The golden age of Romantic ballet, inaugurated by Filippo Taglioni’s La Sylphide, was a short-lived yet intense period of artistic creation. For close to twenty years, ballerinas reigned supreme at the Paris Opera, delighting their public with authentic folk dances imported from exotic locales and ethereal pointe work set against supernatural backdrops.
The emergence of ballet d’action, or dramatic pantomime ballet, during the second half of the eighteenth century helped establish professional dance as an independent theatrical art. Performers progressively abandoned the use of masks, cumbersome hoopskirts, and elevated heels in favor of more natural attire and greater freedom of movement. During France’s First Republic and throughout the Napoleonic era, the male virtuoso dancer tended to dominate the stage with dazzling leaps and spectacular pirouettes while pantomime served to advance the plot. Greek and Roman legends were common themes; costumes were elaborate and stage machinery complex. This remained the case until the early 1830’s, when Romanticism invested French
Various organizational changes at the Paris Opera helped set the stage for Romantic ballet. Between 1826 and 1831, three of the institution’s leading ballet masters, Pierre Gardel
After the fall of the Bourbon monarchy in 1830, the Paris Opera, previously under royal supervision, was transformed into a private enterprise. It was endowed with public funding and placed under the capable financial direction of Louis Désiré Véron, founder of the literary magazine Revue de Paris
By then, work had already begun on the production of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s grand opera-ballet, Robert le diable (Robert the demon), which premiered on November 21, 1831. Marie Taglioni was renowned for her pointe work (that is, her ability to dance on the tips of her toes), and the third act of Robert le diable incorporated a ballet scene, the so-called Dance of the Nuns, that was designed as a vehicle to showcase Taglioni’s skill at dancing on pointe. The white-clad corps de ballet, dancing in the midnight decor of an eerie graveyard bacchanal, formed an integral part of the opera’s narrative design and revealed to a delighted Parisian audience the direction in which Romantic ballet would evolve. Such scenes are now commonly referred to as ballet blanc, or white ballet, spectacles.
The first major success in Romantic ballet, La Sylphide (the sylph), opened at the Paris Opera on March 12, 1832. (Note that this ballet is not related to Michel Fokine’s 1908 ballet, Les Sylphides.) Adolphe Nourrit
Taglioni’s graceful pointe work and diaphanous skirt, innovations linked to the Romantic era, served to underscore the mysterious, ephemeral qualities of the title character, helping make her a central element of the narrative. Costume designer Charles Ciceri
Soon after the premier of La Sylphide, ballets featuring ethnic color, exotic locale, supernatural beings, and human passion became the rage. Austrian ballerina Fanny Elssler, Taglioni’s principal rival for the public’s affection, pioneered the use of authentic national dance in Le Diable boiteux (1836; the lame devil), La Gypsy (1839; the gypsy) and La Tarentule (1839; the tarantella). The Italian Carlotta Grisi
Driven by theatrical success, Romantic ballet promoted the ballerina by placing its emphasis on technique, buoyancy, and grace, rather than spectacular leaps and bounds. To an ever greater extent, male dancers served on stage as mere porteurs (lifters) whose primary function was to raise the ballerina to greater heights. Leading female dancers toured Europe and distant continents, performing to enthusiastic crowds in Paris, London, Milan
By the late 1840’s—once choreographers and dancers had thoroughly explored the finite variations that ballet blanc and national folk dances could offer—the golden age of Romantic ballet came to an end, at least in France and England. A steady decline in box-office receipts and the rising popularity of dance and music halls in the post-Romantic era indicated that the creative artistic fever first displayed in La Sylphide and perfected in Giselle had run its course. The only truly remarkable success in French ballet during the Second Empire was Arthur Saint-Léon’s comic ballet, Coppélia (1870), based on a short story by E. T. A. Hoffmann.
During the last decades of the nineteenth century, St. Petersburg under the artistic direction of Marius Petipa surpassed Paris and London as the undisputed capital of classical dance. Placing greater emphasis on the unity of music and dance and relying less on pantomime, Petipa not only breathed new life into old favorites such as Coppélia, Giselle, Le Diable à quatre, and La Sylphide but also cast exciting new ballets in the familiar Romantic tradition of lyric fantasy and national dance (Sleeping Beauty in 1890, The Nutcracker in 1892, and Swan Lake in 1895). Romantic ballet, refined to the tastes of modern audiences, has demonstrated over and again the depth of its artistic vision and its vitality as an independent theatrical art.
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Bremser, Martha, Larraine Nicholas, and Leanda Shrimpton, eds. International Dictionary of Ballet. 2 vols. Detroit: St. James Press, 1993. Contains detailed biographies and iconographic resources on major figures in nineteenth century ballet. -
Cohen, Selma Jeanne, ed. International Encyclopedia of Dance. 6 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Biographies on important figures; articles on ballet technique, scenic design, lighting, music, notation, libretti, costumes, prints, and drawings. -
Foster, Susan Leigh. Choreography and Narrative: Ballet’s Staging of Story and Desire. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. Discussion of narrative ballet from Marie Sallé’s Pygmalion (1734) to the first staging of Giselle (1841). -
Garafola, Lynn, ed. Rethinking the Sylph: New Perspectives on the Romantic Ballet. Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan University Press, 1997. Articles by thirteen specialists. -
Guest, Ivor. Ballet Under Napoleon. London: Dance Books, 2002. Discussion focused on the first two decades of the nineteenth century. -
_______. The Romantic Ballet in England. London: Phoenix House, 1954. Examines the development of ballet in England during the first half of the nineteenth century. -
_______. The Romantic Ballet in Paris. London: Pitman, 1966. Essential reading focused on the period 1820-1847. -
Lee, Carol. Ballet in Western Culture: A History of Its Origins and Evolution. New York: Routledge, 2002. Includes sections on Romantic and post-Romantic ballet in western Europe and Russia.
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Paris Salon of 1824
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Tchaikovsky’s Swan lake Is Staged in St. Petersburg
Edgar Degas; Léo Delibes; Fanny Elssler; Jacques Offenbach; Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky.