverre uses so liberally, not to mention compound 2 3

For biographical information on Hus, see Jean-Philippe van Aelbrouck, Dictionnaire des Danseurs, Chorégraphes et Maˆıtres de Danse a` Bruxelles de 1600 a` 1830 (Brussels: Mardaga, 1994). Anon. [Ange Goudar], Observations sur les Trois Derniers Ballets Pantomimes qui ont Paru aux Italiens et aux François: Sçavoir, Télémaque, Le Sultan Généreux, La Mort d’Orphée ([Paris]: n.p., 1759), p. 41.

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tenses.4 How is it possible to represent deictic words and phrases such as ‘this is’ when the person referred to is not on stage? And deixis is doubly difficult when the person off-stage is referred to by blood relations; for example: ‘this is the daughter of Priam’. How can the complexities of blood relations, so vital in the plot of tragedy, be expressed in mime?5 Angiolini contends that Noverre stretches beyond credibility the function of a programme. He probably did not coin the phrase, but would doubtless have agreed with the new proverb circulating among Italian theatre critics in Milan during Noverre’s tenure at the Regio Ducal: ‘bugiardo come un programma’, or ‘nothing lies like a programme’.6 The playwright and critic Matteo Borsa concluded similarly that programmes were false promises.7 Stefano Arteaga demonstrated the same point in reverse: he wrote his own account of a production by Noverre based solely on what he saw as a spectator, challenging his reader to guess the subject. Most readers would agree it is not possible to guess.8 It would seem that the relation between programmes and performance was often problematic. It was in France and Italy that programmes caused most controversy. Elsewhere, they were put to many uses without cause for much comment. In Bouillon, a quasi-independent protectorate of France, the Journal Encyclopédique was happy to reproduce without comment (and without acknowledgement) Noverre’s programme for La Toilette de Vénus.9 4

5

6

7

8

9

In the St Petersburg (1803–04) and Paris (1807) editions of his Lettres sur la Danse, Noverre belatedly acknowledges that Angiolini was right (without mentioning him by name) that mime cannot represent grammatical tenses other than the present tense. See Lettres sur la Danse et les Arts Imitateurs (Paris: Lieutier, 1952), pp. 14 and 307. Gasparo Angiolini, Lettere di Gasparo Angiolini a Monsieur Noverre sopra i Balli Pantomimi (Milan: Gio. Battista Bianchi, 1773), pp. 35–38. See Appendix for the published plot synopsis of Noverre’s Agamemnon Vengé. See for example Anon., Due Lettere Scritte a Diversi Soggetti (Naples: n.p., 1774), pp. 4, 6, 11, and 17; and Anon., Memorie per Servire alla Storia degli Spettacoli del Teatro di Milano degli Anni 1774, e 1775. Ossia Lettere Controcritiche del Marchese N . . . al Cavaliere K . . . (Brescia: Fratelli Pasini, 1776), p. 59. As we pointed out in Chapter 4, note 43, the second text may be by Giuseppe Carpani. It was, in any case, written partly as a reply to the first text. Matteo Borsa, ‘Saggio filosofico sui balli pantomimi’, Lettera Terza, in Opuscoli Scelti sulle Scienze e sulle Arti, Tratti dagli Atti delle Accademie, e dalle Altre Collezioni Filosofiche e Letterarie, dalle Opere piu Recenti Inglesi, Tedesche, Francesi, Latine, e Italiane, e da Manoscritti Originali, e Inediti (Milan: Giuseppe Marelli, 1782–83), Vol. VI, Part II, pp. 153–169 (161). The first and second letters are published in Vol. V, Part III, pp. 137–151 and Part IV, pp. 311–321. Stefano Arteaga, ‘Ragionamento sopra il ballo pantomimico’, in Le Rivoluzioni del Teatro Musicale Italiano dalla sua Origine Fino al Presente, 3 vols (Venice: Carlo Palese, 1785), Vol. III, pp. 221–225. Journal Encyclopédique ou Universel (Bouillon: Imprimerie du Journal, 1756–93), January 1758, p. 125. Noverre first performed La Toilette de Vénus ou Les Ruses de l’Amour in Lyon, 18 November 1757 (published programme, Lyons: Aimé Delaroche, 1757). See also the same use made of Noverre’s programme for Lycomède in the Journal Encyclopédique, May 1764, p. 112.


The Public Advertiser in London assumed without question that Charles Le Picq’s programme for Il Ratto delle Sabine was a respectable historical source.10 The Observateur des Spectacles in Brussels published Nieri’s programme for Le Magicien on the assumption that the programme was enough to demonstrate that he did not plagiarise a Parisian work.11 In all these cases, the relation between programme and performance was taken for granted. This makes programmes a tempting source for modern research, all the more so in view of other contemporary remarks which emphasised their reliability. The Tableau de Mastrigt published a programme for a ballet d’action by Dourdé ‘in order to give some idea of a ballet-pantomime to those who know nothing of this Spectacle’;12 a tantalising prospect for the modern researcher who would like to know the extent to which one can ascertain from these texts ‘some idea’ of a lost art.

Multi-purpose programmes Overall, there was no contemporary consensus. Contemporary comments alluding to the fidelity of programmes are undermined by less charitable critics, and it is difficult for the modern researcher to know to what extent one can depend on them. Functions which have been identified tend to be of limited application; they are relevant to some works or choreographers but not to others. The most simple explanation would be that programmes were written to inform the audience of the plot of the story performed. Choreographers travelled Europe restaging their works, performing before different audiences with different expectations and background knowledge of the historical myth and classical themes so often performed. Choreographers could not therefore have taken for granted the precise extent of the spectator’s knowledge of the theme. Consequently, it may be that programmes served to educate some spectators in order to encourage good spectatorship. When one looks at specific examples, however, this explanation is weak. 10 11

12

The Public Advertiser, 31 December 1782. François-Antoine de Chevrier, L’Observateur des Spectacles ou Anecdotes Théaˆ trales: Ouvrage Périodique, 3 vols (The Hague: H. Constapel, 1762–63), Vol. I, pp. 88–89. Nieri’s first name and other biographical details are not known. There is no entry in the otherwise rigorously researched dictionary by Van Aelbrouck, Dictionnaire des Danseurs, Chorégraphes et Maˆıtres de Danse a` Bruxelles. Anon., Tableau du Spectacle Français, ou Annales Théatrales de la Ville de Mastrigt, Précédé d’un Discours Préliminaire par M. Bernard Avocat (Maastrict: J.T. Van Gulpen, 1781), p. 104. Nothing is known of Dourdé; he does not appear in Van Aelbrouck, Dictionnaire des Danseurs, Chorégraphes et Maˆıtres de Danse a` Bruxelles.

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There did not seem to be much need for Noverre to publish a programme for one of his most famous works, Jason et Médée, given that the story of Jason and Medea was at its peak of popularity in the eighteenth century.13 Kathleen K. Hansell makes the same point with another example: there is no reason why Galeotti should have published a programme for a performance of his Psyche in Milan in 1769 when there had been numerous performances of the myth on the same stage in recent years.14 In any case, if an educative function was the sole or even main purpose of programmes, one would expect their content to vary as choreographers travelled from venue to venue. In fact, programmes were translated, reprinted, and circulated in cities all over Europe usually without major editorial changes.15 The simple explanation that programmes were educative, therefore, is unconvincing. Part of the problem with this simple explanation is that it assumes too readily that the reader was naturally intended to be the spectator, when in fact there are likely to have been different kinds of reader. One of them was doubtless the censor. Bruce A. Brown suggests that the plot summaries for Hilverding’s productions in Vienna were probably written in order to gain prior permission to perform.16 In France, the evidence for this use is sometimes made explicit by the censor’s seal of approval on the last page of the programme. Thus, the programme for Sophie de Brabant, by the little-known Pierre-Germain Pariseau, bears the signature of the censor Jean-Baptiste Suard, who gives his permission for performance on the basis, specifically, of having ‘read’ the text: ‘read and approved for the

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16

Marianne McDonald identifies nineteen versions of the Medea myth on the musical stage in the eighteenth century, compared to eleven in the previous century, four in the nineteenth century, and sixteen in the twentieth century. See ‘Medea e` mobile: the many faces of Medea in opera’, in Medea in Performance, 1500–2000 (Oxford: Legenda, 2000), p. 100. Kathleen K. Hansell, Opera and Ballet at the Regio Ducal Teatro of Milan, 1771–1776, doctoral dissertation, Ann Arbor, MI, 1979, p. 687. When there are differences between programmes published for different venues, this is usually a sign that the performance rather than the audience has changed. When Noverre took his one-act work Apelles et Campaspe (first performed Vienna 1773 to music by Frantz Aspelmayr) to Paris, he commissioned new music from Jean-Joseph Rodolphe and expanded the action so that, amongst other things, it included a scene in which Alexander the Great angrily had Apelles clapped in chains as punishment for his wayward behaviour with Campaspe (Act I, scene 5). The greater self-control evinced by Alexander in the original Viennese version is reflected in the subtitle of the work: Apelle et Campaspe de Larisse, ou le Triomphe d’Alexandre sur Soi-Même in Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre, Maˆıtre des Ballets de la Cour Impériale et Royale (Vienna: Joseph Kurzböck, 1776). The Parisian title is slightly less committal: Apelles et Campaspe, ou la Générosité d’Alexandre (Paris: Delormel, 1776). Bruce A. Brown, Gluck and the French Theatre in Vienna (Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 174.


performance of the pantomime and the printing of the programme. Paris, 26th May 1781’.17 Given that the performance took place three weeks later, it is very unlikely that he had anything other than the text on which to base his decision. A related function is evident in manuscript copies of Pierre Gardel’s plot synopses submitted, not to the censor, but to the commissioners of the Académie Royale de Musique in Paris. After a number of drafts in which Gardel made corrections according to comments from others as well as his own ideas, the commissioners finally accepted his programme for Méléagre et Atalante by a majority of ten votes to three.18 Letters from the commissioners are not extant for all of Gardel’s works, but all the manuscript drafts of his programmes are written in a very similar way, suggesting that he was writing for the commissioners throughout his career.19 Programmes for the works of Hilverding, Gardel, and others were undoubtedly written for the benefit of the censors or the commissioners, but this does not explain why programmes in general were subsequently published and sold to the public before, during, and after the performance. Hansell implies that the widespread distribution of programmes in Milan was intended to ‘dignify’ the ballet d’action, a new genre making efforts to justify its existence in an unfavourable artistic environment.20 This reason carries some weight when we consider that the ballet d’action was often thought to depend on dubious aesthetic foundations: it was usually an adaptation of a work from the literary, theatrical, and operatic repertoire, but quite what ‘adaptation’ meant when the medium of words was translated into gesture and dance was open to debate. In an artistic culture dominated by linguistic models of aesthetic representation, a dumb show struggled to be accepted. A verbal appendage in the form of a programme may have provided a halo of respectability, rather as prologues did for early opera in the previous century. However, ‘dignifying’ performance could only be

17

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Pierre-Germain Parisau [Pariseau], Sophie de Brabant, Pantomime en Trois Actes, Représentée sur le Théaˆ tre des Grands Danseurs du Roi, le 15 Juin 1781, performance programme published Paris: Brunet, 1781. Letter from the commissioners dated 6 March 1823, Paris, Archives Nationales de France, AJ13 1023. In the same A.N.F. box there are three drafts and a final manuscript version of the programme for Méléagre et Atalante. First submitted to the Académie Royale de Musique in 1813, the work was performed neither then nor in 1823 when Gardel resubmitted it. It remains unperformed. See, for example, the manuscript programmes for Télémaque, his first production in 1788 since becoming maˆıtre de danse at the Académie two years earlier, and Psyché, 1790, perhaps his most famous work; Paris, Archives Nationales de Frances, AJ13 1024. Hansell, Opera and Ballet at the Regio Ducal Teatro of Milan, p. 688.

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part of the purpose of programmes. It suggests a relatively unproblematic distancing of the programme from the performance, as if the relation between the two were not worth debating, whereas in fact contemporaries did discuss it a great deal. Some programmes were commemorative publications of so-called ‘allegorical’ works glorifying the patron of the arts, royal or noble.21 The relation to performance was less problematic than it was for the majority of programmes, since they were designed to be relatively independent texts; rather than relate closely to the performance, their major purpose was to give wider socio-political influence to an ephemeral performance before a select gathering. In effect, they were propaganda. It is relatively easy to understand the purpose of an ‘allegorical’ work and its commemorative programme, but both were small subsets of a much larger and very different phenomenon. Most programmes were published to accompany public performances in public theatres of works with no significant socio-political intention. Moreover, they were usually cheaply produced pamphlets clearly not intended to last much longer than the performance, and certainly not designed as a durable commemorative item. Susan Leigh-Foster thinks that it is missing the point to focus on the relation of programmes to performance, and that these texts ought instead to be read as narrative fictions in their own right.22 There is, indeed, much contemporary evidence to support the view that programmes were read independently of performances. It is one of Angiolini’s complaints with regard to Noverre’s practice that elaborate programmes encouraged spectators to read them for their own sake.23 There are numerous examples from the correspondence between the Verri brothers in Italy during the 1770s of Pietro sending Alessandro copies of programmes for works which they both knew Alessandro would never see. Pietro praised Noverre’s eloquence,24 and

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Noverre defines a ‘ballet allégorique’ as a composition ‘for royal weddings, celebrations, births, convalescence; also for victories on the battlefield and for peace’, in Lettres sur la Danse (1952), p. 280. See for example Hilverding’s work Les Nouveaux Lauriers, performed St Petersburg, 1759 (or maybe only in 1764); performance programme printed in French and Russian with no publishing details (see the copy in the St Petersburg National Library, 19.113a.3.270). This is the underlying principle of her book Choreography and Narrative: Ballet’s Staging of Story and Desire (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996). Gasparo Angiolini, Riflessioni di Gasparo Angiolini sopra l’Uso dei Programmi nei Balli Pantomimi (London [sic]: n.p., 1775), pp. 26–27. Pietro and Alessandro Verri, Carteggio di Pietro e di Alessandro Verri, dal 1766 al 1797, ed. Francesco Novati, Emanuele Greppi, Alessandro Giulini, and Giovanni Seregni, 12 vols (Milan: L.F. Cogliati, 1910–), Vol. XI, p. 183 (11 November 1780).


Alessandro replied to thank him for the pleasurable reading it gave him.25 Like opera libretti, programmes were sometimes read for pleasure.26 The more one studies the phenomenon of programmes, the greater variety of uses one finds. We have added to the panoply of functions by arguing in Chapter 727 that they were also choreographies of a kind, used by choreographers, dancers, composers, and conductors. At the root of the difficulty in explaining their nature is the surfeit of uses they were put to. In the eighteenth century, this aroused widespread controversy, and in modern times it has made critics reluctant to treat them as a reliable source. The interpretative impasse we face with programmes could only be overcome on the basis of a principle which would allow us to accept their heterogeneous nature and approach them on an empirical basis, genre by genre, species by species, even case by case. It may be that different programmes by different choreographers were intended for different purposes. Contemporary critics did not propose a principle which would allow such an approach, although some advocated flexibility. Noverre defended himself against Angiolini’s criticisms of his programmes by saying that they were ‘interpretations’.28 Evidently he wanted to counter rigid expectations of programmes, but he did not elaborate on what a more flexible understanding might have been. He may have been thinking along the same lines as an anonymous Milanese critic, who wrote that programmes were ekphrastic and ought to be read like descriptions in Dante or Ariosto of paintings, bas-relief, or sculpture.29 This view would indeed allow a great deal more room for the subjective interpretation of programmes, and, as a painterly principle, ekphrasis would be congruent with recurrent contemporary remarks on the ballet d’action which stress its visual principles and its painterly qualities. However, ekphrasis falls foul of the same problem as all the other approaches we have discussed: it works in some cases but not in others. Some programmes 25 26

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Carteggio di Pietro e di Alessandro Verri, Vol. VII, p. 9 (3 August 1774). See for example the Gazzette des Pays Bas, which comments that Calzabigi’s libretto for the opera Alceste ought to be read in full to appreciate its poetry; Gazzette des Pays Bas (Brussels: J.J. Boucherie, 1759–91), no. 3 (January 1768). If this was the perception of Calzabigi’s opera libretti, we might expect it to also be the perception of the programmes he wrote or co-wrote with Angiolini, such as Orfeo ed Euridice and Don Juan (music in both cases by Gluck). See pp. 168–170. Jean-Georges Noverre, ‘Introduction au ballet des Horaces, ou petite réponse aux grandes lettres du Sr Angiolini’, in Discussioni sulla Danza Pantomima. Vedi Lettere sulla Danza di Mr. Noverre, e del Sig. Angiolini (Milan: n.p., 1774?), p. 13. This text was also published by Noverre as a preface to Les Horaces in the collection of his programmes, Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre. Anon., Memorie per Servire alla Storia degli Spettacoli del Teatro di Milano, p. 65.

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do indeed encourage the reader to imagine he or she is in the very midst of the action; there is indeed a degree of ‘enargeia’ in programmes, which is the sine qua non of an ekphrastic text. But many programmes are quite the opposite: very matter-of-fact accounts of events, a synopsis of the action.

Programmes as paratexts A better way to understand programmes, one which allows for a great variety of practices, is to view them as ‘paratexts’ on the fringe of the main work forming a bridge between it and the public. Consumers of the arts rarely rely solely on a given artwork for knowledge, interpretation, appreciation, or memory of it. Spectators of opera in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were ‘primed’ by the prologue, concert goers since the nineteenth century have been able to read programme notes before the performance, and readers of novels in the twentieth century may begin by turning to the ‘blurb’ on the back cover. If, as Gérard Genette convincingly demonstrates, every text is surrounded by a web of paratexts, then likewise every theatrical performance spawns its own network of ‘para-performances’. Although they constitute an almost limitless array of reflections on the performance, although they are protean, they are nevertheless united by a collective function: to give the performance what Genette calls cultural ‘presence’.30 There were three main paratextual purposes of programmes: to attract spectators to the theatre, essentially a captatio benevolentiae or marketing ploy, to frame the performance with contextual information about characters and situations, and to ensure that the action was properly interpreted in accordance with the choreographer’s intentions. The first of the three paratextual functions of programmes, the captatio benevolentiae, is most evident in the commercial distribution of programmes. Unlike opera libretti, it was customary to publish and circulate them a considerable time before the performance. Noverre went as far as to delay his performances at the Regio Ducal Theatre in Milan partly in order to give his programmes more time to circulate.31 They were generally printed in small octavo format (sometimes in quarto) to facilitate use and distribution. They varied in length from two or three pages to fifteen or 30

31

‘Paratext’ and ‘presenting’ the artwork are the words and concepts of Gérard Genette. For the first, see Palimpsestes (Paris: Seuil, 1981), p. 9. For the second, see the introduction to the same author’s Seuils (Paris: Seuil, 1989), a wide-ranging study on the subject of paratexts. See Kathleen K. Hansell, ‘Theatrical ballet and Italian opera’ in The History of Italian Opera, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli, 2 vols (University of Chicago Press, 2002), Vol. II, p. 237.


sometimes more, but they were never long enough to constitute a blow-byblow account of the performance which could last sometimes more than an hour.32 This gave rise to criticism from Matteo Borsa that programmes were too short to be a faithful representation of performance.33 He would have been less critical if he had considered that the longer the programme, the less well it probably functioned as a captatio. A paratext designed as a captatio could not have avoided condensing the performance into a few pages. All the attributes of language would have been necessary, including the one which critics highlighted most often: non-figurative, intangible, abstract language. The following example is representative of many. Angiolini’s anonymous ‘little oracle’ took issue with Noverre’s programme for Iphigénie en Tauride, contending that it is not possible to perform in mime the following words: ‘Isménie makes the greatest efforts to erase from her memory all these unpleasant impressions.’34 Or again: Iphigenia swears to the goddess that her heart is innocent [. . .], that she has no choice but to use the weapon placed in her hand by the barbaric and cruel Tyrant [. . .]. She begs the Goddess to relieve her of duties which dishonour her worship, offend the Gods, and horrify humanity.35

According to the ‘little oracle’, linguistic abstractions (‘mots e´ quivoques’) are beyond the ability of dancers and mimes. But, from a linguistic point of view, abstraction is an inevitable process by which a multi-media performance is translated into words. In any case, words by their nature have a tendency to translate particulars into abstractions. Hence, a single abstract noun may 32

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Noverre’s Adèle de Ponthieu lasted more than an hour. See Hansell, Opera and Ballet at the Regio Ducal Teatro of Milan, p. 832. Pierre Gardel’s Psyché lasted eighty-eight minutes, according to the annotations on the part books of the music; see the front cover of the ‘violino primo’, Lyon, Archives municipales de Lyon, 74PW118. Borsa writes of mime dance in general that a performance lasted more than an hour; see Matteo Borsa, ‘Saggio filosofico sui balli pantomimi’, Lettera Seconda, pp. 320–321. Some were considerably shorter, however. Angiolini’s Sémiramis lasted only twenty minutes; see the preface written either by him or Ranieri de’ Calzabigi, Dissertation sur les Ballets-Pantomimes des Anciens pour Servir de Programme au Ballet-Pantomime Tragique de Sémiramis, reproduced in Calzabigi’s complete works, Scritti Teatrali e Letterari, ed. Anna Laura Bellina, 2 vols (Rome: Salerno, 1994), Vol. I, p. 164. Pitrot’s Le Sultan Généreux lasted twenty-five minutes according to Goudar; see Goudar, Observations sur les Trois Derniers Ballets Pantomimes qui ont Paru aux Italiens et aux François, p. 32. Borsa, ‘Saggio filosofico sui balli pantomimi’, Lettera Seconda, pp. 320–321. Anon., Lettre d’un des Petits Oracles de M. Angiolini au Grand Noverre (Milan: Bianchi, 1774), p. 15. The quotation is taken from Noverre’s Iphigénie en Tauride, Ballet Tragique, Act I, scene 2, in Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre. Anon., Lettre d’un des Petits Oracles de Monsieur Angiolini au Grand Noverre, p. 15. The quotation is taken from Noverre, Iphigénie en Tauride, Ballet Tragique, Act II, scene 2, in Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre.

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be shorthand for elaborate use of stage space, set design, movement, facial expression, and musical accompaniment. This is unlikely to have appealed to all spectators; an inherent risk in captatio is over-promotion or immodesty leading to a contravention of the rules of decorum of the early modern period, when it was taboo for authors to comment publicly on their works. But it is closer to the paratextual function of programmes to criticise them for over-promotion than it is to claim that they lie, that they are fraudulent. Perhaps we ought to replace the contemporary Italian proverb ‘nothing lies like a programme’ with ‘there’s no self-promotion like a programme’. In this sense, one might compare a programme to what is known in modern Hollywood jargon as ‘pitching the movie’ or summarising the script and interest of a film project in a few breathless and nerve-racking minutes to a panel of film executives. They both require virtuoso captatio techniques of hyperbole and synthesis which simply render redundant notions of authorial modesty and fidelity to the real performance. The second paratextual function of programmes was to provide sufficient contextual information about characters, situation, and language for the action to be understood. Given that the genre was new and that the language employed, mime, was unusual, many spectators probably asked themselves the same kind of questions as Goudar did in the remark we quote at the beginning of this chapter: what does this or that gesture, movement, or facial expression mean? Many were doubtless grateful for a supplementary text such as the programme providing a general outline within which to make sense of individual gestures or movements. In this case, the function of programmes was to ‘frame’ the narrative according to the principles common to all narratives: more or less overt signals guiding or even enabling interpretation by the reader.36 Sometimes these signals become clichés if the genre in question becomes particularly well established. Thus, a fairy tale opens with ‘Once upon a time . . . ’. Sometimes these signals develop into a fairly strict set of rules governing the genre. The detective novel is instantly recognisable for this reason.37 These devices may become relatively redundant once a genre has established itself, but would be important in the case of a new genre such as the the ballet d’action seeking to be understood despite a good deal of situational uncertainty. The task was especially hard given that a new artistic language, mime, was used. In this case, we ought

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On framing, see Werner Wolf and Walter Bernhart (eds), Framing Borders in Literature and Other Media (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006). See Tzvetan Todorov, ‘La typologie du roman policier’, in La Poétique de la Prose (Paris: Seuil, 1971).


to think not only in the terms of literary theory (‘framing’), but in terms of what linguists call ‘context-of-utterance’. It is a fundamental illocutionary characteristic of words that they inevitably rely on context to be entirely understood. The sentence ‘shall we take junior back to the zoo?’ relies on interlocutors knowing that they do not ‘take’ junior in the same way that they ‘take’ a bus, and that ‘junior’ will not be taken back to the zoo for the same reason as one would take ‘an escaped lion’ back to the zoo.38 In the new language of mime, keeping such ambiguity to a minimum must have been a challenging task indeed. Overall, the need to provide linguistic and narrative context must have been acutely felt by choreographers, and is likely to have made the programme a valuable tool. The simplest framing device characteristic of programmes was the choice of a well-known story or theme. Original creations were a minority, and invariably they were of a pastoral, light-hearted, or even comic kind. The most ambitious works with tragic, historical, or heroic ambitions were invariably based on existing texts or classical myths. As a result, spectators entered the theatre with expectations and prior knowledge about the story which helped them to interpret the language of mime. Programmes contributed detail to this framing device by a concise or elaborate recounting of the story. From this point of view, there is no difference in principle between Angiolini’s short, simple plans and Noverre’s longer, more elaborate programmes.39 They both framed the performance for spectators, or, in Angiolini’s words, they ‘facilitate the spectators’ understanding and provide them with a plan’.40 Or, as he declared on another occasion, he wrote programmes ‘only to give the context of events and the plan on which the ballet is based’.41 This sounds strikingly similar to Noverre’s analogy between programmes and the synopsis of action at the beginning of each section of a long poem.42 Hence, although the disagreement between the two of them is superficially great, they would appear in fact to have developed two ways to achieve the same paratextual framing function. It is because of the framing function of programmes that contemporaries sometimes compared them to the protasis in classical tragedy, the opening scene or scenes in which a character or characters provide a summary of events, relations between protagonists, ambitions, obstacles, duties, and 38 39 40 41 42

These examples are from F.R. Palmer, Semantics (Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 49. Angiolini argues for simple plans in Riflessioni di Gasparo Angiolini sopra l’Uso dei Programmi nei Balli Pantomimi, p. 17. Angiolini, Lettere di Gasparo Angiolini a Monsieur Noverre sopra i Balli Pantomimi, p. 39. Angiolini, Riflessioni di Gasparo Angiolini sopra l’Uso dei Programmi nei Balli Pantomimi, p. 17. Noverre, ‘Introduction au Ballet des Horaces’, p. 5.

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desires: all the essential ingredients which make the subsequent action possible. This is the analogy made by the anonymous translator of Lucian’s The Dance. Such is the controversial nature of the ballet d’action in Italy in the 1770s that discussion of it spread to unexpected areas, and this translation was to a significant degree part of the pamphlet war between the two wellknown choreographers Noverre and Angiolini. The translator continued the debate in his footnotes, one of which is a defence of programmes on the grounds that the ballet d’action is different from other kinds of theatre such as Classical tragedy or comedy: The difference between tragedy, comedy, and pantomime is the difficulty in the third case of exposing in the first act the web of action, the names, the status, and the interests of the protagonists; hence it is necessary to supply in a programme the principles and the constitutive episodes of the subject.43

On this principle, programmes would be as essential to the ballet d’action as the opening scenes are to Classical tragedy. Given that protasis was a wellestablished and respected part of theatrical convention, the analogy is praise indeed. The implication is that programmes provided the architecture on which the performance relied, that they provided the spectators with the necessary framework on which to construct their interpretation. Writing the protasis for spoken tragedy is a delicate but important matter. In Chevrier’s view, this makes protasis a good analogy for a ballet d’action plot synopsis. As we point out in Chapter 7,44 he read Jean-Baptiste Pitrot’s programme for Le Vieillard Rajeuni, and rewrote it on the grounds that the story needed constructing more precisely; as precisely, in fact, as a tragic protasis: ‘I was always careful to establish the story with the same precision that an author in the protasis would recount that of a tragedy.’45 The analogy is questionable, however, on two counts. Firstly, ballet d’action programmes are unlike tragic protasis in that they recount the whole story, not only the background to it. Secondly, a protasis is integral to the play, not detached as a programme is. It is a matter of pride and principle in seventeenthand eighteenth-century theatre that plays should be self-contained, that the dialogue of the protagonists should provide all the information that the spectator needs, and therefore that elaborate stage directions or indeed performance programmes are not necessary. A lengthy appendage of words 43 44 45

Lucian [Luciano di Samosata], Della Danza, Dialogo di Luciano, con Annotazioni, trans. anon. (Florence: Gaspero Pecchioni, 1779), p. 29n (footnote no. 14). See p. 167. Chevrier, L’Observateur des Spectacles, Vol. II, p. 132. Jean-Baptiste Pitrot was the younger brother of the better-known Antoine. For biographical information, see Van Aelbrouck, Dictionnaire des Danseurs a` Bruxelles.


would have been viewed as a sign of theatrical failure by many contemporary spectators. This principle no doubt underlay a large part of the criticism directed at programmes. The analogy between protasis and programmes held for Chevrier and others because they were not convinced that the ballet d’action ought to be judged according to the same criteria as spoken theatre. This was one of the fundamental issues raised by the debate in the 1770s between Noverre and Angiolini. Noverre consciously took liberties with theatrical conventions because he did not believe that the conventions were ever devised with the ballet d’action in mind.46 Chevrier’s analogy with protasis, therefore, is an implicit recognition that the ballet d’action needed to adapt conventions, that it needed a paratext. The last and most nebulous paratextual function of programmes was to ensure that the performance was properly interpreted, or, more aptly in the case of a stage performance, to promote good spectatorship. Given the unusual and challenging nature of the ballet d’action, this must have been a particularly important function. Other challenging forms of art have found ways to encourage receptiveness in their audience. In the nineteenth century, the programme note was devised as an aid to audience appreciation of symphonic music, and Pierre Baillot’s contemporary justification for this textual innovation is equally applicable to the ballet d’action: ‘it is not enough for the artist to be prepared for the public; so also the public needs to be prepared for what they are about to hear’.47 Baillot’s remark was intended to redress the balance of expectations and make demands of the spectator. A contributor to the heated Milanese quarrel provoked by the ballet d’action in the 1770s made a similar observation: in response to criticisms of the obscurity of mime, he asked: ‘but is this the fault of the artist?’48 As we discuss in Chapter 4,49 he seems to suggest it was more the fault of the spectator than the artist. Denis Diderot was blunter still when he blamed the audience for the lack of success of innovative physical acting in his spoken drama.50 Such high expectations of spectatorship were unusual in 46 47

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See Chapter 7, p. 173. Nigel Simeone, ‘Programme note’, Grove Music Online, in Oxford Music Online, www. oxfordmusiconline.com. Bratton makes a similar point about nineteenth-century English programmes: ‘the programme puts the reader in the frame of mind to understand how we should respond to the performance’. See her New Readings in Theatre History, p. 59. Anon., Memorie per Servire alla Storia degli Spettacoli del Teatro di Milano, p. 15. See also Grimm on the obscurity of mime dance: ‘these weaknesses are inherent to the art’, in Friedrich Melchior Grimm, Correspondance Littéraire, Philosophique et Critique, 16 vols (1753–82; Paris: Garnier Frères, 1877–82), Vol. XII, p. 368. See p. 106. Denis Diderot, Paradoxe sur le Comédien, in Œuvres Complètes, 33 vols (Paris: Hermann, 1975–), Vol. XX, p. 101.

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the early modern period when, on the contrary, the onus tended to be on the author to cultivate clarity. And yet the principle of aesthetic acclimatisation of the viewer or reader has a long history, from the Elder Philostratus to E.H. Gombrich, who holds that viewers of art need a ‘faculty of projection’, a mimetic ability allowing them to recognise an artistic representation of a natural object.51 The ballet d’action was in a curious position. In one sense, spectators did not need a highly developed faculty of projection, since, of all the arts, theatre comes closest to employing ‘natural’ signs. An actor moving and speaking words on stage really is moving and speaking. Mime theatre, however, involved movement and ‘speech’ of an unnatural kind which countered the effect of flesh-and-blood natural signs. No matter how much choreographers and devotees of the art stressed the roots of mime in natural corporeal expression, the spectator could not regard a mute conversation as being as natural as a conversation in words. There still needed to be a mimetic process in the spectator’s mind in order for him or her to recognise the action and spectate as the choreographer would presumably have liked. The need to encourage receptiveness in the spectator arises partly because of the sheer amount of action which could happen in a ballet d’action. As a genre, it was part of developments in the eighteenth century towards kinetic, visual theatre rather than poetic, language-orientated theatre favoured by Classicism. Even an apparently conservative playwright such as Voltaire responded and appealed to changing tastes, reserving his criticism for only the more aberrant practices such as the horse brought on in the midst of an English play.52 The ballet d’action was a reflection of these changing dramaturgical tastes, but was also closely related aesthetically to long-standing conventions of opera, a genre in which a great deal of liberty with staging and visual effects was possible. These two contexts, drama and opera, account to some extent for the action-packed nature of many ballets d’action, but the absence of words in the performance made the need for spectatorial support more necessary. Arnould’s Les Quatre Fils d’Aymon is a typical example of an action-packed historical drama of the kind popular in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Act I is relatively calm, but the following two acts hardly leave the audience time to take breath. Act II depicts the Emperor Charlemagne’s guards fighting amongst themselves, followed by the attack of the four

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Philostratus, Life of Apollonius, II, 22. E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion (London: Phaidon, 1996), p. 155. Voltaire, Dissertation sur la Tragédie Ancienne & Moderne, preface to his play Sémiramis ´ (Amsterdam: Etienne Ledet, 1750).


Aymon brothers, their capture of Charlemagne’s standard and retreat to their castle, Charlemagne’s troops parading threateningly, a sally forth by Aymon’s troops, a battle between Regnaut Aymon and Roland, full engagement of troops from both sides, and finally Regnaut taken prisoner. Act III begins with Regnaut about to be hanged by Charlemagne, when Regnaut’s three brothers make a surprise attack to save him before escaping on horseback. Charlemagne counters by mounting a full-scale assault on the Aymon castle. Roland is captured, and finally there is an exchange of prisoners and Charlemagne magnanimously pardons his enemies.53 Throughout this action, protagonists converse, discuss strategy, vow revenge, express a panoply of passions and generally communicate the motives and objectives of their actions. This work was presumably intended to appeal to the growing contemporary taste for historical drama, but without help from a programme the spectator would most probably have felt bewildered by a mêlée of animated but confusing skirmishes. Although Les Quatre Fils d’Aymon is an especially dynamic work, its flamboyance is really only an extension of the fundamental qualities which were often identified as desirable in the genre. Critics appreciated the pace of action and disliked languid, protracted plots.54 Angiolini’s view is typical of many: the ballet d’action is a convex lens which condenses the action and squeezes out extraneous ‘episodes’.55 Even in the case of Noverre, who incorporated more interludes of pure dance into his works than many other choreographers, observers commented on the fast sequence of ‘moving pictures’ or ‘tableaux mouvants’ that gave his works what we might now call cinematic qualities.56 Stefano Arteaga contended that these cinematic qualities were what distinguished the ballet d’action from other visual arts such as painting or sculpture.57 With moving pictures comes an aesthetic of speed largely alien to contemporary visual arts, and one can imagine that a programme would have helped to prepare audiences for an unusual viewing 53

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55 56 57

Arnould [Jean-François Mussot], Les Quatre Fils Aymon, Pantomime en Trois Actes, Représentée pour la Première Fois, sur le Théaˆ tre de la Porte Saint-Martin, le 15 Nivose an 12. Avec Combats et Evolutions a` Pied et a` Cheval, Musique Arrangée par MM. Francony, performance programme published Paris: Barba, 1804. The first version of this work was performed in 1779 at the Théaˆ tre de l’Ambigu-Comique, performance programme published Paris: Pierre-Nicolas Delormel, 1799. See for example the Gazzetta Urbana Veneta, 2 December 1789, p. 763 on Caroline Pitrot in La Caccia di Meleagro; or Carteggio di Pietro e di Alessandro Verri, Vol. IV, p. 272 (30 October 1771) on an unnamed work by Charles Le Picq. Angiolini [and Calzabigi?], Dissertation sur les Ballets-Pantomimes, p. 168. See Grimm on Noverre’s Médée et Jason in Correspondance Littéraire, Vol. 12, p. 368. Arteaga, ‘Ragionamento sopra il ballo pantomimico’, p. 210. See also Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse (1952), p. 104.

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experience. Perhaps, then, Hansell is right to argue that audiences do not need to be reminded of well-known Classical, mythological, and historical plots, but perhaps they do need some warning that a familiar plot will rush past them in as little as twenty minutes. A second and equally important reason to encourage receptiveness in the audience is that the ballet d’action had an aesthetic of the passions. Exactly how performers portrayed the passions is difficult to say, but it is clear that there is a special use of the body and the mobile face. However it was done, staging the passions was almost universally accepted as a key objective of the ballet d’action, the feature which distinguished it from other forms of dance which were allegedly less expressive and more mechanical.58 This principle led Ange Goudar to criticise Jean-Baptiste Pitrot’s daughter for her lack of expression, despite her prodigious technical talents: She has good legs and arms, but her face is worthless. It’s all of a piece. In high dance, the passions come in fast succession, but she has no idea how to represent surprise, terror, indignation, hate, fury, admiration. These are the transitions expressing different feelings without which a dancer will always be mediocre, because she will lack the sublime quality of dance. There is a great difference between rendering a subject with the feet and with the expression of the soul. An automaton can do entrechats.59

Goudar was by no means an unconditional admirer of the ballet d’action, but many avid supporters of the genre agreed with him that its ‘sublime’ quality came from its ability to represent the passions in dance. It was therefore unfortunate to say the least if spectators sometimes reported that they did not understand the way the passions were represented. In some cases, this was probably due to lighting conditions in contemporary theatres. Thus, although the Public Advertiser in London declares that spectators were impressed by the way Madame Simonet ‘exhibited that strong marked Transition of Counternance’ (original emphasis), this comes with the following caveat: ‘at least to all who were near her’.60 Even with a front row seat, though, some spectators found the typology of passions unclear. Gachet thought they were fundamentally ambiguous, that they left the spectator in a quandary: 58

59 60

Noverre and Angiolini are in agreement on this subject. See the many allusions in Noverre, Lettres sur la Danse (1952), e.g. p. 97, and in Angiolini, Lettere di Gasparo Angiolini a Monsieur Noverre sopra i Balli Pantomimi, e.g. p. 78. Anon. [Ange Goudar], Lettre d’un des Petits Oracles de M. Campioni au Grand Pitrot (n.p.: n.p., 1774), p. 16. The Public Advertiser, 25 February 1782. Simonet was performing in Noverre’s Rinaldo and Armida.


The mind of the spectator wanders according to his imagination which from one moment to the next is mortified to find that it is mistaken, that it has thought one thing only to think another.61

Gachet goes on to write that the programme is intended to compensate for this difficulty by helping the spectator pin down the passions: ‘to remedy the problem of fixing one’s ideas, it has been thought necessary to provide a programme informing the spectator of the action to be performed’.62 This would explain why programmes sometimes read almost like an inventory of passions, a catalogue a little like the list in Goudar’s quotation above: ‘surprise, terror, indignation, hate, fury, admiration’.

Programmes are inherently controversial These, then, are three paratextual functions of programmes which reconcile a wide range of comment and criticism from modern and contemporary sources. It is still possible to argue, of course, that, for whatever reason, programmes should be written differently, but only on the principle that the same is true of any paratext. They are inherently subjective texts dependent on the inclination of the writer for the exact nature of their relation to the main work. They are united only by a common function: to ‘present’ the main work. A more radical criticism would be to argue that programmes per se are not a legitimate component of performance, but then one would also have to argue that all paratexts in general are undesirable, and one would thereby quickly encounter what must be an insurmountable obstacle, namely the ubiquitous nature of a type of text as old as artistic representation itself. Symbiotic or parasitic, all art spawns para-art. The consequence is endless controversy like that caused by programmes in the eighteenth century. Programmes, like all paratexts, were inherently controversial for a number of reasons. In the first place, they were usually considered peripheral to the main work, and yet they had an undeniable and sometimes great influence on reception. Their apparently minor status seemed out of proportion with their influence. Programmes explained so much about the performance that they were sometimes the equivalent of a particularly explicit ‘blurb’ on the back cover of detective novel revealing ‘who did it’ before the reader has even opened the book. Genette gives 61 62

L. Gachet, Observations sur les Spectacles en Général, et en Particulier sur le Colisée (Paris: P. Alex. Le Prieur, 1772), p. 21. Gachet, Observations sur les Spectacles, p. 21n.

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the example of the blurb for Alain Robbe-Grillet’s novel La Jalousie, which reveals the key to the complex experimentation with narrative and theme.63 Or they are like Zola’s preface to La Fortune des Rougon, which Flaubert thought was too candid in giving away the ‘secret’ of the story.64 Not only may the back covers of these books spoil the reader’s enjoyment, but they arguably undermine the autonomy of the main text. Angiolini thought that performance programmes had a similar effect: they damaged the autonomy of a nascent art form just when it is trying to justify its existence.65 The second inherently controversial aspect of programmes derives from the elusive authorial responsibility for what some would regard as effectively a ‘puff’ article intended to flatter the author. Although they were rarely signed, they were usually written by the choreographer. Authorship is often made clear in other sources. Angiolini, for example, acknowledges in his critical works that he is the author of his own programmes, but he adds ´ that he was obliged to write them ‘by the authorities’.66 Etienne Lauchéry’s programmes are signed, not by himself, but by ‘Monsieur Armand Duteil, actor’.67 To what extent, therefore, do Angiolini and Lauchéry escape authorial responsibility for texts which, according to some critics, lacked professional probity? Programmes are an oddity in this respect; although it was common practice in the early modern period for authors not to append their names to their works, it was not common for an author to write an anonymous ‘puff article’. Thirdly, paratexts, as the word implies, hover around the main text; they are not circulated uniquely before it, at the same time, or after it. An introductory essay published with a work of fiction, for example, can later be published independently, giving rise to different expectations on the part of the reader. In the same way, most programmes were intended to be read before a performance by potential spectators who were likely to make a fairly firm connection between text and performance, but that connection is likely to have been less firm when programmes were read later by those who did not attend the performance. Hence the different approach to programmes even by a single individual such as Pietro Verri. When he

63 65 66 67

Genette, Seuils, pp. 105–106. 64 Genette, Seuils, p. 213. Angiolini, Riflessioni di Gasparo Angiolini sopra l’Uso dei Programmi nei Balli Pantomimi, p. 26. Angiolini, Riflessioni di Gasparo Angiolini sopra l’Uso dei Programmi nei Balli Pantomimi, p. 17. ´ See the programme for Etienne Lauchéry’s Ballets Exécutés a` la Fin de Chaque Acte de L’Opéra d’Artaxerces, Représanté [sic] pour la Foire le 19 Mars 1765, in Recueil des Ballets Exécutés sur les Théaˆ tres de Cassel, depuis l’Année 1764 jusqu’à la Fin de l’Année 1768. Inventé & Composé par Mr Lauchéry L. Maˆıtre de Danse de la Cour, Premier Danseur & Maˆıtre des Ballets de S.A.S. Mgr. Le Landgrave Regnant de Hesse &c. &c. (Cassel: David Estienne, 1768).


sent programmes to his brother before attending the performance himself, he often commented on the performability of the text. When he sent a copy after he had seen the performance, he made looser comments on how the text was interpreted.68 In weighing up the critical value of remarks on programmes, therefore, the first question one might ask of the critic is ‘at what point did he read the text?’. It may be that a significant amount of the adverse criticism caused by the ballet d’action was actually based solely on programmes, not on performances. Choreographers were hoisted by their own petard: they used programmes as marketing devices, but found themselves judged wholly upon them. Hence their tendency sometimes towards fierce rebuttals of criticism which must have seemed to them only tangentially related to their efforts on the stage. A fourth and fundamental controversy arises from the varied degree of illocutionary force of paratexts. Just as the authorial preface to a work of fiction may provide objective information, authorial interpretation, or even an authorial injunction to ‘read’ the work in a certain way, the function of programmes varies. The audience at the Regio Ducal Theatre in Milan would have been treated to ‘informative’ programmes in 1773 when Angiolini was ballet-master, injunctive programmes when Noverre took over in 1774, and mildly interpretative ones when a series of choreographers replaced Noverre after 1776, including Domenico Ricciardi and Francesco Rasetti.69 Thus, the protean nature of paratexts, and ‘para-performances’ such as programmes, invites controversy, and yet they are part of the fabric of cultural life. Consequently, the widely divergent opinions on programmes should not prevent modern critics from taking them seriously. On the contrary, we should be encouraged by their heterogeneous nature as paratexts to study them genre by genre, species by species, and, as we proposed above, even case by case. Different programmes have different roles, or indeed a different combination of roles ranging from marketing tool, educative text, ‘pitch’ for the commissioners and censors, or else simply a good read independent of the performance. None of these roles would normally be described as ‘central’; that can surely only be said of the performance itself.

68

69

When Pietro read the programme for Noverre’s Adèle de Ponthieu before the performance, he wondered how it could be staged, commenting that it ‘promises too much’; see Carteggio di Pietro e di Alessandro Verri, Vol. VII, p. 26 (17 September 1774). When he read the programme for La Morte Vendicata di Agamennone having seen the performance, his only comment was an interpretative one, that the plot was ‘cruel’; see Carteggio di Pietro e di Alessandro Verri, Vol. VII, p. 101 (21 January 1775). For a chronology of works performed in Milan, see Hansell, Opera and Ballet at the Regio Ducal Teatro of Milan, Appendix B.

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The importance of paratexts, however, and the overriding conclusion of Genette’s study, is that the periphery is more important than we might think. One is entitled to wonder, however, to what extent this is true in the case of the ballet d’action. It is unlike most of Genette’s examples in that only the paratext is extant. No matter how important the periphery is, what is it worth without the centre? Or, to use Genette’s analogy, a text without its paratext may be as defenceless as an elephant without its tusks, but what use are tusks without the elephant?70 The question is particularly acute if we compare the tangential evidence available on the ballet d’action with the more empirical evidence of Beauchamp–Feuillet transcriptions of ‘danse noble’. Unlike these transcriptions, there is no way that a programme alone can be used to restage a ballet d’action. It would be a mistake, however, to assume too easily that a Beauchamp– Feuillet transcription is the elephant; it, too, may be a para-performance tusk with yet another kind of connection to the main animal. Dance and mime of any kind are by nature ephemeral arts, and therefore any record of them (even using video) may turn out to have a paratextual function. In the domain of mime and dance, there is no centre left to study after the performance is over, but that does not mean that paratexts are useless. In the case of the ballet d’action, programmes say a great deal about what this new genre meant to the eighteenth century. They were designed as a bridge between a highly innovative genre and the public so that neither had to adapt too directly to each other. As such, they are a symptom of how difficult it was for a Classical culture to come to terms with a new kind of theatre with a fast, visual aesthetic. They were also written on the principle that ‘author knows best’, thus contributing to a rise in status of the author during the second half of the eighteenth century.71 Not for nothing were ‘authors’ of ballets d’action the first to be called ‘choreographers’.72 70 71 72

Genette, Seuils, p. 376. ´ See Paul Bénichou, Le Sacre de l’Ecrivain, 1750–1830: Essai sur l’Avènement d’un Pouvoir Spirituel La¨ıque dans la France Moderne (Paris: J. Corti, 1973). See Chapter 7, pp. 165–168.

Conclusions What is dance? What is mime?

Perhaps all of the controversy and thought-provoking aspects of the ballet d’action fundamentally derive from two questions which it persistently poses: what is dance, and what is mime? Either one of these questions has been enough to preoccupy the minds of spectators and scholars alike at many different periods of history, but the ballet d’action is doubly provocative for asking both. What is dance? Ballet d’action choreographers would have been sceptical about a formalist answer. They would not have disagreed with the idea that certain lines, shapes, and contours of movement can be beautiful in their own right, but they thought that this view could cause us to overvalue technique. In their estimation, the formalism at the heart of Baroque dance had degenerated in exactly this way. They criticised the way Baroque dance had developed, not the principles of Baroque dance in themselves. To do otherwise would have been to bite off the hand that fed the ballet d’action, since choreographers and performers were all trained in Baroque dance. If it were possible to ask them ‘what is dance?’ they would probably reply ‘it is evolution, not revolution’. Some, especially Noverre, seem at times to have claimed that they revolutionised their art (although to be fair to Noverre, who is often cast by modern critics as a bit of a charlatan, he never used the word). Some modern critics take their claims too much at face value. It is true that in many ways the ballet d’action was qualitatively new, but the innovations were heavily based on borrowings from related art forms. Ballet d’action choreographers defined dance as being both expressive and representational. As Nelson Goodman has pointed out, the two are not necessarily synonymous,1 but in the case of the ballet d’action, they were both essential features. It expressed the passions in the sense that performers gave the impression of being the very embodiment of one passion or another. In contemporary terms, they ‘impersonified’ them, or in Goodman’s terms, they ‘possessed’ them.2 Semantically, and to some extent aesthetically, the 1 2

See Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub. Co., 1976), pp. 45–52. Goodman, Languages of Art, p. 51.

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ballet d’action was the ‘Ausdrucktanz’ of the eighteenth century, an expressionist dance based on a strong sense of interiority turned outwards. At the same time, however, it was representational in that it sought to depict and to denote fairly directly the characters and events of established narratives from history, myth, and the established theatrical repertoire. Angiolini and other contemporary critics used the word ‘representational’ to mean two things: that the ballet d’action was one of the figurative arts whose medium was essentially visual, and that it was a dramatic or performance art whose medium was stage action. In other words, the ballet d’action was painterly and dramatic. Perhaps this explains a recurrent feature of the ballet d’action, the alternation between rapid and slow movement, between sometimes highly gestural or acrobatic techniques and static, statuesque moments. It must have been a striking mix of leisurely and frenetic movement. The ballet d’action was not courtly. Unlike Baroque stage dance, which was closely related to contemporary principles of politeness, ‘honnêteté’ in France, or ‘sprezzatura’ in Italy, the ballet d’action was not based on the premise that dance and social deportment were correlates. It would have been impossible otherwise for fictional characters to express their passions. This is doubtless one reason why some spectators felt that performances were laboured, contorted, even unnatural, and certainly indiscreet, because dance was used as a medium for expressing the psychological reality of a role (albeit through the filter of conventions for expressing the passions) rather than disguising it. A prince portrayed in courtly dance could not express the kind of emotional torment that would be conceivable in a ballet d’action. Or to take one of the most staged examples, the dancer performing the role of Dido need not have sought any courtly restraint, any emotional discretion in the expression of her despair at the sight of Aeneas sailing away. The ballet d’action also poses the question ‘what is mime?’. The answer which rings out from countless performances and countless contemporary commentaries is that mime is a morally and aesthetically worthy art. Like Lucian, who argued that Roman pantomime was more than an effeminate, mindless, and morally degrading spectacle, choreographers of the ballet d’action dignified mime by making it the medium for the most revered ´ repertoire of mythological and historical themes. Like Etienne Decroux’s ‘corporeal mime’, which, in its Modernist and non-didactic way, asserted the power of mime to convey moral truths about the nature of man, the ballet d’action was based on the premise that the expressive body communicates profound truths more effectively than words can. Mime constituted the

Conclusions

rediscovery of sincerity and the rejection of the ossified, conventional practices of spoken theatre. The spirituality of mime lies firmly in the material, as if, in some quasi-Cartesian dualist way, there is no soul without body, and it is the body which best expresses the soul. Supporters of the ballet d’action insisted that mime was an imitative art, by which they did not mean what might seem obvious, that mime replicates reality, but that it is an art which ‘imitates nature’ by staging human actions, emotions, passions, and in general the internal reality of human beings. It was mime which brought mimesis to the ballet d’action, not dance. Hence, it was thanks to mime that it was possible, for the first time, to conceive of an aesthetics of stage dance. No form of stage dance in the early modern period had attracted the same level of theoretical, aesthetic interest as the ballet d’action did in the eighteenth century. No form of stage dance had been considered as a true art of imitation. Given the dominance of the theory of imitation in contemporary art aesthetics, this amounted to denying stage dance any aesthetic substance. In the ballet d’action, therefore, mime was the mimetic dimension of dance. Mime was a spectacle, and like many kinds of spectacle it often bewildered, puzzled, and astonished spectators. Even though ballet d’action choreographers made a point of distancing themselves from the merely spectacular, the merely acrobatic, street performers, and the like, they used equivalent defamiliarisation techniques. Movements were almost recognisable dance steps, or almost recognisable common gestures, but elaborated in such a complex context that the spectator was bound to feel a gap in understanding. The novel ‘language’ of mime dancers made this partly inevitable, but choreographers seem to have revelled in it, as if they wanted to make the spectator feel at a distinct communicative disadvantage. Spectators were made to feel as if they had landed on another planet; they were not allowed to assume, more complacently, that the mime dancer was a Martian landing on their own planet. Mime was a language, but it did not, by implication, necessarily model itself on articulated language. What was meant by the analogy with language was that mime has a structure, quasi-grammatical and quasi-syntactic, which produces discrete semantic units. Perhaps it is the objective of producing discrete semantic units which makes the analogy with language more useful than others which were occasionally used, such as music. As far as we can tell from the technically unspecific extant evidence, mime in the ballet d’action developed a ‘vocabulary’ as much from everyday, ‘natural’ gesture as from stylised movement. Although mime dancers did not admit as much, this made the ballet d’action quite similar in conception to contemporary

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sign language for the deaf, which was also a ‘methodical’ elaboration of untutored physical expression. These two questions, ‘what is dance?’ and ‘what is mime?’, are posed so acutely by the ballet d’action because it was a hybrid genre, of course. It was also ephemeral. This is true de facto, since it is impossible in all but one case (Ferrère’s choreographies) to reconstruct the stage action. It is arguably true de jure. If we can find no choreographic transcriptions, that may well be because they were never made, because it was beyond the means of mime dancers to make them, and because they may not have wanted to make them even if they could have. If there are no eighteenthcentury instruction manuals for mime, this is probably because it was not nearly so standardised as dance. How and why would mime dancers have written instruction manuals or used transcription systems if they all tended to go about their art in very different ways? Even more so than dance, mime probably relied a great deal on other methods of passing on knowledge, presumably by handing it down from teacher to pupil.

Appendix

i. Anon., ‘Parodie sur les Caractères de la Danse’, Le Mercure, July 1721, pp. 65–72. ii. Charles Le Picq, Il Ratto delle Sabine, performed after the first act of the opera Il Gran Cid, Real Teatro di S. Carlo, 12 January 1780; programme printed Naples, Vincenzo Flauto, 1780. iii. Gasparo Angiolini, Le Roi et le Fermier, Ballet Héro¨ı-Comique, performed Vienna, April 1774; programme published Vienna 1774. iv. Franz Hilverding, Les Amants Protégés par l’Amour, Ballet Pantomime, first performed Vienna, Burgtheater, 1765; programme published Vienna, Jean-Thomas de Trattnern, 1765. v. [Parody of Angiolini’s Sémiramis, by Ange Goudar], in Lettre de Madame Sara Goudar sur le Carnaval de Toscane a` Monsieur L∗∗∗ (n.p., n.p., 1776), pp. 20–24. vi. La Fille Mal Gardée, ou Il n’est qu’un Pas du Mal au Bien, BalletComique-Pantomime, en Deux Actes; De la Composition de M. Dauberval. Remis en Scène par M. Eugène-Hus. Représenté, a` Paris, sur le Théaˆ tre de la Porte-Saint-Martin (ci-devant Opéra) le 20 Vendemiaire an XII (Paris: Fages, 1803). vii. Jean-Georges Noverre, Agamemnon Vengé, Ballet Tragique en Cinq Actes, Exécuté sur les Théatres de Vienne en 1772, in Noverre, Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre, Maˆıtre des Ballets de la Cour Impériale et Royale (Vienna: Joseph Kurzböck, 1776), pp. 22–68. viii. Jean-Benjamin de La Borde, ‘Ballet Pantomime’ [Médée et Jason], from Ismène et Isménias (Paris: Lemarchand, 1770), Act II, scene 5.

Original spelling and punctuation have been retained, but printing errors have been silently corrected. To item viii, La Borde’s ‘Ballet Pantomime’, have been added (in modern type) annotations from the manuscript rehearsal score (Médée et Jason, Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Opéra de Paris, ms A.236.a) where they are different from those on the engraved score. Bar numbers and orchestration have also been added for ease of reference. 233

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Appendix

i. Anon., ‘Parodie sur les Caractères de la Danse’ Le Mercure, July 1721, pp. 65–72 Dans son Temple un jour L’Amour Vint dire aux mortels Qui lui dressoient des Autels, Formez des vœux, Je veux Voir si votre ame inconstante Sera contente. Profités, Amants, jeunes beautez Des dons qui vous font presentés.

Courante Amour Malgré le froid de l’âge, Dans ce sejour Je viens vous rendre homage Je sens vos feux; Une jeune beauté m’engage Et je suis joyeux, Quoique je sois bien vieux. Mon cœur Pour ses beaux yeux soupire, De mon ardeur Elle ne fait que rire; Sans la charmer, Amour de toi je ne desire Que de croire aimer.

Menuet A peine j’ay douze ans, Et je ressens Mille confus mouvements; Quel bonheur si les plaisirs Répondent aux desirs. Petit Amour

Appendix

Fais si bien en ce jour Que ma méchante Maman S’endorme un petit moment, Quand viendra mon Amant.

Bourée Pour moy sans danger Je vois mon Berger, Mais helas! J’ay beau faire il ne m’entend pas: Dieu propice aux Amans Peins luy mes tourments; Dis luy, redis luy tout ce que je sens. En vain mes yeux Montrent mes feux. En vain dessus l’herbette Je fais de mon mieux, Il ne voit pas sa conquête Epargne a` mon cœur, Dieu vainqueur, L’aveu d’une ardeur Qu’il devoit tâcher Du moins de m’arracher; Avec des traits charmans Peins luy mes tourments, Dis luy, & redis luy tout ce que je sens.

Chaconne Je suis beau, bien fait, J’ay de l’esprit & du caquet. Je suis beau, bien fait, Je suis badin, je suis follet, J’affecte des airs e´ tourdis, Mes habits sont tout des mieux choisis, Je suis bien poudré, Je fais souvent l’homme d’affaires. Pourtant par envie On dit

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Appendix

Que de moy l’on rit En tous lieux; Quoique je publie On ne me croit pas toujours heureux. J’ay de beaux yeux Bleu; J’ay des talents Grands Et des dents Et la tresse brune; Cependant Je suis sans bonne fortune. Amour, Mets donc mes attraits au jour, Je suis content Sans les cœurs Et les faveurs, Pourvuˆ Qu’on me croie bien reçuˆ

Sarabande Ha! Malgré moi, Je vois bien Que Themire est parjure Helas! tout m’en assure, Et quand elle veut, je n’en crois rien. Dieux! de ma credulité Faut-il qu’elle jouisse! Qu’elle ait moins d’artifice, Amour, ou qu’elle ait moins de beauté.

Gigue Je ris, je danse, je chante, Je suis contente, Je saute toujours, Je vais, je cours; De nouveaux sujets, Dieu d’Amour, Chaque jour Je grossis ta Cour;

Appendix

Dans les plaisirs & dans les fêtes Je fais des conquêtes; Ma vivacité Range tous les cœurs de mon coˆ té: Puissant Dieu, sois moy favorable; Qu’un Berger aimable Sans trop se lasser, Puisse aussi long tems que moi danser.

Rigaudon Moi je suis tres-content, Pour mon argent Je trouve des beautez a` choisir, Sans soupirer ni sans languir: Et c’est mon plaisir, Mon seul desir, C’est un Abbé qui les fait trop renchérir. Amour, par ton moyen trompé, Qu’il soit attrapé.

Passepied Depuis que mon Amant Connoit mon tourment, Il est moins tendre: Mes soupirs se font entendre Vainement. Tres-souvent je le voi Sous une autre loi; J’ai beau m’en plaindre; Amour, j’ai besoin de feindre; Aide-moi. Il faut un aussi bon soutien Que le tien, Pour feindre un moment, Pour voir son changement D’un œil indifferent. Mais peut-être ma froideur Rallumera son ardeur.

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Gavote J’ai perdu tous mes plaisirs, Ah! que de soupirs M’a couté Philéne! Quelle peine! Je l’ai forcé de fuir ce sejour, Craignant son amour. Quand je pense A la longue absence. Ce souvenir Me fait mourir. Fais que plein des mêmes feux Philéne amoureux, Loin de moi s’afflige. Mais que dis-je! Non, qu’il ne souffre pas le tourment Que mon cœur ressent. Qu’il revienne en ces lieux, Ce sont tous mes vœux.

Loure J’aime a` boire, Fais, Dieux des amours, Par ton secours, Que je boive toujours; Il y va ta gloire; Bien souvent ˆ L’Amour vient en buvant.

Musette Mon Amant Est tendre & constant; Les plaines, Les bois, les fontaines, Les oiseaux heureux, Tout retrace mes feux Charmé

Appendix

Du plaisir d’être aimé. Themire Possede un Empire Plus beau que celui des Rois; Les cœurs sont sous ses loix. Dans tous les lieux Ce Berger suit mes traces. Je ne viens point faire ici de vœux; Je viens te rendre graces; J’ai sçu me faire aimer, Quels vœux puis je former? Les noirs soupçons, Les trahisons; Les plaintes, Les troubles & les craintes, Les tristes regrets Habitent les Palais: Mais dans nos bois, Quand une fois L’on aime, Quel bonheur extrême! Jamais un Berger ˆ qu’on put ˆ changer. Ne crut

ii. Charles Le Picq, Il Ratto delle Sabine, performed after the first act of the opera Il Gran Cid, Real Teatro di S. Carlo, 12 January 1780; programme printed Naples, Vincenzo Flauto, 1780 Personaggi Romolo Ersilia Valeria Ostilio Curzio Acronte Tazio

Fondatore di Roma Principessa Sabina, figlia di Curzio Nobile Sabina Patrizio Romano Principe Sabino Principe Sabino, amanto disprezzato di Ersilia Re de’ Sabini

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Appendix

Cavalieri Romani Donzelle, e Popolo Sabino Lottatori, e Gladiatori Sacerdoti del Tempio di Giove

Atto primo Gran Piazza di Roma circondata di Pubbliche, e Private Fabbriche, in parte non ancora terminate, ed in parte adombrate ancora da qualche albero frapposto. Steccato pe’ Pubblici Giuochi, e Monte Palatino con tempio di Nettuno, ed Ara accesa avanti la porta del Tempio. All’ alzarsi del Sipario vedesi sul Monte Palatino un numeroso concorso di Romani, e Romolo, che sagrifica a Nettuno, perchè riesca felice il meditato Ratto delle Sabine. Finito il Sagrifizio scendono dal Monte, per ricevere i Sabini, che vengono. Entrano Curzio, Acronte, Ersilia accompagnata da Romolo, Valeria da Ostilio, e tutte le altre Sabine da’ Cavalieri Romani. Intrecciano unitamente breve, graziosa danza, dopo la quale all’ ordine di Romolo tutti i Cavalieri Romani accompagnano al luogo destinato le Sabine: E Romolo mettesi al primo luogo, facendosi seder vicino Curzio, ed Ersilia. Al segno di Romolo tutti i Romani snudano i ferri, e rapiscono le Sabine. Si oppongono i Sabini; ma vinti dal numero fuggono. Le Sabine disperate vorrebbero fuggire anch’ Esse; ma, giusta l’ordine di Romolo, sono da’ Romani condotte verso il tempio di Giove. Romolo dopo aver consegnata Ersilia alle sue guardie, impone a’ Guerrieri, che veglino a sicurezza della Città: E segue le Donne rapite.

Atto secondo Bosco sagro con l’ingresso del Tempio di Giove. Vengono i Guerrieri Romani, conducendo ognuno per forza le Sabine rapite, che, vedendosi abbandonate da’ suoi, sono addolorate all’ eccesso. Sopraggiunge Romolo, che, imponendo ubbidienza, e rispetto, comanda a’ Romani, di lasciarle in libertà. Entra Ersilia in mezzo alle Guardie, la quale, con impeto avanzandosi a Romolo, gli rinfaccia il tradimento, e gli domanda, che si pretende da Loro. Procura Egli, di placarla, assicurandola, che nulla si tenterà contro il loro onore. In pruova di che accostasi al Tempio, ne apre le porte; ed escono i Sacerdoti, a’ quali Romolo consegna le Sabine, perchè da’ medesimi siano custodite. Entrano dunque nel Tempio accompagnata da’ Sacerdoti, e tornansi a chiuder le Porte.

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Romolo poscia dice a’ suoi seguaci, che, bramando ottenere la mano delle Sabine, usino colle medesime dolci maniere. Promettono di farlo, e lo giurano. Assicurato in questa guisa Romolo, entra con essi nel Tempio.

Atto terzo Vestibulo del Tempio, con porta nel mezzo, che conduce all’ interno del medesimo. Entra Romolo co’ suoi seguaci, i quali ratisicano la loro parola, come sopra. Si accosta, ed apre la porta del Tempio: Quindi ordina a’ Sacerdoti, di far venire le Donne a’ medesimi conseguate. Si avanzano queste timorose, ed alla loro Testa Ersilia. Allegua Romolo i loro timori, dicendo, che non soffrirano violenza alcuna; ma che in vece tutti si faranno pregio, di prostrarsi a’ loro piedi. Ordina a questo effetto Romolo a’ suoi seguaci, di deporre ogni strumento militare; ed impone alle guardie, di ritirarsi. Promette posca ad Ersilia, di divider colla medesima l’Impero, purchè gli accordi la sua mano: E rigettando questa con orrore una tale offerta, le presenta egli uno stile, accio` possa nel di lui sangue vendicarsi dell’ offesa. Offrono sul di lui esempio tutti i Romani ancora il petto; dimostrandosi pronti, ad esser le vittime del loro sdegno. Ma da tali atti, depostosi in parte dalle Sabine lo sdegno, s’intreccia una Danza generale, nella quale Romolo cerca, di guadagnare l’animo di Ersilia. Lo stesso fa pure Ostilio con Valeria e gli altri Romani colle Sabine, le quali a poco a poco cedono a’ dolci modi di questi. ` quantunque Essa pure dia segni non equivoci di La sola Ersilia pero, propensione per Romolo, chiaramente gli dice, che non speri giammai di ottenerla per sposa, offendosi egli servito di un tradimento, per conseguirla. ` che, rivolgendosi a’ suoi Disperasi Romolo per la di lei resistenza, tanto piu, seguaci, li vede colle Sabine in vari gruppi disposti, per cui comprende, aver i medesimi vinto il rigor di quelle. Da tal vista prende motivo di lagnarsi con Ersilia, rappresentandole, che le sue Compagne anno avuto un cuore piu` docile; e che Egli solo e` l’infelice, che nulla a potuto sul di lei animo. A tal rimprovero quasi s’arrende Ersilia; ma ricordandosi nuovamente del tradimento, si dimostra un’ altra volta indocile, e fiera: con bieco sguardo riprende le compagne della lor debolezza, le quali vorrebbero disimpegnarsi: Ma raddoppiate da’ Giovani Romani le piu` vive espressioni, finalmente si danno per vinte. Per questo fatto cresce piu` festosa la Danza, ed il giubilo universale. Dimostrasi agitata Ersilia da un doppio affetto; dall’ amore cioè, che sente per Romolo, e dal dovere, che la induce a resistere. Vorrebbe ritirarsi;

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ma viene trattenuta da Romolo, da Valeria, e dalle altre Sabine, che sul di loro esempio la invitano ad arrendersi. Non potendosi piu` trattore Ersilia, confessa loro, che volentieri cederebbe; ma che non disporra mai di se stessa senza il consenso del Padre. Per tali sentimenti trasportato Romolo dalla piu` viva allegrezza, ne dimostra ad Ersilia tutto il piacere. In questo mentre sopraggiunge un Guerriero Romano, che gli annunzia l’arrivo di Ambasciatori Sabini. Romolo ordina, che siano subito introdotti. Fa ritirare sulle soglie del Tempio le Sabine custodite da’ Sacerdoti, e dalle Guardie: E, comandando a’ suoi, di riprender l’armi, si dispone a ricevere gli Ambasciatori sudetti. Entrano Curzio, ed Acronte. Curzio a nome del suo Re domanda a Romolo, che renda le rapite Sabine. Ersilia, che riconosce in Curzio il suo Padre, corre a gettarsi a suoi piedi. Curzio alza, ed abbraccia la Figlia ed Acronte fattosi con fierezza avanti a Romolo, dicegli, che gli renda Ersilia a lui promessa in Sposa, o che tema il suo sdegno. Disprezza Romolo le minacce di Acronte, e gli risponde, che non l’avrà giammai, tanto piu` vedendo, che Ersilia dimostre il piu` grande aborrimento per le pretenzioni di Acronte. Curzio prega Romolo, perchè gli renda la Figlia. Ersilia pure aggiunge le sue preghiere, per esser restituita nelle mani del Padre. Romolo, che disprezzo` le minacce di Acronte, non puo` resistere alle suppliche di Ersilia; onde dopo esser restato qualche tempo indeciso, per darle una prova piu` ` che piu` gli aggrada, grande del suo amore, la lascia in libertà, di scegliere cio, rammentandogli pero` nel tempo stesso la sua forte passione. Rimane Ersilia sorpresa della generosità di Romolo, e maggiormente si accende di Lui. Trovasi percio` di nuovo contrastata da un doppio affetto: ma finalmente facendo cedere l’amore di Amante a quello di Figlia, risolvesi, di seguitare il Padre. Addolorato Romolo per tale risoluzione, prende Ersilia per mano, accenna ad Acronte, che a lui non l’avrebbe giammai ceduta; ma che bien volentieri, per consolarla, la rende al Padre. Acronte poscia domanda con fierezza a Romolo, che gli siano rese le altre Sabine. Romolo rispondegli, che, siccome potè rendere Ersilia, perchè era sua preda, cos`ı non puo` restituire le altre, perchè sono prede de’ suoi Seguaci. In seguito di cio` Acronte gli espone, che il loro Re li attende in campo, per render ragione coll’ armi del loro tradimento. Si dimostrano pronti s`ı Romolo, che i seguaci ad accettar la pugna; e Curzio, conducendo seco la Figlia, parte con Acronte. Si fanno avanti le Sabine addolarate pel timore, in cui sono, di perdere o i loro Padri, o i loro Amanti. Questi pero` procurano, di consolarle. In fine Romolo ordina a’ suoi Seguaci, di correre all’ armi; e tutti partono.

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Atto quarto Esteriore della Città di Roma. Da un lato Campagna con un Padiglione, dall’ altro, parte della Città di Roma, ed in prospetto mura della medesima. Vedesi l’Esercito Sabino schierato, e Tazio loro Re co’ Principali dell’ Esercito, che attende l’esito dagli Ambasciatori. Calasi il ponte della Porta di Roma, dalla quale escono Curzio, Acronte, ed Ersilia scortati da’ Guerrieri Romani, i quali subito che sono usciti i Sabini, rientrano in Città, e ne chiudono le porte. Curzio, ed Acronte espongono a Tazio, che non hanno potuto conseguire se non se la sola Ersilia; per lo che Egli ordina a’ suoi, di prepararsi a vendicar l’affronto col dar l’assalto alla Città; e ad Ersilia, di ritirarsi nella Tenda. Intanto vedonsi le mura di Roma ripiene di Guerrieri. Alcuni de’ Sabini le battono con arieti, altri con scale tentano salirle. Difendonsi pero` con valore i Romani, ed improvvisamente fanno varie sortire, onde riesce loro, d’incalzare l’esercito Sabino, e respingerlo lungi dalle mura. Vedesi poscia uscire Acronte inseguito da Romolo, ed altri Romani, a’ quali pero` ordina Romolo di ritirarsi, volendo egli solo battersi con Acronte. Obbediscono i medesimi, e Romolo dopo breve pugna uccide Acronte. Dopo di cio` incamminasi, per raggiugnere l’armata: ma vedendo venire Curzio inseguito da molti Romani, che già stanno per ucciderlo, si frappone loro, salvando al medesimo la vita, il quale pero` depone il ferro nelle mani ` ed unitamente di Romolo. Esce Ersilia dal Padiglione, da cui il tutto osservo, al Padre dimostra a Romolo la sua gratitudine. Consegna questi Curzio ad Ersilia, perchè lo conduca salvo in Roma, e parte, per andar laddove piu` serve la pugna. Ersilia fa cenno alle Sabine, che vedonsi sulle porte della Città, che escano, per impedire, se sia possibile, lo eccidio de’ loro Padri, e de’ loro Sposi. In queste mentre riempiesi nuovamente la Scena da tutti i Romani, e Sabini, che combattono. E nel piu` vivo calor della pugna vengono le Sabine con Ersilia scarmigliate, e piangenti; si frappongono fra’ Sabini, e Romani; e genuflesse chiedono agli uni, ed agli altri, che siccome per loro cagione si e` accesa la guerra, cos`ı alle loro preghiere la sospendano, e diventino amici. Si arrestano li Guerrieri dall’ una parte, e dall’ altra. Tazio domanda a’ suoi, che debba risolversi: Romolo fa lo stesso a’ suoi segnaci. Tutti fanno segno, che si rimettono al consiglio, ed alla fuggia decisionne de’ loro respettivi Capi. Romolo si avanza a Tazio, e dicegli, esser pronto a regnare insieme con Lui, purchè soffra, che le rapite Sabine restino Spose de’ Guerrieri Romani.

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Alle preghiere delle Sabine si arrende Tazio alle richieste condizioni di Romolo, e si danno la mano in segno di pace. Le Donne ricolme tutte di giubilo abbracciano i loro Padri, ed i loro Sposi: e Romolo invita Tazio con tutti i Sabini ad entrar lieti in Roma, per ivi stabilire i Concordati, e poi celebrare le nozze. Onde tutti festosi entrano per la Porta di Roma.

Atto quinto Tempio di Giove. Vedonsi tutte le Donne intorno al Simolacro di Giove custodita da’ Sacerdoti. Vengono tutti lieti i Sabini, ed i Romani, alla testa de’ quali si avanzano pure i loro rispettivi capi con Guardie d’ambe le parti. Si schierano da un lato tutti i Sabini, e dall’ altro i Romani. Romolo con Tazio saliscono sopra il Soglio, Ambedde i Popoli giurano loro ubbidienza, e tutti si danno la mano in segno di pace. Dopo di che i Sabini accordano di buon grado le loro Donne per Spose a’ Romani. Si celebrano le nozze, e si dà principio ad une Danza universale.

Fine Le licenze prese contro l’Epoca de’ Tempi, ed altre simili, sono credute necessarie, per rendere lo spettacolo piu` interessante.

iii. Gasparo Angiolini, Le Roi et le Fermier, Ballet Héro¨ıComique, performed Vienna, April 1774; programme published Vienna 1774 Personnages Le Roi Milord Lurewel Richard Betsy Jenny Charles Clarice Courtisans

Fermier, Inspecteur des chasses du Roi Femme de Richard niece de Richard Amant de Jenny Sœur de Charles Chasseurs Gardes de chasse Paysans & paysanes Valets

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Acte I Le Theatre represente une campagne agreable dans le voisinage d’une maison Royale, que l’on apperçoit au fond sur l’un des cotés. Charles & Jenny expriment par une danse affectueuse leur tendresse mutuelle, tandis que le troupeau de Jenny broute l’herbe des prairies contigues aux Jardins Royaux. Mylord Lurewel, qui se promène dans ces jardins en apperçoit Jenny ˆ pour dont les charmes font sur lui une vive impression, & en sort bientot la voir de plus prés. Les graces naturelles & simples de cette jeune Bergere augmentent les sentimens que deja il a conçus pour elle: il tente tout pour l’engage a` quitter Charles son amant & a` le suivre; mais ses efforts sont vains. Parmi les presents qu’il lui offre il lui présente une bourse remplie d’or. Jenny la refuse avec dedain & la jette par terre avec indignation. Lurewel piqué, & abusant alors de son autorité appelle quelques uns de ses gens qu’il avoit apostés; il employe la force pour separer les deux amans, & il ordonne a` ses Domestiques d’emmener Charles. Melant ensuite la tendresse a` la Violence, & les prieres a` la liberalité il fait tout son possible pour engager la triste Jenny a` repondre a` sa passion: ses efforts sont encore superflus, elle meprise ses dons & brave ses menaces. Quantité de chasseurs qui traversent le Theatre, annoncent la chasse du Roi, & obligent Lurewel, qui doit la suivre, a` se desister de son entreprise. Cependant il confie Jenny a` la garde de ses Domestiques en leur donnant ordre de la conduire chez lui. Jenny croit trouver un moyen de leur echapper, en leur montrant la bourse qu’elle a jettée par terre, & ce moyen lui reussit en effet: ils la ramassent avec avidité, ils se la disputent & Jenny profite de ce moment pour se sauver. L’arrivée du Roi fait retirer les gens du Mylord. Ce Monarque accompagné de Lurewel & de plusieurs Seigneurs de sa Cour forme avec eux differens pas & s’avance de là vers la Foret ou` est le rendez-vous de la Chasse.

Acte II Le Theatre represente une Foret montueuse. Quantité de paysans y coupent du bois que d’autres chargent sur des charrettes. Betsy & George font cesser le travail, parceque l’heure de gouter approche. On prepare une espece de halte champetre, & pendant ce tems les paysans &

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les paysanes executent entre eux des danses analogues a` leur caractere. Elles sont interrompües par l’arrivée de Charles, qui, desesperé d’avoir perdu sa chere Jenny, ne peut même repondre aux questions qu’on lui fait, ni rendre compte de la maniere dont cet evenement s’est passé. ˆ hors d’haleine, craignant toujours d’etre Jenny elle-même accourt bientot poursuivie par Lurewel. Elle apperçoit son amant, & dans la satisfaction qu’elle a de le revoir elle vole a` lui, & exprime toute sa tendresse; elle commence cependant a` vouloir conter sa cruelle avanture; mais un bruit de cors qui annonce que la Chasse est dispersée, en suspend le récit. Le ciel s’obscurcit dans le même tems ˆ un terrible orage melé d’eclairs de tonnere & de grêle repand la & bientot crainte & la consternation. Betsy, Jenny, Charles, & toutes paysanes se retirent en tremblant. Richard distribuë les gardes dans la Forêt, & lui-même il veille a` ce qu’on ne profite point de l’orage pour tuër le gibier reservé aux plaisirs du Monarque. Au fort de l’orage on voit sur la montagne differens chasseurs qui se sont egarés, & des gardes, qui parcourrent la foret, ou` il sont entendu tirer un coup de fusil. Vers la fin de ce même orage le Roi descend seul de la montagne; & ne sachant ou` aller, tant par rapport a` l’obscurité qu’a cause de sa lassitude, il s’assied sur un tronc d’arbre pour s’y reposer. Richard, une lanterne a` la main le surprend dans cette situation, le traite durement dans la persuasion ou` il est que c’est lui qui a tiré le coup de fusil qu’on a entendu; & lui demande brusquement qui il est & ce qu’il fait là? Le Roi, qui a caché les marques de ses Ordres pour n’etre point connu, le prie avec douceur, de le conduire en quelque lieu ou` il puisse se mettre a` courvert, & lui offre a` cet effet de l’argent, que Richard refuse: touché cependant de la bonne mine du Prince il le prend rudement sous le bras & le conduit chez lui, a` condition qu’il y mange beaucoup, & qu’il y boive largement. Lurewel & deux autres Seigneurs de la Cour surviennent en cherchant une issuë pour sortir de la foret ou` ils sont e´ garés: un paysan passe par hazard avec une charge de bois; & au moyen de quelque pieces d’argent qu’ils lui donnent, il les conduit a` la maison de Richard.

Acte III Le Theatre represent l’Interieur d’une Ferme dans le quel on entre par diverses portes de differente grandeur. Betsy & quelques autres paysanes preparent la table pour le souper. En attendant Richard, Betsy se met a` devider & Jenny & Charles se donnent en

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dansant de nouvelles marques de leur tendresse. Richard arrive cependant suivi du Roi que personne ne connoit. Les paysannes sont emerveillées de la magnificence de ses habits, & ne sont pas moins etonnées de sa bonté & de sa politesse. Betsy, Jenny, & Charles font beaucoup d’accue¨ıl a` Richard & regardent a` peine le Roi. Richard s’appercevant qu’il a lui-même oublié son ˆ lui en demande grossierement excuse. hote Les paysanes lui font alors a` leur maniere une reception complete. Tous s’empressent ensuite a` preparer le souper & laissent sans y prendre garde le Roi seul. Richard, qui s’en appercoit retourne sur ses pas avec Jenny, a` qui il ˆ Celle-ci fait de son mieux dit de tenir en attendant compagnie a` son hote. les honneurs de la maison & se defend avec decence des caresses un peu trop vives de l’etranger. Betsy & les paysanes apportent le souper & Richard, qui surprend le Roi prêt a embrasser Jenny lui signifie que ces sortes de familiarités lui deplaisent. On se met a` table. Richard indique a` un chacun sa place & donne la premiere au Roi, qui se trouve avoir Jenny a` Coté de lui. Pour egayer le souper, Richard ordonne aux paysanes de danser entre elles differens pas, & fait danser alternativement Charles, Betsy & Jenny. Le Roi se leve avec precipitation de table pour temoigner a` cette derniere son contentement, & veut l’embrasser mais Richard l’en empeche encore. Tous de concert prient cependant le Prince de danser & après un peu de resistance il se rend a` la demande de ces bonnes gens. Un paysant vient avertir Richard qu’un Seigneur de la Cour va venir chez lui. Le Roi se cache. Lurewel entre, retrouve la belle Jenny, & tente de nouveau de l’enlever; mais le Roi, qui se montre tout a` coup a` ses regards, le petrifie. En même tems toutes les portes de la maison s’ouvrent & laissent voir dans le lointain l’Equipage de chasse du Roi. Tous les Seigneurs de sa suite, qui le cherchoient avec inquietude lui marquent leur respect & leur joye de le revoir. Les paysans, & les paysanes qui le reconnoissent par là se prosternent. Il les releve avec tendresse, & pour punir Lurewel de la violence qu’il a voulu faire a` Jenny, il lui ordonne de s’eloigner de lui. Les Instances & les intercessions de sa Cour le determinent cependant a` lui pardonner cette tentative criminelle. Enfin il fait des presents a` Richard, a` Jenny, & a` tout le monde: & après quelques danses gayes & legeres il part suivi par tous les paysans & paysanes, qui font pour lui les vœux les plus tendres & le comblent de benedictions. La musique de ce Ballet est encore de la Composition de M. Angiolini, a` l’exception de deux morceaux, qu’il a conservés de celle de la piece Francoise intitulée le Roi et le Fermier.

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iv. Franz Hilverding, Les Amants Protégés par l’Amour, Ballet Pantomime, first performed Vienna, Burgtheater, 1765; programme published Vienna, Jean-Thomas de Trattnern, 1765 Principaux Personnages dansans Daphnis, Amant de Thémire Thémire Tyrcis amoureux de Thémire & jaloux de Daphnis Vénus L’Amour Dans l’episode des noces de village Fiancé Fiancée

Le Sr Pique La De Santina Aubry Le Sr Aubry La De Favier La De. Des camps Le Sr Vigano La Delle Stefani

Scene I Le Théaˆ tre représente un terrein aride, terminé par des rochers escarpés. Daphnis & Thémire y arrivent par des chemins impraticables pour se dérober a` la fureur du jaloux Tyrcis: mais ils l’espérent vainement: ils entrent a` -peine dans cette espéce de désert, qu’ils apperçoivent leur persécuteur, qui ne leur laissent que le moment de se cacher sous un buisson.

Scene II Tyrcis fuit & franchit les mêmes chemins que Daphnis & Thémire: il ne ˆ celle qui le méprise, & l’heureux Amant doute point qu’il ne trouve bientot auquel il porte envie. Quelle volupté, s’il peut assouvir sur lui sa vengeance! il exprime a` sa suite combien il l’abhorre; il fait entendre que les Dieux mêmes ne pouront le garantir, & qu’il veut enfin que percé de mille coups, ce Rival odieux devienne la pâture des bêtes féroces. Il ordonne après cela a` cette même fuite de se partager & de chercher par-tout l’endroit qui peut servir de retraite aux Amants infortunés: ce sont des victimes qu’il veut qu’on livre a` toute sa rage, & que pour plus de sureté, il va lui-même attendre a` la seule issue par laquelle on puisse sortir du désert.

Scene III Daphnis, a` qui rien n’est e´ chapé des cruels projets de son Rival, croit ses malheurs au comble; il ne peut se soustraire a` la jalouse vigilance de Tyrcis, quel parti prendre? Mourir, c’est le rendre possesseur de Thémire: idée mille

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fois plus affreuse pour ce tendre Amant, que la mort même, & qui l’accable au point de le priver de la raison. Une foule de mouvements impétueux & furieux se succédent les uns aux autres dans son ame agitée, & grossissent a` ses yeux e´ garés les maux qui le menacent. Il ne se connoˆıt plus; il forme le projet de percer le sein de Thémire, & bientôt il en frémit; mais a` la simple vacillation d’une feuille, croyant voir & entendre Tyrcis, sa fureur & son délire augmentent, & dans son désespoir aveugle il veut enfoncer un dard dans le cœur de son Amante, qui vole audevant de ses coups, contente de perdre des jours qu’elle détesteroit, s’il falloit qu’elle les passât avec tout autre que lui. Daphnis, calmé & désarmé par ce mouvement, ne voit plus que l’horreur de l’action qu’il e´ toit sur le point de commettre, & frissonne a` la seule idée ˆ bientôt lavé de tout son sang. Interdit & tremblant, il d’un forfait qu’il eut se précipite aux piés de Thémire qui loin de lui faire des reproches, le reléve avec tendresse. La situation de Daphnis est trop violente pour que tous ses sens ne soient point affectés; l’image du crime dont il alloit se souiller, l’accable; & ne pouvant plus se soutenire, il s’appuie contre un arbre. Mais quel est l’état de la triste Thémire! L’accablement de l’Amant qu’elle adore, excite en elle les sentimens de la plus tendre pitié, & redoublant l’horreur qu’elle a des cruautés de son barbare persécuteur, elle ne peut retenir ses plaintes contre le Ciel, qui semble les autoriser. ˆ exige Cependant les moments sont précieux; le feu pur dont elle brule, du-moins qu’elle en laisse des témoignages e´ clatans & durables. Vas (semblet-elle dire a` Daphnis) vas, joins ton nom au mien, & qu’ils soient unis après notre mort, ainsi que nos cœurs l’ont e´ té pendant notre vie. Thémire grave de la pointe de son dard son nom sur un Hêtre: Daphnis suit cet exemple; & Thémire pendant ces moments se livre a` la douleur; elle donne a` son Amant, qu’elle se croit sur le point de perdre pour jamais, des larmes qui coulant de ses beaux yeux, pénétrent le cœur de l’amoureux Daphnis. Cher Amant (parroˆıt-elle lui dire encore) puisses-tu e´ chapper aux barbares poursuites d’un odieux persécuteur; puisses-tu e´ viter ses coups! Si jamais tu reviens en ces lieux, jéte, hélas, un coup d’œil sur ce monument de notre tendresse mutuelle; ne cesse jamais de te rappeler que ta Thémire ne chérit que toi seul, & qu’elle aima mieux mourir que de s’en voir séparer. A cette expression, elle veut se percer de son dard: mais elle en est empêchée par son Amant.

Scene IV La déplorable situation de ces deux amants intéresse l’Amour en leur faveur. Le Dieu de Gnide les a suivis, & s’est caché dans le buisson qui leur a servi

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de retraite; il en sort, & sa presence ranime le couple infortuné: tous deux tombent a` ses piés; il les reléve, détache son bandeau de son front, le présente a` Thémire, & lui promet de la protéger ainsi que son Amant. Ce don précieux de l’Amour doit les garantir des persécutions de Tyrcis; ils en témoignent la plus vive reconnoˆıssance, & le fils de Vénus disparoˆıt.

Scene V Daphnis & Thémire se livrent a` la joie que leur inspire leur bonheur. Sans le don que leur a fait l’Amour, ils alloient devenir la victime du cruel Tyrcis qu’ils apperçoivent: Thémire alors secoue le bandeau du Dieu de Cythère; & le pouvoir de ce Dieu transporte dans le désert un village galamment orné pour les noces d’une jeune villageoise. Daphnis & Thémire se cachent parmi les gens de la Noce, & e´ vitent ainsi de tomber entre les mains de leur persécuteur.

Scene VI Le jaloux Tyrcis entre avec sa suite qui marche sur ses pas: son e´ tonnement est extrême; mais soupçonnant que ce qu’il voit, ne peut eˆ tre que l’effet d’une enchantement, il avise aux moyens de le détruire, & donne en conséquence des ordres secrets a` ses gens, qui partent pour les exécuter.

Scene VII Les villageois surpris de voir parmi eux un inconnu, le prient néanmoins de prendre part a` la Fête par une suite de cette bonté de cœur, qui caractérise d’ordinaire les habitans de la campagne: l’air composé de Tyrcis les inquiéte: les femmes les plus folâtres, & sur-tout la Fiancée, entreprennent de l’égayer; & s’expriment ainsi par leurs gestes: Qu’a donc ce pauvre garçon? Pour quoi cet air sombre? Ah! comme le cœur lui bat! Il est amoureux sans doute; il faut le distraire. Tyrcis, a` qui sa situation ne donne nulle envie de s’amuser, feint de partir; mais ce n’est que dans l’intention d’observer uniquement comment il poura nuire a` Daphnis, & a` Thémire, & les faire tomber dans quelque piége.

Scene VIII Peu s’en faut qu’en badinant avec Tyrcis, la Fiancée n’ai troublé la Fête, par la jalousie qu’elle a inspirée a` son Prétendu, qui se calme néanmoins

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bientôt aux innocentes caresses de son accordée, ce qui rétablit le calme, & fait renaˆıtre la joie commune.

Scene IX Rassurés par le bandeau que l’Amour leur a donné, Daphnis & Thémire paroˆıssent; ils examinent avec inquiétude si Tyrcis n’est pas en ce lieu; & sur les assurances positives qu’on leur donne, qu’il en est absent, ils joignent leurs transports a` ceux des villageois auxquels ils montrent le Don précieux que leur a fait l’Amour, & qui a opéré le changement qui les a sauvés de la fureur du cruel Tyrcis.

Scene X Mais que leur satisfaction est de peu de durée! Tyrcis a découvert le charme, & se flate qu’il parviendra a` le détruire: il ordonne a` sa suite, qui paroˆıt avec des torches ardentes, de s’avancer & d’exécuter ce qu’il lui a commandé. Le feu que ses gens se disposent a` mettre aux habitations, répand sur tout le monde une extême allarme; & le désordre est général. Thémire se trouble; dans son agitation le bandeau de l’Amour lui tombe des mains; Tyrcis le ramasse avec impétuosité, & s’en empare: il n’étoit pas destiné a` opérer entre ses mains des prodiges; mais le Dieux des Cœurs le permet dans ce moment, afin de pouvoir rendre plus sensibles aux Amants pour lesquels il s’interesse, les marques de sa protection. Tyrcis secoue le bandeau; le village disparoˆıt & fait place a` une grotte affreuse, habitée par des Sauvages qui sont a` ses ordres, & dans laquelle les Amants se trouvent renfermés avec lui.

Scene XI Ce barbare savoure a` longs traits la cruelle joie qu’il a de les voir en sa puissance; eux qui sembloient un moment auparavant insulter a` ses peines; il commande aux Sauvages de les attaquer, & semble leur dire: Voilà mon Rival, qu’il soit désarmé & qu’il expire. A ce terrible arrêt, le désespoir s’unit a` l’amour dans le cœur de Thémire; elle s’éléve au-dessus de son Sexe; & Daphnis cherche dans son courage des ressources contre ce nouveau malheur. Mais a` quoi sert la résistance contre des forces aussi supérieures? Les malheureux Amants succombent. Thémire, la tendre Thémire supporteroit tout, si elle soufroit seule: mais son Amant chargé de chaˆınes, & attaché a` un rocher, est un spectacle qu’elle ne peut envisager sans frémir. Pour surcroit de maux, l’insolent Tyrcis a encore la barbarie de lui offrir son cœur,

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& de lui demander le sien: mais c’est vainement qu’il emploie tout jusqu’à la douceur même, pour la toucher. A cette nouvelle horreur, Thémire ne cherche & ne desire plus que de se joindre a` son Amant, pour mourir avec lui: son bourreau la retient, & irrité par ce tendre empressement, il veut percer le sein de celui qui cause son tourment. Plaintes, priéres, larmes, soumissions même, tout devient inutile; rien ne peut calmer sa rage: il veut que Thémire lui donne la main aux yeux de Daphnis, & menace, si elle resiste, de venger ce mépris par sa mort. Thémire succombe alors sous le poids de sa douleur mortelle; & la vue de Daphnis prêt a` perdre la vie la jéte dans un long e´ vanouissement. A cet aspect, le barbare Tyrcis oublie sa férocité; le danger de Thémire l’occupe seul; il cherche & il trouve une source d’eau vive, dont il remplit une coquille pour la faire revenir.

Scene XII L’Amour qui n’a cessé de protéger ces tendres Amants, que pour leur rendre ses bienfaits plus signalés, revient dans ce moment & rompt les chaˆınes de Daphnis dont le premier mouvement est de voler a` Thémire. Tyrcis, qui le voit dégagé de ses fers court a` lui, pour le percer d’un dard: mais l’Amour l’en empêche. Vénus descend dans ce même instant d’un nuage sur lequel les Jeux & les Ris l’ont accompagnée; & le Théaˆ tre représente un lieu délicieux. L’Amour instruit sa mére des coupables desseins de Tyrcis; la Déesse de Paphos marque toute l’horreur qu’elle en ressent, & la pitié que lui inspire le sort de Thémire; elle jouit ensuite du moment délicieux qui réunit les deux Amants & de la confusion de Tyrcis, qui lui-même pénétré de son injustice, & le repentir dans le cœur, implore la pitié de la Déesse. Les Amants fortunés a` qui leur félicité a fait tout oublier, intercédent pour lui: Vénus lui pardonne, & pour qu’un jour si beau soit sans nuages, elle lui donne le choix d’une des Nymphes de sa suite, qui avec les Bergers & Bergéres habitans de ce lieu charmant, terminent, le Ballet par un divertissement général. FIN

v. [Parody of Angiolini’s Sémiramis, by Ange Goudar], in Lettre de Madame Sara Goudar sur le Carnaval de Toscane a` Monsieur L∗∗∗ (n.p., n.p., 1776), pp. 20–24 Voici ce Dialogue. Il commence au moment que Semiramis va faire son invocation aux mannes de Ninus.

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L’OMBRE paroit: Ah! vous voila Scélérate. SEMIRAMIS, étonnée, confondue, effrajée: Oh Ciel que vois je! Quoi, l’Ombre de Ninus! Ne me trompé je pas? y vois je bien, ou si j’ai la berluë? Oui c’est elle. Il n’y a pas a` s’y méprendre. Voila son visage: eh que venez vous faire dans ce monde? L’OMBRE: Je viens vous ensévelir dans ce tombeau. SEMIRAMIS: Dans ce tombeau! Oh Dieux! vous me faites frémir, quoi a` mon aˆ ge m’aller enterrer! Sachez, o grand Ombre, que j’ai quelque chose de mieux a` faire dans ce Monde que d’aller passer ma vie chez les morts. L’OMBRE la poursuivant toûjours: Point de raisonnement, vite, sans délai, il faut entrer dans le tombeau. SEMIRAMIS en fuyant: Je n’y entrerai pas. L’OMBRE d’un ton ferme, & résolu: Oh parbleu vous y entrerez, ou vous direz pourquoi. SEMIRAMIS: Je n’y entrerai pas, vous dis je. L’OMBRE Vous y entrerez, vous dis je. SEMIRAMIS veut s’échapper par une Coulisse & l’Ombre la prévient. L’OMBRE: Vous ne m’échapperez point: quoique je ne sois qu’une Ombre, j’ai aussi bonne jambe que vous. SEMIRAMIS s’enfuit d’un autre côté du Théatre, où elle se prosterne dévant l’Ombre: Grand Ombre, je vous en conjure par tous les Dieux de l’Olimpe, ne me faites pas entrer dans le tombeau. Je n’aime point eˆ tre mangée des vers; il n’y a rien que je déteste tant que la pourriture. L’OMBRE: Pourriture, ou non, vous y entrerez. SEMIRAMIS, prête a` entrer dans le tombeau en se déménant comme une furie: Oh destin, oh fatalité de ma destinée, oh changement funeste, au lieu d’un mariage un tombeau. Grands Dieux! Quel lit de noces. L’OMBRE: Dépechez vous, je n’ai pas le tems d’attendre d’avantage. SEMIRAMIS: Si vous etes pressé, je ne la suis pas. L’OMBRE a` la porte du tombeau: Entrez donc. SEMIRAMIS en continuant de se déméner: Pitié. L’OMBRE résolu: Point. SEMIRAMIS: Miséricorde. L’OMBRE menaçante: Point de miséricorde, il faut entrer.

Semiramis après s’être démenée plus qu’une furie, se précipite dans le tombeau.

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vi. La Fille Mal Gardée, ou Il n’est qu’un Pas du Mal au Bien, Ballet-Comique-Pantomime, en Deux Actes; De la Composition de M. Dauberval. Remis en Scène par M. Eugène-Hus. Représenté, a` Paris, sur le Théaˆ tre de la Porte-Saint-Martin (ci-devant Opéra) le 20 Vendemiaire an XII (Paris: Fages, 1803) Personnages La Mère SIMONE, riche Fermière ∗ LISE, sa fille COLAS, jeune fermier, amant de Lise et Corniol (tour a` tour) THOMAS, vigneron ALAIN, son fils Le Tabellion du Village

Hossart Mlle Laure Spitalier Moëssard Armand Tigée

DANSE. Jeunes Villageois Corniol Mlle Degville Suite Legagneur, Duriez cadet, Camus, Séwin. Mesd. Romain, Godet, Henriette, Lebreton Pâtres galants Blondin, Mlle Desgrois, cadette Moissoneurs Brau, Maitrot, Duriez aˆıné, Alarme Moissonneuses Duval, Denise, Pauline, Riviere, Desgrois aˆınée Petits Glaneurs Barré, Castillon, Autres Moissoneurs, comparses La Scène se passe aux environs de Paris ∗

Ce roˆ le, espèce de caricature, ayant e´ té crée´ par un homme, j’ai cru ne devoir rien changer a` l’établissement de l’ouvrage.

Acte premier Le Théaˆ tre représente un hameau: a` gauche du spectateur, sur le devant de la scène, est la maison de Simone: vis-à-vis est une petite e´ table: le jour commence. Au lever de la toile, quelques ouvriers moissonneurs traversent le fond du théaˆ tre. Lise sort de chez elle avec mystère: elle paraˆıt surprise et chagrine de ne point voir arriver Colas, son amant: elle ouvre l’étable, y entre un instant et reparaˆıt bientôt, portant un pot plein de crème qu’elle pose a` terre, a` coˆ té de la porte: une poule entourée de sa petite famille, reçoit aussi

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ses soins; cette image lui rappelle son amour: le jour se lève, elle craint le ˆ point a` réveil de sa mère; et cependant elle voudrait bien que Colas n’eut douter de son exactitude: elle détache un ruban de son corset, le suspend a` une branche d’arbre, et rentre chez elle sur la pointe du pied. Colas arrive, suivi de nouveaux moissonneurs; ses premiers regards se porte sur la ferme qu’habite sa chère Lise: il disperse les ouvriers, feint de les suivre, et revient sur ses pas: il approche doucement, prête l’oreille a` la porte de sa jeune maitresse, n’entend rien, se dépite, et est sur le point de s’en aller, quand il apperçoit le ruban: il le reconnaˆıt et s’en saisit avec transport; il le baise et rebaise; il ne sait ou` le mieux placer, et finit par l’attacher au bâton qui le distingue de ses ouvriers; il le presse contre son cœur, il tressaille de joie; et, allongeant son corps sous la fenêtre de Lise, il rassemble ses doigts sur sa bouche, pour lui envoyer le plus tendre baiser; quand tout-à-coup Simone s’y présente et le surprend: elle le fixe avec colère, le menace du poing; il s’excuse, feignant de passer son chemin, et dérobant aux yeux de la mère, le nouveau gage de la fidélité de sa maitresse: la vieille lui jette sa coëffe au nez, et, dans l’instant qu’elle se baisse pour prendre un panier a` salade, et lui jetter a` la tête; Lise entr-ouvre la porte, et fait signe a` son amant de se sauver. Colas esquive le panier, saisit la main de sa maitresse, la baise a` différentes reprises et s’enfuit a` toutes jambes. Simone qui n’a rien perdu de cet adieu, descend pour gronder sa fille; celle-ci ramasse vivement le panier et la coëffe, et court au devant de sa mère, comme pour lui remettre l’un et l’autre: la vieille n’est pas dupe de cet empressement, et veu entrer en explication. . . . Arrivent de jeunes villageoises qui se présentent a` la mère, en qualité de moissonneuses. Simone dispute sur le prix, en convient et distribue a` chacune une faucille. Lise leur donne un pannier de provisions, et se dispose a` les suivre; sa mère l’en empêche, reste seule avec elle, et la gronde sur ce qui vient de se passer entr’elle et le jeune Colas qui lui déplaˆıt: celui-ci paraˆıt au fond du théaˆ tre; Lise l’apperçoit, lui fait signe de se cacher derrière la ferme, et répond a` sa mère qu’elle n’est accourue qu’au bruit, et que c’est bien malgré elle que Colas a baisé sa main, a` différentes reprises, avant que de s’enfuir. Simone n’en croit rien, lui donne quelques tappes pour ce mensonge et lui deffend de sortir: elle va chercher une baratte; le jeune fermier profite d’une geste que lui fait sa maitresse, et se glisse dans l’étable: la mère revient, ordonne a` sa fille de battre du beurre pendant son absence, avec la crème qu’elle indique, dans l’endroit ou` s’est caché Colas; Lise sourit et promet d’obéir. Simone dirige ses pas vers l’étable; elle est sur le point d’en ouvrir la porte, quand elle apperçoit, a` ses pieds, le pot de crème qu’elle allait chercher. Lise, d’abord effrayée, se rassure: la vieille fait de nouveaux reproches sur cette négligence, et sort après différentes menaces: a` peine a-t-elle quitté la scène, que Colas demande un moment

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d’audience a` sa maitresse; elle résiste d’abord, mais une seconde instance ˆ e: il baise de nouveau le ruban dont il la détermine, et Colas vole a` son cot´ a paré son bâton; elle le reconnaˆıt et rougit; il lui tend la main, elle n’ose y placer la sienne. Il boude, elle s’en afflige; il veut partire, elle le retient par son ruban, lui reproche de l’avoir mal placé et s’en empare: il porte la main a` sa veste, et lui présente le côté gauche; elle passe le ruban dans deux boutonières, fait un nœud coulant qui presse la main de Colas contre son cœur et dont le développement les enchaˆıne ensuite l’un et l’autre: elle finit par attacher le ruban a` la veste de Colas; enhardi par cette faveur, il s’approche doucement pour voler un baiser, mais Lise est trop sage, pour accorder a` l’amant ce qu’elle croit devoir n’appartenir qu’à l’époux. Elle montre la tâche que lui a donné sa mère, et se dispose a` la remplir. Colas veut l’y aider, il prend la place de sa maitresse et travaille d’abord avec ardeur, mais un regard de Lise le distrait, l’amour l’emporte, les amans se rapprochent; la tâche est oubliée: ils ne songent plus, l’un et l’autre, qu’au plaisir de s’aimer. On entend du bruit, Colas s’échappe, et Lise se remet a` l’ouvrage. Une troupe de jeunes villageoises, (autres que celles qui ont déjà parues) arrivent gaiment sur la scène: elles veulent entraˆıner leur amie a` la moison. Simone paraˆıt, gronde et poursuit les jeunes filles pour les battre: celles-ci s’enfuient en se moquant d’elle. Lise prévient le reproche de sa mère en lui faisant entendre que ce sont ces e´ tourdies qui l’on empêchée de finir sa tâche: la vieille n’accepte pas cette excuse, et lève le poing pour la frapper. . . . Arrive Thomas, suivi d’Alain, son fils. Simone sait le motif qui les amène, et renvoie sa fille; Thomas lui propose Alain pour gendre, elle l’accepte: Lise revient pour e´ couter la conversation; mais elle est finie, et elle ne sait que penser de la gaˆıté de tout le monde; sa mère lui permet de la suivre a` la moisson. Alain lui présente le bras, elle le refuse et préfére celui de Thomas. Simone s’empare de son gendre future et tous quatre partent pour la moisson. Le théaˆ tre change et représente un vaste champ garni de moissoneurs; midi sonne, Colas arrive, il ordonne le repas. Simone, Lise, Thomas, Alain, accouplés comme ils sont partis, se rendent a` la moisson. Colas reconnaˆıt les voisins de la vieille, il n’en prend aucun ombrage, et serre en passant la main de sa maitresse. Alain va pour s’asseoir parmi les jeunes filles, Colas l’en empêche et le place a` sa table avec Thomas; le repas commence; on danse plusieurs rondes, Simone finit par s’en mêler; Colas profite de cet instant pour joindre son amie: la vieille le surprend; le futur et son père en conçoivent de la jalousie; ils refusent de trinquer avec le jeune fermier et se retirient avec humeur. Un autre villageois les remplace: son air joyeux anime toutes les jeunes filles; le flageolet qu’il tient, suffit pour les faire

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danser; il se prête a` leurs jeux, danse avec toutes; une d’elles s’empare du flageolet, il la poursuit et on les arrête l’un et l’autre a` l’instant qu’ils sont prêts a` sortir de la scène: le divertissement devient général; mais il est bien-toˆ t interrompu par un coup de tonnerre qu’on entend dans le lointain. Le ciel s’obscurcit, l’orage commence: les moissonneurs effrayés, s’empressent de mettre leurs travaux a` couvert et parcourent la scène avec désordre. Colas suit sa maitresse, Simone s’en apperçoit; il s’enfuit: Lise, sa mère, et les moissonneurs s’éloignent. . . . Fin du premier Acte

Acte II Le théatre représente l’intérieur de la ferme de Simone: a` gauche du spectateur est un escalier de bois conduisant a` une chambre dont la fenêtre est en face du public: au fond du théaˆ tre, sur la droite, est la porte d’entrée avec une ouverture au-dessus, garnie de quelques barreaux de bois. La vieille arrive avec sa fille; elles portent chacune une gerbe sur la tête; Lise se débarasse de la sienne; sa mère l’appelle pour lui aider a` en faire autant. Après avoir changé de mouchoir, Simone tombe de lassitude sur la première chaise qu’elle rencontre: elle s’ennuie et veut filler au rouet, Lise va chercher ce qu’il faut, tandis que Simone, se rappelant d’avoir laissé la porte ouverte, va la fermer a` double tour. Lise apporte le rouet et deux quenouilles, l’une pour sa mère et l’autre pour elle: chacune se met a` l’ouvrage, et d’un coˆ té opposé: Simone s’assoupit en filant. Lise, fâchée d’être renfermée, s’approche doucement pour dérober la clef de la porte. Simone se réveille et propose a` sa fille de danser au son du tambourin. Lise accepte avec plaisir. Au bout de quelques mesures, Simone baille de nouveau, touche a` peine le tambourin, et s’endort tout-à-fait: Lise, pendant la danse, apperçoit son amant a` travers les barreaux de la porte; elle s’approche sur la pointe du pied, lui tend ses mains qu’il peut a` peine atteindre. . . . La vieille se réveille en sursaut et frappe du tambourin. Lise se remet a` danser, Colas disparaˆıt, et Simone pour ne plus s’endormir, danse elle-même avec sa fille. On frappe a` la porte; la vieille ouvre; ce sont les moissoneuses qui suivies de leurs maris lui apportent le reste de ses gerbes et viennent recevoir leur paiement. Simone les satisfait. Les hommes demandent un coup a` boire; la vieille les conduit au cellier; Lis veut les suivre, mais Simone l’en empêche, et a grand soin de fermer la porte sur elle, en sortant. Lise s’afflige de l’obstination de sa mère; elle monte sur une escabelle, regarde au-dessus de la porte, ne voit plus Colas et se désespère. Au moment ou` elle approche du tas de

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gerbes, pour ramasser sa quenouille, Colas, caché parmi celles que viennent d’apporter les moissonneurs, en sort vivement a` moitié, et joint aussi-tôt ses mains pour demander pardon a` sa maitresse d’une démarche un peu trop hazardée: elle demeure interdite, rougit, défend a` son amant d’approcher. Colas, vraiment amoureux, est incapable d’abuser de la position ou` elle ˆ il se contente se trouve: il la rassure, et quelque effort qu’il lui en coute, de l’admirer. Lise, enchantée de la délicatesse de son amant, lui envoie de loin un baiser; il s’élance pour le recevoir. . . . mais un regard l’arrête: Lise est obéie et respectée, autant qu’elle est aimée. Un combat si pénible entre l’amour et la vertu trouble le jeune fermier: elle essaie de se remettre a` l’ouvrage, mais les larmes qui coulent de ses yeux, mouillent le lin qu’elle veut filer et la quenouille e´ chappe de ses mains. Son amant effrayé, croit qu’elle s’évanouit; rien ne l’arrête plus, il vole a` son secours, détache le mouchoir qui couvre son col pour essuyer les larmes de sa bien-aimée: elle dénoue ingénuement le sien: l’échange est fait; les deux amans baisent avec transport le nouveau gage de leur tendresse: jamais parure ne leur a semblé si belle. . . . Ils soupirent. . . . leurs regards se confondent. . . . Simone se fait entendre; Colas ne fait qu’un saut dans la chambre de la vieille: Lise e´ garée, ˆ e ou` elle e´ tait et s’imagine filer, court s’asseoir sur une chaise opposée au cot´ quoiqu’elle n’ait dans ses mains ni quenouille ni fuseau; la mère la surprend dans cette attitude. Lise feint de s’être endormie, et attribue sa distraction au rêve qui l’agitait. Simone est dupe de ce mensonge, mais elle veut savoir d’ou` lui vient le fichu qu’elle porte. Heureusement pour Lise, il est pareil a` celui de sa mère; elle dit l’avoir choisi de préférence dans son armoire. La vieille soupçonne qu’à travers les barreaux de la porte, Colas aura pu parler a` sa fille, et pour e´ viter un second entretien, elle la force de monter dans la chambre ou` Colas s’est caché. Thomas, suivi d’Alain et du tabellion du village, arrive pour conclure le mariage de son fils avec Lise. Les articles sont dressés; la vieille e´ tale les joyaux et la dot: le futur appelle les voisins pour eˆ tre témoins de son bonheur; Simone veut lui laisser le plaisir d’aller chercher sa prétendue: et au moment ou` il achève de monter l’escalier de la chambre, Colas ouvre la porte et se présente vivement, servant de barrière a` l’amante qu’on voudrait lui ravir: la surprise est générale; Simone se désespère: Colas et Lise se jettent a` ses pieds, et la supplient de faire leur bonheur: le tabellion s’y joint, ainsi que tout les villageois; le premier fait entendre a` Simone qu’il n’est qu’un pas du mal au bien: elle se rend a` ce raisonnement, et en dépit de Thomas et de son fils, qui sortent en promettant de se venger: elle unit les jeunes amans. Une fête villageoise et générale, termine la pantomime. FIN

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vii. Jean-Georges Noverre, Agamemnon Vengé, Ballet Tragique en Cinq Actes, Exécuté sur les Théatres de Vienne en 1772, in Noverre, Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre, Maˆıtre des Ballets de la Cour Impériale et Royale (Vienna: Joseph Kurzböck, 1776), pp. 22–68 Personnages du Ballet Agamemnon Clytemnestre Egisthe Oreste Electre Iphise Cassandre Pilade Un Héraut d’armes Principaux officiers d’Agamemnon Dames du Palais Soldats grecs Esclaves troyens Peuple de Mycenes Le Grand Prêtre Les Euménides Le Crime L’Ombre de Clytemnestre

Roi de Mycenes son e´ pouse amant de Clytemnestre, usurpateur secret du Throˆ ne de Mycenes fils d’Agamemnon sœur d’Oreste sœur d’Oreste fille de Priam, Captive d’Agamemnon ami d’Oreste

des Sacrificateurs & des Enfans le Remords, & le Desespoir personnifiés

Acte premier Le Théatre représente une partie des Jardins de Mycenes.

Scene I Egisthe & Clytemnestre paroissent; ils se livrent a` l’idée de leur commun bonheur; ils n’attendent qu’une circonstance heureuse pour faire e´ clater les sentimens qui unissent leurs cœurs, mais cette circonstance trop e´ loignée & fort incertaine encore, pénétre l’ame de Clytemnestre de la plus vive inquiètude: un Songe funeste lui a peint les plus affreux présages. Egisthe non moins inquièt que la Reine, se jette a` ses pieds, & en lui jurant un amour & une reconnaissance e´ ternels, il lui promet que son bras saura

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la délivrer de tous les objèts qui pourroient s’opposer a` leur mutuelle félicité.

Scene II Dans ce moment un bruit de Timbales & de Trompette se fait entendre, & jette Egisthe & Clytemnestre dans le plus grand effroit, il se relève des pieds de la Reine, avec autant de précipitation que de crainte: ce bruit est a` leur ame agitée l’éclat de la foudre en courroux. Ils sont anéantis.

Scene III Un Héraut d’Armes envoyé par Agamemnon se prosterne aux pieds de la Reine & lui remet une Lettre de la part de ce Prince. Clytemnestre la prend d’une main tremblante, & de l’autre, lui fait signe de se relever. Le Héraut se retire vers le fond du Théatre. La crainte s’empare du cœur de Clytemnestre, une sueur froide imprime sur ses traits une pâleur mortelle; elle ne peut se déterminer a` lire ce fatal Billet. Voulant dérober a` tous les yeux sa situation & son trouble, elle ordonne au Héraut de se retirer, &, par l’effort violent qu’elle fait sur elle-même, elle lui sourit agréablement, & lui fait entendre que son message va mettre fin a` ses douleurs & a` ses infortunes.

Scene IV Clytemnestre & Egisthe se raprochent avec le sentiment de la crainte: Clytemnestre lui montre, en frémissant, l’Ecrit fatal, elle hésite & l’ouvre avec un mouvement précipité qui peint l’agitation, le trouble & le desordre de son ame. Ils s’enhardissent a` en faire la lecture & la commencent: chaque phrase les glace d’effroi: celle qui annonce qu’Agamemnon suit avec empressement les pas du Messager porte au cœur de Clytemnestre le coup le plus accablant. Egisthe partage les mêmes sentimens, & ils paroissent l’un & l’autre anéantis sous le poids le leur infortune: ils ne sortent de cette situation que pour se livrer au desespoir. Egisthe veut poignarder Agamemnon; Clytemnestre recule e´ pouvantée: Egisthe veut fuir, se donner la mort, la Reine tremble, s’oppose a` sa suite & a` ses transports, &, pour le conserver, paroit consentir a` son dessein cruel. Un instant après, son cœur dément ce qu’elle vient d’avoüer: elle se reproche sa barbarie, elle est effrayée de l’énormité d’un tel crime. Egisthe qui n’a de ressource que dans la fuite ou dans la trahison,

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s’irrite, s’emporte, menace: son bras accoutumé au Meurtre, sa main exercée au Parricide, ne cherche que de nouvelles Victimes. Clytemnestre qui, dans un instant aussi fatal, ne scait que résoudre, cède & l’autre avec cette agitation qu’impriment sur les traits & sur toute l’action la Fureur, le Remords, & le Desespoir.

Acte II La Décoration représente un magnifique Péristile du palais de Mycenes, a` travers duquel on voit une Porte triomphale & la principale place de la Ville. Le Peristile est orné de tous les Trophées que les Rois d’Argos & de Mycenes ont enlevés dans les différentes Victoires qu’ils ont remportées sur leurs Ennemis.

Scene I Une foule innombrable de Peuple s’assemble sur la Place pour voir son Roi, qui, après douze ans d’absence, rentre dans ses Etats couvert de Gloire & en Triomphateur. Déjà le son des Trompettes, des Timbales & des autres instruments consacrés a` la Guerre fait retentir l’air; des Soldats Grecs marchant en ordre, ouvrent cette entrée triomphale; Ils portent les Trophées de la Victoire: d’autres sont chargés des Trésors & des Dépouilles des Vaincus. Plusieurs Captifs Troyens paroissent dans les Fers, les plus distingués sont enchainés au Char du Vainqueur. Les principaux Officiers d’Agamemnon portent les riches présens destinés a` la Reine & a` ses Enfans. Ce Prince est dans son Char: Cassandre, Princesse Troyenne & fille de Priam est placée a` sa gauche: Le peuple de Mycenes suit ce char, en jettant des cris d’allegresse & portant des Couronnes de Laurier, tandis qu’une autre partie s’empresse a` parsemer de fleurs les chemins par lesquels Agamemnon doit passer.

Scene II Ce Prince, en déscendant de son Char est reçu par sa Famille & par tout ce qui compose sa Cour, il embrasse Clytemnestre & se jette dans les bras d’Electre & d’Iphiste, il reçoit les embrassemens du perfide Egisthe qui tombe aux genoux d’Agamemnon, en ordonant a` tout le Peuple de mêler son respect a` son hommage, il est imité de tout le Monde, sans en excepter Clytemnestre, qui embrasse les genoux du Vainqueur de Troye, mais ce Prince ne voyant point l’objet le plus cher a` son cœur, cherche Oreste dans tout ce qui l’environne, & le demande avec l’empressement de l’Amour paternel. Electre baisse les yeux & garde le silence; Clytemnestre d’abord

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embarrassée, assure Agamemnon qu’il le verra incessamment &, pour e´ luder une nouvelle question, elle vole vers Cassandre, elle demande a` son Epoux quelle est cette Captive distinguée: il lui répond que c’est la Fille de Priam ˆ ses & la recommande a` ses soins généreux, la Reine l’embrasse & lui ote Fers, mais en exerçant cet acte de bienfaisance, elle donne a` connoˆıtre qu’elle lui jure une haine implacable. Cette Reine & Egisthe, dans tous les instans ou` ils ne sont pas appercus, laissent e´ clater la fureur impatiente qu’ils ˆ brulent d’assouvir, en s’immolant les objets qui pourroient s’opposer a` leur bonheur. Agamemnon qui partage la félicité de sa Famille & la joye de son Peuple, ordonne a` ses Guerriers de commencer des fêtes, il y prend part & ne dédaigne point de s’y associer & d’engager sa Famille a` les embellir.

Scene III Cette Fête générale est interrompue pendant quelques instans par un pas en Action entre Agamemnon, Clytemnestre, Egisthe, Electre, Iphise & Cassandre: cette Scéne dialoguée, en dévelopant le Caractére & les Passions de chaque Acteur, sert encore au nœud de l’Action. Agamemnon prodigue les plus tendres caresses a` Iphise & a` Electre; ces Princesses au comble du bonheur ne peuvent se détacher des bras de leur Pére. Electre, qui connoˆıt la cruauté de sa Mére, la barbarie & l’ambition d’Egisthe, frémit d’inquiètude & de crainte. Cassandre, en exprimant sa douleur, lit dans l’ame d’Egisthe & de Clytemnestre le projet barbare que la haine y a gravé. Egisthe & Clytemnestre, en embrassant Agamemnon, employent tous les détours de la Politique, pour lui montre combien ils sont charmés de son retour, mais, leur haˆıne les trahissant a` chaque instant, on en découvre les e´ tincelles. La Fête recommence, & après plusieurs pas adaptés au Sujet & au Caractére mâle & héroique de ce genre, elle se termine par un pas général de progression dont la dernière figure offre un Grouppe piramidal orné de tous les Trophées militaires, afin qu’il porte ce caractère de Pompe & de Majesté qui regnoient dans les Entrées & les Fêtes triomphales des Anciens.

Acte III La Décoration représente le Cabinet de Clytemnestre. Deux grandes croisées ouvertes ont vue sur la Terrasse & les Jardins du Palais. La porte est placée au milieu de ces deux croisées; des colonnes ou pilastres séparent ces trois ouvertures & forment un avant-corps, ou une partie assez saillante pour servir de niches a` des siéges, de maniere que l’on peut entre dans l’Apartement, sans apercevoir les Personnes assises dans les entre-colonnes.

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Scene I ˆ e de Cassandre a redoublé la haˆıne & la fureur, Clytemnestre, dont la vu¨ paroit avec Egisthe: elle lui offre d’une main sa Couronne, & de l’autre un poignard avec la condition barbare qu’il tranchera tout a` la fois les jours de son Epoux & ceux de l’Esclave Troyenne. Elle veut armer les mains d’Egisthe du Fer homicide: celui-ci, quoiqu’accoutumé au Meurtre, voyant de plus près l’instant de le commettre, n’en reçoit la proposition qu’avec effroi; mais ˆ les emportemens de la Reine, ses reproches, ses larmes & l’éclat du Throne le déterminent, il tombe aux pieds de Clytemnestre & lui jure que son bras la délivrera bientôt de deux objèts qui lui sont odieux. Pendant cette scéne, on a vu les jeunes Princesses, qui traversant la Terrasse frappées de la Pantomime e´ ffrayante de Clytemnestre & d’Egisthe, se sont arrêtées aux Croisées, ont e´ té témoins du complot, en ont pénétrer le mystere & l’objèt, & se sont rapidement e´ loignées pour porter a` leur Pére ce funeste avis.

Scene II Clytemnestre sort en peignant tout a` la fois son impatience, son inquiètude & le trouble affreux qui s’empare de ses sens.

Scene III Egisthe seul s’abandonne a` ses réflexions: l’idée du double crime qu’il s’est ˆ il envisage engagé de commettre, porte a` son cœur le cri du remords; tantot le bonheur & les grandeurs qui l’attendent; tantôt il voit le bras de Vengeance armé pour le punir: Le Fer est prêt a` tomber de sa main. Dans ce moment un bruit soudain frappe ses oreilles & porte a` son cœur déchiré un nouvel effroi: il fuit & se dérobe a` l’aide des colonnes.

Scene IV Agamemnon & Cassandre entrent dans le Cabinet de la Reine, sans apercevoir Egisthe. Cassandre, frappée d’un pressentiment funeste, ne peut s’empêcher de fremir sur le Sort qui l’attend, & sur celui dont elle voit qu’Agamemnon est menacé. Ce Prince fait des efforts inutiles pour e´ loigner des présages aussi tristes; mais Cassandre, qui a l’art de lire dans l’Avenir, voit le Palais ensanglanté; elle y voit les Euménides accompagnées par le Crime, par la Vengeance & par la Haˆıne: La Mort suit cette Troupe infernale; elle est

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prête a` frapper. Tels sont les Tableaux effrayans que cette Princesse découvre en reculant d’horreur, & auxquels Agamemnon ne peut croire. Pendant cette Scéne Egisthe, que les Colonnes dérobent aux regards des autres Personnages, est indécis sur le choix de sa premiere Victime, il semble que la crainte & le remords retienne son bras & balancent dans son cœur le crime & la fureur.

Scene V C’est dans ce moment de trouble & d’irrésolution que Clytemnestre paroit; on diroit, a` son Action, qu’elle est accompagnée par les Furies; elle reproche a` Egisthe sa foiblesse, son peur d’empressement a` la servir, son parjure, elle veut lui arracher le Fer dont elle a armé son bras, pour s’en servir contre Agamemnon: Egisthe ne pouvant plus supporter ses reproches, ses menaces & ses emportemens s’élance comme un furieux, & porte ses premiers coups sur Agamemnon; il vole en suite vers Cassandre qui, dévouée a` la mort, marche au devant du coup; sa fermeté & son courage arrêtent le bras d’Egisthe, mais Clytemnestre, qui lui crie: FRAPPE! ACHEVE! ranime toute sa barbarie; il plonge le poignard dans le Sein de Cassandre. Clytemnestre goute alors l’horrible plaisir de la Vengeance pleinement assouvie. Egisthe jette le poignard aux pieds de Cassandre. Les meurtriers se retirent, & quoique s’applaudissant de leurs forfaits, ils montrent dans leur Action le trouble qui suit les grands crimes.

Scene VI Electre & Iphise, qui ont vainement cherché leur Pére dans le Palais; ardentes ê a` le sauver, courent précipitamment, en continuant leur recherche. A la vu¨ de Cassandre assassinée & de leur Pére mourant elles jettent des cris de desespoir, elles se précipitent sur le corps ensanglanté d’Agamemnon, en exprimant ce que le regret & la douleur ont de plus déchirant. Agamemnon leur tend des bras mourans, il reçoit leurs soupirs & leurs larmes. Electre furieuse se relève livrée aux transports du desespoir, puis elle revole aux pieds d’Agamemnon, que la jeune Iphise n’a point cessé d’arroser de ses larmes.

Scene VII Les cris d’Electre ont attiré les Dames & les Officiers du Palais déjà prévenus par le bruit & l’épouvante qu’Electre a semés. Elle leur montre leur Roi

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assassiné, respirant a` peine, & Cassandre privée de la lumiere. A ce double spectacle d’horreur les Officiers volent au secours de leur Roi, & les Femmes se grouppent autour de Cassandre.

Scene VIII Egisthe & Clytemnestre ajoutent a` la noirceur de leur forfait: ils paroissent avec l’empressement de l’amitié; ils affectent un douleur, une pitié que leurs yeux & leur Phisionomie démentent a` tout moment; ils se jettent aux pieds d’Agamemnon; ce Prince rejette ces perfides, témoignages, avec un dédain & une horreur qui avance ses derniers momens. Clytemnestre & Egisthe mettent le comble a` leur crime, en accusant Cassandre du meurtre d’Agamemnon; le poignard qui est a` ses pieds, leur paroissant un indice propre a` les justifier & a` détourner les soupçons, Clytemnestre s’en saisit, le montre aux Officiers, accuse Cassandre, & est prête a` les persuader par cette imposture. Agamemnon, faisant un dernier effort; se relève, justifie Cassandre & déclare qu’Egisthe & Clytemnestre sont ses Assassins; puis se retournant vers ses Enfans, les embrasse & meurt. Electre est partagée entre la Fureur, le Désespoir, & la Vengeance. Pendant la Scéne précédente, ou` Clytemnestre & Egisthe paroissent déplorer leur infortune, Electre les regarde avec les yeux de l’indignation, du mépris & de la colére; mais dans le moment qu’Agamemnon les accuse & confirme cette affreuse vérité, elle se livre a` tous les sentimens qui l’agitent, elle e´ clate en reproches, elle menace, elle insulte, elle jure a` Egisthe que son bras vengera la mort de son Pére, & saura punir un lâche Assassin & un Usurpateur infame. Clymnestre & Egisthe anéantis par l’accusation publique d’Agamemnon, se retirent en exprimant la honte & la rage qu’imprime dans l’ame l’horreur d’un crime découvert.

Scene IX Electre revole aux pieds de son Pére, lui parle, le serre dans ses bras, mais le trouvant glacé & couvert du voile e´ ternel de la Mort, elle recule e´ pouvantée, elle se livre a tous les excès d’une douleur vive & fortement sentie. Iphise mêle ses pleurs aux larmes de sa Sœur; elles se jettent encore sur le corps d’Agamemnon qui n’existe plus: les Officiers l’emportent: les Femmes du Palais enlevent Cassandre. Electre & Iphise suivent le corps d’Agamemnon en fondant en larmes, & en exprimant tout ce que la douleur a de plus amer & de plus véhement.

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Acte IV La Décoration représente un Salon faisant partie des Appartemens d’Electre & d’Iphise

Scene I Ces Princesses paroissent: elles sont couvertes de Deu¨ıl, ainsi que les Femmes de leur suite. Electre & Iphise expriment leur douleur: le Chœur, a` l’imitation des Anciens, joint ses larmes a` leurs Sanglots. Electre, a` la vue du poignard encore tout fumant du sang d’Agamemnon, frémit & exhale sa fureur; puis elle retombe dans sa première tristesse: Iphise & les Femmes font de vains efforts pour tarir la source de ses Larmes.

Scene II Clytemnestre effrayée de son crime & persécutée par les remords, cherche vainement des secours capables de la consoler: elle accourt a` Electre, elle implore sa pitié, elle cherche a` s’excuser sur son Parricide, mais Electre, loin de se laisser toucher, la fuit avec horreur, lui jure de venger la mort de son Pére & s’abandonne a` toute sa fureur. Iphise se jette aux pieds de Clytemnestre qui, offensée des menaces d’Electre, se livre a` son ressentiment; elle supplie cette Mére irritée de pardonner a` la douleur & au désespoir de sa Sœur; mais cette Reine qui craint tout de la vengeance d’Electre, sort en la menancant & en lui faisant entendre qu’elle la fera promptement repentir de son insolence.

Scene III Electre furieuse & hors d’elle-même, fait peu d’attention aux menaces de la Reine. Une de ses Femmes lui annonce l’arrivée de deux Etrangers qui veulent se mettre a` ses pieds, & qui ont quelques secrèts de la dernière importance a` lui communiquer: elle consent a` les recevoir, & frappée par un pressentiment heureux, elle se livre a` la douceur de penser au’elle aura quelques nouvelles d’Oreste.

Scene IV Les Etrangers sont introduits. Oreste pour ménager a sa Sœur une reconnoissance qui pourroit lui causer une e´ motion trop vive, se jette a`

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ses pieds & lui présente une Lettre. Electre la prend, mais en fixant ses regards sur les traits du jeune Etranger, elle y reconnoit tous ceux de son Frére, elle tressaille de joye, elle recule, elle avance, elle lui tend les bras: le plaisir l’empêche de voler a` lui: l’excès d’un bonheur aussi vif & aussi inattendu semble anéantir toutes ses facultés. Oreste se relève, e´ prouve la même e´ motion, les mêmes sentimens & se jette dans les bras de sa Sœur: Il lui présente son Ami fidéle; & Electre lui montre sa Sœur Iphise, qui e´ toit au berceau lors qu’il quitta Mycenes: Il l’embrasse tendrement & remercie le Ciel du bonheur qu’il lui accorde. Electre qui craint que cette félicité ne lui soit ravie & que son Vengeur ne devienne la Victime de la fureur d’Egisthe, prie sa Sœur & engage ses Femmes a` veiller a` la conservation d’un objèt si cher a` son cœur: elles se dispersent pour garder les différens passages qui aboutissent a` son Appartement, afin qu’elle ne soit point surprise par les Ennemis de sa Famille.

Scene V Oreste, qui voit ses sœurs & leurs Femmes en Deuil, demande a` Electre la cause d’un appareil aussi lugubre: elle veut parler, les pleurs & les sanglots e´ touffent sa voix. Oreste, frappé du plus affreux pressentiment, la presse & exige qu’elle s’explique. Electre tout en Larmes lui montre le poignard teint du sang d’Agamemnon, & lui dit que c’est l’instrument fatal dont le cruel Egisthe s’est servi pour percer le cœur de leur Pére. A ce recit Oreste frémit d’épouvante & de rage, il se jette dans les bras de Pylade, puis courant vers sa sœur, il se saisit du poignard & veut aller chercher Egisthe pour le percer de mille coups. Sa sœur & Pylade volent et l’arrêtent.

Scene VI Dans ce moment la jeune Iphise & les Femmes accourent successivement: elles annoncent, en tremblant, l’arrivée du Tiran. A cette nouvelle, Oreste veut l’attendre & lui donner la mort; mais ses sœurs, qui tombent a` ses genoux, suspendent un instant sa vengeance, & le determinent a` se soustraire aux yeux d’Egisthe. Electre confie la garde de son Frére a` l’Amitié de Pylade & aux soins vigilans de ses Femmes.

Scene VII Egisthe entre: les plaintes améres que la Reine vient de lui porter ont excité, sa colère, il est suivi des principaux Officiers du Palais. A son aspect, toute

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la fureur d’Electre semble renaˆıtre, elle le traite avec mépris, elle l’accable ê de reproches. Le Tiran indigné ordonne qu’on la charge de Fers. A la vu¨ des chaˆınes, Electre frémit de rage & de désespoir; Elle les reçoit avec une tranquilité dédaigneuse, puis s’approchant du Tiran avec un air furieux, elle lui dit que ces Fers honteux n’arrêteront point son bras & qu’elle saura le punir de tous ses forfaits. La jeune Iphise qui craint tout des emportemens de sa Sœur & du ressentiment d’Egisthe, tombe a` ses genoux pour le calmer, mais Electre appercevant sa Sœur dans cette posture humiliante, recule d’indignation, vole & l’arrache d’une situation qui avilit la Fille d’Agamemnon, en disant au Tiran que c’est a` lui a` tomber a` leurs pieds. Egisthe outré de colère & frappé par les menaces terribles d’Electre sort avec précipitation, en ordonnant aux Officiers de lui répondre d’elle, Iphise suit les pas d’Egisthe pour tâcher de le flêchir.

Scene VIII ˆ e de ses Fers, exprime tout son desespoir: elle a cependant Electre, a` la vu¨ l’art de se servir de cet e´ tat humiliant, pour enchaˆıner & captiver le cœur de tous les Officiers, a` la garde des quels elle est confiée: elle leur montre ses Fers, elle les attendrit, elle les intéresse, elles les range de son parti; & lors qu’elle leur rappelle les derniers instans d’Agamemnon accusant Egisthe des coups dont il expire, ils frémissent d’horreur.

Scene IX Oreste & Pylade paroissent. Les Officiers s’avancent pour se saisir de l’un & de l’autre; mais Electre leur crie: C’EST MON FRERE, C’EST VOTRE ROI! Elle leur montre, comme un témoignage de cette vérité le Sabre & le Bouclier qu’Agamemnon avoit destinés a` ce Prince & qu’elle lui avoit remis lors que, pour le dérober a` la cruauté d’Egisthe, elle l’éloigna de Mycenes. Les Officiers pénétrés d’amour & de respect pour l’Héritier légitime de leur Roi, tombent & se prosternent aux pieds d’Oreste, qui, en les embrassant, leur promet une reconnoissance e´ ternelle. Oreste & Electre, au comble de leurs vœux, expriment le plaisir que donne l’espoir d’une vengance légitime. Electre remet a` son Frére le poignard teint du sang d’Agamemnon, afin qu’il le lave dans le sang d’Egisthe. Elle lui demande de ne point e´ pargner cette infame Victime, elle lui montre qu’il faut le percer de mille coups & le trainer mourant & baigné dans son sang aux pieds du Tombeau d’Agamemnon. Oreste qui seconde les fureurs d’Electre lui jure qu’il ne portera que des coups assurés, qu’il

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brisera ses chaˆınes & qu’il purgera la Terre d’un Monstre exécrable. Ils quittent la Scéne, ainsi que les Personnes de leur Suite, en exprimant le plaisir de se revoir, de se venger & de sacrifier le barbare Egisthe aux Mânes d’Agamemnon.

Acte V La Scéne est dans la nuit. La Décoration représente un Bois de Cyprès, orné de Tombeaux d’Urnes, de Piramides, de Cariatides qui supportent des Lampes sépulchrales. Le Tombeau des Rois d’Argos et de Mycenes forme la partie principale de cette décoration. Ce Monument Auguste est en marbre blanc, ainsi que les Piramides, les Tombeaux & les Urnes. Les portes du grand Tombeau sont de bronze enrichies de Basreliefs. En les ouvrant, on découvre un Souterrain obscur, éclairé par une Lampe sépulchrale, au milieu s’éléve une Tombe entourée par un Grouppe de Figures de marbre qui expriment les Regrets & la Douleur.

Scene I Oreste & Pylade paroissent dans ce Bois sombre qui ne reçoit d’autre lumiere que celle des Lampes funéraires. Avant de consommer sa vengeance, Oreste veut aller faire des Libations sur la Tombe de son Pére: il entre dans le Tombeau, il descend dans le Souterrain qui y est pratiqué. Pylade en ferme les portes & se cache dans les Bosquets obscurs qui entourent le Monument.

Scene II Une marche triste & lugubre annonce l’arrivée de la Pompe Funèbre: des Gardes portent des flambeaux: la Reine, les Princesses & leur Suite sont couvertes de crêpes noirs, & tiennent dans leurs mains des branches de Cyprès: Egisthes a ses Armes & son Bouclier couverts de crêpe, ainsi que les Officiers & les Troupes qui l’accompagnent. Tous les Trophées d’Agamemnon sont e´ galement couverts de voiles noirs. Des Prêtres, des Sacrificateurs, portent des Encensoirs & des Vases sacrés. Des Enfans portent des fleurs. Des Soldats tiennent des Carreaux de Deu¨ıl qu’ils placent autour du Tombeau. Après cette marche triste & silentieuse, des Femmes dansent un Hymne autour de l’Autel: elles déposent leurs branches de Cyprès sur les marches du Tombeau & elles s’y prosternent dans les attitudes de la douleur. Les Enfans jettent des fleurs.

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Cette cérémonie terminée tous tombent a` genoux & demeurent dans le silence le plus respectueux. Le Grand Prêtre se prépare aux fonctions sacrées ˆ on lui présente les Vases destinés aux de son Ministére: déjà l’Encens brule, Libations, mais le Ciel en courroux ne répond a` tous les vœux qui lui sont offerts que par des Eclairs & des coups de Tonnerre.

Scene III Le Tombeau s’ouvre, on y voit Oreste accompagné des Euménides, il sort de ce Monument, la rage & le désespoir se peignent dans son Action, il apperçoit sa Victime, il se précipite avec fureur sur Egisthe, il lui porte un coup de poignard, il lève le bras pour redoubler, mais Clytemnestre couvrant de son corps celui d’Egisthe reçoit le coup mortel réservé au Tiran. Electre qui s’élance pour arrêter le bras de son Frere, en criant: C’EST MA MERE: ne peut arriver a` tems. Oreste furieux n’entend, ne voit rien & livré a` tous les transports de la Vengeance, il se jette une seconde fois sur Egisthe & le perce de plusieurs coups. Cependant frappé d’une terreur soudaine, il se retourne, il voit une Femme expirante & ses Sœurs en Larmes: il marche a` pas chancelants, il lève d’une main tremblante le Voile qui lui dérobe les traits de celle a` qui il vient involontairement de donner la mort: a` l’aspect de sa Mére, il recule d’horreur & d’effroi, il veut se frapper, mais Electre & Pylade volent a` son secours & le desarment: il tombe sans connoissance sur une Tombe peu elevée. Le Peuple e´ pouvanté fuit de toutes parts. On entraˆıne Egisthe & Clytemnestre.

Scene IV Dans ce moment les Furies sortent du Tombeau pour exhaler leur joye barbare: elles appellent le Crime, le Remords, & le Desespoir pour mieux déchirer le Cœur du malheureux Oreste: les siflemens de leurs Serpens sont leurs cris d’allégresse. Cependant Oreste revient a` lui, il revoit avec la lumière les objèts hideux qui le persécutent. La Troupe infernale se grouppe sans cesse autour de lui pour le tourmenter, & le poursuit sans relâche. C’est envain qu’il conjure; rien ne peut fléchir leur barbarie. Oreste furieux s’abandonne a` l’horreur qui le déchire: son Action peint, avec l’égarement & l’effroit, tout ce que le Crime, le Remords & le Désespoir lui retracent d’horrible, il fuit, mais la Terre s’entrouvre sous ses pas.

Appendix

Scene V L’ombre terrible & menaçante de Clytemnestre lui apparoit & lui montre la playe toute saignante qui a frayé jusqu’à son cœur un chemin a` la Mort. Oreste a` cet aspect e´ pouvantable, recule, frémit, se jette aux pieds de l’Ombre, la conjure d’une voix foible & mourante de croire que son cœur est innocent & que sa main seule est criminelle. L’ombre lui répond d’une voix menaçante & terrible, rejette ses pleurs & ses sanglots & disparoit.

Scene dernière Oreste qui ne peut plus supporter la vie, & qui est sans cesse livré a` la barbarie des Euménides, & déchiré par les reproches que le Crime, le Remords & le Desespoir portent a son cœur, veut se donner la mort; mais Pylade, Electre & Iphise, toujours attentifs a` sa conservation, s’opposent a` ses transports funestes. Le malheureux Oreste tombe dans leurs bras, accablé sous le poids de ses douleurs, sans sentiment & sans connoissance. Les Furies, le Crime, le Remords & le Désespoir, tous ces Monstres infernaux, se grouppent autour de lui, pour ne le plus abandonner∗ ∗ Pendant cette derniere Scéne, Pylade, Electre & Iphise peignent leur douleur & le tendre intérêt qu’ils prennent a` la cruelle Situation d’un Frére & d’un Ami. Ils ne voient ni le Spectre, ni les Furies; Ils n’apperçoivent point le Crime, le Remords & le Desespoir personnifiés. Tous ces objets e´ ffrayants ˆ que par Oreste. ne sont vus FIN

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viii. Jean-Benjamin de La Borde, ‘Ballet Pantomime’ [Médée et Jason], from Ismène et Isménias (Paris: Lemarchand, 1770), Act II, scene 5

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i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi.

Primary literature [305] Secondary literature [312] Stage works [319] Eighteenth-century periodicals [322] Manuscripts [322] Dictionaries and reference works [323]

i. Primary literature Abert, Hermann (ed.), Ausgewählte Ballette Stuttgarter Meister aus der 2. Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts. Florian Deller, Johann Joseph Rudolph (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel; Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1958) Algarotti, Francesco, Saggio sopra l’Opera in Musica (1755; Livorno: M. Coltellini, 1763) Angiolini, Gasparo [and Calzabigi?], Dissertation sur les Ballets-Pantomimes des Anciens pour Servir de Programme au Ballet-Pantomime Tragique de Sémiramis, in Ranieri de’ Calzabigi, Scritti Teatrali e Letterari, ed. Anna Laura Bellina, 2 vols (Rome: Salerno, c.1994), Vol. I, pp. 154–176 [and Calzabigi?], preface to Don Juan, ou Le Festin de Pierre, in Scritti Teatrali e Letterari. Ranieri Calzabigi, ed. Anna Laura Bellina, 2 vols (Rome: Salerno, c.1994), Vol. I, pp. 147–153 , Lettere di Gasparo Angiolini a Monsieur Noverre sopra i Balli Pantomimi (Milan: Gio. Battista Bianchi, 1773) , Riflessioni di Gasparo Angiolini sopra l’Uso dei Programmi nei Balli Pantomimi (London [sic]: n.p., 1775) Anon., Due Lettere Scritte a Diversi Soggetti (Naples: n.p., 1774) Anon., Lettre d’un des Petits Oracles de M. Angiolini au Grand Noverre (Milan: Bianchi, 1774) Anon., [Giuseppe Carpani?], Memorie per Servire alla Storia degli Spettacoli del Teatro di Milano degli Anni 1774, e 1775. Ossia Lettere Controcritiche del Marchese N . . . al Cavaliere K . . . (Brescia: Fratelli Pasini, 1776) Anon., Riflessioni Sopra la Pretesa Risposta del Sig. Noverre all’Angiolini, in Discussioni sulla Danza Pantomima. Vedi Lettere sulla Danza di Mr Noverre e del Sig. Angiolini (Milan: n.p., 1774)

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Anon., Tableau du Spectacle Français, ou Annales Théatrales de la Ville de Mastrigt, Précédé d’un Discours Préliminaire par M. Bernard Avocat (Maastrict: J.T. Van Gulpen, 1781) Aristotle, Sense and Sensibilia, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, 2 vols (Princeton University Press, 1995), Vol. I Artaud, Antonin, ‘En finir avec les chefs-d’œuvre’, in Le Théaˆ tre et son Double (Paris: Gallimard, 1964) Arteaga, Stefano, ‘Ragionamento sopra il ballo pantomimico’, in Le Rivoluzioni del Teatro Musicale Italiano dalla sua Origine Fino al Presente, 3 vols (Venice: Carlo Palese, 1785), Vol. III Augustine, De Ordine, in Œuvres de Saint Augustin (Paris: Desclée, de Bouwer et Cie, 1939-), Vol. IV Bachaumont, Louis Petit de, Mémoires Secrets pour Servir a` l’Histoire de la République des Lettres en France, depuis MDCCLXII, ou Journal d’un Observateur, Contenant les Analyses des Pièces de Théaˆ tre qui ont Paru durant cet Intervalle, les Relations des Assemblées Littéraires, 36 vols in 18 (London: John Adamson, 1783–89) Barrault, Jean-Louis, ‘Le corps magnétique’, in Cahiers Renaud Barrault, 99 (1979), pp. 71–135 Beaumelle, Laurent Angliviel de la, L’Esprit (Paris: Favre, 1802) ´ ementaire Théorique et Pratique de l’Art de la Danse (Milan, Blasis, Carlo, Traité El´ 1820; Rome: Gremese, 2007) Boaden, James, Memoirs of the Life of John Philip Kemble Esq., 2 vols (London: n.p., 1825) Borsa, Matteo, ‘Saggio filosofico sui balli pantomimi’, in Opuscoli Scelti sulle Scienze e sulle Arti, Tratti dagli Atti delle Accademie, e dalle Altre Collezioni Filosofiche e Letterarie, dalle Opere piu Recenti Inglesi, Tedesche, Francesi, Latine, e Italiane, e da Manoscritti Originali, e Inediti (Milan: Giuseppe Marelli, 1782–83), Vol. V, Part III, pp. 137–151; Vol. V, Part IV, pp. 311–321; and Vol. VI, Part II, pp. 153–169 Boulenger de Rivery, Claude-François, Recherches Historiques et Critiques sur Quelques Anciens Spectacles, et Particulièrement sur les Mimes et sur les Pantomimes (Paris: Jacques Mérigot Fils, 1751) Bulwer, John, Chironomia, in Chirologia, or, The Naturall Language of the Hand: Composed of the Speaking Motions, and Discoursing Gestures thereof: Whereunto is Added, Chironomia, or, The Art of Manual Rhetoricke, Consisting of the Naturall Expressions, Digested by Art in the Hand (London: Henry Twyford, 1644) Cahusac, Louis de, ‘Ballet’, in Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers, ed. Denis Diderot and Jean D’Alembert, 28 vols (Paris: Briasson et al., 1751–65; Neuchâtel: 1765–72), Vol. 2 , La Danse Ancienne et Moderne ou Traité Historique de la Danse, 3 vols (The Hague: Jean Neaulme, 1754)

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Von Feldtenstein, C.J., Die Kunst nach der Choregraphie zu Tanzen und Tänze zu Schreiben, nebst einer Abhandlung u¨ ber die a¨ usserliche Wohlanständigkeit im Tänzen (Braunschweig: n.p., 1767) Warburton, William, The Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated on the Principles of a Religious Deist, 2 vols (London: Fletcher Gyles, 1737–41), Vol. II [Watson, Thomas?], ‘Deaf and Dumb’, Supplement to the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica, 6 vols (Edinburgh: A. Constable & Co, 1824), Vol. III Weaver, John, Anatomical and Mechanical Lectures upon Dancing, wherein Rules and Institutions for that Art Are Laid Down and Demonstrated (London: J. Brotherton and W. Meadows, 1721) , An Essay towards an History of Dancing (London: Jacob Tonson, 1712) , The History of the Mimes and Pantomimes (London: J. Roberts, 1728)

ii. Secondary literature Alm, Irene, ‘Pantomime in seventeenth-century Venetian theatrical dance’, in Creature di Prometeo. Il Ballo Teatrale. Dal Divertimento al Dramma. Studi Offerti a Aurel M. Milloss (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1996) , Wendy Heller, and Rebecca Harris-Warrick, ‘Winged feet and mute eloquence: dance in seventeenth-century Venetian opera’, in Cambridge Opera Journal, 15.3 (November 2003), pp. 216–280 Andrews, Richard, ‘Molière, commedia dell’arte, and the question of influence in early-modern European theatre’, in The Modern Language Review, 100.2 (April 2005), pp. 444–463 ´ Aubry, Pierre and Emile Dacier, Les Caractères de la Danse: Histoire d’un Divertissement pendant la Première Moitié du XVIIIe Siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1905) Austin, Gilbert, Chironomia: or, A Treatise on Rhetorical Delivery (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1806) Austin, J.L., How To Do Things With Words (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962) Bakhtin, Mikhail, Rabelais and his World (University of Indiana Press, 1984) Banducci, Antonia, ‘Du jeu scénique et de son effet dramatique: l’apport des didascalies manuscrites scéniques dans les livrets et partitions’, in Musique et Geste en France de Lully a` la Révolution, ed. Jacqueline Waeber (Berne: Peter Lang, 2009) Barnett, Dene, The Art of Gesture: The Practices and Principles of Eighteenth-Century Acting (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1987) and Ian Parker, ‘Finding the appropriate attitude’, in Early Music, 8.1 (January 1980), pp. 65–69 Bartel, Dietrich, Musica Poetica (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1997)

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Benedetti, Jean, David Garrick and the Birth of Modern Theatre (London: Methuen, 2001) ´ ´ Benha¨ım, Guy, ‘Etienne Decroux, ou la chronique d’un siècle’, in Etienne ´ Decroux, Mime Corporel: Textes, Etudes et Témoignages (Saint-Jean-de-Védas: L’Entretemps, 2003) ´ Bénichou, Paul, Le Sacre de l’Ecrivain, 1750–1830: Essai sur l’Avènement d’un Pouvoir Spirituel La¨ıque dans la France Moderne (Paris: J. Corti, 1973) Bourguinat, Elizabeth, Le Siècle du Persiflage (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999) Bourqui, Claude, La Commedia dell’Arte: Introduction au Théaˆ tre Professionnel Italien entre le XVIe et le XVIIIe Siècles (Paris: SEDES, 1999) Brainard, Ingrid, ‘The speaking body: Gaspero Angiolini’s “rhétorique muette” and the ballet d’action in the eighteenth century’, in Critica Musica: Essays in Honor of Paul Brainard, ed. John Knowles (Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1996) Bratton, Jacky, New Readings in Theatre History (Cambridge University Press, 2003) Brooks, William, ‘Louis XIV’s dismissal of the Italian actors: the episode of “La Fausse Prude”’, in The Modern Language Review, 91.4 (October 1996), pp. 840–847 Brown, Bruce A., Gluck and the French Theatre in Vienna (Oxford University Press, 1991) Cave, Terence, Recognitions: A Study in Poetics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988) Chaouche, Sabine (ed.), Sept Traités sur le Jeu du Comédien et Autres Textes: De l’Action Oratoire a` l’Art Dramatique (1657–1750) (Paris: Champion, 2001) Chazin-Bennahum, Judith, Jean-Georges Noverre’s Medea (Hightstown, NJ: Dance Horizons, 2000) [VHS recording] , ‘The making of a Baroque ballet, Medea’, in Early Music News, 25 (January 2001), p. 1, pp. 19–22 Chioles, John, ‘The “Oresteia” and the avant-garde: three decades of discourse’, in Performing Arts Journal, 15.3, Classics Contemporary (September 1993), pp. 1–28 ˆ de Bourgogne in 1697’, in Clarke, Jan, ‘The expulsion of the Italians from the Hotel Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 14 (1992), pp. 97–117 Dalmonte, Rossana, ‘“Une e´ criture corporelle”: la musica e la danza’, in Il Sogno del Coreodramma. Salvatore Viganò, Poeta Muto, ed. Ezio Raimondi (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1984), pp. 145–240 Day, David, The Annotated Violon Répétiteur and Early Romantic Ballet at the Théaˆ tre Royal de Bruxelles (1815–1830), doctoral dissertation, Department of Music, New York University, January 2008 Dotoli, Giovanni, Temps de Préfaces: Le Débat Théaˆ tral en France de Hardy a` la Querelle du Cid (Paris: Klincksieck, 1997) Duchartre, Pierre-Louis, La Comédie Italienne: L’Improvisation, les Canevas, Vies, Caractères, Portraits, Masques des Illustres Personnages de la Commedia dell’Arte

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(Paris: Librairie de France, 1924), trans. Randolph T. Weaver as The Italian Comedy. The Improvisation, Scenarios, Lives, Attributes, Portraits and Masks of the Illustrious Characters of the Commedia dell’Arte (New York: Dover Publications, 1966) Eriksen, Thomas Hylland and Finn Sivert Nielsen, A History of Anthropology (London: Pluto Press, 2001) Fantham, Elaine, ‘Quintilian on performance: traditional and personal elements in “Institutio” 11.3’, in Phoenix, 36.3 (Autumn 1982), pp. 243–263 ´ Forsans, Ola, Le Théaˆ tre de Lélio: Etude du Répertoire du Nouveau Théaˆ tre Italien de 1716 a` 1729, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 2006: 08 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2006) Fumaroli, Marc ‘Les abeilles et les araignées’, in La Querelle des Anciens et Modernes: XVIIe–XVIIIe Siècles (Paris: Gallimard, 2001) Gajewski, Margaret Therese, The Language of Movement: A Critical Study of the Development of the Ballet d’Action and its Promotion by Selected German Courts during the Enlightenment, doctoral thesis, University of London, 2005 Garelli, Marie-Hélène, Danser le Mythe: La Pantomime et sa Réception dans la Culture ´ Antique (Leuven: Editions Peeters, 2007) Genette, Gérard, Palimpsestes (Paris: Seuil, 1981) , Seuils (Paris: Seuil, 1989) Gombrich, E.H., Art and Illusion (London: Phaidon, 1996) Gooden, Angelica, Actio and Persuasion: Dramatic Performance in Eighteenthcentury France (Oxford University Press, 1986) , Diderot and the Body (Oxford: Legenda, 2001) , (ed.), The Eighteenth-century Body: Art: History, Literature, Medicine (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2002) Goodman, Nelson, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub. Co., 1976) Gordon, Mel, Lazzi: The Comic Routines of the Commedia Dell’Arte (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1983) Grout, Donald Jay, ‘Seventeenth-century parodies of French opera’, in The Musical Quarterly, 27.2 (April 1941), pp. 211–219, and 27.4 (October 1941), pp. 514– 526 Gruber, Gernot, ‘I balli viennesi di Gluck e lo stile drammatico della sua musica’, in Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi Musicali ‘Gluck e la Cultura Italiana nella Vienna del suo Tempo’, 1–4 September 1973, Chigiana, nuova serie 9–10 (1972–73) Guest, Ivor, The Ballet of the Enlightenment: The Establishment of the Ballet d’Action in France (London: Dance Books, 1996) Gugitz, Gustav, ‘Die Familie Hilverding und ihre theatralische Sendung’, in Jahrbuch des Vereines für Geschichte der Stadt Wien, 11 (1954), pp. 71–103 Hall, Jon, ‘Cicero and Quintilian on the oratorical use of hand gestures’, in Classical Quarterly, 54.1 (2004), pp. 143–160

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Hansell, Kathleen K., Opera and Ballet at the Regio Ducal Teatro of Milan, 1771–1776, doctoral dissertation, Ann Arbor, MI, 1979 , ‘Theatrical ballet and Italian opera’, in The History of Italian Opera, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli, 2 vols (University of Chicago Press, 2002), Vol. II, pp. 177–308 Harris-Warrick, Rebecca and Bruce A. Brown (eds), The Grotesque Dancer on the Eighteenth-Century Stage. Gennaro Magri and his World (University of Wisconsin Press, 2005) , and Carol G. Marsh, ‘The French connection’, in The Grotesque Dancer on the Eighteenth-century Stage: Gennaro Magri and his World (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), pp. 173–198 Heck, Thomas (ed.), Picturing Performance: The Iconography of the Performing Arts in Concept and Practice (University of Rochester Press, 1999) Heitner, Robert R., ‘The Iphigenia in Tauris theme in drama of the eighteenth century’, in Comparative Literature, 16.4 (Autumn 1964), pp. 289–309 Hourcade, Philippe, Mascarades et Ballets au Grand Siècle (1643–1715) (Paris: Desjonquères & Centre National de la Danse, 2002) Johansen, K.F., ‘Logos’, in Encyclopedia of Classical Philosophy, ed. Donald Zeyl (London and Chicago, IL: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997) Jones, C.P., Culture and Society in Lucian (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986) Jones, Richard, Ancients and Moderns: A Study of the Background of the Battle of the Books (University of California Press, 1965) Jory, E.J., ‘The literary evidence for the beginnings of Imperial pantomime’, in Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London, 28 (1981), pp. 147–161 Jütte, Robert, A History of the Senses: From Antiquity to Cyberspace, trans. James Lynn (Cambridge: Polity, 2005) Katrisky, M.A., The Art of Commedia: A Study in the Commedia dell’Arte 1560–1620 with Special Reference to the Visual Records (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006) Kennedy, Andrew K., Dramatic Dialogue: The Duologue of Personal Encounter (Cambridge University Press, 1983) Kloiber, Rudolf, Die dramatischen Ballette von Christian Cannabich (Munich: Kutzner, 1928) Kracauer, Siegfried, The Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (Princeton University Press, 1997) Lada-Richards, Ismene, Silent Eloquence: Lucian and Pantomime Dancing (London: Duckworth, 2007) Lalonger, Edith, ‘J.F. Rebel’s Les Caractères de la Danse: interpretative choices and their relationship to dance research’, in Sarah McCleave (ed.), Dance and Music in French Baroque Theatre: Sources and Interpretations (London: Institute of Advanced Musical Studies, 1988), pp. 105–123

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Select bibliography ´ Laroch, Philippe, Petits-Maˆıtres et Roués: Evolution de la Notion de Libertinage dans le Roman Français du XVIIIe Siècle (Laval University Press, 1979) Lawler, L.B., ‘Phora, schêma, deixis in the Greek dance’, in Transactions of the American Philological Association, 85 (1954), pp. 148–158 Lecompte, Nathalie, ‘Jean-Baptiste François Dehesse: chorégraphe a` la Comédie Italienne et au Théaˆ tre des Petits Appartements de Madame de Pompadour’, in Recherches sur la Musique Française Classique, 24 (1986), pp. 142– 191 Leigh-Foster, Susan, Choreography and Narrative: Ballet’s Staging of Story and Desire (Indiana University Press, 1996) Lynham, Deryck, Father of Modern Ballet: The Chevalier Noverre (London: Dance Books, 1972) ˆ Mamzczarz, Irène, Le Masque et l’Ame. De L’Improvisation a` la Création Théaˆ trale (Paris: Klincksieck, 1999) Mars, Francis L., ‘Ange Goudar, cet inconnu’, in Casanova Gleanings, 9 (1966), pp. 1–64 Martin, Isabelle, Le Théaˆ tre de la Foire: Des Tréteaux aux Boulevards, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 2002: 10 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2002) Martinez, Ariane, La Pantomime: Théaˆ tre en Mineur, 1880–1945 (Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2008) Masson, Paul-Marie, L’Opéra de Rameau (Paris: Henri Laurens, 1930) McCleave, Sarah Yuill, Dance in Handel’s Italian Operas: The Collaboration with Marie Sallé, PhD dissertation, Department of Music, King’s College, University of London, 1 October 1993 McClymonds, Marita P. with Patrick M. Keady, ‘Renaud et Armide’, in Ballet Music from the Mannheim Court, ed. Paul Corneilson and Eugene K. Wolf (Madison, WI: A-R Editions, 1996), Part IV McDonald, Marianne, ‘Medea e` mobile: the many faces of Medea in opera’, in Medea in Performance, 1500–2000 (Oxford: Legenda, 2000) Mercier, Catherine, Le Ballet Médée et Jason d’après Noverre de 1763 a` 1804 a` l’Opéra de Paris: Du Divertissement au Ballet Autonome, MA thesis, Paris, Sorbonne, 2005 Molinari, Cesare, La Commedia dell’Arte (Milan: Mondadori, 1985) Molloy, Margaret E., Libanius and the Dancers (Hildesheim and New York: OlmsWeidmann, 1996) Montagu, Jennifer, The Expression of the Passions: The Origin and the Influence of Charles Le Brun’s Conférence sur l’Expression Générale et Particulière (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994) Mooser, R.A., Opéras, Intermezzos, Ballets, Cantates, Oratorios, Joués en Russie durant le XVIIIe Siècle, avec l’Indication des Œuvres de Compositeurs Russes ´ Parues en Occident, a` la Même Epoque. Essai d’un Répertoire Chronologique et Alphabétique (Geneva: A. Kundig, 1945)

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Nye, Edward, ‘L’allégorie dans le ballet d’action: Marie Sallé a` travers l’écho des parodies’, in Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de la France, 2 (April–June 2008), pp. 289–310 Palmer, F.R., Semantics (Cambridge University Press, 1981) Peters, F.E., ‘Logos’, in Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon (New York University Press, 1967) Plann, Susan, A Silent Minority: Deaf Education in Spain 1550–1835 (University of California Press, 1977) ` the coreodramma and the language of gesture’, in Poesia, Giannadrea, ‘Vigano, Historical Dance, 3.5 (1998), pp. 3–8 Ralph, Richard, The Life and Works of John Weaver. An Account of his Life, Writings and Theatrical Productions, with an Annotated Reprint of his Complete Publications (London: Dance Books, 1985) Randi, Elena, Pittura Vivente. J.-G. Noverre e il Balletto d’Action (Venice: Corbo e Fiore, 1989) Rée, Jonathan, I See a Voice: A Philosophical History of Language, Deafness and the Senses (London: Harper Collins, 1999) Rizzoni, Nathalie, ‘Le geste e´ loquent: la pantomime en France au XVIIIe siècle’, in ´ Musique et Geste en France de Lully a` la Révolution: Etudes sur la Musique, le Théaˆ tre et la Danse, ed. Jacqueline Waeber (Berne: Peter Lang, 2009), pp. 129–148 , ‘Quand L’Absence apparaˆıt . . . L’allégorie au théaˆ tre au dix-huitième siècle’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 2003: 07 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2003), pp. 429–443 Rotolo, Vincenzo, Il Pantomimo: Studi e Testi (Palermo: Presso l’Academia, 1957) Schmidt, James (ed.), What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions (University of California Press, 1996) Schwartz, J.L. and C.L. Schlundt, French Court Dance and Dance Music: A Guide to Primary Source Writings 1643–1789 (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1987) Simeone, Nigel, ‘Programme note’, Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, www. oxfordmusiconline.com Smith, Marian, ‘Borrowings and original music: a dilemma for the balletpantomime composer’, in Dance Research, 6.2 (Autumn 1988), pp. 3–29 , ‘The earliest “Giselle”? A preliminary report on a St Petersburg manuscript’, in Dance Chronicle, 23.1 (2000), pp. 29–48 Smith, Patrick J., The Tenth Muse: A Historical Study of the Opera Libretto (London: Gollancz, 1971) Spaziani, Marcello, Don Giovanni dagli Scenari dell’Arte alla Foire: Quattro Studi con Due Testi Forains Inediti e Altri Testi Italiani e Francesi (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1978) Steblin, Rita, A History of Key Characteristics in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (University of Rochester Press, 2002)

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Stötzner, Heinrich, Samuel Heinicke. Sein Leben und Wirken (Leipzig: n.p., 1870) Szondi, Peter, Theory of the Modern Drama, trans. Michael Hayes (Cambridge: Polity, 1987) Tani, Gino, ‘Angiolini’, in Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo, ed. Silvio d’Amico (Rome: Casa editrice Le Maschere, 1954–65) Taviani, Ferdinando, ‘Un vivo contrasto. Seminario su attrici e attori della commedia dell’arte’, Teatro e Storia, 1 (October 1986), pp. 25–75 and Mirella Schino, Il Segreto della Commedia dell’Arte. La Memoria delle Compagnie Italiane del XVI, XVII e XVIII Secolo (Florence: La Casa Usher, 1982) Tilmouth, Michael and Richard Sherr, ‘Parody (i)’, Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, www.oxfordmusiconline.com Todorov, Tzvetan, La Poétique de la Prose (Paris: Seuil, 1971) Tozzi, Lorenzo, ‘Appunti in margine alla partitura’, in Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi Musicali ‘Gluck e la Cultura Italiana nella Vienna del suo Tempo’, 1–4 September 1973, Chigiana, nuova serie 9–10 (1972–73), pp. 555– 564 , Il Balletto Pantomime del Settecento: Gaspare Angiolini (L’Aquila: L.U. Japandre, 1972) , ‘La poetica angioliniana del balletto pantomime nei programmi viennesi’, in Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi Musicali ‘Gluck e la Cultura Italiana nella Vienna del suo Tempo’, 1–4 September 1973, Chigiana, nuova serie 9–10 (1972–73), pp. 487–500 Verba, Cynthia, Music and the French Enlightenment: Reconstruction of a Dialogue, 1750–1764 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) ˆ Classique ´ Viala, Alain, Naissance de l’Ecrivain: Sociologie de la Littérature a` l’Age ´ (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1985) Wadsworth, Philip, Molière and the Italian Theatrical Tradition (Birmingham, AL: Summa Publications, 1977) Waeber, Jacqueline, ‘Décor et pantomimes du Devin du Village: une e´ tude didascalique’, in Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les Arts Visuels, Annales de la Société Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Actes du Colloque de Neuchâtel, 20–22 September 2001, ed. Frédéric S. Eigeldinger (Geneva: Droz, 2001), pp. 131–166 West, Shearer, The Image of the Actor (London: Pinter Publishers, 1991) Williams, Peter, Chromatic Fourth During Four Centuries of Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997) Winter, Marian Hannah, The Pre-Romantic Ballet (London: Pitman, 1974) Wolf, Werner and Walter Bernhart (eds), Framing Borders in Literature and Other Media (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006) Wood, Caroline, ‘Orchestra and spectacle in the “tragédie en musique” 1673–1715: oracle, “sommeil” and “tempête”’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 108 (1981–82), pp. 25–46

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iii. Stage works Angiolini, Gasparo, Alzira, first performed Milan, Scala, 1782; performance programme published Milan: Gio. Battista Bianchi, 1782. , La Caccia di Enrico IV, first performed Venice, San Benedetto Theatre, 1772–73; restaged Milan, Regio Ducal Theatre, 1773; performance programme published Milan: Gio. Battista Bianchi, 1773. , Le Roi et le Fermier, Ballet Héro¨ı-Comique, first performed Vienna 1774 (adapted from La Caccia di Enrico IV); performance programme published Vienna: n.p., 1774. , La Sagrificia de Dircea, performed Milan, Regio Ducal Theatre, 1773; performance programme published Milan: Gio. Battista Bianchi, 1773. , Semira, first performed St Petersburg 1772; performance programme printed with no publishing details (see the copy in the St Petersburg Public Library, 18.169.2.85). , Semiramide, Ballo Tragico-Pantomimo, first performed (as Sémiramis) Vienna, Burgtheater, 1765; performance programme published with essay as Dissertation sur les Ballets Pantomimes des Anciens, pour server de Programme au Ballet Pantomime Tragique de Sémiramis (Vienna: Trattner, 1765); restaged Venice, San Benedetto Theatre, 1773 and performance programme adapted and reprinted in Venice the same year by Modesto Fenzo. , Sémiramis, first performed Vienna: Burgtheater, 1765; performance programme published Vienna: Jean-Thomas de Trattnern, 1765. Arnould [Jean-François Mussot], Les Quatre Fils d’Aymon, Pantomime en Trois Actes, Représentée pour la Première Fois, sur le Théaˆ tre de la Porte Saint-Martin, le 15 Nivose an 12. Avec Combats et Evolutions a` Pied et a` Cheval, Musique Arrangée par MM. Francony; performance programme published Paris: Barba, 1804. A similar version was first performed in Paris in 1779, Théaˆ tre de l’AmbiguComique; performance programme published Paris: Pierre-Nicolas Delormel, 1799. Barrault, Jean-Louis, La Fontaine de Jouvence, first performed in Paris, Marigny Theatre, 1947; scenario by Boris Kochno, music composed by Georges Auric, music performed and directed by Pierre Boulez. Beretti, Andromico e Ramira, performed Milan, La Scala, carneval 1793; performance programme published Milan: Gio. Battista Bianchi, 1793. Boissy, Louis de, Les Talens a` la Mode, first performed Paris, Théaˆ tre-Italien, 1739; published in Boissy, Œuvres de M. de Boissy, Contenant son Théaˆ tre Français ´ et Italien. Nouvelle Edition, Revue, Corrigée et Augmentée de Plusieurs Pièces Nouvelles, 7 vols in 5 (Amsterdam and Berlin: J. Neaulme, 1768), Vol. VI. Clerico, Francesco, La Conquista del Vello d’Oro, performed Milan, La Scala, carneval 1792; performance programme published Milan: Gio. Battista Bianchi, 1792. , Issipile, performed Rome, Teatro delle Dame, carneval 1788; performance programme published Rome: Gioacchino Puccinelli, 1788.

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Didelot, Charles, The Caucasian Captive, first performed St Petersburg, Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre, 1823; performance programme printed in Russian with no publishing details (see the copy in the St Petersburg National Library, 18.171.2.162). Dorneval, Arlequin Traitant, first performed at the Foire de Saint-Germain in 1716, published in Lesage, Alain-René et D’Orneval, Le Théaˆ tre de la Foire, ou l’Opéra Comique. Contenant les Meilleures Pièces qui ont été Représentées aux Foires de S. Germain et de S. Laurent, 10 vols (Paris: Ganeau, 1721–37; Geneva: Slatkine, 1968), Vol. II. Fuzelier, Louis, Arlequin Défenseur d’Homère, first performed at the Foire SaintLaurent in 1715, published in Lesage, Alain-René et D’Orneval, Le Théaˆ tre de la Foire, ou l’Opéra Comique. Contenant les Meilleures Pièces qui ont été Représentées aux Foires de S. Germain et de S. Laurent, 10 vols (Paris: Ganeau, 1721–37; Geneva: Slatkine, 1968), Vol. II. Gallet, Sébastien, Il Disertore, performed Milan, La Scala, 1785; performance programme published Milan: Gio. Battista Bianchi, 1785. Gardel, Maximilien, La Rosière, first performed Paris, Académie Royale de Musique, 1783; programme published Paris: n.p., 1783. Gardel, Pierre, Télémaque dans l’Isle de Calypso, first performed Paris, Académie Royale de Musique, 1790; programme published Paris: Delormel, 1790. Gioia, Gaetano, Gli Orazi ed i Curiazi, performed Rome, Teatro a Torre Argentina, carneval 1812; performance programme published Rome, Crispino Puccinelli, 1812. Hilverding Van Wewen, Franz Anton Christoph, Les Amants Protégés par l’Amour, performed Vienna, Burgtheater, 1765; performance programme published Vienna: Jean-Thomas de Trattnern, 1765. , L’Asile de la Vertue, first performed St Petersburg, Imperial Theatre, 1759; performance programme printed in French with no publishing details (see the copy in the St Petersburg National Library, 19.113a.3.269–277). , Les Nouveaux Lauriers, performed St Petersburg, Imperial Theatre, 1759 (or maybe only in 1764); performance programme printed in French and Russian with no publishing details (see the copy in the St Petersburg National Library, 19.113a.3.270). Hus, Eugène, La Fille Mal Gardée, ou Il n’est qu’un Pas du Mal au Bien, performed Paris, Théaˆ tre de la Porte Saint-Martin, 1803; performance programme published Paris: Fages, 1803. First performed by Dauberval, Bordeaux, Grand Théaˆ tre de Bordeaux, 1789 as Le Ballet de la Paille, ou Il n’y a qu’un Pas du Mal au Bien. La Borde, Jean-Benjamin de, Ismène et Isménias; orchestral score published with annotated stage directions, Paris: Lemarchand, 1770. Le Picq, Charles, Castor et Pollux, Ballet Héroique-Pantomime en Cinq Actes, performed St Petersburg, Imperial Theatre, 1803; performance programme published St Petersburg: Imprimerie Impériale, 1803.

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Muzzarelli, Antonio, La Generosità di Scipione, performed Rome, Teatro di Torre Argentina, carneval 1790; performance programme published Rome: Gioacchino Puccinelli, 1790. Noverre, Jean-Georges, Agamemnon Vengé, first performed Vienna, Kärntnertor Theater, 1772; text published in Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre, Maˆıtre des Ballets de la Cour Impériale et Royale (Vienna: Joseph Kurzböck, 1776). , Apelles et Campaspe de Larisse, ou le Triomphe d’Alexandre sur Soi-Même, first performed Vienna, 1774; text published in Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre, Maˆıtre des Ballets de la Cour Impériale et Royale (Vienna: Joseph Kurzböck, 1776); performance programme published Paris: Delormel, 1776 with the title Apelles et Campaspe, ou la Générosité d’Alexandre. , Eutimo ed Eucari, first performed Vienna or Milan before 1776; performance programme published Milan: Giovanni Montani, 1775. , Les Horaces, first performed Vienna, Kärntnertor Theater, 1774; text published in Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre, Maˆıtre des Ballets de la Cour Impériale et Royale (Vienna: Joseph Kurzböck, 1776). , Iphigénie en Tauride, Ballet Tragique, first performed Vienna, 1772–73; text published in Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre, Maˆıtre des Ballets de la Cour Impériale et Royale (Vienna: Joseph Kurzböck, 1776). , Médée et Jason, first performed Stuttgart, 1763; text published in Recueil de Programmes de Ballets de M. Noverre, Maˆıtre des Ballets de la Cour Impériale et Royale (Vienna: Joseph Kurzböck, 1776). , Les Petits Riens, first performed Paris, Académie Royale de Musique, 1778. , La Toilette de Vénus ou Les Ruses de l’Amour, first performed Lyon, 1757; performance programme published Lyon: Aimé Delaroche, 1757. Pannard, Charles-François, Les Tableaux, first performed Paris, Théaˆ tre-Italien, 1747; published in Théaˆ tre et Œuvres Diverses de M. Pannard, 4 vols (Paris: Duchesne, 1763), Vol. I. Parisau [Pariseau], Pierre-Germain, Sophie de Brabant, Pantomime en Trois Actes, Représentée sur le Théaˆ tre des Grands Danseurs du Roi, le 15 Juin 1781; performance programme published Paris: Brunet, 1781. Piron, Alexis, Arlequin Deucalion, first performed Paris, Foire Saint-Germain, 1722; published in Le Théaˆ tre de la Foire au XVIIIe Siècle, ed. Dominique Lurcel ´ (Paris: Union Générale d’Editions, 1983). Pitrot, Antoine, Télémaque dans l’Isle de Calipso, Ballet Sérieux, Héro¨ı-Pantomime, first performed Paris, Théaˆ tre-Italien, 1759; programme published Paris: Ballard, 1759. Rameau, Jean-Philippe, Les Fêtes d’Hébé, ou Les Talents Lyriques, Ballet en Trois Actes et un Prologue, first performed Paris, Académie Royale de Musique, 1739; in Œuvres Complètes de Rameau, ed. C. Saint-Saëns, 18 vols (Paris: Durand et Fils, 1895–1924; New York: Broude Brothers, 1968), Vol. IX.

321

322

Select bibliography

Riccoboni, Luigi, Il Filosofo Deluso, first performed Paris, Théaˆ tre-Italien, 1719. For a modern edition of the scenario, see Luigi Riccoboni, Discorso della Commedia all’Improvviso e Scenari Inediti, ed. Irène Mamzczarz (Milan: Il Polifilo, 1973). ` Onorato, La Morte d’Agamennone, first performed Venice, Teatro GiustiniVigano, ani di San Moisè, 1777. Programme printed the same year with no publisher’s details (see the copy in Venice, La Casa Goldoni, 54.A.64/15). , Rinaldo ed Armide, o sia la Conquista di Sionne, performed Rome, Teatro di Torre Argentina, carneval 1788; performance programme published Rome: Michele Puccinelli, 1788. Weaver, John, The Fable of Orpheus and Eurydice, Attempted in Imitation of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, first performed London, Drury Lane, 1718; text published London: W. Mears, J. Browne, W. Chettwood, 1718. , The Judgment of Paris. A Dramatic Entertainment in Dancing and Singing, After the Manner of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, first performed London, Drury Lane, 1733; text published London: J. Tonson, 1733. , The Loves of Mars and Venus, first performed London, Drury Lane, 1717; text published London: W. Mears, J. Browne, 1717.

iv. Eighteenth-century periodicals Annonces, Affiches et Avis Divers (Paris, 1751–1811) Le Caméléon Littéraire (St Petersburg, 1755) La Donna Galante ed Erudita, Giornale Dedicato al Bel Sesso (Venice, 1786–87) English Chronicle or Universal Evening Post (London, 1779–1801) Gazzetta Urbana Veneta (Venice, 1787–98) Gazzette des Pays Bas (Brussels, 1759–91) Giornale delle Belle Arti e della Incisione Antiquaria, Musica, et Poesia (Rome, 1784– 88) Journal Encyclopédique ou Universel (Bouillon, 1756–93) ´ Journal Etranger, Ouvrage Périodique (Paris, 1754–62) Le Mercure (Paris, 1721–23) Le Mercure de France (Paris, 1724–91) The Prompter (London, 1734–36; 1789) The Public Advertiser (London, 1752–93) The Times (London, 1785–1800) Universal Journal (London, 1723–24)

v. Manuscripts Anon. [Antoine de Piis], ‘Chanson’ [parody of Noverre’s Les Horaces], Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, N.A.F. 3043, f. 102–103

Select bibliography

Anon. [Jean-Benjamin de La Borde], Médée et Jason [orchestral score], Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Opéra de Paris, ms A.236.a Ferrère, Auguste-Frédéric-Joseph, ‘Partition et Choreographie Ornée des figures et habillements des Balets donnee Par Auguste, frederick, Joseph, ferrere. A Valenciennes en 1782’ [sic throughout], Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Opéra, Rés 68 MSS Gardel, Pierre, Le Bal Masqué [plot synopsis], Paris, Archives Nationales de France, AJ13/1032 , Psyché [plot synopsis], Paris, Archives Nationales de France, AJ13 1024 , Télémaque [plot synopsis], Paris, Archives Nationales de France, AJ13 1024 Journal du Comte Charles de Zinzendorf et Pottendorf, Haus- Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Vienna Letter from the commissioners of the Académie Royale de Musique to Pierre Gardel concerning Méléagre et Atalante, 6 March 1823; Paris, Archives Nationales de France, AJ13 1023 Müller, Ernest, Psyché, sixteen-part manuscript orchestral score (choreography by Pierre Gardel), Lyon, Archives Municipales, 74WP 118 Rémusat, Comte de, letter to Pierre Gardel; Paris, Archives Nationales de France, AJ13 1023

vi. Dictionaries and reference works Deutsches Wörterbuch, ed. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, 16 vols (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1854–1960) Dictionnaire de la Danse, ed. Philippe Le Moal (Paris: Larousse, 1999) Dictionnaire des Danseurs, Chorégraphes et Maˆıtres de Danse a` Bruxelles de 1600 a` 1830, Jean-Philippe van Aelbrouck (Brussels: Mardaga, 1994) Dictionnaire des Théaˆ tres de Paris, Claude and Francis Parfaict, 7 vols (Paris: Rozet, 1767) Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo, ed. Silvio d’Amico (Rome: Casa Editrice Le Maschere, 1954–65) Encyclopedia of Classical Philosophy, ed. Donald Zeyl (Chicago, IL: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997) Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon, F.E. Peters (New York University Press, 1967) Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, www.oxfordmusiconline.com

323

Index

acting, 86, 116, 117, 122, 125 evolution of techniques, 85, 133, 136 physical acting, 9, 52, 60, 73, 74, 85, 122, 165, 221 actio, 28, 49, 115, 121, 165 Algarotti, Francesco, 46 Angiolini, Gasparo, 41, 53, 54, 64, 83, 86, 91, 94, 97, 133, 169, 178, 192, 193, 219, 223, 226, 227, 230 La Caccia di Enrico IV or Le Roi et le Fermier, 56, 141–142 Don Juan, ou Le Festin de Pierre, 83, 160 Le Naufrage, 193 querelle with Noverre, 42, 48, 91, 98, 170–177, 209, 214, 215, 221 Semiramide or Sémiramis, 57, 89, 98, 143, 147, 179, 205 Telemaco, 188 Aristotle, 13, 19, 36, 48, 172, 173, 175 Arnould, Jean-François Mussot Les Quatre Fils d’Aymon, 222 Augustine, Saint, 49 Bachaumont, Louis de, 88, 163–166 Barrault, Jean-Louis, 58, 103 Boissy, Louis de, 158 Les Talens a` la Mode, 158 Borsa, Matteo, 95, 105, 109, 125, 176, 210, 217 Cahusac, Louis de, 160, 173 La Danse Ancienne et Moderne, 41, 46–47, 122 Calzabigi, Ranieri de’, 56 Caraccioli, Louis-Antoine de, 128–132 Castel, Louis, 33, 36 censorship, 57, 70, 212 character, concept of, 52, 60, 67–68, 74, 77, 78, 80, 165, 194, 196 Chevrier, François-Antoine de, 108, 166–168, 169, 220 choreography, 163, 165, 167, 170 choreographic transcriptions, 2, 3, 168, 184, 232

324

Beauchamp–Feuillet notation, 2, 5, 65, 136, 162–165, 168, 170, 228 chorus, 40, 51, 100–101, 157, 203 Comédie Française, 60, 71 Commedia dell’arte, 50, 62–83, 102, 125 commedia degli zanni, 66 improvisation, 64–66, 80 lazzi, 65, 74, 76 masks, 68, 77 reformed Commedia, 76–81 roles, 66–68, 80 ´ Condillac, Etienne Bonnot de, 20, 27–30, 32 Copeau, Jacques, 85 ‘mask’ exercise, 85, 87 Corneille, Pierre, 53, 116, 144, 181 dance, 44 character dance, 117, 128 court ballet. See dance, noble dance Court Masque, 22 Italian intermezzi dance, 47, 64, 83, 115 national traditions, 47, 57–58, 91, 206 noble dance, 2, 39, 46, 136, 165 Dauberval, Jean, 52, 110 La Fille Mal Gardée, 58, 149–150 De Gérando, Joseph-Marie, 15 ´ Decroux, Etienne, 200, 230 Dehesse, Jean-Baptiste François, 79–80 Derrida, Jacques, 11 Deschamps, Claude-François, 20 Didelot, Charles, 58 Diderot, Denis, 37, 86, 183, 189, 221 Les Bijoux Indiscrets, 130 Entretiens sur le Fils Naturel, 49, 156–158 Lettre sur les Sourds et les Muets, 26–27, 33 Le Neveu de Rameau, 41, 91 De la Poésie Dramatique, 137 ‘Réponse de M. Diderot a` la Lettre Précédente’ [letter to Mme Riccoboni], 134 Dubos, Jean-Baptiste, 43–44, 47, 75, 116, 132, 183

Index

ekphrasis, 215 Engel, Johann Jacob, 134, 138 ´ ee, Charles-Michel, Abbé de l’, 10, 17–22, Ep´ 104 Ferrère, Auguste, 3, 132n, 163n, 232 foire, French, 50, 63, 69–72, 73 Fontenay, Saboureux de, 16, 17–18 Gallet, Sébastien, 168, 176 Gardel, Pierre, 180, 187, 193, 206, 213 Garrick, David, 4, 52–53, 64, 75, 90, 123, 137 gesture. See actio; language, natural gesture; mime, movement vocabulary Gluck, Christoph Willibald, 83, 100, 185, 192, 193, 205–206 Goldoni, Carlo, 63, 73, 80–81 Gombaud, Antoine, Chevalier de Méré, 127 Goudar, Ange, 11, 42, 69, 89, 94, 104, 107, 125, 145, 147, 178, 180, 191, 209, 224 Heinicke, Samuel, 16 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 10, 34–37 Hilverding, Franz, 57, 60, 82–83, 89, 95, 146, 171, 188, 190, 212 Les Amants Protégés par l’Amour, 146 L’Asile de la Vertu, 57 Les Nouveaux Lauriers, 57 Hobbes, Thomas, 14 Hus, Jean-Baptiste, 209 imitation, 222 mimesis, 21, 25–26, 110, 138, 184, 231 musical imitation, 21, 155, 193–194, 202, 203, 204 stylistic imitation, 89, 180, 186–187 Jooss, Kurt, 61, 84, 84n Kant, Immanuel, 10 Khevenhüller-Metsch, Johann Josef, 168 La Borde, Jean-Benjamin de, 164, 186, 194, 199, 205 La Bruyère, Jean de, 127–128 language abstract ideas, 19, 217 action language, 20, 23, 28–30 articulated language, 10, 13, 29, 30, 34, 206 deaf sign language abstract ideas, 18, 20–21

history of development, 15–17 sign for ‘belief ’, 18 sign for ‘God’, 21 sign for ‘love’, 12 hieroglyphs, 24–27 logocentrism, 50–51 natural gesture, 13, 104–105, 107, 109, 137, 231 phonocentrism, 11, 13–17, 30, 31 somatic language, 9, 11, 13, 28, 37, 69, 75–76 theories of origin, 11, 22–24, 28, 34 ´ Lauchéry, Etienne, 226, 226n Le Brun, Charles, 107n Le Picq, Charles, 4, 67, 99, 123–125, 180, 211, 239 Lecoq, Jacques, 111 Locke, John, 19–20, 27 Lucian, 230 The Dance, 40–41, 42–43, 49, 52, 220 Lully, Jean-Baptiste, 22, 39 Magri, Gennaro, 92 marionette theatre, 82–83 Marivaux, Pierre de, 78 masks, 40, 88–89, 164. See also Commedia dell’arte, masks; Copeau, Jacques, ‘mask’ exercise Metastasio, 54, 67, 124 mime analogy with deaf sign language, 11–13 corporeal mime, 85, 230 face, 87–92, 224. See also masks importance of non-comic mime, 50, 69, 102 movement vocabulary, 92, 103–104, 105, 108, 120, 128–130, 134, 136, 146, 159 and music, 188, 206 pantomime noble, 160 relation between dance and mime, 43–48, 92–95 relation between language and mime, 51, 73, 94–102, 176, 179, 209, 213, 217, 220, 231 vocal mime, 101 Molière, 39, 60, 64, 69, 80 Müller, Ernest, 206 music. See chorus; imitation, musical imitation; mime, and music; opera annotated scores, 185–188, 206 collaboration between composer and choreographer, 192 colour music. See Castel, Louis Muzzarelli, Antonio, 54

325

326

Index

Nicolini, Grimaldo, 189 Noverre, Jean-Georges, 5, 12, 47–48, 52, 53, 58, 64, 68, 84, 90–91, 96, 100–102, 137, 146, 160, 170, 193, 216, 227, 229. See also Angiolini, Gasparo, querelle with Noverre Agamemnon Vengé, 144, 160, 172–174, 177, 179, 209 Apelles et Campaspe, 178 Les Caprices de Galathée, 165 Les Dana¨ıdes, 126 Les Fêtes Chinoises, 177 Les Horaces et les Curiaces, 98, 143–144, 168, 174, 181, 204 Iphigénie en Tauride, 55, 99, 217 Lettres sur la Danse, 47, 86, 88, 132, 168–169, 173 Médée et Jason, 89, 107, 166, 194–203 Les Réjouissances Flamandes, 177 opera, 54, 124, 154–161, 205–206, 222 French opera, 22, 54, 122, 155, 156, 164, 189 Italian opera, 47, 83, 155 libretto, 21, 54, 56, 216 récitative, 50, 51, 94, 189 Opéra-Comique, 46, 47

Riccoboni, Luigi, 63, 76, 77, 80–81 Ritorni, Carlo, 59 Rodolphe, Jean-Joseph, 194, 205 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 24, 30, 36, 207 Sainte Albine, Rémond de, 116 Saint-Léger, 169 Sallé, Marie, 41, 46–47, 81–82, 89, 120–123, 157, 159 Scala, Flaminio, 73 Schink, Johann Friedrich, 5, 23, 42, 48, 126 sensationism, 19, 27 source material for ballets d’action, 53–55, 56–58, 219 spectator response, 5, 9, 13, 51–52, 88, 101, 106, 109, 111, 150, 152, 153, 154, 158, 177, 178, 179, 180, 191, 194, 211, 214, 221–225, 226, 231 staging, 51, 101, 147, 178, 180, 182–183, 222 casts, 39–40 on-stage signs, 71, 98–100, 143 props, 98, 106, 143, 149–150, 165, 182, 200 Stokoe, William C., 21 Sumarokov, Alexander, 56, 57 synaesthesia, 33

parody, 71, 117, 147–148, 158, 181–183 passions, depiction of, 31–34, 52, 74, 86, 106–110, 121, 154, 161, 197, 224–225, 229 Péreire, Jacob Rodrigues, 11, 16, 17, 31 performance programmes, 4, 53, 97, 120, 121, 132, 143, 144–146, 151, 165, 169, 171, 175, 208 Piazza, Antonio, 42, 98n Piis, Antoine de, 181–183 Piron, Alexis, 70 Pitrot, Antoine, 145, 146, 191 Pitrot, Jean-Baptiste, 166, 220 plot synopsis. See performance programmes Prévost, Françoise, 60, 116–120, 121, 132

Théaˆ tre Italien, 63, 70, 76, 78, 80, 81

Rabelais, François, 111 Rameau, Jean-Philippe, 22, 155, 159 Les Fêtes d’Hébé ou Les Talents Lyriques, 158 Les Indes Galantes, 157 Rameau, Pierre, 41, 129 Riccoboni, Antoine-François, 78, 116, 138

Warburton, William, 24, 29 Weaver, John, 41–42, 134, 163 The Loves of Mars and Venus, 45, 111, 120, 132 Orpheus and Euridice, 55 The Tavern Bilkers, 63

Verri, Pietro and Alessandro, 179, 214, 226 Vestris, Gaëtan, 88, 89, 94, 109, 164, 186, 188, 194 ` Maria Medina, 88, 97, 186 Vigano, ` Onorato, 54, 152 Vigano, ` Salvatore, 60, 186, 192, 206 Vigano, visual qualities, 97, 105, 230 cinematic, 176, 178, 194, 223 vs intellectual qualities, 49–50 painterly, 4, 46, 58, 86, 107, 165, 174, 176, 177–179, 215 Voltaire, 161, 222 Sémiramis, 55, 143, 147

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