Parisian music-hall ballet, 1871-1913 9781782045687, 1782045686

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PARI S I A N MUSIC -HALL BALLE T 1871–1913 S a r a h G u t s c h e - M il l e r

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871–1913

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Eastman Studies in Music Ralph P. Locke, Senior Editor Eastman School of Music Additional Titles of Interest Building the Operatic Museum: Eighteenth-Century Opera in Fin-de-Siècle Paris William Gibbons “Claude Debussy As I Knew Him” and Other Writings of Arthur Hartmann Edited by Samuel Hsu, Sidney Grolnic, and Mark Peters Debussy’s Letters to Inghelbrecht: The Story of a Musical Friendship Edited by Margaret G. Cobb Translations by Richard Miller French Music, Culture, and National Identity, 1870–1939 Edited by Barbara L. Kelly

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The French Symphony at the Fin de Siècle: Style, Culture, and the Symphonic Tradition Andrew Deruchie Irony and Sound: The Music of Maurice Ravel Stephen Zank Musical Encounters at the 1889 Paris World’s Fair Annegret Fauser Pentatonicism from the Eighteenth Century to Debussy Jeremy Day-O’Connell The Poetic Debussy: A Collection of His Song Texts and Selected Letters Edited by Margaret G. Cobb Translations by Richard Miller Unmasking Ravel: New Perspectives on the Music Edited by Peter Kaminsky A complete list of titles in the Eastman Studies in Music series may be found on our website, www.urpress.com.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871–1913

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

Sarah Gutsche-Miller

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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The University of Rochester Press gratefully acknowledges the AMS 75 PAYS Endowment of the American Musicological Society, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, for generous support of this publication. Copyright © 2015 by Sarah Gutsche-Miller All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. First published 2015 University of Rochester Press 668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA www.urpress.com and Boydell & Brewer Limited PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK www.boydellandbrewer.com

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ISBN-13: 978-1-58046-442-0 ISSN: 1071-9989 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gutsche-Miller, Sarah, 1977– author. Parisian music-hall ballet, 1871–1913 / Sarah Gutsche-Miller. pages cm — Eastman studies in music, ISSN 1071-9989 ; v. 123) ISBN 978-1-58046-442-0 (hardcover : alkaline paper) 1. Ballet—France— Paris—History—19th century. 2. Ballet—France—Paris—History—20th century. 3. Ballets—France—Paris—History and criticism—19th century. 4. Ballets— France—Paris—History and criticism—20th century. I. Title. II. Series: Eastman studies in music ; v. 123. GV1650.P3G88 2015 792.80944'36109034—dc23 2015011292 A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. This publication is printed on acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Contents List of Figures

vii

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

1

1

The Venues and the Shows

7

2

Music Halls for Tout-Paris

31

3

Creative Artists: Authors, Composers, and Choreographers

55

4

The Ballet-Divertissement

75

5

Real Pantomime-Ballets: The Choreographic Conventions of 1890s Music-Hall Ballet

97

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6

Music as Storyteller: The Musical Conventions of 1890s Music-Hall Ballet

115

7

As Pleasing to the Ear as to the Eye: A Popular Musical Style

133

8

The Stories of Music-Hall Ballet: Romance, Flirtations, and Other Pleasures

161

A Delight to Behold: Glitter, Glamour, and Girls

176

Appendix A: Tables of Ballets Staged by the Folies-Bergère, the Olympia, and the Casino de Paris

207

Appendix B: Synopses of Ballets Staged at the Folies-Bergère, the Olympia, and the Casino de Paris

234

Notes

285

Bibliography

333

Index

347

9

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved. Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Figures 1.1 Yves and Barret, Les Folies-Bergère, 1878. Representation of patrons and prostitutes milling about the winter garden.

10

1.2 Folies-Bergère program, January 7, 1877.

14

1.3 Folies-Bergère program, April 13, 1894.

17

1.4 Folies-Bergère programs, December 21, 1900; July 28, 1900; January 12, 1900.

18

1.5 V. Dargaud, etching of the Casino de Paris hall and stage before seating was added, ca. 1892.

24

1.6 Photograph from a Casino de Paris program showing the hall as seen from the stage.

25

1.7 Casino de Paris program, 1895.

26

1.8 Olympia program, 1895.

29

2.1 Folies-Bergère poster, printed by Emile Lévy, 1874.

33

2.2 Postcard of the Folies-Bergère winter garden.

34

2.3 DeBeaurepaire, Folies-Bergère—Représentations des frères Hanlon-Lees et de Little Bob (1872).

35

2.4 H. Alberti, halftone illustration of the Folies-Bergère promenoir.

41

2.5 Composite photograph by E. LaGrange, Le hall des Folies-Bergère, quinze minutes d’entracte.

42

2.6 E. LaGrange, Le promenoir des Folies-Bergère.

42

2.7 Composite photograph by E. LaGrange, Sur le Boulevard—Sortie de l’Olympia, in Paris la Nuit, Le Panorama, ca.1900.

46

2.8 Olympia program, left and central panels of the cover, 1894.

47

2.9 Wood engraving by Lagarte of revelers at the Casino de Paris, in Delsol, Paris-Cythère: Étude de mœurs parisiennes.

50

2.10 Composite photograph by E. LaGrange of Casino de Paris revelers.

51

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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viii figures 4.1 Folies-Bergère poster for Sur la plage, printed by Emile Lévy, 1883.

82

4.2 Nadar Studios, Victoria Laisne in Les abeilles, 1877.

84

4.3 R. Lamy, cover illustration from Charles Hubans, Les abeilles, “Valse brillante.”

85

5.1 Maria Bordin and Robert Quinault in Mme Mariquita’s Stella, 1911.

105

5.2 Nadar Studios, Liane de Pougy and Mlle Régina in Rêve de Noël, 1897.

106

5.3 Bode, illustration of a scene from Presse-ballet, printed in Le Journal du Théâtre, May 11, 1888.

109

9.1 Jules Chéret, Folies-Bergère poster for Fleur de Lotus, 1893.

184

9.2 Folies-Bergère poster for Marine, printed by F. Appel, 1890.

187

9.3 Rosary, wood engraving of the duel scene in Les réservistes à venir, printed in Le Journal du Théâtre, December 25, 1887.

188

9.4 Officers in an unspecified production staged by the Olympia, printed in Le Journal Amusant, April 3, 1897.

189

9.5 Photograph of Angèle Héraud as Cadet Rousel, printed in a Casino de Paris program, 1900.

190

9.6 Costumes for Pierrot au hammam, centerfold in Le Théâtre Illustré 6, no. 20.

196

9.7 Mars, wood engraving of a scene from Brighton, printed in Le Journal Amusant no. 1942 (November 18, 1893).

196

9.8 Photographs of dancers from Les sept péchés capitaux, printed in Paris Qui Chante, October 18, 1903.

201

9.9 Nadar Studios, Mlle Lhéry in Sardanapale, 1897.

202

9.10 Drawing by A. Poulain showing Falguière’s statue of Mérode as displayed at the 1896 Paris salon, Gil Blas, June 26, 1896.

203

9.11 Caricature of Cléo de Mérode in Phryné, printed in Le Journal Amusant, March 20, 1897.

205

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Acknowledgments This project came about because I did not believe that Sergei Diaghilev could have found such a large and receptive audience for ballet in 1909 if Parisians had not had an established creative ballet culture of their own. Like everyone before me, I began by studying the repertoire of the Paris Opéra and was disappointed with what I found. What I discovered later was not what I expected, and I might not have found it at all had it not been for the pioneering research of Hélène Laplace-Claverie. I would like to thank her for her advice and encouragement at the very beginning of my research. I would also like to thank Vincent Warren, then head librarian at the École Supérieure de Ballet du Québec, who presented me with what was at the time a rare copy of the book that instigated this project, Laplace-Claverie’s Écrire pour la danse: Les livrets de ballet de Théophile Gautier à Jean Cocteau (1870–1914). My research was made possible by substantial fellowships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, a McGill University graduate scholarship and travel grant, an AMS Elizabeth Bartlet Research travel grant, and an AMS 75 PAYS publication subvention. I wish to thank Ralph Locke, Sonia Kane, Julia Cook, Ryan Peterson, and Tracey Engel at the University of Rochester Press for their always friendly assistance at various stages of this process, and I would like to thank Dan Deutsch, who set my musical examples and provided editorial assistance; David Romero, who cleaned up some very muddy reproductions; and Deborah Miller, who proofread a manuscript riddled with Canadian spellings and speckled with misplaced dashes. This book would never have made it to completion without the contributions of family, friends, colleagues, librarians, and archivists. I am especially indebted to the magasiniers of the Musée de l’Opéra, two of whom took it upon themselves one summer to search for missing documents—over the space of a week, they turned up four lost scores, a poster, a series of performance journals, and a set of programs—and to many a présidente de salle at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris who found sources for arcane bits of information. Corinne Lebel, curator at the Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques, was also very generous with her time. I have received guidance from several scholars. I would especially like to thank Steven Huebner, Lloyd Whitesell, Julie Cumming, and Annegret

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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x

acknowledgments

Fauser for reading and providing invaluable feedback on the dissertation that forms the basis of this study. Other scholars who have offered advice about the material or about doing research in Paris include Katharine Ellis, Mark Everist, Sarah Hibberd, Claire Rowden, Marie-Hélène Saghai, and Lesley Wright. I would also like to thank my anonymous readers and the members of the Columbia Seminar on Studies in Dance, whose comments and questions enriched sections of this book. I owe a debt of gratitude to Marian Smith, Lynn Garafola, and Jane Pritchard, who patiently answered innumerable questions, pointed me to various sources of information, read parts of the manuscript with a muchappreciated attention to detail (any errors remain my own, of course), and who engaged with me in many inspiring conversations about ballet. Selma Landen Odom has been not only a generous colleague since I first arrived in Toronto, but also a friend. Colleagues Matilda Butkas Ertz, Sam Dorf, Helena Kopchick Spencer, Stephanie Schroedter, Nathan Martin, Andrew Deruchie, Kym White, and Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers have provided answers to obscure dance-related questions or shared stimulating intellectual exchanges while also providing much-needed encouragement and friendship along the way. I am grateful for the unwavering affection of my grandparents Alice and David Gutsche, who funded my last research trip, and my parents David Miller and Clara Gutsche, whose unconditional love mixed well with critical advice as I wrote the book. There would be far more half-baked, vague, or unconnected thoughts, tangents, and redundancies without my mother’s patient and meticulous slog through the entire manuscript. Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Steven Vande Moortele, for his editorial feedback, friendship, and steadfast support, and my daughter, Hannah, who arrived two days after I first contacted the University of Rochester Press, and who has never known a time when mommy was not working on her book.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Introduction In the late nineteenth century a popular form of ballet emerged in Paris’s foremost music halls: first at the Folies-Bergère in the 1870s, then at the Casino de Paris and the Olympia in the 1890s. For more than four decades, music halls rather than ballet’s traditional home, the Opéra, were the settings for a vibrant French ballet culture. Music halls had the money, artistic ambition, and public visibility to attract the era’s best creative and performing artists, and the profitable staging practices to generate a steady stream of spectacular ballets. Performed to full houses night after night alongside acrobatic acts and song-and-dance routines, these productions quickly became the focal point of an evening’s entertainments and drew a larger and more varied audience than had ever attended ballet. Music-hall ballets were initially no more than divertissements similar to those integrated into large-scale lyrical and dramatic works staged at the Paris Opéra or Opéra-Comique. In the 1870s, the Folies-Bergère began presenting short illustrative ballets that served as pretty and sometimes titillating backdrops to an evening of socializing. They proved immediately popular, and ballet quickly became a favorite form of music-hall entertainment. Soon the Folies-Bergère was creating new ballets at a rate of four to six per year and producing them on an ever grander scale. By the late 1880s, the hall was staging grandiose pantomime-ballets: works with extended narratives conveyed through a combination of mime and dance. Pantomime-ballets in turn became a staple of Parisian music-hall entertainment. As the Folies-Bergère grew to be the preeminent music hall in Paris, and as ballet became an increasingly important element of its success, other venues took notice.1 When the Casino de Paris and the Olympia became music halls in 1890 and 1893, they looked to the Folies-Bergère as a model and patterned their activities on those of the already famous and profitable venue. Between 1890 and 1909, all three halls presented new pantomime-ballets on a regular basis, each vying to stage more exciting and impressive productions than the others. In the 1890s alone, the Folies-Bergère created thirty pantomime-ballets, the Casino sixteen, and the Olympia eighteen, each of which was performed on a nightly basis for several months. Pantomime-ballet had become everyday entertainment for a broad public.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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2

introduction

The vogue for ballet in popular venues quickly spread beyond Paris. In the 1860s and 1870s, ballet could be seen in only eight French cities, and always in grands théâtres and municipal theaters. Of the forty-eight ballets staged in the regions of France between 1860 and 1878, twenty-two were created in Lyon and sixteen in Bordeaux—historically the two centers of French ballet outside of Paris.2 In the 1880s, ballet caught the attention of the general public, and many of the commercial entertainment venues springing up across the country kept apace, producing a remarkable number of ballets in just a few years. Not only did the number of ballets staged in France nearly double over the next two decades, these works were presented in nineteen different venues, including several regional music halls such as the Lyon Folies-Bergère, the Bordeaux Folies-Bergère, and the Bordeaux Alcazar. Between 1899 and 1910, 165 different ballets were presented in 68 venues, nearly all popular establishments. After 1900, urban music halls and popular theaters in spas such as Aix-les-Bains and Vichy outnumbered traditional theaters, which nonetheless continued to present new works every year. Combined, French regional theaters and music halls produced at least 310 new ballets between 1870 and 1909. Over the same forty years, Parisian music halls and theaters created another 250 independent ballets (mainly pantomime-ballets) and more than 300 divertissements.3 Until recently, this vibrant ballet culture has been entirely ignored.4 Indeed, the turn of the twentieth century has long been considered a dark period for ballet in France, with few ballets created or restaged. Historical surveys of ballet usually skip over these years altogether, while the historians who do cover the era describe it as one of decline and decadence.5 The inaccuracy stems from the way in which French ballet history has been documented and narrated. Nearly all histories of ballet focus on dance in statefunded “high art” institutions, which in France has meant a nearly exclusive concentration on the Paris Opéra. The 1870s did mark the beginning of a long period of relative inactivity at the Opéra with regard to the creation and performance of independent ballets (as opposed to ballets in lyrical productions). Whereas the state theater had created over sixty new ballets between 1820 and 1870, production dropped to twenty-five over the next fifty years. Only four were created in the 1890s. However, the Opéra was not the only institution to stage ballet. A glance at theater listings in newspapers and in catalogues of theatrical performances paints a very different picture from the one constructed by canonical ballet history. Although ballet was foundering at the Opéra, the actual number of works staged in Paris in the 1880s and 1890s and the number of theaters in which they were performed rose exponentially. Ballet did not disappear from the Parisian stage at the end of the nineteenth century; it simply changed venue. By the time Sergei Diaghilev brought his first productions of Russian ballet to the Paris Théâtre du Châtelet in 1909, there was a large and diverse ballet-going audience. His productions may have drawn a new musical and

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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introduction 3 artistic crowd, but the arrival of the Ballets Russes did not spark a sudden revival of ballet in the French capital as has long been assumed.6 Rather, it marked a turning point in the history of an ever-changing genre. Music-hall ballet marked another.

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The Origins of Parisian Music-Hall Ballet The emergence of ballet in Parisian music halls depended on a confluence of several factors. That the halls could stage ballets at all was due to an important change to French theater law. Between 1807 and 1864, the Opéra was by imperial law the only venue permitted to create ballets with developed story lines and staged with sets and costumes.7 Other theaters could present divertissements, but not pantomime-ballets, and café-concerts could not stage ballets at all.8 In the mid-1860s, the Napoleonic system of privileges was repealed. After a first decree in 1864, anyone could open a theater, and all theaters were allowed to stage all genres. A second decree in 1867 broadened the field to include private entertainment venues.9 It was therefore only after 1867 that a music hall was allowed to present ballet.10 Another factor that favored the development of a new form of ballet in a new venue was the shrinking presence of ballet at the Opéra. By the 1870s, the Opéra had begun a slow but steady decline in the number of ballets it produced and in the quality of these works. Contemporary reviews indicate that while many were entertaining, they were either pale imitations of Romantic ballets, minor divertissements with little dramatic significance, or feeble emulations of the Italian spectacle ballets seen at the Eden-Théâtre.11 In the 1890s, critics began complaining that Opéra ballets were growing too similar to music-hall ballets, and by the early 1900s, they openly disparaged what they felt was a general decline of Opéra ballet. To make matters worse, the company lost three key artists in 1870, and in 1873 and 1894, fires destroyed the sets and costumes for most of its repertory.12 Performance standards also slipped. Although the Opéra never lost its reputation for top-notch foreign star ballerinas, comments made in reviews suggest that corps girls were primarily decorative, as they lacked the technical skills necessary for performing complex choreography in the academic idiom.13 With the Opéra in a state of flux and with few major works left in its repertory, the stage was set for other venues to take the lead. Music halls had several precedents for creating ballets with broad appeal. Popular boulevard theaters such as the Théâtre de la Gaîté, the Théâtre du Châtelet, and the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin had a long tradition of presenting original choreography geared toward a mass audience. Ballet was an essential ingredient of boulevard-theater féeries, dramas, and pièces à grand spectacle, with choreographed divertissements lasting twenty minutes or more.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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4

introduction

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Parisian music halls also had a direct model in the highly profitable Alhambra Theatre of Varieties in London, which began staging ballets alongside circus attractions several years before the Folies-Bergère.14 These early music-hall ballets—the Alhambra produced forty-five new productions between 1864 and 1870—played a vital role in the development of popular ballet and were key to establishing many of the stylistic features and performance practices common to the genre in England and France. Although English and French musichall ballet had distinctive structural and stylistic characteristics—some born of differences in theater laws, others due to audience expectations—English music-hall ballet remained one of the strongest influences on French musichall ballet into the 1910s as subjects, themes, and ballets, dancers, composers, and choreographers moved back and forth across the Channel.15 The form of ballet that had the greatest impact on music-hall ballet in the late 1880s and into the 1890s was the Italian ballo grande. In 1883, just as the Opéra’s ballets started garnering as much criticism as praise, when the féerie was beginning to wane, and when music halls still performed small-scale divertissements, the Eden-Théâtre burst onto the scene with lavish and skillfully executed Italian ballets of an unprecedented scale. The Eden’s first production, a restaging of Excelsior, consisted of more than ninety minutes of dancing and pageantry with multiple stage sets, an array of colorful costumes, and a cast of several hundred. Virtually overnight, the Eden-Théâtre became the Parisian center for ballet, and all other venues tried to imitate it.16 By the late 1880s the Eden’s formulaic spectacles were wearing thin with audiences, and in 1891, the theater went bankrupt. Music halls, in the meantime, had already integrated the most successful visual elements of the Eden’s ballets into their own increasingly grand productions.

Practical Notes This book explores the history and aesthetic of Parisian music-hall ballet at the three most prominent venues: the Folies-Bergère, the Olympia, and the Casino de Paris. Music-hall ballets were newly written, composed, and choreographed by the era’s preeminent artists of popular theater, music, and dance. They were grounded in the formal conventions of nineteenth-century French pantomime-ballet and, like Opéra or Eden-Théâtre ballets, they were often impressive productions, with lavish scenery and costumes, large ballet corps, and internationally acclaimed star ballerinas and mimes. Music-hall ballets nevertheless form a distinct collection of works that was influenced by a range of contemporary choreographic trends and popular genres, and that reflected the visual and musical preferences of music-halls’ pleasure-seeking audiences. Music-hall ballet in France was, in the broadest sense, “classical ballet.”17 Until the mid-1880s, most ballets were divertissements, short works with little

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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introduction 5 plot and more dance than mime. From the late 1880s through the early 1900s, the three halls staged large-scale pantomime-ballets, productions with developed narratives conveyed through mime and action and ornamented by dance. The danced component of these pantomime-ballets fell into two broad categories: character dance and ballet in the academic idiom. Only rarely did it include popular dances. Although exotic dances, skirt dances, and “eccentric” or “naturalist” quadrille dances often appeared alongside ballets on the same music-hall programs, these performances were separate numbers, not to be confused with music-hall ballet.18 The book is divided into three sections. Chapters 1 to 3 explore the context in which music-hall ballet was created and performed. Chapter 1 examines ballet’s new venue in order to establish the institutional and commercial pressures that helped shape the genre; chapter 2 reconstructs the audiences of each hall to determine the impact of expectations on the development of music-hall ballet’s combination of academic and “popular” features; and chapter 3 presents the music halls’ authors, composers, and choreographers, tracing parallels between the artists who created ballets at different points in the genre’s history and attendant shifts in the types of ballets they produced. The second section of the book looks at the formal aspects of music-hall ballet. Chapter 4 offers an introduction to the ballet-divertissement, and chapters 5 and 6 examine the visual and musical conventions of 1890s pantomime-ballets. The last three chapters explore the musical, narrative, and visual attributes that characterize 1890s music-hall ballet as a “popular” genre. Extensive appendixes provide details about the premiere dates, venues, and authors, as well as thumbnail synopses of all the pantomime-ballets. Music-hall ballet enjoyed its greatest popularity between the late 1880s and early 1900s, when the three most prominent Parisian halls staged the largestscale productions with the most inventive narratives complemented by the most imaginative music and performed by the most skilled, formally trained dancers. It is perhaps misplaced academic snobbishness to concentrate on the most complex ballets. No doubt some music-hall patrons preferred Olivier Métra to Louis Ganne and short, sexy divertissements to pantomime-heavy, thought-provoking “masterpieces.” Yet prevailing evidence confirms the public’s fascination with and appreciation of the grand ballets of the 1890s. The period from 1886 through 1901 saw the largest number of new productions and the highest box-office earnings for ballets, the most critical interest from journalists in the broadest range of newspapers, and the most abundant publication of ballet librettos, scores, and images. Focusing on the 1890s is also practical: there is far more material available to aid in the reconstruction of ballets from 1886 to 1901 than from all other periods combined. The complimentary theme of many chapters is the similarity between ballets staged in commercial music halls and those created for the august Paris Opéra. Perhaps more logical comparisons might have been made with English

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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6

introduction

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music-hall ballet or ballets performed at the trendy Eden-Théâtre. As mentioned above, Opéra ballet had been on the decline since 1870, and the state theater did not recover its footing as a choreographic center until several years after the music halls dropped ballet from their programs. The Eden-Théâtre was briefly popular in the 1880s with its over-the-top spectacle, athletic virtuosity, and mass choreographies; English music-hall ballet remained an important, if remote, influence, especially with regard to the contemporary-themed ballet; and boulevard-theater divertissements offered examples of successful popular choreography. Nevertheless, Opéra ballet remained the gauge par excellence for critics, and the ultimate measure against which French audiences would have judged pantomime-ballets, even in a music hall.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Chapter One

The Venues and the Shows

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“It is ugly and it is superb, it is in both exquisitely good and outrageously bad taste.”1 With these words, J.-K. Huysmans summed up the paradoxical allure of the legendary Folies-Bergère, a venue celebrated as much for its resplendent décor and club-like surroundings as for its theatrical productions and circus acts. Huysmans’s account of an evening at the hall in his 1879 Parisian Sketches evokes an atmosphere at once elegant and rowdy, refined and vulgar. Patrons swarmed the halls, creating a frenzy of noises, smells, images, and interactions; the air was thick, dusty from the seat cushions and carpets, and filled with cigar smoke; the crowds were lively and noisy; the courtesans ever-present and alluring. He concludes: It is also unfinished, like anything that aims to be truly beautiful. The faux jardin, with its raised walkways, its arcades of rough wooden latticework with solid lozenges and cut-out trefoils stained red ochre and gold, [. . .] with bars tended by amply made-up women, resembles at one and the same time the restaurant on the rue Montesquieu and a Turkish or Algerian bazaar. Alhambresque à la Poyet, Moorish à la Duval, with, what’s more, the vague smell of those bar-saloons in the old suburbs decorated with Oriental columns and mirrors, this theatre, with its auditorium whose faded reds and tarnished golds clash with the brand-new luxury of the faux jardin, is the only place in Paris that stinks so deliciously of the makeup of bought caresses and the desperation of depravities that fail to excite.2

The Folies-Bergère was an English-style music hall that ultimately became a symbol of Parisian pleasures.3 Trading on a potent mix of laughter, sex, and dreams, the hall welcomed patrons into a dazzling fairyland to revel in hedonistic amusements. They could smoke or drink in an extravagantly decorated lobby, join the courtesans milling about in the vast passage that encircled the hall, or watch a succession of lighthearted entertainments in the auditorium.4 It was a favorite haunt for affluent Parisians seeking the latest trends, where the famous rubbed shoulders with the infamous, and where tourists could taste the heady combination of beauty and vice that fed Paris’s reputation for joie de vivre. The Folies-Bergère was the most famous of the many music halls that sprang up in Paris and the provinces in the 1870s.5 It was unusually grand, relatively

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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8

chapter one

exclusive, and it presented the most popular acts of the day. For twenty years, it was also Paris’s most active venue for ballet. In the early 1890s, the FoliesBergère suddenly found itself with two rivals: the Casino de Paris and the Olympia. The new halls were equally immense and opulently decorated, and they boasted similar high-quality variety entertainments; both halls also regularly staged spectacular ballets. Music halls were very different venues from the opera houses and spectacle theaters that traditionally presented ballet. The halls’ directors aspired not to build a lasting repertoire of timeless works of art but to create a buzz among le Tout-Paris with eye-catching ephemera. Ballets vied for attention with an array of novelty acts and exotic attractions, as well as with the distractions afforded by the audience itself. Even when advertised as the highlight of an evening’s program, ballets needed to seduce their novelty-seeking audiences with trendy topics, great spectacle, and illustrious performers. The result was a distinct, if fluid, subgenre of French pantomime-ballet—one molded by the eclectic, fashionable, and profit-oriented institutions in which it was created and performed.

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Limping into Existence: The Folies-Bergère’s First Years In May of 1869, just two years after the French government repealed the last of the Napoleonic theater laws that had dictated the staging of specific genres in specific theaters, Albert Boislève established the first music hall in Paris: the Folies-Bergère. His chosen location was a linens store of vast proportions situated on the rue Richer in the ninth arrondissement.6 The space was inviting, with a richly decorated lobby and a comfortable auditorium, and programs featured operettas, comic pieces, and songs for the relatively low entrance fee of one franc or one franc fifty.7 The hall was not, however, an immediate success. Between 1869 and 1871 it closed several times, first as a result of poor box-office returns, then because of the Franco-Prussian War and Siege of Paris. For several months the building stood empty, used intermittently as a stage for political speakers.8

Sari and the Creation of Les Folies-Bergère The history of the Folies-Bergère began in earnest in September 1872, when Léon Sari took over the management of the hall.9 Sari immediately set to work revamping the space, and over the next three years transformed the FoliesBergère into one of the most attractive popular venues in Paris. He also revitalized the hall’s programming. He sought out acts of international caliber and

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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the venues and the shows 9 brought in famous performers to entice Parisian society. By 1875, the hall was playing to full houses and to great acclaim night after night, and the FoliesBergère could rightly be compared to its model, the Alhambra Theatre of Varieties in London.10 Sari’s first improvement was to enlarge the lobby and add new social spaces—promenoirs—around the back of the auditorium. The lobby, which doubled as a café, was then transformed into a sumptuous Oriental winter garden, complete with giant Louvois fountains at the center and bars tended by pretty waitresses along the sides.11 From the back of the garden, patrons could enter the promenoir and auditorium or they could mount the grand staircase to the theater’s balcony, walk along an upper promenoir that encircled the balcony, or visit additional bars that ran around the upper perimeter of the lobby (fig. 1.1). All spaces were contiguous and permeable, allowing patrons to move freely from one to the next and to view the various entertainments—both theatrical and social—from multiple vantage points. Enraptured with the brightly lit splendor and posh but relaxed surroundings, patrons returned time after time, sometimes buying a ticket for a theater seat, but sometimes coming only to mingle with fellow revelers in the winter garden. The hall early on acquired a reputation for illicit pleasures, and its most notorious space was the promenoir. This broad passage, which ran along the perimeter of the auditorium, served as a promenade for patrons wanting to stroll about while keeping an eye on the stage. It also doubled as the meeting point for men and prostitutes.12 Although not openly advertised, the availability of prostitutes was well known to the public and well documented by journalists.13 The prostitutes were also a source of creative inspiration for several authors and artists, who seem to have relished the grittiness and vice their presence suggested. Early illustrations of the hall’s working women include Jean-Louis Forain’s cartoons of a promenoir cocotte and an 1875 poster by Chéret. Literary descriptions include Huysmans’s account of the hall’s prostitutes in his Parisian Sketches (1879), Zola’s depiction of a night at the hall written for the Italian journal Cronaca Bizantina (1882), and Guy de Maupassant’s portrayal of his protagonist’s obsession with the Folies-Bergère prostitutes in Bel-Ami (1885). Édouard Manet’s Un bar aux Folies-Bergère (1881/82) provides an artistic interpretation of a different type of music-hall working woman: the barmaid. All of these figures simultaneously drew on and helped foster the FoliesBergère’s reputation for titillation. Forain’s promenoir cocotte published by Le Monde Parisien in December 1879 shows a well-dressed man in top hat and overcoat leaning with what Novelene Ross describes as a “provocative leer” toward a tightly corseted young woman.14 The caption below it reads: “—And what is your name? —Zoé . . . the rest of the conversation has been deleted by the censor.”15 There is nothing subtle about this caricature: it was intended either to remind Folies-Bergère patrons of past indulgences or to set them dreaming of future liaisons. So, too, Zola’s account of the Folies-Bergère promenoir

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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10 chapter one

Figure 1.1. Yves and Barret, Les Folies-Bergère, 1878. Representation of patrons and prostitutes milling about the winter garden. The auditorium and promenoir are beyond the arch. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn Va 286 13, H71021).

depicts a scene of open licentiousness, shocking for the unsuspecting wives of wholesome bourgeois families, but thrilling for their husbands. Zola describes the reactions of patrons as they see, first, the gaudily dressed “prowlers” past their prime, sinister in their poor taste; then, the pretty ones, so desirable and coquettish in their fresh toilettes. Disgust turns to envy and to desire, and the husbands leave entranced, trailing wives suddenly angry and jealous.16 Huysmans’s description of the promenoir cocottes conjures up an almost brothel-like world: They are outrageous and they are magnificent as they march two by two round the semicircular floor of the [promenoir], powdered and painted, eyes drowned in a smudge of pale blue, lips ringed in startling red, their breasts thrust out over laced corsets, exuding waves of opoponax which they disperse by fanning, and which mingles with the strong aroma of their underarms and the subtle scent of a flower expiring on their bust.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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the venues and the shows 11 You watch, entranced, as this gaggle of whores passes rhythmically by, against a dull red backdrop broken only by windows, like wooden merry-goround horses that twirl in slow motion to the sound of an organ around a bit of scarlet curtain embellished with mirrors and lamps; you watch their thighs churn under dresses the bottoms of which are edged by white petticoats that flounce, like eddies of foam, under the hem of the material. You gasp as you follow the skill with which these women’s backs slide between the bellies of men who, coming in the opposite direction, open and close again around them, revealing a glimpse, through the gaps between the men’s heads, of the backs of their chignons, lit on each side by the golden gleam of a piece of jewellery, by the flash of a gemstone.17

The scene evoked by Maupassant in Bel-Ami as the backdrop for a character sketch of his amoral hero, Georges Duroy, is nearly as dissolute.18 Shortly after we are introduced to Duroy—a down-and-out former military officer, now railway clerk, who will eventually lie his way into the top ranks of society—he happens upon a previous military acquaintance and journalist for La Vie Française, Monsieur Forestier. The two head to the Folies-Bergère. Forestier frequently uses his journalist’s privilege of free entrance, but Duroy has never been. Maupassant’s rendering of the scene that greets Duroy echoes Huysmans’s:

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In the vast lobby that leads into the circular promenade, where the gaudily dressed pack of whores prowls about, mingling with the dark-suited crowd of men, a group of women waited for new arrivals in front of one of the three counters, over which three raddled and rouged vendors of drink and love were presiding. Behind them, tall mirrors reflected their backs and the faces of the passers-by.19

Duroy and Forestier are soon shown to their seats in a box, but instead of paying attention to the acrobats on stage, Duroy watches the prostitutes roaming the promenoir behind him. Duroy and Forestier eventually join the crush of the crowd, and Duroy accepts the advances of a heavily made-up brunette. In Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère, Manet creates contradictory perspectives of a woman who played a more ambiguous role vis-à-vis the hall’s clientele. The painting shows a well-dressed barmaid standing behind her counter looking enigmatically toward the viewer; her reflection in the mirror, softer and seemingly detached from herself, suggests some kind of exchange with a top-hatted client.20 She might be responding to the gentleman’s advances, but she might not; and he might not be propositioning her at all. Although many historians have assumed, like Maupassant in the passage quoted above, that Manet’s barmaid was a “vendor of drink and love,” she probably was not a prostitute.21 She might have flirted, and she was certainly expected to add to the hall’s décor, but her function was to excite fantasies. As Robert Herbert and T. J. Clark note, Parisian café waitresses had a longstanding reputation for low morals, and Sari would have been well aware of this when he hired pretty women to enhance

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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12 chapter one the sale of alcohol.22 Even if these women were not themselves for sale, many visitors to the Folies-Bergère would have thought they were. Like Maupassant, Jules Chéret made that assumption—or he played on the Folies-Bergère clientele’s desires. His advertisement poster from 1875 illustrates many of the pleasures readily found at the hall, including flirtatious barmaids. Yet while Maupassant’s descriptions and Chéret’s posters of attractive waitresses helped promote the idea that these women might do more than sell drinks, Manet’s painting leaves the opposite impression: that such encounters might only have been imagined.23 None of these fictitious representations of the Folies-Bergère’s working women may be taken at face value. Manet’s painting raises as many questions as it answers; Chéret and Forain were in the business of selling dreams to pleasure-seeking boulevardiers; and as Robert Herbert writes, Huysmans and Maupassant “had a writer’s interest in exaggerating [the Folies-Bergère’s] role as a prostitutes’ market.”24 As we shall see in the next chapter, the activities of the promenoir were not so outrageous that they deterred bourgeois families and high society from attending the Folies-Bergère. Nevertheless, the FoliesBergère’s dames de petite vertu and pretty waitresses played an integral role in the hall’s reputation for sensuous pleasures and provided men with fodder for reveries well into the 1910s. As a result, the hall’s promenoir at times vied with its official stage as the focal point of the evening’s spectacle as members of the audience and prostitutes alike paraded about in front of each other.

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Sari’s Variety Programs Although ambiance was key to the Folies-Bergère’s popularity, its box-office success also depended on high-quality attractions and entertainments. For a fee of one to three francs in addition to the two-franc entrance ticket to the Folies-Bergère’s café and promenoir, patrons could sit in the auditorium and watch a constantly changing selection of the most sought-after acts in Europe.25 Most of these acts were visual. Since the hall was not architecturally well suited to spoken dialogue or singing—one critic wrote, tongue-in-cheek, that it was “ingeniously engineered . . . for the acoustics of a pantomime!”— Sari dropped the spoken pieces of his predecessor and offered fewer sung numbers than most analogous venues.26 Instead, he presented a wide array of athletic routines and circus curiosities such as performing animals, gymnasts, clowns, bearded ladies, and trapeze artists, along with pantomimes, operettas, and ballet divertissements.27 An orchestra of forty musicians led by composerconductor Olivier Métra played popular dance tunes between numbers. Ballet was a mainstay of the Folies-Bergère’s programs throughout the 1870s and 1880s. Sari produced between two and six new divertissements every year and restaged many more. Initially, these ballets did not stand out from other numbers. Rather than present one central large-scale ballet framed by variety

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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the venues and the shows 13

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acts, as would later be the custom, Sari offered a mix of short theatrical works— usually an operetta, a pantomime, and a ballet-divertissement—in alternation with circus attractions (fig. 1.2). Theatrical works were not performed for long stretches of time, but kept in constant rotation. Divertissements usually played for only a few days before being replaced by a new or recent work, and at most a run lasted three to four weeks. All ballets were typically restaged at least once within a given season and could return periodically for up to a year. A rare collection of programs for two consecutive months of the FoliesBergère’s 1876–77 season gives a sense of staging practices under Sari.28 In mid-November, a new divertissement titled Les faunes, choreographed by M. Bertotto to music by Métra, was added to a program that already featured an operetta and a pantomime.29 Three weeks later, on December 9, a divertissement titled La Posada by the Armandi brothers and Métra succeeded Les faunes. After only two days, another divertissement was added—Les fiancés du Béarn by the Armandi brothers, again arranged by Bertotto with music by Métra. La Posada was soon dropped in favor of a restaging of Les faunes. The two ballets, Les faunes and Les fiancés du Béarn, then played together until they were replaced on December 24 by a divertissement choreographed by Mlle Mariquita—Les joujoux, to music by Métra.30 On December 29, Les fiancés du Béarn was brought back to play alongside Les joujoux. In just six weeks, audiences would have had the opportunity to see four different ballets. Throughout this time, operettas and pantomimes came and went, short acts were periodically added and removed, and musical numbers were gradually replenished so that returning audiences could see novelties along with revivals of popular favorites.

The Marchand Era Music-hall ballet might have remained in the realm of the divertissement had it not been for the vision of Édouard Marchand, the artistic director of the Folies-Bergère from 1886 to 1901. By the mid-1880s, after a decade of lucrative evenings of variety entertainment, Sari’s Folies-Bergère was foundering and near bankruptcy. In 1881, Sari had suddenly made radical programming changes that had lost him his audience base without attracting new patrons. In an effort to add artistic prestige to his establishment, he had initiated a series of symphonic concerts under the direction of a committee that included Charles Gounod, Jules Massenet, Camille Saint-Saëns, and Léo Delibes.31 The concerts had been a financial disaster and had ended one month later. Sari had quickly reverted to variety-style entertainments in the hopes of recovering his former audience, but his business losses, compounded with his gambling habits, proved ruinous. He held out for four more years, but was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1885 and sold the Folies-Bergère the following year.32 The hall was quickly snapped up by the Allemands, a wealthy couple with no knowledge

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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14 chapter one

Figure 1.2. Folies-Bergère program, January 7, 1877. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Po PRO.B.169 1876–1877).

of the theater business despite already owning the Parisian music hall La Scala. The Allemands placed a new director at the helm: Édouard Marchand.33 Marchand’s reign marked a golden age for the Folies-Bergère and for musichall ballet. For fifteen years, Marchand treated audiences to an awe-inspiring succession of world-class entertainments. He also produced a constant stream of new and ever-more-spectacular ballets. Between 1886 and 1901, he staged forty-nine pantomime-ballets, with thirty new works appearing in the 1890s alone; and each, as the reviewers for Le Figaro repeatedly declared, was staged

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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the venues and the shows 15 with more “delightful” music, “ravishingly beautiful” dancers, “elegant and graceful” mimes, “luxurious” costuming and décor, and “exquisitely arranged” choreography than the last.34

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The Hall: Luxury and Decadence Marchand marketed his hall to a higher-class audience than Sari did, but the Folies-Bergère lost little of its fundamental character. The incongruities of décor, entertainment, and ambiance so vividly described by Huysmans and others not only remained the hall’s defining attributes, they became even more pronounced. The surroundings became ever more luxurious, the audiences more affluent, and the theatrical productions more artistic and spectacular, yet the hall never lost its reputation for naughty pleasures. Prostitutes continued to peddle their wares in the promenoir; groups of leg-shaking chorus girls and beautiful courtesans displaced circus acts on the stage; and nearly all of Marchand’s theatrical productions featured seminudity, lascivious dances, or seduction scenes.35 Marchand remodeled the Folies-Bergère twice in his first few years, undertaking major renovations in 1888 and making cosmetic alterations in 1893.36 In both cases, his modifications brought the hall closer to a theater in layout and appearance. Marchand’s first renovations were to the space itself. He raised the auditorium to be level with the lobby, and he added an amphitheater.37 He then refurbished the boxes and balcony and replaced the benches at the orchestra level of the auditorium with rows of individual upholstered seats. He also installed new bars in the galleries, and created a thin separation between these and the auditorium.38 Although one could still move freely between the auditorium, galleries, gardens, and promenoir, the auditorium itself lost some of its café-concert feel. According to various theatrical columnists, the decorative changes made to the hall in 1893 transformed an already luxurious space into one of resplendent opulence. The hall’s electric lamps were cleverly concealed beneath yellow satin shades, and the walls, repainted in softer tones, were adorned with white and gold Louis XV mirrors that refracted and amplified the dazzling show of light. Soft, thick blue-and-white carpeting covered the entire expanse of the hall from the street to the stage, and a beautiful royal blue velvet curtain pulled back with huge drawstrings hung on the stage.39 Despite a façade of sophistication, the hall never lost its fundamental tension between elegance and ill repute, and the promenoir, still teeming with prostitutes, remained a favorite attraction. As the author of a tourist guidebook published in 1900 reported, one is entertained, one is amused, as much by the scenes that play themselves out in the boxes, in the promenades, and in the garden as by the

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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16 chapter one varied show taking place on the stage. The aristocracy of the demi-monde does not scorn the boxes of the Folies-Bergère and on certain nights one may cast one’s lorgnette over the entire army of Paris’s high gallantry [la haute galanterie parisienne]. . . . The intermissions are themselves like a succession of tableaux vivants, a sort of cinematography in which parades Paris’s gallantry and nightlife.40

The Folies-Bergère would for decades remain the quintessential Parisian symbol for erotic enchantment.

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Circus Acts and Other Popular Numbers Although he placed a far greater emphasis on ballet, Marchand maintained Sari’s basic programming formula.41 He presented a selection of short numbers (circus and acrobatic routines, song and dance acts, and performing animals); musical interludes of polkas, waltzes, and marches played by a fortypiece orchestra; and at least one ballet or other theatrical production (figs. 1.3 and 1.4).42 During the fifteen-minute intermission, audiences were treated to musical performances in the lobby, often given by a gypsy orchestra or a women’s orchestra from Budapest. Marchand brought in an impressive range of acts. The Folies-Bergère was for many years best known for its high-quality circus performers, and programs nearly always featured tightrope walkers, acrobats, trapeze artists, gymnasts, or athletes. Circus acts also included sideshow attractions such as the giants Chang (8ʹ) and Constantin (8ʹ6″); a Burmese family whose faces were completely covered in hair; and Captain Costentenus, tattooed from head to toe.43 Clowns, magicians, and jugglers made frequent appearances—Little Tich was a crowd pleaser for years—and various animal acts, from tamed lions and bears to performing elephants, snakes, pigs, and dogs, punctuated the evening’s performance.44 As during Sari’s tenure, the Folies-Bergère was not a venue for popular song, but Marchand did on occasion present the era’s most famous singers, including La Cavalieri, Polaire, Yvette Guilbert, and Paulin. He also introduced technological wonders: velocipedes (bicycles) appeared on the stage numerous times in the early to mid-1890s, and the American biograph, an early form of motion picture, became a popular final number in the last years of the century. Although Marchand retained circus entertainments as program standards for the duration of his career, there were subtle differences in the types of acts invited to perform at the Folies-Bergère in the 1890s. He dropped freak shows early in his term along with other lowbrow circus attractions, and turned his attention instead toward exhibitions of the female body. In 1890, he presented the first group of singing and dancing “girls,” the English Sisters Barrison, who drew huge crowds and sparked a craze for girlie shows that lasted for decades.45

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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the venues and the shows 17

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Figure 1.3. Folies-Bergère program, April 13, 1894. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn 8-RO-11091).

A few years later, he brought in a series of leg- and bosom-flaunting Spanish dancers, including Mlle Hernandez, Juanita de Frezia, Luz Chavita, and La Belle Guerrero. Marchand also capitalized on Parisians’ fascination with famous personalities and famous beauties. The era’s so-called three graces, Émilienne d’Alençon, Liane de Pougy, and Caroline Otéro, all held long-term contracts at the Folies-Bergère, at first performing in their own numbers and later starring in ballets and pantomimes.46 Otéro, in particular, held audiences spellbound and was for years the hall’s headline attraction. Yet it was the modern dancer Loie Fuller who achieved the most enduring fame. Her avant-garde performances of color, light, and shifting patterns of movements, which both embodied and presaged so many artistic currents from Art Nouveau to Symbolism, drew huge crowds to the Folies-Bergère following her debut there in 1892.47 Of all the Folies-Bergère’s attractions and performers, Fuller, as we shall see in the following chapter, also had the most profound and enduring impact on the makeup of the hall’s audiences. Except for performers with a guaranteed draw, such as Otéro or Fuller, most acts were quickly replaced, usually in the space of a couple of weeks. Emile Blavet, one of the most dedicated chroniclers of the Folies-Bergère’s activities, described this practice in one of his reviews for Le Figaro :

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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18 chapter one

Figure 1.4. Folies-Bergère programs, December 21, 1900; July 28, 1900; January 12, 1900. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn PRO.B.169 1898–1949). When I don’t know what to do of an evening, I go to the Folies-Bergère. I do not know of a more pleasant, more relaxing pastime, and especially of a more amusing variety. . . . Every fortnight brings with it a new surprise, offers a novel attraction. They do not wait until a number becomes stale before it is removed from the program; it is withdrawn before it ceases to please.48

These variety numbers and novel attractions are what the hall is now remembered for, and popular histories of the Folies-Bergère concentrate on them to the nearly complete exclusion of ballet.49

Pantomime-Ballet on the Music-Hall Stage One of Marchand’s most profound changes to the Folies-Bergère’s programs in the late 1880s was to stage a single large-scale pantomime-ballet as the focus of the show rather than present several short theatrical numbers—an operetta,

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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the venues and the shows 19 a pantomime, and a divertissement—amid variety acts.50 These pantomimeballets played a vital role in building the hall’s reputation and contributed greatly to the genre in terms of choreographic and musical creativity. Blavet, writing as Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre for Le Figaro, stated as much in a review of the 1890 ballet Une répétition aux Folies-Bergère :

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A good deal of their [the hall’s] fame is due to the ballets they present. And it is not only for their pretty faces and pretty legs that their ballets recommend themselves, but especially for their art, taste, and elegance so rare in places in which choreography is nothing but an accessory. . . . Also, the most expert composers of this special art, Métra for example, have not shied away from providing exquisite little scores. It is here that Messager’s fortunes were born. Today Desormes reigns, and the ballet that has been the surprise tonight, Une répétition aux Folies-Bergère, is, from a musical standpoint, a true pearl.51

Every ballet was performed nightly for a minimum of six weeks, and a popular production could play for three months or more. In the 1890s, the hall often left an old ballet on the program after introducing a new production, or restaged a popular ballet from the preceding year after interest in a new one had begun to wane. For a few years, it was therefore common for a program to include two major ballet productions.52 Since the Folies-Bergère always took in higher box-office receipts during the first few weeks of a ballet’s run, it was in Marchand’s best interest to stage new ballets at regular intervals and to bring back popular successes when the current production ceased to attract crowds.53 This meant that music-hall audiences saw a lot of ballet. The production schedule of the Folies-Bergère’s 1893/94 season provides a good illustration of just how much ballet the hall’s patrons could have seen. In this one season alone (September, 14, 1893–June 23, 1894), Marchand’s company premiered three pantomime-ballets and one divertissement, and restaged two major productions from the previous year. The season opened with a bang. L’arc-en-ciel, a ballet that starred the Moulin Rouge dancer Jane Avril, premiered alongside a repeat performance of the previous year’s boxoffice hit, Les Folies Parisiennes.54 The two ran together until mid-October, when Les Folies Parisiennes was replaced by a topical divertissement, France-Russie. L’arc-en-ciel remained on the bill, and either Les Folies Parisiennes or France-Russie played alongside for the remainder of October and November. The hall premiered Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts in December, accompanied for three months by either L’arc-en-ciel or France-Russie (the hall never staged all three on the same program). In February 1894, Les Folies Parisiennes was brought back to run alongside Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts, and France-Russie or L’arc-en-ciel alternately appeared on matinée programs, replacing the racier Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts at a time when the hall billed itself as family oriented. Fleur de Lotus, premiered in the spring of 1893, was revived at the end of February 1894 and ran alone

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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20 chapter one for three months. In the last month of the season, both Les Folies Parisiennes and Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts alternately played alongside Fleur de Lotus. Thus in June, audiences could see repeats of the hall’s three most popular ballets from the previous two years. During this same season, the Folies-Bergère staged only one theatrical production that was not a ballet: a striptease pantomime titled Le réveil de la Parisienne. By the end of the 1890s, the Folies-Bergère had become the Parisian center for creative ballet. Marchand had the financial resources and connections to retain the best choreographers, dancers, and mimes working in Paris, as well as to commission the most popular authors and composers to create original works. His last great contribution to the genre came in November of 1901 when he produced Lorenza, a three-tableaux historical romance by Rodolphe Darzens with music by Franco Alfano. Always on the lookout for ways to attract attention to his hall, Marchand invited the Opéra’s famous ballet soloist and renowned beauty, Cléo de Mérode, to join the Folies-Bergère’s troupe and debut the leading role. Mérode quickly accepted the generous terms of the contract, and a new hit was launched.55 All of Paris came running, and critics filled column after column with flowery accounts of the latest music-hall ballet extravaganza and its beautiful star.56

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Ballet Gives Way to the Revue Marchand did not live to create another ballet. He fell gravely ill during the run of Lorenza and sold the hall to the Isola brothers, former Folies-Bergère magicians who already owned and directed the Olympia.57 Marchand’s death in 1902 precipitated the demise of pantomime-ballet at the Folies-Bergère. Although the Isola brothers initially maintained the hall’s ballet-centered variety programming, they favored revues over ballets. Revues—loosely connected theatrical pieces that included topical skits, songs, spoken dialogue, and choreography—provided even more opportunities for showing off women’s bodies and could be staged with even greater pomp and splendor than pantomimeballets.58 They proved highly lucrative and quickly became the favored form of entertainment at the Folies-Bergère.59 For the first few years, revues included ballet divertissements, usually created by dancers, mimes, and choreographers familiar with music-hall ballet: Alfredo Curti, Mme Daynes-Papurello, M. Sicard, M. Eugénio, Mme Cernusco, Mme Stichel, and Robert Quinault all choreographed ballets for Folies-Bergère revues between the mid-1900s and late 1920s.60 These ballets also occasionally featured renowned dancers: Natalia Trouhanova performed in Folies-Bergère revues in 1909 and 1913, Stacia Napierkowska in 1909 and 1912, and Régina Badet in 1912.61 The format and aesthetic of the revue did not, however, lend itself to mime, character dance, or academic ballet, and by the 1910s, most numbers were performed by dancing girls or other popular troupes.62

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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the venues and the shows 21 Pantomime-ballet did not immediately disappear with the rise of the revue. Between 1902 and 1904, the Isolas staged Faust, Les septs pêchés capitaux, and La fée des poupées, three large-scale ballets with choreography by Curti. None, however, was new. The first two had been premiered at the Olympia, which the Isolas owned, and La fée des poupées had been created in Vienna and seen at the Olympia in 1894 and 1899.63 Paul Ruez, who took over as artistic director from 1905 to 1907, staged another two ballets, Antinoa and Le timbre d’or.64 Though impressive in scale, both works resembled a grab bag of clichés: they were revues masquerading as ballets. Le timbre d’or even included numbers performed by a popular dance troupe, the Milano Girls. In 1908, the Isolas, back in the directors’ seat, staged only one act of Sports, a ballet created a decade earlier. The genre of pantomime-ballet had one last, brief period of glory between 1909 and 1913, when the Isolas left their hall in the hands of a trusted administrator, Clément Bannel.65 Bannel, it seems, admired ballet. He invited Mme Mariquita back from the Opéra-Comique to create four new major ballets as season openers for the Folies-Bergère: Romi-Tchavé (1909), Les ailes (1910), Stella (1911), and Montmartre (1913). All were full-scale narrative ballets written, composed, and choreographed by eminent artists, including Jean Richepin, Louis Ganne, Claude Terrasse, Adolphe Willette, and Mme Mariquita. They were well received by critics, and they did well at the box office. Yet they could not compete with the revues created in the same years, which earned higher receipts than any ballet ever had. Montmartre was the Folies-Bergère’s last pantomime-ballet. Raphaël Beretta and Léon Volterra, who took over management of the hall during the war, were not interested in the genre; nor was Paul Derval, who transformed the hall into a venue for the glamorous revues it is now known for: animated musical postcards with seminude women parading amid glittering spectacle.66

Music-Hall Ballet Conquers Paris The Folies-Bergère was Paris’s preeminent popular venue for ballets in the 1890s, but it was by no means without competition. Many music halls regularly staged ballet-divertissements, and some, on occasion, produced major pantomime-ballets.67 The Paradis-Latin, for example, staged three pantomimeballets in 1889 composed respectively by Edmond Diet, André Messager, and Jacques Lafitte; the Eldorado staged two by Louis Desormes in the mid-1890s; and between 1897 and 1899, the Folies-Marigny produced three large-scale ballets with music by Messager, Francis Thomé, and Gaston Salvayre. Yet if these venues might have temporarily diverted attention and audiences away from the Folies-Bergère, they did not pose a lasting threat. Rather, they helped promote the idea that ballet could be trendy entertainment for cosmopolitan audiences.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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22 chapter one Eventually only two rivals emerged: the Casino de Paris, which opened its doors with a spectacular pantomime-ballet in 1890, and the Olympia, which followed suit three years later. Each hall presented ballets nearly as often as did the Folies-Bergère, and on as grand a scale. For the next decade, the three halls tried to outdo one another, and popular ballet thrived.

The Casino de Paris, 1890–1909

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The Casino de Paris had a checkered early history. When Louis and Paul Lointier set out to establish a new entertainment venue in 1890, their goal was to construct the biggest and most impressive music hall in the world. In this they succeeded: the Casino was immense.68 The building extended from 15 rue Blanche to 16 rue de Clichy—an entire block—and according to Emile Blavet, measured twenty thousand square feet and had vaulted glass ceilings sixty feet high.69 Blavet also claimed that the theater had room for 1600 spectators: 1000 could be seated in rows, boxes, and a balcony, and there was additional standing room for 600. The elaborate Oriental garden and the promenior could hold another 4400 strollers.70 The Casino’s décor was as sumptuous as the space was majestic. In a review of the grand opening, Blavet rhapsodized about the hall’s fairy-tale-like appearance and magnificent layout: Once through the main entrance and into the hall you find yourself in a fairyland, in a dream from the Thousand and One Nights. The first impression is blinding: it seems that, among other noteworthy numbers, M. Lointier has hired the Sun, so much has electricity been exploited. It is an orgy of lighting in which, at first, all blends together and is obscured. But little by little your eyes get used to this violent lighting and all becomes clear and precise, and the admirable hall appears in its radiant splendor with its circle of elegant Italianate boxes, its svelte double row of columns. . . .71

Although the Casino was immediately popular, its directors failed to recoup their costs. They had considerably overextended their finances in building the extravagant hall and were forced to declare bankruptcy within a year.72 In October of 1891, the hall was bought by Louis Borney and Armand Desprez, who split the oversized space into two venues: the Casino de Paris and the Nouveau-Théâtre.73 Although each had its own entrance (the NouveauThéâtre was located on the rue Blanche and the Casino on the rue de Clichy), the hall and theater were initially connected by a passage that allowed patrons to wander between them. Casino patrons wanting to attend Nouveau-Théâtre performances had to pay a supplemental fee to enter the theater, but patrons of the Nouveau-Théâtre could wander into the Casino during intermissions or could join the Casino’s public balls after the show without extra charge. The

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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the venues and the shows 23 Casino presented music-hall variety entertainments and the Nouveau-Théâtre produced large-scale plays, pantomimes, operettas, and other lyrical works.74 Both venues staged ballets. The Casino de Paris remained a relatively large and sumptuous hall, even after the split. In a 1900 French guide to the pleasures of Parisian nightlife, an anonymous writer admired the hall’s spectacular surroundings and colonnade-supported galleries flooded with the light of golden lamps. He went on at length about walls painted soft tones of pale green, white and gold; profusions of flowers that adorned the boxes; and rows of mirrors that reflected the gaiety of the revelers.75 Following the loss of its formal theater, the Casino adopted the programming and layout of a standard music hall: circus acts and light theatrical works were presented on a raised stage in an open auditorium that adjoined a café and a promenoir. Yet the hall was closer in look and feel to a café-concert or dance hall than to a music hall. Most of the single vast room was given over to the grand promenoir—as at the Folies-Bergère, the favorite gathering place for many patrons and the meeting point for prostitutes and their clients—and the stage seemed almost an afterthought (fig. 1.5).76 The platform, which stood at one end of the hall with a few rows of seats in front of it and boxes on each side, was strangely unsuited to theatrical productions: it was fairly small, it lacked wings, and it was so poorly designed that critics often complained of not hearing the orchestra when seated toward the back (fig. 1.6).77 The audience also had to enter the Casino from behind the stage, past the theater’s seating area.78 As Jules Bois remarked when the Casino reopened as a separate hall in 1891, the impractical placement of the new entrance required those performing on the stage to compete for attention with the human comedy taking place beside them.79 Despite these limitations, the hall mounted a steady stream of ballets, some of which were improbably ambitious.

The Show The Casino’s programs closely resembled those of the Folies-Bergère. Dance tunes played by an in-house orchestra framed a series of acrobatic or athletic feats, circus routines, performing animals, and curiosities, along with a central theatrical offering such as a ballet, striptease pantomime, mimodrama, or tableaux vivants. However, perhaps because its auditorium was smaller and its boxoffice earnings lower, the Casino’s entertainments tended to be more modest. The hall presented a number of singers, but usually not of the same caliber as those seen at the Folies-Bergère; celebrities comparable to Caroline Otéro and Loie Fuller were conspicuously absent (fig. 1.7).80 The Casino also doubled as a dance hall. After the curtain fell on the evening’s stage performances at the relatively early hour of 10:30 or 11:00 p.m., the hall became a venue for public balls, and couples came to dance the rest of

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Figure 1.5. V. Dargaud, etching of the Casino de Paris hall and stage before seating was added, reproduced in La Construction Moderne, 8e année (ca. 1892). Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn Va 283, H66894).

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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the venues and the shows 25

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Figure 1.6. Photograph from a Casino de Paris program showing the hall as seen from the stage. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn 8-RO-11124 2).

the night away.81 Balls at the Casino, as at the neighboring Moulin Rouge, featured eccentric cancan dancing by famous high-kicking “naturalist quadrille” performers such as Grille-d’Égout, Hirondelle, Rayon d’Or, Môme-Fromage, La Sauterelle, and La Glu.82

Casino Ballets versus Nouveau-Théâtre Ballets The Casino de Paris and Nouveau-Théâtre were initially so closely linked that it can be difficult to establish unequivocally whether a specific ballet was performed at the music hall or at the theater.83 Programs alternately bear the names Casino de Paris, Nouveau-Théâtre, Casino de Paris/Nouveau-Théâtre, or Casino de Paris et Nouveau-Théâtre. In 1895, one ballet, Vassilissa, shows up on two different programs in the same year: one announced the venue as the “Casino de Paris” and the other as the “Casino de Paris Salle du Nouveau-Théâtre.”84 Scale is usually the best indicator of a work’s provenance. Whereas the Casino usually staged one-act ballets, half of which were composed by the Casino’s orchestra conductor Henri José, the Nouveau-Théâtre created much more impressive productions written by well-known composers. Scaramouche

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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26 chapter one

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Figure 1.7. Casino de Paris program, 1895. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn 4-RO-15700 3).

(1891) and Bouton d’or (1893), for example, both premiered at the NouveauThéâtre, would have been ambitious productions for a music hall. Messager’s Scaramouche was almost twice as long as music-hall ballets from the same period and had a far more complex narrative and score.85 Gabriel Pierné’s Bouton d’or, premiered two years later to critical acclaim, was a hybrid work that mixed singing, mime, spoken roles, and ballet under the rubric Fantaisie lyrique.86 Like Scaramouche, it was far grander than anything performed at the Casino in the same years. The Casino did, however, stage the rare grandiose ballet. The hall’s first production, Le Capitaine Charlotte (1890), composed by the Eden-Théâtre’s famous Italian ballet composer Romualdo Marenco and choreographed by Carlo Coppi, was a two-act, four-tableaux ballet with an enormous cast that included a danseuse étoile and principal travesty performer, four female and four male secondary roles, nine dancers listed as sujets (soloists), twenty-four women of the ballet corps, and 120 “people on stage” as part of the “personnel of the ballet” (presumably women in walk-on roles for crowd scenes).87 Although this first Casino ballet was staged in the formal auditorium that would later become part of the Nouveau-Théâtre, Georges Pfeiffer’s four-tableau spectacle ballet Cléopâtre (1900), staged at the Casino a decade later, was equally grandiose, with extravagant sets, impressive crowd scenes, and dazzling stage effects. Madame Malbrouck (1898) and La montagne d’aimant (1899) had lightweight plots that centered on flirtations and love intrigues, but they were fairly long,

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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the venues and the shows 27 with four and five tableaux respectively. Les amoureux de Venise (1896) featured over-the-top sets that included a real bridge stretching over a canal with gondolas going back and forth beneath it. Although the Nouveau-Théâtre occasionally included extended ballet divertissements in large-scale theatrical works, it staged few autonomous ballets after 1893.88 In contrast, the Casino created approximately twenty-five new ballets in just under twenty years. Curiously, despite the constraints of the Casino’s stage, and despite the limited attention paid to stage entertainments, the hall mounted several works that count among the most interesting ever to come out of a music hall. As we shall see in later chapters, ballets such as Vénus à Paris (1896), Don Juan aux enfers (1897), Madame Malbrouck, and Le voyage de Madame la Présidente (1905) played a central role in the modernization of ballet, whether by debunking former mythological and historical heroes or by playing with gender roles and portraying strong women in control of their destinies. The Casino produced its most dramatic large-scale works between 1896 and 1901, and it continued to stage pantomime-ballets periodically until 1910. After 1902, however, numbers declined dramatically. Like the Folies-Bergère, and perhaps in an effort to keep up with the trend-setting hall, the Casino turned to producing revues, most of which featured popular troupes of dancing girls rather than ballerinas and ballet corps. Successive directors Jules Chancel, G. Zittel, and L. Vidal nevertheless produced the occasional new ballet production between 1905 and 1910, and the 1908/09 season saw a flurry of new choreographed works.89 The demise of ballet at the Casino came abruptly in 1910, when the management of the hall changed hands once again. The new director, Albert Cailar, favored the revue over all other popular genres and put an end to the creation of narrative ballets. Future directors did not revive the genre, and after 1910, dance became little more than a decorative addition to the glittering revue.

The Olympia, 1893–1913 The Olympia was inaugurated on April 12, 1893, by Joseph Oller, the force behind many of Paris’s most famous entertainment venues, including the Jardins de Paris, the Nouveau Cirque, and the Moulin Rouge.90 Built on the site of the demolished Montagnes Russes, one of Oller’s earlier enterprises, the new hall boasted an even more opulent décor than the Folies-Bergère: “Once through the brass-studded doors, it is a delight to behold,” wrote the anonymous author of a Parisian guidebook, “with bright and gay décor in blue and gold, like a young girl’s dream. Carpeting abounds, like a bed of moss beneath your feet. One walks between isles of flowers, as if in the land of eternal spring.”91 There were flowers everywhere—in the boxes and suspended from the balconies—and the foyer was adorned with a double row of palms.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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28 chapter one Some chroniclers likened the hall to an orientalist fantasy, others to the carefree atmosphere of the Côte d’Azur.92 The space was immense, an architectural wonder lit by ten giant chandeliers.93 The auditorium had comfortable seating at the orchestra level, large boxes, and double horseshoe galleries with gilded railings.94 Behind these was a grand promenoir, which Blavet praised as “spacious enough to hold thousands with ease without rubbing up against each other or causing confusion as at analogous establishments.”95 The theater also had an orchestra pit and state-of-the-art staging equipment. Changes of scenery, Blavet wrote, were done instantly with machinery before the audience’s eyes, something that was in advance of regular theaters.96 Despite its first-class theater, the Olympia maintained the informal café-concert ambiance typical of music halls. In Blavet’s words, the hall was “half theater, half concert, . . . conducive to digestion, with the freedom to come and go, and with the freedom to drink and smoke cigars as one likes.”97

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The Show The Olympia featured many of the same entertainments as the Folies-Bergère. In the 1890s, short acts included circus-style routines such as acrobats, contortionists, athletes, jugglers, trapeze artists, and performing animals (mostly dogs), along with singers and dancers of all kinds.98 As at the Folies-Bergère, famous personalities played an important role in attracting audiences, and some stars, including Loie Fuller, Caroline Otéro, Liane de Pougy, and Émilienne d’Alençon, appeared at both halls. The Olympia also imitated the Folies-Bergère’s practice of staging light theatrical productions, but the Olympia adopted a slightly different scheduling practice. Instead of creating one new major ballet every few months, it presented one or two theatrical productions for varying amounts of time—sometimes as little as a few weeks—and restaged old works from previous years on a regular basis. Ballet blanc, for instance, the Olympia’s very first ballet, was staged five times over the course of two years. While some of the Olympia’s theatrical productions were short, inserted as one number in a long string of variety acts, others took up the better part of the program, buttressed by a handful of acts at the beginning and end of the evening (fig. 1.8). The Olympia staged as many operettas and pantomimes as ballets, and these occasionally edged ballet out for a few months at a time.99 The longestrunning and most profitable show in the 1890s—and the one that made the greatest splash in boulevardier journals—was not a ballet but a striptease pantomime, Le coucher de la mariée, written in 1895 by Gaston Pollonnais.100 In 1896, Oller, who quickly grew bored with each of his ventures, handed over the directorship of the Olympia to the hall’s conductor, Oscar de Lagoanère.101 Lagoanère maintained Oller’s programming format, but he was ill suited to the task of finding new curiosities, and the hall quickly slipped in stature.102 He handed the Olympia over to the Isola brothers only two years

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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the venues and the shows 29

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Figure 1.8. Olympia program, 1895. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn 8-RO-15747 2-6).

later and stayed on as music director.103 The Olympia flourished under the Isola brothers: emulating the methods of Marchand at the Folies-Bergère, they toured the world looking for first-class acts that would draw le Tout-Paris. They also continued to stage important theatrical works. Both variety numbers and theatrical productions increased dramatically in scale under the Isolas. Circus attractions such as performing animals and acrobatic routines grew bigger and more exotic. The Isolas replaced performing dogs with performing monkeys, seals, elephants, and zebras; clowns with comic singing “negro” acts; and Spanish or English dancers with an array of national, exotic, and eccentric song-and-dance routines. Pantomimes, operettas, and ballets likewise grew in scale. Several ballet productions from the years around 1900 not only rivaled those of the Folies-Bergère in opulence, artistry, and popularity, they even gave the Opéra a run for its money. Charles Lecocq’s BarbeBleue (1898), Henri Hirschmann’s Néron (1898), and Paul Vidal’s L’impératrice (1901) were large-scale productions with scores written by composers well known to theater audiences outside of the music halls. Although the Isolas staged ballets for the duration of their directorship at the Olympia, choreography was not their highest priority. Despite such successes in the late 1890s as the extravagant Sardanapale and Néron and the creative La belle aux cheveux d’or and L’impératrice, the Isolas had a greater affinity for operetta and the revue. In the early 1900s, revues began to outnumber all other theatrical genres on Olympia programs: not only did the Isolas produce more of them, but these productions remained on the program for far longer than most ballets.104

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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30 chapter one When the Isolas did stage ballets, few were new and few drew on post-Romantic French ballet traditions.105 In 1903 they restaged Louis Ganne’s Au Japon, first performed at the Alhambra in London, and the next year they restaged Ganne’s hit from the Casino de Royan and Folies-Bergère, Phryné. Two new ballets staged in 1905 and 1906, Les saisons de la Parisienne and Vers les étoiles, were spectacular danced productions, but they had only tenuous connections to French pantomime-ballet. They lacked a coherent story, afforded few opportunities for pantomime, and eschewed classical dancing. They were effectively revues. As at the Folies-Bergère, the rise of the revue did not immediately spell the end of ballet in the music hall. The Olympia’s early revues included substantial danced divertissements, often choreographed by the leading ballet masters of the day. Olympia revue (1903), Paris qui chante (1903), and Au music-hall (1905), for instance, had divertissements choreographed by Alfredo Curti, and three revues created in 1911, 1912, and 1913 featured danced segments choreographed by the Opéra’s former ballet master, Léo Staats. Staats’s dances for the revues of 1912 and 1913 were also performed by two famous dancers: Stacia Napierkowska and Natalia Trouhanova.106 Divertissements in Olympia revues rarely, however, followed the structural conventions of music-hall ballets; and while some dances might have drawn on an academic idiom and stars might on occasion have been academically trained, pantomime and danse d’école choreography grew increasingly rare with each passing year.107 Ballet witnessed a brief, modest resurgence at the Olympia between 1906 and 1911. While the hall’s directors continued to produce revues and operettas throughout these years, Paul Ruez, who took over management in 1905, and his successors Victor de Cottens and H. B. Marinelli, who led the hall from 1908 to 1911, together staged fourteen ballets.108 Yet few were new, and those few had little in common with the story ballets of the late 1890s.109 Curti’s ballets Paquita (1909) and L’enlèvement de Psyché (1910) were first performed in London; Wenzel wrote the score of Papillon d’or for London’s Empire Theatre; Trianon ballet (1908) was a clichéd divertissement about a young maiden who falls in love with a shepherd; Les aventures de Mlle Clo-Clo (1909) was a bagatelle about a flirtatious boulevard-theater dancer; and Les fanfreluches de l’amour (1913) was a trifle about a youth who falls for an Opéra dancer only to return to his former lover when her dancing at a ball eclipses that of the Opéra star.110 Only Nitokris (1911), an exotic fantasy about a slave girl sacrificed for having desecrated a temple while in frenzied worship, could be considered a true narrative ballet. Nitokris was also the last pantomime-ballet staged by the Olympia. Successive directors Jacques Charles, Raphaël Beretta, and Paul Franck devoted their resources almost exclusively to the production of revues, and while each on occasion produced a ballet or brought in a popular hit from abroad, ballet quickly slipped into the shadows.111 By World War I, the revue had become the theatrical entertainment of choice at the Olympia as at the Folies-Bergère and Casino, and music-hall ballet as a discrete genre faded away entirely.112

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Chapter Two

Music Halls for Tout-Paris With their immense proportions, extravagant décor, top-notch acts, and relatively high ticket prices, the Folies-Bergère, the Olympia, and the Casino de Paris formed a trilogy of elite Parisian music halls designed for and patronized by those with time and money to spare. Audiences were nevertheless varied in social and economic background. They included tradesmen, middle-class professionals, bourgeois families, upper-class socialites, provincial and international tourists, aristocrats, and foreign nobility. Some came to the halls to revel in a posh yet libertine café-concert atmosphere, others to enjoy the most acclaimed popular diversions of the moment, and still others to witness the latest masterpieces in the world of operetta, pantomime, or ballet. Many came only to be seen. Although audiences overlapped and trends can be traced across the three halls, each had its own character and core audience, and differences in clientele paralleled differences in the types of ballets the halls produced.

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The Folies-Bergère The Folies-Bergère from its inception appealed to an unusually diverse audience. Aside from unskilled laborers, who could not afford the two-franc entrance fee, almost every substratum of Parisian society visited the hall at some time. In the hall’s earliest years, the majority of the audience came from the petite and moyenne bourgeoisie, fluctuating and amorphous groups that ranged from clerks, officers, shopkeepers, and skilled workmen to middle-class professionals and businessmen.1 Some men came with their families, others on their own. Writers and artists also frequently attended, along with flaneurs and wealthy gentlemen who wandered in after tasting the pleasures of the nearby grands boulevards.2 Audience demographics changed dramatically in the 1890s after Édouard Marchand took over the management of the Folies-Bergère and transformed the hall into one of the trendiest venues in Paris. While the lower echelons of the bourgeoisie may still have been present, they were suddenly outnumbered by members of the middle and upper-middle classes, aristocrats, and visiting dignitaries. The hall’s gentrification also attracted well-to-do Parisians

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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32 chapter two from new quarters. Flaneurs continued to wander up from the boulevard Montmartre in significant numbers, but after 1893—after Loie Fuller became the talk of the town—they were joined by the privileged and illustrious from the highest circles and most exclusive neighborhoods.

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Bon Bourgeois, Fops, and Blackguards: Sari’s Folies-Bergère The exact composition of the Folies-Bergère’s earliest audiences is likely to remain forever obscure. To be sure, we have a comparative abundance of visual representations and written accounts of the hall from the 1870s and 1880s. Édouard Manet, Jean-Louis Forain, Jules Chéret, Guy de Maupassant, and Émile Zola all recorded their impressions of Folies-Bergère audiences in the hall’s first two decades. However, these works were created with artistic intent or for commercial purposes, not as historical documents. In many cases, they leave a vague, fragmentary, or skewed impression that must be taken with a grain of salt. Most visual artists depicted an audience of fashionably dressed, fun-loving, cosmopolitan ladies and gentlemen. Among those seated in the balcony in Manet’s Un bar aux Folies-Bergère are members of his own entourage: fellow artists and flaneurs, mondains, mondaines, and demi-mondaines.3 Forain’s etchings and paintings of the Folies-Bergère café and promenoir from the late 1870s and early 1880s likewise emphasize elegant gentlemen enjoying the company of stylishly dressed ladies.4 A poster printed by Emile Lévy shows patrons dressed to the nines (fig. 2.1), as does an undated but probably contemporary postcard of the Folies-Bergère’s winter garden (fig. 2.2).5 Elegant dress did not necessarily signify that one was an affluent member of Parisian high society. While the men in Forain’s illustations may have enjoyed the rank of gentleman, many of the well-dressed women—alternately depicted as groups of giddy carousers or as outsiders, waiting alone at café tables—would have been prostitutes.6 And although the caricatured socialites in the right foreground of the poster printed by Emile Lévy appear to be captivated by the scene in front of them, it is unlikely that the women solicited by the two gentlemen in the center were their wives (fig. 2.1).7 A poster printed by Charles Lévy tells a similar story of flirtation and solicitation, as does the engraving from 1878 by Yves and Barret reproduced in chapter 1 and the postcard mentioned above (figs. 1.1 and 2.2). In all three, dandies and men-about-town are shown strolling through the winter garden bowing to, talking to, or surreptitiously admiring pairs of fashionable “ladies.” While the men may have belonged to the upper classes, the women often did not. The Folies-Bergère, these images suggest, catered primarily to flaneurs and pleasure-seeking gentlemen out for a night of flirtation and vice. One contemporary image offers a view of Folies-Bergère audiences that conflicts with those of Manet, Forain, the Lévys, and Chéret. An engraving from

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Figure 2.1. Folies-Bergère poster printed by Emile Lévy, 1874. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn ENT DN-1 [LEVY, Emile /2]-FT 6).

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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34 chapter two

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Figure 2.2. Postcard of the Folies-Bergère winter garden. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn 4-ICO-ARC 46).

1872 signed DeBeaurepaire shows a considerably less sophisticated crowd of men and women crammed into benches at the orchestra level and thronging the balconies above (fig. 2.3). Top hats are nowhere to be seen and the women’s attire is far less ornate than that depicted by Lévy and Chéret. The engraving’s emphasis is on family-style circus entertainments rather than high-class prostitution, and the crowd appears far more boisterous—or more actively absorbed by the stage entertainments—than in previous images. Perhaps this was the Folies-Bergère’s real clientele in its first years. As detailed in chapter 1, Forain, Lévy, and Chéret had a vested interest in fostering fantasies and are likely to have exaggerated the prevalence of suave men-about-town and the centrality of prostitution. Written accounts suggest that Folies-Bergère audiences in the 1870s and 1880s were neither as sophisticated, nor as homogeneous, as most visual representations would lead us to believe. In his 1885 novel Bel-Ami, Guy de Maupassant depicted a hall patronized primarily by the middle classes, not chic socialites; and while the wealthy certainly shared in its pleasures, men of varying ranks far outnumbered elite gentlemen. His account of the Folies-Bergère audience is woven into his character sketch of Duroy, his unscrupulous hero. Duroy and his friend Forestier have come to the Folies-Bergère for the evening and have been seated in one of the theater’s boxes. While Duroy cannot take his eyes off the prostitutes roaming the promenoir behind them, Forestier describes the audience in the auditorium:

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Figure 2.3. De Beaurepaire, Folies-Bergère—Représentations des frères Hanlon-Lees et de Little Bob (1872). Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn VA-286 H71017).

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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36 chapter two Look at the stalls; nothing but middle-class folks with their wives and children, good know-nothings who come here to see the show. In the boxes men about town, some artists, some second-rate girls; and, behind us, the strangest mixture in Paris. Who are these men? Watch them. There are some of every kind, of every profession and every caste, but blackguardism predominates. There are clerks, shopmen, reporters, pimps, officers in civilians’ clothes, swells in evening dress, who have dined out, and who have dropped in here on their way from the Opéra to the Théâtre des Italiens; and then again, too, quite a crowd of suspicious folk who defy analysis. As to the women, only one type. We have known them for the last ten years; we see them every evening all the year round in the same places, except when they are making a sojourn at St. Lazare or at Lourcine.8

Zola’s description of the Folies-Bergère for the Italian literary journal Cronaca Bizantina in 1882 conjures up an even less elegant clientele. According to Zola, the hall was frequented primarily by the petite bourgeoisie: shopkeepers with their wives or families, artists, and a few students. The well-to-do sat alongside, but they were in the minority:

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Here and there a few known figures, some artists, three or four long-haired students, bon bourgeois, storeowners or shopkeepers, joined by their wives or by an honest, dumbfounded family to whom they have judged it appropriate to show them that—not the show, but the prowlers who roam in their fashionable finery, with flashy jewelry [du clinquant] around their wrists, on their ears and around their necks.9

The Folies-Bergère may have attracted a few wealthy patrons, but the hall was not yet the locus of high-end entertainment it would soon become. Nor in its first two decades was it a center of artistic creation. Despite capturing the imagination of painters such as Manet and Forain and writers such as Zola, Maupassant, and Huysmans, the Folies-Bergère did not cater to an artistic or intellectual elite; and while chic socialites and men-about-town may have enjoyed slumming in the hall, the more rarefied of the leisured classes did not initially comprise a significant portion of the audience. Comments made in a series of notices printed by Le Ménestrel that chronicled Sari’s change in programming from variety numbers to concerts of orchestral music and art songs in 1881 confirm that the Folies-Bergère’s audience was interested only in frivolous distractions. According to an unnamed columnist, many were surprised when Sari first announced his decision to rename the Folies-Bergère the “Orchestre du Concert de Paris,” and doubted that the hall’s audience would appreciate evenings of concert music.10 On the first of May, the critic for Le Ménestrel skeptically declared, “The Folies-Bergère, which must be revamped, is in the midst of completing this interesting and delicate operation.”11 After the first concert had taken place three weeks later,

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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the critic reported that despite Sari’s best efforts, the new series had not rid the hall of its former reputation and had therefore not attracted a new audience. The old audience had stayed away: The Concerts de Paris attempted, this week, to purify the profane FoliesBergère. Did they succeed? We would not dare to confirm it—despite the admirable efforts of the artistic committee that dedicated itself to this regeneration. The truth is that M. Sari offered his public the most elegant and comfortable concert hall available in Paris and assembled an orchestra and choir that were at least respectable; and yet the dilettanti have not yet made up their minds to visit the rue Richer—while the former clientele of the Folies-Bergère has defected. That is the exact situation: the lovely Mlle Marie Vachot and the brilliant staccati of her soprano voice were applauded, but as yet do not attract a crowd. Would not a more appropriate star for the FoliesBergère have been Johann Strauss?12

The critic read the situation correctly: the concert series did not attract a new audience and ended prematurely. As he surmised in his final notice on the subject of Sari’s concerts, the “serious public did not believe it possible for the hall to present programs of good music and did not even go see.” The hall was restored to its original form, and “lighthearted Parisians” were once again content.13

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A Hall for Tout-Paris: Marchand’s Folies-Bergère While insouciant Parisians remained the Folies-Bergère’s core audience under Édouard Marchand, they came increasingly from the highest ranks of society. As seen in the previous chapter, Marchand made overtures to the upper classes, renovating his hall, raising ticket prices, and choosing theatrical and circus entertainments that might appeal to them. By the late 1890s, the city’s haut monde were regular patrons. Newspapers reflected this trend not only in the comments they made about audiences but also in their level of interest in the hall and its ballets. The papers that devoted the most space to reviewing music-hall premieres were those that catered to the prosperous and the fashion-conscious. The haut-bourgeois Le Figaro published more music-hall ballet reviews than any other paper throughout the 1890s and into the twentieth century, with the aristocratic Le Gaulois a close second. The gossipy, high-society Gil Blas, the more popular but equally gossipy Écho de Paris, and the ironic, sometimes crude literary and artistic weekly Le Courrier Français were less systematic than Le Figaro and Le Gaulois, but they, too, frequently printed detailed reviews in the 1890s. The shift in the Folies-Bergère’s audience base was nevertheless gradual. Even in the early 1890s, the hall remained so closely associated with coarse

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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38 chapter two entertainments and hallway dalliances that Le Figaro’s critic Emile Blavet had to remind his readers repeatedly that he was not the only respectable spectator to enjoy regular visits to the hall.14 The Folies-Bergère, he wrote on numerous occasions, could boast a certain number of select devotees, among them the famous librettist Henri Meilhac.15 Blavet’s fascination with the gentrification of the hall’s audience in the mid1890s led him to write several columns in which he compared the hall’s new chic clientele with the rowdier crowds of the previous generation. Two provide a valuable retrospective window onto the Folies-Bergère before Marchand:

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Of all the pleasure establishments that without properly being theaters come closest to being one, the Folies-Bergère . . . has, without a doubt, attained the top rank. This conquest has not been easy: it was necessary to fight against prejudices that were more or less legitimate, against that renown—how should I say it?—of loose and dubious conduct that kept “good company” at a distance. Rowdy at the outset, the Folies-Bergère had kept this mark despite serious efforts to shift the house’s genre and general appeal toward a superior ideal. . . . This metamorphosis [of Marchand’s] was a gamble; he risked, in batting his eyelashes at a select clientele, losing the one that was . . . less so. But the audacious young man had faith in the proverb. And for once, the proverb did not lie. Little by little, the fusion took place, and now the great circles that give the theater its tone have their box at the music hall of the rue Richer as at the customary theaters, and so do the most refined of Parisian ladies and gentlemen. I greeted, a few moments ago, emerging from a corbeille of lovely women, the faithful Meilhac, Bishoffsheim, Arsène Houssaye, and so many others whose presence mark a definitive consecration of the theater. The Folies-Bergère is a chic theater.16 What was the Folies-Bergère before M. Marchand presided over its destiny? Without doubt a popular and well-attended establishment, but where the artistic was sacrificed to questions of an inferior order, in which dominated a public of a rather . . . mixed category, and in which high society did not risk itself unless for reasons of debauchery and then under the veil of the most hermetic incognito. Today the Folies-Bergère is classified among the sites of pleasure that have artistic tendencies; it has become, through gradual purification, a center of good company, where honest women are seen openly showing their faces and corsages, their cavaliers in black suits and white ties. Today, the Folies-Bergère not only has a select day as do the regular theaters, but all days without distinction are select.17

That these reviews date from 1893 and 1894, respectively, is not a coincidence. As mentioned earlier, Loie Fuller’s performances during the FoliesBergère’s 1892/93 season marked a turning point in the hall’s history. Not only did she draw vast audiences, she also attracted new segments of the population: artists, intellectuals, and the landed gentry. Undeterred by the hall’s

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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former reputation and fascinated by Fuller’s spellbinding dances, the Who’s Who of Paris swarmed the theater, giving it credence and wiping away the last remnants of social stigma that lingered about its halls. As Blavet wrote:

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Since Loie Fuller has been on the program, the lovely theater has become the rendezvous point for those who love all that Paris has to offer that is rare, elegant, and select. They come from everywhere, and the faubourg of SaintGermain itself—oh, sign of the times—does not dread rubbing shoulders with the new strata of society [les nouvelles couches]. Their set sends impressive delegations each evening. The hall is sold out fifteen days beforehand, and many are sent away from the box office.18

Blavet was not the only one to wax lyrical about the “brilliance” of the FoliesBergère’s new audience. Columnists for the aristocratic daily Le Gaulois likewise stressed the elegance of audiences, which presumably included those who read Le Gaulois. In a review of L’araignée d’or (1896), Adrien Vély remarked that “the announcement of the show, along no doubt with the name of the principal interpreter, Liane de Pougy, sufficed to draw an exceptionally brilliant crowd to the superb hall of the rue Richer. The finest specimens of the world of politics, the world of literature, the world of clubs, the world of pretty ladies were represented in abundance, and quality competed with quantity.” The flash of diamonds in the audience, Vély quipped, risked blinding the audience to the wonders of the stage.19 The upper echelons of society continued to frequent the hall long after Fuller’s contract ended. Members of Paris’s most exclusive clubs had their boxes and the haute bourgeoisie and aristocracy filled the choicest seats. Vély’s remark that the audience risked outshining stage performances is echoed in numerous reports of season-opening galas and ballet premieres published in Le Figaro, Le Gaulois, and Gil Blas. In his review of L’araigné d’or for Le Figaro, Un Monsieur du Balcon, for instance, noted the presence of “Prince Henri d’Orléans, Prince Tcherbakoff, Prince Bariatinski, the Prince of Sagan, the Duke of Leuchtenberg, the Marquis of Montozon, the Prince of Lucinge, the Count of Olivaes [sic], the Count of Penha Longa, Edmond de Goncourt, Jean Béraud, etc.”20 Strapontin, covering the premiere of Les grandes courtisanes for Gil Blas in 1899, began by listing famous personalities in attendance, from actresses and demi-mondaines to minor nobility and foreign dignitaries. In the most expensive seats of the grande avant-scène de première were: La Cavalieri, Jane Michel, Biana Duhamel, Suzanne Orlandi, Jane Dupavé, Suzanne Derval, Isabelle de Lineuil, Jane Derval, Angèle de Lignières, Marpha, Robinson, the exquisite Douglas, Jane de Luxille, Medal, Paule Andral, Marguerite de Nestle, and Jane Yvon. In the loges of the Jockey Club and l’Épatant: Prince Bariatinsky; Prince Galitzine; the Counts Hunolstein,

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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40 chapter two

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de Vagliano, de Gontaut-Biron, de Castellane, Perrin, Faubry, de Torrès, Demonts; Marquis de Mausabré, etc.21

Two years later, the hall was still at the height of its fame and still attracting a notable crowd of politicians, artists, writers, aristocrats, and foreign nobility. While reviewing Lorenza (1901), Un Monsieur du Balcon spotted: “Count Tornielli, ambassador of Italy; Prince Galitzine, the Count of Pradère, secretary of the Spanish Embassy; Arsène Alexandre, the artist Sem, Quentin-Bauchart, Paul Escudier, the Count of Kergorlay, de Saint-Chamand, Victor Roger, A. Lemonier, Sandrini, Rupert-Carabin, Fordyce, A. de la Gandara, Gustave Coquiot, etc., etc., and a crowd of delicious young ladies.”22 By 1900, stylish Parisians could ill afford to miss Folies-Bergère premieres, which were by then major society events. The halls had become fashion runways for the upper classes and premieres occasions for patrons to show off their latest purchases. According to one critic, who signed her articles for Comœdia “Yvette,” Paris’s top clothing designers adopted the practice of waiting until the beginning of the Folies-Bergère season to launch new collections. “One cannot imagine the importance of the reopening of the Folies-Bergère,” she writes. “Imagine: dressmakers and milliners use the opportunity to launch their new collections and people worry about it fifteen days in advance.”23 The hall nevertheless still attracted the middle classes. Although at least one image from the period depicts a crowd as recherché as those described by Strapontin and Un Monsieur du Balcon (fig. 2.4), two composite photographs provide evidence of a comparatively diverse throng, albeit dominated by the middle and upper classes (figs. 2.5 and 2.6). Audiences for premieres—especially season premieres—were wealthier than those of regular nights; when reviewing these “ultra-elegant” premieres, critics would have been expected to name the notables in attendance to heighten the sense of occasion and create a feeling of exclusivity. Reviews that emphasize the sophistication of audiences at premieres serve to distract readers from the continued presence of a far less chic clientele that patronized the hall on a regular basis alongside the new soigné crowd.24 As we shall see, ticket prices were higher than during Sari’s time—each category cost two francs more, and boxes could now be rented ahead at a higher price—but many seats were still within the means of the lower-middle classes, students, and Maupassant’s “suspicious folk who defy analysis.”25 As Baedeker pithily summed it up in 1910, “The society is very mixed.”26 As the hall rose in status and respectability, two groups of patrons grew more prominent: tourists and women. Tourists had always made up at least a small percentage of the Folies-Bergère audience.27 The hall’s emphasis on visual acts would have appealed to foreign visitors as well as to provincial French tourists, many of whom would not have been conversant enough with Parisian French

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Figure 2.4. H. Alberti, halftone illustration of the Folies-Bergère promenoir. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn 4-ICO-THE 4376-4399).

or with Parisian life and politics to understand the topical spoken or sung entertainments presented in other popular venues.28 Visual spectacle continued to draw tourists in ever greater numbers in the late 1880s and early 1890s, and after the success of singers and dancers such as Otéro, Fuller, Mérode, and the Sisters Barrison, tourists flooded in.29 Paris guidebooks from the 1890s almost always mention the Folies-Bergère, and several provide colorful and detailed descriptions of the hall.30 A guidebook published in 1911 went so far as to remark that “the Folies-Bergère now caters almost exclusively to tourists, who make up the bulk of the audience.”31 “Respectable” women may likewise always have gone to the Folies-Bergère. As elaborated above, writers often mention the presence of families, and women can be seen sitting in the auditorium in most images from the 1870s and 1880s. (Since they had to pay, prostitutes did not normally enter the auditorium). The Folies-Bergère certainly tried to entice women. The hall announced its programs in such papers as La gazette des femmes in the late 1870s and early 1880s, and programs always included advertisements geared toward women.32 After the upper classes migrated to the hall in the early 1890s, proper women could attend with relative equanimity.33 According to Mary Abbot, the author of an American guidebook, A Woman’s Paris: A Handbook of Every-Day Living in the French Capital, by 1900, women could even go without a male companion. “The customs of the English and the Americans,” Abbot writes, “have modified

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Figure 2.5. Composite photograph by E. LaGrange, Le hall des Folies-Bergère, quinze minutes d’entracte. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn 4-ICO-THE-4376 1).

Figure 2.6. E. LaGrange, Le promenoir des Folies-Bergère. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn 4-ICO-THE 4376-4399).

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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French criticisms. . . . People in Paris have begun to discriminate between the two kinds of lone ladies.”34 According to Abbot, most of the single women who went to music halls or café-concerts were, however, tourists.35 And despite the increased presence of women in such establishments, Abbot assumes that the Folies-Bergère’s audience was still predominantly male. She notes that “the proud Parisian will tell you first of the Française and the Odéon and the Gymnase; of the two operas, Grand and Comique . . . ; and of the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt. But he will spend his evenings at the Nouveautés and the Folies-Bergère and the Marigny, while his wife and children sit demurely at the Française or at the Opéra, or stay at home.”36 By the mid-1890s, the prominence and respectability of the Folies-Bergère had risen sufficiently to entice the social and cultural elite. Julie Manet, daughter of Berthe Morisot and niece of Édouard Manet, recorded her impressions of the hall in her diary in 1897. She was disgusted by the “idiotic clowns, stupid ballets, and atrocious women in pantaloons” and shocked that families would see fit to bring their children.37 Nevertheless, she, like so many of her set, went to the Folies-Bergère expecting to find amusements tailored to the tastes of the Parisian beau monde, and spent three hours at the hall seemingly without apprehensions about any loss of reputation. The Folies-Bergère’s glory days as the hall of Tout-Paris did not end with the death of Marchand; however, after 1901, the elite made up a smaller percentage of the audience. While the hall continued to draw huge numbers, critics used fewer superlatives to describe them and ceased to name famous individuals. The Folies-Bergère preserved its place at the center of Parisian nightlife for years to come as the likes of Maurice Chevalier, Mistinguette, and later Josephine Baker took to the stage, but the hall would never again host the glamorous haute société that Marchand attracted during the heady 1890s.

The Olympia With its grand proportions, extravagant décor, and trendy locale, the Olympia was a music hall intended for and patronized by society’s crème de la crème. Situated on the broad boulevard des Capucines among high-end shops and cafés, midway between La Madeleine and the Opéra, the Olympia was located in the swankiest area of the three halls. In consequence, it was the city’s most fashionable music hall. From its inauguration, the audience included a significant contingent of the rich and famous, and it catered primarily to socialites and moneyed tourists.38 The Olympia’s opening gala set the tone by drawing an audience that outstripped stage entertainments in glamour, fame, and novelty. Critics who

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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44 chapter two documented the evening nearly all concluded their descriptions of the hall with a tally of the notable patrons in attendance. Frimousse (Raoul Toché), writing for Le Gaulois, conjured up a picture of great wealth and prestige:

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Many black coats, many pretty toilettes, as, from the start, the Olympia seems to have launched itself as the gathering place of elegant society. If I had to prove it to you, I would need only lead you to the grand box on the left where you would quickly recognize the Baron and Baroness Finot, the Prince and Princess of Poix, the Duke and Duchess of Morny, the Count and Countess of Alsace, the Prince of Sagan, etc.39

In Gil Blas, Richard O’Monroy (de St. Geniès), likewise described a crowd that included the highest orders of Tout-Paris: “All around the promenoir and the boxes, most of which, it seems, are already rented by the great circles of Paris; the Jockey Club of the rue Royale; the Mirlitons, the Sporting-Club, etc. In the grande avant-scène de gauche, I recognized the Prince of Sagan, Count Hubert Delamarre, the Duke and Duchess of Morny, the Princess of Poix, etc.”40 Despite changes in management and occasional dips in the quality of its variety shows, the Olympia remained a meeting place for Parisian high society through the late 1890s. A critic for Gil Blas recorded a packed hall for the 1896 premiere of the Olympia’s Christmas ballet Rêve de Noël that was as distinguished as the gathering that attended the hall’s opening night three years earlier. Present were the “Grand-Duke Alexis, Prince Henri d’Orléans, the Marquis de Pierrefeu, the Marquis de la Charme, Prince Soltikoff, Count Nicolai, the Baron of Annery, the Baron of Bournac, the Grand Duchess of Leuchtenberg, etc.”41 Even when critics did not list the names of individual aristocrats, famous personalities, and visiting dignitaries, they usually began or ended their reviews of Olympia ballets either by mentioning the presence of Tout-Paris or by referring to audiences as “ultra-elegant.”42 The Olympia’s audience nevertheless was an amalgam that included members of the professional classes and the more prosperous of the petite bourgeoisie. All of the names listed above come from reviews of premieres, not regular nights. While writers often ended these reviews with assertions that the show was sure to draw Tout-Paris for months to come, the Tout-Paris that came on regular nights would not have been as grand as that at premieres.43 Although the city’s most affluent and influential could go to the hall on regular nights, they probably did not attend in large numbers, except perhaps on the more expensive and therefore more select Thursday evenings. Even on gala evenings, the carriage trade may have made up a smaller segment of the audience than reviewers would have us believe. The very fact that critics were so enthusiastic about naming the great circles, clubs, wealthy individuals, and celebrities in the audience points to the noteworthiness of this occurrence.44

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Images add little to our understanding of who regularly attended the Olympia. A photograph by E. LaGrange published in Le Panorama : Paris la Nuit shows elegantly dressed couples milling about outside the hall. A sea of top-hatted gentlemen along with a few elegant women form an indistinct backdrop near the entrance. In front of them, to the right, stands a well-dressed couple, again signaling the presence of high society. This crowd, the photograph seems to imply, was fashionable and affluent. Yet while it is tempting to give documentary priority to the photograph, it is a cut-and-paste composite image that has clearly been altered. The same well-dressed couple appears in a contemporary photograph, also by LaGrange, taken in the lobby of the FoliesBergère (see figs. 2.5 and 2.7).45 More importantly, the focal point of the photograph is neither the couple nor the crowd behind them, but two gentlemen making advances to two pretty women, linked arm in arm, who happily return their attentions. Gentlewomen they surely were not. Illustrations in programs are no more illuminating about audience composition: they once again intimate that the hall was both a gathering place for high society and a playground for wealthy gentlemen in search of titillation. A program from December 20, 1894, includes three illustrations of audiences (fig. 2.8). The indistinct image in the upper inset of the program’s left-most panel offers few clues. It promotes the Olympia as a popular destination that attracts large crowds each night, and since all are wearing ornate hats, perhaps implies that they were relatively well off. The lower image confirms that these crowds belonged to the haute bourgeoisie. The women are depicted wearing elaborate gowns, and the men top hats and canes. It also suggests that the Olympia wished to bill itself as a respectable venue. Two couples watch the spectacle from the edge of the promenoir, another couple sits at a café table on the right, and two gentlemen stand at the left talking together. But even this relatively staid illustration of the hall includes hints of illicit pleasures. In the foreground, a gentleman chats with two unaccompanied women. And while the image in the middle panel shows couples demurely mounting the grand staircase to join the throngs in the balcony, a gentleman in the foreground flirts with his fashionably-dressed companion—perhaps his wife, perhaps that evening’s chosen escort; their relationship may be intentionally ambiguous. A group of gentlemen lean voyeuristically over the panel, ogling some unseen spectacle: the ladies of the promenoir or winsome ballerinas such as those drawn on the right panel of the program (not shown here). Clubmen were welcome and expected to have a good time. The price of spending an evening at the Olympia provides another perspective for determining audience composition. Even if a patron of the Olympia did not treat himself to a prostitute, an evening out could cost a lot. The coat check most likely cost the standard 25 centimes charged in theaters,46 and programs cost 10 to 25 centimes depending on the size and the number of illustrations.47 A mug of beer cost 50 centimes, as did milk, eau-de-vie, and coffee without

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Figure 2.7. Composite photograph by E. LaGrange, Sur le boulevard—Sortie de l’Olympia, in Paris la Nuit, Le Panorama, ca.1900. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn 4-ICO-THE 4463-4487).

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Figure 2.8. Olympia program, left and central panels of the cover, 1894. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn 4-RO-15747 2-6).

cognac. For 75 centimes, one could get a tea or a syrup; for 1 franc an anisette, soda, iced syrup, or a glass of champagne; and for 1 franc 50 a sherry cobbler, sorbet, cocktail, or lemonade. It cost 2 francs for a pale ale or stout, and a bottle of champagne set one back 6 francs 50 to 8 francs 50, depending on whether one bought a Moët et Chandon, a Veuve Clicquot, or a G.-H. Mumm et Roederer.48 A couple who reserved the choicest seats on a Thursday evening, checked their coats, bought programs, and shared a bottle of champagne would have spent almost thirty francs. Although such prices were far beyond the reach of petit bourgeois couples and families, a single tradesman wanting to taste the pleasures of high society could spend as little as 3 francs 50 for a cheap seat and a mug of beer. Audiences were likely to be as mixed at the Olympia as at the Folies-Bergère.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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48 chapter two

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The Casino de Paris The Casino de Paris fronted on the rue de Clichy in the upscale residential quarter of Saint-Georges, just north of the prosperous Chaussée d’Antin.49 Its entertainments might have been more risqué than those of the Folies-Bergère or the Olympia, but they were intended for the well-to-do. While a certain number of dashing gentlemen and upper-class couples wandered into the Casino from the adjoining Nouveau-Théâtre, others came expressly to the Casino to indulge in the hall’s titillating entertainments. An abonné of the Opéra or an aristocrat from a neighboring hôtel particulier who wanted to go slumming one evening could easily come to the Casino on foot, and a carriage would have reached its doors in minutes.50 The Casino’s wealthiest patrons were, however, both less illustrious than those who went to the Folies-Bergère and the Olympia, and less numerous. Although the Casino was by no means a hall for the masses, it also did not hold the same cachet for the Parisian upper crust as did the other two. Of the three halls, the Casino de Paris has left the fewest documentary traces. Only a handful of programs survive in French state archives; tourism guidebooks almost never describe it in detail; artists and writers rarely depicted the hall or its audiences in paintings or fiction; and journals only occasionally published reviews or images relating to the Casino’s theatrical productions.51 What one can surmise about the hall’s audience is therefore based largely on omission. This silence is, however, eloquent. That the Casino received so much less attention than the Folies-Bergère and Olympia suggests that it was not as fashionable as its rivals and did not attract as many of the class-conscious socialites who fed the market for print and visual representations of the venues, shows, and company they enjoyed. A striking lack of patrons’ names in reviews supports circumstantial evidence that the Casino was the least chic of the three halls. The same critics who routinely began reviews of Folies-Bergère and Olympia premieres with lists of the famous and wealthy in attendance displayed a conspicuous lack of interest in the Casino’s audience. At best, they made general remarks about their entourage. Pédrille, reviewing Vassilissa in 1895, began his short column for Le Petit Journal: “To the great pleasure of its large and elegant audience, the Casino de Paris reopened yesterday.”52 Strapontin, reviewing the premiere of Les amoureux de Venise a year later, observed that “among the black suits were men of distinction [des notabilités] along with many of our lovely society ladies.”53 Adrien Vély wrote that Tout-Paris had attended the premiere of Vassilissa; and the next year, even more vaguely, that Tout-Paris would want to see Vénus à Paris.54 Even these general comments about the elegance of Casino audiences were rare. Most critics only mentioned that a

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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crowd had rushed to the hall, or that the hall’s clientele was numerous, or that the public came en masse, with no mention of who made up that crowd, or clientele, or mass.55 This was a far cry from the panegyrics of Le Figaro’s Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre and Un Monsieur du Balcon over the supremely distinguished audience that regularly partook in the pleasures of the FoliesBergère and Olympia.56 Also telling is how rarely high-end newspapers took an interest in the Casino and its ballets. While Le Gaulois and Le Figaro routinely reviewed ballets staged at the Folies-Bergère and Olympia in the 1890s, and Gil Blas did so nearly as consistently, the three papers paid far less attention to the Casino. The newspapers that did carry reviews of the Casino’s entertainments were the broad-circulation Le Petit Journal and Le Petit Parisien. The two populist papers must, however, have assumed that their readers visited the halls primarily to see clowns, popular singers, and circus-style athletic numbers: they printed few reviews of music-hall ballets but routinely provided reports and announcements of new variety acts. Le Petit Journal and Le Petit Parisien must also have assumed that their readers favored the more accessible Casino over the Olympia or the Folies-Bergère. Neither sent critics to cover ballets staged by the exclusive Olympia, and even the famous and more inclusive FoliesBergère received scant critical attention in the popular press.57 The Casino may not have attracted as many notable figures as the Olympia and the Folies-Bergère, but its primary audience was at least middle-class. As we shall see, ticket prices alone were a deterrent to the working classes. Although the Casino was less expensive than the Folies-Bergère, the entrance fee was still two francs, and even cheap seats cost three. If a lack of documentation of the rich and famous in reviews implies a largely undistinguished crowd, an engraving published in Maurice Delsol’s Paris-Cythère: Étude de mœurs parisiennes and a composite photograph by E. LaGrange show this crowd to be fairly well-heeled (figs. 2.9 and 2.10). The Casino’s audience, these images suggest, was roughly comparable to audiences that attended the Folies-Bergère on regular nights, if not at gala premieres.58 Programming, along with a reputation for a heady nightlife, might explain the difference in audience composition between the Folies-Bergère and the Casino, most other factors being comparable. Although the Casino’s location in a relatively affluent area near other sites of high-end entertainment should have been enough to guarantee a wealthy clientele, its entertainments—especially those of the promenoir—seem to have been provocative enough to deter the more prudish contingent of the middle and upper classes.59 But it did not deter all. Those who wanted to take part in the Casino’s revelries could do so with minimal risk to their reputation: they could enter the Casino through the Nouveau-Théâtre, rue Blanche.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Figure 2.9. Wood engraving by Lagarte of revelers at the Casino de Paris, in Delsol, Paris-Cythère: Étude de mœurs parisiennes. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn 8- LI3- 844).

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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TOUT-PARIS

Figure 2.10. Composite photograph by E. LaGrange of Casino de Paris revelers. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn Va283 3 H66908).

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The Casino benefitted considerably from its association with the NouveauThéâtre.60 During intermissions and after the show, theater patrons often wandered into the Casino to frequent the promenoir or to take part in balls. In a review for Le Courrier Français, a columnist who wrote under the pseudonym Le Rideau de Fer poked fun at members of the Nouveau-Théâtre’s audiences who, too skittish to enter the Casino directly, used the Nouveau-Théâtre as an excuse to go to the Casino: The directors find themselves obliged to negotiate the prudish sensibilities of the Nouveau-Théâtre’s bourgeois public who, unknowingly, come to the ball during intermissions. That they disabuse themselves: If the NouveauThéâtre’s bourgeois patrons “risk themselves” in the hall, it is precisely to see what social prejudice does not allow them: the bourgeois, in his hypocrisy, wants a pretext. Here the excuse is the theater with the view of going to the ball. What he saw—oh! Such horrors, my dear madam!—it was not his fault . . . it was . . . by accident . . . at the theater . . . he went to the Casino for a breath of air because it is so big. . . . And he or she will return, because they will have the excuse here that they do not have for going to the Moulin Rouge.61

One might have to enter incognito or “by accident,” but the Casino had its niche as a sexy playground for the well-to-do.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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52 chapter two

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The Price of Admission Ticket prices offer the strongest evidence of the relative affluence of audiences at the three halls. In 1875, entrance to the Folies-Bergère’s winter garden and promenoir cost two francs, and a seat in the auditorium cost up to four francs, five if reserved ahead of time.62 Since the price of a theater ticket represented nearly a full day’s work for skilled tradesmen and more than a day’s work for unskilled laborers, it is highly unlikely that members of the working classes ever entered the auditorium, and even the gardens and promenoir would have been out of reach for many.63 Although a clerk or shopkeeper could certainly afford the general entrance fee of two francs, seats in the auditorium would have been a luxury, and he could not have brought his family on a regular basis. Middle-class professionals and the haute bourgeoisie could go as often as they liked. Prices in the 1870s were not, however, high enough to create an ambiance of exclusivity that would have drawn the upper classes in large numbers. Records of ticket prices from the early 1890s suggest that the core of the Folies-Bergère’s audience remained relatively stable between the last years of Sari’s management and the first years of Marchand’s. In 1890, entrance to the promenoir was still 2 francs, and the cheapest seats in the auditorium had risen only 50 centimes to 3 francs. A 2-franc entrance fee and 3- to 4-franc theater ticket still kept the lowest classes at bay; and while solvent skilled workers, clerks, and shopkeepers could purchase a theater ticket, they could again only attend on occasion or alone.64 That the hall did not yet attract the choicest crowd is reflected in the minimal increase of seat prices in the highest categories. The most expensive seats purchased at the door in 1890 cost 5 francs.65 Ticket prices changed dramatically in 1893/94, the season following Loie Fuller’s debut. When the Folies-Bergère suddenly became a popular destination for the rich and famous, Marchand raised his prices. In the mid-1890s, the general price of admission was still 2 francs and it was possible to get seats in the last row of the orchestra and balcony for 3 francs, but most seats rose to 4, 5, and 6 francs, with a surcharge of 50 centimes to 1 franc for tickets secured ahead of time.66 Only matinées remained affordable for less affluent families, with cheap seats priced at only 1 franc. Five years later, ticket prices rose another franc. The best seats then cost 7 francs and most cost at least 4 francs.67 High society attending premieres could be fairly certain of finding themselves among their own set since all had to pay the additional reservation fee to be guaranteed admission. The promenoir, however, continued to attract a more varied crowd. Entrance to the Folies-Bergère gardens and promenoir did not rise above 2 francs for another five years, possibly to facilitate the attendance of prostitutes.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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TOUT-PARIS

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When the Olympia opened in 1893, its pricing scheme sent a clear message that this was a hall for the elite. Although the price of admission to the promenoir on all days but Thursday cost 2 francs, seats in the auditorium could set a spectator back 5 or 6 francs. The cheapest seats cost 3 francs, 4 if reserved ahead of time.68 On Thursday evenings, if purchased in advance, patrons of the Olympia paid 3 francs merely to enter the hall and promenoir, and up to 9 francs for the choicest seats.69 As at the Folies-Bergère, Thursday and Sunday matinées were far less expensive than evening performances, with seats available for 2 to 4 francs (3 to 5 if reserved).70 Although a curious petit bourgeois could bring his family to the Olympia on occasion, even matinée tickets remained unaffordable for most workers.71 Ticket prices at the Casino de Paris were initially on par with those of the Folies-Bergère.72 It cost 2 francs to enter the promenoir and 4 to 5 francs for a seat in front of the stage.73 As at the Folies-Bergère, the proletariat could therefore ill afford to go. But while this suggests that the hall drew a well-heeled crowd, the Casino’s ticket prices are somewhat deceptive and alone do not provide an accurate picture of the hall’s audience. Since the Casino had only a small stage with minimal seating at one end of a vast social space, it would have sold few 4- and 5-franc tickets for theater seats, and then only from 8:15 or 8:30 p.m. until 10:00, 10:30, or 11:00 p.m., depending on the program.74 Most of the Casino’s patrons would therefore have come only to partake in the pleasures of the promenoir or to watch or participate in the eccentric dancing that sometimes took place after the curtain fell on stage entertainments. Consequently, most of the Casino’s clientele needed only to pay the 2-franc entrance fee.75 From the mid-1890s through the early years of the twentieth century, all three halls—especially the Folies-Bergère and Olympia—enjoyed the loyal patronage of an audience that was relatively upscale, if varied in provenance and interests. The halls’ trendiness attracted the fashion-conscious and upwardly mobile petite bourgeoisie, and the cult of novelty and an aura of exclusivity enticed prominent members of the leisured classes. There was, however, one influential segment of the population that did not attend in large numbers: the artistic, musical, and intellectual elite. The Folies-Bergère certainly attracted visual artists and writers, but primarily in its early years. Although Huysmans, Maupassant, Zola, Manet, and Forain all recorded their impressions of Sari’s Folies-Bergère and painted or described the presence of other artists in the 1870s and early 1880s, most artists lost interest in the hall after it shed its gritty edge. The absence of a highly cultured or intellectual audience, more than any other factor, set music-hall audiences apart from audiences who attended ballet at the Opéra and Opéra-Comique or who later went to see the Ballets Russes. Music-hall patrons—often well-to-do but interested only in frivolous

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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54 chapter two

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distractions—also set the tone for the ballets produced by the halls. With few exceptions, music-hall productions tended toward the easily accessible. Ballets were neither as risqué as some of the dances seen at the more licentious dance halls such as the Moulin Rouge nor as subversive as skits or songs heard in avant-garde cabarets.76 They were popularized versions of balletic forms traditionally seen in high art venues—works that would be familiar to the wealthy, but attractive and accessible to all.77

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Chapter Three

Creative Artists

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Authors, Composers, and Choreographers Between 1871 and 1913, nearly two hundred writers, composers, and choreographers created new ballets for Paris’s three preeminent halls. All had different career trajectories, experiences, and interests, and all were highly mobile, moving between different types of venues and genres, and creating works in a variety of styles. Their multiple, sometimes distinct, sometimes overlapping perspectives generated a web of ideas and approaches that molded the eclectic and constantly evolving genre that was music-hall ballet. If, for instance, changes in the types of ballet staged by music halls came about in response to audience preferences, they also shifted in accordance with the background and experience of a ballet’s authors. While writers associated with Paris’s boulevard theaters breathed new life into light romantic comedies, those with ties to bohemian culture and to journalism fueled the emergence of new forms of ballet, including mythical and historical parodies and self-reflexive ballets depicting contemporary societal pleasures. Choreographers, all of whom worked concurrently for a range of venues in France, Italy, and England, brought with them an extensive network of influences, creating works that freely juxtaposed elements from boulevard-theater féeries, Opéra ballets, English music-hall ballets, and the Italian ballo grande. Scores remained the most stable component of music-hall ballet, yet they, too, varied in style depending on their author’s career path. Early scores written by specialists of what we would now term musique légère recall the light, simple style of 1870s popular songs and dance tunes; those of the 1890s written by the era’s foremost lyric composers reveal a close affinity with operetta and comic opera. Tracing the provenance of ballet’s creative artists adds a valuable layer to our understanding of the history of ballet in the music halls. For example, the practice in the 1890s of commissioning increasingly experienced, eminent composers mirrored the rise in the halls’ status in the final years of the century and reflected the increased importance of ballet in their programming. Recovering the careers of music-hall choreographers reveals the central role that music-hall ballet played in the choreographic life of Paris. What is striking about music-hall ballet choreographers is not how efficiently they could adapt

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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56 chapter three Opéra ballet to a music-hall setting or incorporate elements of English and Italian ballet into existing French forms—such cross-pollination happened in all choreographic centers of Europe and Russia—but the fact that there was no difference in personnel between an elite national theater and a commercial music hall: both hired the same choreographers. Music-hall ballet was not a trivial genre consigned to second-rate choreographers, but one of vital importance for the preservation and evolution of theatrical dance in Paris. Many of the authors, composers, and choreographers who created music-hall ballets enjoyed great fame in their day. They were beloved by audiences for their skills at devising variations on familiar themes within a set of generic expectations, and celebrated by critics for their amusing stories, lively music, and alluring tableaux. Although musicologists and dance historians have since overlooked or disparaged many of these artists as profit-oriented artisans who produced empty commercial entertainment, it was their very ability to entertain that earned them the respect of critics and the admiration of the public. Their art was, however, ephemeral and they worked predominantly for commercial institutions that have received little critical attention. Their place in Parisian theatrical history was therefore transient, and virtually all of music-hall ballet’s artists have been forgotten.1 Louis Desormes, for instance, a longtime conductor for the FoliesBergère, was celebrated by his contemporaries not only for his dozens of ballets but also for his hundreds of popular songs and dance tunes. Yet Desormes is so little known that only one current music dictionary includes a short biographical entry.2 Madame Mariquita, the Folies-Bergère’s choreographer in the 1890s and 1900s, was one of the most prolific, versatile, and creative of the period, yet she, too, has fallen into obscurity. Mme Mariquita was so revered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that dozens of newspapers in Paris, London, and New York ran obituaries in the week following her death in 1922. At present, there is not a single biographical notice or article about Mme Mariquita in any dance dictionary or encyclopedia.3 Music-hall ballet’s creative artists, as much as institutional and commercial pressures, were the forces that helped shape the genre. Their combined interests, ideas, and artistic vision spawned new forms of theatrical dance entertainment, fostering a vibrant dance culture enjoyed by thousands and altering the course of French ballet for more than four decades. This chapter provides a series of overviews that examine groups of librettists, composers, and choreographers at different points in the genre’s history, connecting the contributions of these artists with the development of popular ballet as a distinct genre.

Librettists Music-hall ballet librettists came from a range of social and literary backgrounds. Some were bohemian artists or authors of boulevard-theater fare; some were

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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creative artists 57 poets, novelists, and short-story writers; and others were journalists and theater critics.4 At least in theory, anyone could write a music-hall ballet. Lines between art and entertainment were easily blurred, and various literary and theatrical circles often overlapped. A music-hall author might move between lightweight and academic genres or between commercial venues and prestigious national institutions, or he might write concurrently for any combination of these. Prior to creating Fleur de Lotus for the Folies-Bergère in 1893, Armand Silvestre, for example, had written several volumes of poetry, literary prose, and criticism, along with stage works for high-art theaters. He had also written librettos for operas by Ernest Guiraud, Victorin de Joncières, and Louis Varney staged at the Opéra-Comique, and for Camille Saint-Saëns’s Henry VIII premiered by the Opéra.5 While he continued to produce works destined for an erudite market after the premiere of Fleur de Lotus, he collaborated on three further music-hall ballets: O’Ménéné with Desormes for the Eldorado (1894); Le chevalier aux fleurs with André Messager and Raoul Pugno for the Folies-Marigny (1897); and Le rêve d’Elias with Paul Lacôme for the Folies-Bergère (1898). A literary chameleon, Silvestre wrote according to the expectations of a given audience, changing his tone and producing content appropriate for each. When writing music-hall ballets, he could shed learned inclinations to write escapist, sometimes titillating, fluff. Yet Silvestre’s ballets could also be more complex than they seem on first reading, demonstrating a cultural crosspollination that music-hall patrons may or may not have recognized. While his interest in Parnassian formalism and collaborations on operatic projects was not evident in his danced fantasies, his predilections for parody and softcore erotica framed by academic conventions were. Fleur de Lotus, for instance, appears on the surface to be a hackneyed romance that encapsulates all of music-hall ballet’s structural and stylistic conventions, but it is also a cleverly wrought parody of a famous Romantic ballet. It not only featured scenes that played into music-hall audiences’ obsession with stripteases but also made reference to a censorship scandal that involved a publication edited by Silvestre himself (see chapter 9). Like Silvestre, Jean Lorrain and Jean Richepin moved comfortably between different creative modes, writing fluently in several genres and styles. Lorrain’s literary reputation rested on a combination of poetry, short stories, novels, and columns for papers such as La Vie Moderne, Le Courrier Français, and L’Écho de Paris.6 In many ways, his association with the halls made sense. His knowledge of fin-de-siècle Parisian mores and his experience writing for popular society journals translated well into music-hall ballet. To some extent, so too did his lifestyle. As well as being a gifted writer, Lorrain was a provocateur, dandy, and aesthete who was openly, even explicitly, gay.7 His name alone suggested titillation and scandal, providing music-hall directors with grist for their publicity mills. His works, in turn, tantalized the Parisian bourgeoisie with their potent mix of classicism and eroticism.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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58 chapter three By all accounts, Richepin’s initial association with music-hall ballet was an anomaly, born of a desire to astonish the Olympia’s conservative audience.8 Eventually a member of the Académie française, Richepin wrote poetry, novels, and short stories, along with stage works for Paris’s august art-house theaters: the Comédie-française, the Odéon, the Opéra, and the Théâtre Antoine. He also actively courted scandal, and to a far greater extent than did Lorrain, reveled in shocking his readers with a crude, popular writing style and vulgar, sometimes grotesque, eroticism.9 Although Richepin’s literary status alone was enough to attract the attention of critics in the days leading up to the premiere of his 1901 Olympia ballet, L’impératrice, his lifestyle and reputation as a provocateur with a taste for unrestrained salaciousness no doubt also lured patrons to the music hall. For all their interest in erotica and penchant for provocation, Lorrain’s and Richepin’s ballets were no more inflammatory or sexually liberated than any others. Once involved with the production of light entertainment for commercial theaters, both authors shed their incendiary inclinations to write ballets that did little more than suggest or titillate. Lorrain’s Rêve de Noël ended somewhat enigmatically with the heroine embracing her poor lover despite her impending marriage to a nobleman, and the temptress in L’araignée d’or was unusually powerful in her ability to entrap her male victims; but in his La belle aux cheveux d’or, La princesse au sabbat, and Watteau, the social order was maintained and all married the “right” partners despite various flirtations and temptations.10 Richepin’s ballet for the Olympia was comparatively odd in terms of narrative structure, yet it, too, maintained many of music-hall ballet’s conventions (see chapter 5). While L’impératrice depicted a female ruler addicted to a “magic herb” and showed her intensely and possessively in love with the already betrothed young peasant who provided her with the drug, the ballet ends with the ruler’s accidental death and the young lovers’ reunion. Both authors thus toyed with conventions and leaned toward originality while carefully treading music-hall entertainment’s line between sexual thrill and bourgeois propriety.11 In practice, most ballet scenarios were produced by librettists who specialized in light theater. Writers such as Silvestre, Lorrain, and Richepin added literary prestige to the halls, but they were not typical music-hall ballet authors. Jacques Lemaire, Max Maurey, Edmond Gondinet, Paul Meyan, Eugène Bertol-Graivil, Fernand Beissier, and Alfred Delilia wrote comedies, operettas, and revues; Paul Louis Flers and Adolphe Jaime wrote librettos for revues, vaudevilles, and comic operas; and Auguste Germain was best known for his comedies.12 Most had their works performed in small popular venues such as the Alcazar, Scala, Eldorado, Menus-Plaisirs, Théâtre de l’Application, and Bouffes-Parisiens, though they also occasionally had works staged by major boulevard theaters such as the Vaudeville, the Porte SaintMartin, or the Théâtre de la Gaîté.13 Since nearly all of these venues catered

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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creative artists 59 to a broad but relatively affluent public that was probably similar to that of the Folies-Bergère, Olympia, and Casino de Paris, boulevard-theater authors shifted easily between the different venues and genres. A few authors, including Jules Jouy, Ernest Grenet-Dancourt, Octave Pradels, Léon Roger-Milès, Adolphe Willette, Georges Courteline, Louis Marsolleau, Jean Lorrain, and Jean Richepin, maintained ties with bohemian café culture and the Chat Noir.14 An affinity with bohemian artistic sensibilities may explain the increased prevalence of parodies toward the end of the 1890s and may have encouraged greater freedom in the way sexuality was handled onstage. Jouy, Roger-Milès, and Pradels all produced a string of ballets that depicted flirtations among the wealthy and powerful of earlier eras, and RogerMilès and Pradels satirized the ascetic hermit Saint Antoine.15 As already mentioned, Lorrain and Richepin produced the occasional sexually liberated or dangerous heroine, and Courteline and Marsolleau penned the most explicit and licentious of the Folies-Bergère’s parody ballets: Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts.16 As they poked fun at former leaders, deflated past heroes, and commented on current societal power structures and received values, they altered the course of ballet and brought it into the modern age. The impact of bohemian culture on music-hall ballet was nevertheless limited. Authors such as Jouy, Roger-Milès, Pradels, and Lorrain revitalized ballet and nudged it in the direction of innovation, but they did not ultimately push ballet into full-blown modernism. Topics were never entirely new, and while these authors played with the genre’s thematic conventions, none significantly altered the genre’s structure.17 Also, with the exception of Courteline and Marsolleau, Bohemian authors played with contemporary sexual mores, but left them intact. They depicted flirtation after flirtation, yet with few exceptions, their heroes married socially approved sweethearts, and their saints held firm against seductive temptresses. Several authors of music-hall ballet librettos also wrote reviews for the daily press or society weeklies. Of the fourteen most prolific music-hall librettists, ten doubled as theater or literary critics, usually for the same five papers that consistently printed reviews of music-hall ballets: Le Figaro, Le Gaulois, Gil Blas, Le Courrier Français, and L’Écho de Paris. Abel Mercklein wrote reviews for Le Figaro, René Maizeroy for Gil Blas, Charles Akar for L’Écho de Paris, and Jean Lorrain for Le Courrier Français and L’Écho de Paris. Jean Richepin contributed to Le Gaulois and Gil Blas, Alfred Delilia to Le Figaro, and Paul Meyan to Le Petit Journal.18 Most wrote occasional reviews of music-hall ballets. Richard O’Monroy, Adrien Vély, and Auguste Germain reviewed dozens of music-hall ballets for Gil Blas, Le Gaulois, and L’Écho de Paris before producing their own, and sometimes reviewed ballets written by their peers for one hall while their own were in performance at another. While writing music-hall ballet reviews gave librettists a platform from which to promote or criticize each other’s ballets—a self-interested project

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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60 chapter three that benefited popular ballet as a whole by raising its profile—their involvement with the mainstream press also made them aware of current events, tastes, and trends, all of which they exploited in their ballet librettos. It is surely not a coincidence that ten of the fourteen ballets featuring contemporary places or activities such as dance halls and sporting events were written by journalists.19 Ballets from the early to mid-1890s such as Paris-turf, Olympia, Les demoiselles du XXe siècle, and Vénus à Paris—all of which portrayed characters wearing contemporary costumes and performing everyday activities— marked a significant shift in the history of ballet. Indeed, the introduction of contemporary life into ballet was one of the most important differences between Opéra and music-hall productions. In-house ballet masters occasionally wrote their own ballets. Though few in number, and usually divertissements rather than large-scale pantomimeballets, these works catered to the prevailing tastes of audiences throughout the 1890s and into the 1900s. Most scenarios penned by choreographers were light crowd-pleasers with a preponderance of dance and pageantry, and a disproportionate number seem to have been created with one pretext in mind: to show off the corps girls in suggestive clothing. Mme Mariquita’s Marine (1890) and France-Russie (1893) centered on military parades and dances performed by female regiments dressed in fitted travesty uniforms, while her self-reflexive behind-the-scenes ballet Une répétition aux Folies-Bergère (1890) afforded endless opportunities for showing off dancers in form-fitting rehearsal outfits.20 Although these ballets may have been created at the request of music-hall directors looking to add short popular dance numbers to the program, it is also possible that they were proposed to the halls by ballet masters looking for an easy way to earn a little extra money. Both would have known firsthand what appealed to audiences. The financial incentive for authors of any literary background or inclination to write for the music halls would have been compelling. With the exception of a handful of works from the years around 1900, ballet librettos were relatively short and did not involve complex ideas or intricate plot twists. They would undoubtedly have been relatively easy to churn out. A work accepted for production was guaranteed nightly performances for two to three months, with the possibility of two hundred performances or more if restaged. As each author received a 2–3 percent cut of box-office receipts, these earnings could be substantial.21 Not surprisingly, authors frequently wrote several different ballet librettos, either for a given hall or for any combination of the three. Paul Meyan, for example, had six ballets staged at the Folies-Bergère.22 Jean Lorrain wrote two for the Folies-Bergère and three for the Olympia; Auguste Germain produced three for the Folies-Bergère and one for the Olympia; Jacques Lemaire and Abel Mercklein wrote for the Casino as well as for the FoliesBergère; and Richard O’Monroy wrote for all three. Many authors who wrote ballet librettos as individuals later paired up to write them in collaboration: P.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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creative artists 61 L. Flers, Jacques Lemaire, Abel Mercklein, and Fernand Beissier all produced single-authored librettos, then teamed up to create additional ballets.23 In the 1890s alone, more than fifty authors contributed librettos to one or more of the three music halls. They brought with them a broad range of influences and interests, and infused ballet with new ideas and new energy. They whipped up enthusiasm for a genre threatened by apathy and neglect at the hands of the state, and lent music-hall ballet a diversity and vitality unparalleled in any other theater of the time.

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Composers Music-hall ballet composers were as versatile and polyvalent as their literary colleagues. In all, at least sixty wrote scores for the Parisian music halls. Some had already achieved recognition as operetta composers for Paris’s foremost lyrical theaters; others were new to the field, trying to gain a foothold in the lucrative world of commercial theater. A few doubled as music-hall conductors, and in the early years, many specialized in light songs and dance tunes. Composers, more than any other group of ballet authors, reflect the rise and fall in popularity and prestige of ballet in music halls. Although composers of various professional backgrounds and levels of expertise wrote for the halls at any given time, the dominance of different groups distinguished by status and primary musical allegiance shifted over the course of the genre’s history. Each reigning group of composers both contributed to and mirrored changes in the relative status of music-hall ballet in any given period. For example, while the earliest ballets typically had scores written by conductor-composers and popular-music specialists, those created when music-hall ballet was at its height of production and prestige were written by established and already famous composers of theatrical music. When ballet began to resemble the pastiche revue, renowned composers of comic opera lost interest. Once again, the composition of ballet scores fell to in-house conductors, popular music specialists, and young musicians.

Made to Order: Early Music-Hall Ballet, 1871–86 It would be tempting to label the earliest music-hall ballet composers as hacks. The scores for more than half of the thirty ballets created by the Folies-Bergère in its first decade were composed by the hall’s resident conductor, who also provided the incidental dance music required to fill an evening’s program. The remaining scores were written by composers who specialized in light songs, salon pieces, and instrumental dance music. These were not the great theatrical visionaries of the day. They did not aspire to any kind of harmonic or rhythmic innovation, nor did they experiment with new forms of dance

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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62 chapter three writing: they wrote to entertain, and they knew what sold. Deeply enmeshed in the Parisian musical world, they were highly skilled at inventing appealing, original music using preexisting templates. Although few of the Folies-Bergère’s early composers achieved lasting fame, most had attained some degree of success before they began writing ballets, and all were prolific. Prior to his involvement with the Folies-Bergère, Charles Coèdes, for example, had worked as the chef de chant at the Théâtre-Lyrique and had composed a string of popular songs and stage works.24 Paul Henrion worked primarily as an apprentice clockmaker and comedian, but he also composed over 1300 songs and piano pieces in addition to the occasional light theatrical score.25 Gaston Lemaire, who studied at the École Niedermeyer, was a music critic for La Presse and a composer of songs, piano pieces, and theatrical works for salons, casinos, and small theaters.26 Louis Mayeur, a saxophone virtuoso, conducted the orchestras of the Jardin d’Acclimatation, the Bon Marché, and the Jardin Mabille.27 Other early ballet composers such as Laurent Derille, G. A. Schneklüd, St. Mary, Lippacher, Georges Auvray, and Edmond Laurens, whose names appear written in script on manuscript librettos from the 1870s and early 1880s, were equally prolific, but none reached a level of recognition that earned him a place in contemporary or current biographical dictionaries.28 These composers would have been a perfect fit for the Folies-Bergère in the 1870s. If the style of their piano music and songs is indicative of the style of their ballets, all wrote upbeat, accessible music that no doubt appealed to the type of audience that regularly frequented the hall in its early years.29 A few exceptional composers of early music-hall ballets produced scores of unprecedented originality that raised the bar for their successors. In 1872, Sari made one of his greatest and most enduring contributions to the musical life of his hall: he hired the conductor, composer, and popularmusic specialist Olivier Métra to be the Folies-Bergère’s music director.30 Métra was among the leading stars of Parisian popular culture when he took up his new post. His waltzes, polkas, and quadrilles kept Parisians spinning gaily around the city’s many dance halls and balls, and as a conductor, he presided over the most notable balls of the era, including those of the Opéra. He served as the Folies-Bergère’s music director for five years, and in those five years composed scores for at least twenty-four ballets.31 Métra quickly proved himself a master ballet composer, writing hit after hit that earned him the devotion of a large audience. Métra launched the hall’s reign as a center for ballet.32 In 1878, Sari commissioned the twenty-five-year-old André Messager to compose music-hall ballets.33 Messager was perhaps an unlikely candidate for the job—he had been educated at the École Niedermeyer and although relatively new to the scene, already moved in art-music circles—but Sari’s choice once again proved astute. Messager’s first ballet, Fleur d’oranger, was a resounding

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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creative artists 63 popular and critical success. The following year, Messager composed the music for two more ballets, Les vins de France and Mignons et villains. Both received glowing reviews, as did the Folies-Bergère, which basked in reflected glory, singled out by critics for producing such fine ballets. Although Messager did not remain long with the hall, he helped cement the Folies-Bergère’s reputation as a venue for ballet.34 Messager may have conducted the orchestra on occasion, but the hall’s principal conductors were Charles Hubans, who wrote at least six ballets for the Folies-Bergère in 1877 and 1878, and Hervé, who wrote one in 1879.35 In 1879, the Folies-Bergère hired a new conductor-composer, Léon Vasseur, but he wrote incidental music, not ballets.36 Hiring Messager to compose ballets had set a new trend at the Folies-Bergère. From 1879 on, the hall increasingly staged ballets written by composers not yet associated with the hall who had shown promise during their studies or who had a record of accomplishment in other theaters—composers who could call attention to Sari’s music hall as a venue for light theater. In 1882, a twenty-year-old graduate of the Conservatoire by the name of Louis Ganne gained entry into theatrical composition with a contract for the score to Les sources du Nil.37 In the same year, the popular operetta composer and songwriter Louis Desormes had his first ballet produced by the Folies-Bergère.38 Both would later play central roles in the development of music-hall ballet in the 1890s. The shift away from composers specializing in light songs and dance tunes toward composers skilled in the art of writing for the theater was pivotal, both for the Folies-Bergère and for the future of music-hall ballet. Sari’s focus on theatrical genres such as ballet signaled his intent to transform his hall from a circus-style café-concert into an upscale variety theater with artistic credibility. He acted too early and too quickly—as his ill-fated series of orchestral concerts in 1881 proved, Paris’s artistic elite could not see past the Folies-Bergère’s former popular orientation—but he recognized the potential for ballet to build a bridge between the hall’s old notoriety and the desired upscale tone. After his concert series failed, Sari returned to staging six ballets per year. Ballet could attract a bourgeois audience by projecting a sense of artistry while appealing to the voyeuristic tastes of his loyal clientele. By the time Sari was forced to sell his hall, the Folies-Bergère had become a well-established venue whose reputation depended in large part on its ballets.

Budding Talent: Composing for a Genre on the Rise, 1886–95 The Folies-Bergère’s new management in 1886 did not immediately alter the hall’s hiring policies, but there were subtle signs of impending change. Like Sari, Marchand recognized ballet’s potential to attract a broad audience that

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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64 chapter three included moneyed socialites, and though he produced fewer new ballets each year than did Sari, each successive production grew substantially in scale. As he allotted ballet an increasingly prominent place in the hall’s programming, he engaged more illustrious composers to create those ballets. Marchand’s first seasons already showed hints of his intention to hire composers of greater renown. Between 1886 and 1888, Marchand commissioned most of his scores from composers who had already written for the Folies-Bergère: Ganne and Desormes produced the ballets on Marchand’s inaugural program; Ganne wrote another the following year, Desormes returned to compose three new works, and Hubans wrote one. Yet only in retrospect can one see Marchand’s commissions from 1886 to 1888 as a sign of a new trend in ballet composition. Until the mid-1890s, continuity with earlier musical practices was more obvious than innovation. Marchand may have solicited scores from a few experienced composers, but, like Sari, he also hired several young composers and popular music specialists. Ganne had proven to be a talented dramatic composer with Les sources du Nil, but he was still very young when he wrote Volapük in 1886 and Fleurs et plumes in 1887. Henri Cieutat, who in 1887 wrote the score for one of the Folies-Bergère’s first full-fledged pantomime-ballets, Le château de Mac-Arrott, had shown promise as an operetta composer for popular theaters; but at twenty-six, he, too, was relatively new to the scene.39 The same was true of Eugène d’Harcourt, the composer of one of the Folies-Bergère’s first contemporary sporting ballets, Paris-turf. Although d’Harcourt had already composed a handful of sacred and secular works, he was new to the world of theatrical composition and had graduated from the Paris Conservatoire only four years earlier.40 Between 1890 and 1893, Marchand also commissioned two now obscure composers, Gaston Paulin and Alfred Dubruck, both of whom devoted their careers to light vocal and theatrical music.41 The most salient continuity between Sari’s and Marchand’s management practices was their dependence on in-house staff to compose ballet music.42 More than half of the ballets staged at the Folies-Bergère between 1886 and 1895 had scores composed by the hall’s longtime conductor, Louis Desormes. Like Métra, Desormes had a vast and loyal following prior to assuming the post of conductor for the Folies-Bergère, and he was a doyen of popular music. He had already composed scores for nine ballets for the Folies-Bergère in the early to mid-1880s, a dozen operettas staged in other music halls in the 1870s, and hundreds of popular songs and piano pieces. In addition, he was a well-known conductor for café-concerts and popular theaters.43 After assuming the post of music director at the Folies-Bergère, he went on to write scores for twenty-four more ballets. Desormes wrote lightweight, conventional ballet scores that incorporated every musical-dramatic cliché of the time, yet he did so with great skill and panache. His ballets were a mainstay of the genre and central to its development.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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creative artists 65 Conductor-composers formed the backbone of music-hall ballet composition at other Parisian halls as well. The first ballet staged by the Casino de Paris/Nouveau-Théâtre in 1890 featured music by the famous Italian ballet composer Romualdo Marenco, known to Parisians from performances of his ballets at the Eden-Théâtre. This production was not, however, a music-hall ballet per se, but one created for the Nouveau-Théâtre, a full-fledged theater with artistic pretensions and ambitions at odds with those of the Casino, which sought only to divert. When the two split into independent venues the following year, hiring practices followed those typical of each type of venue. The Nouveau-Théâtre went on to present ballets with scores by such notable composers as Messager, Georges Street, and Gabriel Pierné, and the Casino de Paris fell back on its conductor, Henri José, for roughly half of its ballets.44 In all, José provided scores for eight of the Casino’s ballets between 1893 and 1901, as well as arrangements of preexisting music for two revue-ballets.45 At first glance, the Olympia appears to have had a more illustrious roster of composers than the Casino, with few works written by its conductor, Oscar de Lagoanère.46 The Olympia’s custom of employing famous composers to provide ballet scores did not, however, begin until the late 1890s, when the genre was at its height in all three halls. Hiring priorities in fact paralleled those of the Folies-Bergère and the Casino, but within a more condensed time line. Programs for the Olympia’s inaugural spring season in 1893 featured two small-scale ballets: one written by the minor operetta composer Antoine Banès and the other by the salon-music composer Jules Walter.47 Oller then staged works already in the repertoire or requested scores from the Olympia’s conductor, Lagoanère. He brought Léopold Wenzel’s Brighton over from London’s Alhambra in the fall of 1893—Wenzel, the ballet’s composer, was the Alhambra’s conductor—and in 1894 presented Josef Bayer’s Viennese ballet La fée des poupées (Puppenfee) and staged a single new ballet by the minor composer Adolphe David.48 Lagoanère composed two of the three ballets premiered in 1895.

Great Composers in the Golden Age of Music-Hall Ballet, 1895–1901 The 1895–96 season marked a decisive change of direction in music-hall practices. Suddenly, highly experienced and widely celebrated musicians vastly outnumbered in-house conductor-composers and light-music specialists. This shift was in part the result of routine turnover of music-hall personnel. As noted earlier, Desormes gave up his conducting post at the Folies-Bergère around 1895, and in 1896 Lagoanère took on the responsibilities of general director for the Olympia, thus probably reducing the time he could devote to composition. There was, however, a second and more important reason for the move toward commissioning composers not directly associated with the halls: a change in audience preferences as a result of the relative gentrification of music-hall

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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66 chapter three audiences around 1894–95. Desormes, Lagoanère, and José could, after all, have continued to write scores into the late 1890s had it been advantageous for their respective halls. Although it appears from programs that Desormes occasionally returned to conduct the Folies-Bergère orchestra until his death in 1898 and composed three new ballets during this time, all three were staged in the provinces. Lagoanère, who handed over the hall’s administration to the Isola brothers in 1898, remained the hall’s conductor for at least two more years and returned to composing pantomimes and operettas on a regular basis; but his only ballets were two short divertissements. The Casino underwent no administrative upheavals, yet even José, who conducted the orchestra without interruption until the turn of the century, wrote fewer ballet scores after 1895 than he had in the early 1890s. As described in the previous chapter, the Folies-Bergère, the Olympia, and to a lesser extent the Casino had by 1895 become the meeting grounds for Tout-Paris. Since this new clientele bestowed cachet on the halls, which in turn attracted other notables along with a growing stream of international tourists, music-hall directors did everything they could to ensure their loyalty. Just as they hired famous personalities to attract the attention of glamour-loving socialites, they commissioned celebrity composers to entice a theatergoing public primed on operettas and comic operas. It was surely not a coincidence that these composers had the added benefit of lending an otherwise indecorous production an aura of respectability and cultural capital. Music-hall managers may also have commissioned prominent composers for artistic reasons. The composers involved with music-hall ballet in the late 1890s had the skills and talent needed to create the grand productions then in vogue. They could write music in a light style that appealed to lovers of musique légère, but with an originality and vision that brought music-hall ballet in line with the era’s great comic operas. The height of music-hall ballet composition directly coincided with the height of music-hall ballet’s popularity and critical reception, a span of only six years between 1895 and 1901. In the first three seasons of this golden age—from 1895 to 1898—most scores were written by composers celebrated primarily for their comic operas and operettas. Henri Cieutat, Frédéric Toulmouche, and Louis Ganne, who had established their reputations in the music halls in the previous decade, had subsequently made names for themselves as composers of light opera for mainstream theaters.49 The newcomers—Edmond Diet,50 Edmond Missa,51 Victor Roger,52 and Louis Varney53—had achieved fame as operetta and comic opera composers long before their association with the halls. At first glance, administrative priorities in the late 1890s do not appear radically different from those of the beginning of the decade. Many early 1890s music-hall ballet composers had, after all, come to the genre by way of light opera. But there was an appreciable difference between the two forms: prestige.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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creative artists 67 Although several music-hall ballet composers from the early 1890s established their careers writing operettas and comic operas, most had specialized in the lightest forms of the genre. Desormes, Cieutat, Hubans, and Banès, for example, made their names writing operettas for music halls and café-concerts such as the Eldorado or Scala. By the late 1890s, music-hall ballet composers were more frequently involved with Paris’s major lyric theaters. Diet, Missa, Varney, and Roger, the most productive and illustrious of the new music-hall ballet composers in the mid-1890s, had works performed at the Bouffes-Parisiens, Folies-Dramatiques, Nouveautés, Renaissance, and Vaudeville prior to writing music-hall ballets. Missa also had an opera staged at the Opéra-Comique before composing his first ballet. The second group of great music-hall ballet composers—those writing between 1898 and 1901—brought popular ballet to its pinnacle of artistry. Productions were grandiose, but had not yet lost their narrative structure in the quagmire of spectacle that would characterize most works from the 1900s and 1910s. Music-hall ballet could attract the best popular composers, and these composers, in turn, raised music-hall ballet’s status by producing the best examples of the genre.54 The halls saw a veritable parade of celebrity composers during these three short seasons. At the Folies-Bergère, Missa returned to write one ballet; Ganne wrote two; Pfeiffer came over from the Opéra-Comique to write one; and Thomé, who had made his name as a ballet composer at the Eden-Théâtre nearly a decade earlier, wrote another. At the Olympia, Varney, Roger, and Ganne composed new ballets for the hall, along with three new recruits from Paris’s foremost lyrical theaters: Henri Hirschmann, Charles Lecocq, and Paul Vidal. Lecocq had composed stage works for the BouffesParisiens, Renaissance, Nouveautés, Folies-Marigny, and Opéra-Comique; Hirschmann for the Opéra-Comique and Théâtre Lyrique; and Vidal for the Opéra-Comique and Opéra. In 1900 and 1901, even the Casino attracted a couple of major names from the world of light opera: Georges Pfeiffer and Victor Roger.55 The Olympia attracted an especially impressive roster of composers. Its ticket prices remained by far the highest of the three halls, and perhaps due to the proximity of other fashionable, high-end theaters including the Opéra and Opéra-Comique, it continued to draw an audience accustomed to attending performances in Paris’s foremost lyrical theaters—an audience familiar with composers such as Varney, Roger, Lecocq, and Vidal. Even in its heyday, the Folies-Bergère attracted a slightly broader audience that expected frothy entertainment. Although directors brought in accomplished ballet and comic-opera composers who could compete with those of the Olympia, the Folies-Bergère never entirely abandoned its kapellmeister-style structure. The hall continued to rely on its conductor for theatrical and incidental music into the 1910s, filling in the gaps with commissions to promising young composers and specialists of light music. In 1898, for example, the Folies-Bergère’s ballets were

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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68 chapter three written by the young light-music composers André Colomb and Paul Marcelles (pseudonym for Marcel Fournier), and by Gustave Goublier, the conductor of the Eldorado and a composer of songs, instrumental pieces, and operettas for café-concerts and music halls.56 In 1901, three of the hall’s four ballets were composed either by the twenty-six-year-old Franco Alfano, or by the hall’s new conductor, Armand Patusset.57 The Casino, always the most accessible of the three halls with the most consistent audience base, remained the most set in its ways. With rare exceptions, the hall relied on three music-hall ballet composers, including the Casino’s conductor, to write its ballet scores: José, Cieutat, and Toulmouche composed twelve of the hall’s fourteen ballets staged between 1895 and 1901. To some extent, music halls had a more impressive roster of composers at the end of the century than in the 1880s because several composers returned periodically to compose new ballets. Ganne made his name in the halls as an apprentice in 1882, then returned to write new ballets after establishing his name as a composer of comic opera for the city’s major lyrical theaters. Hubans and Banès wrote their first ballets in 1878 and 1883, then composed additional ballet scores several years later at the height of their respective careers. Desormes, who composed his first ballet in 1882, wrote his thirtythird in 1895 while he was the conductor of the Opéra balls and an Officier de l’Académie.58 Cieutat, Toulmouche, José, and Diet all had popular followings after more than a decade of writing ballet scores; and Missa, Roger, and Varney, already celebrities when their works were first performed in the music halls, lent the halls their prestige for several years by composing ballet music on a regular basis after 1895. The combination of the halls’ high standing and their long-running, profitable productions would have encouraged loyalty in composers as it did in librettists.

The Specialist Composer Returns: Late Music-Hall Ballet, 1901–13 After 1901, music-hall ballet began a slow but steady decline. Once a thriving center for ballet, the Folies-Bergère staged fewer and fewer new productions until ballet became no more than a novelty presented for seasons’ openings every two years. Although the Olympia staged ballets for another twelve years, many had been created elsewhere, and the rest were revue-like in structure and aesthetic. The Casino regularly presented ballets until 1909, but few were major works. With the revue raking in tens of thousands of francs a night, ballet was quickly eclipsed. Directors devoted a smaller proportion of funds to productions, critics lost interest, and the best creative artists turned to more profitable or more innovative venues. Ballet music followed suit. With the notable exception of Claude Terrasse— the newest star of the operetta world—the only well-known composers to contribute new scores were Varney, Ganne, Hirschmann, and Vidal, who had all

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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creative artists 69 composed ballets for music halls. Jane Vieu, music-hall ballet’s lone female composer, had previously composed incidental theatrical music and orchestral pieces in addition to songs and operettas, but she was not a household name.59 Nor was Justin Clérice, though he, too, had written several comic operas and operettas before composing for the halls.60 Emile Bonnamy, Auguste Bosc, Olivier Cambon, Georges Jouanneau, Léo Pouget, and Henri Dérouville were primarily composers of light music.61 The loss of public and institutional interest in music-hall ballet after 1901 was so complete that little documentation has survived for these last ballet composers. None gained sufficient recognition to be included in contemporary biographical dictionaries, and none has achieved lasting fame. By 1906, the Olympia and Casino even stopped consistently printing the names of composers in their programs, and several were omitted from the performance catalogues published by the French union of dramatic authors. There are also no published scores of music-hall ballets created after 1901.

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Choreographers All music-hall ballets were choreographed by in-house ballet masters and ballet mistresses. Often considered artisans or specialist-technicians, they were the lowest paid of a ballet’s authors and had little status as artists. Their names were frequently omitted from programs and performance catalogues, and they were not always mentioned in the press. A few critics even neglected to name them when praising their dances.62 Yet several who choreographed for the music halls had remarkably long, productive, and influential careers, and were instrumental in carrying ballet forward into a new era. Music-hall choreographers were as versatile as their literary and musical colleagues.63 All were former dancers or mimes who turned to choreography after careers as performers in Europe’s major theaters; all taught and choreographed for both state-supported and commercial venues; and all created dances of different types and styles. To some extent, music-hall choreographers were versatile by necessity. Not only did they have to move constantly between different cities and institutions in order to earn a living, they had to respond to the latest trends in Paris and abroad to produce works that would please a novelty-seeking public. But economic necessity also had a rejuvenating effect on ballet. The cross-pollination of ideas made possible by choreographers’ peripatetic careers, combined with a constant drive for innovation, led many to develop a broader conception of what French ballet could look like. Italians such as Carlo Coppi, Alfredo Curti, Giovanni Pratesi, and Achille Balbiani, who created dozens of ballets in Paris and London, both imbued French choreography with Italian elements and contributed to an ongoing exchange of subjects and choreographic ideas between English and French music halls. Mme

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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70 chapter three Mariquita, who moved back and forth between Parisian boulevard theaters, music halls, and opera houses throughout her seventy-year career as a dancer and choreographer, freely combined various approaches to movement and drama in all of her work.

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Between the Boulevard Theater and the Music Hall The first music-hall choreographers came from Paris’s boulevard theaters. Mariquita—then Mlle Mariquita—was still dancing in spectacles staged by the Porte Saint-Martin when she began choreographing divertissements for the Folies-Bergère in the 1870s, and she worked as the ballet mistress for the Théâtre de la Gaîté in the 1880s before taking up the same post at the FoliesBergère a decade later. M. Bertotto, who created ballets at the Folies-Bergère in the 1870s, also choreographed divertissements for boulevard-theater productions, as did Émile Grédelue, who choreographed music-hall ballets in the mid-1880s.64 Henri Justamant likewise had extensive experience in boulevard theaters prior to assuming the post of ballet master for the Folies-Bergère in the late 1880s. The frequent interchange of choreographers between the two types of popular theater continued throughout the history of music-hall ballet. Mme Mariquita worked for both boulevard theaters and music halls into the 1900s, and although most choreographers for the Olympia and the Casino de Paris were of Italian origin, many accepted occasional contracts with venues such as the Porte Saint-Martin and the Gaîté. This is not a coincidence. As seen in the introduction, boulevard-theater ballet was an important forerunner of music-hall ballet and one of its primary aesthetic influences. Although the two grew farther apart as the century drew to a close—music-hall ballet for a time espoused the formal outlines of post-Romantic Opéra ballet while boulevardtheater divertissements moved away from the tenets of academic ballet—certain similarities persisted over several decades. Authors continued to place a premium on spectacle, and choreographers freely mixed popular and classical choreographic elements in both. Connections between the two were to some extent the result of having a similar commercial orientation and audience base, but their other, and arguably more important link, was a shared personnel. The line of influence between the two types of venues was a direct one. Two choreographers who worked for both boulevard theaters and music halls played an important role in shaping the popular dance world at the end of the nineteenth century: Henri Justamant and Mme Mariquita. Édouard Marchand surely thought he had scored a coup when he hired Justamant in 1887. Justamant was then at the end of a long and fruitful career. He had won both popular and critical acclaim and had choreographed for every major theater in Paris, including the Porte Saint-Martin, the Variétés, the Renaissance, the Gaîté, the Châtelet, the Eden-Théâtre, and the Paris Opéra.65 Although

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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creative artists 71 his tenure at the Folies-Bergère lasted only two and a half years, the handful of ballets that he produced between 1887 and 1889 helped raise the hall’s artistic and commercial stature and assured that ballet remained the highlight of its attractions—a project that would be carried on by Mme Mariquita. Mme Mariquita was the most remarkable choreographer in Paris at the turn of the twentieth century.66 It was she who made the Folies-Bergère the leading center for ballet in Paris in the 1890s, and her work in the music hall and at the Opéra-Comique carried ballet forward into the modern era. Mme Mariquita (born Marie Thérèse Gamaleri (?) in Algiers ca. 1840) had a remarkable life and a formidable talent.67 An orphan from an early age, she first eked out a living in Paris as a character dancer at the Funambules and the Palais Royal, and later at the Bouffes-Parisiens.68 She received ballet training in her early teens, probably from Antoine Paul, and joined the ballet corps of the Opéra in 1858 at the rank of sujet de la danse.69 Her stint at the Opéra was brief. Ill-suited to the national theater’s rigid atmosphere and hierarchy, she left after only two months to perform as a soloist in Madrid.70 She returned to Paris around 1860 to dance in the famous spectacles of the Porte Saint-Martin, and in the early 1870s also danced in the first Folies-Bergère ballets.71 Mariquita’s formative experiences as a dancer introduced her to a range of choreographic possibilities. According to her contemporaries, she could perform national character dances, exotic dances, social dances, and ballet in a danse d’école idiom, apparently with equal skill. She would later use all of them in her own ballets. Mariquita began her choreographic career with a ballet divertissement for the Folies-Bergère in 1871.72 Her extraordinary talent as a creative artist was evident from the beginning and she quickly became a coveted choreographer. The Folies-Bergère commissioned her for several more ballet divertissements in the 1870s, including an 1874 production titled Les Fausses almées that critics continued to mention two decades later in reviews of her ballets for the Opéra-Comique, and contracts began to flow in from Paris’s leading boulevard theaters.73 In 1880 alone, she arranged divertissements for the theater in the Skating hall of the rue Blanche, she worked as a ballet mistress for the Châtelet, and she was awarded the post of ballet mistress at the Gaîté.74 In 1890, with a decade of experience creating ballets, she succeeded Justamant as the ballet mistress of the Folies-Bergère. From the early 1890s through the 1910s, Mme Mariquita was always in high demand. She had an exceptional visibility and status, and skillfully mixed dramatic flare and innovative creativity with business acumen and management skills.75 She continued to choreograph popular dance numbers for the Gaîté until the early 1900s; she choreographed all of the Folies-Bergère’s ballets between 1890 and 1904 and periodically between 1904 and 1913; and from 1898 to 1918 she was the ballet mistress for the Théâtre national de l’Opéra-Comique. In 1900, she was also named the official choreographer for the Paris Exposition’s Palais de la Danse, where she staged a range of

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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72 chapter three works including classical ballet, character dances, and reconstructions of eighteenth-century dance.76 Although Mme Mariquita’s work made some concessions to house styles—she created titillating extravaganzas for the popular theaters and academically oriented though still sometimes sensuous dances for national theaters—her broad knowledge of historical and contemporary dance gave her the ability to negotiate multiple choreographic languages simultaneously. Mme Mariquita kept abreast of the latest trends in dance and had a gift for absorbing current fashions and reformulating them in her own aesthetic with a creative, dramatic flair.

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Between Opera House and Music Hall Mme Mariquita’s appointment as the ballet mistress for the Opéra-Comique marked the summit of her career. She was officially recognized for her skills as a choreographer, and she was regularly celebrated in the press for her artistry. She also grew increasingly outspoken about the need to dissociate ballet from what she felt were stilted academic formulae, and she created several ballets that were alternately lauded and criticized for not fitting received notions of what theatrical dance should look like. Whether or not this translated into innovative choreography in the music halls is entirely speculative. Mariquita’s final musichall ballet, Montmartre (1913), closely resembled ballets staged at the OpéraComique in the same years, at least in terms of dramatic structure. It had a far more complex story line than any other late music-hall ballet, with a quantity of symbolic imagery at odds with music-hall fare of the era. It is therefore tempting to imagine that Mariquita created a complex choreographic drama to match the imaginative scenario. Unfortunately, there is not enough evidence to draw any real conclusions. The only clear link with “art-house” ballet in Montmartre resides in the casting of the lead dancers. As with her penultimate Folies-Bergère ballet, Stella (1911), a male ballet dancer partnered a female ballerina.77 Madame Mariquita served as the principal link between the rarified establishment of the state opera house and the commercial enterprise of the boulevard theater and music hall, but others also bridged the two worlds. Mme Mariquita’s predecessor, Justamant, held the post of ballet master at the Opéra for one season in the late 1860s, and her successor, Mme Stichel, was the Opéra’s ballet mistress in 1910/11.78 Joseph Hansen, who led the Paris Opéra ballet from 1889 to 1905, had for the preceding three years been the ballet master of the Alhambra Theatre of Varieties, London.79 Opéra dancers also occasionally created ballets for music halls. M. Bucourt and M. Ladam choreographed one each—a new production of La fée des poupées (1899) and La Camargo (1901)—and Berthe Bernay created three highly acclaimed spectacle ballets—Barbe-Bleue, Néron, and Les sept péchés capitaux—and two divertissements—Folles amours and Conte de mai—while ballet mistress at the Olympia in 1898/99.80

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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creative artists 73 Although music-hall ballet had many structural and stylistic points in common with Opéra ballets, a paucity of documentation again leaves open the question of whether ballets created by choreographers familiar with the academic precepts of theaters such as the Opéra were any more or less “classical” than those by other choreographers.81 Even tracing the use of ballet’s most academic element—the ballet variation—yields few clues. Ballet variations that adhered to an academic idiom had been de rigeur in music-hall ballets since the 1870s and could be seen in virtually all French ballets, regardless of the choreographer’s origins. They were also as much a part of Italian and boulevard-theater ballet as they were a holdover from state-theater forms of the genre.

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From Italy to Paris to England and Back After the success of the Eden-Théâtre’s ballets in the 1880s, Italian choreographers suddenly found themselves in high demand in Paris. Some were recruited directly from Italy, but most came to the Parisian halls either through the Eden-Théâtre or after working in English music halls. Egidio Rossi, the Casino’s choreographer from 1893 to 1897, was trained at La Scala, Milan, and performed as a premier danseur for both La Scala and Paris’s Eden-Théâtre. After dancing at the Eden, he taught at La Scala then returned to Paris as a ballet master, choreographing for the Porte Saint-Martin and Châtelet before taking the post of ballet master at the Casino.82 He later choreographed ballets for the Alhambra in London. Giovanni Pratesi, one of Rossi’s successors at the Casino, and Achille Balbiani, a choreographer for the Olympia, both performed at La Scala before turning to choreography, and both made the transition to Parisian ballet through the Eden-Théâtre.83 Furthermore, both had experience in English music halls and Parisian popular theaters. Pratesi choreographed productions for London’s Alhambra, and Balbiani choreographed ballets for London’s Covent Garden and Palace Theatre of Varieties, and Paris’s Paradis-Latin and Châtelet.84 The influx of Italian choreographers into Parisian music halls prolonged the influence that Italian ballet had on French ballet beyond the closing of the Eden (see chapter 5), but in a twist that accentuates the international nature of late nineteenth-century ballet, Italian choreographers also provided a direct link with English music-hall ballet. Parisian and London music halls had a history of keeping tabs on each other, watching for new ideas and copying the most profitable shows. Similar titles and topics crop up on both sides of the Channel throughout the 1880s, 1890s, and 1900s, with the occasional ballet restaged in its entirety. Such exchanges served to alter the course of Parisian music-hall ballet at different periods in its history. An English propensity toward choreographic impressions of contemporary pleasures led, for example, to the development of a French variety of hedonistic contemporary ballet in 1890s Paris. In the years after 1900, Parisian music-hall ballet

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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74 chapter three seemed to grow closer in structure and aesthetic to English music-hall ballet, as many productions consisted of series of tableaux and dances connected by the thinnest of narrative threads. The popularity of the music-hall revue was the main catalyst for the demise of pantomime-ballet in the halls, but English music-hall ballet also played a role in the shift from narrative ballet to episodic danced spectacles. One choreographer in particular may have been responsible for pushing Parisian music-hall ballet in the direction of the revue: Alfredo Curti. Curti was the principal choreographer for Parisian music halls between 1902 and 1910. The Isola brothers owned both the Folies-Bergère and Olympia during these years, and Curti produced ballets for both. He staged all of the Folies-Bergère’s ballets from 1902 to 1905, and staged ballets at the Olympia from 1900 to 1902, 1904 to 1905, in 1906, and again in 1910.85 During these same years, he also produced several ballets for the Alhambra, some of which he restaged at the Olympia.86 Although he was by no means the only choreographer to present ballets with more spectacle than narrative, Curti’s productions were among the most revue-like, with elements of pastiche that recall English music-hall ballets of the same period.87 Antinoa (FB, 1905), for example, broadly outlined Pierrot’s love for Antinoa, but the ballet comprised a series of disjointed scenic tableaux rather than the succession of pantomime or action scenes interspersed with dances as characterized earlier French music-hall ballets. Les saisons de la Parisienne (O, 1905) similarly displayed a far looser concept of ballet than French audiences were accustomed to seeing. The ballet’s “plot”—a love triangle seasoned with clichés—even included dramatic excuses for circus routines similar to the music-hall turns sometimes incorporated into English music-hall ballet.88 It was a music-hall variety show disguised as a ballet. Of course, it is impossible to know whether the house hired a given artist for his or her aesthetic or whether artists adhered to house formulae after their works were accepted for production. All had vested financial interests, and all worked toward selling their creations to as broad a public as possible. The role of the artist within the organization of profitable theater production was complex and remained paradoxical throughout the history of music-hall ballet. At the helm stood the director, who held the purse strings and had final say in all artistic and administrative matters. He had huge sway, yet his decisions regarding individual ballets influenced the course of the genre less than did the individual artists he hired to create the ballets’ stories, music, and gestures. Authors, composers, and choreographers worked within the framework of the institution’s priorities, but their creative energy was indispensable to the work’s outcome and to the evolution of the genre. They may sometimes have adhered to a house style or bent their work to suit the commercial dictates of the time and venue, but they were also imaginative individuals who lent the halls their vision of what popular ballet could or should be.

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Chapter Four

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The Ballet-Divertissement The most prevalent form of music-hall ballet was the divertissement. It was the first type of ballet to be adopted by the Folies-Bergère in the early 1870s, and it remained the hall’s primary choreographic genre for nearly twenty years. Although the Folies-Bergère produced far fewer divertissements after Marchand turned to presenting pantomime-ballets in the late 1880s, the hall, along with the Casino and Olympia, continued to stage them through the 1890s and beyond. Divertissements could also be seen in smaller Parisian music halls and in the many halls that sprang up in the provinces in the wake of the Folies-Bergère’s success. Together, French music halls produced hundreds of divertissements between the 1870s and 1910s.1 Music-hall divertissements were typically short, lightweight ballets with little or no plot. Most consisted of loosely structured series of dances accompanied by music of utmost melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic simplicity. They were often thematically and stylistically derivative, and they did not require concentrated attention or any previous knowledge of the conventions of ballet. Despite this simplicity, their importance to music-hall ballet cannot be overstated. Divertissements constitute a self-contained, if constantly fluctuating, repertoire with direct links to various contemporary forms of ballet, from divertissements in large-scale works staged by the Paris Opéra or boulevard theaters to ballets created in English music halls. Although a few features were unique to the divertissement repertoire of a given period, many were either carried over into the large-scale ballets of the 1890s or prompted new developments in music-hall pantomime-ballet. Early divertissements therefore form the context in which music-hall pantomime-ballets were perceived and understood, and our own understanding of popular pantomime-ballet depends in part on a familiarity with the formal structures, topics, musical practices, and visual characteristics of early music-hall divertissements.

The Divertissement at the Folies-Bergère, 1871–82 The Folies-Bergère staged at least sixty divertissements in its initial fifteen years.2 Those from the early 1870s were truly ephemeral; for many, all we know is their title and authors. Nearly all had music composed by the hall’s conductor,

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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76 chapter four Olivier Métra, and most were choreographed by the young Mariquita or by M. Bertotto, who may have been the hall’s ballet mistress and master. Although it is impossible to reconstruct dances in the absence of scores, scenarios, or prose descriptions, titles of these early ballets suggest that they were illustrative numbers that lacked story lines. Between 1871 and 1875, for instance, the hall produced La mer et les cocottes, Clown-ballet, La crevette, La jonquina, Le ballet noir, Les papillons noirs, Champagne, Cigarette, La leçon de danse, Les fausses almées, and Les fleurs. Cast lists printed in the press likewise point to simple danced divertissements. Ballets from these years usually featured a première danseuse and a small corps, with few named characters that would have implied a narrative. This is not to say that early music-hall ballets were entirely devoid of pantomime. Although not particularly illuminating, titles such as Clown-ballet, La crevette, La jonquina, Les papillons noirs, Cigarette, and Les fleurs were more descriptive than the generic title of “divertissement” given to short ballets in the 1890s. Clowns, shrimp, butterflies, bees, and flowers may have done nothing more than dance in costumes that signaled their character type, but it is more likely that they also performed at least basic mime. Pantomime was, after all, an integral element of post-Romantic ballet and popular-theater entertainment, and regardless of a work’s length or complexity, it was needed to provide a dramatic context for the various dances.3 Divertissements with titles that implied a story line, such as La leçon de danse and Les fausses almées, may have included several pantomime scenes. What the first music-hall ballets might have lacked was virtuosity in the academic idiom. Surviving synopses point to a predominance of character dancing. Dances for lovers, dolls, or flowers might have been rooted in nineteenth-century danse d’école, but they might also have been based on national or folk traditions, or they might have been freely conceived exotic or comic numbers. Most dancers were French and probably lacked the rigorous technical training associated with the ballerinas schooled in Italy (étoiles at the Paris Opéra during this period were usually Italian trained). Even Mariquita, one of the best French dancers of the era and the principal dancer in at least one of the 1870s ballets that she choreographed, lacked the technical virtuosity of the Italian ballerinas hired to star in music-hall ballets two decades later.4 Synopses, four published scores, and a prose account by J.-K. Huysmans provide a comparatively vivid impression of music-hall divertissements from the late 1870s. Most were pictorial vignettes staged between athletes, acrobatic numbers, and novelty acts. All were short—none played for more than half an hour—and all relied on dramatic formulae to bind series of dances and tableaux. Titles give a sense of the variety on offer. Between November 1876 and February 1877, the Folies-Bergère staged six ballets: Les faunes, La Posada, Les joujoux, Noce bohème, Les fiancés du Béarn, and Une nuit vénitienne. La Posada was probably an exotic ballet, perhaps set in a Spanish inn; Noce bohème presumably depicted wedding celebrations; and Les fiancés du Béarn might have detailed

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the ballet-divertissement 77 the union of two lovers in southwestern France. From synopses we know that in Les joujoux, toys come to life and dance around a shop, while in Une nuit vénitienne, locals dance on a Venetian bridge. Les faunes, a pastoral divertissement, featured flirtatious dancing wood nymphs and fauns in amorous dalliances.5 The synopses also provide evidence of the narrative simplicity of these ballets. Une Nuit vénitienne, for instance, consisted of a succession of dances set against a picturesque rustic backdrop.

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On a bridge that could be the Pont-des-Soupirs, two young lords, masked and wearing stone grey coats, serenade young noblewomen. Behind them, the Lazzaroni, fishermen and women, come listen. Then begins the joyful dancing of local children who are soon joined by lords and ladies. . . . A tarantella is followed by a solemn dance, in turn replaced by a high-spirited ensemble dance. Gaiety peaks and the curtain falls amid applause.6

Les joujoux (1876), described by a critic as an inconsequential Christmas ballet restaged for the holidays, likewise featured a series of dances loosely connected by their toy-shop setting.7 It delivered a surfeit of colorful sets and costumes but had virtually no plot: a fairy doll awakens the dolls, pierrots, soldiers, and other toys sitting on shelves in a toy shop, and all dance the night away. Only one section toward the end of the ballet was entirely mimed: the shopkeeper returns, tries to order the toys back onto the shelves, and is rendered immobile by a wave of the fairy’s wand.8 A published piano score of André Messager’s 1878 ballet, Fleur d’oranger, provides further confirmation that 1870s music-hall ballets rarely went beyond illustrative danced numbers. Although highly praised and later touted as one of the Folies-Bergère’s most memorable early ballets, Fleur d’oranger was a divertissement in the strictest formal sense.9 The ballet is short—only twenty-one pages in piano reduction—and has no dramatic intrigue: a young shepherd woos his shepherdess through a series of dances.10 Messager’s music consists of self-contained numbers structurally and stylistically appropriate for dancing, with little music that could support mimed action. Each of these numbers is made up of periodic repetitions of phrases in simple binary and ternary forms, always in a single key, tempo, and time signature. Textures are clear, and themes are light and danceable (ex. 4.1). There are a few perfunctory segments of contrasting music, but only to set the scene or announce the arrival of a new character (ex. 4.2).11 There were, however, exceptions to the model described above. Hervé’s Les sphinx, written one year after Fleur d’oranger, provides a counterexample. Les sphinx followed the quest of a young Egyptian astronomer, Chéops, for his astral sweetheart, Diamantine. Although short and subtitled “divertissement,” it had a comparatively even distribution of pantomime and dance, and narrative was almost as important as choreography.12 Foreshadowing later musichall ballets, it also placed a premium on spectacle. The first tableau featured

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Example 4.1. André Messager, Fleur d’oranger, “Valse des bergères”

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the ballet-divertissement 79

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Example 4.2. André Messager, Fleur d’oranger, “Entrée des chasseurs”

“Egyptian” and lascivious dances performed to distract and seduce the lovesick Chéops, and a boulevard-theater-style scene in which the divine Diamantine descends from the heavens riding in a giant seashell. The second tableau, set in an Egyptian pyramid guarded by sphinxes, treated audiences to a series of colorful displays. At the break of day, the sphinxes awaken, stretch, and perform a grotesque “ballet of savage movements.” Chéops soon appears, guided by an old fakir who has offered his services, and slips past the guardian sphinxes while playing seductive tunes on a golden harp. Once inside, the two discover a glittering fairy-tale scene of bewitching precious stones, which descend from their platforms and waltz around them. The sphinxes and their queen, less enthralled with their visitors and

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80 chapter four angered by the trick played on them, descend upon the men and viciously tear into them. But Chéops and the fakir are saved by Diamantine, queen of the precious stones. Diamantine and Chéops are soon united in a passionate embrace as dancers swirl around them, and the fakir is rewarded for bringing them together with four beautiful jewel-women of his own. With its multiple seductive dances, a reward of no fewer than four beauties for the old fakir, and a plethora of alluring dancing jewels, the ballet was clearly designed as a fantasy for a predominantly male audience. Yet the fact that it had a plot, albeit a thin one, signaled the beginning of a shift in orientation for creators of music-hall ballets. So, too, did the music. While always fittingly popular in tone, Hervé’s score transformed trivial ephemera into a notable, if modest, ballet. Hervé paid close attention to the scenario and composed music that was colorful, dramatic, and stylistically appropriate for each tableau or dance. His dramatic music was especially remarkable: he paid as much attention to scenic details as later composers would when writing the grand ballets of the 1890s.13

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Naughty or Nice? While the title of the Folies-Bergère’s first divertissement, La mer et les cocottes, calls to mind promiscuous young women in swimwear, most early titles and synopses hint at mere coquetry rather than explicit sexual content. Les sphinx clearly included several sensuous dances and scenes of seduction, but Les joujoux, Une nuit vénitienne, Les faunes, and Fleur d’oranger seem to have depicted little more than the occasional flirtation. Nonetheless, these ballets must have had a sensuous component. Since all were performed in a venue that openly doubled as the meeting point for prostitutes and their clients, one would expect the ballets to be the symbolic expression of the carnal activities taking place around them. In many cases, divertissements probably did include a sensuous, or even salacious, component, but it was a visual one not entirely dependent on plot. Synopses and titles give only a partial account of a work’s content. Contemporary descriptions and imagery offer conflicting views. Huysmans’s portrayal of an early music-hall ballet in his 1879 prose sketch of the Folies-Bergère serves as testimony to the layering of visual sensuousness over a commonplace exotic divertissement.14 He begins by characterizing the show as unsophisticated entertainment performed by amateurish “dancing girls” of dubious extraction and talent, and invokes the time-honored association of dance with women of ill repute: The ballet begins. The scenery vaguely suggests the inside of a seraglio, full of hooded women who waddle about like she-bears. A fancy-dress Ottoman, head wrapped in a turban and mouth furnished with a chibouk, cracks his whip. The hoods fall away, revealing dancing girls, enlisted from the

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the ballet-divertissement 81 depths of some suburb, who start to skip around to common dance-hall music, enlivened from time to time by the tune of “Old Bugeaud’s Cap,” no doubt introduced into this mazurka to justify the arrival of a bevy of women dressed like spahis.15

Huysmans then outlines the ballet’s formal danced divertissement performed by a classically trained ballerina and ballet corps. Self-enclosed divertissements were normally the segment of a music-hall ballet that came closest to academic dance and to state-theater practices. Huysmans’s portrayal, however, implies that even these could look crude. His description of midriffbaring costumes and writhing movements suggests that the role of the corps dancers was to expose their bodies rather than inspire awe through dance. Although a star ballerina’s costume was normally more circumspect than those worn by corps dancers, Huysmans insinuated that between her garish adornments and melodramatic movements, the overall effect of her variation was equally flashy and cheap. It’s at this moment, under the streams of electric light that flood the stage, that a whirlpool of white tulle appears, spattered with blue fire and with naked flesh writhing at the centre; then the première danseuse, recognizable by her silk leggings, does a little pointe work on her toes, shakes the false sequins that surround her like a ring of golden dots, leaps up and collapses into her skirts, simulating a fallen flower, petals on the ground and stalk in the air.16

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The sketch ends with the most titillating sight of all: the performance of male roles by women in travesty. As Huysmans describes, the ritual appearance of these women, eroticized in tight-fitting male costumes, was for many the favorite feature of popular ballets. But all this bank-holiday orientalism bursting like a loud grand finale cannot distract the connoisseur, who, out of all these great lumps of women rhythmically shaking themselves silly, is interested only in one, the one dressed as a spahi officer, with her large, billowing blue pantaloons, her dainty red boots, her gold-braided spencer and her little scarlet waistcoat, skin-tight, moulding her breasts and showing off their erect tips. She dances like a goat, but she is adorable and common, with her braided kepi, her wasp waist, her large backside, her retroussé nose, and her look of pleasantly roguish tom-boy.17

Without Huysmans’s colorful description, a synopsis of this same ballet would no doubt appear as innocuous as that of Une nuit vénitienne or Les joujoux. If these ballets had a titillating element, it was a visual one, and not dependent on narrative.18 Images of music-hall dancers, in contrast to ballet synopses, often suggest that the Folies-Bergère’s divertissements were little more than leg shows. Posters depict dancers and actors kicking up their skirts, wearing skintight outfits, or exposing their ample breasts (fig. 4.1) These were no doubt exaggerated

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Figure 4.1. Folies-Bergère poster for Sur la plage, printed by Emile Lévy, 1883. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn ENT DN- 1 [LEVY, Emile /12]-FT 6).

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the ballet-divertissement 83 to catch the attention of passers-by, offering more bare flesh than the would-be bourgeois hall could deliver, yet they reflected what patrons hoped to see, and confirm that audiences expected more prurience than plot when they entered the music hall.19 A collection of portraits of Folies-Bergère dancers attributed to the House of Nadar provides another fascinating glimpse into the aesthetic of early musichall ballet.20 The photographs show dancers in costumes that range from conventional knee-length tutus to cinched bodices with short skirts. In a series of portraits ostensibly representing the Folies-Bergère’s 1877 divertissement Les abeilles, Victoria Laisne, Pauline Levesque, and Mlle Brambilla pose in bumblebee outfits that consist of nothing more than fitted corsets over body stockings adorned with a skimpy drapery that serves as a skirt (fig. 4.2). Although it is possible that these studio photographs were intended as mildly erotic cabinet cards and did not reflect what dancers wore on the stage of the Folies-Bergère, an etching by R. Lamy on the cover of a published waltz from Les abeilles shows nine dancers in exactly the same costumes as those worn by Laisne in Nadar’s portrait (fig. 4.3). The Folies-Bergère’s dancers probably did at times wear such revealing clothing. These were no more audacious than costumes worn by dancers in boulevard-theater spectacles at the Théâtre de la Gaîté or the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin.21 In the end, the actual level of undress is irrelevant. As advertisement posters, photographs, and illustrations confirm, early music-hall divertissements depended for their success at least in part on voyeurism. Whether or not Nadar’s photographs and Lamy’s etching reflect what women wore on the stage of the Folies-Bergère, such imagery helped set the tone of the FoliesBergère’s ballets and played an important role in a complex game of suggestion and titillation, stimulating the viewer’s imagination and creating an aura of permissiveness.

From Divertissement to Ballet: 1882–90 The 1880s can best be summed up as a transitional period for ballet at the Folies-Bergère. Productions grew larger in scale, and divertissements that featured successions of dances with thin narrative threads gradually gave way to ballets with more elaborate plots and roughly equal proportions of pantomime and dance. Works were increasingly subtitled “ballet” rather than “divertissement,” and some productions even sported the subtitle “pantomime-ballet.”22 The shift toward expanded proportions was, however, never entirely linear, and to some extent, changes in subtitles reflect the economic interests of Léon Sari and Édouard Marchand rather than any real change in scale and dramatic structure. Although both advertised ever-more-impressive productions, 1880s ballets did not, as a general rule, have the grand scale or developed narratives

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Figure 4.2. Nadar Studios, Victoria Laisne in Les abeilles, 1877. Médiathèque de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine (APNADAR020371). © Ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

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the ballet-divertissement 85

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Figure 4.3. R. Lamy, cover illustration from Charles Hubans, Les abeilles, “Valse brillante.” Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn VM12 G-6352).

of 1890s pantomime-ballets. If one were to define 1880s music-hall ballet using strict generic markers, most would remain in the broad category of the divertissement. Critics rarely considered them important enough on a dramatic level to warrant reviews, and the Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques only occasionally included titles of 1880s ballets in their catalogues of new French theatrical repertoire.23

Subjects for 1880s Ballets The Folies-Bergère staged a slightly broader range of ballet subjects in the 1880s than in the 1870s. Romantic comedies and amorous intrigues predominated as they would in subsequent decades, followed in prevalence by comedies in exotic settings, fairy tales and fantasies, and contemporary ballets depicting fashionable pleasures. The one constant, regardless of a ballet’s story line, was a propensity toward sensuousness. Romantic comedies tended to rely on the timeworn premise of two young lovers uniting after overcoming an obstacle, but the standard trajectory of lovers separated, then betrothed,

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86 chapter four served as a backdrop for scenes of flirtation and seduction rather than as a mirror of bourgeois values. For example, in the 1881 Fragonard-era rustic divertissement Les bonbons, ou Le fidèle berger, a pretty shepherdess eventually regains the affections of her flirtatious shepherd husband, but only after his fidelity is tested by seductive and scantily dressed dancing candies.24 Occasionally, a divertissement presented flirtations or scenes of undress without the cover of romance and with little dramatic imperative. Sur la plage (1883) begins with a seaside tableau of fisherwomen asleep on a beach by a calm sea. They awaken and dance together. After gathering their nets, they join a group of women in swimsuits who emerge from their cabins to dance. When the swimmers realize that they are being watched by a group of dandies, they return to their cabins to dress. The gentlemen descend onto the beach and, though disappointed to find the swimmers gone, happily dance with the fisherwomen. Some fishermen suddenly appear and are angered to discover their wives dancing with other men. But a fight is dispelled when the fishermen are duped into thinking that their wives were merely giving the swimmers time to get dressed. The swimmers join the group, all is forgiven, and all dance together. Ballets with exotic themes provided additional opportunities for exhibiting the young, nubile women who populated the ballet corps. On the more restrained side was the 1882 divertissement Les marionettes javanaises, set in a Javanese coastal village at the foot of a sultan’s palace and gardens. The divertissement included ensemble dances for local fisherwomen awaiting their pearlfishermen husbands’ return from sea, and dances for a bayadère who performed during royal festivities. The remainder of the ballet consisted of various dances and crowd scenes, festivities, and choreographed conflicts performed by the fishermen and their wives, by guards, and by animated puppets. La pile du calife, also staged in 1882, seems slightly steamier. Set in a sultan’s harem, the ballet showcased provocative dances by beautiful women in luxurious tableaux. In the first scene, concubines of international origins wearing the costumes of their native homelands lounge about on the sultan’s divans, smoking, drinking, and eating. Two almées then perform dances accompanied by the sultan’s eunuchs (presumably in travesty), and a visiting naval officer (again in travesty) dances a pas de deux with the sultan’s French concubine.25 Exotic ballets were not always sensuous. At least one, an 1883 ballet titled Tohu-Bohu, leaned toward slapstick comedy. Set on a remote island, TohuBohu called for various grotesque dances by cannibals who capture a young European couple that has unintentionally wandered into their kingdom. The highlights of the ballet were a savage cortège and a self-contained divertissement called for by the king of savages with dances performed by the captured couple—a comical twist on the exotic dances so often incorporated into nineteenth-century French ballets as entertainment for European royalty. A few 1880s ballets edged toward the bizarre, featuring insects and animals as the main protagonists. At first glance, Les mouches de la Saint-Jean (1883)

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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the ballet-divertissement 87 seems like a commonplace ballet about a poor boy in love with a wealthy girl, whose romance is assisted by a beggar who turns out to be a fairy. But it had a peculiar twist: after the boy gives the old beggar woman something to eat, the latter reveals herself to be the queen of the flies, and help for the boy arrives via a swarm of flies sent to break up his beloved’s arranged marriage to another. Les sauterelles (1887) featured a cast of insects. The ballet opens with youngsters chasing and capturing grasshoppers, which are left hanging from nearby bushes. After the grasshoppers are freed from their nets by passing beetles, they turn on their human captors, pricking, biting, and scratching them. After joyful dances and a love scene between two of the freed grasshoppers, the ballet ends with a wild bug dance.26 Several roles in Les lapins (1884) and Cocorico (1884) were performed in animal costumes. Les lapins, a ballet about hunters and their women partners, had ensemble dances and solos for rabbits and hares. Cocorico narrated a day in the life of a group of chickens in a loose series of pantomimed tableaux liberally interspersed with dances.27 It included solo dances for a rooster; various ensemble dances for roosters, chickens, and chicks; a comic dance for a cook; a battle between rival roosters; a cortège of chickens bearing an egg; the emergence from the egg of a new chick; a scuffle between the chickens and the cook; and an ensemble finale for dancing chickens celebrating the imprisonment of the cook. The 1880s also saw the first examples of what would later become one of the defining and most profitable types of music-hall entertainment: topical ballets featuring contemporary pleasures, recognizable locales, and fashionable people.28 In 1882, the Folies-Bergère staged Le grand prix de Paris, a divertissement about bookmakers, gamblers, and the elegant spectators of horse races. Set in Paris in front of le Moulin de la Galette, it seems from circumstantial evidence to have depicted Parisians in contemporary dress milling about, flirting, and generally having a good time. Sur la plage, produced the following year, falls into the same category. If Emile Lévy’s poster may be used as evidence, the ballet centered on bathers at a popular seaside resort disporting in the latest figure-hugging swimsuits (see fig. 4.1).29 Though few and far between, these early topical ballets whetted Parisians’ appetites for self-reflexive entertainments and set a precedent for the flurry of contemporary ballets in the 1890s. A last collection of 1880s music-hall ballets defies classification. In these productions, character and popular dances, comic or dramatic scenes, battles or arguments, flirtations and seductions, and cortèges or parades were thrown together in confusing disarray for no other purpose than to present a variety of amusing vignettes. Au bois (1883), for instance, included a hoop dance (pas de cerceaux), a quadrille, a contradance, and a cancan, drinking scenes among college boys, and arguments between unfaithful newlyweds, all without any overriding plot or theme. In Les deux coqs, the children of two competing tavern owners fall in love, escape together, try to join the circus, are found, punished,

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88 chapter four forgiven, and all are reconciled amid disputes between inn owners, dances for peasants in the village square, the chaotic arrival and grand march of street entertainers, an ensemble dance for all assembled in the square, performances by the touring circus, dances for the young lovers dressed up as circus performers, various scenes of reconciliation, and a final ensemble finale. Like the earliest music-hall divertissements and like the later revue, the point of these ballets was not to tell a story but to amuse through dance and stage spectacle.

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Divertissement or Pantomime-Ballet? While the plot lines of 1880s music-hall ballets mark them as divertissements, the choreographic and musical structures of these same ballets suggest that not all were mere danced numbers. Even before Marchand took over as director and promoted the creation of large-scale pantomime-ballet, the structural division between the divertissement and the pantomime-ballet had begun to collapse. Approximately half of the manuscript scenarios for 1880s ballets stored in the censors’ files of the Archives nationales are very short: no more than pretexts for dances.30 These scenarios lack the detailed instructions for stage action and gestures that characterize 1890s librettos. Yet the remaining half of the scenarios collected in the same file resemble short pantomime-ballets, with developed plots and a dramatic structure that allowed for mimed action and dance in roughly equal proportions. Divertissement scores provide further evidence that while some early musichall ballets deserve their transient fate, at least a few were well-wrought, if smallscale, choreographed dramatic productions. As seen above, Hervé’s score for Les sphinx not only includes nearly as much music for action scenes and pantomimic tableaux as for self-contained dances, but its pantomime music pays marked attention to the dramatic needs of the scenario.31 Desormes’s score for Mars et Vénus is lightweight and unpretentious, built almost entirely on tonic and dominant chords, but the characters are musically delineated and contrasted, and stage action is carefully matched by evocative musical writing. Louis Ganne’s score for Les sources du Nil is even more evocative and dramatically wrought, and could be termed a miniature pantomime-ballet.32 Les sources du Nil provides a good illustration of the moveable border between the divertissement and the pantomime-ballet in the 1880s. It is subtitled “divertissement,” and at first glance, it looks like a standard divertissement. The scenario is straightforward and lacks drama: an explorer and his men lose their way during an expedition to find the source of the Nile and are saved by the Nile fairy and her undines.33 The ballet’s length, choreographic structure, and music, however, belie the designation of divertissement. At forty-seven pages in piano reduction, Les sources du Nil is as long as several of the one-act pantomime-ballets staged later in the century, and roughly twice the length of most divertissements. Scale alone was enough for an author to

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the ballet-divertissement 89 designate a work a “ballet” or “pantomime-ballet” rather than “divertissement,” or for a work to be taken seriously by theater critics. While in this case greater length did not mean greater dramatic complexity, Les sources du Nil followed the formal layout of a pantomime-ballet. Both the text and music reveal a near parity of drama and dance—pantomime makes up slightly more than half of the ballet—and different kinds of dances are interwoven with action scenes and sequences of conversational mime. The ballet also relied on spectacle to a greater extent than did most contemporary divertissements. Although certain elements of the production were utterly conventional— bands of women sporting travesty uniforms cavorting with minimally clothed supernatural creatures in an exotic locale were standard fare—others anticipated by ten to fifteen years the Folies-Bergère’s emphasis on stage effects. One of the attractions of Les sources du Nil was its use of technology. As the curtain rose, a grotto opened dramatically before the audience’s eyes to reveal an electrically lit-up waterside scene. This illuminated grotto later became the backdrop for the ballet’s finale, when the Nile fairy exposes the grotto’s waterfall and leads the explorer to the river’s source. Although Les sources du Nil was by no means the first popular ballet to showcase running water, electricity in the theater was still a novelty in 1882 and was unusual enough to be indicated in the scenario.34 The most remarkable aspect of Les sources du Nil was the music. Ganne’s score is varied and imaginative, and, while entirely written in a popular style—textures, harmonies, rhythmic patterns, and melodic material are upbeat, catchy, and always simple—the music never descends into the banal. Unlike composers of other extant music-hall divertissements, Ganne rarely resorts to repetitive oompah-pah or boom-chick accompaniment figures, never repeats the same chord throughout an entire phrase, frequently varies rhythmic and melodic patterns even within antecedent–consequent phrases, and constantly modifies textures. Melodies are also never based on outlining triads as they are in many musichall ballets. Ganne closely follows the dramatic and structural contours of the libretto, with music that is descriptive during pantomime sections, and rhythmically, melodically, and formally balanced for dances (exx. 4.3 and 4.4). Les sources du Nil is also interesting for its attention to internal musical cohesion. Ganne did not use leitmotifs per se and did not assign specific types of music to individual characters or events, but two themes recur periodically throughout the ballet. These themes, which are melodically related, are often fragmented, sometimes combined contrapuntally, and always woven into the score’s continually varied texture (exx. 4.5–4.7). Since the two melodies are interchangeably associated with the undines, the undine fairy, and Old Nile, they seem to have been devised in the interest of creating musical cohesion rather than narrative clarity. They also appear in the ballet’s introduction and as the final melodic gesture in the apotheosis finale, again displaying an unusual attention to thematic unity for a popular ballet score, and particularly for such an early one.

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Example 4.3. Louis Ganne, Les sources du Nil, “Le Vieux Nil dort toujours”

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the ballet-divertissement 91

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Example 4.4. Louis Ganne, Les sources du Nil, “Mazurka des ondines”

Shifting Terminology Beginning in the late 1880s and continuing into the early 1900s, the FoliesBergère produced ballets of ever-larger dimensions. Most had narratives portrayed by mime and ornamented by a variety of classical, character, and popular dances, and stage action was underscored by tailor-made dramatic music. From the mid-1890s on, most Folies-Bergère ballets were effectively pantomime-ballets.35 The same evolution played itself out in the newly opened Casino de Paris and Olympia. The Casino’s first ballets in the early 1890s were little more than glorified divertissements, while several staged around 1900 were large-scale pantomime-ballets. The Olympia staged increasingly impressive works with dramatic story lines and virtuosic dancing in the mid-1890s, and by 1900 regularly produced pantomime-ballets that in scale and structure would not have been out of place at the neighboring Opéra. Paul Vidal could just as well have staged the Opéra’s La Maladetta (1893) at the Olympia and the Olympia’s L’impératrice (1901) at the Opéra.

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92 chapter four Example 4.5. Louis Ganne, Les sources du Nil, introduction, mm. 45–52

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Example 4.6. Louis Ganne, Les sources du Nil, opening scene, mm. 105–8

The delineation between divertissement, ballet, and pantomime-ballet was nevertheless fluid, and terminology remained vague. In the late 1880s, the allencompassing term “divertissement” was dropped in favor of the label “ballet,” but this designation had no more clearly defined implications for a work’s structure than the term “divertissement” had a decade or two earlier.36 The confusion was amplified in the 1890s by the use of the term “pantomime-ballet” for works that were no different from the “ballets” or “divertissements” staged a few years earlier. Terms were so flexible that the word “pantomime” was also sometimes used to refer to music-hall ballets, and not always for works that had more mime than dance. It often happened that the same ballet was alternately

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the ballet-divertissement 93

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Example 4.7. Louis Ganne, Les sources du Nil, mm. 454–67

identified as a “ballet” or a “pantomime” by different critics. This ambiguity was sometimes warranted: pantomimes, particularly pantomimes à grand spectacle, usually had significant divertissements built into them. Consequently, they were sometimes structurally indistinguishable from ballets that had a preponderance of mime. The proliferation of imaginative descriptive titles in the 1890s spawned a further complication for establishing a stable generic definition. Le château de Mac-Arrott, for example, was advertised in Le Figaro as a “légende-ballet écossais” and Le rêve d’Elias as a “ballet aérien.” The Olympia listed the ballets Brighton, Fée des poupées, Faust, and Watteau as “grands ballets,” Olympia as a “ballet-prologue,” Le scandale du Louvre as a “ballet mimé,” Ballet blanc as a “ballet fantaisiste,” and Les mille et une nuits and L’impératrice as “ballets-féeriques.”37 The trend only intensified after 1900. The Folies-Bergère’s Antinoa was listed on programs as a “ballet féerique à grand spectacle,” and Le timbre d’or and Montmartre were both termed “fantaisie dansée.” The Olympia designated Paris-fêtard (1906), Les aventures de Mlle Clo-Clo (1909), and Les fanfreluches de l’amour (1913) as “fantaisie-ballet,” and L’enlèvement de Psyché and Nitokris as “légende.”38 The range of descriptive titles given to music-hall ballets suggests an internal breakdown of traditional structural features or a diversification of types of ballet, but in fact such designations did not align themselves with specific generic categories. As Hélene Laplace-Claverie writes, many turn-of-thecentury ballets that were assigned descriptive titles had those titles altered or

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94 chapter four removed when they were restaged in different venues.39 L’araignée d’or, a ballet by Jean Lorrain premiered at the Folies-Bergère in 1896, began as a “légende dansée,” became a “conte féerique ” on programs, was referred to as a “conte mimé ” in the press, and was listed simply as “ballet-pantomime ” in the SACD catalogues. Similarly, Cieutat’s Le château de Mac-Arrott was initially subtitled “légende-ballet écossais,” then labeled a “ballet-féerie ” in the printed piano score. In most cases such inventive titles were likely a marketing gimmick and not a reflection of formal differences. As Laplace-Claverie remarks, such titles were used to mask the works’ fundamental uniformity. Every once in a while, subtitles did reflect actual changes to the structure of a ballet. Several works created around 1900 are listed in programs and the SACD catalogues as “ballet-revue,” “ballet-operette,” “ballet-opéra,” and “ballet avec chants,” signaling an increased production of hybrid genres.40 Though some, including Ganne’s Phryné and Lecocq’s Barbe-Bleue, merely had the occasional sung chorus, others, such as the Olympia’s Les turlutaines de l’année (1895), a revue-ballet with no listed authors, and Missa’s Un déjeuner sur l’herbe (1897), an operetta-ballet, were likely precursors of the music-hall revue and the musical.41 The one exception to this elasticity of terminology was the use of the label “divertissement.” After 1890, divertissements titled as such were almost always true divertissements with all of the genre’s formal implications.

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The 1890s and Beyond: The Divertissement in the Age of the Pantomime-Ballet Despite the ever-expanding proportions of music-hall ballet through the 1890s, all three halls continued to stage a significant number of divertissements. These were holdovers from an earlier period and had little demonstrable impact on late music-hall ballets. A few were added to programs that already featured a pantomime-ballet, and others ran as the sole independent choreographed number amid standard variety fare.42 The Olympia produced by far the greatest number of autonomous divertissements.43 Between 1896 and 1899, the hall staged the divertissements Noussima (divertissement japonais), Fête champêtre, La folie de l’or, Vénus cantinière, Les trois couleurs, Les deux baisers, and Conte de mai. All had scores written by established music-hall ballet composers such as Edmond Missa, Oscar de Lagoanère, and Frédéric Toulmouche.44 The Folies-Bergère, which in the 1890s created far more pantomime-ballets than did the Olympia or Casino, only occasionally produced divertissements. Almost all had exotic backdrops and nonspecific titles such as Divertissement hongrois, Divertissement espagnole, or Divertissement écossais. A few lacked even these vague descriptors and are simply listed on programs as Divertissement. Untitled divertissements similarly show up on Casino programs, usually alongside a pantomime-ballet or another theatrical production. These

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the ballet-divertissement 95 ballets seem to have been devoid of narrative—programs do not even list character names—and were not listed in performance catalogues or reviewed by the mainstream or theatrical press. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, the three halls also produced one-act works titled “ballet” that would best be described as “divertissement-like.” The ballets Joujoux-ballet (1889) and Les joujoux (1894); Les baigneuses (1889), Brighton (1893), and Bains de dames (1895); Les réservistes à venir (1888) and Marine (1890); and Les demoiselles du XXe siècle (1894) and Paris-turf (1890) resembled earlier divertissements in tone, lack of coherent narrative, and emphasis on dancing, pageantry, and costuming. They were, however, slightly longer than typical divertissements, and they featured updated themes and characters. They were also taken seriously enough as theatrical productions to warrant reviews in the daily press and documentation in the SACD catalogues. They were not, therefore, divertissements proper. Most divertissement-like ballets reinforced an already entrenched musichall tradition of putting the female body on display. In the bathing-suit ballets Les baigneuses (1889), Brighton (1893), and Bains de dames (1895), authors sacrificed story for titillation: they were no more than pretenses for presenting an entire company of young dancers frolicking about in form-fitting swimsuits against picturesque seaside backdrops. Military ballets had a similar purpose and effect. Les réservistes à venir (1888) and Marine (1890), both written by the Folies-Bergère’s current ballet master, featured series of military exercises and parades for soldiers in travesty. Neither could be said to portray even a simple story; their sole purpose was to exhibit women in tights.45 Although created for a specific military event and devised with blatant patriotism in mind, the FoliesBergère’s 1893 France-Russie had a similar structure and visual effect.46 Another type of divertissement-like ballet was the up-to-date ballet, a slightly larger-scale version of the up-to-date divertissement. As with its predecessors, these ballets depicted contemporary characters performing everyday activities or enjoying current pastimes and entertainments. Some were entirely fanciful: Presse-ballet (1888) combined impersonations and pageantry in a series of parades, posed tableaux, and dances for women sporting pennants bearing the names of contemporary French newspapers. Others mirrored the lifestyles that music-hall audiences either led or aspired to lead. Les demoiselles du XXe siècle (1894) showcased young ladies in fanciful futurist dresses performing the latest physical exercises and dances.47 Paris-turf (1890) was an expanded and updated version of Le grand prix de Paris. Set at the Longchamps Hippodrome, it depicted a romance between a young woman and her college-aged lover who wins her hand after the horse he bets on wins the race. The romance was, however, an afterthought, and barely registers in the scenario. The real attractions were scenes of jockeys in travesty, horse races, and tableaux of elegant Parisians milling about in their finery and flirting with each other.

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96 chapter four One of the more surprising types of divertissement-ballet to enjoy enduring popularity in the music halls was the toy ballet. Animated toys have a long choreographic history, both on the popular stage and in opera houses. Coppélia, The Nutcracker, and The Fairy Doll are the most famous examples of this tradition, but there were also several divertissements created on the same theme.48 One of the most influential was Mme Mariquita’s and Métra’s 1876 Les joujoux, the Christmas ballet described at the beginning of this chapter. Mme Mariquita’s divertissement, which ran intermittently for over a year, was the acknowledged inspiration for The Fairy Doll (Die Puppenfee, or, as it was known in Paris, La fée des poupées).49 In turn, The Fairy Doll was a runaway success that toured in Paris and all over Europe. The Olympia produced two versions of the ballet—one in 1894 and the other in 1899—and the FoliesBergère staged one in 1904.50 Mme Mariquita’s Les joujoux also spawned local imitations: Justamant and Desormes created their own Joujoux-ballet for the Folies-Bergère in 1889, and Beissier, Rossi, and Cieutat staged a ballet titled Les joujoux for the Casino in 1894. Les joujoux and Joujoux-ballet had essentially the same premise: dolls, puppets, and military figurines are magically set in motion, then returned to an inanimate state at the end of the ballet. Like earlier divertissements that included animals, and like contemporary popular balls for revelers dressed up as babies, toy ballets must have appealed to their audiences because they were funny or cute.51 None was overtly sexual in nature. Although toy soldiers wore travesty outfits of bodices and leggings and dolls sported short tutus and plunging necklines, the scenarios left little room for anything beyond mild flirtations.52 These charming fantasies serve as reminders that while music-hall divertissements often included at least one scene or dance designed to set men dreaming of amorous liaisons, the genre as a whole can by no means be equated with eroticism. Divertissements and divertissement-like ballets were immensely popular and profitable throughout the early and mid-1890s. They consistently raked in high box-office receipts and generated excitement among ever-growing numbers of spectators and theater critics. As the demand for spectacle encouraged the creation of ever-grander ballets, pantomime-ballets with multiple acts and tableaux quickly overtook these more modest productions. Yet the shift toward staging large-scale pantomime-ballets did not put an end to the subject matter or tone of the divertissement. Pastoral sketches, amorous flirtations, dances for inanimate objects, exotic vignettes, and tableaux or pageants for women in suggestive costumes remained at the core of many music-hall ballets, subsumed within large-scale works and coloring the aesthetic of these more spectacular productions.

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Chapter Five

Real Pantomime-Ballets The Choreographic Conventions of 1890s Music-Hall Ballet

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It’s a ballet, a real ballet worthy of the Opéra itself and not only a divertissement mixed with dances that the Folies-Bergère has given us yesterday evening, with exquisite music by Varney. . . . One need not be a particularly clever prophet to predict a great success for this new work, La Princesse Idaea, which will bring all of Paris running to M. Marchand’s music hall.1

Blavet may have been somewhat carried away in his enthusiasm for the FoliesBergère’s latest première. La Princesse Idaea received mostly lukewarm reviews and merely average box-office earnings. Yet his declaration expressed a larger truth. By the 1890s, music-hall ballets were genuine pantomime-ballets that conveyed intricate narratives through mime, dance, and music. Indeed many of music-hall ballet’s formal components recalled the genre’s high-art counterpart. The two had the same large-scale structures, and they had similar scene and dance types. Both also relied for theatrical effect on a previous knowledge of dramatic, choreographic, and musical conventions. If one were to study only the conventions of 1890s music-hall pantomime-ballets, one might mistake many of these works for ballets produced by the Paris Opéra in the same years.2

A Traditional Structure The most obvious connection between music-hall and Opéra ballet was their structure. As the term implies, pantomime-ballet was a hybrid genre that combined pantomime and dance to tell a story. All pantomime-ballets staged by the Opéra in the nineteenth century had these two basic components, and while the proportions varied considerably, mime was at least as important as dance. In a study of Romantic ballet, Lisa Arkin and Marian Smith noted that “it is more accurate, in fact, to conceive of these ballets as mimed dramas that called for dancing from time to time.”3 Their observations may also be applied to pantomime-ballets staged at the Opéra a half-century later. Scores show that whereas dance considerably outweighed mime and action scenes in La

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98 chapter five Korrigane (1880) and La Maladetta (1893), the reverse was true in La tempête (1889). Les deux pigeons (1886) and L’étoile (1897) had a near balance of the two, with a slight emphasis on mime or action scenes and with most dances taking place in self-enclosed divertissements.4 Music-hall ballets exhibited a similar range of formal composition. As noted earlier, a few ballets from this period were divertissement-like in their emphasis on dance while several others resembled pantomimes. For example, whereas the relatively short ballets Flagrant-délit, Presse-ballet, Marine, and Une répétition aux Folies-Bergère featured a large number of dances and choreographed processions with only occasional pantomime scenes, Miroir and Fleur de Lotus, created in the same five years, included only a handful of dances. Even large-scale pantomime-ballets could differ significantly in their balance. Dance accounted for slightly more than half of Phryné, and was both integrated into the narrative and performed in long divertissements. L’impératrice, in contrast, had far more pantomime than dance. Despite its designation of ballet-féerique, it had only one danced divertissement: a relatively short interlude in the first tableau that included character dances, a variation, and a waltz. Where in the final tableau one would typically find another danced divertissement, Richepin called for a formally separate diegetic pantomime, framing the last tableau as a pantomime within a pantomime. On average, however, music-hall ballets from this period preserved Opéra ballet’s roughly equal allotment of pantomime and dance, with any exceptions favoring a higher proportion of pantomime. The sequence of dance and pantomime scenes in music-hall productions was fairly flexible, with few standardized practices. Most dances were grouped together into formally distinct divertissements, and if a ballet comprised multiple acts or tableaux, these divertissements usually appeared in the second or third tableau. Ballets also usually began with pantomime scenes and ended with ensemble dances and an apotheosis tableau. It was common to have entire scenes or series of several short scenes that were entirely devoid of dancing, and dances, even in divertissements, could be interrupted by mime.5 Otherwise, librettists were given a free hand and could design their ballets to suit their own preferences.

Pantomime and Other Nondanced Scenes Pantomime was by definition one of the fundamental components of all nineteenth-century French pantomime-ballets, but perhaps because the halls’ ballet troupes possessed more charm than dance skill, gesture and action played a particularly important role in music-hall ballets. Pantomime was so highly valued that professional mime artists were routinely hired to play both central and secondary roles. Jane Margyl and Jane Thylda, who starred in musichall ballets for the Folies-Bergère and Olympia, trained as actresses and were

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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real pantomime-ballets 99 famous for their skills in the art of gesture, not dance. Louise Willy, who made her debut in the role of Fleur de Lotus, quickly became a powerful box-office draw, coveted for her beauty and grace. She went on to perform in several more ballets, but always as a mime artist, never a dancer.6 Two of the era’s most famous silent actors, Thalès and Séverin, were likewise highly valued for their mime skills in ballets staged at the Folies-Bergère and Olympia.7 The popularity of these and other mime artists, along with the importance of narrative in late 1880s and early 1890s music-hall ballets, ensured that future ballets would feature a significant proportion of scenes performed by nondancing actors. Mimed—or, more accurately, nondanced—scenes came in many different forms. Three were present in virtually every music-hall production: gestural mime, action scenes, and tableaux involving parading or posed ensembles. Mime could be integrated at any point in a ballet and could be performed either by a single character or by several “in conversation.” Although not enough evidence survives to form a clear picture of what mime might have looked like, occasional descriptions in treatises and comments in reviews suggest a mix of prescribed, codified gestures and freer movements, similar to the stylized acting of early silent films.8 Prescribed mime relied on stock gestures or coded symbols common to ballets produced by the Opéra to illustrate the detailed commentary and dialogue frequently written into librettos and scores.9 Unscripted mime would have been understood in the context of character entrances or changes in action. Either type could be accompanied by mimetic musical cues to help convey meaning. Even the longest and most detailed passages of mime may have been simple enough that anyone could understand the suggested narrative. Critics, at least, never complained. Gestures needed to be clear, since music-hall ballets were designed not for the connoisseur but for neophytes, tourists, and pleasure-seekers. Many spectators would have been distracted by social interactions and by the bustling crowds that surrounded them, or they would have been watching from a distance. Also, although music-hall directors went to the trouble and expense of providing synopses in programs, most spectators probably preferred admiring charismatic stars and ogling scantily-dressed dancers to following the detailed stories that these performers acted out. Of course, it is also possible that mime passages were as complex as in ballets staged at the state theater. Since the same music-hall ballet was performed unaltered at least seven times each week (nine if there were matinées) for up to three months, ballet enthusiasts had ample opportunity to see a production repeatedly if they were interested in the details of a particular scenario.10 Critics did sometimes praise librettos for being clear and actors for being expressive, but none commented directly on the performance of mime. Although storytelling was, in theory, the primary mission of pantomimeballets, spectacle was what won audiences over and insured profitability. Most music-hall authors understood this, and devised extravagant action

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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scenes—battles, storms, athletic competitions, or other moments of intense drama that called for vast numbers of actors and dancers to gather together on stage. A typical ballet included at least two or three action scenes, and some had many more. R. Mythe, for example, built the first act of his fairy-tale ballet, Le château de Mac-Arrott (1887), around a series of standard action scenes. The ballet began with highlanders performing Scottish dances in national costumes, but it quickly shifted to pantomime as they gathered to await the arrival of the laird. Mime scenes in which principal characters expressed their hopes and desires then alternated with various action scenes including a royal cortège, an archery competition, and a storm scene, all of which allowed for high drama and the continued presence of picturesque crowds of villagers milling about in the background. Action scenes were so well tailored to the tastes of music-hall audiences that several ballets from the turn of the century featured successions of extravagant dramatic tableaux with only occasional passages of mime to tie them together and occasional dances to add diversity. The Olympia’s 1897 pseudohistorical ballet Sardanapale, for instance, centered on nondanced scenes. The ballet opens with a religious ceremony in honor of the god Baal attended by the Assyrian monarch Sardanapalus and his people.11 During the ceremony, Sardanapalus catches a glimpse of a beautiful woman, and in a moment of chaos, abducts her. Back at his palace, he summons his slave girls to dance during an orgy. Action scene is then layered upon action scene as tension builds toward a final climax. After a revolt of the people and the storming of his palace by warriors, Sardanapalus transforms his throne into a giant pyre, orders his women to be thrown upon it, and steps into the blaze as the populace swarms into his palace. Similarly, Néron, another mock-historical extravaganza created by the Olympia the following year, featured more action scenes than dance. Young lovers are cruelly parted by the jealous emperor against backdrops that included the sacrificing of Christians, gladiator fights, and the burning of Rome. Music-hall ballets derived much of their visual impact from large crowds of dancers and extras. Crowds were an easy way to create a sense of great spectacle, and in consequence, even the simplest, least dramatic ballets incorporated scenes in which various characters milled about in colorful groupings. It was common to see entire villages spill out onto the stage to watch, comment upon, or participate in an argument or duel, or for ballets to include weddings, village festivities, or any other celebration that could justify large gatherings. For the same reason, it was also common for a ballet to feature a procession or parade. Just as Parisians turned out by the hundreds of thousands to watch a six-hour parade in honor of Victor Hugo’s eightieth birthday, so too villagers, dancers, and fantastical creatures stood by to watch music-hall ballet’s endless royal cortèges, military parades, and other processions.12 Authors of music-hall ballets created a remarkable variety of pageants. Productions featured cortèges of mythical figures, gods, religious worshipers,

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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real pantomime-ballets 101 or groups of people from various nations; contemporary French military parades or processions of officers from different eras and nationalities; fashion parades, wedding processions, and royal cortèges; défilés of newspapers, stamps, toys, and dolls; and successive entrances in a single scene of a ballet’s different groups of characters (youths, the main protagonists, older couples, merchants, a school group). Most crowd scenes and processions recalled those of Romantic and late nineteenth-century Opéra ballets and relied for credibility on stock plot devices such as village, wedding, and royal celebrations. In Fleur de Lotus, royal entertainments give rise to a cortège preceding a danced divertissement, and in La belle et la bête, the departure of Beauty’s father on his ill-fated journey serves as an excuse for a cortège and dance of villagers. BarbeBleue, Le miroir, Les amoureux de Venise, and Madame Malbrouck all begin or end with wedding celebrations that include processions and dances. Several ballets featured pageants with a contemporary twist. In Paris-turf, Sports, and Chez le courturier, royal cortèges and village processions have been replaced by parades of Parisians displaying the latest fashions at the favored gathering places of the day: sporting arenas and dress shops. In Vénus à Paris, Sans-Puits-House, and Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts, rustic village dances and royal celebrations are supplanted by contemporary ballroom or dance-hall scenes. A final type of nondanced scene that regularly turned up in music-hall ballets was the posed tableau, in which dancers or actors froze the action to create an arresting image. The practice probably derived from one that dates back at least as far as Romantic ballet, but it was also used more recently in boulevard-theater extravaganzas. Arkin and Smith have termed the Romantic practice “frozen pictures.” Actors, they write, “often froze in tableaux or ‘pictures,’ sometimes at moments of high drama in the middle of a scene, sometimes just before the fall of the curtain.”13 Posed tableaux in music-hall ballets usually came at the end of a parade, ensemble dance, or mime scene, and provided a moment of intense visual display that contrasted with the flurry of movement that preceded them. Many were transient and elicited little reaction from critics, but in 1893, at least two such tableaux stole the show. One was in the FoliesBergère’s L’arc-en-ciel, a ballet created to star the popular Moulin Rouge dancer Jane Avril. Although L’arc-en-ciel was a relatively complex pantomime-ballet that juxtaposed characters of the commedia dell’arte with fairies, and although the star-studded cast should have guaranteed rave reviews, only one scene prompted more than routine compliments: a ballet divertissement danced by the rainbow fairies.14 At the end of this divertissement, two groups of seven dancers dressed in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet-colored tutus and scarves move about in kaleidoscopic patterns, then come together to form a rainbow.15 Reviews of this production were oddly laconic in their descriptions of the work as a whole, but a few went on at length about the rainbow tableau and described it as the highlight of the show.16 As with synchronized ensemble dances and tableaux in the Eden-Théâtre’s Italian ballets, the

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Folies-Bergère’s rainbow tableau seduced music-hall audiences with its arresting configurations and surfeit of color. The other intriguing example of a ballet pausing to allow for a posed tableau occurs in the second act of the Folies-Bergère’s 1893 romantic comedy, Fleur de Lotus. The tableau follows a mime scene and dance performed by the title character and a group of fairies. Fleur de Lotus, exhausted after walking for hours in search of her sister, has come upon a lake filled with beautiful lotus flowers (see chapter 8). The lake is guarded by a sleeping royal servant and populated by Péris, water nymphs who have been dancing by moonlight. The Péris reveal themselves to Fleur and help her to undress so that she may bathe. Once nude, Fleur sits by the lake and admires her reflection, marveling at her own beauty. She unties her long hair, letting it fall around her, then places one of the precious flowers in it and poses. Her pose coincides with the end of the second A section of a short ABA form, and the long, harmonically static coda that follows is marked “tableau plastique.”17 The scene had all the hallmarks of a conventional balletic posed tableau, and it appealed to the traditions both of the tableau vivant and the academic nude—the perfect façade of respectability for presenting a nude dancer in the middle of an otherwise run-of-the-mill pantomime-ballet (see chapter 9). Posed tableaux were also a standard closing device at the end of a ballet. Most scores conclude with a section labeled “Apotheosis”—a musical coda that could only have supported a static formation. Librettos and synopses likewise often make reference to a final apotheosis, with comments that suggest posed tableaux. These apotheoses almost invariably consisted of tableaux glorifying the conjugal union of a ballet’s protagonists or pictorial representations of the resolution of a conflict. In Tzigane and Le rêve d’Élias, the united lovers pose after embracing, framed by friends and family. In Cléopâtre, the union of Anthony and Cleopatra in death is frozen for a final spectacular tableau. Les septs pêchés capitaux ends with the seven sins standing under a banner proclaiming their submission to “Love, vanquisher of evil,” while Mimes d’or concludes with a tableau depicting a personified Fortune surrounded by collapsed stock values.

Dance Dance in music-hall ballets can be roughly divided into two broad categories: classical ballet, denoting dances choreographed using the abstract patterns, codified movements, and gestures of nineteenth-century danse d’école, and character dances, which could be based on danse d’école poses and gestures but could also draw on national and social dances. As with mid- and late nineteenth-century high-art forms of pantomime-ballet, most dances were character dances that had at least tangential dramatic connections to the plot.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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real pantomime-ballets 103 Classical dances, usually performed by the star ballerina in separate divertissements, played a comparatively small role in music-hall productions both in dramatic terms and in the time allotted to them. Yet dances in the academic idiom attracted a disproportionate amount of critical attention, and audiences loved them for their virtuosity. The presence of classical dance was also what set 1890s music-hall pantomime-ballet apart from earlier divertissements, and what brought the popular form of the genre closer in line with Opéra ballet.

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Classical Ballet, or Danse d’école The primary medium for classical ballet was the “variation.” Variations were short solo dances performed by the danseuse étoile in self-contained divertissements set apart from the central narrative using rationales such as weddings, royal entertainments, village festivities, dreams, and other fanciful phenomena.18 Variations provided a vehicle for showing off a star ballerina’s technical virtuosity, and a ballerina normally performed one or two contrasting classical numbers in each divertissement (the number of divertissements and variations depended primarily on the scale of the ballet as a whole). Due to casting practices, dances in the academic idiom typically had no direct dramatic connection to the plot, except in self-reflexive ballets such as Une répétition aux Folies-Bergère, La Camargo, and Stella, which featured a ballerina in the starring role of “ballerina.” Although no choreography is extant, several sources suggest a close connection between music-hall and Opéra ballet variations. Prose descriptions of these dances are usually vague, but when critics do remark upon the steps or poses of a given music-hall variation, they use the same terms as when describing variations in contemporary Opéra ballets. A ballerina’s skills on pointe were frequently remarked upon, and her pirouettes routinely praised.19 She was also often commended for her lightness of step, her grace, and her delicacy.20 Since music-hall ballerinas were almost exclusively trained in Italy, and since music-hall patrons admired acrobatics, star ballerinas would surely have performed with the virtuosity characteristic of the more athletic Italian school. The ballerinas themselves were occasionally favorably compared to Opéra or Eden-Théâtre stars, or they were described more generally as accomplished ballerinas of the “grande école.” Visual representations of music-hall ballet offer a few additional clues about popular ballet’s classical components. One such clue is a photograph taken in 1911 that captures a pose performed during a pas de deux from Mme Mariquita’s penultimate Folies-Bergère ballet, Stella. The male lead dips the female, whose tutu, pointe shoes, arms en couronne, and feet firmly turned out and held in fifth position attest to the academic nature of their dance (fig. 5.1).21 Another photograph, taken in Nadar’s studio and supposedly representing a pas de deux from the Folies-Bergère’s 1896 Christmas ballet, Rêve de

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Noël, shows an academically trained dancer with proper turnout and feet firmly pointed (fig. 5.2). Although photographs of dancers performing steps or gestures from a specific work are rare, portraits sometimes show dancers holding basic poses that would have been used in any nineteenth-century ballet, and all of the ballerinas in photographs and press or program illustrations wear the knee-length gauze tutus typical of the period.22 Regardless of performance style, the Italian-trained ballerinas who danced the variations in music-hall ballets were as skilled as their peers hired by the Opéra, and they were certainly capable of performing in the academic style. Aïda Boni, a première danseuse étoile who moved between several halls in Paris, later became a star ballerina at the Opéra-Comique under Mme Mariquita, and eventually at the Opéra.23 Lina Campana, who created nearly all of the star ballerina roles for the Folies-Bergère in the early to mid-1890s and for the Olympia at the end of the decade, trained in Turin before making her debut at the Eden-Théâtre. She subsequently danced at the Alhambra in London, the Porte Saint-Martin, the Théâtre de la Gaîté, and the Royal Theater of Turin.24 More transient star ballerinas included Odette Valéry, who studied in Milan and debuted in a production of Excelsior in Rome, then toured all across Italy as an étoile before taking up a two-year residency at the Folies-Bergère; and Maria Giuri, one of the most brilliant ballerinas of the time, who prior to her debut at the Olympia performed in St. Petersburg, at Covent Garden, at the Empire in London, and in the United States.25 Variations were the principal vehicle for academic ballet, but other dances— pas de deux, ensemble dances—could also draw on a danse d’école vocabulary.26 Corps dancers did not, as a general rule, receive the virtuosic training of Italian, or even French, star ballerinas, but they could be asked to perform dances choreographed with some of the basic steps and poses of academic ballet.27 Several titles of ensemble numbers listed in scores and descriptions of these dances in scenarios or reviews call to mind dances in contemporary Opéra ballets that relied on geometric patterns and simultaneous ensemble movements for their choreographic appeal. Rêve de Noël (1896) had a waltz for snowflakes, Vision! (1898) a dance for perfumes and a waltz for flowers, and La belle et la bête (1895) a ballet of roses for sixty dancers. By way of comparison, the Opéra’s La tempête (1889) included a dance for jewels; La Maladetta (1893) featured a snowflake ballet; and La ronde des saisons (1905) had dances for flowers.28 The many untitled ensemble dances performed directly after variations in the divertissement portion of music-hall ballets most likely also relied on a basic ballet vocabulary.

Character Dance Character dance, which included all folk, national, social, or other titled dances, accounted for most of the dancing in music-hall ballets. Ballets

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Figure 5.1. Maria Bordin and Robert Quinault in Mme Mariquita’s Stella, 1911. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn 8-RO-10992).

contained any number of character dances in any combination, and these dances could be performed by the corps, the star ballerina, a secondary soloist, or a specialty dancer brought in to add novelty and variety to a production. Phryné, for example, introduced a string of pseudoancient dances for Assyrians, Phoenicians, Persians, Egyptians, and Greeks in a formal divertissement, along with a bacchanal and dances for Chrysis and Bacchus, the sacred courtesan, and musicians. La belle et la bête had village dances, a diabolic dance of gnomes, grotesque dances for otherworldly creatures, and the previously mentioned ballet of roses. Barbe-Bleue included a ballet of keys with a solo waltz for the golden key; a ballet of bats; and within a divertissement, harvest dances and a ballet of peasants and flowers. While character dances were frequently grouped together in self-enclosed divertissements, unlike ballet variations, they could also be integrated into the main story line between mime or action scenes. In Rêve d’or, only one dance appears outside the divertissement: a pas de deux in the first tableau that was probably classical in style but without the technical virtuosity of ballet variations (the distinction is due to casting practices, which will be discussed below).29 All other dances were performed in a series, separated from the action in a long

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Figure 5.2. Nadar Studios, Liane de Pougy and Mlle Régina in Rêve de Noël, 1897. Médiathèque de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine (APNADAR009458). © Ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

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real pantomime-ballets 107 divertissement that took up the better part of the second tableau. The divertissement included a classical solo variation, a polka for large coins, a waltz for monetary bills (valse des millions), an interpolated mime scene, and a final galop for the entire ensemble. In contrast, Lecocq’s Barbe-Bleue had as many dances outside as within the divertissement, and the ballet’s classical variations were, exceptionally, not integrated into the main divertissement. The ballet also had an unusually large number of different types of dances. The divertissement, which accounted for most of the third and final tableau, was the work’s principal vehicle for ensemble dances. The corps performed, in succession, a ballet des paysannes et des fleurs, a pas des moissonneurs, a pas de la paysanne, and an ensemble coda. Other dances interspersed between dramatic scenes included a choral number in the first tableau titled menuet that presumably had a danced component; a danse des petits fous de cours; a ballet des clés (part of which was accompanied by the chorus); and a solo valse de la clé d’or for the star ballerina toward the end of the same tableau. The second tableau featured dances for bats (a danse des chauves-souris and a musically more formal pas des chauvessouris); an unspecified ensemble dance; a pas de la clé d’or—the solo classical variation; and a pas de l’hésitation, which, judging by the accompanying music, was also in an academic style. Music-hall ballets featured many of the same types of character dances as appeared in Opéra ballets, and for similar reasons. Music-hall ballets with historical themes, for instance, often incorporated historical dances in order to underscore the period in question while providing an entertaining variety of dances and a sense of chronological exoticism. Madame Bonaparte, Madame Malbrouck, Watteau, La Camargo, Le miroir, and Merveilleuses et gigolettes all included eighteenth-century dances such as the minuet or the gavotte in the ballroom scenes. While these dances no doubt added to the visual realism projected by accurate period reproduction sets and costumes, they also contributed to the nostalgic feel of these works and to their overall aura of sumptuous display—a winning combination that was part of the impetus for the creation of so many ballets on the theme of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century parties. Folk or national dances similarly helped establish a ballet’s geographic setting while providing opportunities for ensemble dances in arresting costumes. The opening Scottish gigue in Le château de Mac-Arrott sets the scene and begins the ballet with a splash of color; the Parisian heroine of Napoli is introduced to the tarantella during an Italian sojourn; and in Vassilissa, Russian students perform national dances during their trek to Siberia. Eroticized “exotic” dances associated with foreign characters, normally of Middle Eastern or Mediterranean origin, fall into a similar category, with the exception that these were almost always restricted to divertissements—an effort, perhaps, to contain and distance their threatening sexuality. Many music-hall character dances depicted individuals or groups in a more abstract way. These dances were titled, but they relied more on dramatic

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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context and costuming for connections to the plot than they did on specific steps or patterns. Many would have been imaginative, freely choreographed dances designed to set the ballet corps in motion. Titles give some idea of the range of these numbers. Merveilleuses et gigolettes had a pas des esclaves (valse), a ronde de gardes, a danse des oiseaux de nuit, and a ballet des sorcières. In Rêve de Noël, one waltz was titled danse des flocons de neige and the other, pas de la séduction. Other ballets that presented dances by normally inanimate objects or fanciful characters include Rêve d’or, which featured a ballet for dancing coins and bills, and Presse-ballet, in which dancers personified the primary newspapers of Paris (fig. 5.3). Music-hall ballets included relatively few of the social dances common to contemporary ballroom culture. Polkas, galops, and mazurkas occasionally turn up in music-hall ballet scores, but they are comparatively rare. If choreographers made use of the steps and figures of these dances or of quadrilles, they did so without providing the title of a specific dance type.30 One social dance was, however, indispensable to music-hall ballet: every ballet, regardless of structure, length, setting, or plot, had at least one waltz. The waltz was consistently the longest dance in scores, the most frequently excerpted for publication in piano or band arrangements, and the most commented upon and praised in reviews. Some waltzes had dramatic links to the plot as diegetic ballroom dances, but the majority were titled character dances either performed by soloists— as in the valse de Diana or valse de la clé d’or—or by an ensemble. A significant number of waltzes had dramatic connections to love or seduction. Two young lovers in Le château de Mac-Arrott dance a pas de deux to waltz rhythms under the heading valse lente duo d’amour; ladies emerging from the waters in Bains de dames beg their suitors for their clothing to the sounds of a waltz; and in Merveilleuses et gigolettes, couples attending a ball coquettishly flirt their way through a waltz while an officer declares his love to the invited ballerina before spinning her around the dance floor. The waltz was still a favorite social dance in fin-de-siècle dance halls and ballrooms, and its association with popular culture and mass-market entertainment made it a natural, even essential, element of music-hall ballet.

Other Types of Dance and Pantomime A last category of scenes could be either danced or mimed. These numbers had a common aesthetic or purpose rather than a characteristic set of steps and gestures: all were sensuous, titillating, or provocative interludes that focused on the female body—lascivious dances, cancans, seduction scenes, bathing scenes, toilette scenes, and stripteases. None was new or unique to musichall ballet. As with all other choreographic elements discussed so far, these

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Figure 5.3. Bode, scene from Presse-ballet, printed in Le Journal du Théâtre, May 11, 1888. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn 4-ICO THE 4381).

risqué scenes had precedents and parallels in ballets produced both by the Opéra and by popular theaters.31 Lascivious and seductive dances turn up in Opéra ballets from the 1830s through the early 1900s, as do bathing scenes and stripteases (see chapter 9).32 The cancan and other eccentric dances were drawn from the world of popular entertainment, modeled on performances seen at dance halls such as the Moulin Rouge. Cancans (or cahuts), along with their late nineteenth-century variants eccentric dances and naturalist quadrilles, were sometimes incorporated into music-hall ballets, but not as frequently as one might expect.33 It is possible that music-hall authors or directors did not consider such dances appropriate for a ballet, even when staged in a music hall. Eccentric dances were for after-hours entertainments at the Casino or for the less refined, more permissive dance halls.34 With few exceptions, when such dances did appear in ballets, they functioned as diegetic numbers set in dance halls or music halls. Les Folies Parisiennes, for example, featured a final number for the famous Moulin Rouge naturalist quadrille dancer La Goulue, who either danced the eccentric number herself or was imitated by a member of the Folies-Bergère’s troupe. Students performed eccentric dances during the concluding ball in Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts; in Sans-Puits-House, students out for an evening of partying perform what are described in the synopsis as “dances representing the joys of

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modern dance halls”; and in Vénus à Paris, the gods participate in a dance-hall redoute.35 In Les grandes courtisanes, Mme Mariquita had the dancer who portrayed an early nineteenth-century courtesan perform an 1830s-style cancan.36 The dance was a huge success and mentioned in several reviews. According to the theater critics of Le Figaro and Gil Blas, the cancan received an ovation and had to be repeated the night of its premiere.37 Mme Mariquita’s dance must, however, have been stylized: it is referred to as a pas de cancan in Le Figaro and as “an amusing sort of 1830s cahut” in Gil Blas. Eccentric dances were occasionally used for comic effect, incorporated into the dramatic narrative in incongruous situations or assigned to inappropriate characters. In Vénus à Paris, both Venus and Jupiter are drawn into the frenetic dancing at the Bal Mabille and join in with delirious abandon. The discord of watching gods lose themselves in the wild performance of the cahut no doubt delivered laughs. In Une répétition aux Folies-Bergère, the ballet master tries but fails to teach a company member how to perform an eccentric dance. The scene reads like an aside to the main plot, but the dance again no doubt drew laughs: audiences would have found it amusing to watch a stern ballet master perform the movements of an eccentric dance and see a supposedly trained ballet dancer flail about in a grotesque version of an already frenzied dance. A provocative dance more frequently seen in music-hall ballets was the lascivious dance. Unlike the cancan, danses lascives were identified as such in scores and librettos, and they were frequently remarked upon in reviews. Most were integrated into the narrative as dances for characters already identified as sensuous, while others were set apart in divertissements as dances for slaves and other exotic characters. In La princesse au sabbat, for instance, the princess performs a lascivious dance in the witches’ den while under a spell, whereas in Sardanapale, slaves perform the danses lascives during a royal ceremonial divertissement. Seduction scenes were even more prevalent than lascivious dances. They could be mimed or danced, and could be performed by the protagonist, a secondary soloist, or by the entire ballet corps. Seductions became so popular that by the mid-1890s, authors nearly always built some excuse into their ballets for the introduction of a temptress or two. The conceit was virtually always the same: a beautiful temptress is sent by an omniscient fairy or other higher power to test a man’s fidelity or moral fortitude. In Tentations, for example, Mephistopheles tempts the devout hermit Saint Antoine with drinks and unspecified entertainments, and in Les deux tentations, Mephistopheles sends in a succession of voluptuous blondes. In Le rêve d’Elias, nefarious fairies dressed as precious stones entice a curious Elias into their cave with bewitching dances; in Les sept pêchés capitaux, the seven deadly sins, personified, dance before Pierrot in an attempt to wrest him from his Pierrette; and in Don Juan aux enfers, Don Juan is tormented by a series of irresistible enchantresses as punishment for having broken the hearts of so many women (see chapter 8).

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Pantomime versus Ballet Despite structural similarities, 1890s music-hall and Opéra ballets would have looked quite different. For one, different institutional pressures and commercial priorities inevitably led to a new production aesthetic in the halls that affected the choreographic style of dances and mime scenes. As detailed in further chapters, audience preferences for the lightest and raciest forms of popular entertainment led directors and authors to place an ever-greater emphasis on exhibitionism. Also, as discussed earlier, Parisian music-hall ballet looked not only to the Opéra for inspiration, but also to popular forms of ballet. In the 1880s and 1890s, this included ballet in boulevard-theater spectacles and in the always-popular English music halls, as well as ballet at the Eden-Théâtre. But even when a music-hall ballet included only dances also found in Opéra ballets, these dances did not always resemble their models. Differences in casting between state-theatre and music-hall ballet led to significant disparities in performance style. In 1890s music-hall ballet, mime and dance were not necessarily performed by the same person, and different dancers performed different types of choreography. Principal roles in 1890s music-hall ballets were usually split into three categories: the dramatic female lead was performed either by an actress or character dancer, the dramatic male lead by a travesty actress or travesty dancer, and the star ballerina role by an academically trained ballerina. Lead male roles could also be performed by male mimes, but never by male dancers.38 A ballet’s two principal dramatic roles—usually the heroine and her lover—were held by performers skilled in the art of mime and proficient in various forms of popular and character dance, but not academic ballet. Principal character dancers or actresses performed all of the pantomime scenes, danced character or popular dances, and occasionally performed a pas de deux that drew on a basic ballet vocabulary, but they did not perform classical variations. Ballet in a strict academic style was instead performed by the hall’s Italian-trained première danseuse étoile. Star ballerinas, though always given equal billing in programs, did not perform dramatic roles and their performances rarely had any bearing on the central narrative. They normally danced only in divertissements, usually as bayadères, fairies, or fanciful characters in a royal entourage, fairy glen, or dream. As a result, music-hall ballets maintained a relatively strict division between dances in formally self-enclosed, extradramatic divertissements, and character or popular dances integrated into a ballet’s narrative. With only a few exceptions, such as Barbe-Bleue or the ballets about ballerinas mentioned earlier, plots could not accommodate the appearance of a ballerina without the excuse of a separate divertissement. Rêve d’or and Fleur de Lotus, staged by the Folies-Bergère in 1892 and 1893, provide representative examples of this split casting. In Rêve d’or, the principal roles of the two young lovers were performed by Henriette Vergané and

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Angelina Correnti. Vergané normally performed secondary danced roles in the early 1890s as a high-ranking member of the ballet corps, and Correnti, who specialized in trouser roles, premiered most of the principal male roles for the Folies-Bergère in the same years. The Italian-trained première danseuse étoile, Lina Campana, impersonated Fortune during a dream sequence. Fleur de Lotus featured mime artists Mlle Micheline and Martha Fugère in the principal female roles, and travesty dancers Angelina Correnti and Mlle Mercédès in the supporting trouser roles.39 Campana again danced the ballet variations, this time as a bayadère during royal entertainments.40 The practice of splitting star ballerina and principal mime roles was not unique to Parisian music halls. Although it was not common in French state theaters or English music halls, there was an Italian precedent. Italian ballet, which tended to place great emphasis on mime and required dancers to be skilled as dramatic interpreters, often cast mime artists in principal dramatic roles.41 In the nineteenth century, the primi ballerini di rango francese (or primi ballerina seri francesi, dancers who specialized in academic dancing of the French style) were called on to perform classical dances such as pas de deux.42 Primi ballerini italiani, primi ballerini per le parti, or primi mimi danced or mimed dramatic roles.43 Although not consistent, the practice was maintained through the end of the century, and many of the balli grandi performed at the Eden-Théâtre had roles split between dancers and mimes.44 Thus, not only did French choreographers have a local model, several Italian mimes who performed in the Eden-Théâtre ballets later choreographed for the music halls. It is likely that they brought Italian casting conventions with them. French ballet did have its own tradition of casting mimes in certain secondary roles, and music hall choreographers may have drawn on this custom as much as on Italian practices. Parents, grandparents, old misers, witches, and other comic or grotesque characters were normally mimed in Romantic and post-Romantic Opéra ballets. Music-hall audiences would also have been used to seeing separate ballet divertissements in popular pantomimes, and seeing pantomimes performed alongside divertissements. It would have been a small step to dividing principal dramatic and danced roles between mimes and ballerinas in music-hall pantomime-ballets. It is also possible that this practice had nothing to do with Italian influences or historical French practices and arose instead out of purely economic interests. In the 1870s and 1880s, music-hall ballets were performed as in any French theater: a principal female performer both mimed and danced anything the plot required of her character.45 It was only in the 1890s, after Marchand took over the direction of the Folies-Bergère, that the halls began to stage ballets with split principal roles. The change may have come about as a publicity stunt. Marchand, who excelled at finding new ways to attract audiences, may have speculated that presenting beautiful and charismatic actresses in principal roles could heighten the glamour quotient of his ballets and raise

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real pantomime-ballets 113 the profile of his hall. After all, a ballerina could be pretty, but she needed primarily to be skilled in the art of dance. A dramatic actress or character dancer could be hired for her pulchritude alone. After 1890, it became more common for principal dramatic roles to be assigned to women skilled in the art of mime and possessed of unusual beauty rather than to dancers. Two ballets staged by the Folies-Bergère in 1893 illustrate the further exaggeration of this new trend, casting famous courtesans and professional beauties in principal dramatic roles. L’arc-en-ciel featured the already famous Moulin Rouge dancer Jane Avril—a brilliant dance-hall performer but not a ballerina by any standard—alongside the talented young Jeanne Lamothe, who later became a première danseuse but not an étoile.46 The star ballerina, Lina Campana, appeared only in the divertissement, as a rainbow fairy. Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts starred the beautiful courtesan and music-hall personality Émilienne d’Alençon opposite Jeanne Lamothe, who this time performed a trouser role. The unidentified star ballerina would have danced the role of lead fairy in the ballet’s final divertissement.47 Although character dancers and mimes from the late 1880s and early 1890s such as Mlles Vergané, Micheline, and Fugère were admired for their dramatic talents and may have been highly skilled performers, they would not have guaranteed a full house. The era’s most famous and infamous actresses could. By the late 1890s, famous personalities, courtesans, popular dancers, and actresses far outnumbered classically trained dancers in principal roles. The era’s so-called three graces, Émilienne d’Alençon, Liane de Pougy, and Caroline Otéro, became coveted stars of music-hall ballets, as did the mime and striptease artist Louise Willy and the Opéra’s première danseuse and icon of beauty, Cléo de Mérode. Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts was specially written for Émilienne d’Alençon, whose physique and magnetic personality assured her presence in several later music-hall ballets, including Néron, La belle et la bête, and Faust. The courtesan Liane de Pougy created tailor-made roles in L’araignée d’or and Rêve de Noël, and the charismatic and wildly popular Spanish dancer Caroline Otéro starred in L’impératrice and Une fête à Séville. Two spectacle ballets that earned high critical and popular praise, Phryné and Lorenza, starred the Opéra’s Cléo de Mérode, invited in turn by the Casino de Royan, the Folies-Bergère, and the Olympia to perform the title roles.48 All of these ballets had separate roles for a formally trained star ballerina. A quest for higher box-office earnings had become the norm, and the structure of music-hall ballets was permanently altered. Oddly, several ballets from the late 1890s did not assign titled dramatic roles to star ballerinas. It seems that splitting roles had by then become so common and accepted a practice that it was no longer necessary to devise a dramatic excuse to have these dancers appear outside the central narrative. Star ballerinas continued to be listed on programs as premières danseuses étoiles, but without an accompanying character name, and their variations in scores were likewise left untitled. They were no less important than they had been previously. All

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ballets still included classical variations, danseuses étoiles continued to be billed in large bold typeface on programs, and they received as much praise in reviews as did the professional beauties who performed dramatic roles. The practice of splitting roles remained somewhat erratic through the 1890s and 1900s, and there were exceptions at all three halls. Roughly half of the Casino’s productions were staged with traditional casting. The Casino’s star ballerina Mlle Enriu, for instance, sometimes danced variations in ballets that called for split roles, but she also frequently performed standard principal female roles that called for both mime and ballet. Enriu performed the purely danced role of an undine in L’étoile de mer as a danseuse étoile, while the principal fisherman and his fiancée were performed by secondary dancers Blanche Dupré and Gabrielle Renée. She later held the title role of Venus in Vénus à Paris, and the lead female character and object of Céno’s love, Dionisia, in Les amoureux de Venise.49 Aïda Boni, one of the great star ballerinas of the era, likewise performed traditional roles that combined mime and dance in the Casino’s Sans-Puits-House and Don Juan aux enfers. Ultimately, the majority of music-hall ballets from the 1900s and 1910s came to resemble a parade of updated conventions with little of the creativity and imagination that had characterized productions from the 1890s. A perpetual search for novelty brought late music-hall ballet closer to the episodic revue and farther from the narrative pantomime-ballet. During the 1890s, however, this same search for novelty infused music-hall ballet with a vitality nearly lost at the Opéra. For more than a decade, music-hall ballet’s creative artists produced masterpieces of the genre that successfully assimilated all that was pleasing and amusing in French pantomime-ballet while giving their dances and mime scenes a fresh gloss. Although 1890s music-hall ballets and Opéra ballets had comparable structures with a number of musical, narrative, and visual similarities, it is important to remember that this was in large part because the two traditions briefly converged in the last years of the century. Music-hall ballets from the 1870s and even 1880s had certain formal and stylistic traits in common with Opéra ballets, but other influences—notably those of boulevard-theater spectacles and English music-hall ballet—were more obvious. Ballets staged in the halls after 1900 would once again move away from academic models toward an aesthetic fueled almost entirely by popular cultural trends. In between, for about a decade, music-hall ballet traded on associations with high culture, while the Opéra looked to profitable forms of ballet at the Eden-Théâtre and music halls. Popular and elite forms of ballet briefly became interchangeable—or almost. Opéra and music-hall ballets shared a basic two- or three-act structure made up of an alternation between pantomime and dance, and they featured many of the same types of scenes and dances.50 Yet as we shall see in following chapters, music-hall ballets remained a distinct genre, with lightweight music, entertaining narratives, and revealing costumes.51

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Chapter Six

Music as Storyteller

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The Musical Conventions of 1890s Music-Hall Ballet Popular ballet music was virtually identical to Opéra ballet music in both form and function. Written to complement a particular libretto, ballet music closely followed the dramatic contours of a given plot. It set the scene, delineated characters, underscored the mime, and acted as a support for dance. Scores composed for music-hall productions also had to be as clear and predictable as possible, with musical cues that could be readily deciphered by a broad public. Music was therefore the most conservative component of a music-hall ballet. Composers adopted the stylistic and formal conventions of state-theater ballet music and preserved these formulas without significant change into the early twentieth century. The result is that while music-hall ballet scores ranged considerably in their rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic complexity (see chapter 7), their overall structure and the formal and stylistic conventions of their dramatic and dance music remained remarkably static throughout the history of the genre.

Dance Music Dance and dramatic music were separate entities, each with its own function and conventions. Dance music was highly standardized and had a relatively narrow stylistic range. It needed to have a steady pulse with rhythms that propelled a dancer forward, an even number of measures, and balanced phrases. Dance music also needed to be simple enough to recede into the background and not distract from the choreography. Virtually all dances therefore consisted of repetitions of tuneful periodic melodies in small binary or ternary forms. Of all dance types, ballet variations were subject to the most rigidly observed set of conventions. Composers nearly always used an ABA form with a twoor four-measure lead-in to set the tempo and a brief, sometimes more rapid, coda for bravura finales. Although variations could be as short as three sets of absolutely square sixteen-measure periods—no more than vignettes for

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the ballerina to make a cursory appearance on stage—most were double that length, and a few longer still. Variations usually had contrasting A and B sections with rhythmic patterns appropriate for different types of movements. One section might be suitable for delicate steps on pointe and pirouettes, the other for small jumps and turns across the room. The bayadère’s two variations in the second divertissement of Fleur de Lotus (1893) by Louis Desormes perfectly illustrate the conventions of ballet music. Although one can only speculate about music-hall ballet choreography, the music for the first variation (ABAʹBʹ) suggests a combination of pointe work, turns, or jumps. The A sections, with their upbeat flute and clarinet melody over pizzicato chords, might have showcased series of steps on pointe or pirouettes. The faster-paced phrases of slurred dotted rhythms in the B sections that propel forward and the final accelerated tutti cadential flourish could have accompanied bigger movements or turns that moved quickly across the entire expanse of the stage (ex. 6.1). The second variation, with its light rising pizzicato figures over a chordal accompaniment, all of which accentuate weak beats, could also have been appropriate for small jumps and turns on pointe, showing off the bayadère’s grace and delicacy after the showier first variation (ex. 6.2). Character dances, whether national dances, social dances, or dances with fanciful titles, had forms nearly as standardized as variations. Since most character dances were performed by an ensemble rather than a soloist, they tended to consist of simple melodies with regular rhythmic patterns in a steady meter that any corps member with even minimal professional training could follow. Like variations, character dances consisted of repetitions of antecedent–consequent phrases organized into small ternary or binary forms (most often AABB, sometimes ABAʹ). Many had introductions, again to set the tempo and allow dancers to take their places, but none had the rapid codas characteristic of the final virtuosic flourishes in ballet variations.1 The one exception to this structural pattern was the waltz. Waltzes were by far the longest dances in any ballet. Always multisectional, many followed a loose rondo form, but some were episodic, comprising a series of contrasting sections connected only by virtue of repetitive accompaniment patterns and similar triadic melodies. The waltz was also the only ensemble dance in which composers let their creativity flow relatively unrestrained. Meter necessarily remained steady, but as will be demonstrated in chapter 7, a few waltzes featured irregular phrasing, interesting rhythms, and colorful harmonies that lent the dance a complexity sometimes at odds with the rest of the ballet.

Dramatic Music Dramatic music made up the bulk of a music-hall ballet score. Its function was to evoke a given time or place, feeling or atmosphere, to delineate

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Example 6.1. Louis Desormes, Fleur de Lotus, tableau 2, first variation

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Example 6.1.—(concluded)

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Example 6.2. Louis Desormes, Fleur de Lotus, tableau 2, second variation

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characterization, or to help convey the meaning of specific mime gestures. Since composers were not bound by the formulaic requirements of dance music, dramatic music varied far more than dance music, both formally and stylistically. Music for detailed mime scenes, for instance, could be made up of repeated phrases in a series of stylistically contrasting sections that followed the general outlines of a dramatic scene, but it could also be formally free, even recitative-like in its metrical and rhythmic flexibility, following a mime’s gestures. Dramatic writing also tended to be more interesting on a purely musical level. Composers could use more complex harmonies and thicker textures without any concern that these would distract the dancers and mimes or divert attention from the choreography. Dramatic intelligibility was sustained through a combination of musical conventions or topics, recurring melodies, and mimetic sounds. Composers rarely directly quoted older works, but they did make allusions to established stylistic traits that might evoke a particular place, era, or character type. These musical signs were then reinforced through the use of recurring melodies or musical styles associated with a given character or situation. Composers also wove explicit mimetic gestures into the musical texture wherever the narrative allowed for them. When a character knocked on a door, the orchestra invariably provided the associated sound by playing three short chords followed by silence while all listened for a response. Characters running downstairs or fairies slipping into a lake were often accompanied by rapidly descending scales, laughter was mimicked by short descending patterns and repeated notes, the snores of an old man sleeping were imitated by trills in the bassoons, and so on. A short and unusually condensed pantomime sequence from Henri Cieutat’s Le château de Mac-Arrott offers a good illustration of how music could be used to help elucidate the narrative. The scene takes place in the Scottish countryside on the lands of Mac-Arrott, a wealthy laird. He has offered his daughter Diana’s hand to the man who wins an archery competition, and all watch as one after another fails. Diana’s penniless young lover, Eric, sits nearby, miserable at the thought of his beloved’s impending union to another. He has been assured of help in his quest for Diana’s hand from a fairy (formerly a beggar woman to whom he had offered assistance), but this brings him little comfort. The pantomime sequence begins as Diana gives Eric an arrow. He takes it, but is despondent. Just as he is about to shoot, the fairy appears and seems to direct his arrow; he hits the bull’s-eye. In just eighteen measures, Cieutat combines three of the standard musical techniques listed above—musical conventions, recurring melodies, and mimesis—to reinforce the narrative. Diana’s pleading gestures are underscored by a gentle eight-measure melody typical of music for ballet heroines. Her “feminine” lyricism immediately contrasts with Eric’s more pedestrian line, a passage heard earlier in the ballet and already associated with his character. When

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music as storyteller 121 the fairy appears, Eric’s music is suddenly interrupted by a triadic melody in 89 followed by two measures of tremolos. Tremolos were a characteristic marker of otherworldly creatures as well as a common device for signaling tension or suspense, and this particular 89 melody is a fragment of the theme played two scenes earlier when the fairy first revealed herself to Eric. The chromatic scale and final chord mimic the flight of the arrow and hitting of the bull’s-eye (ex. 6.3). Cieutat’s music is unmistakably in the service of the drama: the sequence is entirely composed of fragments, and changes in musical style occur solely in relation to the narrative. Evocative dramatic music could be written to set the scene in a more general way. The opening of Ganne’s score for the 1899 Folies-Bergère ballet La princesse au sabbat offers a striking example of this practice. The ballet features a vain princess whose search for eternal beauty leads her into the sinister world of black magic. As the curtain rises, decrepit old witches and their savage companions skulk about in semiobscurity guarding a giant cauldron. The set is grotesque: a crumbling, dilapidated stone cave filled with reptile skeletons,

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Example 6.3. Henri Cieutat, Le château de Mac-Arrott, scene 9

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taxidermied animals, and vials of green liquid, all infused with a lurid reddish light. It is a world of mystery and fantasy, alluring in its dramatic potency yet ominous. Ganne’s music evokes this sinister and mysterious world as of the ballet’s very first chord. The musical introduction to La princesse au sabbat, a fifteen-measure passage marked “fairly slow and somber,” begins with what one eventually hears as a dominant sonority—V7 of the tonic established in the first scene—but it is inflected by a diminished fifth (ex. 6.4). Although the dominant is well enough established by the end of the opening passage to act as a lead-in to the first scene, harmonies are clouded throughout by whole-tone sonorities, obscuring functional harmonic relations and creating a sense of tonal ambiguity. In the first scene, functional harmony is once again undermined: the opening C is connected to the concluding C-major chord by a series of augmented triads underpinned by a descending whole-tone scale (ex. 6.5). The practice of conveying a dramatic narrative with closely correlated music was a common feature of even the most musically dense and intricate Opéra ballet scores from the end of the century, but the correspondence of music to stage action tended to be more conspicuous in music-hall ballet scores. Dramatic musical cues in popular ballets likely needed to be as obvious as the mime they accompanied in order to help the halls’ diverse and inattentive audiences understand the plot.2 Composers therefore relied heavily on longestablished topics and formulas. The result was that similar scene types from different ballets sound remarkably similar.3 Storm scenes from two different ballets—one from Cieutat’s Le château de Mac-Arrott and the other from Desormes’s Fleur de Lotus—offer examples of some of the most hackneyed dramatic music. At the end of the first tableau of Le château de Mac-Arrott, as Mac-Arrott learns of the low class of his future son-in-law and threatens to annul the engagement, a storm gathers on the horizon. The onset of the storm is indicated using musical topics established through associations to earlier repertoire. Thunder and wind are represented by frenzied tremolo chords and rapidly descending and ascending streams of chromatic sixteenth notes, sometimes rushing by in quintuplets, sometimes intensified in rising sequences. Melodic material, restricted to ponderously accentuated triads in quarter and dotted half notes, conveys a sense of doom and adds to the sense of heightened tension produced by an unusually wide instrumental range, a constant fortissimo dynamic, a lack of cadences, and irregular, erratic phrase fragments (ex. 6.6). As in Le château de Mac-Arrott, the storm scene from Fleur de Lotus marks the climax of the first tableau and provides a convenient excuse for a series of critical turning points in the narrative. The Prince must convince the innocent Goutte de Rosée to come away with him, leaving before anyone can tell Fleur de Lotus where to find her sister (see chapter 8). Their need for haste and their immediate departure only make sense once the music is heard, signaling with

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Example 6.4. Louis Ganne, La princesse au sabbat, tableau 1

prescribed musical devices the onset of a violent storm. Desormes depicted thunder and wind through the use of tremolos, series of rising and descending chromatic chords in the strings, and arpeggios played by basses rising to a held-note climax, then descending to ever greater depths (ex. 6.7). Textures throughout this section are thick, creating a foil for the pattering rainlike offbeat eighths in a central section. Tension mounts toward the end with a frantic chromatic sequence of tremolo chords ascending nearly two octaves to a fortississimo before fading out on the descent. Even without casting a glance at the dancers or studying the printed synopsis, members of the audience would surely have been able to identify the type of scene playing out on stage. Several composers also used stereotypical musical gestures to delineate character types. They tended to set male and female characters apart using melodic or rhythmic attributes thought to sound feminine or masculine; characterize peasants through accompanying folklike melodies over drones; announce the arrival of royalty with ponderous, often dotted tutti chords; and represent fairies with tremolos, usually played by high-pitched instruments. Desormes’s music for Fleur de Lotus perfectly encapsulates all of these. The first appearance of the peasant girls, Fleur de Lotus and Goutte de Rosée, inside their rustic cottage is accompanied by a simple folklike melody over a tonic pedal (ex. 6.8). The girls’ humble tune is then offset musically by the entrance of a royal cortège in the second scene: the gentle duple melody over drones is replaced by fortissimo dotted rhythms in 86 (ex. 6.9). The girls and their suitors are subsequently given gendered musical styles. The two female protagonists are almost

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Example 6.5. Louis Ganne, La princesse au sabbat, scene 1, opening

always accompanied by flowing lyrical lines, while their lovers are given more sober stepwise material. Fairies were assigned equally formulaic musical gestures. When fairies emerge by a moonlit lake in the second tableau, their entrance is signaled by violins playing a long pianissimo tremolo followed by silence. The silence is broken by a rising arpeggiated flourish on the flute, an indication that something mysterious is about to appear. This is repeated, equally softly, an octave lower (ex. 6.10). As the tremolos are rhythmically slowed down to half-step eighthnote alternations, a mincing, delicate melody is heard in a higher voice as if mimicking the airborne footsteps of some ethereal being. For any audience member familiar with Giselle or later ballets written in a similar vein, such music could only signal the arrival of otherworldly creatures.

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Example 6.6. Henri Cieutat, Le château de Mac-Arrott, “L’orage”

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Example 6.7. Louis Desormes, Fleur de Lotus, tableau 1, “L’orage”

Dramatic Dance Music Dances integrated into a ballet’s dramatic thread could be as descriptive or evocative as dramatic music. When writing dances for witches in La princesse au sabbat, for instance, Louis Ganne often paid as much attention to evoking the appropriate atmosphere as he did when composing dramatic music for the same ballet. Although the “Ballet des sorcières” is a straightforward dance with simple functional harmonies, the “Bacchanale et ronde infernale” vividly conveys the evil intentions of these sinister characters. While augmented and

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Example 6.8. Louis Desormes, Fleur de Lotus, scene 1, mm. 67–84

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Example 6.9. Louis Desormes, Fleur de Lotus, scene 3, “Cortège”

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Example 6.10. Louis Desormes, Fleur de Lotus, tableau 2, scene 3

diminished sonorities contribute to an overall sense of unease, a parody of the Dies Irae played by trombone, bassoon, and double bass help reinforce the dance’s infernal quality.4 The music for exotic dances tended to be the most colorful of a ballet’s dramatic dances, but also the most clichéd. As a comparison of a slave dance in Desormes’s Fleur de Lotus to a lascivious dance in Ganne’s Phryné illustrates, even two composers who wrote ballets at the opposite extremes of originality and musical complexity used the same narrow set of musical signs to represent their exotic characters. Both dances feature sinuous melodic lines

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^ ^ with chromatic alterations of ♭2 and ♯4 to the scale within the minor mode, augmented seconds, offbeat sixteenth-note alternations, and broken chords. Desormes’s dance, a quintessential example of stereotyped musical exoticism, also included offbeat thirty-second-note flourishes and accentuated weak beats. Appoggiaturas in the melodic line occasionally highlight second beats, and broken chords accentuate the third beat in the accompaniment. Desormes’s orchestration may have contributed to this exotic sound. Although the orchestral score is missing, indications in the piano score suggest that wind instruments predominated. The scene begins with a two-part texture in which the upper melodic line is played by the oboe—it is later taken up by a flute and punctuated by cymbal crashes—and the lower line is played by the clarinet and bassoon. The broken chords played on third beats and the thirty-second-note flourishes in the lower voices may have been intended to mimic the sound of the sitar or related instrument (ex. 6.11). Exotic characters from any number of countries performed a variety of dances, but certain types lent themselves to a particular treatment: that of a sexualized exoticism. Slaves, almées, and bayadères—the dancers of unspecified and fictionalized Middle Eastern or Indian derivation who wore the midriffbearing, sequined outfits so evocatively described by Huysmans in his Parisian Sketches—often performed some sort of sensuous dance. Some were titled “lascivious dance” in scores or referred to as such in reviews, while others may be assumed to have been sensuous from descriptions in scenarios. In at least a few cases, these dances were accompanied by the kind of routine exotic music described above. Although records are too meager to offer more than hints of a standardized practice, it seems probable from surviving scores that the

Example 6.11. Louis Desormes, Fleur de Lotus, tableau 2, divertissement, “Esclaves”

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correlation of exotic and erotic was strong enough by the 1890s for exotic music alone to signal the presence of an eroticized dance. This was especially likely when both the music for an exotic number and the character who performed the dance contrasted strongly with the rest of the ballet. Fleur de Lotus once again provides a representative example. Although the ballet is set in India, the score is diatonic throughout, with entire numbers based on tonic-dominant progressions in major keys. The slave dance is the only number with exotic musical markers.5 While there are no descriptions of the choreography associated with this particular dance, its musical characteristics suggest an adherence to the prevailing association between exoticism and sensuality. Indeed, Desormes seems to have reserved his exotic music for the one dance that could be construed as sensuous, perhaps in an effort to underscore or heighten the erotic potential of a sexualized “other,” or perhaps to make the slave’s sensuousness acceptable, insulated by a wall of familiar conventions. Ganne’s score for Phryné offers an unusually striking example of the link between exotic music and eroticism. Toward the end of the second tableau, directly following a long divertissement, Phryné performs what is described in the score as a “very voluptuous dance with lascivious movements and gestures.”6 Her dance is so openly carnal that she is subsequently convicted for impiety and summoned before a court to establish her purity. Phryné’s performance comes after a series of dances that includes variations for the sacred courtesan and dances for Persians, Phoenicians, Assyrians, Egyptians, and Greeks. Although most of these dances have slightly unusual harmonic or rhythmic traits (see chapter 7), the music for Phryné’s dance is unmistakably “exotic.” Whereas Ganne wrote all of the above-mentioned pseudonational dances and those for the courtesan in a late-nineteenth-century diatonic idiom, he created Phryné’s lascivious dance using many of the stereotypical musical markers of Middle-Eastern exoticism common to nineteenth-century French opera and ballet.7 Minor-mode melodic lines are inflected with augmented seconds ^ , ♯4^, and ♮/♯7^ over a tonic pedal, and simple and chromatic alterations of ♭2 rhythmic patterns are embellished with offbeat sixteenth-note alternations and arpeggiated chords to mimic strumming (ex. 6.12). Significantly, when Phryné is later called upon to prove her innocence in court, she performs the same dance, but it has been musically transformed. Her dance is now entirely diatonic. It is no longer recognized as being exotic, and she is deemed chaste, devoid of all unseemly sensuality (ex. 6.13). The correlation of exoticism with licentiousness in music-hall ballet, and the association of exotic sensuousness with the forbidden, were extensions of an already well-established trope carried over from nineteenth-century French art, literature, opera, and ballet on the high-art stage. Exotic dances in musichall ballets were, however, rarely fraught with semantic tension of any kind, and the dancers posed no real threat to the established social order projected

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Example 6.12. Louis Ganne, Phryné, “Danse de Phryné”

by the ballet’s story line. Phryné aside, exotic characters usually had no bearing on the central story at all. Almées, slave girls, and bayadères normally danced only in divertissements, their eroticism safely contained by the formal conventions of the genre. Most entered the stage for a single dance, then disappeared immediately afterward. Exotic dancers also rarely seduced the male characters they sought to tempt. Their role was purely visual, and their performances appeared as suspended vignettes. As with its choreographic components, music-hall ballet’s musical conventions confirm that these productions were fundamentally the same as ballets created for the national opera house. Yet as detailed in the following chapters, they were not identical. Where they differed was in musical style and visual aesthetic. Although academic in structure, music-hall ballets were grounded in popular culture, and it is these aspects that appealed to broad audiences and assured the ballets’ commercial success. A popular surface is also what marked music-hall ballets as a distinct genre: one that maintained the overall structure and formulas of nineteenth-century French post-Romantic ballet, but that used them as the framework for productions with an up-to-date, popular sensibility.

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Example 6.13. Louis Ganne, Phryné, “Danse mystique de Phryné”

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Chapter Seven

As Pleasing to the Ear as to the Eye

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A Popular Musical Style In a review of Henri José’s Le tzigane for Gil Blas in 1899, Gaston Serpette encapsulated the essential qualities of a great music-hall ballet score. M. Henri José, he writes, “has perfectly understood that in a music hall, one needs above all to capture the attention of a public that comes far more for its own amusement than in search of great art. Also, all of his pieces are always melodically and rhythmically clear. One effortlessly follows this music that accurately underlines all of the libretto’s situations.”1 To be a success, ballet music needed to be entertaining and functional. Although creativity and the ability to write arresting dramatic scenes were valued, music-hall composers earned the highest praise if they were able to write music that followed the contours of the plot and that was upbeat, danceable, colorful, and melodically appealing.2 The excerpts of reviews included below represent only a small sample, but their similarity is revealing. M. G. Pfeiffer’s music, which is clear, dancelike, rhythmic, and melodious, offers the ear a plethora of delicious motives.3 M. Ganne’s score is full of color, with a delicate orchestration and demonic and fantastic sonorities, and in which the Dies Irae is integrated in a most curious fashion. But the composer has not forgotten the dance tunes and punctuates the ballerina’s light steps with the liveliest of melodies.4 M. Diet’s music is elegant and dancelike. Lovely waltz tunes are particularly pleasant. Charming and voluptuous motives underline the expressive miming of M. Thalès, Hélène Chauvin (La belle aux cheveux d’or), Louise Willy.5 M. Ed. Diet’s score is elegant and carefully crafted. The dance tunes are properly dancelike, which is occasionally lacking in ballets. They place choreographic virtuosity at the forefront.6

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Popular ballet music was light music. It was written for commercial venues as ephemeral entertainment that would appeal to as large and diverse an audience as possible.7 Music-hall scores were not intended for concert-hall performance or intellectual contemplation but rather as supports for pantomime and dance. Ballet music fit in with other types of music heard at the halls: polkas, waltzes, and marches played by the orchestra between circus or theatrical performances, music for song-and-dance routines, and exotic musical acts presented during intermissions. Music-hall ballet music was therefore closely tied to its function: its form was dictated by generic requirements and its tone by performance context and audience expectations. This does not mean that popular ballet scores can be summarily dismissed as inconsequential background music. Several composers showed a remarkable degree of imagination and ingenuity, balancing the technical requirements of pantomime and dance music, the tastes of their audiences, and their own creative inclinations with scores that were at once well crafted, evocative, and appealing. In addition, a handful of music-hall ballets staged at the turn of the century—particularly those by renowned comic-opera composers Ganne, Vidal, and Hirschmann—display a relatively intricate and varied musical language, and an interest in formal and thematic unity that went beyond the demands of the genre. The sixteen extant pantomime-ballet scores that include stage action printed above the staff can be divided into overlapping categories according to complexity of musical material. The lightest are Louis Desormes’s Rêve d’or, Le miroir, and Fleur de Lotus ; Henri Cieutat’s Le château de Mac-Arrott ; Jules Bouval’s Le scandal du Louvre; Antoine Banès’s Olympia ; Louis Varney’s La Princesse Idaea ; and Oscar de Lagoanère’s Bains de dames. The most complex are Louis Ganne’s Phryné and La princesse au sabbat ; Henri Hirschmann’s Néron ; and Paul Vidal’s L’impératrice. Ganne’s Merveilleuses et gigolettes, Edmond Diet’s Rêve de Noël, Francis Thomé’s Le Prince Désir, and Charles Lecocq’s Barbe-Bleue fall somewhere in between. These groupings should not be read as an indication of relative artistic value. As noted above, some of the most memorable and most carefully crafted works were among the lightest. Although similarities between all surviving music-hall scores suggest a relatively constant style, it is important to keep in mind that only one in five pantomime-ballet scores written between 1886 and 1901 has so far turned up in theater archives and libraries, and none for productions after 1901.

Texture and Accompaniment Figures Popular ballet music was made up of catchy melodies over functional harmonies. Textures tended to be fairly thin, and accompaniment patterns repetitive. In the very simplest scores, which include most written in the 1880s and

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early 1890s and all written by Desormes, accompaniment patterns consist of triadic patterns or chords repeated either for several measures or throughout an entire segment of a pantomime sequence (ex. 7.1). Dance music in these lightest scores has extremely repetitive chordal bass lines in standard duple and triple patterns, sometimes syncopated, that change only from one section of a dance to the next (ex. 7.2). Textures and accompaniment patterns are not always as static as the above passages from Desormes’s Fleur de Lotus and Cieutat’s Le château de Mac-Arrott suggest. Pantomime scenes in ballets of moderate complexity by Ganne, Diet, Missa, and Lecocq are almost always homophonic and sometimes include passages of repeated chords, but patterns are constantly modified, even when thematic or melodic material is extremely simple. In Merveilleuses et gigolettes, for instance, Ganne repeats the same harmonic patterns for only two to eight measures instead of extending the same texture over entire sections or scenes as Desormes does (ex. 7.3). The same is true of dramatic music in the most intricate ballets from the turn of the century by Ganne, Hirschmann, and Vidal. While their dramatic writing remains light and homophonic throughout, accompaniment patterns are constantly varied. Even in ballets with comparatively interesting pantomime music, accompaniment patterns for dance music tended to be of the chordal “boom-chick” or “oom-pah-pah” variety with occasional walking bass lines. These patterns were especially common in popular dance numbers such as waltzes, polkas, mazurkas, and galops, many of which were excerpted from ballets and sold as separate numbers in piano reduction. Of these, the waltz was the most formulaic. As can be seen in the three examples below, waltzes were almost always made up of triadic or stepwise melodies and simple rhythms over repetitive chordal bass lines, regardless of the dance’s harmonic language or the ballet’s overall complexity. The first example is from Lagoanère’s divertissement-like Bains de dames, one of the most conventional and functional of all published ballet scores (ex. 7.4). The second is from Lecocq’s Barbe-Bleue, a large-scale work that is musically—at least in terms of its harmonic language—unremarkable (ex. 7.5). The third is one of two waltzes from Ganne’s La princesse au sabbat, another major ballet that is elsewhere notable for its unusually colorful harmonies. This last waltz is a variation, the third number in a divertissement-like “ballet of witches,” and not an ensemble dance. Although light and tuneful, the waltz’s atypical phrasing creates a sense of metrical ambiguity at odds with the expectations of the style (ex. 7.6).

Thematic Material and Harmony Thematic material in all popular ballets was written to be rhythmically and melodically as catchy as possible. Melodies were, as a general rule, either

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Example 7.1. Louis Desormes, Fleur de Lotus, tableau 2, scene 5

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Example 7.2. Henri Cieutat, Le château de Mac-Arrott, tableau 5, divertissement des fées, pas de deux

stepwise or triadic, and rhythmic patterns rarely included anything beyond eighths and sixteenths in duple and triple combinations. Exceptions occurred only in pantomime sequences in which composers were called upon to evoke a particular dramatic atmosphere (such as the storms described in chapter 6), and in the occasional cadenzas written to set divertissements apart from a ballet’s central narrative. Differences between the simplest divertissement-like ballets and the most complex works become far more apparent at the level of their harmonic structures. The simplest works—those by Cieutat, Desormes, Banès, Lagoanère, and Varney—can only be described as light music. These ballets are almost entirely organized around fifth relations or around modulations to the relative major or minor, and move between keys with no more than four flats or sharps. Cieutat’s Le château de Mac-Arrott, for example, begins with an opening Gigue in G and C, a short scene in C minor/E-flat major, and a dance in rondo form that moves through E flat–A flat–E flat–B flat–E flat. A royal procession in C is followed by a pantomime for a fairy and a peasant in A flat–F minor–F major–B flat–F, a return of royalty in A–D–A, another rondo dance for the princess in

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Example 7.3. Louis Ganne, Merveilleuses et gigolettes, scene 17

B flat–F–B flat–E flat–B flat, and so on. Nearly all dances and pantomime scenes are written in straightforward ABA or rondo forms, all sections of which predictably outline I–IV–I, I–V–I, or I–IV–I–V–I (the long final waltz is the exception, but still moves by fifth relations through C–G–C–F–B flat–F–C). There are no overarching connections between these key centers: the ballet does not begin and end in the same key, and there is no evidence of forethought or logic in the sequence of keys.

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Example 7.4. Oscar de Lagoanère, Bains de dames, valse, “Danse des suppliantes”

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Example 7.5. Charles Lecocq, Barbe-Bleue, “Valse”

Harmony at a local level is equally simple, with standard functional progressions centered on tonic and dominant (ex. 7.2). Only occasionally was Cieutat’s, Desormes’s, or Lagoanère’s harmonic language colored by diminished seventh chords, modal mixture, or chromatic inflections, and then only for brief moments of heightened dramatic interest (ex. 7.7).

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Example 7.6. Louis Ganne, La princesse au sabbat, “Variation—valse”

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Example 7.7. Henri Cieutat, Le château de Mac-Arrott, scene 5, “Tristesse d’Eric”

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As already mentioned, extreme harmonic simplicity does not imply overall simplicity, nor does it signal a second-rate ballet. Cieutat’s score for Le château de Mac-Arrott, though unquestionably one of the lightest, was nevertheless carefully crafted. It remains upbeat and engaging throughout, while perfectly encapsulating the formal conventions of nineteenth-century pantomime-ballet music. Narrative and musical dramatization are closely connected, and the ballet’s principal components—pantomime, ballet, and character dances—are accompanied by music appropriate for their style and function. Cieutat also incorporated a web of recurring melodies and musical styles that help differentiate characters and elucidate the scenario.8 Light ballets also cannot be grouped into a single homogeneous collection of scores structured around tonic and dominant harmonies. Lagoanère’s miniature ballet Bains de dames is, if anything, harmonically even simpler than Cieutat’s Le château de Mac-Arrott, with continuous streams of tonic and dominant chords. The final waltz, which runs to six of the ballet’s twenty-four pages, is almost comically simple in its outlining of I and V chords (see ex. 7.4). All sections of this five-part rondo, along with the subsequent variation, are in the tonic key of E flat, with the exception of the extended middle segment, which is in the dominant, B flat. Yet several scenes are related by third, not fifth, with frequent modulations between E, C, and E flat (see scenes 1, 3, and 4). Conversely, scores that employ an imaginative harmonic language often contain some passages of extreme harmonic simplicity. In Barbe-Bleue, for example, Lecocq combines a somewhat broader harmonic palette than can be found in Cieutat’s or Lagoanère’s scores with writing that was as simple as nineteenth-century harmony can get. Scenes built on a rapid succession of chord progressions that include secondary dominants, third substitutions, and the occasional diminished or augmented sixth chord, alternate with others that move between tonic and dominant harmonies in closely related keys. In virtually all cases, divisions between simplistic and more imaginative writing fell along functional lines: dance music, as mentioned, was necessarily a support for choreography, whereas dramatic music could briefly take center stage. Although music-hall ballets are undeniably light, several scores from the late 1890s have a relatively intricate harmonic structure, both on a large-scale and local level.9 These ballets—the major productions from the height of music-hall ballet—seem surprising given the context in which they were performed. Despite the shift in the mid-1890s toward a clientele probably accustomed to comic opera, ballet, and music drama staged in Paris’s preeminent theaters, and despite the halls’ practice of relying increasingly on well-known comic-opera composers, music-hall patrons still came to the halls to enjoy an evening of frivolous entertainment. The halls were not traditionally the realm of the ballet connoisseur, yet a few of the ballets from the turn of the century are masterpieces of the genre. Ganne’s ballets from the second half of the 1890s—Merveilleuses et gigolettes, Phryné, and La princesse au sabbat—and Vidal’s

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L’impératrice stand out as works of art with their creatively wrought scores that nevertheless maintained the conventions of popular ballet. Ganne’s Merveilleuses et gigolettes, which lies somewhere between the simplest and the most complex music-hall ballets, provides several illustrations of how a music-hall composer could navigate the delicate boundary between originality and accessibility. On a broad structural level, pantomime scenes and dances are harmonically related either by fifth or by third (modulations between each occur in roughly equal number), and scenes alternate between major and minor keys: gone are the chains of major keys moving around the circle of fifths. Sections of scenes, or segments of closed dance forms, are similarly organized. In the act 1 Menuet–Variation–Menuet, for instance, sections of the ABACDCAʹ form are alternately related by fifth or by third: A is in G major, B in E minor (vi), A in G major, C in C major (IV), D in E minor, C in C major, and Aʹ returns to G major. Although it is unlikely that any of the Folies-Bergère’s onlookers would have been aware of the structural underpinnings of the ballet they were watching, they might have appreciated Ganne’s imaginative play with the stylistic conventions of familiar dance types. Ganne’s Menuet from the first act of Merveilleuses et gigolettes, for example, is striking for its unidiomatic harmonic structure as well as for its clever melding of past and present. Ganne’s Menuet recalls the eighteenth-century Menuet–Trio–Menuet, but with several distortions.10 In place of a Trio, Ganne has substituted a Variation for the star ballerina (ex. 7.8). The Menuet itself has all of the distinctive traits of its Baroque model: its narrow melodic range, simple rhythmic gestures in triple time, and sparse textures mimic those of a standard minuet, as does the regularity of phrasing: the dance remains in 43 throughout, with phrases grouped in pairs. However, the Menuet’s musette bass—more commonly found in the trio than the minuet— and the melodic line are harmonically so static and mechanistic that the dance seems to belong to a nineteenth-century music box rather than to the court of Louis XV (ex. 7.9). The same Menuet also illustrates Ganne’s use of a relatively sophisticated harmonic language within a seemingly modest dance. The midsection Variation is a case in point. Rather than present a simple tune over a series of alternating tonic and dominant chords as would Desormes, Cieutat, or Lagoanère, Ganne built his Variation on colorful uses of common-practice chord progressions, chords with added notes, and third substitutions, all of which lend a subtle contemporary bent to the minuet’s traditional harmonic underpinnings (see ex. 7.8). Ganne’s use of the musical conventions of the minuet help establish the ballet’s Napoleonic-era setting, evoking the world of early nineteenth-century ballroom culture; yet he simultaneously appeals to an audience steeped in the harmonic language of late nineteenth-century ballroom dances. The main waltz in Merveilleuses et gigolettes provides another interesting example of Ganne’s melding of music-hall ballet’s conventions with an imaginative

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Example 7.8. Louis Ganne, Merveilleuses et gigolettes, “Variation de la Guimard”

harmonic palette. All of the rhythmic, melodic, and textural features typical of waltzes are present, as are the quintessential accompaniment figures: the sweeping stepwise and triadic tune is simple and predictable, and the oompah-pah bass line propels forward and inspires dance. If one were to look only at the waltz’s surface characteristics, one might easily mistake it for the work of Desormes or Cieutat. However, its harmonic language moves far beyond a formulaic alternation of I and V chords. In the A sections of the rondo-form Waltz, the gentle descending melody of the section’s single period is unusually chromatic. The melodic line of the opening antecedent begins with a descending movement by half step and is supported by chords that likewise move chromatically: of the accompaniment’s three parts, two move chromatically while the third holds a common tone. The remainder of the phrase is built using standard harmonies, but where one expects an arrival at a half cadence in measure 16, one finds instead an unidiomatic slide to V from a preceding diminished seventh chord in measure 15 and a move to V24 at the end of the phrase (ex. 7.10). The Waltz’s B section is equally colorful. The first phrase begins with a melodic line that hints at the whole-tone scale. Three measures into the second phrase, an appoggiatura within a chord that functions as a neighboring

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Example 7.9. Louis Ganne, Merveilleuses et gigolettes, “Minuet,” sections A and B

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Example 7.10. Louis Ganne, Merveilleuses et gigolettes, Waltz (A section)

II produces a fleeting quartal harmony, while the concluding root-position tonic arrives without a cadence (ex. 7.11). At no point does Ganne’s waltz sound out of place or jarring to the ear, but the scope of his harmonic palette is exceptional for a ballet staged in a music hall.11

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Example 7.11. Louis Ganne, Merveilleuses et gigolettes, Waltz (B section)

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Orchestration Orchestration was one of the most frequently remarked upon aspects of a music-hall ballet score. Critics were quick to compliment music that was evocative, and they always commented on unusual instrumental combinations. As seen erlier, Ganne’s score for La princesse au sabbat, for example, earned high praise for its “refined and colorful orchestration” that included “demonic and fantastic sonorities.”12 Instrumental color had been a favorite device throughout the nineteenth century for underlining a mimed narrative or creating the appropriate atmosphere, and this was as important for a music-hall ballet as it was for any work performed by state or imperial theaters. Orchestration in music-hall ballets had, however, a second, more functional, goal: it had to be audible. Anything too delicate would have been lost in the vast and chaotic halls. Vaslin, writing under the pseudonym Pédrille for Le Petit Journal, twice implicitly criticized this feature of popular ballet music in oddly backhanded compliments to two composers.13 In a review of Pierné’s Bouton d’or, he wrote: “The score, delicate as it is, has perhaps one flaw: it is too fine, too distinguished for the spectacle, the bright costumes and décors, the laughter. The eyes are too occupied to taste Gabriel Pierné’s delicate music, his fine entrances, his dance melodies as they deserve; but there remains nevertheless enough to charm the ear of the nonexpert.”14 Later the same year, Vaslin commented that “M. Maraval wrote a very modern and distinguished score on this little subject [Les manoeuvres du printemps]. The only reproach one could make—but this reproach is almost a compliment—is that it was too delicate for the vast hall in which it was executed.”15 Further evidence of a tendency for music-hall ballet composers to emphasize loud, even brash orchestrations may be found in reviews that denigrate Opéra ballets for sounding too much like those of the popular theaters. In a review of L’étoile, Jules Huret of Le Figaro criticized André Wormser for his lack of imagination, dynamism, and vigor, and reported that audience members were heard in the hallways of the Opéra making disparaging remarks about the score’s orchestration, which they likened to the brassy din heard at the Folies-Bergère.16 Aside from anecdotal testimony of a tendency toward brass-heavy orchestration, evidence is scarce. Although piano reductions of music-hall ballets frequently include indications for the use of trumpets, horns, and trombones and hint at standard block writing, instrumentation tends only to be printed above the staff at points when it might add to the work’s dramatic effect. In general, these instrumental indications help to reinforce musical-dramatic stereotypes. In the piano score for Desormes’s Fleur de Lotus, for instance, pastoral writing featured melodies for oboe or clarinet over strings, fairies were accompanied by a single violin or wind instrument over tremolo strings, and brass fanfares announced the entrance of royalty. Only one full orchestral score of a Parisian music-hall ballet has surfaced: the complete draft in manuscript of Thomé’s Le Prince Désir.17 Thomé’s orchestra

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calls for what seems from piano reductions and published orchestral excerpts of dances to have been the standard combination: two flutes (doubling piccolo), two oboes (doubling cor anglais), two clarinets, bassoon (unclear whether one or two), two horns in F, three trumpets in A, three trombones, strings, harp, timpani, bass drum, and voices (which sing a textless “Ah”).18 For the most part, his orchestration is unadventurous: a given group—winds, brass, or strings—or solo instrument carries the melody, and one or both of the remaining groups play accompaniment figures (i.e. winds doubling violins might play a melody punctuated by brass and low strings). The harp introduces the ballerina’s variation, and strings playing pizzicato accompany her dancing; the tutti orchestra is used for climaxes, and brass add color or reinforce the bass line of repeated accompaniment patterns. An emphasis on brass instruments and block writing aside, a few scores do seem to have had imaginative orchestrations. The most obviously dramatic is Ganne’s La princesse au sabbat. Even without confirmation from reviews of its extraordinary orchestration, Ganne’s attention to orchestral color and effect can be inferred from the ballet’s piano score. There are far more indications of orchestration than one normally sees in piano reductions, and nearly all of these call for unusual combinations of instruments. The orchestra itself appears to have been the standard music-hall ensemble of strings, doubled winds and horns, three trumpets and three trombones, harp, and basic percussion, with the addition of tam-tams and bells. Orchestral timbre in La princesse au sabbat was always closely linked to the story line, which was structured around a contrast between the world of the princess and her human friends, and the world of witches and their entourage of fantastical creatures and insects. The latter inspired Ganne’s most evocative and unusual orchestrations. As witches stir their brew, flutes, violins, and violas play repeated descending arpeggios beneath which oboes, horns, bassoons, and cellos play a slow, low-pitched, triply dotted ponderous melodic line marked “brutal et sonore.” This is interrupted by an evil incantation accompanied by a brass choir. A little later, the witches dance around the cauldron, and although their music looks like a traditional dance with a bouncy duple tune over repeated chords, it is written in minor. At the return of the A section of a standard ABA form, the melodic line is so high-pitched that it must have been played by a piccolo or E♭ clarinet. The latter would have been an appropriate invocation of the nineteenth-century witch topic as seen, for instance, in the Finale of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. In this same section, Ganne has superimposed a second melody, a languorous descending line played by violins, viola, cello, and trombone that gives the dance a melancholic affect (ex. 7.12). The “Valse mélancolique” performed in the third tableau by a reluctant princess forced to dance with a grasshopper and giant maybug is particularly colorful. Rather than write a light melody over an oom-pah-pah accompaniment, Ganne places the accompaniment—in this case only the “pah-pah”—in

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Example 7.12. Louis Ganne, La princesse au sabbat, “Danse évocatrice de Plango et des sorcières,” mm. 53–71

the top voice to be played by two clarinets and violins. Bassoons, violas, cellos, and harp play the melody below, a descending line of dotted half notes with tenuto markings. The combined effect of the sluggish melodic line, with its tenuto emphasis and low instrumentation, and the chirping “pah-pah” of the accompaniment, perfectly evoke the princess’s reluctance to dance with her distasteful but nimble-footed partners (ex. 7.13).

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Example 7.13. Louis Ganne, La princesse au sabbat, “Valse mélancolique”

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Form Musical form in popular ballets was as closely tied to plot as were a ballet’s stylistic characteristics. Most music-hall ballet scores are therefore episodic, with series of musically contrasting scenes that follow the contours of a given libretto. Unity—whether formal or thematic—was not of primary importance: too frequent repetitions of musical material for purely formal reasons would have confused rather than supported a mimed and danced narrative. Several ballets, including some of the very lightest, are nevertheless musically unified. Recurring melodies are common, as are recurring musical styles associated with a particular person, place, or action. Key structures and schematic uses of contrasting harmonic languages (usually chromatic vs. diatonic) also occasionally attest to a composer’s interest in large-scale formal planning and musical cohesion. In most cases, however, these unifying devices serve a dramatic function: they provide musical cues for dramatic events and help maintain narrative clarity over the long term. Recurrences of musical material occasionally turn up in divertissements or simple one-act ballets. For instance, Ganne’s first divertissement, Les sources du Nil, is composed of an intricate web of repeated themes, and Cieutat’s lightweight pantomime-ballet, Le château de Mac-Arrott, has recurring melodies despite its thematic and harmonic simplicity (see chapters 4 and 6).19 Ganne’s and Cieutat’s ballets are, nevertheless, exceptions. Short music-hall ballets— those with only one act or those that are divertissement-like in structure and feel—were normally entirely episodic and relied for narrative cohesion and clarity on musical stereotypes and topics. Not surprisingly, structural uses of musical repetition are found in the longest and most complex ballets from the turn of the century. These include

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Hirschmann’s Néron, Ganne’s La princesse au sabbat and Phryné, and Vidal’s L’impératrice. (Not all major ballets display evidence of large-scale formal planning. Lecocq’s Barbe-Bleue, though of a comparable scale, was episodic.) Interestingly, theater critics never failed to mention the presence of motivic recurrences, which in the post-Wagnerian 1880s and 1890s were systematically referred to as leitmotivs. Popular ballet scores appear to have risen in artistic worth in the eyes of critics if they made extensive use of leitmotivs, regardless of how frequent or obvious these were. In most cases, leitmotivs were no more than calling-card style prompts that signaled the return of someone or something in as clear a manner as possible. Every once in a while, a music-hall ballet composer did show an interest in musically rather than dramatically motivated thematic repetition and musical cohesion. In Néron, Hirschmann uses leitmotivs to add narrative clarity, but he also repeats musical material for purely formal reasons. His leitmotivs, which are simple and easy to hear, are used both literally and symbolically. The principal and most frequently repeated leitmotiv is the Love theme, a melody initially played during the love duet that marks the first appearance of Claudius and his sweetheart, Marcella. The original version of the Love theme is a sixteen-measure passage that makes up the entire third scene but for a four-measure closing section. It is slow, legato, and marked “very soft and very expressive.” The theme is never again heard in its entirety, but appears in modified form several times throughout the remainder of the ballet (ex. 7.14). Its first repetition is in the very next scene. As Poppea tries to woo Claudius, his response—that his heart is already given to Marcella—is accompanied by a fragment of the Love theme played triple forte and “with passion” over triplets and lush chords. When Claudius later begs Nero to spare Marcella, who as a Christian is sentenced to death, the leitmotiv’s opening fragment is heard twice more in close succession, this time with accents on each note and woven into a different texture. The ballet divertissement, gladiator fights, and Claudius’s attempt to win Marcella as a battle prize then interrupt the dramatic flow of the ballet. When the Love theme returns, it is to accompany Claudius’s victory and brief reunion with his beloved. The melody, now closer to its original affect with its slow tempo, slurred legato lines, and accompaniment of tremolos and broken chords, is used once more as a literal musical representation of their union. A few measures later, Nero separates the two lovers and issues renewed orders for Marcella’s death. Claudius is to be her murderer. The melody is heard one final time, unaltered, soaring over the same held chords but with a return to a rapid tempo. She is killed—by Nero’s men, not Claudius—and the Love theme is lost beneath a frenzy of chromatic triplets and sextuplets as Nero sets fire to Rome. Musical cohesion in Néron is not limited to dramatically motivated recurrences of melodies. On occasion, Hirschmann repeated large sections of music

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Example 7.14. Henri Hirschmann, Néron, scene 3, love theme

without any narrative rationale. The ballet’s opening is a case in point. Néron begins with a self-contained divertissement for chorus and dancers who celebrate the glories of Nero’s Rome in a series of seven numbers that include a cortège for Silène and her retinue, sung choruses and dances for courtesans, posed tableaux for bacchantes and fauns, and a waltz for the première danseuse.

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Since the divertissement precedes the introduction of the ballet’s central dramatic characters, and since a divertissement normally requires contrasting music for a series of individual numbers, recurring melodies would be out of place (though not impossible, since several characters return periodically within the divertissement). Instead, and perhaps to give the divertissement a sense of formal closure, the divertissement’s finale is almost entirely made up of fragments of music from preceding numbers. It begins with a repetition of music from the choral A section of the opening number, a fragment of music from its danced B section, and another return of material from the A section of the same first number. This is followed by choral material originally heard in the third number—Silène’s entrance—rounded off with a new coda as fauns, bacchantes, courtesans, and all other dancers leave the stage. The return of earlier material creates a recapitulatory effect, or a loose ABAʹ form across a divertissement that contains a series of internal ABA forms.

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Popular Ballet Music at Its Height As has now been mentioned several times, both the Folies-Bergère and the Olympia created a handful of productions around the year 1900 that were comparable to ballets staged in highbrow venues such as the Paris Opéra or Opéra-Comique.20 This brief inclination toward grandiose music-hall ballet was most noticeable in the increased scale of productions and emphasis on extravagant display, but the artistic value of these works arguably lay in the quality of their music. Two surviving scores offer good examples of music that would have been equally appropriate for ballets presented by mainstream theaters. One is Vidal’s L’impératrice, written for the Olympia in 1901, and the other is Ganne’s Phryné created in 1896 for the Casino de Royan and restaged at the Folies-Bergère in 1897 and at the Olympia in 1904. The following vignettes focus on large-scale structure in L’impératrice and on surface musical characteristics in Phryné.

L’impératrice Vidal’s L’impératrice—a two-act ballet with an extended prologue—was an unusual ballet for a popular venue. Largely lacking the streams of tonic and dominant harmonies, repetitive chordal accompaniment figures, and stepwise or triadic melodies that characterize the vast majority of popular ballet scores, it is harmonically and thematically as complex as any production staged at the Opéra and Opéra-Comique.21 This can to some extent be accounted for by the work’s unusual organization: L’impératrice contains more pantomime scenes than one would find in most ballets; there are virtually no dances outside of the formal divertissements; and one of the divertissements consists of

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an autonomous pantomime rather than a series of dances. Also, the show’s starring role was played by the popular Spanish dancer-actress Caroline Otéro, and the two young lovers, who were played by mime artists, portrayed characters who were themselves professional mimes. Such a preponderance of pantomime may have allowed for more interesting music. As discussed earlier, dramatic music was always harmonically, rhythmically, melodically, and texturally more complex than dance music. The few dances in L’impératrice are, fittingly, relatively light, with repetitive accompaniment figures and simple thematic material. A waltz in the second divertissement even has that dance’s ubiquitous repetitive chordal accompaniments and triadic melodic line. What is most remarkable about Vidal’s score is its large-scale musical cohesion and thematic unity. Vidal employed a range of melodic and rhythmic leitmotivs associated with a given person or situation that, while not systematically heard each time a character or situation returns, are more intricately integrated into the musical-dramatic web than most leitmotivs or similar devices found in earlier music-hall ballets. Musical-dramatic connections were such an important feature of Vidal’s score that a synopsis of Richepin’s libretto published in L’Art du Théâtre included a table of musical themes associated with characters and events.22 This was the only music-hall ballet represented in the press in this manner.23 The most important leitmotiv in L’impératrice is the one associated with the magic herb: octave and chord tremolos—or trills, depending on instrumentation—combined with a rising melodic line. This motive not only returns several times throughout the ballet, it is also altered to fit the dramatic situation. It first appears when a witch presents the ballet’s hero, Psellias, with a magic herb in return for his generosity (Psellias had given her his last coin, thinking she was a hungry old woman; she returned the favor by giving him the key to the Empress’s happiness so that he could win the advertised monetary prize). It is heard next when Psellias brings the herb to the imperial palace, and again when it is tested by the Empress’s guards and eunuch, who respond with manic happiness. For each of these iterations, the theme’s tremolo pattern and basic contour are maintained while its intervals and harmonies are altered. Unlike most examples of recurring musical material in earlier music-hall ballets, the magic herb motive retains its effect without sounding repetitive. The motive is also heard in the finale where, combined with the thick-textured chords in triplets earlier associated with the Empress, it musically supports her melodramatic death scene. Vidal also used recurring musical material to provide connections between scenes without specific dramatic ties. A passage played at the beginning of the prologue when Psellias twice sells his belongings to a peddler, for example, returns when Psellias tells Myrrha, his beloved, that winning the offered reward for cheering up the Empress will allow him to buy her jewels and finery. A variation of this music returns without dramatic motivation toward the

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end of the prologue as the couple argues over whether he should go to the palace (rhythms in both the melody and accompaniment remain unchanged but the melodic line is somewhat altered, as are harmonies and textures). Repeated musical gestures also helped maintain characterization over long stretches of time. Musical sighs, for example—a pattern of descending thirds and fourths with a dotted-quarter-to-eighth rhythm—are frequently heard in conjunction with appearances of the despondent Myrrha. They accompany Myrrha’s complaints of hunger in the prologue’s pantomime, and the same pattern, intervallically altered, returns in the second act when Myrrha complains of her long wait and voices her fears that her lover will not come back from the imperial palace. In addition to using thematic links that are easily perceived by any reasonably attentive member of the audience, Vidal creates a web of more obscure tonal connections, some of which have extramusical functions. The work begins and ends in the key of E-flat major, a key with clear dramatic ties to the Empress and her world. It is the key used in the prologue for the entrance of the soldiers who arrive to announce the Empress’s contest (the mimed proclamation itself is written in A-flat) and for the scene in which Psellias decides to enter the contest. It is then used in act 1 for the first appearance of the Empress as she ascends her throne. The key does not return until the last scene of the second act, when the Empress dies. In contrast, the opening second-act tableau of fishermen going about their work while the humble Myrrha awaits Psellias is written in A major, a tritone away from the E-flat world of the Empress. On a more general level, scenes depicting the Empress in an unhappy state are set in minor keys—particularly turbulent scenes are highly chromatic— while dances by the docks and in the palace divertissement are in major keys. The actual keys do not appear to be in any way related and change frequently, especially during detailed pantomime scenes. A few tonal connections also provide musical links without clear links to the narrative. The prelude, for instance, ends in C as does the first act, and the prologue ends in E-flat major, foreshadowing the ballet’s final key.

Phryné Phryné was a spectacular production, as grand as any ballet staged at the Paris Opéra in the same period. It called for a large cast of principal dancers and mimes, secondary characters, corps dancers, and figurantes; the standard fortypiece orchestra was augmented by an offstage instrumental ensemble, a choir, and vocal soloists; and the sets were lavish and the costumes opulent. Germain’s deftly crafted libretto maintained the structure of nineteenth-century French pantomime-ballet, with dramatic mimed scenes, crowd scenes, and sumptuous cortèges, virtuosic danced divertissements, and a dazzling apotheosis tableau. The choreography, newly created in turn by Mme Stichel for the Casino

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de Royan, Mme Mariquita for the Folies-Bergère, and Alfredo Curti for the Olympia, reflected contemporary choreographic trends, drawing on ancient Greek imagery and imbuing resultant dances with an element of sexual provocation. Ganne’s score, which adhered to the musical-dramatic conventions of both state-theater and music-hall ballet, went beyond the stylistic expectations of the latter with an unusual attention to formal invention, thematic variety, and harmonic color. Of all of the ballet’s components, Ganne’s music arguably stands out as the most imaginative and creative. His score is a masterpiece of the genre. It remains engaging and appealing to the untrained ear, yet has a broader harmonic palette and a more intricate network of recurring thematic material than any other music-hall ballet. What is especially remarkable about this score is that Ganne’s most inventive writing is not for dramatic music but for dances. Despite a higher proportion of dance music in Phryné than was customary, the musical language remains varied and relatively complex throughout the entire work. Although Ganne’s score warrants close analysis on multiple levels, this brief discussion of its artistic merits focuses on only four dances, all from the act 1 divertissement: “Les joueuses de flûte, de lyre et de cythare,” “Les Assyriennes,” “Les Phéniciennes,” and “Variation—La courtisane sacrée.” Since all four dances are from a divertissement, one would expect them to be simple numbers in small binary or ternary forms made up of balanced phrases in a single meter, tempo, and key. Their harmonic palette would likewise normally be predictable, with alternations between tonic and dominant chords. With only slight alterations, Ganne does maintain the standard dance forms and balanced phrases necessary for his dancers to perform in synchrony. “Les joueuses de flûte” has an unusually long B section in an ABAʹ form; “Les Phéniciennes” has a slightly lopsided ABACAʹ with a C that is twice the length of all other sections; and the Variation has an unusually long improvisatory introduction. But these formal deviations are not in themselves especially remarkable. Where Ganne breaks with convention is in the dances’ surface musical characteristics—features such as meter, rhythm, and harmony. “Les joueuses de flûte, de lyre et de cythare,” the first dance of the extended act 1 divertissement, begins with a straightforward upbeat melody in 86 over an accompaniment of dotted-quarter chords (ex. 7.15). In the B section, however, the melodic line is suddenly syncopated and in 42, while the accompaniment remains in 86. To add to the rhythmic complexity, the meter changes periodically, but at irregular intervals: Ganne has set his syncopated legato melody in uneven segments of three measures in 42 with one measure of staccato eight notes in 86, always above a running sixteenth-note triadic accompaniment in 86 (ex. 7.16).24 There is no way to know if this section of the dance was performed by only one of the characters or by the entire ensemble, or how complex their choreography might have been.25

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Example 7.15. Louis Ganne, Phryné, “Les joueuses de flûte, de lyre et de cythare,” section A

The Courtesan’s Variation that brings the divertissement to a close would have posed an even greater challenge to dancers accustomed to predictable rhythms and fixed meters. It begins with a ten-measure introduction, a cadenza-like flourish similar to those written to delineate fantastical divertissements from the workaday world of a ballet’s central narrative (it is used here to call attention to the star ballerina after the divertissement’s unusually long series of character dances). The entire variation—three sixteen-measure periods in an ABA form—is composed of a strict alternation of single measures in 2 3 4 and 4 (ex. 7.17). Beats do not add up to square patterns of eight or sixteen but of ten and twenty, counts that no nineteenth-century ballerina would have been accustomed to, particularly in so strictly conventional a dance as a variation. The time signature remains in a constant 42 only in the final phrase and four-measure codetta that accelerates for the ballerina’s bravura conclusion. The Assyrians’ Adagio maintains a steady meter but is rhythmically far more intricate than most dances in the repertoire. Perhaps intending to suggest the exotic provenance of the Assyrian dancers, Ganne combines duple and triple figures, accentuates weak beats, and blurs strong–weak beat divisions with syncopations. In the first measure, for instance, the melodic line highlights strong beats, whereas the accompaniment accentuates weak beats: a strong quarter on the first beat of the melody is tied to a double-dotted duple rhythm on the following weak beat (followed by a repetition of the same pattern), but chords in the accompaniment are played only on beats two and four. In the second measure, both the melody and the accompaniment accentuate weak beats: the melodic dotted rhythmic pattern on the strong beat acts as a pickup to the

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Example 7.16. Louis Ganne, Phryné, “Les joueuses de flûte, de lyre et de cythare,” section B

second-beat quarter note, which is emphasized by an accent, appoggiatura, and sforzando. The accompaniment, now an arpeggiated sextuplet, again falls on the second beat (ex. 7.18). Elsewhere in the same dance, duple rhythms with tenuto markings alternate with triplets, and weak-beat accompanying chords alternate with chords on strong beats. Although the counts are steady and square, fluctuating patterns of accentuation and combinations of duple and triple rhythms in close succession would have posed a challenge to a ballet corps, and would have sounded appropriately exotic to an audience accustomed to unvarying simple rhythms over repetitive chordal accompaniment patterns. “Les Phéniciennes,” another ensemble dance with exotic overtones, is striking for its harmonic language. Rhythm and meter are utterly predictable, and phrases are balanced. Instrumentation may have lent the dance a unique color—there are markings for the use of crotales on the strong beats of most measures—but its most distinctive attributes are its atypical harmonic

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Example 7.17. Louis Ganne, Phryné, “Variation de la courtisane sacrée”

progressions and modal sound. In the eight-measure refrain of the small rondo, rather than conclude the antecedent with a standard cadence on the dominant, Ganne has substituted a doubly plagal cadence: the antecedent phrase ends with a subdominant IV chord that is preceded by its own subdominant iiø65 chord (m. 4). The consequent ends with a transposition of the same pattern, with the result that the entire phrase ends with another plagal cadence in the tonic (ex. 7.19, m. 8). Third substitutions for the dominant (III♯5 for V) in both segments of the phrase add to the dance’s slightly foreign sound. The first episode of “Les Phéniciennes” is entirely written in the phrygian mode. The melodic line is characterized by a flattened second degree, and the supporting harmony moves frequently between I and ♭II (ex. 7.19). Modal writing, here as in several other dances and mimed scenes in Phryné, was doubtless used for dramatic purposes. Along with its vaguely exotic flavor, modal inflections within Ganne’s otherwise diatonic framework help create an archaic sound for a ballet about an ancient Greek subject. Ganne’s and Vidal’s ballets were remarkably inventive works, comparable to ballets written for the Opéra and the Opéra-Comique during the same period. Composed on an unusually grand scale, their scores demonstrate as much

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Example 7.18. Louis Ganne, Phryné, “Les Assyriennes”

concern for imaginative musical writing as for creating a scaffold for mimed and danced entertainment. Yet even these colorful scores are relatively straightforward and include an abundance of catchy tunes. They were deftly crafted works that offered creative variants to established conventions. They were also exceptions. As surviving scores for complete ballets and transcriptions of excerpted dances by Banès, Bouval, Cieutat, Desormes, Diet, José, Lagoanère, Lecocq, Thomé, and Varney confirm, music-hall ballet music was popular music, with lively rhythms, appealing melodies, a simple harmonic language, and ample use of repetition of thematic material, accompaniment patterns, and underlying harmonic structures.26 When writing for music halls, composers strove to engage audiences in lighthearted escapism with ballets that were as unpretentious as they were entertaining.27

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Example 7.19. Louis Ganne, Phryné, “Les Phéniciennes,” A section

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Chapter Eight

The Stories of Music-Hall Ballet

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Romance, Flirtations, and Other Pleasures The appeal of music-hall ballets relied to a great extent on the stories they told.1 Although spectacle and glamour played an important role in music-hall ballet’s popularity, the genre remained firmly rooted in the tradition of storytelling throughout its history. And the plots were fun. Most were light tales of love set in wondrous far-off lands filled with alluring women, or in glittering paradises both fantastical and Parisian. The genre was intended to be escapist entertainment, one of the intoxicating pleasures of the boulevard that helped fuel the legend of the Belle Époque. While deeply enmeshed in the mores of fin-de-siècle Paris, music-hall ballets nevertheless remained aloof from social and political affairs.2 It is striking that during an era plagued by political turmoil, social unrest, and economic recessions, the authors of music-hall ballets pointedly ignored general strikes, bombings, riots, and fears of social decay. Instead they provided a reprieve from the onslaught of daily stress. In the music halls, history was mined only for colorful backdrops and costumes, social and political affairs served as fodder for comedies, and “contemporary” meant trendy places and pastimes and the latest fashions in dress. Music-hall ballets promoted pleasurable distractions, beautiful people and places, and gratified desires. Story lines for the first pantomime-ballets staged by music halls in the late 1880s and early 1890s closely resembled the divertissements of the preceding two decades.3 These pantomime-ballets were longer and more complex than divertissements, but the two forms shared numerous stock themes, topics, settings, and character types. In the mid- to late 1890s, however, the range of ballet topics seen on the music-hall stage suddenly broadened. The halls continue to stage love stories, fairy tales, exotic fantasies, and pastoral sketches, but they also began to present lavish spectacles and parodies that drew on mythological and historical subjects. Ballets that made reference to contemporary places, people, and events—a type of ballet specific to the music halls that had been presented sporadically since the 1870s—also increased dramatically in the 1890s. As Hélène Laplace-Claverie observes in her study of French

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ballet librettos, the proliferation of subjects considered appropriate for choreographic interpretation was one of the most significant developments in ballet writing at the turn of the century.4

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Romance Regardless of scale or narrative structure, the theme that resurfaced most frequently in music-hall ballets of any era was love. (For thumbnail sketches of all music-hall ballet scenarios, see appendix B). Most tales of love from the 1880s and early 1890s were romantic comedies, a few depicted star-crossed lovers imbedded in a farce, and toward the end of the century, love stories occasionally took the form of dramas. In the late 1890s and early 1900s, music halls also staged a large number of ballets that depicted amorous flirtations and seductions, and all ballets that had romantic underpinnings included increasingly explicit sexual material. The most common type of music-hall ballet plot was the romance. In the late 1880s and early 1890s a disproportionate number celebrated the union of a poor young man with a wealthy young woman after overcoming the objections of the girl’s domineering father. In R. Mythe’s Le château de Mac-Arrott (FB, 1886) and Jacques Lemaire’s Rêve d’or (FB, 1892), for example, two lovers are kept apart by the girl’s father, who is on the lookout for a wealthy suitor for his only daughter. While the patrician Mac-Arrott is forced to give up his daughter to the poor peasant who wins an archery competition, the father in Lemaire’s ballet holds out until his daughter’s suitor is in possession of a suitable dowry. Rêve d’or had one unusual feature: it was one of the few Parisian music-hall ballets to have explicit moral overtones. When the young man finds a banker’s wallet full of money, he falls asleep while deliberating what to do with it and dreams of wealth (his dream takes the form of a danced divertissement for coins and bills). Upon awakening, he returns the wallet to its rightful owner and is duly rewarded for his honesty with a large enough dowry to marry the object of his affections. Ballets about lovers uniting after overcoming an obstacle occasionally included elements of slapstick.5 In Ernest Grenet-Dancourt’s Les amoureux de Venise (C, 1896), a doge’s son dresses up as a poor musician to court his aristocratic lover. He serenades her, and she promises her hand in marriage without her father’s consent. When the father discovers the clandestine romance and forbids it, the young man reveals his true identity, and the father blesses the couple’s union. Félix Cohen’s Le fiancé de cire, created at the Olympia two years earlier, bordered on the farcical. A poor boy who is in love with a rich young lady is helped out by the director of a wax museum, who devises a ruse to bring the two together. The boy pretends to be a wax statue so that he and the girl, brought to the museum by her father, might speak to each other.6 The father discovers the

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the stories of music-hall ballet 163 ruse and throws a wax statue into the river, thinking that it is the boy. The father is tried for attempted murder, but when the truth is revealed, he is acquitted on condition that his daughter be granted permission to marry her poor lover. Romances could also take the form of fairy tales. Some were dramatizations of standard tales or retellings based on familiar models, others were fantasies that included fairies who helped characters out of a predicament. Only three ballets were based on preexisting fairy tales. Richard O’Monroy’s La belle et la bête (FB, 1895) did not stray significantly from the basic outline of the traditional story, and neither Max Maurey and Augustin Thierry’s Les mille et une nuits (O, 1899) nor A. Lemonnier’s Cendrillon (O, 1902) was unusual enough to warrant a synopsis in the press. More often, librettists drew on common tales as the basis for pastiche comedies. One of the best examples of this practice is Armand Silvestre’s romantic comedy Fleur de Lotus, created for the FoliesBergère in 1893. Fleur de Lotus tells the story of two Indian peasant girls, Goutte de Rosée and her sister Fleur de Lotus, who are discovered by a prince and his friend. The ballet follows a basic Cinderella plot—an entire scene is devoted to Goutte de Rosée’s acquisition of a beautiful dress and consequent transformation into a princess—but with variants that parody the conventions of pantomime-ballets staged by the Opéra.7 The ballet begins with Fleur de Lotus instructing her sister on how to avoid the unwanted attention of passing gallants: she is to cover her face with soot and dress in old rags to appear undesirable. Goutte de Rosée, left alone in their rustic hut while her sister is taking their goat to pasture, hears a royal cortège approaching and covers her face as instructed. A young gallant—the prince’s friend—enters the stage, finds the hut, and peers through a crack in the door. Seeing Goutte de Rosée and suspecting her ruse, he throws water in her face to reveal her beauty. He falls in love, but the prince enters and he, too, falls in love with Goutte de Rosée. The prince proposes marriage, and a couple of scenes later an enamored Goutte de Rosée follows him to his palace. Fleur de Lotus returns, finds a trail of grains left along the path by Goutte de Rosée, sets out to search for her sister, gets waylaid by water nymphs, bathes in a lake, eventually finds her sister, and becomes engaged to the prince’s friend. The scenario could be read by any member of the audience as a conventional romantic comedy with references to Cinderella and Le Petit Poucet.8 For those familiar with the Romantic repertoire, however, Fleur de Lotus might also have come across as an exotic retelling of Giselle with a few sexy interludes and a fairy-tale ending.9

Libertine Romance For all their adherence to conventions, music-hall love stories conveyed very different messages than did their state-theater counterparts. Romantic and

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post-Romantic Opéra ballets that portrayed the union of young lovers usually reminded viewers of the importance of maintaining the social order and marrying within one’s own community.10 Music-hall ballets espoused a much more playful and permissive concept of love—one that involved a great deal of flirtation. According to music-hall ballets, one need not be courting or married to have a good time, and one could be married and still have a good time. Anyone could flirt anytime for the sole pleasure of flirting. By the mid-1890s, there were also notable changes in the way romantic comedies portrayed women. Female characters henceforth flirted and dallied as often as men, and some found new marriage partners. They could take an extramarital lover and not be punished (Rêve de Noël ); they could marry outside their rank and live happily ever after (Fleur de Lotus); if they took a lover, they could have their spouse back when ready to return (Madame Bonaparte); and they could divorce their husbands to marry a more attractive man (Le voyage de Madame la Présidente).11 In Abel Mercklein’s Les manœuvres du printemps (C, 1893), a married woman who flirts with a hussar officer suffers no repercussions for her dalliance, while her husband ends up the butt of a prank and is forced to flee the scene. Similarly, in Madame Malbrouck (C, 1898), Octave Pradels has the title character flirt with a knight while her husband is off at war. Unbeknownst to her, her husband returns and learns of her infidelity. He fakes his own death in order to trick her into remorse, but she believes herself to be free and becomes engaged to her knight. Monsieur Malbrouck appears at her wedding, but when Mme Malbrouck does not recognize her gaunt old husband, he leaves the new couple alone and returns to war.12 To some extent, ballets that presented libertine women reflected real societal changes that took place in the last years of the nineteenth century. Middle and upper-class Parisian women had more freedom to choose their own partners than in previous generations; they were increasingly encouraged to enjoy sexual relations in marriage; and after 1884, they could get a divorce.13 But these ballets were also fantasies. Although the idea of the nouvelle femme pervaded French culture, few bourgeoises in fact enjoyed the kinds of sexual freedom portrayed by literature or art, or music-hall ballets.14 Music-hall ballets were also not straightforward depictions of emancipated Parisiennes. While some turned libertine flirts into chic urban goddesses (Merveilleuses et gigolettes, Cythère, Napoli, and Paris qui danse), others reflected societal fears of the nouvelle femme, directly mocking her or making sure that the audience would not take her seriously. Music-hall ballets could present strong-willed, independent, sexually aware heroines, but only with some sort of distancing mechanism. The most common means for weakening the impact of illicit liaisons was humor. All of the ballets that showcased flirtatious women were at least light comedies, and several, including Les manœuvres du printemps and Madame Malbrouck, were patently absurd. Les aventures de Mlle Clo-Clo (O, 1909), a ballet about a free-willed boulevard-theater star dancer, also had elements of

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the stories of music-hall ballet 165 slapstick. Mlle Clo-Clo dines with her lover at a disreputable restaurant after her show, dances for demimonde customers, and gets caught up in flirtations that land her in trouble with the Apaches. As discussed below, Le voyage de Madame la Présidente showcased a female president leaving her husband for a foreign prince, but the ballet was so close to burlesque that spectators could easily ignore any hypothetical critiques of established social structures. Another convenient ruse for making libertine ladies more palatable to a bourgeois audience was to set ballets about flirtations in the past. Les manœuvres du printemps and Madame Malbrouck were set in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as were Bains de dames (1895) and Trianon ballet (1908), frothy tales about girls flirting with local youth. In Bains de dames, officers pilfer clothing left behind by court ladies bathing in the gardens of Versailles and return them only when promised a kiss and dance in exchange. The ladies grant their wish, pair up with the officers, and wander off into the woods in couples as night falls. Trianon ballet recalled the divertissements of old: shepherds and shepherdesses dance and flirt, a noble maiden falls in love with a poor shepherd and spurns the love of an old gentleman, and all ends well after the old man is united with the maiden’s aunt and the maiden with her poor young lover. Another period ballet, Madame Bonaparte (FB, 1900), showed Napoleon and his wife flirting with different partners.15 First, Joséphine flirts with officers at a party while her husband is off at war, and then Napoleon, who returns unexpectedly, flirts with a ballerina invited to perform at the ball. Merveilleuses et gigolettes (FB, 1894) likewise depicted flirtations between Madame Tallien, Madame Récamier, Napoleon, members of the Directoire and officers of the Italian army, muscadins, and merveilleuses. Yet another approach to staging ballets about flirtations was to make allusion to famous theatrical productions or to works of art. Paris-cascade, written by Auguste Germain for the Olympia in 1901, was a comedy about an extramarital tryst that recalled Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy’s Le réveillon (or Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus) and mirrored the goings-on of the Opéra’s famously libertine balls. A gentleman flirts with a salesgirl in a Parisian dress shop and invites her to a ball at the Opéra. There they are discovered by the man’s masked wife, who tricks her husband into falling in love with her anew. She reveals her identity and dances in triumph to taunt him. Un déjeuner sur l’herbe (O, 1897), an operetta-ballet written by Raoul Bénédite and G. Trompette, was probably intended to make allusion to Manet’s painting of that name. The ballet follows the trials and tribulations of a widowed owner of a lingerie shop in the Marais who takes his employees to lunch in the countryside each Sunday. The weekend picnics become the backdrop for scenes of amorous intrigue between the businessman and the young female employee he loves, and in turn, between this young woman and the young man she loves. Flirtations and pursuits are mirrored by a divertissement in which the sleeping widower has visions of scantily clad dancing nymphs. The tale ends with the union of the

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young lovers after the widower is arrested for immorality (neither the synopsis nor reviews make clear what the widower did to warrant his arrest). In the case of Un déjeuner sur l’herbe, allusion may also have been a clever marketing ploy. Whether or not the staging reproduced Manet’s juxtaposition of clothed men and nude women—attire that intentionally or not would ironically have been in keeping with typical music-hall costuming—merely evoking the well-known image would have suggested the possibility of seeing female nudes.

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Ballets of Temptation and Seduction As part of their quest for ever greater titillation, the three halls staged several ballets in the late 1890s that starred female protagonists cast in the role of seductress. Most depicted enchantresses common to Romantic and post-Romantic ballet: sensuous young women sent by external forces—usually a nefarious otherworldly creature or Satan—to test a young man’s strength of character. As described in chapter 5, Tentations (C, 1893) and Les deux tentations (C, 1895) centered on sensuous temptations sent by Mephisto to break a hermit’s resolve, and Les sept péchés capitaux (O, 1899) highlighted the seductive powers of the seven deadly sins sent by Satan to test Pierrot. In Don Juan aux enfers (C, 1897), Mme Léopold Lacour provides a comical inversion of the well-known tale of Don Juan.16 When Don Juan appears in the underworld, he immediately begins to flirt with Mme Satan. Satan impatiently gives orders for the heartbreaker to suffer the fate he has inflicted on his 1,003 victims. Don Juan is given a heart and is left in the charge of Mrs. Satan, who takes on the role of torturer. Don Juan is then brought to his knees by a parade of seductresses, many of whom he has formerly seduced. Seductresses could also appear for a single titillating scene. Edmond Mize and Eugène Vivier’s Diamant (FB, 1898) was at first glance a standard ballet about a poor boy who finds a way to overcome the objections of a protective father to marry a wealthy girl: a jeweler’s apprentice learns how to cut diamonds so that they shimmer irresistibly and wins the hand of the head jeweler’s daughter. When on the brink of discovering how to cut diamonds, the ballet’s hero is surrounded by personified precious stones who dance around him, offering themselves up with sensuous allure in an attempt to prevent him from uncovering the secret of the diamond’s beauty. In Le rêve d’Elias (1898), presented at the Folies-Bergère a few weeks after Diamant (the two overlapped), Elias is overcome by his curiosity about a cave and leaves his wife to explore it despite her attempts to distract him with dances. The cave turns out to be enchanted and Elias is mesmerized by dancing precious stones. But all ends well. The irresistible seductresses were sent by a fairy who promised to help the wife. The fairy and wife appear before Elias, and the estranged couple is reconciled.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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the stories of music-hall ballet 167 One music-hall seductress wielded influence over men by her own will without instruction from a higher power. In Jean Lorrain’s L’araignée d’or, Oriana lures all passing men—knights, landowners, or shepherds—to her cave and traps them in her net. Once captive, the men lie passively at her feet. A youthful Amadis hears of their plight and journeys across snowy mountains to rescue them, but he, too, is ensnared and, unable to pierce the heart of a giant golden spider who blocks the cave’s entrance, he falls before Oriana’s irresistible charms. One can also assume that the work was more openly licentious than most. Its protagonist was performed by the courtesan Liane de Pougy, whose beauty and charm and history as a seductress made her the perfect candidate to play a heroine who tempts male victims to an uncertain fate. Oriana was dangerously in control, but she was an exception. For all their wiles and temptations, the enchantresses that populated music-hall ballets had little of the venom now associated with fin-de-siècle seductresses. Unlike the femme fatales of symbolist art and literature, music-hall ballet’s seductresses, with the exception of the sinister Oriana and the vengeful temptresses of Don Juan aux enfers, were neither dark nor dangerous characters.17 Most were ineffectual, and their male victims always in the end escaped their snares unscathed. These women were decorative rather than demonic.

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Spectacles and Parodies Romance, flirtation, and seduction were also the core themes of historical and mythological ballets. Both types of ballet had largely fallen out of fashion at the Opéra. The state theater staged only three between 1870 and 1912 that drew on mythology—Sylvia (1870), Bacchus (1902), and Les Bacchantes (1912)—and none that portrayed historical events.18 In contrast, the halls created several of each. The Olympia staged the mythology-inspired ballets Olympia (1893) and L’enlèvement de Psyché (1910); the Casino Vénus à Paris (1896); and the FoliesBergère Mars et Vénus (1882), Sports (1897), and Cythère (1900).19 Historical ballets included Merveilleuses et gigolettes (FB, 1894), Phryné (FB, 1897), Sardanapale (O, 1897), Néron (O, 1898), Madame Malbrouck (C, 1898), L’enlèvement des Sabines (FB, 1898), Madame Bonaparte (FB, 1900), Cadet-Roussel (C, 1900), Cléopâtre (C, 1900), La Camargo (C, 1901), Cléopâtre (O, 1906), and Trianon ballet (O, 1908).20 Authors of mythological and historical ballets for the music halls did not treat their subject matter with the reverence expected in high-art theaters. As Laplace-Claverie contends, “Far from attempting a scrupulous reconstruction of precise historical events, these ‘historical ballets’ cultivated a sort of chronological exoticism, the sole ambition of which was to enthuse the public by offering sumptuous living frescos.”21 Mythological ballets eschewed didactic symbolism and morals, unless to parody them, and had only tenuous links to

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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the stories on which they were modeled. Returning to an earlier conception of such subjects as they had been presented at the Opéra would have been too archaic, too “démodé,” especially in post-Offenbach Paris.22 Serious or historically accurate treatments would also have been out of place in popular venues, whose audiences would have been unlikely to appreciate any production that leaned too far toward the learned.23 Néron and the first Cléopâtre (1900) provide representative examples of historical ballets staged by music halls. As in all popular historical ballets, their librettists made reference to real people and events, but they were clearly more concerned with spectacle than with veracity. For Néron, Max Maurey and Augustin Thierry relied on a thin narrative as the framework for a series of action scenes, each more extravagant than the last. The ballet centers on the ill-fated love of Claudius for the young Christian woman, Marcella. Poppea, whose love for Claudius is unrequited, swears vengeance and has Marcella arrested by Nero. Marcella is condemned to die along with her father and several other Christians. This gives rise to circus games, which include gladiator fights, voluptuous slave dances, and classical ballet variations. Claudius pleads with Nero to spare Marcella’s life, and he is challenged to a duel to win her hand. He wins, but Nero remains bent on Marcella’s murder and reneges. Claudius and Marcella are briefly united before Marcella is fatally wounded by Nero’s men. The bloody scene escalates into complete chaos as the citizens, now agitating against their cruel leader, swarm the imperial loge. Nero escapes, and in revenge against his wayward people, orders that Rome be set ablaze. Claudius searches for his beloved amid the inferno and finds Marcella surrounded by other bodies. She dies in his arms and he kills himself. As the curtain falls, Nero can be seen in the distance contemplating the destruction he has unleashed. The plot of Cléopâtre is as short on historical accuracy as that of Néron, but its authors Charles Quénel and Henry Moreau favored the lascivious over the gruesome. The ballet is built around seduction scenes, orgies, military displays, and festive danced divertissements. It begins with a tableau in Cleopatra’s palace in which all but one man, Tersidius, succumb to the charms of Cleopatra’s ladies-in-waiting. Cleopatra orders festive dances and joins in, charming her prey, Marc Anthony. A second tableau depicts Cleopatra giving her ladies-inwaiting lessons in seduction so that they might tempt the stalwart Tersidius. She and the ladies then offer themselves to Tersidius, but to no avail. Marc Anthony, drawn by the noise, returns and again falls victim to Cleopatra’s guiles. In a third tableau labeled “Orgy,” Marc Anthony is treated to songs, dances, and drinks. In the meantime, the city is besieged: war cries are heard in the distance, and the orgy is interrupted. The palace is swarmed, and Cleopatra and Marc Anthony die in passionate embrace. Mythology served primarily as fodder for humorous parodies that relied on incongruities of chronology and register for comic effect.24 For example,

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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the stories of music-hall ballet 169 Cythère, premiered at the Folies-Bergère in 1900, begins with a group of students wearing costumes typical of the 1830s who try in vain to help a young man awaken the love of a young woman. Just as the students give up in despair, Eros miraculously appears on the scene, dressed as a Parisian dandy and driving a new automobile. He offers the students his services and gives them a lift to the island of Cythera. There, his mother, Venus, attempts to lure the young woman into the world of Love by presenting a divertissement of lascivious dances performed by well-known couples: Romeo and Juliet, Elsa and Lohengrin, Estelle and Némorin. Eros pierces the young woman with his arrow of love and she swears eternal devotion to her admirer. Despite the light tone of these ballets, the use of mythological topics in music-hall ballets was never entirely devoid of irony or critical perspective. Several scenarios reveal a marked interest in demystifying established gods and heroes by giving them human desires and frailties.25 In Abel Mercklein and Fernand Beissier’s 1896 ballet Vénus à Paris (C, 1896), Venus and Mars sneak off from Olympus after overhearing Jupiter regale Juno with the wonders he witnessed during his last escapades on earth. Jupiter and Juno soon realize they are missing, set off to find them, and discover them drinking and dancing at a Parisian ball. While Jupiter rounds up the wayward gods, Juno gets caught up in the revelries and joins in the eccentric dancing. In Les grandes courtisanes, staged three years later at the Folies-Bergère, Hubert Desvignes presents a virginal Diana keen on learning the art of seduction. Tired of her perpetual chastity and dreaming of knowing true earthly love, the goddess descends to earth, where she is reincarnated as a series of famous courtesans. She soon finds earthly love to be inane and returns to Olympus.26 A handful of works made pointed attempts to deflate heroic figures.27 Tentations (1893) and Les deux tentations (1895), both staged at the Casino, strip the hermit Saint Antoine of his saintly status by painting him as a weak, ridiculous figure.28 In Tentations, Léon Roger-Milès has the hermit fall asleep to fantasize about earthly temptations. Metamorphosed into a Parisian dandy, he is no longer “dressed in his robe but rather costumed, shaved, and curled, like the most coquettish of clubmen.”29 Various enchantresses attempt to seduce him, and he comes dangerously close to succumbing. Just as he believes himself to be lost forever, he awakens and finds that his adventure was merely a nightmare. The second version of the tale by Octave Pradels and José Frappa again casts Saint Antoine as the helpless victim of temptations, this time sent by Mephistopheles to test his strength of character. Saint Antoine successfully resists, and the ballet ends with a bit of slapstick: when Saint Antoine chases the disguised Mephistopheles away, the latter sends in a sow that successfully seduces Saint Antoine’s pig.30 A few authors wrote parodies that targeted the newly venerated heroes of Parisian popular culture.31 Both of Paul Louis Flers’s librettos for the FoliesBergère, Chez le couturier (1896) and Sports (1897), for example, make fun

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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of the hero worship bestowed upon sports figures and fashion designers by transforming them into new Parisian gods.32 In Chez le couturier, crowds swarm the “temple” of fashion and workshop of the grand priest of elegance, the tailor Roucet (a stand-in for Doucet).33 His clients—caricatures of Parisian bourgeoises named Mlle Snobinette and Mme de Ventre y Potante and demimondaines thinly disguised behind the pseudonyms Manette Guilbert and Émilienne de Rançon—adoringly await the tailor’s oracle.34 In Sports, a new bride rejects the advances of her husband on her wedding night, and though he invokes the help of Love and Cupid, he is unable to regain her favor. The bride, named Moderne, has already given her heart to Sport. The ballet then moves to the kingdom of sport, where Sport sits on his throne and watches benevolently over his devoted ladies.35 All of these works are rare examples of a more self-conscious, reflexive irony than one typically finds in post-Romantic French ballets, one that poked fun at viewers by presenting them with fictionalized portraits of themselves.36 Alongside ballets that undermined or discarded mythological gods were parodies that dethroned historical heroes. The result was a weakening of the male figure, a shift of characterization that exacerbated the already languishing image of the danseur in late nineteenth-century ballet. One approach was to shift the focus of the ballet from traditionally important heroes to their wives. As suggested by their very titles, Octave Pradels’s 1898 Casino ballet Madame Malbrouck and Thierry Lemoine’s 1900 Folies-Bergère ballet Madame Bonaparte presented the wives of famous men as the stories’ principal characters.37 Madame Bonaparte is the force to be reckoned with on the home front, even though a meeting with a fortune-teller reveals that Bonaparte will eventually remarry. As seen earlier, Madame Malbrouck gains the upper hand in marital affairs and it is she who chooses a new marriage partner. In Don Juan aux enfers, Don Juan is left at the mercy of Madame Satan, who undertakes his torture. Fernand Beissier’s Le voyage de Madame la Présidente offers the most intriguing example of the subversion of a masculine power structure through role reversals. In this 1905 Casino ballet, Madame la Présidente, rather than her husband, is the policy-making head of state. No social stature is granted to Monsieur le Président. He is merely a domestic partner, with no influence in household or foreign affairs. As a further slight, he is stripped of all appearance of masculinity: when refused permission to travel with Madame la Présidente on a foreign diplomatic tour, he dresses up as a female reporter so that he might keep an eye on his wife. As Laplace-Claverie points out, the irony of this role reversal is doubly reinforced: whereas the male lead in musichall ballets would normally have been played by a woman in travesty, Madame la Présidente’s husband is played by a man, but the leading man is dressed in travesty as a woman. Not only does Madame la Présidente “wear the trousers,” her husband literally wears a skirt.38

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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the stories of music-hall ballet 171 Yet Beissier stopped short of making a strong statement about the place of the nouvelle femme in French society. While the ballet presents a female president in a position of authority who can exercise her will to divorce her husband and marry another man, several scenes undermine the ballet’s message about gender roles. The ballet opens with Madame la Présidente not discussing state business but rather conferring with the wife of the Prime Minister about her travel wardrobe. An entire scene shows her choosing dresses and hats that are modeled by live mannequins. The ballet soon moves into slapstick.39 Scenes depicting the often-absurd shenanigans of La Présidente’s husband alternate with ever more convoluted love intrigues. By the second tableau, it is made clear to the audience that this ballet should not be taken seriously. M. le Président is involved in a series of comic mishaps, first while he looks for a place to sleep and later when he accidentally finds himself leading an official parade; Mme la Présidente flirts with the Prince of the kingdom she is visiting and arouses the jealousy of the chief of protocol; and M. le Président, lured away by the wife of the Prime Minister, is later caught kissing her. All comes to a head after an official ball. The Prince wins a duel with M. le Président over Mme la Présidente’s affections and she consents to a divorce to marry her new lover. M. le Président will wed the (now former) wife of the Prime Minister. Not only does Madame la Présidente lose control of her destiny by giving way to the Prince’s desires, she is portrayed neither as a strong leader nor as a strong woman. She is merely another flirtatious Parisienne out to have a good time. A studio photograph reproduced in a program implies that Madame la Présidente even performed an eccentric dance (the cancan) at some point—presumably amid the wild revelries of the ballet’s final scenes. By presenting viewers with ballets that depicted strong female leads, music halls may have helped reinforce shifting perceptions of women in fin-de-siècle France, but they did not openly politicize gender issues or critique contemporary social constructs.40 They also sent mixed messages. On the one hand, women in music-hall ballets could be portrayed as self-sufficient shopkeepers, students, teachers, and athletes, strong-willed girls, independent-minded wives, omnipotent fairies, and even a president. Leading ladies also had far more agency in the 1890s and 1900s than in the two prior decades: married women could flirt with impunity, girls could marry the lovers of their choice, and the modern, chic, flirtatious Parisienne presided over the city of Light and Love.41 On the other hand, these strong woman ostensibly in control of their destinies were treated as decorative objects, minimally dressed, posed in alluring stances, and asked to perform sensuous dances for the men who paid the entrance fee. When Gil Blas ran a review of Le voyage de Madame la Présidente, the critic, Strapontin, made no mention of the transfer of power from le Président to la Présidente but went on at length about the allure of the delicate and graceful Angèle Héraud (Mme la Présidente), the charms of her lovely companions,

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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and the delights of the “suggestive” love scene between the ingenue and her princely lover, played in travesty.42 There was also a limit to how far music-hall authors were willing to transgress traditional gender boundaries. Although most lead male characters were performed by women, these “male” characters almost invariably had little influence in society. Women played lovers, not kings. With the exception of Madame la Présidente, characters who would in real life have wielded power were consistently performed by men. Political and historical figures such as Napoleon or Nero, for instance, were performed by male mimes, not women in travesty. In Une répétition aux Folies-Bergère (1890), a behind-the-scenes ballet about a rehearsal at the music hall, Mme Mariquita faithfully recreated a typical theater hierarchy: the Italian-trained ballerina Enrichetta Comolli performed the role of the ballerina; Angelina Correnti played her partner in travesty; and the ballet master and stage director were performed by men. Even secondary characters in romantic comedies who portrayed persons of authority, such as fathers, were normally performed by male mimes.

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The Fun and the Fashionable: Choreographing Contemporary Pleasures A final type of ballet that had a lasting and profound effect on the genre was the contemporary-themed ballet. Although the Folies-Bergère produced the occasional divertissement with an up-to-date topic in the 1870s and 1880s, and although English music halls frequently staged topical ballets, the Parisian equivalent did not come to the fore as an important subgenre of French music-hall ballet until the early 1890s, after Édouard Marchand and Mme Mariquita joined the hall. Perhaps Marchand recognized the box-office potential of this type of ballet at the Folies-Bergère after seeing models in London; perhaps he was persuaded by the businesssavvy Mme Mariquita, who wrote her own productions and had considerable experience with this type of dance from her years in the boulevard theaters; or perhaps the many journalists and boulevardiers who wrote librettos for the halls in these years saw them as the perfect vehicles for expressing their whimsical fantasies and parodies of Parisian life. Whatever the genesis of these topical ballets, they quickly became music-hall staples. In between romantic comedies, exotic fantasies, and fairy-tale ballets, the halls now staged productions that depicted fashionably attired Parisians enjoying the same amusements relished by those who came to watch the ballets. Scenes of eighteenth-century châteaux, village squares, pastoral glens, and fantastical lands increasingly gave way to representations of Paris and its pleasure grounds, while peasants, royalty in period costumes, and fairies were replaced by urban pleasure-seekers, socialites, and La Parisienne.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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the stories of music-hall ballet 173 Ballets with contemporary themes nearly all explored or replicated other trends in popular culture. Sporting events remained a favorite plot device into the early twentieth century, but there was an important difference between the sports ballets of the 1870s and those of the 1890s.43 By the mid1890s, athleticism for women had become more acceptable, if still a topic of much controversy.44 Librettists engaged with the debate through comedy and parody. Not only did many more ballets depict athletic activities, sports were now performed by actual women, and not women performing men’s roles in travesty. The Casino’s 1895 ballet about a student pension, Sans-Puits-House, included a scene for female borders going through gymnastics exercises, while the Folies-Bergère’s Les demoiselles du XXe siècle, created a year earlier, centered on women performing various dances and exercise routines.45 Both did reasonably well at the box office, and P. L. Flers’s Sports, the ballet discussed above about a woman who leaves her husband for athletic games, was an uncontested hit. First performed at the end of the 1896/97 season, it returned to the stage in the fall of 1897, when it ran for a full four months. A decade later, a ballet about the pleasures of sports was still relevant in a culture enamored with athletic competitions.46 Sports was restaged in 1908 and played for another three months.47 Even more prevalent than ballets about sports were stylized representations of popular cultural events: carnival balls, dance-hall entertainments, and music-hall diversions. Some were self-reflexive and mirrored the musichall milieu itself. Mme Mariquita’s behind-the-scenes ballet Une répétition aux Folies-Bergère (1890), for example, mixed a backstage romance with rehearsals for a ballet-divertissement performed on a set that was a replica of the FoliesBergère stage. In Olympia (1893), Alfred Delilia’s inaugural ballet for the Olympia, a young, blasé Parisian bored with life discovers a novel fairyland, the newly built music hall. The Olympia’s restaging of the English music-hall ballet Brighton (1893) ended with an evening ball at the local Casino, and Auguste Germain set Paris-cascade (1901), his ballet about an extramarital liaison, at the Paris Opéra.48 Georges Courteline and Louis Marsolleau’s Folies-Bergère ballet Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts, which featured the choosing and crowning of a beauty queen for a ball, was inspired by the arts students’ ball. Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts, created in December 1893, is especially interesting for having been a parody of actual events that took place earlier that year. In February of 1893, the second annual ball for students of painting, sculpture, architecture, and engraving—the Bal des Quat’z’Arts—staged a cortège that featured four barely clothed artists’ models arranged in artistic tableaux.49 Sarah Brown (alias Marie Roger), impersonating Cleopatra in a tableau from Rochegrosse’s La fin de Babylone, was borne into the ballroom almost nude, reclining on a palanquin carried by four men;50 Yvonne (Clarisse Roger) rode in on a white donkey wearing multicolored ribbons draped over her body; Suzanne (Emma Denne) represented Diana and wore only an ornament in

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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her hair; and Manon (Joséphine Lavolle), who personified Beauty, wore even less.51 Following the ball, the state filed a legal suit against the models at the behest of the recently formed Société générale de protestation contre la licence des rues, a self-appointed committee of moralists led by the “Père de la Pudeur,” senator René Béranger.52 The models were found guilty of exposing their breasts, but as they were recognized to be professional artists’ models, they were fined a nominal hundred francs, afterward remitted.53 The trial resulted in violent protests over artistic freedom and prudery, and the ball quickly became a cause célèbre. Several theater directors capitalized on the notoriety of the Bal des Quat’z’Arts in the year following the trial. The editor of the salacious journal Le fin de siècle, François Mainguy, for instance, organized a mock “Bal fin de siècle” in which the model hired to represent Beauty and the nymph who danced around her wore next to nothing.54 The Folies-Bergère, not to be outdone, staged Georges Courteline and Louis Marsolleau’s choreographed parody, Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts. The ballet both replicated the ball’s infamous cortège and parodied the scandal and trial that followed. While clearly devised with profit in mind, the work also dealt covertly with the question of censorship. The authors capitalized on the trial’s notoriety, all while supporting the students’ calls for freedom of artistic expression. Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts begins with an artist examining a line of undressed models under the placard “Tonight, nine o’clock, Bal des Quat’z’Arts / Looking for a perfectly beautiful woman to be the queen of the ball.”55 None meets his ideal, but another, Émilienne, arrives, dressed in tattered, outmoded clothes. She demurely insists on undressing indoors, and once inside the artist’s workshop, slowly removes each garment (the striptease is described in great detail in the manuscript libretto).56 The enamored artist crowns her queen of the ball and she is presented to the public to general acclaim. At the same moment, a military fanfare is heard, and officials enter bearing a new placard that reads: “In the name of public morality, an extreme decency is required. Joseph Prud’homme.” Prud’homme himself enters and is shocked to see Émilienne in nothing but a light chemise. In an attempt to appease him, women try to pin, tie, and fold her chemise in various ways, exhibiting first one part of her body and then another. Horrified when a breast is revealed, Prud’homme pulls out a vine leaf and covers her up. Dancers then appear, and as each removes a leaf from her own costume to pin it on Émilienne, Émilienne is gradually decorated head to toe with what the program described cynically as “that symbol of administrative decency.”57 Prud’homme leaves satisfied and, much to the delight of her on-stage audience, Émilienne removes the chemise. The ball begins. Émilienne is borne into the ballroom by four men as part of a cortège and is placed on a pedestal wearing a translucent shawl as all dance around her. A study of music-hall ballet subjects reveals a broad range of productions: traditional love stories and fairy tales played alongside titillating historical

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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divertissements, slapstick comedies, fashionable displays of everyday life, salacious historical spectacles, and mythological parodies. Peasants, nobility, officers, and fairies mingled with pierrots, harlequins, and columbines, and historical and mythological heroes shared the stage with contemporary figures such as sportsmen, demi-mondaines, and a markedly urbane, usually Parisian, bourgeoisie. The result was an eclectic mix of ballets that combined the familiar with the novel, the classical with the contemporary, the nostalgic with the fashionable. What music-hall ballets never depicted were the grimmer events of the time. While late nineteenth-century Paris was rocked by stock crashes, recessions, strikes, and other social upheavals, the music halls celebrated the frivolous side of life and the pleasures that Paris and its environs had to offer: dancing at popular balls, enjoying variety-show entertainments, strolling on the boulevards, taking weekend picnics to the countryside, swimming in fashionable watering holes, watching fashion shows or sporting events, and flirting, anywhere and with anyone. When a music-hall ballet included military displays, these mimicked the processions of Republican celebrations, not lines of battle-weary soldiers suffering the privations of war. In the halls, being informed meant staying abreast of the latest fashions and knowing which theatrical performances to attend. Music-hall ballets were far more likely to include references to popular operas or operettas, imitate works staged by Sarah Bernhardt, mirror pageants and balls presented by the Moulin Rouge, or parody minor sexual scandals than they were to engage with political affairs and social concerns. Music-hall ballet was intended to be escapist entertainment, and its stories promoted sensuous hedonism above all else.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Chapter Nine

A Delight to Behold

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Glitter, Glamour, and Girls Intricate plots, imaginative music, and creative choreography all contributed to the artistic success and critical appreciation of a ballet, but a production could be a box-office hit without even a hint of originality. The true raison d’être of music-hall ballet was spectacle. Examples of audiences favoring visual display over artistic innovation abound in all three halls. The Folies-Bergère, for instance, kept the military divertissement Les réservistes à venir (1887) on the bills for four months but performed the far more involved, pantomime-heavy romantic comedy Le château de Mac-Arrott (1887) for only seven weeks. The melodramatic historical pageant L’enlèvement des sabines (1898) outperformed its far more imaginative successor, La princesse au sabbat (1899), which also had one of the most original and colorful scores. In later years, the cliché-ridden, revue-like Antinoa (1905) and lightweight comedy Stella (1911) grossed higher nightly receipts and remained far longer on the program than the comparatively complex Montmartre (1913). At the Olympia, the bathing-suit ballet Bains de dames (1895) played for twice as long as the quasi-learned Le scandale du Louvre (1895); and the sensationalist Sardanapale (1897) and overtly sensuous Les sept péchés capitaux (1899) netted higher profits and enjoyed a longer run than the novel and comparatively erudite L’impératrice (1901).1 Music halls did everything they could to emphasize the spectacular aspects of their ballets. Programs highlighted the names of famous performers in large bold type, announced colorful sets and period costumes, advertised unusual décor or special effects, and listed the number of women in the ballet corps. Posters featured celebrated personalities and depicted corps dancers in revealing costumes. Press announcements for imminent premieres often made reference to the scale of a production or to the number of pretty girls in the ballet corps, to favorite set and costume designers, and to glamorous performers. Reviews of ongoing productions, in turn, sold ballets with grand proclamations of sensational costumes, lavish scenery, enchanting choreography, marvelous tableaux, and promises of mesmerizing, exquisitely beautiful—and preferably scantily clad—mime and dance artists.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Scenic Splendor A quest for dazzling cascades of color governed every aspect of a music-hall ballet, beginning with the story’s setting. In the first two years of the 1890s alone, one could see ballets set in a hippodrome, a music hall, a royal palace, the city of Lisbon, an artist’s studio, a jeweler’s workshop, a forest glade, a stately home, a French village, and by the seaside. In longer ballets, a first act or tableau might take place in an idyllic forest clearing or in luscious gardens, and a second act inside a palace or lavishly decorated house (Le château de Mac-Arrott, Dans l’inconnu, Le roi s’ennuie, Miroir, Merveilleuses et gigolettes, Les amoureux de Venise). Other ballets featured a combination of rural and urban locations (Un déjeuner sur l’herbe, Vassilissa, La Camargo, Les saisons de la parisienne), or fantastic and urban settings (Les mimes d’or, Cythère, Vers les étoiles, Deux sous d’amour). Fairylands could also be juxtaposed with glitzy, urban cultural sites such as pleasure grounds and dance halls (Olympia, Vénus à Paris, Sports, Les grandes courtisanes). Certain types of settings lent themselves to lavish décor, and therefore resurfaced periodically. Exotic locales were a perennial favorite. Librettists set their amorous intrigues in any number of eras and countries, usually as a pretext for arresting sets and costumes. Poor young men fell in love with wealthy young women and were united after overcoming the objections of the young woman’s father in Scotland, Brittany, Japan, Spain, Belgium, Holland, and India (see appendix B). Several more found true love in the pastoral arcadias of imaginary or mythical eras. Youths flirted by the sea in England and Italy, in French port towns, and along the Danube River. Pierrot watched women bathe in Turkish baths in Pierrot au hammam; a princess endured psychological torture from witches before regaining her Egyptian palace in La princesse au sabbat; and an estranged couple was reunited by a fairy in India in Le rêve d’Elias. In late music-hall ballets, a couple in possession of a Japanese postcard was magically transported to Tokyo (Deux sous d’amour); a spurned lover found comfort in an opium den in the Far East (Fumées d’opium); and a young man came upon Bedouins while wandering through a desert in search of his beloved (Les ailes). Rarely did a ballet’s setting have anything to do with its plot. History was similarly mined for its scenic potential, and not only for ballets that made reference to real events or people. Bygone eras often served as picturesque backdrops for productions that did not have any narrative connection to the period represented by the décor. Versailles and the Château de Marly were the settings for several ballets about flirtations, including Bains de dames (O, 1895), Watteau (O, 1900), and Trianon ballet (O, 1908). Versailles was also the backdrop for La Camargo (C, 1901), a ballet about the famous ballerina of that name. Le miroir (FB, 1892), a romantic tale of a shepherdess and her itinerant musician lover, was arbitrarily set during the reign of Louis XV without any mention of real events or people. Cadet-Roussel (C, 1900), which recounted the

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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exploits of a young soldier who spurns his beautiful female admirers to serve his country, was set in the era of Louis XVI. Poor young suitors and their more affluent sweethearts found true love in ancient Greece, during the Roman Empire, in the Middle Ages, and in the Renaissance. Historical ballets appealed to audiences for their nostalgic escapism, but they also provided a secondary form of entertainment: the exhibition of reproduction costumes and scenery. Even when incidental to a ballet’s story line, scenery and costumes in historical ballets were expected to be authentic period replicas, and they were appreciated as an independent art form. Le miroir, for instance, received considerable praise for having accurate Louis XV-era costumes and sets, though no mention was made of their incongruity in relation to the plot. Cadet-Roussel was similarly admired for its carefully crafted Louis XVI reconstructions and supposedly authentic period military costumes, yet no one worried about the ballet’s tenuous links to real historical events.2 The set designers for the Olympia’s 1895 ballet Le scandale du Louvre went so far in their quest for realism as to borrow ancient Greek objects from various museum collections, including the Louvre, British Museum, Naples Archaeological Museum, Berlin Royal Museum, and the Hermitage.3 The provenance of these objects was then documented in the hall’s program, lending the ballet an air of cultivated sophistication at odds with the remainder of the bill’s variety acts. When in 1911 the Olympia staged an “Egyptian legend” titled Nitokris, critics once again raved about arresting, artistic, and supposedly authentic décor and costumes, this time replicas of ancient Egyptian artifacts. According to an unnamed critic who reviewed Nitokris for Le Figaro, stage designers Demoget and Mouveau carried out research at the Louvre, the British Museum, and the Munich Pinakothek to produce their copies of Egyptian costumes, jewelry, and accessories.4 Sumptuous staging occasionally became an end in itself. While the grand historical ballets discussed in previous chapters—Sardanapale, L’enlèvement des Sabines, Cléopâtre, and Néron—are obvious examples of this practice, the halls also staged a few conventional romantic comedies that placed theatricality and display above dance and mime. Les amoureux de Venise (C, 1896), for instance, was in every formal respect unremarkable and the plot clichéd: two lovers are united after overcoming the objections of the girl’s father. The staging, however, set it apart from the Casino’s usual fare. Along with backdrops inspired by Canaletto’s paintings of Renaissance Venice, the ballet featured a real bridge with gondolas coming and going in a canal beneath it, a palazzo with an ornate balcony, and a greenhouse overlooking a canal.5 Critics were enthralled and devoted more space than usual to descriptions of the décor. Two reviews in particular give a sense of the work’s opulence and capture the tone of the production as a whole: Never has the mise-en-scène been more dazzling, never have Millet and Choubrac done better. Let us judge from this brief overview. In the first

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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a delight to behold 179 tableau, a Venetian square and palazzo complete with a real balcony; and behind it, a giant bridge beneath which gondolas—real gondolas . . .—cross paths. Against this exquisite setting: a continuous parade of people in gilded costumes—not to mention mandolinists of absolutely local color. In the second tableau—a luxurious interior—we applauded the Pas du voile, one of the score’s pearls, danced by Mme Eurieu [sic] with this top-notch artist’s perfect artistry and customary charm. To crown the whole, the third tableau: a veritable apotheosis of gold, silk, and satin, with the arrival of a fairy-tale-like gondola covered in flowers and lit by electric lights.6

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The final act is a veritable apotheosis in which, amidst the dazzle of velour and silk and the sparkle of gems, twirl a graceful bevy of young women with provocative torsos and fetching legs. The gondola into which alight the young married couple before the curtain falls has a most beautiful effect: entirely bejeweled, it suddenly emitted multicolored rays.7

Although Ernest Grenet-Dancourt’s scenario was described by critics as charming and engaging, Henri José’s score praised for being one of his best, and Rossi’s choreography declared imaginative and poetic, all of their contributions were overshadowed by the mise-en-scène. The backdrops, produced by Butel and Valton, and the costumes, designed by Choubrac and made by the House of Millet, proved to be the true stars of the show.8 Extravagant mises-en-scène were, of course, nothing new for Parisian theatergoers. An aesthetic of over-the-top spectacle still prevailed at the Opéra and in boulevard theaters, and it was the primary selling point of the shortlived Eden-Théâtre. Yet while costumes and scenery were central to theatrical display in all of these venues, they were indispensible for music halls. Music-hall stages were smaller than those of mainstream theaters; and at least one, the Casino, didn’t have wings. Also, unlike theaters such as the Opéra, Châtelet, or Porte Saint-Martin, music halls rarely invested in the stage machinery necessary for special effects. Instead, they hired the most famous craftsmen then working in Paris to create spectacular sets and costumes. Set designers included Amable, Gardy, Jambon, Menessier, Lemonnier, Jusseaume, and Rubé, all of whom worked simultaneously for the foremost theaters of Paris.9 Costumes were designed by Chéret, Choubrac, and Gerbaut and were produced by the Houses of Pascaud, Millet, Baron, and Landolff. The House of Landolff, a husband-and-wife team, made by far the largest number of ballet costumes for all three halls. The two were sought after by both private and state theaters, and individual stars sometimes commissioned them to create made-to-order gowns.10 Their costumes were so coveted that when Marchand offered Cléo de Mérode the starring role in Lorenza, one of his incentives was that she could order her own wardrobe to be made by Landolff.11 Otéro likewise had her gown made by Landolff when she premiered the lead role of L’impératrice at the Olympia. All of the other costumes for the ballet were made by the Maison Baron.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Clothing may always have played a central role in music-hall ballet’s success, but the attention paid to what dancers and actresses wore noticeably increased in the years around the turn of the century. Directors may have placed greater emphasis on dancers’ attire in an effort to project an impression of ever-greater spectacle. However, costuming also acquired a more prominent function within that spectacle in response to a demographic shift at the Folies-Bergère. The increased attendance of society women in the mid-1890s helps explain the sudden rise in the same years of upto-date ballets that featured contemporary dress and fashion shows—the Folies-Bergère’s 1896 Chez le couturier is the most obvious example—as well as the upsurge in critics’ commentary on clothing in general. Directors and critics alike had found a new way of appealing to the expanding female contingent of their audiences.12 While revealing costumes aimed primarily at pleasing the male viewer remained a staple of music-hall ballets, the magnificent gowns worn by the stars in historical and exotic ballets, along with the modern outfits sported by dancers in contemporary ballets, now attracted nearly as much attention. The few extant photographs of music-hall ballet costumes attest to the luxury so often celebrated in the press.13 A photograph published in Le Théâtre in 1901, for instance, shows Caroline Otéro in the gown made by Landolff that she wore as the Empress in the Olympia’s L’impératrice. The dress was a marvel of silk, satin, sequins, beading, and embroidery that would have elicited the admiration of spectators and critics in any theater.14 Even if Otéro’s gown was more ornately adorned than most music-hall costumes, an album of studio photographs taken by Edgar de St. Senoch of the 1900 FoliesBergère ballet Madame Bonaparte suggests that ostentation was the norm.15 The album includes fifteen photographs of dancers and mimes. Two show ballerinas in traditional knee-length gauze tutus, two more are of (female) officers in travesty costumes of leggings and fitted jackets, and the rest depict women in a variety of luxurious gowns. All of the gowns were made of rich cloths and ornamented with a quantity of embroidery and beading that one would expect to see at state-subsidized theaters such as the Opéra or Comédie-Française. The attention paid to costuming in music-hall ballets took on almost comic proportions in the 1900s. Programs from the 1880s and 1890s already included the names of all costume designers and makers. After 1900, they also detailed the provenance of every costume, hat, accessory, wig, and shoe.16 Olympia ballets created between 1909 and 1911 featured costumes drawn by Comelli and made by the Maison Alias or Pascaud, wigs brought in from the London firm of Clarkson, and shoes made by the Maison Crait. Accessories were provided by Carpezat, and flowers came from Caillaux and Javet.17 Programs for the FoliesBergère’s last two ballets, Stella (1911) and Montmartre (1913), likewise listed the source of their wigs (Loisel & Dieudonné) and shoes (Crait).18 A program

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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a delight to behold 181 for the 1908 Casino ballet Fumées d’opium included the names of costume and set designers (Granier, Chambouleron, Mignard and Ronsin), shoemakers (Maison Bor), wigmakers (Maison Baudet), and jewelers (Maison Plimsaults), yet omitted the name of the ballet’s choreographer.19

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Stage Magic Despite the ever greater dependence of music-hall ballet on spectacle, few productions incorporated stage effects. The hall’s restricted spaces on the platform and in the wings presumably curtailed the use of large machinery, and music-hall directors may have resisted investing in stage technologies that would be used only for ballets and not variety acts. The use of electrical lighting for special effects was the one exception. By the 1890s, electrical lighting was no longer a novelty in itself.20 Bright, seemingly magical electric lights had for several years been one of the attractions of music halls, especially for patrons whose homes were still equipped with comparatively dim gaslights.21 The Folies-Bergère had outfitted its halls and auditorium with electric lighting as early as 1881, and by the 1890s, most halls and theaters were fully wired.22 But colored lighting and illusions generated through light projections were new, and they were made popular by Loie Fuller in the early 1890s.23 The sudden proliferation in the mid-1890s of ballets that relied on lighting for special effects may have been an attempt to capitalize on Fuller’s successes. Lighting displays were typically incorporated into ballets without dramatic imperative: they were used purely for spectacle. Colored lights added to the magic of the fairy-tale apotheosis in Les amoureux de Venise (C, 1896) and gave the bejeweled cave scenes in Le rêve d’Elias (FB, 1898) their fantastical quality. Similarly, during the Siberian winter scene of Vassilissa’s (C, 1895) second tableau, giant ice blocks glowed over multicolored lights.24 In the case of Vassilissa, lighting effects might have been integrated into the ballet to make use of expensive machinery already owned by the Nouveau-Théâtre. Bouton d’or and La Prétentaine, presented on a Nouveau-Théâtre program two years earlier, had been designed to allow for the use of light machines previously purchased by Fuller for a series of dance performances.25 Every once in a while, special effects did play a central role in a music-hall ballet. Although romantic intrigue, exotic costumes and décor, scantily clad water nymphs, and a striptease were among the draws of the Folies-Bergère’s 1893 ballet Fleur de Lotus, stagecraft was at least as important. A storm scene in the first tableau featured realistic effects of thunder and lightning and genuine rain that fell into a hidden trough at the front of the stage. This was followed in the second tableau by a dazzling arrangement of giant flowers dusted with gold glitter that fell from the sky. The finale offered an even greater sensation: a sparkling fairylike “crystal curtain” made up of thousands of fragments of glass held together with tiny metal wires that caught and refracted the stage lights.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Reviews of Fleur de Lotus were overwhelmingly enthusiastic,26 and even Émile Duret, who in his review for La Presse derided the plot for being thin, nevertheless appreciated the magnificence of the ballet’s staging:

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Fleur de Lotus is a young Indian girl with whom Prince Timour has fallen in love. Fleur de Lotus runs away with him, leaving her poor sister Goutte de Rosée in tears [the critic has mistakenly reversed the women’s names]. But all ends well: Goutte de Rosée finds her own Prince Charming and the crystal curtain, shining with the most scintillating effect in a representation of a shower of diamonds, falls as the two couples tenderly embrace. One sees that the author did not invest much in terms of imagination but the mise-enscène was sumptuous. . . . The décor of the second act, with its gigantic chrysanthemums, its range of scintillating tones, its sky from which falls a golden dust, were ravishing. As for the natural rain showers of the first tableau, it went a little too far in its quest for realism in a pantomime-ballet that dealt essentially with the dream world.27

Mises-en-scène that included effects such as real rain and crystal curtains might have been expensive, but the Folies-Bergère’s director, M. Marchand, knew well the power that spectacle had for enticing visitors to his hall, and since spectacle was what brought them back repeatedly, his costs could be amortized and recouped over several months.28 Marchand and his colleagues were also very careful in their choices of special effects. They never staged anything groundbreaking or used new machinery, instead building on or imitating already proven successes. In the case of Fleur de Lotus, the muchvaunted crystal curtain had already enchanted audiences at the Alhambra Theatre of Varieties in London for the 1892 production of Aladdin.29 Marchand could compete with his English rival and be reasonably certain of a triumph in Paris. Audiences’ love of spectacle eventually precipitated the demise of the music-hall pantomime-ballet. Divertissements remained an integral component of the music-hall revue into the 1920s and beyond, but independent ballets—especially story-based pantomime-ballets—could not provide the kind of endless shimmer and froth then in demand. By 1905, narrative ballets were on the wane, largely replaced by revue-like ballets. These hybrid works were little more than series of loosely connected choreographed tableaux or successions of over-the-top mises-en-scène. Parisian sights alternated with fantastical or exotic locales, bathing scenes or stripteases with parades and crowd scenes—all in the same ballet. Some provided opportunities for introducing various forms of early cinema, others for bringing cars onstage.30 Even the ballets closest in narrative structure and subject matter to post-Romantic Opéra ballets tended by the 1900s to consist of streams of clichés devised as pegboards for alluring costumes and outlandish sets. Visual orgy became an end in itself and the narrative ballet lost its foothold in the halls.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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a delight to behold 183

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Sex Sells As press reviews confirm, the winning component of a music-hall ballet for most patrons was the display of the female body. Short notices in theatrical columns promised minimally dressed young ladies, and reviews often included at least a passing reference to pretty legs. Critics for the openly sensationalist Le Courrier Français capitalized on music-hall ballet’s association with exhibitionism, spicing up reviews with descriptions of prurient content. An unsigned notice promoting Le miroir, for example, promised “the loveliest legs in a graceful ballet”; Jules Bois went into ecstasies over the corps dancers’ curvaceous thighs in Le rêve d’or and described the young women as “légèrement décostumées”; and Jules Roques noted that the costumes for Brighton were splendid and their contents “eminently suggestive.”31 The Olympia’s 1897 pseudohistorical ballet Sardanapale elicited an especially colorful review. According to Jules Roques, the ballet recalled the Bal des Quat’z’Arts procession, exhibiting all that morals held at bay. The bourgeoisie, he declared, “alight after a good dinner, will hurry in each night to devour—by sight—this orgy-aphrodisiac of bared midriffs, extended legs, round bottoms, and firm tits.”32 Posters and drawings of ballets reproduced in the press were even more explicit than reviews, routinely depicting women baring their breasts and legs or wearing virtually nothing. Chéret’s poster for Fleur de Lotus shows a woman, probably meant to represent Fleur de Lotus with the stolen flower in her hair, running about or dancing in nothing but a transparent veil. Women behind her—perhaps the Péris—are similarly uncovered (fig. 9.1). An engraving by F. Lunel ostensibly representing a scene from Les perles is even more explicit. It depicts a group of women dancing naked, draped in transparent veils and ropes of pearls. Most of these accounts of nudity in music-hall ballets were pure fiction. Although ballets did often afford opportunities for racy costuming, and while certain dances and pantomime scenes may have had risqué overtones, columnists—especially those writing for Le Courrier Français—tended to sensationalize music-hall productions’ sexual element. If judged by their librettos and scores, Le miroir and Le rêve d’or, for example, appear to be two of the most conventional and unremarkable pantomime-ballets ever produced by the halls. Critics writing about these two ballets might have been enthralled by the ubiquitous travesty dancers who performed virtually all male roles, but there was no nudity. Similarly, there was no mention in the scenario or reviews of any nudity in Les perles, let alone a dance for naked women draped in nothing but ropes of pearls. In most cases, these images and reviews say more about the fantasies of those who produced and consumed them than about the ballets they were supposedly representing. None of the available photographs of music-hall ballets or dancers were as revealing as illustrations and written descriptions imply, though costumes for a handful of ballets, including Fleur de Lotus, Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts, Phryné, and Lorenza, came close.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Figure 9.1. Jules Chéret, Folies-Bergère poster for Fleur de Lotus, 1893. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn ENT DN-1 [CHERET, Jules/62]-ROUL).

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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a delight to behold 185 Critics could easily focus on the female body for good reason. Music-hall ballet was the province of the female performer: she danced or mimed any type of principal, secondary, or supporting role, and she populated the entire ballet corps. Although several ballets included small character roles performed by male actors, and some featured a male mime in a principal role, women far outnumbered men in every single music-hall ballet. Virtually no ballet included more than three or four men in any type of role. Sardanapale, the ballet that elicited the off-color review by Jules Roques quoted above, included one of the most famous male mimes of the era, Thalès, in the title role. Two smaller roles were also held by men. But women played the other six principal and secondary roles, and they were accompanied by an allfemale corps. The program for Sardanapale boasted one hundred people on stage playing slaves, priests, courtesans, merchants, acrobats, and guards. All would have been women. While Thalès was a star and probably a draw for many, the approximately 140 women who accompanied him were at least as great an attraction.33 Even when a cast included several men, an all-female corps ensured that women outnumbered them. One of the Folies-Bergère’s earliest pantomimeballets, Pierrot Volage (1886), presented nine men in principal and secondary roles and only four women of equivalent rank. However, the ballet corps tipped the balance; women still outnumbered the men by a ratio of four to one. The cast list from Merveilleuses et gigolettes (1894) paints a similar picture. The ballet showcased four of the era’s great male mimes in principal roles: M. Eugénio (from La Scala, Milan), M. Duvelleroy (from the Théâtre du Vaudeville), M. Laurent, and M. Cressionier. There were eight women in principal roles, but no starring travesty performers. Lest the ballet be criticized for providing too few opportunities to ogle women, the ballet corps performed a succession of male roles in travesty, including guards, army officers, conscripts, and boys.

Travesty Virtually every music-hall ballet included women who performed in travesty. Women played the lead romantic hero, painters and sculptors, merchants and bankers. If divertissements and ballets with fanciful themes had any male roles, those few were normally performed by women. As noted above, when a historical ballet or mythological parody featured male mimes in principal or secondary roles, some pretext was devised to allow for the appearance of women in masculine garb.34 In any ballet, mixed-gender groups of peasants, students, villagers, or Parisians were performed by an all-female ballet corps: half performed in traditional feminine costumes and the other half in travesty. The most common travesty roles were military personnel. Officers of varying ranks held starring roles as lovers; gladiators and warriors routinely met

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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in battle; and armies and naval regiments performed military exercises. All were women. Enthusiasm for seeing women in martial regalia was so pronounced that regardless of a ballet’s theme, every music-hall ballet included at least one walk-on role for an officer, even if that officer had no connection to the narrative. Officers turn up without dramatic imperative in crowd scenes, taverns and dance halls, parades, and ballroom scenes.35 Their ubiquitous presence on the music-hall stage may on occasion have been a means to stir up patriotic fervor in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian war—kaleidoscopic military configurations in Marine, France-Russie, and Cadet-Roussel involved a considerable amount of flag waving, and there is anecdotal evidence of a few ballet scores including the Marseillaise—but officers were primarily decorative: they were a convenient excuse for showing off the female form (fig. 9.2).36 Travesty costumes could be fairly revealing. At the very least, jackets and trousers were close-fitted, cut to emphasize a woman’s curves. Historical costumes allowed for short breeches or tight leggings, and exotic ones gave rise to various levels of undress. Images in illustrated programs, caricatures in the press, and advertisement posters imply that costumers took liberties with male attire, lowering necklines, removing sleeves, and shortening trousers (figs. 9.3, 9.4, and 9.5). Many artists surely exaggerated the level of décolletage seen on the stage, but photographs of travesty performers do attest to a fairly high level of provocation, both of costuming and of pose; their femininity tended to be exaggerated rather than concealed. As Garafola writes, travesty dancers were hired to display “the shapely legs, slim corseted waists, and rounded hips, thighs, and buttocks of the era’s ideal figure.”37 They did not offer commentary on contemporary gender politics or provide a critique of the manner in which gender was represented on the Parisian stage. These women were purely ornamental.38 The performance of principal roles in travesty may also have appealed to the male contingent of music-hall audiences for the implied homoerotic relationship between the two performers. The vast majority of ballets featured the union of two young lovers, almost always played by two women. As Garafola speculates, “in the formalized mating game of the travesty pas de deux, two women touching and moving in harmony conveyed an eroticism perhaps even more compelling than their individual physical charms.”39 It also removed the male competition from the imagined trysts of the “patron” and his ingénue. Critics never directly alluded to the mating or union of two women, nor did they comment on the allure of seeing two women touch each other. However, at least one poster suggests that homoeroticism did contribute to music-hall ballet’s appeal. The poster, made by Orazi for the Olympia’s production of Rêve de Noël (1896), shows Liane de Pougy and Rose Demay in close embrace, with Demay resting her head against Pougy’s bare shoulder and Pougy leaning in to give Demay a kiss.40

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Figure 9.2. Folies-Bergère poster for Marine, printed by F. Appel, 1890. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn ENT DN-1 [APPEL, F. /7]-ROUL).

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Figure 9.3. Rosary, wood engraving of the duel scene in Les réservistes à venir, printed in Le Journal du Théâtre, December 25, 1887. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (FOL- YF- 70).

Music-Hall versus Opéra: A Question of Degree, not Kind Travesty performers were by no means unique to music-hall ballet.41 Assigning women to trouser roles had been in vogue for several decades and was a practice common to all French theaters that staged ballets. The Paris Opéra was no exception. Ballet at the Opéra had undergone a gradual feminization since the earliest days of Romantic ballet and was by the 1880s a bastion of ballerinas, corps girls, and female travesty dancers. Strides made in the ballerina’s technique in the early nineteenth century, along with her ability to express

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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a delight to behold 189

Figure 9.4. Officers in an unspecified production staged by the Olympia, printed in Le Journal Amusant, April 3, 1897. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (FOL- LC2- 1681).

Romanticism’s ethereal, unattainable Feminine, had led to her glorification by critics and adulation by audiences. Ballerinas quickly rose to unprecedented prestige and began to overshadow their male partners.42 Fewer boys entered the Opéra school, and fewer danseurs took to the stage.43 Meanwhile, the Opéra’s director, Louis Véron, was busy turning ballets into girlie shows and his underpaid dancers into courtesans.44 As wealthy clubmen flocked to the theater to admire dancers’ legs and flirt with the young danseuses in the Foyer de la danse, women began to don masculine costumes on the stage. In Garafola’s words, soon “the danseuse en travesti usurped the position of the male danseur in the corps de ballet and as a partner to the ballerina. Stepping into roles

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Figure 9.5. Photograph of Angèle Héraud as Cadet Rousel, printed in a Casino de Paris program, 1900. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Po PRO.B.62).

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a delight to behold 191 previously filled by men, women now impersonated the sailor boys, hussars, and toreadors who made up the ‘masculine’ contingents of the corps de ballet, even as they displaced real men as romantic leads.”45 The trend only intensified over the turn of the twentieth century. Most ballets included at least a few danseuses en travestie in the corps and in supporting roles, and some featured a travesty dancer in a lead role. The male leads in Coppélia (1870), Gretna Green (1873), Deux pigeons (1886), Bacchus (1902), and La ronde des saisons (1905) were all played by women. Dancers such as Eugénie Fiocre, Marie Sanlaville, and Louise Mante specialized in trouser roles, developing stage personalities as travesty stars and garnering applause for their looks as much as for their dancing.46 At least one male dancer of the time bemoaned the plight of his fellow danseurs. As the Opéra-Comique’s premier danseur Robert Quinault lamented in his unpublished history of ballet in the Third Republic, “It was then the vogue of the travesty dancer, dancers of uncertain technique, but with voluptuous chests and thighs, and who were immensely pleasing to the abonnés of the orchestra stalls. Male dancers became nothing more than mere accessories, supporting here, supporting there, but almost never dancing.”47

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The Danseur The danseur did not entirely disappear from the Opéra stage. Marian Smith has shown that despite the invective of detractors and declining prestige, the danseur continued to perform lead and supporting roles in many midcentury ballets.48 Men also continued to perform in Opéra ballets in the 1870s through the early 1900s, even as travesty dancing became common practice.49 La Korrigane (1882), created at the height of the craze for travesty dancers, included a huge cast evenly split between men and women. Men not only mimed but also danced. Breton dances, for example, were danced by twenty women and twenty men; a “Ronde des Korrigans—ballabile” was danced by ten different women and ten different men; and eighteen men performed a mimed battle scene and contest as part of a divertissement. Miguel Vasquez, Louis Mérante, and M. Ajas all partnered Rosita Mauri, leading waltzes and other dances accompanied by a female ballet corps.50 Bacchus (1902) featured an equally balanced cast. Although the lovers Yadma and Bacchus were performed by Emma Sandrini and her travesty partner Louise Mante, the ballet included roles for forty-one men: eight in principal character roles—Hansen, Ladam, Vanara, Ajas, Rémond, Hoquante, Staats, and Girodier—seven as princes and Indian priests—Javon, Lavigne, Leblanc, Lévi, Fossurier, Fressé, and Schwartz—and twenty-six in the corps as fauns and warriors.51 Joseph Hansen and Léo Staats led two ensemble dances opposite Louise Mante and Carlotta Zambelli (Bacchanale, act 1; and Charisia, act 2), and Hansen performed a solo comic dance in the second tableau (“Danse de Silène,” act 1). The twenty-six fauns and warriors danced in mixed-gender ensembles in a bacchanal (act 1) and as part of festivities ordered by Bacchus

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(act 2). The ballet also included one dance—a “Pas des curètes”—for the fourteen male corps dancers who played warriors. La tempête (1889) was another interesting exception to the craze for travesty. Although this ballet did feature several women in male roles, and women far outnumbered men, one male dancer was cast as a virile man, and men performed both supporting and corps roles. In the second act, the male romantic lead—the sailor Ferdinand, performed by Vasquez—emerges from the water after narrowly escaping death in a shipwreck.52 Disheveled, he stumbles ashore and discovers the beautiful Miranda. She is immediately attracted to him, and he falls in love with her. He gives chase and they dance flirtatiously, she coyly offering herself, then pulling away. No music-hall author would have missed the opportunity to cast a travesty dancer wearing a tattered sailor’s costume, nor to have a travesty sailor try to seduce a young maiden. Indeed, in a music-hall ballet, all of the shipwrecked sailors would have been women, no doubt sporting threadbare costumes that barely covered their bodies. In La tempête, by contrast, the sailors are performed by men, and only the apprentices are performed by women in travesty. This led to some odd and possibly titillating pairings—after Ferdinand’s shipwrecked mates are reunited, the sailors and apprentices dance with joy, mixing men with travesty dancers. Such casting allowed the Opéra to allot men minor roles in the ballet all while providing voyeurs with their travesty fetishes. Despite the presence of several men in Opéra ballets, by the late nineteenth century women outnumbered men at all ranks.53 A preference for looking at nubile young women cost men their place in the corps, and travesty dancers sometimes squeezed men out of lead roles. The danseur was present, but in ever-dwindling numbers and with little critical respect. Numbers also do not tell the full story. Even when a ballet featured men in lead or secondary roles, few of these dancers were adequately trained for the rigors of classical ballet, and they were no match for ballerinas.54 Some performed character, social, and historical dances, but not ballet in a danse d’école idiom. Of the twelve men who performed lead and supporting roles in Opéra ballets in the 1880s and 1890s—Vasquez, Mérante, Hansen, Ajas, Rémond, Pluque, Stilb, de Soria, Ladam, Régnier, Vanara, Dauty, and Cornet—the Spanish-born Miguel Vasquez was the Opéra’s lone premier danseur.55 Six of the top-ranked men— Stilb, de Soria, Régnier, Vanara, Dauty, and Cornet—usually mimed, and only occasionally performed ensemble character dances.56 Some may never have received serious dance training at all, while others were nearing the ends of their careers. Ballet masters Louis Mérante and Joseph Hansen, once good dancers, were well past their dancing prime in the 1880s and 1890s. Cornet and Dauty were likewise elderly: they entered the Opéra in 1838 and were already sujets de la danse in 1866.57 When any of these men were mentioned in ballet reviews, the comments were about their abilities as mimes, not as dancers.58 No male dancer attracted thoughtful critical attention at the fin de siècle, and none played a significant role in the popular imagination.59

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a delight to behold 193 It is, however, important to note that while male ballet dancers fell out of favor, male character dancers and mimes continued to perform in Opéra ballets. Pantomime and action scenes made up a large proportion of every ballet, and since men often performed in these scenes, male character dancers and mimes were on stage alongside ballerinas and female character dancers for most of the ballet. The danseur nearly disappeared from the Opéra’s ballets, but men did not. While the danseur did not fare any better in boulevard theaters, he did play a significant role in Eden-Théâtre ballets.60 Italian male dancers were far better trained than their French colleagues, and at least some could perform virtuosic tours de force.61 Men not only played dramatic leads that called for character dancing and mime, they could also dance ballet.62 Overall, the Eden’s Italian ballets included more parts for men than did contemporary French ballets. Italian male dancers never received the adulation enjoyed by prima ballerinas in France, but a few gained a high degree of fame and had international careers separate from the touring Italian spectacles. Enrico Ceccheti, Georgio Saracco, Vittorio di Vicenti, and Luigi Albertieri, for instance, went on to have illustrious careers in London.63 Several others—Benedetto Pastorini, Giovanni Pratesi, Achille Balbiani, Alfredo Curti, Egidio Rossi, and Carlo Coppi—held posts in Paris and London as music-hall ballet masters and choreographers. Curiously, although the Italian practice of casting male mimes in lead roles did have its corollary in Parisian music-hall ballet, the Eden’s danseurs had little impact on French ballet.64 The brief surge in 1886 in the number of male dancers hired by the Folies-Bergère to perform in its ballets might have been a response to the popularity of the Eden’s productions in the mid-1880s; but after the Eden declared bankruptcy in 1890, none of the Eden’s male dancers found work in the Parisian music halls as dancers, and the halls quickly reverted to female-dominated productions.65 Travesty dancing was perhaps too ingrained and accepted a practice in Paris, and too beloved a part of the musichall show for Italian men to make much headway in France. It took the arrival of Diaghilev’s Russian dancers to change music-hall casting practices. When in 1909 Diaghilev presented his first season of Russian ballet to the Parisian public, male dancers suddenly found themselves back in the spotlight. The Russian troupe included several principal male dancers, all of whom actually danced. Performances by Adolphe Bolm, Mikhail Mordkin, Georgi Rosai, and Alexis Bulgakov far outstripped those of any French danseur, and Vaslav Nijinsky captivated audiences with his combination of athletic prowess and expressiveness.66 As Parisians flocked to see men dance, critics celebrated the craze in the press.67 They also began to pay more attention to local male dancers.68 The danseur received more press coverage in the few years after 1909 than he had in several decades, and he began slowly to regain a foothold in French ballet. Mme Mariquita, ever sensitive to the latest choreographic trends, brought over her premier danseur, Robert Quinault, from the Opéra-Comique

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to perform the lead male danced roles in her last three Folies-Bergère ballets: Romi-Tchavé (1909), Stella (1911), and Montmartre (1913).69 Mme Mariquita was not the only music-hall choreographer to capitalize on the mania for male dancing. The 1910 Olympia ballet Papillon d’or featured Yetta Rianza opposite Ettore Caorsi, a premier danseur from the Geneva Royal Theater. Except in these four ballets, the danseur was conspicuously absent from the music-hall stage. This does not mean, however, that music-hall ballets were entirely the domain of the female performer. Apart from a few divertissements, music-hall ballets always included male roles performed by men. Between 1886 and 1913, the Folies-Bergère, Olympia, and Casino employed at least twentyone, eighteen, and fourteen male mimes respectively. Many performed with the troupe for several years, so that each hall had two to eight male mimes on hand at any given time. Mimes such as Thalès, Séverin, and Paul Franck were famous outside of the halls and were hired as stars. Although mimes were the only male presence in music-hall ballet, they were more important to late-nineteenth-century ballet than numbers convey. At a time when the norm in all Parisian theaters was to cast travesty dancers in the role of leading man, music halls regularly featured the great male actors of the day in starring roles. Mime was a way to have a strong male presence in a ballet.

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Nudity Travesty dancing was tame in comparison to some of the ruses devised to exhibit women’s bodies. Flaunting the female body in various states of undress was a thread that ran through the history of music-hall ballet. As described in chapter 4, the Folies-Bergère’s divertissements from the 1870s and 1880s regularly showcased young women in fetching exotic costumes, minimal insect outfits, or bathing suits. While in the 1890s such displays became individual scenes within a larger narrative, they were no less central to the genre. All three halls routinely staged ballets that called for women to appear in bathing suits, for women to undress, or for women to pose nude as artists’ models. While most of these ballets did provide some kind of narrative pretext for such scenes, by the 1900s, bathing scenes and stripteases were inserted seemingly at random. The open display of the female body no longer required a justification. Bathing scenes were the easiest way to get women onstage in skimpy costumes.70 The Folies-Bergère’s early divertissement-like bathing-suit ballets mentioned in chapter 4—Sur la plage (1883) and Les baigneuses (1889)—were followed at the Olympia by Brighton (1893) and Bains de dames (1895). All centered on women frolicking in or by the water. Beginning in the early 1890s, it became more common to include a bathing scene as a picturesque interlude into an unrelated narrative. Any excuse was acceptable, regardless of the scene’s credibility within the broader story line. Examples range from Pierrot coming upon a harem of women in Turkish baths (Pierrot au hammam [O, 1897]) and a

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a delight to behold 195 personified Sport watching over women swimming (Sports [FB, 1897 and 1908]), to scenes of gentlemen watching women cavort in the sea as the backdrop to an unrelated pantomime scene (Les saisons de la Parisienne [O, 1905], and Le timbre d’or [FB, 1906]). All of these ballets depicted men (often travesty dancers) enjoying the sight of female bathers. The objectives of bathing-suit divertissements were utterly straightforward; they had no literary or artistic pretensions. Similarly, bathing scenes in pantomime-ballets rarely had any bearing on the plot. They were short, purely visual interruptions to an ongoing story. Although there was little subject matter in any of these productions that might arouse the indignation of the public or cause offence, prose descriptions and images suggest that swimming costumes concealed the bare minimum (figs. 9.6). Like the many illustrations published in the popular and caricature press that depicted curvaceous women in swimming outfits holidaying at seaside resorts, these ballets were designed to invite the male gaze and elicit fantasy (fig. 9.7).71

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Stripteases Bathing scenes also allowed for stripteases. Before dipping into the sea, lake, pond, or bathtub, dancers slowly removed their dressing gowns or outer garments, stripping down to their tight-fitted swimsuits or body stockings. In a review of the Olympia’s 1893 production of Brighton, for instance, Richard O’Monroy declared the most successful number of the ballet to be a dance for a dozen “little women” who appear by the sea wearing bathrobes. “With each step,” he writes, “the viewer envisions her wearing an ultra-fitted bathing costume in purple, pink, saffron, and pearl grey, until the moment when the robes fall before the audience’s enchanted eyes.”72 O’Monroy later described the bathing scene in Un déjeuner sur l’herbe (1897) in similar terms: “And what better to do after lunch than bathe. It is perhaps not quite hygienic, but it is fresh . . . Thus M. Lagoanère’s pensioners get undressed— something we would never complain about—and after performing a few strokes in the river, . . . they emerged in skin-tight bathing costumes for our applause, which we warmly bestowed upon them.”73 Fleur de Lotus featured an equally titillating striptease and bathing scene in an extended interlude to a romantic comedy. In the second tableau, an exhausted Fleur de Lotus, who has been wandering the countryside in search of her wayward sister, stumbles upon a lake of lotus flowers guarded by a royal servant and populated by dancing water nymphs, or Péris. Unable to continue her search, she stops to rest and is encircled by the Péris. The Péris take pity on her and slowly help her to undress so that she might refresh herself in the lake. The striptease is followed by a posed tableau in which Fleur de Lotus sits by the lake nude, combing her long hair and admiring her own reflection. In L’impératrice, voyeurism added a tantalizing frisson to an already clandestine tableau. When a danced divertissement fails to arouse the interest of the

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Figure 9.6. Costumes for Pierrot au hammam, centerfold in Le Théâtre Illustré 6, no. 20. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Po π- 1347).

Figure 9.7. Mars, wood engraving of a scene from Brighton, printed in Le Journal Amusant no. 1942 (November 18, 1893). Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Po π- 1272).

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a delight to behold 197 bored ruler, the Empress decides to take a bath in her indoor pool. The assembled courtiers turn to face the wall, and a eunuch helps remove her gown. The audience is then privy to what her courtiers are forbidden to see: the beautiful Caroline Otéro in a skin-colored bodysuit. Bathing was not the only excuse for stripteases. In Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts (1893), Phryné (1897), and Lorenza (1901), the heroine is called upon to remove her clothing in the name of art. As seen in the previous chapter, Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts, a parody of the Bal des Quat’z’Arts, presented multiple disrobing scenes: one showing Émilienne undressing to take part in the beauty competition; a second in which her already minimal chemise is manipulated to show off different parts of her body when attempting to appease M. Prud’homme; another when she removes the chemise and is borne into the ballroom; and a last when she is placed on a pedestal as the beauty queen of the ball. Phryné, a recasting of the story of the ancient Greek courtesan, relied on history to maintain a shred of modesty. In the balletic version of the tale, the sculptor Praxitèle’s muse and model is accused of impiety after dancing nude before a statue of Venus and is summoned before the courts. In order to prove her innocence, Phryné performs a chaste version of her dance. Praxitèle then rips off her draperies so that all assembled, and by extension the audience, can see her perfect beauty. Exonerated on the grounds that such beauty is not of this world, Phryné stands nude for all to admire. Lorenza, created five years after Phryné, revisited the trope of the artist’s muse posing nude: Lorenza de Medici unveils her exquisite physique for the Renaissance sculptor Benvenuto Cellini, who is inspired to create his statue of Venus. Nudity scenes in all of these ballets took the form of posed tableaux in the manner of a tableau vivant or painting. Fleur de Lotus did not dance nude, but sat coquettishly by a lake. Phryné danced demurely for the court to prove her chastity before her robes were removed, not after; Émilienne stood still on her pedestal, first while nymphs danced about her covering her with vine leaves, and later as the beauty queen of the ball; and Lorenza posed as Venus, in proper academic fashion. That all of these tableaux gave a nod to academic convention is no coincidence: situating music-hall ballet’s most conspicuous displays of the female figure in the context of high art circumvented accusations of impropriety.74 Authors also alluded to specific paintings as a strategy for showing off the female nude within the prescribed boundaries of public decency. The voluptuous, orientalist orgy in Sardanapale, for instance, derived both piquancy and respectability from references to Georges Rochegrosse’s La mort de Babylone. So, too, did the bathing scene in Un déjeuner sur l’herbe, which probably made allusion to Manet’s painting of that name.75 Silvestre’s Fleur de Lotus provides an especially entertaining example of veiled voyeurism. The fairy-tale love story, exotic setting, and allusions to Giselle and the conventions of postRomantic pantomime-ballet provided a semblance of decorum for dances by

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minimally dressed water nymphs, a striptease, and lakeside nudity scenes; but these risqué scenes also relied on associations with academic nude painting to camouflage their immodesty. Fleur de Lotus’s thirty-two measure toilette scene after her striptease, for instance, alluded to Salon nudes—a repertoire Silvestre knew intimately as an art critic and author of several catalogues of Salon reproductions.76 The final suggestive scene in Fleur de Lotus parodied the censoring office that used academic conventions to accept or decline nudes for artistic salons and illustrated publications. The scene unfolds as follows. When the Prince’s servant, Ouyapapa, suddenly awakens, the Péris disappear and Fleur de Lotus is forced to hide in the reeds. The royal party soon enters and all sit down to watch a danced divertissement. Fleur de Lotus watches from her hiding place. After the divertissement, Goutte de Rosée discovers that someone has picked a flower from the royal lake and sets off to hunt for the perpetrator. Only then is Fleur de Lotus discovered, still hiding in the reeds and nude but for a giant leaf wrapped around her. She emerges to embrace her sister, and the Prince’s friend, Calisada, falls in love with the exposed young maiden. This scene brought the erotic portion of the ballet to a close with flair. Although the parallel was not remarked upon by critics, the audience may have recognized it as a send-up of a censorship scandal that involved the author of the ballet himself. Five years earlier, a drawing by Alexandre Jazet on the cover of a catalogue of Salon nudes edited by Armand Silvestre was censored and destroyed.77 The cover showed a nude woman peeping out from a slit in a giant leaf. The corresponding scene in Fleur de Lotus was surely not a coincidence. Many in the audience would have known about the scandal, making it possible for Silvestre to hint at nudity without showing any actual flesh. Stripteases and nudity scenes were well suited to music halls. Nevertheless, like travesty dancing, they had their corollary in the state theater. Ingénues routinely danced seductively in Opéra ballets, undressed before the audience, and frolicked in moonlit lakes. Beautiful slave girls of different nationalities lounged about in the rich Oriental tableau in Namouna (1882), and dancers tried to seduce their victims with exotic dances in Les deux pigeons (1886), Bacchus (1902), and La ronde des saisons (1905).78 As part of a dream sequence in Le rêve (1890), the heroine, Daïta, water goddesses, and their queen, Isanami, play in the water by moonlight. Isanami brings Daïta the ornate gowns she dreams of owning and administers her toilette. In La tempête (1889), dragonflies that wear revealing costumes—like those seen in boulevard-theater ballets—sun themselves by a lake and flit about in a stream. Sylvia (1876) included two such scenes in close succession. The ballet opens on a moonlit tableau of naiads emerging from the water and being chased by fauns and sylvans.79 A short time later, Sylvia enters the clearing with her nymphs. After dancing in honor of the chase, her nymphs succumb to the tempting freshness of the lake. A few rest by the side while others prepare to

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a delight to behold 199 enter the beckoning waters. As in music-hall ballets, voyeurism provided the scene with a hint of licentiousness: Sylvia and her nymphs are furtively watched by her two suitors, Aminta and Orion. There was nothing new in such scenes. Ballet had been equated with women and sex since Véron’s transformation of the Opéra into a palace of pleasures.80 Indeed, eroticism maintained a presence in Opéra ballet throughout the nineteenth century, beginning with the sensuous debauchery of the nuns in Robert le diable and surfacing repeatedly in Romantic and post-Romantic ballets despite changes in theater management, audience composition, prevailing artistic aesthetic, and sociopolitical climate.81 Smith and Kopchick Spencer have recently identified several examples from the 1830s through the 1860s (both within and alongside operas) that incorporated bathing scenes, stripteases, and what Smith has termed “feminine scenes”: tableaux in which women gaze at themselves in mirrors, comb their hair, or make their toilette. La tentation (1832) and La révolte au sérail (1833), for instance, featured lengthy bathing scenes in orientalist settings, and Les Huguenots (1836) presented women performing their toilette and cavorting in the water in the gardens of sixteenth-century Chenonceaux.82 The 1839 ballet La Tarentule contained a striptease only slightly less provocative than the dozens of music-hall striptease pantomimes produced in the 1890s. Dr. Oméopatico eagerly awaits while his demure and reticent young bride undresses, one piece at a time, down to her corset and petticoat. A muslin curtain hides Laurette from her groom, but her striptease is performed in full view of the audience.83 Déshabillés can be found in so many Opéra productions that one wonders how different these ballets were from their popular counterparts. Were music-hall ballets any more risqué? Was the sensuous material the same, but presented more openly? Perhaps it was a question of reception: audiences could indulge more freely in voyeurism in the permissive atmosphere of the music halls. A few music-hall ballets do seem to have had more explicit erotic content. Opéra ballets were designed in part to please the prurient contingent of the theater’s abonnés, but they were expected to remain within the bounds of upper-class decorum and artistic restraint as befitted a national institution. Music halls had no such constraints. They attracted patrons from a similar socioeconomic base, but their artistic objectives were governed primarily by commercial priorities, and their directors knew that sexual provocation was profitable. It was in their best interest to offer shows that included at least some conspicuous flaunting of the female body. Although bathing scenes, stripteases, and posed tableaux for corps dancers in minimal clothing appeared in as many Opéra as music-hall ballets, a few music-hall productions did up the ante. A photo spread in Paris Qui Chante of dancers from Les sept péchés capitaux, for instance, shows women sporting costumes that recall those from boulevard-theater spectacles and

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early music-hall divertissements, not Opéra ballets.84 While all of the corps dancers are wearing the regulation body stocking, these dancers exhibit as much as they conceal: the shortest possible skirts flow from beneath tightly cinched, low-cut, lacy bodices (fig. 9.8). The costumes for the personified sins are even more daring. Although the skirts fastened to their bejeweled bodices are longer, they are slit up to the waist, displaying the dancer’s entire leg and curve of the buttocks. Christine Kerf, the principal travesty and partner to star ballerina De Consoli, is shown wearing dark tights rather than trousers. A photograph taken by Nadar Studios in 1897 of Mlle Lhéry posing in her costume for Sardanapale similarly recalls boulevard-theater costuming. Her corseted bodice is adorned with metal plates that call attention to her curvaceous body, and the scanty braided mesh that covers her body stocking reveals far more than it hides (fig. 9.9). A slightly more subtle strategy for spicing up ballets was to use skimpy versions of everyday contemporary clothing. Several of the topical ballets from the 1890s required dancers to exhibit their bodies without the cover of geographical and chronological exoticism. Seeing a Parisian shop girl remove her everyday street clothes in a ballet such as Un déjeuner sur l’herbe was all the more provocative with the conflation of fantasy and reality. So, too, was seeing pretty Parisian girls running about in bathing suits and close-fitted sporting outfits in Les demoiselles du XXe siècle, Chez le couturier, and Sports. Casting in the 1890s and beyond served to reinforce the potency of musichall sensuousness. Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts called for Émilienne d’Alençon to play herself—Émilienne the beauty queen—and stand nude at a ball for all to admire. Ballets such as Phryné, Lorenza, and L’impératrice had some of the trappings of a traditional historical or exotic Opéra ballet, but these were trumped by exhibitions of the era’s most desirable sex symbols, dancers Cléo de Mérode and Caroline Otéro, in the act of undressing. As with Émilienne d’Alençon, assigning famous courtesans the roles of temptresses and beauty queens collapsed the space between fact and fiction and gave these ballets a sense of realism that doubtless heightened the shows’ voyeuristic impact.85 Lorenza, too, conflated reality and fantasy, history and contemporary scandal. Like Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts, the Folies-Bergère’s 1901 spectacle ballet Lorenza both featured a famous contemporary beauty as the object of sexual fantasy and made reference to a recent scandal over indecency. As described earlier, the ballet was ostensibly a recasting of the Italian Renaissance sculptor Benvenuto Cellini’s search for his ideal muse and model, whom he finds in Lorenza de Medici. In the ballet’s final scene, Medici, played by Mérode, disrobes to reveal her extraordinarily beautiful body. Cellini is awed by her perfect physique and is inspired to create his famous sculpture of Venus. This final scene of Lorenza dramatized a scandal involving Mérode herself. In 1896, shortly before creating Phryné for the Casino de Royan, Mérode had been the subject of gossip after sitting for a sculpture by the French artist Alexandre

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a delight to behold 201

Figure 9.8. Photographs of dancers from Les sept péchés capitaux, printed in Paris Qui Chante, October 18, 1903. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Po π- 73).

Falguière. Although Mérode claimed to have been the model for the head only, the sculpture was a full nude (fig. 9.10). The head was recognizably Mérode’s, and all assumed that she had posed naked.86 Mérode, posing in Lorenza as the beautiful model for a statue of a nude, provided the ballet with an ironic twist surely not lost on the audience.87 There were limits to how far music-hall authors and directors were willing to push exhibitionism. Few ballets staged at the Folies-Bergère, Olympia, or Casino had explicitly erotic narratives, and no dancer in a music-hall ballet

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Figure 9.9. Nadar Studios, Mlle Lhéry in Sardanapale, 1897. Médiathèque de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine (APNADAR009659). © Ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

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Figure 9.10. Drawing by A. Poulain showing Falguière’s statue of Mérode as displayed at the 1896 Paris salon, Gil Blas, June 26, 1896. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Po π- 620).

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was ever truly naked. Although skimpy outfits no doubt struck many viewers as risqué, music-hall ballets tended to be suggestive rather than openly salacious. Ballets that pushed the boundaries of acceptable music-hall entertainment were exceptions. Music halls were, after all, mainstream venues that catered to a broad cross-section of professional and leisured society. They attracted men, but also women and families. And although families normally attended matinée performances, it is important to remember that the shows were virtually the same as those presented at night.88 While reviews routinely called attention to déshabillés, there is little evidence that music-hall ballets were as indecent as some critics imply. Déshabillé meant wearing bodysuits and light coverings, and no bather ever removed her swimsuit.89 According to Mérode, her costume for the nudity scene in Phryné consisted of a pale pink bodysuit beneath a translucent pink tunic. In order to give an impression of nudity after she removed her heavy robes, fellow dancers draped the robes behind her so that the audience could see the outline of her body against the dark backdrop (fig. 9.11).90 As Mérode wrote, it required a certain amount of good will to accept that she was naked.91 Writing more generally about fin-de-siècle stripteases and early forms of theatrical nudity, Georges Montorgueil remarked in 1896 that one needed an impressionable mind to perceive the women on display as “naked” when their bodies were in reality carefully concealed.92 The audience, he wrote, was responsible for any real impropriety by imagining indecency and perversion where there was none. Ballets could appear titillating in part because they were assumed to be so. Music halls capitalized on long-standing associations between ballet and the female body, and between boulevard entertainment and lax morals. Desire was aroused beneath a veneer of respectability.93 Whether or not men acted upon their lust after the show, erotic fantasizing was understood to be one of the pleasures of the music hall and was actively encouraged. For all their emphasis on the female physique, music-hall ballets were relatively circumspect when it came to displays of the female body. Music-hall “eccentric” dancers, exotic dancers, and dancing “girls” routinely displayed far more risqué behavior than did dancers in music-hall ballets, as did the actresses who starred in the dozens of striptease pantomimes staged by the halls in the 1890s.94 Tableaux vivants remained a common means for presenting women in revealing attire in various popular venues; postcards and cartes de visite of famous beauties were bought in the thousands; and openly erotic photographs were readily available.95 The illustrated press printed drawing after drawing of Parisiennes in form-fitting cycling outfits or young women bathing in popular coastal resorts, and lingerie ads lined music-hall programs and filled the back pages of newspapers. The caricature press, in turn, depicted voluptuous, curvaceous women cycling, bathing, performing athletic feats, and otherwise showing off their figures. Music-hall directors were quick to pick up on these profitable cultural trends and incorporated scenes in their ballets that mimicked popular imagery.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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a delight to behold 205

Figure 9.11. Caricature of Cléo de Mérode in Phryné, printed in Le Journal Amusant, March 20, 1897. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Po π- 1272).

What distinguished music-hall ballets from those produced by the Opéra was a question of degree, not kind. Both types of ballet were pitched to elite audiences and both aimed to be mainstream. They had virtually identical narrative, choreographic, and musical structures, and they shared many elements of musical style. They also had a similar visual aesthetic. Spectacle was given a place of honor in the halls, as it was at the Opéra, and both constantly put the female body on display. Music-hall ballets were not, however, derivative productions that rehashed the Opéra’s clichés. They formed a unique repertoire that combined the conventional structures of high art with the popular idioms of mass entertainment.

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Paradoxically, the same commercial pressures and attendant aesthetic attributes that might have consigned music-hall ballet to the status of commercial kitsch had a profound impact on French pantomime-ballet and played a significant role in the renewal of what had become a stilted, formulaic genre at the Opéra. Writers who depicted the frivolities of everyday Parisian bourgeois lifestyles, for instance, suffused their scenarios with elements of irony and parody and dealt with contemporary mores and social constructs with an immediacy that foreshadowed the purportedly innovative librettos produced for their more famous successors, the Ballets Russes. Not bound by the strictures of academic ballet and simultaneously required to arrange dances for women not trained as ballerinas, choreographers in turn created a new kind of danced theater that placed a greater burden on expressiveness than on formal virtuosity. They prompted novel approaches to the genre, fostered a more flexible notion of what “ballet” could be, and cultivated an audience that could appreciate choreographic innovation. By looking to new sources of inspiration and drawing on the most successful trends in popular art and entertainment, music-hall authors, composers, and choreographers created works with an originality and flair not seen in Paris for decades. These artists and entrepreneurs infused the genre with a vitality long lost at the state theater and brought ballet into the twentieth century.

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Appendix A

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

Tables of Ballets Staged by the Folies-Bergère, the Olympia, and the Casino de Paris

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Work Volapük

Pierrot volage Fleurs et plumes Les Gitanos Le château de Mac-Arrott Les réservistes à venir Presse-ballet

Dans l’inconnu

Date of premiere1 Length of run

9/25/1886

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9/25/1886

1/13/1887−3/11/1887

3/12/1887–5/2/1887

5/3/1887–6/12/1887

11/22/1887–4/8/1888

4/9/1888–6/3/1888 Reprise: 1/14/1889− 3/8/1889

9/15/1888−12/16/1888

B. 1a Div. japonais

B. 1a

B. 1a

B. 1a [Figaro : Légendeballet écossais]

B.1a [Prog: Ballet-div.]

B. 1a [MS: Div.]

B. 1a [Prog: Div.-pant.]

B. 1a, 2t [Prog. B.-div.; MS: Div.]

Genre/acts2

Table A.1. Ballets premiered by the Folies-Bergère, 1886−1913

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Henri Justamant

G. de la Neuville (SACD Jacques Lemaire)

Henri Justamant

R. Mythe

G. Adrien

Edmond Beaumont

Joseph Gayda

H. de Cuers and G. de Bompar

Librettist3

Louis Desormes

Charles Hubans

Louis Desormes

Henri Cieutat

Carman

Louis Ganne

Louis Desormes

Louis Ganne

Composer

Charles Justament

Henri Justamant

Henri Justamant

Émile Grédelue

Émile Grédelue

Émile Grédelue

Émile Grédelue

Émile Grédelue

Choreographer4

208 appendix a

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Joujoux-ballet Flagrant délit

Les baigneuses Marine

Paris-turf Le roi s’ennuie

Une répétition aux Folies-Bergère

3/9/1889–5/27/1889

5/28/1889−10/8/1889 (staged sporadically in November and December)

10/9/1889−1/24/1889 (not on matinées)

1/25/1890−4/28/1890 (staged sporadically in May and June)

4/29/1890

9/13/1890−11/9/1890 (on matinées during the run of Une répétition aux Folies-Bergère)

11/6/1890−3/2/1891 Reprise 10/8/1892− 2/7/1893 (sporadically)

(continued)

Les almées (new production of Mariquita’s Les fausses almées, 1874)

Work

12/18/1888−1/13/1889

Date of premiere1 Length of run

Auguste Germain Charles Aubert

Mme Mariquita

B. 1a

B. 1a

Mme Mariquita

B. 1a

Ballet militaire

Adolphe Jaime

Jules Margat

B. 1a [L’Entracte and prog: Ballet breton] B. 1a

Henri Justamant

Madame Mariquita

B. 1a [Figaro: Div.]

B. 1a

Librettist3

Genre/acts2

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Louis Desormes

Louis Desormes

Eugène d’Harcourt

Louis Desormes

Charles Hubans

Louis Desormes

Louis Desormes

Olivier Métra

Composer

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Charles Justament

[?] Justamant

Charles Justament

[?] Justamant (see note 4)

Choreographer4

appendix a 209

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Un atelier fin de siècle Les chansons

Les perles Rêve d’or

Miroir Orsowa Les Folies Parisiennes

Fleur de Lotus

3/17/1891−10/12/1891 (overlaps with Les perles; performed on matinées through January 1892)

9/12/1891−1/5/1892

1/6/1892−5/31/1892 (overlaps with Les Perles and Miroir)

2/7/1892−5/31/1892

9/10/1892−10/7/1892

11/15/1892−4/24/1893 Reprise: 2/10/1894 (with Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts)

3/25/1893−5/7/1893 Reprise: 2/24/1894– 5/31/1894

Work

3/3/1891−5/31/1891 Restaged sporadically in May 1892

Date of premiere1 Length of run

Paul Meyan

B. 1a

B. 1a, 2t [Prog: B. 2t]

Armand Silvestre

Louis Desormes

Louis Desormes

Paul Meyan

Ballet-revue

Louis Desormes

Louis Desormes

Georges de Bompar Gaston Paulin

René Maizeroy

Jacques Lemaire

Louis Desormes

Louis Desormes (arrangements of old and new songs)

Louis Desormes

Composer

B. 1a

B.-pant. [MS: Pant]

B. 1a, 2t

Paul Meyan

Alfred Delilia

B. 1a, 2t

B. 1a [Prog: B. 2t]

Librettist3

Genre/acts2

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Choreographer4

210 appendix a

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(continued)

La belle et la bête

9/17/1895−1/8/1896

B. 2t [Prog: B.-pant. 2t]

Richard O’Monroy [de Saint-Geniès]

Edmond Diet

Louis Varney

Amédée Moreau

La Princesse Idaea

3/27/1895−6/21/1895 (plays with Merveilleuses et gigolettes t1 only)

B. 1a [Prog: Ballet indien] [L’Entracte : Grand ballet indien 3t]

B. 2a [Prog: B.-pant. 3t]

Merveilleuses et gigolettes

12/21/1894−3/26/1895 (final performances: t2 only)

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Louis Desormes

Louis Ganne

Abel Mercklein (SACD register also lists Amédée Moreau)

B. 1a [Prog: B.-div]

Les demoiselles du 9/15/1894−12/7/1894 XXe siècle Reprise: 12/11/1895−12/21/1895 (with La belle et la bête)

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Choreographer4

Louis Desormes

Louis Desormes

Alfred Dubruck

Composer

Jules Jouy and Jacques Lemaire

Georges Courteline and Louis Marsolleau

B.-pant. 1a

Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts

12/9/1893−2/25/1894 (plays with France-Russie, L’arc-en-ciel, or Les Folies Parisiennes)

Amédée Moreau

B.-pant. 1a

Mme Mariquita

France-Russie

10/17/1893−1/17/1894 (overlaps alternately with L’arc-en-ciel or Émilienne)

Librettist3

Genre/acts2

B. 1a [Press: Ballet patriotique]

L’arc-en-ciel

Work

9/14/1893−12/10/1893 Reprise: occasionally December 1893 Reprise: January 1894 (with Émilienne)

Date of premiere1 Length of run

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Les mimes d’or

Les cygnes

L’araignée d’or

Chez le couturier Phryné Sports

1/7/1896−5/22/1896 Reprise: 10/3/1896−10/31/1896 Premiered at the Alhambra 1884

5/7/1896−6/28/1896 (overlaps with Les cygnes) Reprise: 10/3/1896−10/31/1896

5/23/1896−6/28/1896 9/13/1896−11/19/1896

2/10/1897−6/23/1897

6/3/1897−6/23/1897 9/4/1897−12/22/1897 12/23/1897–1/21/1898 (a2 only) Reprise: 9/4/1908– 11/30/1908 (a1 only)

Work

12/24/1895−2/23/1896 (overlaps with La belle et la bête)

Date of premiere1 Length of run

Auguste Germain Paul Louis Flers

B. 3a [Score: B. 2a, 3t] B.-pant. 2a [Prog: B.-pant. 2t]

Paul Louis Flers

Edmond Diet

Jean Lorrain

B.-pant. 1a [Prog: Conte fée. 2t]

B. 2a

Georges Jacobi

Joseph Hansen

B. 2a [Prog: B 1a]

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Choreographer4

1er tabl: Gustave Mme Mariquita Goublier 2e tableau: M. Holzer

Louis Ganne

Victor Roger

Louis Desormes

Paul Meyan and Pierre Laffitte

B. 1a [Prog: B.-pant 1a]

Composer

Librettist3

Genre/acts2

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

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Les grandes courtisanes

Le Prince Désir Cythère

Madame Bonaparte [Prog: B.-pant. 2t]

5/13/1899–6/11/1899 (overlaps with La princesse au sabbat) 9/16/1899–12/11/1899

11/11/1899–4/13/1900

4/26/1900–10/8/1900 Ran through summer (expo)

10/9/1900–1/25/1900

(continued)

Napoli

La princesse au sabbat

1/25/1899–6/11/1899

1/26/1901–6/9/1901

L’enlèvement des Sabines

9/15/1898–1/8/1899

B. 4a [Prog: B.-pant 4t]

B.-pant. [Prog: Ballet 3t]

Paul Milliet

Thierry Lemoine

Auguste Germain

Pierre Guérande

Franco Alfano

Georges Pfeiffer

Louis Ganne

Francis Thomé

Edmond Missa

Hubert Desvignes

B. 1a [Prog: B.-pant. prologue, 3t] [Press: Div.] [Prog: Ballet 3t] [Prog: Ballet 2t]

Louis Ganne

Paul Marcelles

Jean Lorrain

Adrien Vély and Charles Dutreil

Paul Lacôme

André Colomb

Composer

B. 2a [Prog: B.-pant. 3t] [Score: B. 3t]

B. 1a [Prog: B. 1a]

B. 1a, 2t Armand Silvestre [Prog: B.-pant. 2t] [Figaro: Ballet aérien]

Le rêve d’Elias

Edmond Mize and Eugène Vivier

B.-pant. 2a [Prog: B.-pant. 4t]

3/29/1898–6/19/1898 (played with Diamant)

Librettist3

Genre/acts2

Diamant

Work

2/4/1898–6/19/1898 (2, 3, or 4 tableaux removed in future performances)

Date of premiere1 Length of run

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Choreographer4

appendix a 213

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Antinoa

Le timbre d’or

8/31/1906–12/12/1906

Les sept péchés B.-pant 1a capitaux [Prog: B.-pant. 3t] (new production)

9/12/1903–1/19/1904 Premiered Olympia 1899

9/1/1905–12/18/1905

Faust

9/13/1902–11/8/1902 Premiered Olympia 1900

La fée des poupées

Lorenza

11/4/1901–3/3/1902

9/14/1904–12/4/1904 Premiered Vienna

Paris s’éveille

10/11/1901–11/3/1901 Premiered Cirque d’été

B. 1a [Prog: Fantaisieballet]

B. 1a [Prog: B. fée à gr. spectacle]

[Prog: B.-pant]

[Prog: Grand ballet fée 4t]

B.-pant. [Prog: B.-pant. 3t]

B. 1a

B. 1a [Prog: Ballet comique]

Noce auvergnate

9/13/1901–11/3/1901

Genre/acts2

Work

Date of premiere1 Length of run

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

Henri de Gorsse, Georges Nanteuil

Bonis-Charancle

Joseph Hassereiter

M. de Marsan and René Louis

H. Crémieux and A. Jaime

Rodolphe Darzens

Mme Mariquita

Choreographer4

Justin Clérice

Emile Bonnamy

Joseph Bayer

Henri Hirschmann

Hervé (from Petit Faust)

Franco Alfano

M. Sicard Danses anglaises de J. Pomé

Alfredo Curti

Alfredo Curti

Alfredo Curti (mise-en-scène Séverin)

Alfredo Curti

Mme Mariquita

Rodolphe Berger Mme Mariquita

Alfred Patusset

Mme Mariquita

Surtac [Gabriel Astruc]

Composer

Librettist3

214 appendix a

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Romi-Tchavé

Les ailes Stella Montmartre

9/4/1909–11/28/1909

9/1/1910–11/28/1909

9/1/1911–11/26/1911

9/1/1913–10/27/1913

B. 4t [Prog: Fantaisie dansée 4t]

B. 3t

Conte arr. 4t [Prog: B. fée 4t]

B. 1a [Prog: Ballet bohemien]

Genre/acts2

Adolphe Willette

René Louis and Mme Mariquita

Chekri-Ganem

Jean Richepin

Librettist3

Auguste Bosc

Claude Terrasse

Louis Ganne

Tiarko Richepin

Composer

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Mme Mariquita

Choreographer4

Choreographers were sometimes involved with the writing of the scenario in collaboration with another author, or they had their names added as “authors” to collect royalties through the SACD. There is therefore occasional overlap or lack of clarity regarding the authorship of ballets. Programs from April 1888 list the choreographer of Presse-ballet as H. Justamant (and elsewhere on the same program as H. Justament), FOL-YF-70 (Folies-Bergère programs 1887−88), while programs from January 14, 1889, March 5, 1889, and April 7, 1889, list the choreographer as Ch. Justament.

4

Information about artists is compiled from the SACD catalogues; Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse ; Wicks, The Parisian Stage ; manuscript librettos in F-Pan ; programs and artists’ dossiers in F-Pn and F-Po ; and theater listings and reviews in Entr’acte, Le Figaro, Gil Blas, L’Écho de Paris, Le Courrier Français, and Le Gaulois.

3

The main genre entry is that listed in the Catalogue général des œuvres dramatiques et lyriques (SACD); all additional or conflicting genre subtitles in square brackets are from scores, manuscript librettos, programs, or press reviews. B.—ballet; Pant.—pantomime; Div.—divertissement; Ballet à gr. sp.—ballet à grand spectacle; B-Opte—ballet-opérette; Fée—féerie or féerique; 1a—1 act; 1t—1 tableau.

2

Premiere and reprise dates are from F-Psc, Registres-recensement, Folies-Bergère, 1886−1917; Registres-recensement, Olympia, 1893−1913; and Registresrecensement, Casino de Paris, 1890−1914. Individual pages are sometimes missing from these box-office registers, and bookkeeping is occasionally sloppy.

1

Work

Date of premiere1 Length of run

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216

appendix a

Divertissements Premiered at the Folies-Bergère

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

Information about divertissements comes from programs, posters, artists’ dossiers, scores (excerpted dances), and reviews. These sources are too inconsistent to create a systematic table. Les conscrits espagnols, pantomime-ballet by Justamant, music by Olivier Métra, [ca. 1872−1877]. Le ballet noir, music by Métra [ca. 1872−1877]. Clown-ballet, divertissement by Justamant, music by Métra [ca. 1872−1877]. Les papillons noirs, music by Métra, choreography by Mariquita [ca. 1872−1877]. Champagne, music by Métra [ca. 1872−1877]. Cigarette, music by Métra [ca. 1872−1877]. Les fleurs, music by Métra [ca. 1872−1877]. Les volontaires, music by Métra [ca. 1872−1877]. Le capricorne, divertissement by Paul Meyan [1870s]. La crevette, divertissement by Meyan [1870s?]. La haute gomme, divertissement [1870s?]. La mer et les cocottes, ballet nautique by Charlin and Mlle Mariquita, music arr. by Gandon, November 30, 1871. L’emprunt, divertissement, January 8, 1872. Les folies amoureuses, pantomime-ballet by Gerny and Mlle Mariquita, music by A. Coedès, February 1, 1872. Le bataillon des amours, operetta-ballet by H. Bedeau, music by Paul Henrion, dances by Mlle Mariquita, June 13, 1872. Les femmes de feu, music by Métra, 1874. Les fausses almées, ballet by Mlle Mariquita, music by Métra, March 8, 1874. La jonquina, divertissement, music by Métra, September 15, 1875. La Catarina, ballet, music by Métra, October 20, 1875. La leçon de danse, divertissement, music by Métra, December 10, 1875. Les boxeurs, music by Métra (?), 1875. La posada, divertissement by the Armandi brothers, music by Métra, 1876. Les joujoux, divertissement by Mlle Mariquita, music by Métra, March 20, 1876. Noce bohème, divertissement arranged by M. Fuchs, music by Métra, November 1876. Les fiancés du Béarn, divertissement by the Armandi brothers, arranged by Bertotto, music by Métra, November 1876. Les faunes, divertissement by Bertotto, music by Métra, November 1876. Une nuit vénitienne, divertissement by Bertotto, music by Métra, November 1877. Aux porcherons, music by Métra, 1877.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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appendix a 217 Échec et mat, music by Métra, 1877. Fouchtra, music by Métra, 1877. Les frisonnes, by Charles Hubans and Bertotto, 1877. Les abeilles, music by Hubans, 1877. Les femmes chevaux, divertissement by Justamant, 1878. Le bazar d’esclaves, divertissement, March 15, 1878. La fête de Guy, divertissement, music by Hubans, June 10, 1878. La petite muette, music by Hubans, ca. 1878. Les tziganes, music by Hubans, ca. 1878. Les noces de Polichinelles, divertissement-ballet, music by Hubans, October 29, 1878. Fleur d’oranger, divertissement-ballet by L. Defoursy and Mlle Mariquita, music by André Messager, December 1, 1878. Les vins de France, divertissement, music by Messager, 1879. Mignons et vilains, divertissement, music by Messager, 1879. Les sphinx, divertissement, music by Hervé, April 26, 1879. Bécarre!, pantomime-ballet by Lemaire, music by Georges Street, choreography by Émile Grédelue [1880s?]. Le sabbat, divertissement by L. Grillet, music by Hervé, 1880. Divertissement-revue, no recorded authors, October 19, 1880. Fleur d’oranger, reprise, music by Messager, 1881. Les deux jocrisses, divertissement-pantomimique (minimal dancing), April 10, 1881. Pierrot et Méphisto, divertissement-pantomimique (ends with dances), July 4, 1881. Amarillo, divertissement espagnole, music by Louis Mayeur (?), October 12, 1881. Une dragonade, divertissement, December 16, 1881. Les bonbons, ou Le fidèle berger, December 31, 1881. Les marionettes javanaises, divertissement by Eugène Louvigny, music by Georges Auvray, March 24, 1882. Une bonne aventure, ballet, May 1, 1882. Mars et Vénus, music by Louis Desormes, 1882. Le grand prix de Paris, divertissement by Marc Le Prevost, music by Desormes, June 3, 1882. Une noce alsacienne, divertissement-ballet by Olivier Lincourt, music by Louis Mayeur, sent to censors June 26, 1882, marked “No” (rejected by the censors). La pile du calife, music by Mayeur (?), August 2, 1882. Les sources du Nil [MS: Les ondines du Nil], divertissement by Armand Lafrique, music by Louis Ganne, November 30, 1882. Au bois, divertissement by Mengal, music by Mayeur, February 3, 1883.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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218

appendix a

Une kermesse hollandaise, divertissement by Mengal, music by St. Mary, May 5, 1883. Tohu-Bohu, divertissement (inner page titled ballet) by A. Debelly, music by Antoine Banès, July 3, 1883. Sur la plage, divertissement by St. Mary, music by Desormes, August 16, 1883. Les gandins, divertissement by St. Mary, music by Desormes, October 3, 1883. Les mouches de la St. Jean (originally Les cigales), divertissement by Fernand Beissier, music by Desormes, November 24, 1883. Cocorico, divertissement chorégraphique by Chauvin, music by Messager (?), January 26, 1884. Les lapins, divertissement (MS: La Chasse), scenario by G. Noyer or Moyer (?), music by Gaston Lemaire, May 28, 1884. Ouverture de Guillaume Tell, divertissement by August Mengal, music by Rossini (arrangements), July 9, 1884. Une scène au camp, divertissement, choreography arranged by Grédelue, scenario and music by Edmond Laurens, August 20, 1884. Garden Party, divertissement by Eugène Louvigny, music by Georges Auvray, choreography arranged by Grédelue, August 16, 1884. Deux coqs, divertissement by Auguste Galnem, music by Desormes, November 10, 1884. Ivresses!, ballet by Galnem, music by St. Mary, January 24, 1885. Le pensionnat de Mme Laïk, divertissement by Galnem, music by Lippacher, April 9, 1885. Ophélia, divertissement by Justamant, music by Ganne, September 24, 1885. Mousses et loup-de-mer, divertissement by H. Marius, music by G. A. Schneklüd, November 15, 1885. La fête de Ménilmontant, divertissement-pantomime (includes dancing) by G. Adrien, music by Desormes, December 31, 1885. À la foire, divertissement-pantomime by Adrien, music by Desormes, choreography arranged by Grédelue, ca. 1885. Bergerie, ballet, lyrics and music by Laurent Derille [De Rillé?], March 2, 1886. Vulcain, divertissement chorégraphique by Gras and Grédelue, music by P. Tagliaferro, May 29, 1886. La rosière de Montretout, divertissement-pantomime (little dancing) by Adrien, music by Desormes, June 12, 1886. Ophélia, reprise, divertissement by Justamant, music by Ganne, June 1887. Les sauterelles, ballet by Justamant, music by Hubans, September 10, 1887. Clowns et clownesses, divertissement by Justamant, music by Desormes, September 16, 1887.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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appendix a 219

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

Divertissement espagnol, divertissement by Justamant, music by Desormes, December 20, 1887. La seguidilla, divertissement by Justamant, music by Desormes, December 21, 1887. Divertissement espagnol, divertissement by Justamant, music by Desormes, (reprise?) February 1888. Divertissement écossais (or Les écossais), divertissement by Henri Justamant, music by Desormes, May 1, 1888. Divertissement écossais, ballet by Justamant, (reprise?) 1889. Le roi blanc, ballet by Charles Aubert, September 10, 1890. Divertissement militaire, divertissement by Mme Mariquita, music by Desormes, February 1891. Le ballet des lumières, divertissement (no listed authors), spring 1894. Divertissement hongrois, no listed authors, 1895. Divertissement, ballet by Gustave Goublier, September 15, 1898.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Work Olympia

Ballet blanc

Brighton (Les plaisirs de la plage) Le fiancé de cire

La fée des poupées

Date of premiere Length of run

4/11/1893–6/14/1893

6/15/1893–7/31/1893 Reprise 9/1/1893– 10/10/1893 Reprise 5/1/1894– 6/14/1894 Reprise Feb-March 1895 Reprise 6/24/1895– 7/19/1895

10/11/1893–1/20/1894 Premiered London Empire

2/11/1894–4/30/1894 Reprise 5/8/1895– 6/23/1895

10/16/1894–2/6/1895 Premiered Vienna

Katti Lanner

Alfred Delilia

Librettist

B. 1a [Prog: Grand ballet]

Adolphe David

Léopold Wenzel

Jules Walter

Antoine Banès

Composer

Joseph Hassreiter Joseph Bayer and P. Gaul (trans. by G. Hartmann)

Félix Cohen B.-pant. [Prog: Pant.-ballet 1a]

B. 1a [prog: Grand ballet ]

B. 1a [Prog: Ballet fantaisiste 1t]

B. 1a [Prog: Balletprologue]

Genre/acts

Table A.2. Ballets premiered by the Olympia, 1893–1918

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

Alfred Rathner

Benedetto Pastorini

Katti Lanner

Benedetto Pastorini

Benedetto Pastorini

Choreographer

220 appendix a

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Les turlutaines de l’année

Bains de dames, ou Les baigneuses de Trianon Le scandale du Louvre Arlette Rêve de Noël Pierrot au hammam

Un déjeuner sur l’herbe Sardanapale

2/7/1895–4/16/1895

7/20/1895–10/07/1895 Reprise 7/14/1896– 9/13/1896

10/8/1895–12/22/1895

3/17/1896–4/21/1896 Premiered Nice

12/4/1896–1/26/1897

5/1/1897–6/24/1897 (not every night: alternates with Le coucher de mariée)

7/2/1897–8/10/1897

9/30/1897–12/21/1897

(continued)

Work

Date of premiere Length of run

Oscar de Lagoanère

Octave Pradels

B. 1a [score: Div-ballet]

B.-pant. 1a [Prog: B.-pant. grand sp. 2t]

Max Maurey and Lucien Puech

Edmond Diet

Edmond Missa

Raoul Bénédite and G. Trompette

B.-opte 1a

Edmond Diet

Louis Gregh

Frédéric Toulmouche

Jean Lorrain

Fernand Beissier

Bertol-Graivil B.-pant. 1a [Le Théâtre Illustré : [Eugène Edouard Domicent] B.-pant avec chœurs]

Pant. 1a [score: B.-pant.]

B.-pant. [Prog: B. 1a]

L. Roger-Milès and Jules Bouval Charles Akar

Oscar de Lagoanère (new and arranged)

Hermil

Revue-B. 1a [Prog: Revueballet à gr. spectacle 1a]

B. 1a [prog: Ballet mimé]

Composer

Librettist

Genre/acts

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

Achille Balbiani

Rita Papurello

Rita Papurello

Rita Papurello (?)

Rita Papurello (?)

Rita Papurello

Benedetto Pastorini

Benedetto Pastorini

Choreographer

appendix a 221

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Work Vision! Barbe-Bleue

Néron

Les sept péchés capitaux

La fée des poupées (new choreography or new staging) Les mille et une nuits

Date of premiere Length of run

3/5/1898–5/10/1898

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5/12/1898–10/2/1898 (ran through summer)

10/29/1898–1/1/1899

1/28/1899–5/15/1899

5/16/1899–7/9/1899

10/7/1899–1/7/1900

Edmond Missa

Composer

Henri Hirschmann Egidio Rossi (mise-en-scène Thalès)

Max Maurey and Augustin Thierry

[Prog: Grand ballet féerique 2 parties, 6t] [Gil Blas: B-féerie à gr sp.]

M. Bucourt

Joseph Bayer

Hassreiter and Gaul (trans. by G. Hartmann)

[Prog: Grand ballet]

Henri Hirschmann Berthe Bernay (mise-en-scène Thalès)

Berthe Bernay and Vanara

Achille Balbiani

Choreographer

Maurice de Marsan Henri Hirschmann Berthe Bernay and René Louis (mise-en-scène Thalès)

Max Maurey and Augustin Thierry

Richard O’Monroy Charles Lecocq

L. Roger-Milès

Librettist

B.-pant. à gr. spectacle [Prog: B.-pant. avec chœur]

B.-pant. 1a [Prog: Nouveau Ballet 3t avec chœur]

B.-pant. 1a, 3t [Prog: Nouveau B.-pant 3t avec chœur]

B.-pant. 1a, 2t

Genre/acts

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

222 appendix a

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Pierrot aux manœuvres La belle aux cheveux d’or

Watteau

Faust

L’impératrice

Paris-cascade

February 1900

5/2/1900–9/30/1900

10/8/1900–12/29/1900

12/30/1900–4/5/1901

4/6/1901–6/19/1901

9/3/1901–12/6/1901

(continued)

Work

Date of premiere Length of run

Librettist

Hervé (arranged by Gardel-Hervé)

From Petit Faust by A. Jaime and H. Crémieux

B. 1a [Prog: Ballet 2t]

Auguste Germain

Louis Varney

Paul Vidal

Edmond Diet

Edmond Diet

Marius Lambert

Composer

Jean Lorrain

Jean Lorrain

Jean Richepin B. Fée 2a [Prog: B.-fée 2a, prologue, and Féerie-ballet-pant. 2a, 3t]

[Progs: Grand b.-pant. 3t, and Grand ballet féerique 4t]

B. 1a [Prog: Grand ballet 3t]

B. 1a [Prog: Ballet légende en 3 visions]

[Prog: B.-pant 1a] Trebla and Paul Perrin

Genre/acts

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

Alfredo Curti

Alfredo Curti

Alfredo Curti (mise-en-scène Thalès)

Alfredo Curti (mise-en-scène Thalès)

Alfredo Curti (mise-en-scène Thalès)

Egidio Rossi (mise-en-scène Thalès)

Choreographer

appendix a 223

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Phryné

Les saisons de la B. 1a Parisienne [Prog: Gr. ballet 4t] B. 1a [Prog: Fantaisieballet 4t]

Au Japon

Paris-fêtard

Cléopâtre

Vers les étoiles

9/26/1903–10/16/1903 Premiered Alhambra 1902

9/1/1904–10/26/1904 Premiered Royan 1896 Reprise FB 1897

2/4/1905–5/9/1905

2/3/1906–5/6/1906

5/4/1906–7/22/1906

11/1/1906–3/7/1907

B. 1a [Prog: B.-féerie 6t]

B.1 [Prog: B. 3t]

B.-pant.

[Prog: Gr. ballet]

B.-pant 1a [Prog: Féerieballet-pant 4t]

Cendrillon

1/11/1902–5/1/1902

Genre/acts

Work

Date of premiere Length of run

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

Justin Clérice

Louis Varney

Louis Ganne

Paul Ferrier and Bertol-Graivil

Félix Sicard

Alfredo Curti

Alfredo Curti

Alfredo Curti

Choreography Carlo Coppi, arranged by Curti

Alfredo Curti

Choreographer

Henri Hirschmann Félix Sicard

Charles Quénel Olivier Cambon and Henry Moreau

E. GrenetDancourt and Georges Nanteuil

Alfredo Curti

Auguste Germain

Louis Ganne

Victor Roger

Gardel-Hervé and A. Lemonnier Félicien Champsaur (after S. L. Bensusan)

Composer

Librettist

224 appendix a

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Gutsche-Miller.indd 225

(continued)

L’enlèvement de Psyché

1/4/1910–2/22/1910 Premiered London Alhambra

Les aventures de [Prog: FantaisieMlle Clo-Clo ballet]

3/2/1909–4/30/1909 Paquita, ou Les filles de Bohême

Trianon ballet [Prog: also Ballet-Trianon]

12/31/1908–3/1/1908

8/21/1909–10/17/1909 Premiered London Alhambra

Noël à Séville

12/24/1908–1/10/1908

B. 1a, 3t [Progs: Légende 3t, and Idylle 3t]

B. 1a [Prog: Ballet romantique] [Review: Ballet nautique]

B. 1a

B. 1a

Alfred Moul

George W. Byng

Alfredo Curti

Alfredo Curti

?

?

Valverde?

M. Dufort

M. Dufort

René Maizeroy

?

John Tiller B. 1a [Prog: Fant. ballet 2a; Synopsis: Ballet div. 2t]

Deux sous d’amour

11/6/1908–11/30/1908

Composer ?

Librettist John Tiller

Div. 1a [Prog: Fantaisieballet 2t]

Paris-vacances

9/1/1908–11/5/1908

Genre/acts

Work

Date of premiere Length of run

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

Alfredo Curti

Mme DaynesPapurello

M. Le Roy

M. Le Roy

M. Le Roy?

Mme Parlato

Mme Parlato

Choreographer

appendix a 225

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Work Papillon d’or

Nitokris (Egyptian legend)

Les fanfreluches de l’amour Les charmeuses Idylle dans les blés

Date of premiere Length of run

8/19/1910–10/13/1910

Gutsche-Miller.indd 226

2/15/1911–4/30/1911

12/2/1913–1/6/1914

4/6/1917 Premiered Algiers 1913

8/30/1918–9/12/1918

B.-pant. 1t

B. 1a

B. 1a [Fantaisie-ballet]

B. 1a, 4t [Légende de l’ancienne Egypte 4t]

B. 3t [Prog: Grand ballet 3t]

Genre/acts

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

Paul Vidal

Louis Lemarchand F. Rouget

Jean Richepin and P. de Choudens

Jane Vieu

?

?

Léo Staats

Mme Cernusco

Georges Jouanneau (choral parts by Eugène Poncin, conductor)

Jean-FrançoisLouis Merlet

Vova Berky

Alfredo Curti

Léopold Wenzel (Wenzel conducted the performance)

Alfredo Curti

Choreographer

Composer

Librettist

226 appendix a

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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appendix a 227

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

Divertissements Premiered at the Olympia Amourettes d’atelier, divertissement-pantomime by M. Repossy, music by Joseph Bongnard, choreography by Pastorini, April 1893. Premiers-soupirs, divertissement-pantomime, music by Jules Walter, choreography by Pastorini, February 1894. Caméléon-ballet, music by Walter, choreography by Pastorini, July 1895. La folie de l’or, grand divertissement by G. Chauvin, music by Oscar de Lagoanère, choreography by Rita Papurello, 1896 (reprise: 1898). Fête champêtre, divertissement by Papurello, music by Lagoanère, choreography by Rita Papurello, February 1896 (reprise: spring 1898). Noussima, divertissement japonais, music by Edmond Missa, choreography by Papurello, 1896. Les deux baisers, divertissement, music by Missa, choreography by Papurello, March 1897. The Flower Ballet, grand ballet [divertissement], music by Casadessus, choreography by Papurello, June 19, 1897. Les favorites, divertissement by Octave Pradels, music by Henri Hirschmann, June 1898. La Manille, divertissement by Eugène Héros, music by Edmond Missa, choreography by Achille Balbiani, December 1897. Conte de mai, divertissement by Jean Bernac, music by Gaston Paulin, miseen-scène by Thalès, dances by Berthe Bernay, 1898. Folles amours, “Carnival Scenes” by Hirschmann, dances by Bernay, January 1899 (premiered 1898?). Les trois couleurs, divertissement by G. Arnould and H. de Vrécourt, music by Frédérique Toulmouche, April 1899. Vénus cantinière, divertissement by M. Trebla and Paul Perrin, music by Marius Lambert, mise-en-scène by Thalès, choreography by Rossi, 1899. Merveilleuses, divertissement, music by Jane Vieu, choreography by Alfredo Curti, summer 1900. Le réveil des fleurs, grand ballet by Curti in Ganne’s operetta Miss Bouton d’or, winter 1903. Cartes postales, divertissement, music by Domergue, choreography by Curti, winter 1905. Au music-hall, divertissement-revue, choreography by Curti, spring 1905. Venise à l’Olympia, scènes vénitiennes by Curti, music by Olivier Cambon, winter 1906. Iris, ballet électrique, fall 1906. L’aéroplane, January 5, 1910. Blanc et noir, listed in the press as a ballet unicolore or a divertissement fantaisiste, John Tiller, April 1911. Les muses, divertissement by Louis Lemarchand and Fernand Rouvray, September 3, 1915.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Scaramouche

L’heureuse rencontre La fin d’un monde Bouton d’or Les manœuvres du printemps Tentations

Les joujoux

10/17/1891 Nouveau-Théâtre

9/14/1892

Fall 1892–Winter 1893 Casino

1/3/1893–6/20/1893 Nouveau-Théâtre

4/6/1893 Reprise 1895

11/16/1893

3/17/1894

B.-pant.

B.-pant [Prog: B.-pant. 3t and Div-pant. 1a]

Ballet-pant. 1a [Prog: B.-pant. 3t]

Fantaisie-ballet 4a

Div.-pant. 1a

Div. 2a [score: Div.-pant.]

B. 2a

B.-pant. militaire

Les grandes manœuvres

1/25/1891

Genre/acts B. 2a, 4t

Work

10/18/1890–2/12/1890 Le Capitaine Charlotte

Date of premiere Length of run

Table A.3. Ballets premiered by the Casino de Paris, 1890–1909

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

Fernand Beissier

L. Roger-Milès

A. Mercklein

Michel Carré fils

A. Vallin

Léon Roger-Milès and Charles Akar

Maurice Lefèvre and Henri Vaugneux

?

Romualdo Marenco

Librettist

Henri Cieutat

Henri José

Emile Maraval

Gabriel Pierné

Louis Ganne

Louis Ganne

André Messager and Georges Street

?

Romualdo Marenco

Composer

Egidio Rossi

Egidio Rossi

Egidio Rossi

Egidio Rossi

Egidio Rossi

Egidio Rossi

Carlo Coppi

Carlo Coppi

Carlo Coppi

Choreographer

228 appendix a

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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B. 1a [Pant.-comique] [Prog: Gr. div.] [score: B.-pant]

11/19/1895–3/20/1896 Les deux tentations Reprise 3/18/1896–6/20/1896 Fiammina Vénus à Paris

11/19/1895

9/9/1896–12/22/1896

B. 1a [prog: B.-pant 5t]

11/29/1897–4/17/1898 Don Juan aux enfers

(continued)

B. 1a [prog Grand B.-pant. 4t]

12/23/1896–4/11/1897 Les amoureux de Venise

B. 1a

B.-pant. 1a, 3t

9/13/1895–12/15/1895 Vassilissa (Nouveau-Théâtre?)

Mme. Léopold Lacour

Ernest GrenetDancourt

Abel Mercklein and Fernand Beissier

Egidio Rossi

Octave Pradels and José Frappa

L. Roger-Milès

Jacques Lemaire

B. 2a [Prog: comic-ballet (sic), 2a, 3t

Sans-Puits-House 1/4/1895–2/25/1895 (closed for fire) 3/16/1895–6/10/1895 Reprise 9/16/1897–11/28/1897

Librettist George Elwall

L’étoile de mer

9/14/1894–1/3/1895

Genre/acts B.-pant 2a [Prog: B.-pant. 2a, 3t]

Work

Date of premiere Length of run

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

Henri José

Henri José

Henri Cieutat

Henri Cieutat

Frédéric Toulmouche

Henri José

Henri José

Henri José

Composer

Alexandre Rossi

Egidio Rossi

Egidio Rossi

Egidio Rossi

Egidio Rossi

Egidio Rossi

Egidio Rossi

Egidio Rossi

Choreographer

appendix a 229

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Work Madame Malbrouck

La montagne d’aimant

Le tzigane Cléopâtre

Cadet-Roussel

Paris qui danse

La Camargo

Date of premiere Length of run

10/24/1898–2/7/1899

2/10/1899–4/26/1899

9/20/1899–2/28/1900

3/2/1900–9/30/1900 Ran through summer (expo)

10/2/1900–3/1/1901

3/7/1901–2/6/1902

9/28/1901–2/24/1902

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

Gutsche-Miller.indd 230

B.-pant. [Prog: Grand B.-pant. 4t]

B. revue 1a [Prog: Ballet-revue 5t]

B.-pant. 1a [Prog: Grand B.-pant. 3t]

B.-pant. 2t [Prog: B.-pant. 4t]

B. 1a [Prog: B.-pant. 5t]

B.-pant 1a [Prog: B.-pant. 5t]

[Prog: B.-pant. 1a, 4t] [poster: Grand B.-pant. 4t]

Genre/acts

Fernand Beissier

Ernest GrenetDancourt

Adrien Vély and Alévy (Armand Lévy)

Abel Mercklein and Jean Bernac [SACD: Henri Leba and Jean Bernac]

Victor Roger

Arr. Henri José (popular songs)

Henri Cieutat

Georges Pfeiffer

Richard O’Monroy Henri José

Henri José

Fr. Toulmouche

Octave Pradels

Mme Clarine Lux and Maurice Guillemot

Composer

Librettist

M. Ladam de l’Opéra

Michelucci

Giovanni Pratesi

Merlai

Belloni

Belloni

Belloni

Choreographer

230 appendix a

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Gutsche-Miller.indd 231

B. 1a [Prog: B.-pant. gr. sp. 4t]

(continued)

Paska

B.-pant. 1a

Fumées d’opium

2/25/1908–5/3/1908

B. fée

2/11/1909–3/31/1909

La tulipe noire

10/18/1907– 11/27/1907

Div. 1a [Prog: Balletfantaisie 1t]

B.-pant. 1a [Prog: B.-pant. espagnol 3t]

Luxuria

4/11/1907–4/30/1907

B.1a

12/24/1908–2/18/1909 Soledad (not performed every night)

Éternel triomphe

10/22/1906– 11/18/1906

Le voyage de Madame la B.-pant. Présidente [Prog: B.-fantaisie 7t]

1/24/1905–4/13/1905

B.-revue [Prog: Grand B.-Revue 6t]

Les pantins de Paris

2/27/1902–6/1/1902

Genre/acts

Work

Date of premiere Length of run

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

Pierre Chapelle

Léon Gautier

August Germain and Trébor

Géo Sims and C. Fletcher (?) or Victor de Cottens

Mme Cernusco

Maurice Depret

Fernand Beissier

P. L. Flers

Librettist

Arr. by Henri Contesse

Henri Dérouville

Léo Pouget

?

M. Freydet

L. Giot

Léo Pouget

New and arr. by Henri José

Composer

Rizzo

Rizzo (mise-enscène Thalès)

Thalès (?)

?

Mme Cernusco

?

Rizzo

Michelucci

Choreographer

appendix a 231

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Work Fruit défendu La rose d’amour Pierrot et Pierrine

Date of premiere Length of run

4/1/1909–5/13/1909

5/14/1909–5/31/1909

5/14/1910 [?]

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

Gutsche-Miller.indd 232

[Prog: B.-pant. 1a]

B. 1a [Prog: B.-pant. 1a]

B. 1a

Genre/acts

E. Laroche

R. Flamm

Maurice Chassang and Gabriel Tallet

Librettist

Ch. Haring

Mme DaynesPapurello

Rizzo

Rizzo

Louis Delune ?

Choreographer

Composer

232 appendix a

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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appendix a 233

Divertissements Premiered at the Casino de Paris

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

Pavane, grand divertissement par le corps de ballet, ca. 1895. Divertissement rustique, arranged by M. Rizzo, danced by the ballet corps, 1909. La fête du printemps, ballet russe, by Mme Daynes-Papurello, ca. 1910. Faust, excerpts with choreography by Mme Daynes-Papurello, September 1911.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Appendix B

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

Synopses of Ballets Staged at the Folies-Bergère, the Olympia, and the Casino de Paris

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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(continued)

Fleurs et plumes (FB, 1887) A kingfisher is in love with a baby bird—the queen of the wagtails. A pink lotus flower is in love with him, to the chagrin of the water lily who is in love with the lotus. Dragonflies resting in the reeds emerge, awaken the water lilies, and dance. The divertissement illustrates their flirtations, jealousies, and unions in dance.

Autumn: Lake surrounded by trees, mossy boulders, reeds

-Dances, likely in an academic idiom, for watery creatures and flowers including pas de deux, pas d’ensemble, solo dances, a mazurka, waltz, and several fancifully titled pas

-Dances of fantasy characters (Moon and Stars) -Beauty competition (corps dancers and Colombine perform as competitors)

-Dances for groups of girls from different nations -Dances for the young woman (on pointe)

19th century

Volapük (FB, 1886) Attempts are made to teach Volapük (an invented “international” language then in vogue) to all of the nations of the world. A young woman discovers the true universal language: Love. All celebrate.

Italian village square Pierrot volage (FB, 1886) Complicated commedia dell’arte love triangle merged with fantasy (Pierrot’s spiritual wife is the Moon, his children little pierrots) and a beauty competition in which Colombine is chosen to be beauty queen and is paraded before the village. Léandre is eventually united with Colombine, and Pierrot returns to his Moon and little pierrots.

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

Table A.4. Synopses of ballets staged at the Folies-Bergère, Olympia, and Casino de Paris, 1886–1901

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

-Patterned tableaux of shifting colors

-Duel between Pierrot and Léandre -Beauty competition -Lovers’ spats -Crowd scenes of fantasy characters and cortège of the Moon and her Stars

-Tableau of women in the costumes of various nations -Apotheosis featuring the triumph of Love

Spectacle

appendix b 235

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-Military evolutions with choreography -Military processions of female soldiers to end the ballet

-Village festivities -Royal procession -Storm -Archery competition -Princess plays an organ to distract father— organ later comes to life and plays on its own -Final triumphant march of Le Petit Journal carrying a notice announcing its current distribution of 950,000 copies

-A cantinière dances and is joined by the female soldiers -Dances after a duel

-Scottish dances -Villagers waltz -Pas de deux for lovers -Divertissement of forest fairies with variations and ensemble dances (includes a variation for united lovers) -Journals dance, march, create tableaux -The statue of Voltaire takes part in the final dance

“Camp des roses,” a military encampment

-Scotland: highland lake with palace in the distance -Gothic palace -Enchanted forest

Contemporary Fantasy: square in Paris with a statue of Voltaire in the background

Les réservistes à venir (FB, 1887) Female reservists play cards, read “the rights of women,” and go through military exercises. They join a cantinière in dance then have a drink. A male soldier, allowed into the camp, offers the toast but is reprimanded by the cantinière, who should have the honor. He is offended; they duel; the cantinière wins. The soldiers return to their military evolutions and dances. Parade.

Le château de Mac-Arrott (FB, 1887) A poor young man is in love with a young noblewoman. With the help of a fairy, they are eventually united despite the father’s objections.

Presse-ballet (FB, 1888) A passer-by asks a salesgirls behind a newspaper kiosk which is the most pleasant journal to read. The salesgirl transforms herself into a ballerina and presents him with the different papers. Personifications of local journals including Le Gaulois, Gil Blas, Le Figaro, Le Temps, L’Évènement, La Gazette des Tribunaux, La Vie Parisienne, L’Officiel, Le Soleil, Le National, Charivari, L’Autorité, Le Courrier Français, Le Radical, L’Intransigeant, La Lanterne, Le Sport, Le Matin, Le Soir, La Liberté, La Justice, Le Petit Journal.

Spectacle

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

236

Gutsche-Miller.indd 236

appendix b

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-Villagers costumed in groups of different colors to create shifting patterns -Village dances -Pas de deux for lovers -Dances for coupled up villagers

-Toys come to life and dance -Dance for a doll fairy

Bretagne: church, house with rural landscape

Toyshop

Flagrant délit (FB, 1889) A young man dances with a young woman. She leaves; a second enters; he dances with her and they wander into the “Lovers’ Woods” (a sign reads “Bois d’amour”). The first woman returns and is angered by the man’s inconsistency. She summons the villagers, who join the trio in the woods. An old man tries to sort the situation out, but by then all of the villagers have coupled up and are dancing. All ends well.

Joujoux-ballet (FB, 1889) Toys are brought to life by a toy maker in his workshop.

(continued)

-Semi-nudity (bathers undress to go swimming)

-Exotic locale and costumes

-Seaside

-New dances with more complex poses by Justamant (Le Gaulois)

Les baigneuses (FB, 1889) Women remove their clothes and head to the water to bathe; they are watched by an admiring group of shepherds.

Les almées (FB, 1888) Reprise of Métra’s Les fausses almées originally choreographed by Mariquita in 1874

-Japanese sets and -Dances performed by village girls in front of the costumes girl’s house -Dances at wedding reception

Japan: gardens

Dans l’inconnu (FB, 1888) A young Japanese man is in love with a young Japanese woman who is to be married off by her father to a wealthy old man. The couple is eventually united with the help of the Fairy of Love (they trick the old man, who breaks his vows and demands the return of his money).

Spectacle

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

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appendix b 237

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-Tableaux of parading Parisians wearing the latest fashions -jockeys in travesty

-Dancers costumed in different colors (for shifting patterns) -Dancers in rehearsal outfits -Featured ballerina Mlle Comolli from the EdenThéâtre

-Women dance around the successful gambler (waltz)

-Eccentric dancing (cancan) -Dancers do their warm-up exercises and rehearse a ballet -Aerial ballet by Enrichetta Comolli

Paris: Longchamps hippodrome

Contemporary: Behind the scenes and on the stage of a music hall

Paris-turf (FB, 1890) A young college man seeks to gamble his modest savings. He is surrounded by elegant society and jockeys. All flirt and parade about. The student bets on an unlikely horse who wins; he is suddenly wealthy. He is betrothed to a pretty young woman.

Une répétition aux Folies-Bergère (FB, 1890) The ballet master teaches a dancer a new pas excentrique ; the répétiteur flirts with the ballet girls; the ballet master asks the répétiteur to play a new score and they bicker; the corps rehearses but performs terribly; all enter the stage and dance a divertissement.

-Military displays (travesty) -Apotheosis: tableau of flags

-Two divertissements

Toulon: port with ships in the background

Marine (FB, 1890) Marines perform exercises under orders from their captain. They take a break. A couple dance and invite their friends to join: divertissement. They are ordered back to their exercises. A fanfare is heard: a French admiral and his officers enter. After polite exchanges and mutual felicitations, all dance together: divertissement

Spectacle

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

238 appendix b

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-National dances -Ballet as royal entertainments

-National dances by villagers

-Dances of seamstresses and painting students -Divertissement of paintings that come alive

Château

Portugal

Artist’s studio

Le roi s’ennuie (FB, 1890) A young monarch who cannot be cheered up is offered a parade of entertainments including dances by princesses, Scots, Hungarians, Poles, etc. Unmoved, he turns and watches a young man in his garden steal oranges for his beloved. The monarch is moved by the scenes of love and joins in the dancing and gaiety.

Le Capitaine Charlotte (C, 1890) A young Parisian woman in Lisbon has many adventures include dressing up as an officer, running a hostel, hunting, and fighting a duel. At the end of the ballet she is united with her lover.

Un atelier fin de siècle (FB, 1891) A painter is looking for inspiration. A neighbor enters to light her cigarette. She sits for him, but he cannot paint her features in the right place; instead, he kisses her. Students enter and are delighted to find a woman among them; she calls for her friends. Revelries. A wealthy amateur enters: delighted, he buys the paintings, which come to life and dance.

(continued)

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

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-Parade of officers (travesty) -Battle

-National costumes -Royal décor and costumes

Spectacle

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Rationales for dances -Divertissement during wedding festivities

-Dances for fishermen and fisherwomen -Divertissement of pearls in jeweler’s workshop

-Cortège for nuptials of Colombine and Gilles -Festivities for nuptials of Colombine and Gilles -Futuristic visions: ballet of children

Setting and era Fantasy

-Seaside -Jeweler’s workshop

Stately home

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

Les chansons (FB, 1891) The queen of song announces the union of two famous songs. All famous songs are invited to attend: Au Clair de la lune, Cadet-Roussel, Malbrouck, etc. As they prepare to sign the marriage certificate, they notice the absence of witnesses and ladies of honor: Paulus, Yvette Guilbert, Thérésa, Duparc. . . . They enter, sing, drink, and dance. The lovers (la Mère Michel and le Juif Errant) are sent off to end the night together.

Les perles (FB, 1891) The tide recedes and exposes the bottom of the sea. Fishermen and women come to collect pearls. A young fisherman forgets his fiancé and falls in love with a pearl. The others, less enamored, call for a Jewish jeweler, who sets them. The young man, forced to sell his pearl, is distraught. Back at the jeweler’s workshop, he tries to win the pearl’s heart but she chooses life with a lord. The fisherman returns to his ill-used fiancé.

Scaramouche (NT, 1891) Scaramouche is given a magical mask and sword by Pulcinella so that he can seduce Colombine, who is betrothed to Gilles. Midnight strikes in the midst of his magic tricks and he loses his powers. Gilles and Colombine are united.

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-Battle between Scaramouche and Arlequin -Magic tricks with disappearing and cloning characters

-Dancers dressed up as famous singers past and present (Paulus, Yvette Gilbert, Thérésa) -Singing?

Spectacle

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-Dream sequence: dances of coins and bills -Apotheosis: dance of money with reappearance of Fortune

France: era of Charles X

Rêve d’or (FB, 1892) A poor young man is in love with a wealthy young woman. The young man finds a banker’s wallet full of money. As he sleeps, he sees a beautiful ballet of coins and bills. When he awakens, he returns the wallet and is rewarded for his honesty: the banker gives him a dowry and convinces the girl’s father to consent to the marriage.

(continued)

-Hungarian party with national dances -Dances by the goddess of dance and her fairies -Dance of flowers -Final dance after couple is united

Idyllic forest clearing by a waterfall

-Dances from famous operettas -Dances for la Goulue

Rationales for dances

Orsowa (FB, 1892) Mephisto takes over the last remaining bit of earthly paradise not yet under his control. Subplot of young Hungarian lovers united; a young man is first spurned by the woman he loves and is tested by Mephisto’s temptations but all ends well.

Palace of the Folies Les Folies Parisiennes (FB, 1892) Mephisto and Gaîté try to create a hit operetta by Parisiennes mixing the right ingredients. They invite old hits to deposit their greatest attributes in a large pot. Famous operettas parade, sing, and dance before them.

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

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-Personifications of coins and bills -Personifications of Love and Fortune

-Tableau of hundreds of flowers of different colors that open at once -Mephisto offers rejected lover consolation of seductions (riches, beauty, drink, impersonated) -Seduction scene, love scene -Festive gathering of young locals

-Opening tableau of personified favorite operettas in front of medallions representing Offenbach, Hervé, Lecocq, Audran, Vasseur

Spectacle

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Rationales for dances -Village wedding (no connection to plot) -Dance lesson at court (18th-century dances) -March after engagement is announced

-Village dances around young man; more village dances when he joins in -Pas de deux of lovers -Dances in celebration of the union

-Dances during auditions

Setting and era French seaside: era of Louis XV

Village

Paris

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

Miroir (FB, 1892) Pierrot, a travelling musician, gives a poor shepherdess a mirror to show her how beautiful she is. They are betrothed. The shepherdess is discovered to be the daughter of royalty (her father recognizes her by the road; he has a locket with her picture). She is taken to his palace and Pierrot follows. They marry despite her change of fortunes.

L’heureuse rencontre (C, 1892) Village youth dance around a morose young man. An old man wanders in and tells their fortunes. A young woman enters, tells of her lost love then dances with the young man. She is his former lover, whom he spurned then grieved. He begs forgiveness, she accepts, and they swear eternal fidelity.

La fin d’un monde (C, 1892) Sir Edward Plutus travels to Paris with Mlle Pichette. Pichette convinces him to buy her the Hippodrome to turn into a private home. The personnel is distraught, but Pichette gets “Casino” to audition them. Dancers, acrobats, clowns, etc., perform for “Casino,” who is enchanted and hires all of them.

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-Soldiers in travesty -Commedia dell’arte figures (musician Pierrot and captain Scaramouche) combined with royalty in period costumes

Spectacle

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(continued)

French port, 1893

-Village dances for Russian officers -Russian and French national dances

-Dances of young women in a forest glen -Fairy dances and scarf dance in rainbow colors

Entrance to a cave L’arc-en-ciel (FB, 1893) with a stream running Pierrot the artist is in love with Colombine but has rivals. Colombine enters, dances with friends, nearby and spurns Pierrot’s love in favor of a musician. After seeing a rainbow and being mesmerized by its colors, Colombine is taken to an enchanted fairyland in which the colors dance together. She is eventually returned to her musician lover who is revealed to be Harlequin wearing the colors of the rainbow.

France-Russie (FB, 1893) Topical divertissement to celebrate the arrival of Russian marines in France that week. French and Russians meet, exchange niceties, dance, and parade together before an admiring crowd of French villagers.

-Love scenes -Striptease and posed nudity scene -Storm -Contrast of rustic and royal costumes/décor -Exoticism: Indian setting; blackface servant children

-Royal divertissements with a ballet performed by the Bayadère and corps -Exotic dance in the divertissement -Dance for fairies

-Forest clearing on an Indian mountainside -Lake in palace grounds

Fleur de Lotus (FB, 1893) A prince discovers a beautiful peasant girl while out hunting and becomes engaged. They return to the palace. Her sister comes looking for her, bathes with fairies, unwittingly steals a precious lotus flower, is hunted down, and is eventually discovered hiding in the reeds. The girls are united (the stolen flower is forgotten) and the prince’s friend falls in love and proposes to the sister.

-Parade of officers of different ranks in travesty -Tableau of flags

-Fight between Pierrot and rival -Tableau of corps dancers in rainbow formation -Featured Jane Avril

Spectacle

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

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Rationales for dances -Models displaying their talents for the painter dance their chagrin at not being chosen -Ballet of women covering the nude beauty queen with vine leaves. -Ball (with eccentric dances)

-Ballet in the fairyland tableau

-Bathers emerge onto the beach to dance together (in bathing suits): waltz, tarentella -Scottish dance by miss Bonman and Flanagan -Ball at the Casino in the evening

Setting and era -Painter’s Studio -Ballroom

Contemporary Paris: The Olympia music hall

English sea-side

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts (FB, 1893) Émilienne offers her services as a model to a famous painter, who is in charge of choosing a beauty queen for the evening’s ball. She undresses to reveal her “treasures” and is crowned. She is displayed nude (veiled), which scandalizes the officer of public morals. The painter invokes a fairy, who has each dancer detach a flower from her toilette to cover Émilienne. When M. Prudery leaves, she throws off her veils and is borne into the ballroom.

Olympia (O, 1893) A young blasé Parisian is amazed by nothing, including the wondrous Montagnes Russes. Olympia arrives and with a wave of her magic wand transports him into a fairyland (i.e., the Olympia music hall on opening night).

Brighton (Les plaisirs de la plage) (O, 1893) Various intrigues and entertainments by the sea in England. A young couple try to escape their parents to be alone together.

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-Chaotic crowd scenes -Sports and fishing -Storm

-Parody of Parisians at the recently dismantled Montagnes Russes -Self-reflexive depiction of Parisians in the fairyland that was the new hall

-Striptease scenes and nudity -Parade of officials -Final nudity scene during ball -Featured Émilienne d’Alençon

Spectacle

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(continued)

-Divertissements of hussars and nursemaids

-Competition between Parisian and Spanish dancers (cahut against a popular Spanish dance) -Backstage rehearsal scenes at the Opéra -Ballet “The Triumph of Aurora” is staged within the ballet as a whole

Spain and Paris

Bouton d’or (NT, 1893) A French ballerina dances in Spain. A wealthy man falls in love with her and follows her back to Paris, leaving his Spanish dancer-lover behind. After love trysts and entanglements, the Spaniards return together to Spain. (Embedded ballet: the King of Darkness falls in love with Aurora and has her removed by the Genie of darkness during the night. He declares his love; she tricks him into removing his wings; he cannot fly off at the moment of their union and is vanquished by Light and Clarity then dies; Aurora is triumphant.)

Jardin des plantes, Les manœuvres du printemps (C, 1893) 1809 A husband watches jealously as his wife flirts with a hussar officer. The officer hides first in a gardener’s basket then in an empty bear cave. A group of Nannies enters the park and follows the soldiers. They leave their babies in the gardener’s basket to flirt with the officers. The husband throws the basket into the bear’s den thinking the Officer is still hiding in it. The Officer emerges with the babies pretending to be a bear. The husband, duped and fearing retribution from the law, runs off while the nannies encircle the two lovers.

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

-Parisians in period costume -Officers in travesty -Flirtations

-Lovers’ spats and wooing -Dance rehearsal (in rehearsal costumes) -The ballet “the Triumph of Aurora” used light machines purchased for Loie Fuller: ballet featured dancers disappearing in a whirl of colored lights

Spectacle

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Merveilleuses et gigolettes (FB, 1894) Flirtations and jealousies in different periods. First tableau: ball scenes with Mme Récamier, Mme Tallien, Bonaparte, and members of the Directoire. Next: a contemporary ball attended by Polyte, Môme Chrysanthème, Jeanne de Marbeuf, and the Terreur de Romainville. Last tableau: apotheosis on a giant flowered web that brings together all characters transformed into contemporary Parisians (the orchestra plays their associated leitmotif). They are presided over by La Parisienne, the eternal flirt and enchantress.

-Luxemburg Palace with view of gardens in 1797 -Ballroom in 1894 -Triumph of La Parisienne (contemporary)

-Invited ballerina performs for the officers and ladies -Ballroom dances (included 18th-century dances and waltz) -Divertissement for Napoleon (pas de la colombe, la Monaco, waltz, polka)

-Dances as part of the ladies’ exercises -Party scenes in period costume -Parading of Napoleon and his men -Scenes of contemporary revelries -Singing of “Plaisirs d’amour” (a contemporary popular song by Martini)

-Saint Anthony is shaved, coiffed, and dressed as a Parisian dandy by his temptresses -Scenes of seduction and temptation

-Dances by enchantresses -Land of delights: pas de deux, pas de quatre, ballabiles, and a lascivious dance

-Hermit’s Cave -Land of Sensuous Delights (voluptés)

Tentations (C, 1893) Saint Antoine hallucinates from hunger: he is escorted into the land of voluptuousness where a multitude of slightly dressed blonde women emerge from all sides to dance and seduce him. He nearly succumbs to human frailties but awakens just as he thinks he is lost forever.

Les demoiselles du XXe siècle (FB, 1894) Modern young ladies perform the latest exercises including dance and athletic routines

Spectacle

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

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Setting and era

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-Dance for the queen of the sea fairies and dances for sea fairies -Pas de deux for a fisherman and his fiancée

Seaside

L’étoile de mer (C, 1894) Cast list: Undine, Young Fisherman, Fisherman’s Fiancée, Old Fisherman, Water Genie, Queen of Water Fairies, Water Fairies (ballet corps). The ballet was probably a standard tale of lovers parted, then reunited.

(continued)

-Mechanical dolls dance when displayed for customers -Toys and dolls come to life after midnight strikes

Toy store that turns into a fairy kingdom

-Automatons come to life

Rationales for dances

La fée des poupées (O, 1894/ FB, 1904) A merchant displays his mechanical toys and dolls for customers. A wealthy Englishman buys the fairy doll. After the shop closes and midnight strikes, all of the toys come to life in a fairy kingdom under the wand of the fairy doll. The merchant awakens and all is in place.

Holland Le fiancé de cire (O, 1894) A poor boy loves a rich young lady. The complicit director of a wax museum devises a ruse to bring the two together: the boy pretends to be a wax statue so that he can talk to the girl, brought to the museum by her father. The father throws the wax statue into the river, thinking that it is the lover. He is tried, but acquitted when the truth is revealed on condition that his daughter be allowed to marry the young man.

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

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-Comic scenes for wax dolls -Love scene -Trial with crowd of neighbors -Dutch costumes

Spectacle

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-Parade of dolls -Battle scene -Officer dolls in travesty

-Cortèges of friends and neighbors as the father departs -Combination of sumptuous royal costumes and grotesque characters -Featured Émilienne d’Alençon in travesty as the Prince

Dolls and toys come to life and dance

-Village dances -Ballet of roses (60 dancers) -Gnomes perform a diabolic dance (they surround the father when he picks a rose) -Grotesque dances for otherworldly creatures when Beauty is brought to the palace -Beauty dances around the palace

-Toy boxes -Rustic outdoor setting

Holland Medieval? Renaissance? (conflicting reports in the press)

Les joujoux (C, 1894) While children sleep, dolls come to life under enchantment of the fairy Elfa. Harlequin and Pierrot dolls fight over a beautiful doll wearing a gauze gown. When fight gets out of hand, Elfa waves her wand and they are immobilized once more.

La belle et la bête (FB, 1895) The story of Beauty and the Beast. Ending: the beast takes poison and collapses. Beauty (named Hilda) is frightened and kisses the beast. He turns into a prince.

Spectacle

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

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-Divertissement in honor of the princess (included dances by bayadères)

-Dream sequence: personified money and term deposit certificates dance

India

Paris Stock Exchange

La Princesse Idaea (FB, 1895) A listless Indian princess is offered rich cloths, jewels, and danced entertainments, but she remains sad. A fakir plays his lute for her and sings. She is drawn in and joins the song. He rips off his robes and reveals a beautiful adolescent body. The princess throws herself into his arms. The father, fearing his magic, locks him in a tower. The princess follows his song and finds him; her father discovers them together. He is about to strike the boy but Buddha appears and orders his pardon. The father prostrates himself before the god and submits to his daughter’s marriage.

Les mimes d’or (FB, 1895) A poor young stock clerk finds a way to raise money so that he can marry his love: he matches beautiful women (mimes brought to Paris to perform at the Folies-Bergère) with paying men who work at the stock exchange. All celebrate while he sits alone. There is a stock crash, but he awakens and realizes that it was a dream. He is happily united with his love.

(continued)

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

-Parade of beautiful women -Love scenes -Chaotic scene of the stock-market crash (term deposit certificates fill the air)

-Exotic majestic décor/ costumes -Claps of thunder as Buddha appears from the ether -Exotic songs

Spectacle

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Student pension

Sans-Puits-House (C, 1895) A former student sneaks into his old boarding house to see his young favorite, Nelly. He tells her about the pleasures he has experienced in the world. He is discovered and expelled by the director. In revenge, the boy frightens everyone by reappearing with other boys masked as savage chiefs. The director orders the girls to dress in military uniform and battle the intruders. They go to battle, and Nelly tries to escape with her lover. He is shamed (made to wear a donkey skin) and she takes part of it to share his shame.

-Dances representing the joys of modern music halls -Gymnastics exercises (ordered by the director as a punishment for dancing with the old student)

-Reconstructions of Greek -Battle scene dances from decorations -Personifications of on pottery/vases mythical figures

Musée du Louvre

Le scandale du Louvre (O, 1895) Nighttime at the Louvre: figures on vases come to life. They return to inert form as a guard wanders by.

-Students playing games -Flirtation scene; love scene -Students play tricks on the director and on each other

-Bathing scene -Scene of ladies and officers in travesty kissing and hinting at further flirtations in the woods -High society in period costume

-Officers and ladies dance a minuet -The ladies (in bathing suits) dance for the men for the safe return of their clothes

Versailles, Louis XV

Bains de dames, ou Les baigneuses de Trianon (O, 1895) A captain and his officers are in love with the ladies of the court. The ladies refuse their advances. While they are bathing, the men steal their clothes then bribe the women for their return: the women are to dance with them and give them a kiss in exchange for their clothes. They do and the ladies and officers wander off into the woods in pairs as night falls.

Spectacle

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

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-Festivities as students celebrate the election of their president -Russian dances in a hostel on route to Siberia -Celebrations when the student is freed

-Amusements to entice Saint Anthony -Dance for pigs (“comic love duo”)

-Dances of sirens and swans (ensembles and solos)

-St. Petersburg -Siberia

Desert

Lake in a forest clearing

Vassilissa (Cas/NT, 1895) A student suspected of hostilities against the Russian government is sent to Siberia. Friends and the woman who loves him journey there to save him. While in Siberia, the student saves a child from a bear, is pardoned by the government, and is united with his lover.

Les deux tentations (C, 1895) Mephistopheles sends various temptations to Saint Anthony in his desert cave. Saint Anthony resists all and chases Mephistopheles away. Mephistopheles then sends a sow to seduce Saint Anthony’s pig.

Les cygnes (FB, 1896) A hunter sees a swan queen and is struck by her beauty. He watches her swans dance and approaches the queen. He first threatens her with his arrow, then expresses his love. They are interrupted by sirens who intend to drag him to the bottom of the lake. The swan queen orders her swans to dance around him to protect him. She faints. He is dragged away by sirens, but later saved by the swan queen. They are united.

(continued)

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

-Love scene -Finale of swan queen and hunter in a boat pulled by swans

-Seduction scene with drinking and amusements

-Journey of student’s girlfriend through harsh winter landscape -Tableau of children playing and people skating in Siberia -Battle with bear -Décor of ice blocks lit up with colored lights

Spectacle

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Arlette (O, 1896) A villain tries to remove a rival who is engaged to the woman he fancies. The fiancé makes a pact with the villain (who has magic powers) but is saved by fairies who guard over him and by his bride who drags him into the church to break infernal powers.

Enchanted rural setting -Dances for fairies

-Waltz of the mannequins -Grand divertissement of future fashions -Variations for “Fashion” personified

-Seductive dances of enchantress

Fantastical cave

L’araignée d’or (FB, 1896) Oriana lures men into her cave. The men she has seduced lie passively at her feet. A zealous youth, Amadis, travels across snowy mountains to rescue her victims. Oriana dances to tempt him, but he resists. He awakens the men and leads them to the cave’s entrance only to face a golden spider on her giant web. Amadis tries to pierce the spider’s heart but fails, and he and his fellow captives fall asleep at the seductress’s feet.

Tailor’s workshop Chez le couturier (FB, 1896) First act: Parisians come to see an haute-couture tailor (Doucet), who is treated as a contemporary god. Second act: a fashion show displaying the latest and future fashions

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

-Elegant Parisians in the tailor’s workshop -Fashion show (some women less dressed than others); fantastical futuristic clothes -Parodies of famous personalities: Émilienne de Raçon, Manette Guilbert

-Journey through a snowy landscape -Giant golden web and spider -Featured Liane de Pougy as the seductress

Spectacle

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-Snowflake ballet

-Dance-hall revelries and dances

-Château -Snow-covered landscape

-Olympia -Parisian Hall (bal Mabille)

Rêve de Noël (O, 1896) A page and count’s daughter sitting (and ostensibly reading) together are discovered in an embrace by the girl’s father. The father throws the page out into a snowy landscape to face an assortment of terrors (fantasy scene). The girl searches for the page, and when they are reunited by miracle toward the end of the ballet, the two again embrace. She is introduced by her father to her noble fiancé, a duke. She happily accepts the offer, but maintains a secret bond with her page.

Vénus à Paris (C, 1896) Mars and Venus want to know the wonders that Jupiter sees during trips to earth, so they escape from Olympia and go dancing in Paris. Junon and Jupiter come in search of them. Junon gets caught up in the revelries, joins in the eccentric dances, and is caught by Jupiter flirting with a young cavalier. Jupiter, in a fury, condemns Venus to her planet but forgives Junon.

(continued)

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

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-Personifications of mythical figures drinking champagne and dancing quadrilles -Bolts of lightning unleashed by Jupiter’s fury

-Love scene -Battle with bear -Cortège of the three kings bringing gifts to the Christ child (during to the fantasy winter scene) -Featured Liane de Pougy in travesty as the page

Spectacle

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Spectacle -Love scene with singing -Fight between father and another man (tricked by the young lover) -Ends with a ride in a magnificently decorated gondola that drifts towards the palace where the couple will live -Cortège of Venus, Greek boys (in travesty), courtesans, musicians -Nudity scene -Trial -Celebrations after the trial -Choir

Rationales for dances -Villagers gather and dance to the sounds of the young lover’s serenades -Pas de voiles by the young lady at home -Marriage celebrations

-Divertissement of exotic dances (Assyrians, Phoenicians, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks) and a Bacchanal -Dances for Chrysis and Bacchus, the sacred courtesan, musicians -Phryné’s seductive dance -Phryné’s dance of purity before the court -Dance after acquittal (final waltz)

Setting and era Renaissance Venice: -Balcony scene -Inside a wealthy palazzo -Greenhouse

Ancient Greece: -Painting studio -Outdoors -Court

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

Les amoureux de Venise (C, 1896) A doge’s son, dressed up as poor musician, is in love with a wealthy young lady. He serenades her; she promises marriage against her father’s wishes. He sneaks into her house and is found by her father. His identity is revealed and the union blessed.

Phryné (FB, 1897/ O, 1904) The sculptor Praxiteles tries to create a statue of Venus. Venus sends him the perfect model: Phryné. After various divertissements, Phryné is accused of impiety by the Old Héliaste and is brought before a tribunal. After her veils are removed to reveal her perfect beauty, she is acquitted: no mortal could be blessed with such bodily perfection.

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-Ballet variations -Dances in the kingdom of sports (60-80 ballerinas)

-The widower falls asleep and dreams of scantilyclad dancing nymphs

-Bridal bedroom -Kingdom of Sports

-Paris, in the Marais -Idyllic pastoral setting

Sports (FB, 1897/ FB, 1908) A bride rejects the advances of her husband on their wedding night. He invokes the help of Love and Cupid, but they are powerless to help him regain her favor: the bride has already given her heart to Sport. We are then transported to the kingdom of Sport. Sport sits on his throne and watches benevolently over his devoted ladies, who take part in various activities: polo, boxing, football, cycling, dance, and swimming.

Un déjeuner sur l’herbe (O, 1897) A widowed businessman who owns a lingerie store takes his staff to lunch in the countryside each Sunday. A picnic becomes the backdrop for a love intrigue. The widower is in love with a young woman who is in love with a young man. The widower is arrested for immorality (the reason is not made clear in reviews) and the young couple are united.

(continued)

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

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-Contemporary Parisians -Bathing scene -Sets: shop decorated with lingerie -Singing

-Bedroom scene: husband tries to lure his wife into bed -Personifications of gods -Demonstrations of sports performed by women in tight-fitting costumes -Use of a car onstage in the 1908 production

Spectacle

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-Women lounging against orientalist backdrops -Bathing scene -Apotheosis of Love Triumphant

-Dances in the hammam

-Divertissement of courtesans and slaves for Sardanapalus (with danses lascives)

-Parisian street in front of a hammam -Interior of Turkish Baths

-Babylon: temple of gods -Palace

Pierrot au hammam (O, 1897) Pierrot, in a travel costume and carrying a suitcase of banknotes, arrives before a hammam in search of a beautiful woman to perform in Êve pendant le péché, which he is to stage in a London music hall. Young Parisian damsels arrive and enter the hammam. Pierrot offers them contracts, but they refuse, laughing at him. He sneaks into the hammam. He is overwhelmed by beauty and perfumes, falls asleep, and dreams of seeing Le Chic—the most beautiful damsel— undressing and striking nude poses for him. He wakes, she steals his money, he panics, she gives in, and they are united in love.

Sardanapale (O, 1897) Sardanapalus fancies a beautiful young woman during a religious ceremony and takes her to his palace. He orders his slaves to dance. Peasants revolt against him, he is tricked by one who had sworn vengeance for the capturing of his newest beauty, and the palace is stormed by warriors. Sardanapalus decides to take his own life in the midst of this orgy and does so, surrounded by his courtesans, as the people swarm into his palace.

-Crowd scene in church -Abduction of a young woman -Orgy -Battle scene (soldiers in travesty) -Death of courtesans and Sardanapalus on burning pyre -100 people on stage

Spectacle

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

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-Little devils dance a divertissement -Seductresses dance quadrilles before Don Juan -Jeweler’s dream: ballet of precious stones (including ballet variations)

The wife dances for her husband to distract him -Dances of stars/precious stones -Dances when the couple is reunited

Satan’s cave

15th-century Brussels

-India -Enchanted cave

Don Juan aux enfers (C, 1897) Don Juan tries to seduce Mrs. Satan and is punished by Satan and his wife: Don Juan is given a heart and is until eternity seduced by women who then spurn him.

Diamant (FB, 1898) A poor young jeweler is in love with the wealthy daughter of the head jeweler. Her father objects. The young jeweler discovers the secret to cutting diamonds and wins the girl’s hand.

Le rêve d’Elias (FB, 1898) Elias is overcome by curiosity about a cave of precious stones; he fights with his wife. He enters the cave and is seduced by stars dressed as precious stones. The estranged couple is later reunited with the help of a fairy.

(continued)

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

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-Fairy scene -Storm -Seduction scene -Dances in a magical sparkling cave -“Visions animées, femmes aériennes”

-Seduction scene: stones seduce the young man knowing that if he finds out how to cut a diamond, her beauty will overwhelm theirs -Period sets and costumes

-Series of seduction scenes -Aida Boni danced the role of Satan’s wife

Spectacle

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Setting and era

-Dances for the wedding -Ballet of keys -Ballet of bats -Dances (Pas) for peasants, court jesters, bats, and the golden key -Waltz of flowers -Perfumes made visible

Fantasy

Vision! (O, 1898) [?]

-Picturesque tableaux: kaleidoscopic color patterns

-Nobility in fantastical costumes -Featured mimes Thalès and Jane Thylda -Choir and soloists

-Hersilia’s toilette scene -Flirtations between the Sabine King’s wife, Hersilia, and the Roman Warrior -Military festivities -Abduction of the Sabine women by Roman warriors

-Dances during Roman festivities (includes military dances, “voluptuous” dances by Sabine women, and a “suggestive” dance by Hersilia’s lady-in-waiting)

-Château Parc -Dungeon -Château interior

Spectacle

Rationales for dances

Barbe-Bleue (O, 1898) Barbe-Bleue hides his dead former wives, only to have them discovered by his curious young wife.

Rome, BC L’enlèvement des Sabines (FB, 1898) -Sabine Palace Roman warriors ask the King of Sabines to send -Roman Square women to marry Romans; the King refuses, but brings his people on an official visit to Rome. Unbeknownst to him, his wife, Hersilia, has fallen in love with one of the visiting warriors, Fabius: the two swear eternal love. The Sabine women are abducted during Roman military festivities; Hersilia falls into the arms of Fabius.

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-Love scenes -Sacrifice of Christians -Gladiator fight -Duel -Orgy -Burning of Rome -Featured Émilienne d’Alençon

-Parody -Series of parties -High society in period costumes -Military men in travesty -comic pseudo-funeral cortège (cortège of bedraggled army officers) -Tune of “Malbrouck s’en va-t-en guerre” as a leitmotif

-Dances (including ballet variations) during circus entertainments

-Party with a divertissement -Dances around the officers’ tent -Ball on the night of the wedding with country dances, a minuet, and a gavotte -Wedding festivities (divertissement)

Rome, under Nero -Interior: Orgy -Arena -Burning Rome

18th Century -Stately home interior -Tent of Malbrouck and his officers -Ballroom

Néron (O, 1898) Claudius is in love with the Christian Marcella; Poppea is in love with Claudius. Poppea has Marcella condemned to death. Claudius fights for Marcella’s life. He wins the gladiator fight, but Nero threatens to have Marcella strangled so that Claudius will get only her body. The people rise up against the tyrant, who sets Rome on fire. Claudius is reunited with Marcella amid the inferno.

Madame Malbrouck (C, 1898) Mme Malbrouck flirts with a knight. Her husband has been at war for seven years. Malbourck returns to find his wife in the knight’s arms. He fakes his death to trick her. She prepares to marry the knight. Her husband appears at her wedding, but when Mme Malbrouck doesn’t recognize him, he admits that he can no longer inspire love and leaves the new couple, returning to war.

(continued)

Spectacle

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

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-Courtesans dance seductively (including an 1830s cancan) -The goddess performs dance-hall quadrilles -Courtesans and virgins summoned by “Life” dance seductively -Dance of personified pearls that emerge out of shells -Dances of octopuses and starfish

-Olympia -Parisian dance hall

-Mysterious grotto -By the sea

Les grandes courtisanes (FB, 1899) Diana is allowed by Jupiter to travel down to earth to know mortal love. She is incarnated as various famous courtesans. Disgusted with the inanities of human love, she returns to Olympia.

Le Prince Désir (FB, 1899) A prince with ideals of purity resists the seductive temptations of “Life,” personified. Life then mends her ways, becomes docile and passive, and the prince falls in love with her.

-Courtesans seduce the Prince and seduce the Prince’s Virgins

-Impersonations of courtesans through the ages in period costumes -Dance-hall revelries

-Exotic Egyptian décor -The princess performs and costumes lascivious dances when under a spell -The princess and her court ladies dance -Dances for fantastical creatures (witches, a giant frog, a beetle)

Egypt -Witches’ den -Egyptian palace

La princesse au sabbat (FB, 1899) A princess in search of eternal youth and beauty is ensnared by evil witches. She is eventually rescued by her lover.

Spectacle

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

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-Soldiers try to seduce women -Women try to seduce soldiers (soldiers in travesty) -Apotheosis of “Love” -Lascivious dances of beautiful island maidens -Women dance to distract themselves from visions of men that haunt them -War dances of soldiers

-Island of eternal spring on which no man has ever spent the night -Officers’ island

La montagne d’aimant (C, 1899) Soldiers land on a secluded island populated by beautiful women. The knight and his men offer their hearts, give them jewels. . . . The queen chases them off, but her maidens are obsessed. They leave their island to find the soldiers. The mollified queen offers her “beauty” to the knight; all are united.

(continued)

-Featured Julia Seales, a London music-hall star, and Émilienne d’Alençon in travesty

-Exotic dances -Dances during wedding celebrations

-Sultan’s palace -Tavern -Home of Ali Baba -Dream world with Aladin

-Impersonated sins seduce Pierrot -Battle between a good Genie and Satan -Apotheosis: Triumph of Good -Choir

Spectacle

-Dance of infernal spirits -Dances of deadly sins

Rationales for dances

Les mille et une nuits (O, 1899) Tales derived from the Thousand and One Nights

-Inside a povertyLes sept péchés capitaux (O, 1899/ FB, 1903) Pierrot resists a series of temptations (personified stricken home seven deadly sins sent by Satan) and remains true -Satan’s palace to his love, Pierrette.

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

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-Village workers gather for dances -Argument with father -Inn full of soldiers (travesty) -Dream sequence -Apotheosis: musician surrounded by his muses and crowned with eternal glory

-Villagers dance as the young man plays the violin -Cousin dances seductively (with violin accompaniment) to raise money -Dream divertissement: music notes and rhythms written by the young man come to life and dance -Students perform a quadrille (cancan) in a forest clearing -Venus’s slaves dance to amuse her (including a “Valse des baisers”) -Venus treats students to a show of seductive dances (waltzes) for the corps and star ballerina

-Bohemian village of Klattau -Inn by the Danube -Dream world

-Clearing near Paris -Boudoir of Venus

Le tzigane (C, 1899) A young man disobeys his father and leaves the family business to seek a career as a violinist. His cousin joins him to keep him company. They perform in inns as they travel (she dances). He is poor so he composes. No one listens to his music and he falls ill. He dreams of creating beautiful music (music notes dance around him, singers sing), then dies of exhaustion. His fiancée (his cousin?) arrives with his father, who forgives him.

Cythère (FB, 1900) Eros, driving a car, arrives to help students sort out their love lives. He brings them to Cypress where Venus presents them with a series of lascivious dances performed by wellknown couples: Romeo and Juliet, Elsa and Lohengrin, Estelle and Némorin, Carmen and the Toreador. . . . Eros pierces the heart of a reluctant young lady with his lovers’ arrow, and she and her suitor are united.

-Seduction scenes -Historical exoticism/ anachronisms -Use of automobile onstage -Two students dressed up as Rodolphe and Mimi Pinson -Venus dressed as La Parisienne -Modern students wearing 1830s costumes to relive the past

Spectacle

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

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(continued)

Watteau (O, 1900) Comic scenes of flirtation and love at court. Watteau is tricked into revealing his love for a young woman.

French court of Marly

-Festivities at court

-Grand divertissement: dances for dragonflies and tadpoles, forest fairies and nymphs

-Dances at the party: period dances, Vestri and his best student are invited to dance (which leads to a full ballet divertissement including a parody of La Vestale)

Directoire Paris -Bonaparte’s home

Madame Bonaparte (FB, 1900) Mme Napoleon has a party while her husband is off at war. This gives rise to a series of flirtations (hers and friends’). Napoleon returns unexpectedly and is angered to find his wife partying while he is at war. She appeases him. At a later ball, Napoleon flirts openly with the ballerina. His wife consults with a fortune-teller who shows her future: Napoleon with a different wife leaning over a cradle.

Forest clearing La belle aux cheveux d’or (O, 1900) A young man wanders away from a hunting party. He falls asleep and is surrounded by dancing forest creatures. He awakens and picks a magic flower that binds him to a beautiful princess. He is subjected to temptations sent by an evil giant but resists, conquers the giant, and is united with the princess.

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

-Flirtations of wellknown figures -Backdrops that reproduced Watteau’s paintings -Featured Jane Thylda as Watteau and Liane de Pougy as his love interest

-Drinking song mimed by Thalès -Sensuous temptations sent to seduce the young man

-Flirtations among the nobility -Spectacular tableau of soldiers in French and Austrian uniforms -Nobility partying in period costumes

Spectacle

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Setting and era

-Scenes of flirtation, seduction -Orgy -Siege -Apotheosis: death of Cleopatra and Anthony

-Parade of soldiers (travesty) -Tableau displaying the flags of Austria and France -Period Louis XVI reconstitutions -Featured Angèle Héraud as CadetRoussel

-Festivities in Cleopatra’s chambers -Cleopatra’s courtesans dance to seduce soldiers -Cleopatra dances to seduce Marc Anthony -Divertissement during the orgy with singing, dancing, and libations -Dances of three women in love with Cadet-Roussel during festivities before his departure -Festivities after the war -dance of officers, hussars, and Tyroleans

-Paris: era of Louis XVI -Tyrolean Inn -Party in a Paris drawing room

Cadet-Roussel (C, 1900) A young soldier goes off to war despite the devotion of three young women: he resists their temptations to serve his country. He returns victorious and is united with one of the young women.

-Parade of soldiers -Exotic tableaux from around the world -Apotheosis: Triumph of Love

-Ballet of flowers (marguerites) when Faust travels around the world looking for Marguerite -Dance of devils

Cleopatra’s palace

Spectacle

Rationales for dances

Cléopâtre (C, 1900) Cleopatra seduces Marc Anthony (her slaves are also seductresses), but they are caught off-guard during an orgy and die in a siege.

-School of Doctor Faust (O, 1900/ FB, 1902) Choreographed arrangement of Hervé’s operetta Faustus -Tour around the world Le petit Faust, a parody of Gounod’s Faust. -Mephisto’s palace

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-Sets: sea and blue sky, white and pink houses, bright costumes, etc. during Parisian winter -Featured Christine Kerf (from 1900 Expo Palais de la danse) and 60 corps dancers

-Period costumes and sets -Nudity scene (model poses as Venus) -Featured Cléo de Mérode from the Opéra as the nude model

-Neapolitan dancers and singers perform a tarantella, a zingara, and a neapolitan at a seaside restaurant -Youth dance on the seashore -Dances in the city square before the singing competition

-Dances for Cellini -Dances by ladies in waiting

-Gare de Lyons, Paris -Naples: restaurant terrace by the sea -Cave on the Azure -Naples: square

Renaissance Florence -Cellini’s atelier -Lorenza’s boudoir -Gardens of the Palazzo Vecchia

Napoli (FB, 1901) La Parisienne escapes frenetic Paris to visit the city of Naples (her lover, a banker, misses the train). A handsome Neapolitan singer falls in love with her. She offers him money after he performs for her and he throws it to the people; he wants only her corsage. They walk together by the sea; he declares his love for her; she succumbs to his embraces. He enters a singing competition and is crowned. The banker appears, but La Parisienne sends him away and declares that she will remain in Naples with her lover.

Lorenza (FB, 1901) Benvenuto Cellini searches for the perfect model for his statue of Venus. He finds it in the beautiful duchess Lorenza de Medici who offers him her unveiled body in the name of art.

(continued)

Spectacle

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

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Spectacle -Love scene and love spats -Comic scenes with eunuch servants -Nudity scene (bathing ruler) -Pantomime within a pantomime -Featured Caroline Otéro as the imperial ruler -Storm scene -Flirtations -Parisians in fancy gowns

-Period costumes and sets -Behind-the-scenes tableaux with rehearsal costumes -Fight scene -Palace festivities

Rationales for dances -Divertissements to entertain the ruler; mime performs character dances

-Ball held at the Opéra: included a ballet divertissement titled “Les Éléments” for personified Earth, Air, Fire, and Water -Rehearsals at the Opéra -Village dances at the Inn -La Camargo dances for the bandits -Versailles festivities: dances in the gardens, dances by La Camargo

Setting and era Bosphorus: Greek Antiquity -Quay-side in fishing village -Imperial palace -Return to the quay

-Parisian dress and millinery shop -Opéra

18th century -Opéra -Inn on route to Versailles -Versailles

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

L’impératrice (O, 1901) A bored imperial ruler is made happy by smoking a magic herb brought by a poor young mime who seeks a monetary prize for his beloved. She falls in love with the mime and incurs the wrath of his fiancé. The ruler is fatally wounded and dies a glorious, life-fulfilling, orgasmic death.

Paris-cascade (O, 1901) A married man flirts with a shop girl and invites her to a ball. During the ball, his wife, masked, tricks him into falling in love with her in retaliation for his flirtations, then reveals her identity. She dances in triumph to taunt him.

La Camargo (C, 1901) Dancers rehearse for the ballet Ulysses and Calypso. Intrigues: a new star is discovered in La Camargo. The old star is jealous and tries to have La Camargo kidnapped when on route to Versailles. La Camargo dances for the bandits and one of them recognizes her; he escorts her to Versailles. Palace festivities and reconciliation of the ballerinas.

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-Ballet of blossoms -Danse de fascination (Geisha)

-Japan

Au Japon (O, 1903) Dédé is brought to Prince Korin but she loves Torio, who finds her and plots for her rescue. The escape goes awry, but Maiko the Geisha charms Prince Korin, convinces the Prince to grant the lovers a pardon, and regains her position of honor.

(continued)

-Sequence of colorful, loosely related tableau: revue-like -Included a mimed parody titled “le billet du logement”

-Dances (Pas) for authors, Bersaglieri, Tunisians, Russian marines, and a danse générale -Dances at the Femina Sports Club gala: dances by children and nannies, dances of dolls

-La Foire -Le Femina Sports’ Club -Le Petit Palais -Chez Mme Vve Martin

Les pantins de Paris (C, 1902) An entertainer tries to attract an audience. A famous performer, Carmen, calls on Figaro to help whip up enthusiasm (he also falls for her). Authors of different nationalities enter. Père Piotin is scandalized to see one woman with so many men (“no wonder France no longer makes children”). Piotin brings in women of all nationalities and distributes them. Gala with circus performances. Le Petit Palais is filled with children. Dance of dolls and apotheosis with the queen of the dolls.

-Exoticism

-Revue-like parade for myriad Parisian types

-Spanish dance -Variations by la Lune -Belly dance by Angèle Héraud

Contemporary Paris

Paris qui danse (C, 1901) Presents La Parisienne, modern, chic, flirtatious, in different Parisian locales: la Porte Monumentale, le Modern-Style-Bar, le Théâtre français, le Trocadéro, les Fontaines lumineuses. Described by Arlequin in a review (3/11/1901) as a “pantomime, revue, ballet, tableau vivant, femme-statue et femmes fleurs.”

Spectacle

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

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Setting and era

-Palace of Dreams Antinoa (FB, 1905) Pierrot, passed out from hunger and fatigue, is lifted up by Love and Fortune. Nymphs bring in fruit, but they forbid him from eating it. Jews enter bearing a rich coat. Love and Fortune dress him in it. A royal cortège carries him to his throne: he is now king. Festivities with dances by Antinoa, a sacred virgin. Pierrot falls in love with Antinoa. Thunder is heard: Antinoa appears in the sky. Pierrot is afraid of Thunder, but Antinoa reaches out to Pierrot. Love goddesses prepare the royal chamber. Antinoa is borne in by negresses. Antinoa slowly undresses. Pierrot, drunk with love, rips off the last veil. Pierrot and Antinoa prepare to leave on a boat. Festivities. Thunder intrudes, but Love shoots arrows at the clouds and bursts them: rain of roses.

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-Dances for royal festivities, including a voluptuous dance by Antinoa -Dances for nuptial festivities, including dances for bacchants

Rationales for dances

-Royal cortège -Apparition of Antinoa in clouds -Striptease -Exoticism: Jews; negresses -Boat bedecked with flowers -Roses rain down on the final scene -Apotheosis: Triumph of Love

Spectacle

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-Parade and circus performances within a ballet -Seaside bathing scenes and stripteases (shrimp fisherwomen)

-Dances in circus performances? -Dance of flowers -Dances during harvest festivities

-Winter: Place de la République -Spring: Woods -Summer: Seaside -Fall: countryside

Les saisons de la Parisienne (O, 1905) Chimney sweeps dance with young ladies. They are interrupted by a Fairground Circus parade. A young girl wants to join the troupe. An Old Man becomes her protector and pays her début fees. The Circus performs until chased off by guards. The Girl leaves the Old Man for the circus Director. The Old Man buys flowers to woo her. Love scene between the Girl and the Director. The Director gives her lilacs: flowers dance. Gents hover around ladies emerging from seaside cabins: they pull off the women’s dressing gowns and discover four “mamas” [?]. The Old Man discovers the Girl and the Director together. She tricks him: he is summoned back to Paris by telegram. A group of boaters arrives: they remove their costumes and hurry into the sea. The girl’s lover convinces a local farm girl to seduce the Old Man; she does. Harvest festivities.

(continued)

Spectacle

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

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Spectacle -Angèle Héraud as Mme la Présidente -Fashion parade of mannequins for Mrs. President to choose her dresses and hats -Comic scene: Mr. President is chased from bunk to bunk looking for a place to sleep on the train. -Comic scene: guards tell impatient girls that Mr. President, who has appeared still dressed in travesty, is the real president. They swarm him but find him ugly -Cortège of Mrs. President -Banquet scene in Palace -Apotheosis: Victory of Love

Rationales for dances -Dancing during a ball: tambourine dance by Mme la Présidente

Setting and era Era: ca.1820s–1840s -Presidential home -Kingdom of Illyria -Palace interior -Garden party

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

Le voyage de Madame la Présidente (C, 1905) Mme la Présidente prepares for a foreign diplomatic tour. She and Olympia, wife of the Prime Minister, choose her dresses and hats (mannequins display possible gowns). M. le Président is jealous; he wants to come. He dresses up as an English reporter and secretly follows her. He does not have a berth and chaos ensues. They arrive in the Kingdom of Illyria. The prince greets Mme la Présidente. Next morning: comic scene and cortège of the President; banquet; ball. The Prince of Illyria flirts with Mme la Présidente. The chief of Protocol is jealous. M. le Président is also jealous. He gets angry, but is recognized by Olympia, who is in love with him and who blackmails him into coming away with her. The Chief of Protocol exposes M. le Président and Olympia kissing. The Prince and M. le Président fight a duel. The Prince wins. Mme la Présidente consents to divorce M. le Président and marry her new lover. M. le Président will wed Olympia.

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(continued)

-Beach at Brighton Le timbre d’or (FB, 1906) -Kingdom of Stamps Ladies and fisherwomen bathe. They are joined by two groups of young people: one of boys, one of girls. One of each remains apart from his/ her group. The two are interested only in stamp collecting. They compare: both are missing the same famous stamp. Two yachts chase each other across the sea: series of drawings flash by. King Kiss-Ki owns a huge stamp collection, including the missing stamp. He holds a party, but state coffers are empty. He is convinced to auction off the stamp. The two young people pool their collections, are united in love, and buy the stamp together. The King opens his stamp album: stamps of different nationalities parade and dance.

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Spectacle

-Dances at the king’s party -Seaside bathing (shimp -Dances of stamps fisherwomen) -Incorporation of series of humorous drawings by the frères Clérice -Parade of stamps -Included performances by “The Milano Girls” -Apotheosis: tableau of multinational stamps

Rationales for dances

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-Maidens dance for la Fête nationale -“Drinks” dance during festivities -Dances of stars (divertissement in honor of the sunrise)

-“Voluptuous dances” by the most beautiful women of Egypt, Nubia, and Greece to distract Cleopatra

Alexandria -Cleopatra’s terrace

Cléopâtre (O, 1906) Cleopatra weeps over Anthony’s departure. She orders dances by the most beautiful women of Egypt, Nubia, and Greece to distract herself. She hears a singer, Lydias, and has him brought in. Lydias arrives with his lover, Thécla, but she is imprisoned by the jealous Cleopatra. Cleopatra tries to seduce Lydias; he is faithful to Thécla. Lydias is imprisoned. Now together, the young lovers are about to drink a deadly poison, but when Anthony returns, Cleopatra forgives them and releases them.

July 14th Vers les étoiles (O, 1906) A shepherd comes to Paris for a national holiday. -Porte Maillot, Paris -Sky He is overwhelmed by the chaos. He befriends an astronomer and serviceman, who help him in his search for his beloved star. They ride a hotair balloon into space: views of Paris from above, threat of comets, landing on the moon, meeting with Venus, star shower, the Big Dipper is snuffed out, and they arrive in the Land of the Stars. The shepherd declares his love for Venus, but is spurned. Before he returns home, he is invited to Venus’ divertissement given in honor of the sunrise.

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

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-Gathering of crowds for national festivities -Chaos during storm: reveling crowds scatter and the hot-air balloon breaks free of its tethers -Hot-air balloon flying through a starry sky, shooting comets and fireballs, and landing on the moon -Apotheosis of stars

-Historical exoticism -Warriors in travesty -Apotheosis: Triumph of Love, master of Life over Death

Spectacle

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(continued)

-Dances of shepherds and -Period costumes and décor shepherdesses (minuets and pastourelles) -Festivities in honor of the double betrothal

18th century -Rose Garden, Trianon park, Versailles

Trianon ballet (O, 1908) Shepherds and shepherdesses dance and flirt. A noble maiden falls in love with a poor shepherd and spurns the love of an old gentleman. The old man is eventually united with her aunt, and the maiden with her poor young lover.

-Reflection of contemporary Paris -Exotic décor in Tokyo: Japanese cityscape, mousmès and geishas, giant chrysanthemums

-Dances of girls and soldiers

-Street in a suburb of Paris -Japanese dreamland

Deux sous d’amour (O, 1908) Some milliner shop girls are sent to town on business. They are warned to avoid the attentions of men. On their way, they are distracted by the entrance of a regiment and join the soldiers. One remains alone looking at foreign postcards in a shop window. A group of college boys passes. A girl falls in love with a boy who returns her love. He buys her a postcard, which, touched by Cupid’s arrow, transports them into a dreamland in Tokyo.

Spectacle

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

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Spectacle -Scene centered on Giselle’s friends’ admiration of bridal jewels -Exoticism: opium den with locals in colorful costumes similar to those of Egyptian belly dancers -Seductions of opium girls -Cathedral ruins overrun with scantilyclad mythological creatures -Cortège of grand priests -Cathedral “marriage” festivities ending in an orgy

Rationales for dances -Dances for betrothal festivities -Dances during Maxime’s dreamed marriage festivities -Lascivious dances of opium-den seductress

Setting and era -Home interior -Far Orient: opium fumoir -Dream: cathedral ruins

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

Fumées d’opium (C, 1908) A family celebrates the nuptial agreement of Giselle and her wealthy suitor. Her former lover—a marine thought lost at sea—returns. Giselle still loves him, but he is poor and she must support her family. The marine, Maxime, takes her ring as a pledge of her love and leaves. Maxime seeks comfort in an opium shop in the Far East. He is tricked by a local belle into smoking. He looks at a portrait of Giselle and slumbers. He dreams of an elaborate ceremony carried out by vestals, fauns, and bacchants in cathedral ruins. A cortège of grand priests blesses all. Maxime and Giselle are wed. A virgin is nearly sacrificed to Venus, but Venus offers her instead to the sadistic pleasures of love and she is delivered to the fauns. Festivities end in an orgy. Maxime awakens, tries to re-join his regiment, falls prey to the opium-den seductress, smokes again, and loses the talisman ring to the seductress. When he awakens, he sees a vision of Giselle crying over his broken promise. He cries.

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(continued)

Paquita, ou Les filles de Bohême (O, 1909) Gypsies, students, peasants, Prince Philip, a Duke, Paquita, and Don Gomez enter an encampment successively, interspersed with dances. Paquita reads fortunes. Duel of the Duke and Gomez; Gomez is taken prisoner by the Duke. Paquita organizes his rescue, marries Gomez, but is detained by the Duke who proposes to her then imprisons her. The Duke hosts festivities. Paquita is brought in. Prince Philip falls in love with her. Gomez arrives, explains they are wed, and Prince Philip chivalrously sets her free.

Spain -Gypsy encampment -Castle terrace -Ambassadors’ Hall, Alhambra

-Wild gorge in the Romi-Tchavé (FB, 1909) Carpathian mountains Idza is engaged to Hourgno, a chief returning from exile, but in love with Mitchki. Idza’s sister tries to stop Hourgno from taking Idza, the tribe’s favorite. The tribe enters. Hourgno tries to greet people, but all turn their backs on him. Love scene between Idza and Mitchki. Hourgno’s sister tells Hourgno, who is enraged. Hourgno and Mitchki duel. A priest intervenes and is killed. The tribe attacks Hourgno. Idza saves him, but ties him to tree and forces him to watch her marriage to Mitchki. Hourgno and his sister escape after the wedding is over.

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-Starred Napierkowska “of the Opéra” and R. Quinault of the OpéraComique -Waterfall on stage -Duel

-Many exotic dances -International cast: sections of the ballet corps came from the Olympia, Paris; the Alhambra, London; and La Scala, Milan -Dances at the encampment (cloak dance, mazurka, water carriers’ dance, pas de deux for Paquita and Gomez, farandole) -Dances at wedding celebrations -Dances for royal festivities (fan dance mauresque dance, garland dance, bacchanal)

Spectacle

-Water dance -Children’s games and dances -Dances of torches -Idza’s dance during wedding -Orgiastic dances and “galop de folie” after wedding.

Rationales for dances

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Setting and era

Fruit défendu (C, 1909) The devil, Beelzebub, gets lost in the Scottish countryside after a nocturnal party and seeks shelter in a mill. At daybreak, youth, peasants, and servants emerge. The youngsters play, discover the devil, and threaten him. He teases them in return. In come Patrick and his sweetheart, Lizzie. The devil’s pranks do not affect Lizzie; she is too virtuous. He places cherries before a sign that reads “Forbidden fruit,” but she does not succumb. The couple is engaged. All come to celebrate. Lizzie ensnares the devil in a chicken coop after he tries once more to trick her. Dances in honor of the new couple.

-Scottish countryside

-Restaurant by the Les aventures de Mlle Clo-Clo (O, 1909) Seine A boulevard-theater star dancer dines with her lover at a disreputable restaurant after her show. She is asked to dance for demi-monde customers, then is caught up in flirtations that get her into trouble with the Apaches. Rescued by police, she vows never to be caught in such a situation again.

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

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-Dances of young peasants -Dances in celebration of nuptials

-Dances to entertain fellow diners

Rationales for dances

-Vista of the Seine behind the restaurant -Contemporary dress

Spectacle

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(continued)

-Bohemia Paska (C, 1909) A young Magyar chief, Enyédé, leaves his soldiers in charge of the camp. They fall asleep. A young Bohemian, Paola, enters, steals food, trips, and wakes the soldiers. She mimes that she needed to feed her tribe. Enyédé frees her, but she must tell his fortune, then dance. She doesn’t know how. The soldiers dance for her. She offers to find her sister, who tells fortunes and dances beautifully. She returns with her clan. Endyédé falls in love with the beautiful sister, Paska. Paska foretells his violent death. He laughs and order festivities with dancing. He dances with Paska. Paola throws herself at Endyédé and stabs him.

-Enchanted Garden of La rose d’amour (C, 1909) Roses Flowers awaken at dawn. Prince Charming awakens and sees a ring on his finger, given to him by his godmother, the Butterfly Fairy, to help him find his fiancée, transformed into a Bengal Rose by the evil Rose Fairy (in punishment for pride). The Prince searches among the flowers. The Rose Fairy tries to seduce him to remove his talisman. He almost succumbs, but the Butterfly Fairy rescues him by pricking the Rose Fairy. Rose falls, but is saved by the Prince, who pities her. She is touched and presents him with his Bengal Rose.

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

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Spectacle

-Dances of Soldiers for Paola -Dances of soldiers and Bohemians -Dance of Endyédé and Paska

-Exoticism

-Dances for flowers -Colorful flower décor -Dances for the Rose Fairy -Women in insect and flower costumes

Rationales for dances

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Spectacle -Enchanted garden with flying fairies and huge flowers -Exoticism: Bedouins and desert landscape -Final scene: fairies “beat their wings, rise up, and disappear” -performances by “Les Flying Girls de Heidenreich” -Starred Napierkowska of the Opéra-Comique

Rationales for dances -Dances for fairies and flowers -Dances of Bedouin slave girl for the chief and for the prince -Exotic dances for the prince at the palace (including African dances)

Setting and era -Desert -Enchanted garden -Desert with Bedouins -Palace

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

Les ailes (FB, 1910) Prince Nour, wandering the desert, finds an enchanted garden with flying fairies. A fairy princess picks a flower, pricks her finger, and releases seven girls imprisoned in flowers by a witch. Fairies and flowers dance with joy. Nour falls in love; catches one, but she escapes. Nour wanders the desert looking for his beloved. Bedouins drift by and find a well; the chief brings in captive women, gets his favorite girl to dance, and tries to assault her. Nour rescues her, is imprisoned, and is rescued by the Fairy. The girl escapes. The King tries to entertain the lovesick Prince Nour with exotic dances. The Bedouin girl enters and dances. The fairy returns, explains the impossibility of an earthling–fairy union, and touches the two with a magic flower. The Prince and the Girl unite. The fairies fly off.

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-Dances for insects

-Cornfields -Spider’s haunt -Butterfly kingdom

Papillon d’or (O, 1910) Margot and friends capture the Golden Butterfly. She is entreated by her sweetheart, René, to release it. A naturalist catches the same butterfly, is distracted by Margot’s beauty, loses the butterfly, drinks wine with René, and falls asleep. The butterfly returns with a spider and an avenging army to weave a web around the scientist. He is condemned to death. René appeals his plight, and the butterfly grants his release. The scientist promises never again to sacrifice the life of an insect in the name of science.

(continued)

-Temple of Venus L’enlèvement de Psyché (O, 1910) -Monster’s cave Youths and maidens bring offerings to Venus’s -Cupid’s bower shrine. Psyché arrives with a procession of worshipers. She is declared so beautiful that they desecrate Venus’s shrine and deify Psyché. Venus arrives and curses Psyché to fall in love with a sea monster. Venus enlists the help of her son, Cupid, but he falls in love with Psyché and rescues her. Psyché is brought to Cupid’s flowery bower. She wanders about touching fruit, flowers, and rich fabrics, then admires herself in the mirror. Cupid catches her with his arrow of love and “she yields herself a willing captive.”

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

-Fantastical backdrops (3rd tableau garden by seashore that is “resplendent with flowers”) -Procession of worshipers -International cast of dancers (Psyché, Mlle Léonora, from Alhambra, London; corps from La Scala, Milan and La Monnaie, Brussels)

-Colorful décor of huge butterflies -Army of insects (women in insect costumes)

Spectacle

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Setting and era

Stella (FB, 1911) Dancers rehearse for a new divertissement, La bacchante. The star ballerina is sick. A corps dancer offers to replace her, is auditioned, performs brilliantly, and is offered the role. A pre-show hubbub ensues: costumers, visitors, delivery-boys with discreet messages for dancers, coquette dancers, and others come in and out of dancers’ dressing rooms. The minister arrives and the divertissement is performed at the répétition générale.

-Backstage: rehearsal foyer and hallway. -On stage: ballet within a ballet

-Fantasy Pierrot et Pierrine (Casino, 1910) Pierrot runs away from Pierrine, whom he no longer wants to marry. Hungry and tired, he falls asleep on a bench. Pierrine and her friends track him down, wake him, invite him to dance: they want him to celebrate the engagement that he reneged. Pierrot’s friends find him and threaten reprisals if he does not stick to his promise. Pierrot, left alone, is filled with doubt. He invokes the Moon, has dreams of his Pierrine, and rekindles his love for her. Celebrations.

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

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-Dances by the “Tutus mignons,” miniature dancers

-Behind-the-scenes voyeurism

-Rehearsals for a divertissement -Audition of a corps dancer for the starring role -Divertissement La Bacchante

Spectacle

-Dances of Pierrine and friends -Dances in celebration of the engagement

Rationales for dances

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-Goddess of Light and Love dances; Nitokris watches without being seen then imitates her dances and gestures -Nitokris dances for the goddess in the temple -Nitokris performs a “mad dance” (danse de folie) for her followers

Ancient Egyptian Temple

Nitokris (O, 1911) Nitokris, a slave girl, dreams of visiting a sacred temple. She flees Thebes and follows a caravan of faithful to the Temple. Once inside, she is bewitched by a goddess’s dances and jewels. Nitokris denudes the goddess of her jewels and dances for her. She is sacrificed for having desecrated the sacred space, but is sanctified in death. She rises from her tomb and dances with a sphinx as white birds fly above them. She performs a mad dance for the people who have assembled to worship her.

(continued)

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

Copyright © 2015. University of Rochester Press. All rights reserved.

-Cortège of the faithful carrying offerings to the temple -Crowds gather to worship the newly deified Nitokris -Flock of doves and a dozen white pigeons released into the audience -Décor, costumes recreated based on museum studies -La Sylph (exotic dancer and supple ballerina) performed the “danse de folie”

Spectacle

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Spectacle -Nostalgic views of old Montmartre in different seasons -Resurrection of familiar Montmartre symbols and history: old mill, Chat noir, Vache enragée, Pierrots in different attitudes as drawn by Willette

Rationales for dances -Dances of bacchants and muses -Dances in the painter’s studio -Dances of little pierrots

Setting and era Mythologized Montmartre -Painter’s Studio -Montmartre Butte -Flower-covered mill

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

Montmartre (FB, 1913) Bacchants present Pierrot with muses. He choses a wife. Pierrots (painters, poets, and musicians) sing and work. The muses have become playful women who pose for them and take part in their games. Their landlord, M. Vautour, enters, demands rent, chases all out except Pierrot, then is devoured by Black Cats. Pierrot paints outdoors on the Butte. His Pierrette makes him warm and cozy, then sneaks off with Arlequin. Pierrot, alone and cold, is mocked by children. The Vache enragée attacks him, then dies after licking paint off Pierrot’s canvas. Spring returns and lovers emerge. Pierrot and Pierrette make up. Little pierrots dance around couple. Car horns are heard: a demolition crew sent by M. Vautour arrives to take revenge. La Ville de Paris (personified) appears, calls for Gallic gaity to prevail, and bequeaths the Butte to the Pierrots and songs. Apotheosis: triumph of the Artist.

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-Slow waltz by Clorinde (“symbol of artificial voluptuousness and theatrical sensuousness”) -Waltz by Lucinde -Ensemble dances for the Carnival

-Carnival

Les fanfreluches de l’amour (O, 1913) A poor young poet, Sylvain, dreams only of frivolities. Sylvain loves Clorinde—an Opéra dancer who is kept by a ridiculous, but rich Old Man—but is engaged to Lucinde, a poor florist. Sylvain chases the Old Man away and Clorinde falls for youth. The Old Man falls for the florist, offers her jewels, and dresses her in rich clothes. Clorinde is asked to dance for Carnival festivities. Lucinde then dances and eclipses the Opéra dancer. Sylvain rushes to pay homage to his new idol, recognizes her, and swears he always loved her. She eventually gives in; the two are united. The Old Man, touched by her love, allows her to keep the riches and returns to his ballerina, who prefers baubles to love.

-Carnival scenes with a procession -Star dancer Yetta Rianza from the OpéraComique -Performances by “The Olympia Girls”

Spectacle

The table of thumbnail synopses, rationales for dance, and elements of the spectacle was compiled using manuscript librettos in F-Pan F18 1045, stage action in scores, synopses in programs, and plot descriptions in press reviews. Question marks in the tables denote dances or scenes mentioned in synopses or in the press, but not clearly described.

1

Rationales for dances

Setting and era

Title of work (hall, year of première)1

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Notes All translations are my own unless otherwise stated. I have aimed to keep the tone and meaning of the originals and have made translations as literal as possible, though often with substantial changes to punctuation. Due to space constraints, I have not been able to include the original French in the endnotes, but reviews, at least, are now easily found online in the newspaper database archived by BnF Gallica.

Introduction 1. 2.

3.

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4. 5.

6.

7.

8.

In the 1890s, the Folies-Bergère was the third-highest-grossing venue in Paris. The top two were the Opéra and Opéra-Comique. The span of dates for these statistics corresponds with the publication dates of the different volumes of the Catalogue général des œuvres dramatiques et lyriques faisant partie du répertoire de la société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques. Some divertissements were independent ballets, others included within large-scale lyrical or dramatic genres. These numbers do not include ballets staged for special cultural events or divertissements not recorded in the SACD catalogues. The exception is Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse. See Guest, The Paris Opéra Ballet ; Quinault, La danse en France sous la troisième république ; and Vaillat, Ballets de l’Opéra de Paris (1947). Many other dance histories mention the period in passing under revealing chapter headings. See Bourcier, “Le coma prolongé de la danse à l’Opéra,” 201–2; Christout, “Le déclin progressif du ballet en occident,” 80–87; Kinney, “Ballet in Its Dark Age,” 228–40; and Lifar, “Décadence du ballet,” 66–68. Ballet’s popularity in fin-de-siècle Paris spurred Albert Carré to add ballet to the Opéra-Comique’s repertoire when he became that theater’s director in 1898. Carré hired Mme Mariquita to choreograph pantomime-ballets and ballet-divertissements for operas, which she did until 1918. The Opéra-Comique was for a time the center for innovative French ballet and was another important predecessor of the Ballets Russes. The Opéra was at no point in the nineteenth century the only institution to stage ballet, nor was it always the dominant venue for original choreography. At midcentury, ballet could be seen in disparate venues, including the Théâtre Italien or Opéra-Comique, the Théâtre de la Gaîté, the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin, the Ambigu-Comique, and the Cirque Olympique. See Wild, Dictionnaire des théâtres parisiens au XIXe siècle ; Ménil, Histoire de la danse à travers les ages ; and Guest, Ballet of the Second Empire, appendix E. See also Levin, “Appendix: A Documentary Overview of Musical Theaters in Paris, 1830–1900,” 379–402. Parisian theaters routinely pushed the boundaries of generic classifications to produce so-called divertissements that were in effect pantomime-ballets with developed

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9.

10. 11.

12.

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13.

14.

15.

notes to pp. 3–4 narratives. The Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin was the Opéra’s most important competitor in the realm of ballet in the 1820s and 1830s. See Jacq-Mioche, “Le ballet à Paris de 1820–1830.” In 1864, cafés were permitted to present only instrumental and vocal music without costumes, décors, or transvestism, and without mixing prose, pantomime, or dance. Vaillant, “Circulaire explicative du précédent décret, 1864,” in Recueil des lois, décrets, arrêtés, 14–15. Wild, Dictionnaire des théâtres, 9–19. The Opéra did stage the occasional successful production during this period. Charles Marie Widor’s La Korrigane (1880) was performed only eight times in its first year, but it was frequently restaged and received fifty-four performances after six years (it was restaged every year between 1880 and 1886). Paul Vidal’s La Maladetta (1893), though not especially well received at the outset, received 176 performances by the time it was dropped in 1927. Messager’s Les deux pigeons had an even more impressive performance history. It was one of the only ballets to exceed ten performances in its first year (it was presented twelve times), and it remained in the repertory until 1949, by which time it had been performed 196 times (See Guest, The Paris Opéra Ballet, 143–44). As Jane Pritchard points out (Pritchard,“The Great Hansen,” 86), longevity and commercial success are rarely indicators of artistic innovation or quality, but they do speak to the continued presence and popularity of ballet at the Opéra at a time long thought to have been devoid of choreographic activity. Although Hansen was given few opportunities to choreograph large-scale ballets for the Opéra, as Pritchard rightly notes, some are worth closer study. The promising ballerina Giuseppina Bozzachi died of smallpox during the Siege of Paris; Marie Taglioni retired from her teaching post; and the choreographer Arthur Saint-Léon died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of forty-nine. The lack of discipline of the Opéra ballet corps came up frequently in reviews of Eden-Théâtre ballets, in which Opéra dancers were compared to those of the Eden. Eden-Théâtre dancers were, in contrast, commended for their almost military precision as a group. Opéra ballets relied increasingly on travesty dancers and on props such as garlands and palms to create visual interest. Guest, The Paris Opéra Ballet, 12. See also the review by Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “Bacchus,” Le Figaro, November 27, 1902, in which he describes the ballet’s spectacular attributes in the same terms used for reviews of music-hall ballets. The Alhambra in the 1860s was so successful that it was soon emulated by many of the music halls that cropped up around London. The Empire, the Metropolitan, the South London Palace, Lusby’s, the Canterbury, the Oxford, and the Crystal Palace all had ballet troupes, ballet masters, and important danced entertainments at different periods in the late nineteenth century. Guest, Ballet in Leicester Square, 6; and Pritchard “Collaborative Creations,” 55–56, 77–79. The zenith of English music-hall ballet productivity and popularity coincided with that of Parisian music-hall ballet. The Alhambra, which returned to staging independent large-scale ballets in 1884 after a thirteen-year hiatus, and the Empire, its archrival, established on the other side of Leicester Square in 1887, both housed sizable dance troupes and employed some of the best ballerinas, choreographers, and popular composers of the era. In England, pantomime-ballet fell under the category of “stage plays,” works with developed story lines. Under the Lord Chamberlain laws, only selected licensed theaters were permitted to present stage plays, and while “pantomime-ballet” was not specifically included in these

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notes to pp. 4–9 287 laws, any variety-theater ballet that leaned too far toward conveying a story was subject to fines. Craies, “The Censorship of Stage Plays,” 196–202; and Pritchard, “Divertissement Only,” 5–6. 16. Excelsior was premiered January 7, 1883, and played for three hundred consecutive performances. For a discussion of the ballet, see Pappacena, ed. Excelsior. The impact of the Eden-Théâtre’s ballets on choreography in Paris was out of proportion to the institution’s short span of operation, just under ten years. In addition, even though twenty-five ballets were staged during this time, the Eden’s most important productions were its first Italian ballets. See reviews of Eden-Théâtre productions by Edouard Noël and Edmond Stoullig originally published in Les annales du théâtre et de la musique and collected in “L’Eden-Théâtre, 1884–1893,” Bibliothèque nationale de France (hereafter cited as F-Pn), RT-2979. 17. I am using the term to refer generally to danced works that used the codified steps and poses of nineteenth-century academic ballet. 18. This differs from English music-hall ballet, which did not follow the conventions of nineteenth-century pantomime-ballet, since English theater laws prohibited the staging of narrative genres (see above). English music-hall ballet included a far broader range of dances and scenes, including music-hall turns and other acts that in France were always performed separately.

Chapter One

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1. 2.

Huysmans, “The Folies-Bergère in 1879,” 43. Ibid., 43–44. Emile Zola described the hall in similar terms for Cronaca bizantina. Zola, “Folies-Bergère.” 3. The Folies-Bergère still advertises itself as “le symbole de la vie parisienne et du plaisir à la française.” See http://www.foliesbergere.com/Du-19eme-au-21emesiecle--fid36.aspx. Accessed December 14, 2013. 4. Sallé and Chauveau, Music-hall et café-concert, 155. 5. Wild, Dictionnaire des théâtres parisiens, 9–19. 6. Héros, “Les Folies-Bergère,” 1. 7. Recueil factice de documents concernant les Folies Bergère, Collection Rondel, F-Pn 4-RO-15722 (1), 3, 5–7. The hall differed from a café-concert in that drinks had to be paid for separately, and differed from a theater because spectators could drink and smoke where they pleased. 8. Speakers included Jules Michelet and Henri Rochefort. Always filled for these events, the Folies-Bergère was granted eight months of publicity, at least in terms of name recognition. Muriand, Les Folies-Bergère, 13; and Sallé and Chauveau, Musichall et café-concert, 155. 9. M. Boislève ceded the hall to M. Duvécu in December 1870. Duvécu then ceded the bankrupt hall to Léon Sari in November 1871. Sari, formerly the director of the Délassements-Comiques, inaugurated the revamped hall on September 13, 1872. Héros, “Les Folies-Bergère,” 1. 10. So remarked a critic in 1875. See clipping from March 1875 in F-Pn 4-RO-15722 (1), 11. 11. Héros, “Les Folies-Bergère,” 1. 12. The prostitutes apparently sometimes caused disturbances by fighting among themselves. When the Isolas took over in 1901, they distributed special entrance

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14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

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22. 23.

24. 25. 26.

27.

28.

notes to pp. 9–13 cards to the most elegant prostitutes, who also had from then on to register with the police. Muriand, Les Folies-Bergère, 44. See, for example, comments in Arnold Mortier’s Les soirées parisiennes, guidebooks, and the daily press. Scenes of encounters between gentlemen and prostitutes also turn up in the illustrated press. See images in Le Journal Amusant, November 24, 1877, and December 14, 1878. Ross, Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 79. Jean-Louis Forain, in Le Monde Parisien, December 6, 1879, reproduced in Ross, Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 79. Zola, “Folies-Bergère.” Huysmans, Parisian Sketches, 34. T. J. Clark similarly notes that Maupassant saw the Folies-Bergère as an appropriate backdrop for a character sketch of two dissolute men and “trotted out the clichés with gusto.” Clark, The Painting of Modern Life, 245. Maupassant, Bel-Ami, translated by Margaret Mauldon, 12. For readings of Un bar aux Folies-Bergère that discuss the role of the barmaid and the Folies-Bergère in contemporary Parisian culture and in the public imagination, see especially Iskin, “Selling, Seduction, and Soliciting the Eye”; Ross, Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergère ; Collins, ed, 12 Views of Manet’s Bar ; Herbert, Impressionism, 79–81; and Clark, The Painting of Modern Life, 205–58. Many contemporaries took Manet’s barmaid for a prostitute, as have modern historians. See, for example, Clark’s analysis in The Painting of Modern Life, 253. See Iskin, “Selling, Seduction, and Soliciting the Eye,” 25; and Herbert, Impressionism, 80, for more on the subject. Herbert, drawing on Arnold Mortier’s account of Blanche-Rose, who worked at a Folies-Bergère bar and “smiled at Sari,” then moved her way up as an actress at the Athénée-Comique, writes that some of the barmaids were aspiring actresses or other women trying to make a living in Paris. As Herbert states, though these women did not live conventional lives and may have taken a lover, “between this and prostitution there is an enormous gap.” Herbert, Impressionism, 80. Manet’s model, Suzon, a woman who worked as a barmaid at the Folies-Bergère, apparently insisted on bringing her boyfriend to painting sessions. Iskin, “Selling, Seduction, and Soliciting the Eye,” 25. Herbert, Impressionism, 80; and Clark, The Painting of Modern Life, 244–45. After all, nothing at the young woman’s bar is for sale. The bottles of liquor are sealed and glasses are nowhere to be seen. See Ross, Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 82–84, on la dame de comptoir and her association with coquetry. Herbert, Impressionism, 309 [note 41]. Clark made a similar remark in The Painting of Modern Life, 244. Baedeker, Paris and Its Environs (1878), 56. Entrance to the hall and promenoir cost two francs. Joanne and Joanne, The Diamond Guide, 186. “Une salle très ingénieusement agencée . . . pour l’acoustique de la pantomime.” L’Eclipse, May 16, 1869. F-Pn 4-RO-15722 (1), 3. Muriand claims that Sari was aware of the acoustic deficiencies of his hall, noting that Sari dropped spoken numbers. Muriand, Les Folies-Bergère, 20. If so, it is all the more surprising that Sari wanted to present evenings of concert music in 1881. See Muriand, Les Folies-Bergère, 22–26, for descriptions of specific numbers and entertainers. See also reproductions of Folies-Bergère posters at gallica.bnf.fr (“Folies-Bergère affiche”). Folies-Bergères programs, F-Po PRO.B.169 (1876/77).

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notes to pp. 13–16 289 29. Scores for these orchestral numbers were listed on programs as being for sale at the “Comptoir de musique des Folies-Bergère.” 30. Joujoux, premiered in March 1876, was restaged as a Christmas ballet later the same year. See programs from December 27, 1876, to January 1, 1877, F-Po PRO.B.169 (1876–77). 31. Victorin de Joncières, and Ernest Guiraud were also on the committee. Héros, “Les Folies-Bergère,” F-Pn 4-RO-15722 (1), 11–12. The Folies-Bergère was renamed the Orchestre du Concert de Paris. Jann Pasler writes that Sari may have been inspired by a festival of French music held at the Hippodrome in 1878/79. As Pasler notes, orchestral concerts were growing in popularity in the 1880s and several new series were initiated in Paris. See Pasler, Composing the Citizen, 462–63, 472, and 480–81. 32. F-Pn 4-RO-15722 (1), 15–17. M. and Mme Allemand paid 252,000 francs for the hall. The annual rent for the hall, which belonged to the Hospice des QuinzeVingts, was then 72,000 francs. Charles, Cent ans de music-hall, 157. 33. Édouard Marchand had recently married the niece of the Allemands. The Allemands also bought the Eldorado in 1887 and left it to Marchand to run. 34. The superlatives appear with increasing frequency in Le Figaro reviews from the 1890s signed Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre and Un Monsieur du Balcon. 35. As noted earlier, prostitutes continued to have access to clients in the halls of the Folies-Bergère throughout Marchand’s term while the Isolas limited access to the prettiest and most discreet prostitutes. Paul Derval opted to remove the prostitutes from the hall entirely when he took over the directorship. Muriand, Les FoliesBergère, 44. 36. According to Emile Blavet, Marchand replaced the last of the gas lamps with electrical fixtures in 1890. Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, [Le roi s’ennuie], La Soirée Théâtrale, Le Figaro, September 14, 1890. 37. L. R.-M., “Folies-Bergère,” clipping in F-Pn 4-RO-15722 (1), 19. Marchand also installed fans in the ceiling to help regulate the temperature. 38. Muriand, Les Folies-Bergère, 16. 39. Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, La Soirée Théâtrale, Le Figaro, September 15, 1893. The theater critic for Gil Blas provided a similar description in a review of the hall’s opening. Asmodée, “Aux Folies-Bergère,” Gil Blas, September 16, 1893. 40. “Les cafés-concerts et music-halls, Folies-Bergère,” in Guide des plaisirs à Paris (1900), 50–51. The author goes on at length about the women roaming the halls. 41. In the 1890s, theatrical entertainments were occasionally replaced by boxing tournaments, both with humans and with kangaroos. See reports of the tournament between black champion Peter Jackson and Welsh champion David Saint John in Le Figaro’s theatrical listings in the spring of 1894. 42. Many of the incidental dance tunes played by the music-hall orchestra were composed by the hall’s conductor and by composers of popular ballets or pantomimes. Louis Desormes and Louis Ganne regularly apppear on Folies-Bergère programs, as does Paul Linke in the last years of the century. Other composers advertised in the 1890s include Johann Strauss, Ch. Dubois, Fahrbach, Cayrou, P. Monteux, R. Sigaloff, Gangloff, Fournier, L. Jacket, Hambourg, Laporte, E. Broustet, Suppé, Courtois, J. Focheux, H. Rosès, H. José, Manotte, L. Halet, G. Goublier, Eilemberg, L. Mège, Lafitte, and Coquelet. 43. Muriand’s picture-book survey provides long lists of the legendary acts that Marchand brought to the hall during his directorship. Muriand, Les Folies-Bergère,

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45. 46.

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51. 52.

53. 54. 55.

notes to pp. 16–20 19–34. See also “Affiches Folies-Bergère” at gallica.bnf.fr for posters advertising the hall’s attractions. Examples of these include Sam Lockart’s (1889) and later Géo Lockart’s (1895) elephants, Nala Damajanti and her snakes (1890), Douroff and his rats (1893), Jane Derval and her pig (1899), and Marvelle’s performing cats (1890). Ibid., 22. Sallé and Chauveau, Music-hall et café-concert, 155. These women were remembered by audiences more for their beauty and personalities than for their performances. For a glimpse into their colorful world, see the popolar biography of Otéro. Figuero and Carbonel, La véritable biographie de La Belle Otéro, 183–91. Lista, Loïe Fuller, 25. See also Kermode, “Poet and Dancer Before Diaghilev,” 145– 60; Current and Current, Loie Fuller: Goddess of Light ; Albright, Traces of Light ; and Garelick, Electric Salome. Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, La Soirée Théâtrale, Le Figaro, May 29, 1889. Advertisements in the theatrical columns periodically announced new acts or attractions, and reviews occasionally focused on acts, though these write-ups tended to be short. See, for example, Abel Mercklein’s column in Le Figaro, 4 May 1898, in which he details the new numbers added to the Folies-Bergère’s program but says nothing about the two ballets still featured: Rêve d’Elias and Diamant. Reviews of ballet premieres also frequently devoted a portion of the column to the short acts that were presented the same night. See for example Muriand, Les Folies-Bergère ; Castle, Les Folies-Bergère ; Derval, FoliesBergère ; Pessis and Crepineau, Les Folies-Bergère ; and Verheggen, Les Folies-Bergère. Although ballets were the mainstay of the Folies-Bergère’s programs in the 1890s, the hall occasionally presented important pantomimes as the evening’s theatrical entertainment. Catulle Mendès’s wildly successful pantomime Chand d’habits (1896) was the hall’s main entertainment for three months without an accompanying ballet production. It was periodically restaged at the Folies-Bergère until 1907. Chand d’habits featured a significant ballet divertissement choreographed by Mme Mariquita and performed by the hall’s ballet corps and current star (including the Opéra’s Jeanne Chasles in 1900 and 1906). See programs in F-Pn WNA-214 (1896– 97) and 8-RO-11378. It was staged at several other theaters through the 1920s, including the Funambules (1898), F-Pn 8-RO-11379; the Ministère du Commerce (1900), F-Pn 8-RO-11380; the Olympia (1920), F-Pn 8-RO-11382; the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (1921), F-Pn 8-RO-11383; and the Théâtre de la Gaîté-Lyrique (1922), F-Pn 8-RO-11385. Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, La Soirée Théâtrale, Le Figaro, November 8, 1890. In March 1892, the Folies-Bergère presented three ballets on the same program: Rêve d’or, Le miroir, and Les chansons. The program featured only six short acts, four to begin the show and two sandwiched between Le miroir, and Les chansons. FoliesBergère program, March 1, 1892, in F-Pn 4-RO-15722 (2), 10. Bibliothèque de la Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques, Paris, France (hereafter cited as F-Psc), Registres-recensement, Folies-Bergère. Les Folies Parisiennes had a run of five months in 1892, an unprecedented length for any Folies-Bergère production. Cléo de Mérode claims to have been surprised by Marchand’s invitation to create a lead ballerina role for a major new ballet at the Folies-Bergère, which she says she thought was a venue for exotic dancing. Mérode, Le ballet de ma vie, 236–40. She

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56. 57.

58.

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60. 61.

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62. 63. 64.

65.

66. 67. 68. 69.

had, however, already created the lead role in Phryné at the Royan Casino, and was always easily drawn away from the Opéra if offered a lucrative contract elsewhere. Mérode twice made the front page of the Gil Blas during performances of Lorenza. The Isola brothers had appeared at the Folies-Bergère as magicians in 1886. They paid 700,000 francs for the music hall, a relatively low price for the building because there were only three years left on its lease. They were able to renew it with a raise in rent from 78,000 francs per year to 120,000 per year. Charles, Cent ans de music-hall, 162. Marchand had produced the first revue, Place au jeûne, in 1886. He had the idea of linking attractions and ballet to create one long uninterrupted show. Place au jeûne featured a contemporary Parisian setting and drew on current affairs. It was far from a triumph, but it sowed the seeds for future shows of the same nature. Muriand, Les Folies-Bergère, 50. The Isolas’ revues, all titled La revue des Folies-Bergère and all produced by Victor de Cottens, consisted of various tableaux linked together by a commère and compère—presenters who announced the new acts. Muriand, Les Folies-Bergère, 51. One revue from 1902 included a tableau depicting a strike of Opéra ballerinas that required replacing dancers with policemen in tutus. Ibid., 52. The SACD’s box-office registers show an increasing discrepancy in box-office earnings between ballets and revues. Although the ballets brought in very high profits, the revues did even better and did so for up to six months, thus amortising production costs to an even greater extent than did the ballets. F-Psc, Registres-recensement, Folies-Bergère. See programs in F-Pn 4-RO-15722 (6–13). See theater listings in April and September in Le Gaulois and Le Figaro and programs in F-Pn 4-RO-15722 (6–9, 10–13). Robert Quinault of the Opéra-Comique usually performed as the star male dancer when a Folies-Bergère revue called for classical dance with partnering. See programs in F-Pn 4-RO-15722 (6–13). All three productions of La fée des poupées had different choreographers. See appendix A. The Isolas ceded the directorship of the Folies-Bergère to Paul Ruez in June of 1905, but kept ownership and required an annual payment. Ruez remained only two years. The Isola brothers kept a hand in the affairs of the Folies-Bergère until 1913, when they took over the directorship of the Opéra-Comique. Muriand, Les Folies-Bergère, 55–58. Clément Bannel and Jacques Charles hired Paul Louis Flers to create their revues. Always as light in tone, Flers’s revues were more satirical and less vulgar than those of the Isolas. They were also more and more luxurious, with eight hundred costumes and dozens of tableaux. Scenes were altered every few months to keep the interest of returning patrons (by the end of the run, each revue would be substantially different from its original form). Ibid., 56, 58. Ibid., 73. These are the revues that inspired Florenz Ziegfeld. Even the Moulin Rouge sometimes staged ballet on its outdoor stage. The hall was created on the site of the former skating hall of the rue Blanche. Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, La Soirée Théâtrale—Au Casino de Paris, Le Figaro, October 19, 1890. See also R. d’A, Le Casino de Paris, October 5, 1890, clipping in F-Pn 4-RO-15700 (1), 9.

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notes to pp. 22–25

70. Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, La Soirée Théâtrale—Au Casino de Paris, Le Figaro, October 19, 1890. This was presumably what became the Nouveau-Théâtre stage and auditorium. While it is possible that the Casino de Paris could have accommodated this many people in its first year, box-office earnings imply a slightly lower attendance even on busy Saturday evenings. With the exception of the hall’s gala opening night, which brought in 11,849 francs, nightly earnings rarely exceeded the 6,000-franc mark and sometimes brought in no more than 3,000 francs. Since one could enter the hall for two francs and get a seat in the theater for three to four francs, it is unlikely that the hall ever admitted more than 3,000 on any given evening even if all came only to wander the promenoir and never entered the theater. Box-office receipts for the Casino are considerably lower after 1891. F-Psc, Registres-recensement, Casino de Paris. 71. Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, La Soirée Théâtrale—Au Casino de Paris, Le Figaro, October 19, 1890. 72. Sallé and Chauveau, Music-hall et café-concert, 131. 73. Le Rideau de Fer, Concerts—Casino de Paris, Le Courrier Français, September 25, 1892. 74. The Nouveau-Théâtre opened as an annex to the Casino’s Salle de bal et café-concert on October 17, 1891. Wild, Catalogue de l’Opéra II, 237–38. 75. Guide des plaisirs à Paris (1900), 53. Jules Bois described the hall in similar terms for Le Courrier Français. Jules Bois, Casino de Paris, Le Courrier Français, October 25, 1891. 76. Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, La Soirée Théâtrale, Le Figaro, October 19, 1890. 77. Sallé and Chauveau, Music-hall et café-concert, 131; and Latour and Claval, eds., Les théâtres de Paris, 246. The Folies-Bergère had wings, but these were so constricting that Chassaigne de Néronde marvelled at the hall’s ability to stage ballets with multiple changes of décor and large casts. Néronde, “Un Music-hall derrière le rideau.” 78. One critic remarked that the singing in Louis Ganne’s ballet L’heureuse rencontre was lovely, but one could only hear it if near the stage. Le Rideau de Fer, Concerts— Casino de Paris, Le Courrier Français, September 25, 1892. 79. Jules Bois, Casino de Paris, Le Courrier Français, October 11, 1891. 80. Programs in F-Pn 4-RO-15700. 81. Times were advertised on the program. Ibid. 82. Casino program, La fin d’un monde, F-Pn 8-RO-11483. 83. Although I have located the performance registers of both establishments in the archives of the Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques, the two books were mislabeled and a few works that were definitely performed at the NouveauThéâtre appear among others definitely performed at the Casino. The two books are probably simply reversed from 1893 on, but since a few programs cross-list certain works, some questions remain. 84. Program for Casino de Paris Salle du Nouveau Théâtre [Vassilissa], F-Pn 8-RO11065; and program for Casino de Paris [Vassilissa], Bibliothèque-Musée de l’Opéra, Paris, France (hereafter cited as F-Po) PRO.B. 62. Vassilissa may have been performed at the Nouveau-Théâtre as part of the Casino’s programming as if the two were once more a single venue. One critic complained after the premiere of Vassilissa that the Nouveau-Théâtre was taking a step backward by presenting a ballet worthy of music-hall entertainment and not what he considered the more artistic productions by composers such as Pugno, Pierné, Messager, Street, and Thomé

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usually staged at the theater. Paul-Emile Chevalier, Semaine Théâtrale, Le Ménestrel, September 15, 1895. The libretto was written by Maurice Lefèvre and Henri Vaugneux, and the choreographer was Carlo Coppi. Louis Ganne conducted the performances of Scaramouche, premiered October 17, 1891. André Messager and Georges Street, Scaramouche (Paris: Enoch, 1890); and Casino, Nouveau-Théâtre [Scaramouche], program, F-Pn 8-RO-10951. The critic for Le Petit Journal, Pédrille, describes the work as a fantaisie à spectacle. Paris au Théâtre, Le Petit Journal, January 4, 1893. The SACD catalogues list it as a fantaisie-ballet. The presence of solo singing, spoken roles, and chorus were too great a departure from ballet’s traditional format for this designation to be accurate, but ballet-divertissements did make up half of the work’s total length. The ballets were choreographed by Rossi and the danseuse étoile was Mlle G. Enriu, a ballerina who starred in several Nouveau-Théâtre divertissements and pantomimeballets. One of the ballets was designed to showcase new lighting equipment operated by Loie Fuller. Shifting colored lights obscured entrances and exits so that dancers appeared and disappeared as if by magic. Casino de Paris program [Le Capitaine Charlotte], Matinée, January 25, 1891, F-Pn 8-RO-10797. For example, Messager’s operetta Miss Dollar (1893) included a two-tableaux ballet, and André Wormser’s pièce lyrique (or fantaisie exotique), Le dragon vert, had a ballet by Rossi in the fourth tableau titled La fête du dragon vert. See theatrical listings in L’Entr’acte (1893–94). The divertissements in Nouveau-Théâtre productions were danced by Casino dancers and choreographed by the Casino’s resident ballet master. Borney and Desprez handed over management of the hall to Jules Chancel in 1905 after the building’s owner, Alfred Edwards, allowed Réjane to take over part of the Casino in order to expand the Nouveau-Théâtre (which became the Théâtre Réjane). The hall then cycled through several directors in one decade: G. Zittel, L. Vidal, Albert Cailar, and Rougé and Guy Dumas. The Casino did not come into its own until after WWI under the direction of Léon Volterra and Jacques Charles when it became famous for revues. See clippings and programs in F-Pn 4-RO-15700 (1). Oller had previously created a hall called Les Fantaisies Oller, which he turned into a theater in 1878 under the name Les Nouveautés (it later moved to the rue des Italiens). Sallé and Chauveau, Music-hall et café-concert, 170. He also created a wax museum, the Musée Oller, in the basement of the Olympia. Charles, Cent ans de music-hall, 173. “L’Olympia,” in Guide des plaisirs à Paris (1900), 55–56. Oller had brought the Montagnes Russes over from England in 1888. The roller coasters were built entirely of wood and were deemed a fire hazard by the préfecture de police in 1892. Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, La Soirée Théâtrale—Olympia, Le Figaro, April 12, 1893. Ibid. According to Blavet, each chandelier produced as much light as the lone chandelier at the Opéra. Blavet tended to hyperbolize in his reviews of music-hall activities. According to Sallé and Chauveau, the Olympia’s theater had 2,000 seats. Sallé and Chauveau, Music-hall et café-concert, 170.

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notes to pp. 28–30

95. Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, La Soirée Théâtrale—Olympia, Le Figaro, April 12, 1893. See also E. D.-H. [Émile Duret-Hostein], Courrier des Théâtres,” La Presse, April 13, 1893: “The true curiosity was the hall itself, marvelously decorated and lit up with thousands of lights like a fairy palace.” 96. Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, La Soirée Théâtrale, Le Figaro, April 12, 1893. 97. Ibid. The review echoes another written by Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre about his first evening at the Folies-Bergère in 1888 in which he went on at length about all of the “liberties” to be enjoyed at the hall. “Aux Folies-Bergère,” Le Figaro, October 19, 1888. 98. The hall did present curiosities such as the lady with the iron jaw, but these were rare. 99. Two Olympia programs from 1896 and 1897, for instance, featured the operetta Tante Agnès (1897) and the pantomime-operetta Un mariage au violon (1897), both of which had ballet-divertissements. The hall staged various other genres in the 1890s, including mimodramas and at least one zarzuela. 100. This pantomime, which showcased the beautiful mime Louise Willy in various stages of undress, was one of a series of striptease pantomimes with titles such as La puce, Le coucher d’Yvette, Le coucher de la mariée, and Le réveil de la mariée. 101. Feschotte, Histoire du music-hall, 110. 102. It may also have slipped in popularity. Admission prices dipped in 1896. Programs in 4-RO-15747. 103. Sallé and Chauveau, Music-hall et café-concert, 171. They also bought the Gaîté-Lyrique. 104. The Isolas and Ruez greatly expanded the range of theatrical works on offer. Between 1902 and 1908, they staged an American operetta, a Viennese operetta, a fantaisie-bouffe, and several “pièces.” Programs in F-Pn 4-RO-15747 (4–9). Box-office earnings were roughly comparable for all theatrical works staged by the Olympia, including ballets. F-Psc, Registres-recensement, Olympia. 105. The most conspicuous change in ballet staging practices at the Olympia in the 1900s was the sudden shift to presenting productions premiered in English halls. 106. Programs in F-Pn 4-RO-15747 (10–11). Napierkowska, then dancing at the Opéra, performed the lead danced role in the féerie-revue titled 1909! Des femmes, rien que des femmes accompanied by the Olympia’s ballet corps. F-Po PRO.B.275. Trouhanova also appeared in a series of dance galas held at the Folies-Bergère during the summer of 1911. “Aux Folies-Bergère,” Le Figaro, June 6, 1912. Trouhanova danced to Chopin, Weber, and Grieg. See also Garafola, “Soloists Abroad,” 155–56. 107. Programs in F-Pn 4-RO-15747 (8). 108. Ruez was simultaneously the director of the Folies-Bergère and the Olympia. See programs in F-Pn 4-RO-15747. 109. Cottens and Marinelli paid so little attention to ballet that their programs routinely lacked either the name of the ballet’s choreographer or the name of its composer. 110. The Parisian version of Papillon d’or seems to have been a new production by Curti, but he drew heavily on plot elements of the English version. Thanks to Jane Pritchard for sending me information about Lanner and Wenzel’s 1901 production. 111. Jacques Charles became the hall’s director in 1911, Raphaël Beretta in 1915, and Paul Franck 1918. See programs in F-Pn 4-RO-15747; and Gustave Fréjaville, “Histoire de l’Olympia,” Comœdia, 5 June 1929. 112. In 1917, the Olympia restaged Les charmeuses, a ballet by Jean Richepin, Paul de Choudens, and Paul Vidal first created in 1913 in Algiers. In 1918 the hall staged a

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notes to pp. 30–36 295 last ballet, Idylle dans les blés, by Louis Lemarchand with music by F. Rouget. These are the last two ballets staged by the Olympia listed in the SACD catalogues.

Chapter Two 1.

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As Steven Huebner points out, the category of “bourgeoisie” is notoriously variegated and unstable, and includes people from a broad range of socioeconomic backgrounds. Huebner, “Opera Audiences in Paris, 1830–1870,” 206. The Folies-Bergère was situated in the relatively affluent ninth arrondissement, and although tucked away on the rue Richer, it was only a five-minute walk from the boulevard Montmartre. It was also for its first two years near the Opéra on the rue Le Peletier, and until 1911, around the corner from the Conservatoire de musique et de declamation on the rue Bergère. For a history of the area, see Roy, Mémoire des rues ; Junot and Andia, eds, Le 9 e Arrondissement; and Van Deputte, Vie et histoire du IXe arrondissement. Manet included portraits in the Folies-Bergère audience of Méry Laurent (wearing yellow gloves, resting her elbows on the railing) and Jeanne de Marsy (above Méry to the right in a yellow dress and black hat), glamorous demi-mondaines who belonged to Manet’s circle. Gaston La Touche, a painter and dandy, sits to Méry’s left. Henri Dupray, a military painter, appears at the very back. Ross, Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 8–9. See, for example, two prints titled Les Folies-Bergère, 1880, reproduced in Faxon, Jean-Louis Forain, 89–90. See also Forain’s painting Le bar aux Folies-Bergère, a source of inspiration for Manet’s painting of the same name, reproduced in Jean-Louis Forain: La comédie parisienne, 47; and Browse, Forain the Painter, 24, 118. See also Jules Chéret’s poster from 1879, reproduced in Broido, The Posters of Jules Chéret, 9 (fig. 31, no. 105). A poster printed by Charles Lévy that is strikingly similar to the postcard and Chéret poster offers an almost identical portrayal of the hall’s patrons. See Parisenimages.fr, Musée Carnavalet/Roger-Viollet, image number 41239-8. For an interesting discussion of the meaning and morals behind Forain’s paintings of Opéra dancers, see Dixon, “Forain: Narrative Meanings and Moral Implications,” 26–33. Lévy’s poster does not present a view of a hyper-sexualized music hall. No one is flirting with the barmaids, who are occupied with pouring a drink, and the blurred background of the parterre and balcony is dotted with top hats and elegant headdresses, suggesting the presence of numerous couples. Even the vignette that depicts the promenoir is devoid of sexual content: a gentleman holds the arm of an elegantly dressed lady while others wander the halls alone. Maupassant, Bel-Ami, trans. Henderson et al., 13. See also Maupassant, Bel-Ami, trans. Mauldon, 13, for a more colloquial translation. Zola, “Folies-Bergère.” Zola began his front-page column with a more general statement about the audience: “Il existe à Paris un endroit bizarre, exquis, fort peu orthodoxe, moitié café, moitié théâtre, parisien au possible, fort recherché par les provinciaux et les étrangers. Cet endroit s’appelle les Folies-Bergère. Là, une foule se réunit chaque soir; quand je dis une foule, c’est une cohue que je devrais dire. Elle se compose du public qui s’amuse, ou mieux encore du public qui a la

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11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

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notes to pp. 36–41 prétention de s’amuser, c’est-a-dire de ce groupe énorme, blasé, pincé, noceur, rarement jovial, que l’on rencontre depuis une dizaine d’années partout où il est bon goût de se trouver.” See Mortier, Les soirées parisiennes (1882), 8: 193–95, for a description of the crowd that attended the inaugural performance. Mortier considered it a mismatch for the serious music presented. The series was organized by a committee that included Charles Gounod, Jules Massenet, Camille Saint-Saëns, Léo Delibes, Victorin de Joncières, and Ernest Guiraud (see chapter 1). “Nouvelles diverses—Paris et départements—Concerts et soirées,” Le Ménestrel, May 1, 1881. Ibid., May 22, 1881. Ibid., June 5, 1881. Emile Blavet wrote under the name Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre in the early to mid-1890s. Noël and Stoullig, Les annales du théâtre et de la musique (1893), 522. Blavet specified the presence of Meilhac three times. See Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, [Une répétition aux Folies-Bergère], La Soirée Théâtrale, Le Figaro, November 8, 1890; Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, [L’arc-en-Ciel], La Soirée Théâtrale, Le Figaro, September 15, 1893; and Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, [Le roi s’ennuie], La Soirée Théâtrale, Le Figaro, September 14, 1890. Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, [L’arc-en-ciel], La Soirée Théâtrale, Le Figaro, September 15, 1893. Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, [Les demoiselles du XXe siècle], La Soirée Théâtrale, Le Figaro, September 16, 1894. Blavet goes on to remark that the most select day of all was the season opening. Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, [Les Folies Parisiennes], Courrier des Théâtres, Le Figaro, November 17, 1892. Adrien Vély, [L’araignée d’or], Soirée Parisienne, Le Gaulois, May 8, 1896. Un Monsieur du Balcon, [L’araignée d’or], Concerts et Spectacles, Le Figaro, May 8, 1896. Strapontin, “Les grandes courtisanes,” Paris la Nuit—Aux Folies-Bergère, Gil Blas, May 15, 1899. Punctuation as in original. Un Monsieur du Balcon, “Lorenza,” Spectacles et Concerts, Le Figaro, November 5, 1901. Punctuation as in original. Yvette, “La réouverture des Folies-Bergère: Stella.” Comœdia, September 2, 1911. Critics stopped listing names of individual patrons around 1900, but they continued to describe the audience of Folies-Bergère premieres as “supremely elegant” or “ultra-select” for another decade. Maupassant, Bel-Ami, trans. Henderson et al., 13. Baedeker, Paris and Its Environs (1910), 42. The Folies-Bergère is almost always mentioned in guidebooks from the 1870s, but only to provide the address, hours, and general price of admission, and to inform tourists that drinks must be purchased separately. See, for example, Donville, Guide complet de l’étranger dans Paris; Nouveau guide pratique dans Paris; and Joanne and Joanne, The Diamond Guide. See Weber, “A Wealth of Tongues,” 67–94. Manet’s inclusion of Bass beer on the counter in Un bar aux Folies-Bergère might have been intended as a signal of cosmopolitanism or a reference to consumer culture, or it might have signaled the presence of English tourists.

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notes to pp. 41–43 297 29. The Folies-Bergère normally closed for the summer, but it remained open during the summer of 1900 for the Paris Exposition. Box-office receipts rose sharply during the summer months, confirming that the hall had by then become an essential stop for tourists. F-Psc, Registres-recensement, Folies-Bergère, 1886–1917. 30. Information about the Folies-Bergère is included in all French, English, and American guidebooks with chapters on Parisian theaters or entertainment venues, and it is frequently warmly recommended (the Folies-Bergère, along with the Olympia, the Folies-Marigny, and, on occasion, the Casino de Paris, are interchangeably included under the headings theater, café-concert, music-hall, or circus). See guidebooks listed in the bibliography, including MacQuoid and MacQuoid, In Paris, 83; Conty’s Practical Guides (1898 and 1911); and Guide des plaisirs à Paris (1900), 50. There are also references to Parisian music halls in English newspapers. 31. Joanne, Paris, 385. 32. La gazette des femmes, revue du progrès des femmes dans les beaux-arts et la littérature, l’enseignement et la charité, la musique et le théâtre, 1877–82. 33. The presence of prostitutes must have discouraged some women from attending music-hall performances. After the opening of the Casino de Paris, one theater critic quipped that it would have been desirable to make available a second entrance for women and children that bypassed the promenoir. Jules Bois, Le Casino de Paris, Le Courrier Français, October 26, 1892. Marchand’s practical and financially advantageous solution at the Folies-Bergère was to institute matinées held every Thursday and Sunday afternoon. 34. Abbot, A Woman’s Paris, 113–14. 35. Although “particular French ladies do not go to the cafés chantants, . . . Americans go a great deal.” Ibid. 36. Ibid., 123–24. A guide to the different educational institutions of Paris published in 1898, which includes a few pages at the back with lists of ministries, embassies, libraries, museums, and theaters, provides the following cautionary note for women students at the bottom of a list of entertainment establishements: “We believe it our duty to mark with an asterisk the venues that we advise ladies not to attend.” Those marked with an asterisk include the Folies-Bergère, the Olympia, and the Casino de Paris. Guide de l’étudiant étranger, universités, écoles nationales, institutions libres, 1898, 94. 37. Manet, Growing Up with the Impressionists, 119. She would have seen the ballet Sports. Manet comments that these families would probably not show their children paintings of naked women, yet had no qualms about seeing “frightful women with plunging necklines, tightly laced waists, and skimpy pantaloons.” She was also disgusted by how smoky the hall was. 38. Although the Olympia is not systematically listed in tourism guidebooks, tourists are sometimes mentioned in reviews. See, for example, Un Monsieur du Balcon, [Les sept péchés capitaux], Spectacles et Concerts, Le Figaro, January 29, 1899. In July 1895, programs for the Olympia included the English translation of the title Le coucher de la mariée below the French. F-Pn 4-RO-15747 (2–6). Wealthy tourists may also have wandered in from hotels on the boulevards, which were among the most expensive in the city. See the appendix of hotels in Conty’s Practical Guide to Paris (1911), 3–6. Beginning in the early 1900s, the Olympia acknowledged the importance of tourists by publishing synopses of revues and ballets in English and German as well as in French.

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39. Frimousse [Raoul Toché], “Olympia,” La Soirée Parisienne, Le Gaulois, April 12, 1893. 40. Richard O’Monroy [Richard de l’Isle de Falcon de Saint-Geniès], La Soirée Parisienne—À l’Olympia, Gil Blas, April 14, 1893. Punctuation as in original. 41. O. S., [Rêve de Noël], Premières Représentations—À l’Olympia, Gil Blas, December 5, 1896. 42. See, for example, Calchas, Courrier des Théâters, La Presse, June 9, 1893; Adrien Vély, “Soirée parisienne—Barbe-Bleue à l’Olympia,” La Soirée Parisienne, Le Gaulois, May 14, 1898; Un Monsieur du Balcon, [Watteau], Spectacles et Concerts, Le Figaro, October 9, 1900; and Un Monsieur du Balcon, [L’impératrice], Spectacles et Concerts, Le Figaro, April 7, 1901. 43. High society could pay to reserve seats ahead of time. Box-office receipts were always highest for the first two to three nights, confirming that people who wanted to be “in the know” reserved seats and rushed to see the newest ballet at the beginning of its run. F-Psc, Registres-recensement, Folies-Bergère, 1886–1917; Registres-recensement, Olympia, 1893–1913; and Registres-recensement, Casino de Paris, 1890–1914. 44. Un Monsieur du Balcon stops listing the names of individual patrons in Le Figaro reviews in the early 1900s, though he continues to stress the presence of socialites and celebrities for season openings. 45. Whether the decision to insert the couple in the foreground of both photographs was made for formal reasons or to establish the “high-class” tone of the halls remains a mystery. 46. The price of coat checks in the theaters is mentioned in Joanne, Paris, 38, and Baedeker, Paris and Its Environs (1910), 386. 47. The commercial nature of music-hall entertainment is reflected in advertisements for high-end goods and services, along with a few household items: Grand Marnier, pianos à bord, desserts (Supreme Pernot), cough medication, jewelry (sales, purchases, rentals), perfume, hats, fine liqueurs, high-end restaurants, chocolates, underclothing, and cars. See, for example, Olympia program, June 5, 1899, F-Pn 8-RO-10909. 48. Programs sometimes include the prices of drinks. See for example, the Olympia program for November 26, 1893, F-Pn 8-RO-10947. 49. The Faubourg de la Chaussée d’Antin had been a choice location for the grande bourgeoisie for half a century. See Ratchiffe and Piette, Vivre la ville, les classes populaires à Paris, 312–13. 50. Despite its proximity to the Gare Saint-Lazare, the Casino may not have drawn as many tourists as the Folies-Bergère and Olympia. Tourists are not mentioned in Casino reviews and guidebooks did not always cite the Casino even when they provided information about the Folies-Bergère and Olympia. 51. Newspapers almost always carried at least a skeletal outline of the evening programs of the Folies-Bergère and the Olympia in theatrical columns, but not necessarily those of the Casino. 52. Pédrille [Vaslin], [Vassilissa], Paris au Théâtre, Le Petit Journal, September 14, 1895. 53. Strapontin, Au Casino de Paris, Gil Blas, December 24, 1896. 54. See, for example, reviews by Adrien Vély, [Vassilissa], Courrier des Spectacle, Le Gaulois, September 15, 1895, and [Vénus à Paris], Courrier des Spectacles, Le Gaulois, September 10, 1896. 55. Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, [Vassilissa], La Soirée Théâtrale, Le Figaro, September 14, 1895; Un Monsieur du Balcon, [Vénus à Paris], La Soirée Théâtrale, Le Figaro,

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September 10, 1896; and Un Monsieur du Balcon, [Don Juan aux enfers], La Soirée Théâtrale, Le Figaro, November 30, 1897. See, for example, Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, [L’enlèvement des Sabines],” Spectacles et Concerts, Le Figaro, September 16, 1898, and Abel Mercklein, [Prince Désir], Spectacles et Concerts, Le Figaro, November 12, 1899. Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre was likely Jules Huret in the late 1890s. It is not clear who Un Monsieur du Balcon was, but it may have been Georges Boyer or Jules Huret. Le Petit Journal did, however, print short notices of upcoming or ongoing FoliesBergère programs, including for new ballets. Another illustration in Delsol of the Folies-Bergère promenoir depicts an audience almost identical to the one of the Casino. Delsol, Paris-Cythère, 211. As Edmée Lescot sang in the early 1890s: “Au Casino de Paris / Les femmes et leurs maris / Prenn’nt pour entrer le dimanche / Par la ru’ Blanche. Quand il vient dans la semaine / De ses devoirs affranchi / Carrément le mari s’amène / Par la ru’ d’Clichy.” (On Sundays at the Paris Casino, women and their husbands enter by the rue Blanche. On weekdays, husbands enter straight through the rue de Clichy.) Delsol, Paris-Cythère, 9–10. Although physically connected, the Casino de Paris and the Nouveau-Théâtre do not seem to have shared the same audience. Le Rideau de Fer, “Concerts: Casino de Paris,” Le Courrier Français, September 25, 1892. Italics in the original. Clipping from an 1875 guidebook filed in F-Pn (photo-estampes), Va. 286 (13), H71011. See salaries of various types of workers in Chevallier, Les salaires au XIXe siècle, 36, 42–44, 47, 51, 69. In 1881, an unskilled laborer made on average 3.50 francs per day. Most skilled laborers in the bourgeoning construction industry made approximately 7 F per day, as did bakers and printers. Women laborers (laundresses, florists, seamstresses) made on average 3 F per day. An unmarried worker in 1883 spent 850–1,200 F a year on basic necessities, including lodging, food, clothing, and incidental expenses. With a wife and one child, basic necessities required an annual salary of 2,200 a year, or 6 F a day. Chevallier, Les Salaires au XIXe siècle, 124. According to Fabrice Laroulandie, masons in the 1890s earned 7 F per day, carpenters 8 F, and tailors and cobblers 7 F. Laroulandie, Les Ouvriers de Paris au XIXe siècle, 88–89. All who attended the Folies-Bergère probably had at least one drink, and those with theater tickets might also have checked their coats and bought a program. F-Pn 4-RO-15722 (2), Folies-Bergère programs, April 25, 1890. Avant-scène (5 pl), 25 F; loge de rez-de-chaussée (4 pl), 20 F; loge de galerie (4 pl), 12 F; fauteuil d’orchestre, 3 F; promenoir, 2 F. One could call ahead for reservations. See also F-Pn WNA-214 (1891–92), program, December 12, 1891 (same prices). F-Pn WNA-214 (1893–94), Folies-Bergère program, March 28, 1894. Avant-scène (5 pl.), 30 F; avant-scène de galerie et loges A et B (6 pl.), 36 F; loge de rez-de-chaussée (4 pl.), 24 F; loge d’amphithéâtre de face (4 pl.), 20 F; fauteuil d’orchestre, 4 F.; fauteuil d’amphitéâtre de face, 4 F; loge de galerie de côté (4 pl.), 16 F; fauteuil de galerie, 3 F; stalle d’orchestre, 3 F; promenoir, 2 F. All seats cost 50 centimes to 1 franc more if reserved ahead of time. F-Pn WNA-214 (1900–1901), Folies-Bergère program, May 2, 1901. Avant-Scène, 40 F; loge, 30 F; fauteuil 1er rang, 6 F; fauteuil d’orchestre autres rangs, 5 F; fauteuil de

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notes to pp. 52–54 face, 4 F; fauteuil de balcon de côté, 3 F; promenoir, 2 F. Entrance to the promenoir rose to 3 F by 1906. Guide des plaisirs de Paris (1906), 98. F-Pn 8-RO-10947, Olympia program, November 26, 1893. On regular days: avantscène, 6 F; loges, 5 F; fauteuil, 5 F; stalles, 3 F; loge 1re étage, 3 F; promenoir, 2 F. On Thursdays: avant-scène, 7 F; loges, 6 F; fauteuil, 6 F; stalles, 4 F; loge 1re étage, 4 F; promenoir, 3 F. For matinées: avant-scène, 4 F; loges, 3 F; fauteuil, 3 F; stalles, 2 F; loge 1re étage, 2 F; promenoir, 1 F. All tickets cost 1–2 francs more if purchased in advance. Prices at the Olympia fluctuated considerably from year to year. In 1894, the most expensive seats cost 10 francs (F-Po PRO.B.275, Olympia program, October 1894), but this was lowered to 8 in 1895 with most seats in the 3- to 5-franc range (F-Pn 8-RO-11066, Olympia program, December 1895). Entrance to the promenoir normally cost 2 francs, but the price was briefly lowered to 1 franc in 1895/96, then raised again. Programs sometimes advertise the possibility of a subscription to the Olympia, but no mention is made of the cost. By 1906, all categories had risen 1 franc, including the promenoir. Guide des plaisirs de Paris (1906), 102. Entrance to the promenoir cost one franc for matinées. Music-hall tickets at the highest end of the price spectrum remained accessible in comparison to major theaters. Two-franc tickets that allowed entrance into social spaces and the cheapest three-franc seats at the far reaches of the auditorium were more expensive than the cheapest seats in most of the city’s established theaters. The cheapest tickets (without sightlines) in the highest balcony of the Opéra cost 2 F, and most mainstream theaters, including the Opéra-Comique, Porte-Saint-Martin, Châtelet, and Gaîté, had tickets available for 1 F. The Opéra charged up to 17 F for the choicest seats, and the most expensive tickets for the theaters mentioned above ranged between 9 and 14 F (most seats at the OpéraComique, Porte-Saint-Martin, Châtelet, and Gaité ranged between 5 and 8 F, roughly on par with the best music-hall tickets). The Eldorado and Scala—two high-end café-concerts—offered seats starting at 1.5 F and 2 F up to 4 and 5 F. Mobisson and Bonnefous, L’album-guide parisien pour l’exposition universelle de 1889, 6, 126, 138, 140, 144, 158. The Folies-Bergère’s prices increased far more through the 1890s than did those of the Casino. Baedeker, Paris and Its Environs (1900), 36. Casino prices rose slightly by 1906: fauteuils, 4 F and 5 F; loges, 6 F; promenoir, 3 F. The select day was Friday. Entrance for matinées was 1 F. Guide des plaisirs de Paris (1906), 96. The Casino opened its doors at 8:00 p.m., but the show started only at 8:15 or 8:30. The curtain fell at 10:00, 10:30, or 11:00. See F-Pn 15700 (3), Casino programs. Those coming in from the Nouveau-Théâtre did not have to pay at all. These combined factors may explain the Casino’s comparatively low box-office returns throughout the 1890s. Gendron, Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club, 48. For a look at the use of high culture diluted for mass sales, see Horowitz, Understanding Toscanini, 6–7, who quotes Dwight Macdonald, “Masscult and Midcult,” in Against the American Grain (New York: Random House, 1962). Critics never complained of inappropriate entertainments, and they were considered suitable for families. On the rare occasions when a hall presented overtly erotic quadrille dancers such as the Moulin Rouge’s La Goulue, they were always the last number on the program or for late-night balls, after families would have left.

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Jann Pasler is similarly critical of this historiographical problem in Composing the Citizen, 28–30 and 35–36. Pasler’s work makes significant inroads into recovering the variegated history of music at all social, economic, and cultural levels, and presents a nuanced view of French musical culture in the Third Republic. Goubault, “Desormes, Louis César Marchione, dit,” in Fauquet, Dictionnaire de la musique, 378. The entry is only 130 words long. The one article that includes an overview of Mme Mariquita’s career and a discussion of women’s roles as choreographers in France is Garafola’s “Where Are Ballet’s Women Choreographers?” See Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 59–66, for more information about individual authors. His poetry had also been set to music by Gabriel Fauré, Jules Massenet, and Cécile Chaminade. Several other music-hall authors, including Paul Milliet, Fernand Beissier, and Michel Carré fils, had works staged at the Opéra-Comique. Lorrain [Paul Duval] also wrote a few comedies, vaudevilles, operettas, and dramas for such disparate theaters as the Menus-Plaisirs, Bouffes-Parisiens, Nouveautés, and Théâtre de l’Odéon. Winn, Sexualités décadentes chez Jean Lorrain, 10. In a review of the première of L’impératrice for Le Figaro, the critic writing as Un Monsieur du Balcon registered surprise that the Olympia would stage a work by Paul Vidal and Jean Richepin. He concluded that it was done to astonish Parisians. The critic does not mention Richepin’s reputation, nor does he ever comment on the status, appropriateness, or literary background of any other author. Un Monsieur du Balcon, “L’Olympia—L’impératrice,” Spectacles et Concerts, Le Figaro, April 7, 1901. According to Pierre Andrieu, Richepin and Vidal offered their ballet to the Isola brothers for production at the Olympia. Andrieu, Souvenirs des frères Isola, 83. Richepin turned toward the salacious after his first book was censored and he received a one-month jail sentence for indecency. Madelénat, “Jean Richepin,” in Beaumarchais et al, Dictionnaire des écrivains de langue française, 1548–49; and Patry, “Jean Richepin,” in Le nouveau dictionnaire des auteurs, N–Z, 2708. Lorrain penned five music-hall ballet librettos for the Folies-Bergère and Olympia, of which L’araignée d’or (1896), La princesse au sabbat (1899), and La belle au cheveux d’or (1900) stand out as having unusually rich and somewhat odd story lines. L’impératrice was an unmitigated success. Richepin went on to collaborate on the ballet Romi-Tchavé for the Folies-Bergère in 1909—the year after he was made a member of the Académie française—and on Les charmeuses, which premièred in Algiers in 1913 and was restaged by the Olympia in 1917. Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 59–61; and Wicks, The Parisian Stage: Part V. A handful had their works produced in such disparate venues as the Moulin Rouge and the Théâtre-Français. See works listed by author in Wicks, The Parisian Stage: Part V. This is only a partial list. The range of genres and theaters is greater when all works are accounted for. Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 60. See also Siegel, Bohemian Paris, for a discussion of Parisian bohemian culture. The ballets are: Merveilleuses et gigolettes (Jouy), Bains de dames, Les deux tentations, and Madame Malbrouck (Pradels), and Tentations (Roger-Milès).

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16. There are two additional game-changing parodies that were not written by a theater critic: Sports and Chez le couturier by Paul Louis Flers, who later altered the course of music-hall entertainment through his Folies-Bergère revues. 17. A few of their librettos, including Les amoureux de Venise (Grenet-Dancourt) and L’heureuse rencontre (Roger-Milès) were downright conventional, while some of the most interesting parodies were written by authors of popular boulevard-theater entertainment (Beissier’s Le voyage de Madame la Présidente is a prime example). 18. This is far from an exhaustive list. Other critics who only wrote one or two ballet librettos include Paul Milliet (Le Monde Artiste) and Ernest Grenet-Dancourt (Le Rappel). Composers were likewise active as music and theater critics. Georges Pfeiffer wrote for Le Voltaire, Victor Roger for Le Petit Journal, Antoine Banès for La Nation, and Edmond Diet and Gaston Serpette for Paris. See lists of critics in Noël and Stoullig, Les annales du théâtre et de la musique. 19. The ten ballets are Les demoiselles du XXe siècle and Vénus à Paris (Mercklein); Paristurf, Cythère, and Paris-Cascade (Germain); Les Folies Parisiennes and Mimes d’or (Meyan); Olympia and Un atelier fin-de-siècle (Delilia); and Le voyage de Madame la Présidente (Beissier). 20. Choreographers’ names frequently appear paired with those of writers in the SACD catalogues. While this might imply that they had a hand in shaping more librettos than programs suggest, including their names alongside those of literary authors may have been a strategy to ensure that they collected royalties. Choreographers were not considered independent authors until the turn of the twentieth century. Mme Mariquita is one of the first to have been acknowledged as an “author” in her own right. She was inducted into the ranks of the SACD in 1890 and received her fair share of profits for her choreographic work from that point on. Conversation with Corinne Lebel, curator, SACD archives, Paris, July 16, 2013. Mme Mariquita’s total earnings collected for her by the SACD make clear the advantages of her being a member of the society. Between February 10, 1890, and January 10, 1898, Mme Mariquita earned 44,457.85 francs (an average of 5,557.20 francs per year). This was presumably in addition to a salary she earned as ballet-mistress. F-Psc “Madame Mariquita, dossier”; and F-Psc Registres-recensements, Folies-Bergère, 1886–1917.” 21. According to Jules Martin, authors of theatrical works for the Folies-Bergère received 10 percent of box-office earnings. Martin, Nos auteurs, 600. He perhaps meant all authors combined. According to the SACD, most authors were allotted two or three percent of box-office earnings. 22. Meyan’s ballets were Le capricorne, La crevette, Les perles, Les chansons, Les Folies Parisiennes, and Mimes d’or. 23. P. L. Flers, for example, wrote with Jacques Lemaire, and Abel Mercklein with Fernand Beissier. 24. Kocevar, “Auguste-Charles Coèdes,” in Fauquet, Dictionnaire de la musique, 289. Coèdes was a chef de chant at the Théâtre-Lyrique and a composer of romances, songs, mélodies, and light stage works for the Folies-Bergère, the Menus-Plaisirs, the Théâtre des Nouveautés, and the Folies-Dramatiques. 25. Henrion also sang at the Chat noir, accompanying himself at the piano. Goubault, “Alexandre Ferdinard (dit Paul) Henrion,” in Fauquet, Dictionnaire de la Musique, 587. 26. “Jean-Eugène-Gaston Lemaire,” in Martin, Nos auteurs, 340–41. Lemaire (1854– 1928) also wrote a handful of orchestral works, including a couple of symphonic poems.

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notes to pp. 62–63 303 27. Greenwood, “Louis Mayeur,” 10. 28. The librettos, originally sent to the censors, are now stored at the Archives nationales. Archives nationales, Paris, France (hereafter cited as F-Pan) F18 1045. Not all names written on librettos are legible, and many are lacking given names. Derille might be De Rillé, who organized and wrote for male choirs in France. 29. The main record for these composers is the large number of songs, instrumental dance pieces, and band or orchestral transcriptions of popular tunes preserved by the Bibliothèque nationale de France, F-Pn (musique), fichiers auteurs. 30. Dupart, Olivier Métra, 29. 31. Olivier Métra (1831–89) wrote, among other pieces, two hundred waltzes, quadrilles, polkas, and mazurkas. He provided dance music to be played between variety acts and scores for many of the hall’s operettas. F-Pn 4-RO-3902. See also Pierre, Le conservatoire national de musique et de déclamation, 813; and Bril, “Métra,” in Fauquet, Dictionnaire de la musique, 795. According to Pierre, Métra wrote thirty-four ballets for the Folies-Bergère. This number seems high given the rate of turnover of ballets during these years, but it is possible. It is very likely that he wrote more than the twenty-four that I have found mentioned in programs, on posters, and in the press. 32. Métra’s skills as a composer of ballets also landed him a commission at the Opéra for the ballet Yédda in 1879. 33. Wagstaff, André Messager, 6. 34. All of Messager’s ballets were popular and critical successes. Messager went on to compose the comic operas for which he is now known, as well as ballets for the Opéra—Les deux pigeons (1886)—and for the Opéra-Comique—Une aventure de la Guimard (1900). Eleven years after writing his first ballet for the Folies-Bergère, when already a regular contributor to Paris’s most prestigious venues and the artistic director of the Opéra-Comique, Messager returned to the music halls with L’Isba for the Paradis-Latin in 1889 and Le chevalier aux fleurs for the inaugural program of the revamped Folies-Marigny in 1897. 35. See advertisements for the Folies-Bergère listed in La Gazette des Femmes between 1877 and 1882. 36. Léon Vasseur (1844–1917), who conducted the orchestra from 1879 to 1884, wrote incidental music along with nearly three dozen operettas for popular theaters and music halls. “Article de presse sur Léon Vasseur,” F-Pn 8-RO-4451. See also Bril, “Vasseur, Félix-Augustin-Léon,” in Fauquet, Dictionnaire de la musique, 1258–59. Vasseur wrote a ballet titled La brasserie for the Eden-Théâtre in 1886. 37. Louis Ganne (1862–1923) was involved with all stages of music-hall ballet, and his works closely mirror developments in popular ballet. As was typical of early 1880s ballets, Les sources du Nil was a divertissement that in structure resembled a pantomime-ballet. Volapük (1886) and Fleurs et plumes (1887), written at the beginning of Marchand’s tenure, followed the format of one-act pantomime-ballets then in vogue. Ganne’s Casino ballet, L’heureuse rencontre, was written while he was conducting at the neighboring Nouveau-Théâtre at a time when most ballets were composed by in-house staff. Merveilleuses et gigolettes (1894), Phryné, and La princesse au sabbat (1899), created at the height of music-hall ballet production, were musically the most imaginative and colorful music-hall ballets ever written. Ganne wrote ten music-hall ballets over a thirty-year period. He also wrote more than two hundred other works, including dance tunes, songs, salon pieces, and instrumental works. His operetta, Les saltimbanques (1899), and comic opera, Hans, joueur de flûte (1906),

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notes to pp. 63–65 are still occasionally performed today. Lechevin, Les origines et le destin du compositeur Louis Ganne. Desormes (d. 1898) composed more than five hundred works over a span of thirty years: two hundred songs and romances, three hundred pieces for piano or orchestra (mainly dances and arrangements), more than a dozen operettas, thirty-five ballets, and a handful of saynètes, vaudevilles, revues, and pantomimes. Martin, Nos auteurs, 170–71. According to Martin, Desormes was born in Algiers in 1845. Desormes’s birth date and place are recorded as Algiers, 1841, by Stieger in Opernlexikon, Komponisten, 263, and Berlin, December 15, 1840, by Goubault, in Fauquet, Dictionnaire de la musique, 378. Henri Cieutat (1861–1906) received some musical training but was primarily an administrator for the Ministry of Fine Arts. Although considered an amateur, Cieutat was a recognized composer of light music and had songs, instrumental pieces, and operettas or comic operas performed in café-concerts, music halls, and small popular theaters. “Nécrologie,” Le ménestrel, December 1, 1906; and Martin, Nos auteurs, 124–25. D’Harcourt’s background was unusual for a composer of popular music. He came from an aristocratic family and was a member of the Jockey Club. In addition to teaching singing in Paris schools, he earned a law degree. He left a sizable œuvre, including a mass, opera, three symphonies, ballets, motets, cantatas, mélodies, and chamber music. E. Bernard, “Harcourt, Eugène d’,” in Fauquet, Dictionnaire de la musique, 526. D’Harcourt was also involved in revivals of early music. See Ellis, Interpreting the Musical Past, xvi. Paulin (d. 1921) wrote several mélodies and choral works in addition to songs and light instrumental music. F-Pn (musique), fichiers auteurs. Dubruck also wrote music for early films. Not all of the hall’s conductors wrote theatrical music, though most did write dance tunes. Of the five conductors listed on Folies-Bergère programs between 1894 and 1900—H. Hamburg, Gustave Goublier, Paul Linke, Louis Laporte, and Henri Cas—only Goublier composed a ballet score, Sports, which was not performed until the year after he left the hall. Martin, Nos auteurs, 170–71. José, born in 1856 in Amsterdam, arrived in Paris in 1885. He conducted the orchestras of the Menus-Plaisirs, the Théâtre des Nouveautés, the Théâtre de la Renaissance, the Casino de Néris-les-Bains, and the Nouveau-Théâtre. He was also the music director of the Folies-Marigny in 1897, where he conducted Messager’s ballet Le chevalier aux fleurs. “Articles de presse sur Henri José,” F-Pn 8-RO-3607. José never achieved the same level of fame as did Desormes, nor was his ballet music as well received. José’s ballets were rarely praised outright by critics; one was even described as dull, which would have been sharp criticism given the generally enthusiastic reception of music-hall ballet scores. Nevertheless, the most popular dances were excerpted and published in piano reduction. Born Oscar Louis Antoine Ferdinand de Lagoanère in Bordeaux on August 5, 1853, Lagoanère first studied Greek and Latin at the Bordeaux Lycée. He moved to Paris in 1869 and studied piano with Antoine-François Marmontel, harmony with Jules Duprato, and accompaniment with Augustin Savard at the Conservatoire. He left after two years to begin his career as an accompanist for the Bouffes-Parisiens. In 1873, he was certified to teach music in the Paris school system, which he did for most of his life. His career in the theaters continued with a series of conducting

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posts, first at the Théâtre de la Renaissance, then at the Folies-Dramatiques, the Porte Saint-Martin, the Menus-Plaisirs (1887–89 and 1891–93), and the BouffesParisiens (1889–91). Lagoanère’s involvement with the Olympia began in 1894. He held posts there until 1900, mainly as its conductor, but also, from 1896 to 1898, as general director. Lagoanère composed ballets, pantomimes (including Le coucher de la mariée), operettas, musique de scène, mélodies, romances, waltzes, and other dance tunes. Martin, Nos auteurs, 319–20; “Articles de presse sur O. de Lagoanère,” F-Pn 8-RO-3627; and “O. de Lagoanère,” Le Courrier Français, November 18, 1900. Antoine Banès (1856–1924) initially trained at the Paris Conservatoire with Emile Durand, but left to complete his studies in arts administration, and his primary career was as an archivist. “Articles de presse sur Banès,” F-Pn 8-RO-2418. He was a librarian for the Opéra-Comique and the Opéra—work for which he was awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur in 1913—but he also regularly contributed music criticism to Le Figaro and in the 1890s composed several theatrical works for both private and state theaters. Martin, Nos auteurs, 31. The Bibliothèque nationale de France catalogue lists nearly two hundred piano pieces by Adolphe David. Frédéric Toulmouche (1850–1909) was born in Nantes and studied composition with Victor Massé at the Paris Conservatoire. He specialized in light theatrical music for music halls and small theaters. The best of these, according to his obituaries, were La veillée de noces (Menus-Plaisirs, 1888), Mademoiselle ma femme (Menus-Plaisirs, 1893), La perle du Cantal (Folies-Dramatiques, 1895), and La Saint-Valentin (Bouffes-Parisiens, 1895), all published in piano reduction. Toulmouche also composed the score for one of the Olympia’s most acclaimed operettas of all time, Tante Agnès, staged in 1896. His music-hall ballets postdate all of these. Toulmouche also worked for several years as the chef de chant, or vocal coach, for the Opéra-Comique, a position he held until his death. “Articles de presse sur Toulmouche,” F-Pn 8-RO-4435. Edmond Diet (1854–1924) studied organ and improvisation at the Conservatoire with César Franck, and counterpoint, fugue, and orchestration with Ernest Guiraud. He left without prizes and for a few years wrote “serious” pieces: oratorios and sonatas for piano and violin. Diet found far greater success composing light music in the 1880s. He wrote dozens of popular songs, piano pieces, and dance tunes, and had vaudevilles, pantomimes, operettas, and ballets performed in venues such as the Menus-Plaisirs, Paradis-Latin, Bouffes-Parisiens, and AthénéeComique. Diet’s reputation increased steadily throughout the 1890s and in 1906 he had a comédie-lyrique performed at the Opéra-Comique. Fauquet, “Diet, EdmondMarie,” in Fauquet Dictionnaire de la musique, 385; Martin, Nos auteurs, 174; and “Edmond Diet,” Le Théâtre Illustré [Olympia: Rêve de Noël], 6e année, no. 13. Edmond Missa (1861–1910) was one of the most prolific and celebrated light-opera composers of his day. He trained at the École Niedermeyer and Paris Conservatoire, where he studied with Jules Massenet. Missa garnered acclaim at an early age. He received an honorable mention in the 1881 Prix de Rome for his cantata Geneviève, and the Prix Cressent in 1886 for his first comic opera, Juge et partie, staged at the Opéra-Comique. Missa worked simultaneously as an organist at the churches of St. Thomas-d’Aquin and St. Honoré-d’Eylau in Paris, and as a composer of popular theatrical music for venues ranging from the Bouffes-Parisiens and Opéra-Comique to the Casino de Paris and Olympia. He also wrote mélodies and romances, and works for choir, piano, and orchestra. Martin, Nos auteurs, 405–6; and Tchamkerten, “Edmond Missa,” New Grove Dictionary.

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52. By the time Victor Roger (1853–1903) wrote his first music-hall ballet, Chez le couturier, for the Folies-Bergère in 1896, he had already written over twenty operettas. Like many of his predecessors, Roger began his career writing songs and operettas for music halls, then made a career composing light theatrical music for popular venues such as the Bouffes-Parisiens, Folies-Dramatiques, Menus-Plaisirs, Renaissance, and Nouveautés. Roger also worked as a theater and music critic for La France and Le Petit Journal and acted as the general secretary for the Opéra balls. Lamb, “Victor Roger,” New Grove Dictionary. 53. Louis Varney (1844–1908), often called the Offenbach of his time, grew up listening to Offenbach’s music while his father conducted at the Bouffes-Parisiens. Varney studied at the Conservatoire with Antoine Elwart and Louis Clapisson, then returned to the popular theaters to pursue his career. Varney’s operettas, composed over twenty-five years at a rate of approximately two a year, were staged in all of Paris’s top theaters. His best-known operetta, Les mousquetaires au couvent (1880), ran for more than 700 performances and remains in the repertory today. “Article de presse sur Varney,” F-Pn 8-RO-4450; F-Pse “Louis Varney”; and Lamb, “Louis Varney,” in New Grove Dictionary. 54. The increased celebrity of music-hall ballet composers at the turn of the century is partly reflected in the greater number and length of entries that document their careers in canonical musicological dictionaries. Whereas of the early ballet composers only Ganne has a biographical notice in the Grove Dictionary and Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, most ballet composers from the late 1890s appear in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians or Grove Dictionary of Opera. 55. The former had already written a ballet for the Folies-Bergère, and the latter for the Olympia. 56. See F-Pn (musique), fichiers auteurs, and Jean-Claude Fournier, “Gustave Goublier (1856–1926),” Opérette no. 76. 57. Franco Alfano (1875–1954) is now famous for completing Puccini’s Turandot. Patusset was the Folies-Bergère’s conductor for most of the decade. He composed a couple of ballets along with the music for the hall’s early revues. 58. Martin credits Desormes with thirty-seven ballets for the Folies-Bergère. Martin, Nos auteurs, 170–71. Desormes wrote at least three ballets for other theaters. 59. Tsou, “Jane Vieu,” New Grove Dictionary of Women Composers, 478. 60. Conservatoire-trained Justin Clérice (1863–1908) wrote songs, piano pieces, dances (waltzes, mazurkas, etc), and light theater works including the Hippodrome ballet Vercingétorix, comic operas, and operettas. F-Pn (musique), fichiers auteurs. 61. Emile Bonnamy (d. 1920) wrote dozens of popular songs, dances, and piano pieces, and a handful of operettas, comic operas, and pantomimes. Auguste Bosc (d. 1945) and Henri Dérouville (d. 1919) wrote vast numbers of songs and instrumental pieces. Olivier Cambon (d. 1918) wrote light vocal, instrumental, and theatrical music. Georges Jouanneau was born in Brest in 1875 and grew up in Algiers. He moved to Paris to attend the Conservatoire, where he studied with Pessard, Lenepvue, and Caussade. He wrote light instrumental and vocal music, of which only a handful of pieces survive. F-Pn Rf-66752. Léo Pouget wrote songs, dance music, instrumental and orchestral pieces and suites, at least one operetta, and film music. Lists of genres were compiled from catalogue entries in F-Pn (musique), fichiers auteurs. 62. A study of nineteenth-century popular theaters reveals the presence of several important women choreographers. As Lynn Garafola has argued in her article

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“Where Are Ballet’s Women Choreographers?” the perceived dearth of women choreographers in dance history is due to historiography rather than an actual lacuna. Most nineteenth-century women choreographers, as Garafola has noted, worked for the popular theaters, for circuses, or for pleasure grounds—institutions that have until recently received scant attention. Garafola, “Where Are Ballet’s Women Choreographers?” 215–30. The term choreographer is anachronistic but used here for concision. Ballet masters and mistresses were not guaranteed royalties for their ballets and did not normally belong to the Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques. Until 1893, they were usually described in programs and the press as having “arrangé ” or “réglé ” the dances and mises-en-scènes. Although the Folies-Bergère switched to the term “chorégraphie par” after 1893 and the Olympia used the term on occasion after 1898, the Casino persisted in using “arranged by ” or “réglé par ” into the early 1900s. Bertotto was ballet master at the Cirque Olympique from 1826 to 1830, then at the Porte Saint-Martin. Van Aelbrouck, Dictionnaire des danseurs, 75. He also choreographed in French provincial theaters. According to Jane Pritchard, Justamant’s most influential ballets were those created for Jacques Offenbach’s Le voyage dans la lune premièred at the Gaîté and performed throughout Europe. He also choreographed féeries in Berlin and London. See Pritchard, “Divertissement Only,” 15, n.15. Henri Justamant was born in Bordeaux in 1815 and died at Parc Saint-Maur January 2, 1890 (Vettermann writes that Justamant’s date of death was January 2, 1886, the date listed in the Saint-Maur-des Fossé registers. The register must be incorrect, given evidence that he was still choreographing through 1889). His first ballets were staged in the 1840s and 1850s at the Grands Théâtres of Bordeaux, Marseilles, and Lyon. He was the ballet master at the Brussels Théâtre de la Monnaie from 1861–64, then moved to Paris, where he worked primarily for boulevard theaters with one season at the Opéra. Catalogue de livres anciens et modernes et des manuscrits originaux des ballets et divertissements de M. Henri Justamant. There is some evidence that Henri Justamant’s younger brother Charles also choreographed for the Folies-Bergère. Most reviews and programs from the late 1880s list the hall’s ballet master as Justamant or Justament without providing a first name, but a couple specify either Charles Justament or Henri Justamant with consistent differences in the spelling of their last name. For more on Justamant, see Vettermann, “In Search of Dance Creators’ Biographies,” 124–32. For a more detailed biography, see Gutsche-Miller, “Pantomime-Ballet on the Music-Hall Stage,” 138–49. Far more praise was heaped on Mme Mariquita than on her colleague at the Opéra, Joseph Hansen. André Levinson’s tribute after her death sums up what many thought of her throughout her career: “Surgie de cette même floraison du génie populaire qu’un Frédérick Lemaître ou ce Deburau aux côtés duquel elle débuta sur le boulevard du Crime, Mariquita nous apparait—à considérer son immense passé—comme un être quasi légendaire, une Esméralda qui aurait survécu d’un demi-siècle à son romancier. Car elle avait atteint l’âge vénérable de ces grands maitres de ballet les Vestris, les Gardel, les Petipa, que leur formidable et pur labeur semble avoir dotés d’une éternelle jeunesse. Car cette femme qui avait vu danser la Taglioni et dont l’enseignement résumait l’expérience d’un siècle, ou peu s’en faut, conserva jusqu’à la fin cette ardeur de l’imagination et cette ténacité à la peine qui font qu’elle nous laisse tout en répertoire et une lignée de vaillantes élèves à la douleur desquelles nous nous associons cordialement.”

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notes to p. 71 Clipping in “Recueil factice d’articles de presse concernant Mme Mariquita, 1885– 1922,” F-Pn 8-RO-11776. I have found three variants of a possible last name—Gamaleri, Gamalera, and Gamalein—none of which is recorded on an official government document. Her death certificate lists her name only as Madame Mariquita. She also used the stage name Mariquita Tanzi as a teenager, but she dropped it sometime in the 1860s for Mlle Mariquita. As of the 1890s, she was known to all as Madame Mariquita: it was her stage name and her nickname, but also the one she used in all formal correspondence. She may not have known her last name and may not have known her date of birth. Her application for membership into the Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques lists her birthdate as Christmas Day 1840, but this is most likely made up. Several obituaries state that she was eighty-two years old at her death in 1922. Others place her on the Paris stage at seven, even eight years old (a few claim she was five; Mérode claims she was six). Since Mariquita debuted at the Funambules in 1845, she might have been born as early as 1838. See, for example, Sebastien Voirol, “Mariquita, an Appreciation,” Dancing Times 146 (November 1922): 119; Charles Akar, “Mariquita,” Écho de Paris, 6 October 1922; clippings in F-Pn 8-RO-11776; and Mérode, Le ballet de ma vie, 239. Charles Akar, “Mariquita,” Écho de Paris, October 6, 1922; and “Mariquita, Noted Ballet Mistress, Is Dead in Paris,” New York Herald, October 14, 1922. For an account of her early childhood, see Carré, Souvenirs de théâtre, 219. According to Léonce Balitrand, Mariquita took lessons from Paul “l’aérien,” by whom he probably meant Antoine Paul, a French premier danseur known for his technical agility. Léonce Balitrand, “Mariquita est morte,” Le Petit Parisien, October 6, 1922. Mariquita was hired at the Opéra under the assumed name Mariquita Tanzi. F-Pan AJ13 649 (1858) [État des appointements: sujets de la danse]. She was classified as a “sujet” among the “artistes de la danse” and was initially paid 1,000 francs per year—the lowest-paid of the ballerinas but higher than the topearning corps dancer. F-Pan AJ13 649 (1858). According to Gaston Lebel, Mariquita left the Opéra of her own accord with a 4,000-franc fine for breaking her contract. Lebel, “La célèbre danseuse,” October 6, 1922; and Anon., clippings in F-Pn 8-RO-11776. Lebel, “La célèbre danseuse,” October 6, 1922, in F-Pn 8-RO-11776. See also Akar, “Mariquita,” October 6, 1922, in F-Pn 8-RO-11776. Mariquita’s name appears in cast lists at the Porte Saint-Martin from the 1860s and 1870s. Some of the Porte SaintMartin ballets, including Ballet des pifferari (1868) and Le miroir magique (1876), were choreographed by Justamant and Grédelue, both of whom were ballet masters at the Folies-Bergère before Mariquita. It seems from scant evidence in the press that she performed the main ballerina role in these early Folies-Bergère ballets. According to C. de Néronde, the young Mariquita held the position of ballet mistress at the Folies-Bergère in these years. Néronde, “Un music-hall derrière le rideau,” 899. Garafola, “Where Are Ballet’s Women Choreographers?” 217. Mariquita had a corps of around 200 dancers at the Gaîté. A. de Saint-Albin, “Au jour le jour, Mariquita,” clipping in F-Pn 8-RO-11776. Mariquita worked at the Gaîté for more than twenty years, where her divertissements and mises-en-scènes were popular additions to the theater’s féeries, dramas, and operettas.

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notes to pp. 71–74 309 75. Mariquita gained entry to the Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques in 1890 following a dispute over royalties with Marchand. F-Pse, “Dossier Madame Mariquita.” 76. Mme Mariquita’s fame stretched far beyond Paris. Directors at London’s Alhambra Theatre of Varieties tried twice to bring her to London to stage a ballet—once in 1903 and again in 1911—but she was both times prevented from leaving the Opéra-Comique for the required month due to contractual constraints imposed by Albert Carré. Her letters on the subject are held at the Victoria and Albert Theatre Archives, London (hereafter cited as GB-Lv). My thanks to Jane Pritchard for bringing these to my attention. 77. The lead dramatic roles were, however, performed by mimes in the tradition of 1890s music-hall ballet. 78. Mme Stichel worked at the Folies-Bergère into the early 1920s. See Folies-Bergère programs in F-Pn WNA-214. For a brief look at Mme Stichel’s career prior to working at the Folies-Bergère, see Garafola, “Where Are Ballet’s Women Choreographers,” 219–20. Stichel, born Louise Manzini, danced at the Folies-Bergère in the late 1870s (she performed the role of the Queen of the Sphinxes in Les sphinx) and at the Opéra in the 1880s, then turned to choreography. She was the ballet mistress at the Monte Carlo Theater in the early 1890s, she staged the first version of August Germain’s and Louis Ganne’s Phryné at the Casino de Royan in 1896, and she choreographed spectacular féeries at the Châtelet in the early 1900s. Her late works include dances for the Gaîté Lyrique, the Opéra-Comique, and the Casino de Nice. 79. For more on Hansen, see Jane Pritchard, “The Great Hansen.” 80. Bernay is remembered today for her memoirs of her student days at the Opéra and her dance treatise. 81. Similar plots and character types show up in music-hall and Opéra ballets, but also in ballets staged in other venues in France and abroad. Mme Mariquita’s last ballets for the Folies-Bergère might provide hints of stylistic continuity between opera-theater and music-hall ballet. Stella (FB, 1911) had a straightforward linear narrative and maintained a standard pantomime-ballet structure at a time when most music-hall ballets mimicked the template of the music-hall revue. It included ballet variations in an academic idiom and character dances for a ballet corps in a formal divertissement. Yet commonalities might also have a different origin. Mme Mariquita’s 1911 ballet centered on a behind-the-scenes plot that recalled her own ballet from 1890, Une répétition aux Folies-Bergère. While the casting of Stella certainly came from Mme Mariquita working simultaneously at the Opéra-Comique, the ballet’s conventional structure might equally derive from her recycling an old crowdpleaser from twenty years earlier. 82. “Recueil factice d’articles de presse concernant Egidio Rossi,” F-Pn 8-RO-16324. Rossi choreographed for the Alhambra in 1898–99 after working at the Paris Casino (1892–97) and the Olympia (1899). Pratesi returned to the Casino for one year in 1900. 83. On Pratesi, see Scafidi, “Le théâtre de la Scala,” 53–54. Balbiani’s career is outlined in Pritchard, “Divertissement Only,” 40, n. 26. Balbiani was trained in Venice, then performed as a premier danseur in Milan, Rome, and abroad. 84. Pritchard, “Divertissement Only,” 40, n. 26. 85. Curti may have been on commission rather than on contract in order to earn a higher salary.

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86. Alfredo Curti was also an internationally renowned mime. He performed in London, New York, Berlin, Moscow, Brussels, Bordeaux, Marseille, and Paris before gaining recognition as a choreographer in Parisian and English music halls. “Olympia: Les saisons de la Parisienne,” Le Théâtre Illustré, in F-Pn 8-RO-10804. 87. Curti may have been responding to current trends in London halls, which were turning profits from ballets that had few links to “classical” choreography. 88. Curti was the most important of the cross-border choreographers, but others left their mark. John Tiller staged Deux sous d’amour (1908), which included contemporary views of Parisian lovers and a fantastical trip to Tokyo; and Coppi, the Alhambra’s ballet master from 1885 through the 1890s, restaged Au Japon, first performed in London the previous year. Pritchard, “Divertissement Only,” 136. For more on Coppi, see ibid., 114–15.

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Between them, the Folies-Bergère, the Olympia, and the Casino de Paris staged at least 120 divertissements, and many other halls in Paris and in the provinces produced dozens, if not hundreds, more. The SACD recorded only large-scale narrative works. My estimate is therefore based on titles listed in programs, on posters, in theater listings, or in reviews. These titles come from manuscript librettos (F-Pan F18 1045), scores, programs, press reviews, and advertisements at F-Pn and F-Po, and authors’ or dancers’ memoires, obituaries, and biographical notices in programs. A parallel may be seen in the divertissements staged to this day in the pantomime theater in Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens: even the shortest, simplest divertissements have some mime to set the scene. Mariquita (mlle) was the première danseuse in La mer et les cocottes. Adrien Laroque, “Revue des théâtres,” November 19, 1871, 329. Fantasia, Folies-Bergère Program, November 9, 1876, F-Po PRO.B.169 (1876–77). Fantasia, Folies-Bergère Program, February 10, 1877, F-Po PRO.B.169 (1876–77). These programs included a theatrical column with discussions of selected works presented each week. Ibid., daily programs from December 27, 1876, to January 1, 1877. Ibid., November 9, 1876. André Messager’s first Folies-Bergère ballet, Fleur d’oranger (1878), was performed two hundred times. René Dumesnil, “Un Centenaire: André Messager,” Le Monde, December 16, 1953. He was subsequently commissioned to write two other ballets for the Folies-Bergère: Les vins de France and Mignons et vilains. Music-hall pantomime-ballet scores usually range between fifty and eighty pages in piano reduction, and some are 120–40 pages long. There are no titled variations, but there are several Pas, including solo dances for the central character, who was probably classically trained. Hervé’s Les sphinx runs to forty pages in piano reduction. See, for example, the dramatic music that begins the second tableau: “Lever du soleil” and “Animation des sphinx,” in Hervé, Les sphinx, 19–21. When the sun rises at the beginning of the desert panorama, dawn is evoked musically through the gradually thickening texture of a single chord. The scene begins with a single held

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note, with one new note added in each successive bar. This becomes a tremolo, increasingly widely spaced and shifting in harmony, accompanied by a slow, lyrical melody. The subsequent awakening of the sphinxes is evoked through a similar thickening of textures and increased melodic and harmonic activity. J.-K. Huysmans, “The Folies-Bergère in 1879,” 38–39. Huysmans was perhaps describing Le bazar d’esclaves, a divertissement from March of 1878. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Scenarios that hinted excessively at open sexuality would, after all, have been censored. Although censorship laws had loosened considerably by this time, Georges Montorgueil’s descriptions of the theatrical antecedents of the striptease suggest that many productions, including those staged in music halls, were still subject to rules regarding decency and public exposure. Montorgueil, Année feminine, 76. See also Dawkins, The Nude in French Art and Culture, 7–85. Posters by Lévy, Chéret, and Appel depicted ballerinas wearing shorter tutus than would have been acceptable at the Opéra. See, for example, posters for Les marionnettes javanaises, Bonne aventure, Mars et Vénus, Le grand prix de Paris, Les deux coqs, and La haute gomme archived by www.roger-viollet.fr. Hundreds of photos from Nadar’s studios have been digitally archived by the Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine. See studio photographs archived online by the Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine. F-Pan F18 1045. In the first couple of years of Marchand’s tenure, half of the surviving librettos are titled divertissements. They are consistently labeled “ballet” only after 1888. Authors who belonged to the Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques had to declare all narrative works to the society in order to collect a percentage of box-office receipts. Authors of unlisted ballets from the 1880s either did not belong to the society or they did not take these ballets seriously as dramatic works. Conversation with Corinne Lebel, SACD, July 2013. Although no mention is made of specific paintings by Fragonard, a reference to Fragonard in the scenario suggests that the ballet may have recalled libertine scenes depicted in his works. A poster by Charles Lévy of La pile du calife shows women in colorful costumes with skirts slit up to the thigh. These were, however, far from the déshabillés of Hubans’s Les abeilles. BnF Gallica, Médiathèque de Chaumont, A2266. Insects and animals occasionally turned up in subsidized theaters, but music-hall animal and bug divertissements were closer in conception and style to boulevardtheater divertissements. Such creatures also turn up in English music-hall ballets, but since many of these were created in response to French boulevard-theater ballets, the origins of influence may never be untangled. The ballet was perhaps an excuse to present dancers in costumes like those used in La poule aux æufs d’or performed at the Châtelet in 1877. See photos by Nadar studio archived online by the Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine. Although staging ballets about stylish Parisians pursuing hedonistic pleasures now seems an obvious way to amuse style-conscious, hedonistic Parisians and tourists, topical ballets did not originate in France. As with so many trends in French music-hall ballet, the practice had its roots in English music-hall ballet. Le grand

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notes to pp. 87–94 prix de Paris, for instance, followed close on the heels of two English ballets titled Sport, one staged by the South London Palace in 1875 and the other by London’s Metropolitan in 1879. Pritchard, “Divertissement Only,” 9, 11, 147–51. For more on later examples of English “up-to-date” ballets, see also Guest, Ballet in Leicester Square, 104–14. Topical music-hall ballets were the forerunners of the Ballets Russes ballets from the 1920s that Lynn Garafola has termed examples of “lifestyle modernism.” See Garafola, Ballets Russes, 98–115. La mer et les cocottes might belong to this category as well, but a lack of visual evidence again precludes firm conclusions. As seen in advertisements and images in the daily and illustrated press, seaside resorts were increasingly popular among the French in the last years of the nineteenth century. An unsigned article in F-Pn 4-RO-15722 (1) also notes that the Folies-Bergère’s early ballets were very short. These scores have text above the staff as in pantomime-ballet scores, suggesting a deliberate emphasis on musical-dramatic relationships. Les sources du Nil was Louis Ganne’s debut as a composer. It played for eighty performances. Clipping in “Article de presse sur “La Volapük,” ballet, musique de Louis Ganne,” F-Pn 8-RO-10863. The manuscript scenario is titled Les ondines du Nil. F-Pan F18 1045 (Censures, Folies-Bergère). The ballet called for a première danseuse, a danseur comique, travestis, and named characters. The curtain rises to reveal a grotto scene in which the sleeping Nile fairy and her partner, Old Nile, are surrounded by undines. The Nile fairy awakens and signals for her undines to dance. A pas d’ensemble is followed by a ballet variation and a mazurka performed by her two favorites. A series of short mime passages follow. First the undines signal the presence of lost travelers and the Nile fairy orders her undines to hide behind the rocks. Next one of the travelers appears, miming his thirst and staggering about the stage in exhaustion. Fellow travelers appear and repeat the same scene. The fairy and her undines come to their aid. After a brief love scene between the undines and the travelers, all perform a long waltz. Following the waltz, the main traveler explains that his mission was to find the source of the Nile. The fairy leads him to the source in her grotto, and all dance together in an ensemble finale. The ballet was also topical, in keeping with the trend toward staging ballets that were dramatizations of everyday experiences or events. Parisian audiences would have known of recent attempts to find the source of the Nile and of controversies surrounding conflicting reports of explorers’ discoveries. Lafrique’s version of events added fairies to the mix and was wholly inaccurate from a scientific standpoint. Marchand’s appointment in 1886 as the hall’s director and his subsequent changes to programming coincide with the beginning of the SACD’s systematic cataloguing of music-hall ballets. Prior to the 1890s, it was extremely rare for a ballet to be subtitled “pantomimeballet.” Les folies amoureuses (1872) bore the label of pantomime-ballet, but the two dozen ballets that followed were subtitled “divertissement.” The SACD also termed L’impératrice a “ballet-féerique.” Les aventures de Mlle Clo-Clo (1909) and Les fanfreluches de l’amour (1913) are not recorded in the SACD catalogues. The rest are listed simply as “ballet” or “ballet-pantomime.” Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 112–13.

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notes to pp. 94–97 313 40. Subtitles are not always listed in the SACD catalogues or in programs; they also often conflict. 41. Unfortunately, as I have not located scores for these, it is impossible to discern the nature of these productions. From reviews, it seems that the emphasis was on dancing rather than singing. 42. Divertissements were also integrated into pantomimes, operettas, and eventually, revues. 43. The Olympia’s longest-running ballet, Ballet blanc, appears to have had virtually no plot. It may have consisted of abstract dances for a star ballerina and the corps de ballet. Entr’acte lists Ballet blanc as a divertissement fantaisiste. See also E. D.-H., Courrier des Théâtres, La Presse, April 13, 1893; and Pédrille, Foyers et Coulisses, Le Petit Journal, April 14, 1893. 44. It is rarely possible to pin down premiere dates of divertissements since, as mentioned, contemporary performance catalogues never listed them and they were not reviewed in the daily press. The years listed in appendix A mark the first time they appear on programs. 45. The Folies-Bergère also staged a Divertissement militaire by Mme Mariquita and Desormes in 1891. 46. France-Russie was written and choreographed by Mme Mariquita. This is only one of the many theatrical displays occasioned by the visit of the Russian navy in France. Disparate Parisian theaters, including the Concert-Parisien, Concert des Décadents, and Opéra, staged songs and topical divertissements the week the Russian officers were in Paris. Pédrille, Foyers et Coulisses, Le Petit Journal, October 13, 1893; and La Soirée dans les Théâtres, Le Petit Journal, October 22, 1893. 47. Though the ballet was perhaps intended to glorify the healthy, physically active Republican French woman (see, for instance, Tilburg, Colette’s Republic, and “‘The Triumph of the Flesh”), it also reinforced a view of women as sexual objects. 48. Coppélia (1870) was composed by Léo Delibes and choreographed by Arthur SaintLéon; The Nutcracker (1892) was composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov; and Die Puppenfee (1888) was composed by Joseph Bayer and choreographed by Joseph Hassreiter. 49. George Jackson, “Die Puppenfee,” in Cohen, ed., The International Encyclopedia of Dance. Die Puppenfee was also staged by Nikolai and Sergei Legat at the Mariinsky in 1903. Thanks to Lynn Garafola for bringing this production to my attention. 50. It was rechoreographed by the hall’s ballet master for each new performance. 51. Morin, Carnavals parisiens, 9. 52. Illustrations in Le Courrier Français and photographs by the Nadar studios show a ballerina in her standard tutu surrounded by common toys.

Chapter Five 1. 2.

Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “La Princesse Idaea aux Folies-Bergère,” La Soirée Théâtrale, Le Figaro, March 28, 1895. Analogous Opéra ballets include La Korrigane (1880), Les deux pigeons (1886), La tempête (1889), Le rêve (1890), La Maladetta (1893), and L’étoile (1897). A comparison with Marian Smith’s analyses of French Romantic ballet in Ballet and Opera in the Age of Giselle reveals that music-hall ballet’s choreographic conventions stretch back

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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at least as far as the 1830s. With few exceptions, Smith’s descriptions of mid-nineteenth-century Opéra ballets could be applied to the ballets staged by music halls half a century later. Smith, Ballet and Opera in the Age of Giselle. See also Kopchick Spencer, “The Jardin des Femmes as Scenic Convention.” 3. Arkin and Smith, “National Dances in the Romantic Ballet,” 20–21. Giselle, for example, had fifty-four minutes of mime and action and sixty minutes of dance. Smith, Ballet and Opera in the Age of Giselle, 175. 4. Widor, La Korrigane ; Vidal, La Maladetta ; Thomas, La tempête ; Messager, Les deux pigeons; and Wormser, L’étoile. 5. This was again also true of Romantic and late nineteenth-century ballet. On Romantic ballet, see Arkin and Smith, “National Dances in the Romantic Ballet,” 20. 6. Louise Willy later turned to the silver screen, performing in some of the earliest pornographic films. 7. Gaston-Léon Séverin was born in Paris in 1879 and trained in comedy at the Conservatoire. During his student years, he performed in various theaters, including the Athénée, the Mathurins, and the Union Artistique, and made his professional debut at the Odéon in 1901. Jules Martin, Nos artists, 329; and Séverin, L’homme blanc. Théodore Thalès was born and trained in Marseille and was already well known by the age of twelve. He performed and directed mime in Marseille until 1896, then moved to Paris to take up a career performing in and directing music-hall productions. “Recueil factice concernant le mime Thalès,” F-Pn 8-RO-11637. 8. Berthe Bernay, for example, who choreographed ballets for the Olympia, described three types of pantomime, which she termed “natural,” “artificial,” and “conventional.” According to Bernay, natural pantomime is that which comes naturally to actors from their own feelings; artificial pantomime has specific rules and must be learned; and conventional pantomime consists of natural gestures that have become stock gestures through repetition in the theater. Bernay, La danse au théâtre, 41–42. 9. C. de Néronde provides the following description of a mime passage devised by Mme Mariquita: “I like a lovely young girl, she is hiding, but I know where to find her: I like (two hands on the heart), —a lovely young girl (the hands draw an oval space and to the right spreads the five fingers, previously closed), —she is hiding (a gesture representing a roof), —but I know how to find her (the finger is placed on the forehead, soon lit with a victorious expression).” C. de Néronde, “Un musichall derrière le rideau,” Le Monde Moderne (1897): 900. 10. It seems that with one or two exceptions, Parisian music-hall ballets were presented in their entirety for the duration of the run with all pantomime scenes intact. This is at variance with English practices. Ballets staged at the Alhambra and the Empire had their mime scenes progressively cut throughout a ballet’s run until most of the mime was trimmed from the production. See press clippings from the 1890s in GB-Lv Alhambra Scrapbook (cuttings) (Alhambra box 4, 5, and 6). 11. Sardanapalus was a common topic in the nineteenth century. See, for example, Byron’s 1821 tragedy, Delacroix’s 1827 painting The Death of Sardanapalus, or Victorin de Joncières’s 1867 opera. There were also several balletic versions of the tale, including one in 1834 at Drury Lane and in 1853 at the Princess’s. The Alhambra was slated to stage a version of Sardanapalus by Arthur Sullivan in 1895,

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12.

13. 14. 15.

16.

17. 18. 19.

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21. 22.

23.

but the hall instead produced a patriotic revue-like historical ballet about Great Britain. Guest, Ballet in Leicester Square, 59. Hugo’s death in 1885 also brought millions of mourners out to walk in his funeral procession. Mass processions were standard fare for political figures as well, as were mass pilgrimages to various French religious sites. Crowds gathered for military reviews at Longchamps, to worship Boulanger in the streets of Paris, at universal expositions, etc. For a fascinating study of mass culture at the end of the century, see Schwartz, Spectacular Realities. Arkin and Smith, “National Dances in the Romantic Ballet,” 22. The libretto was published in an illustrated hardback edition and reproduced in its entirety for Le Courrier Français, October 1, 1893. Asmodé describes the dance as a “pas des écharpes.” Asmodée, “Aux Folies-Bergère,” Gil Blas, September 15, 1893. See also Le Rideau de Fer, “Folies-Bergère,” Le Courrier Français, September 17, 1893. See, for example, Francisque Sarcey, Critique Théâtrale, Le Temps, September 18, 1893. Critics devoted more space to the change of décor at the Folies-Bergère in the fall of 1893 than they did to the opening show. See also Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “Aux Folies-Bergère,” Le Figaro, September 15, 1893. The indication tableau plastique appears in the score. Desormes, Fleur de Lotus, 38. See Smith, Ballet and Opera in the Age of Giselle, 17, for an equivalent list of divertissement rationales in Romantic ballet. In an article about the Folies-Bergère and its artists, a journalist recorded that the allegro he watched Mme Mariquita choreograph for a premier sujet was “composed of brisés and pas de chat and completed with a pas de bourrée.” Néronde, “Un musichall derrière le rideau,” 900. A description of Lina Campana in an illustrated program for Les septs pêchés capitaux is a case in point. “La légèreté de Lina Campana n’a d’égale que sa force. C’est une danseuse de la grande école; ses pointes sont d’une extrème élégance et ses tours d’une rare pureté.” “Les sept péchés capitaux,” Le Théâtre Illustré 7, no. 36 (1899). See also reviews of ballets through the 1890s printed in Le Figaro. Newspaper clipping in “Recueil factice concernant Stella,” F-Pn 8-RO-10992. A series of photographs taken in 1900–1901 by Edgar de St. Senoch includes two photos of ballerinas in thick knee-length tutus. F-Pn (Photo-estampes) “Madame Bonaparte, ballet 1900–1901.” In some cases, tutus may have been shorter or had fewer layers than might have been appropriate at the Opéra. See artist photos of Lina Campana in F-Po “Estampes, Lina Campana.” Since these cabinet cards were destined for a commercial market, they may have displayed more leg than Campana did on the stage. Aïda Boni was born in Milan and trained at La Scala. She made her debut in Florence as a prima ballerina at the age of sixteen, then went to Paris, dancing at the Théâtre Marigny, the Folies-Bergère, and the Casino. She quickly attracted attention and in the late 1890s was hired by the Opéra-Comique to dance as an étoile. She created principal roles there and at the Paris 1900 Exposition Palais de la Danse, then danced for several seasons at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels, and La Scala, Milan. During a performance of Les deux pigeons at Covent Garden, London, André Messager noticed her and hired her as a star ballerina for the Opéra, where she danced for the remainder of her career. Clipping in “Recueil factice sur Aïda Boni,” F-Pn 8-RO-12397.

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24. Lina Campana trained in Turin with Mme Legrain, completing her studies in 1889 at the age of sixteen. She then came to Paris to dance at the Eden-Théâtre, where she premiered roles in Le cœur de Sita and La tentation de Saint-Antoine. She continued her training in Paris with Mme de Gaspari and Mme Mariquita. Clipping in “Mlle Lina Campana,” F-Pn 8-RO-12400. 25. Odette Valéry, born Marpha de Vasiliadis to Athenian parents, also performed Greekinspired dances in Paris and elsewhere before turning to acting in her twenties. In 1908, she danced in Samson and Delila at Hammerstein’s Manhattan Opera House. See “Folies-Bergère, La princesse au sabbat,” Les feux de la Rampe 5, no. 84; Jules Martin, Nos artists, 384; and New York Times (November 8, 1908), 7. Mlle Giuri danced in New York at the Metropolitan Opera in Gounod’s Faust and danced the role of Swanilda in the first American full-length production of Coppélia in 1887, staged by the National Opera Company. “Amusements: The American Opera,” New York Times, February 27, 1887; and “Ballet Dazzles Boston: Production of ‘Coppelia’ by the National Opera Company,” New York Times, January 16, 1887. For more on Giuri, see Maria Giuri e le stampa del due monde (Bologna: Società Tipografica Azzoguidi, 1887). 26. I have yet to come across references to lifts or supported adagios, and only the ballerina performed variations. Male principal roles were either performed by male mimes or by female character dancers. 27. Mme Mariquita did teach ballet: some students, including Jeanne Chasles, studied with her for years. 28. Such dances were prevalent in nineteenth-century French ballet. Other examples include the “Jardin animé” in Le corsaire, waltzes for flowers and snowflakes in The Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker, and dances for flowers and snowflakes in the 1888 féerie, Le pied du mouton. See Henri Justamant, “Les fleurs guerrières et Les flocons de neiges,” F-Po B-217 (14); Collins, “Adolphe Adam’s Ballet Le corsaire,” 324; and Pritchard, “‘The Great Hansen,” 98. 29. Though the dance may have been based on classical steps and poses, the dancers who performed these two characters, Henrietta Vergani (Henriette Vergané) and Angelina Correnti (travesty), were not ballerinas of the highest rank and did not normally perform roles that required academic skills. 30. This does not mean that music-hall ballets were any less intricately linked to the dance cultures of their time than were Romantic and post-Romantic pantomimeballets staged by the Opéra. For more on the links between theatrical and social dance, see Arkin and Smith, “National Dances in the Romantic Ballet,” 16, 20; Schroedter, “Topologien Pariser Tanzkulturen,” 519–43; and Bouchon, “Les représentations du bal dans le ballet du XIXe siècle,” 153–78. 31. Predecessors in Romantic and post-Romantic ballets include the many scenes of women bathing, doing their toilettes, and performing dances such as pas de schall. See Smith, “Ballet at the Opéra,” 321–36; and Kopchick Spencer, “The Jardin des Femmes as Scenic Convention.” 32. Examples abound from the turn of the twentieth century. In Le rêve, Daita dances flirtatiously for Sakouma despite pleas from her fiancé, Taiko. Gastinel, Le rêve, 31. In La Maladetta (1893), fairies “charm Cadual with their lascivious poses and their dances.” Vidal, La Maladetta, 153. Later examples include, Busser, “Scène de séduction,” La ronde des saisons, 97; and “Danses de Yadma,” act 1, tableau 2 (Yadma’s dances of seduction for Bacchus are described in the score as increasingly provocative) in Duvernoy, Bacchus, 58–64. Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre described the

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33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38.

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40.

41. 42.

costumes in Bacchus as minimal and likened the third tableau bacchanal to the Bal des Quat’z’Arts. “Bacchus à l’Opéra,” La Soirée Théâtrale, Le Figaro, November 27, 1902. For a fascinating study of the history of the cancan and its relationship to French social and cultural politics, see Parfitt-Brown, “Capturing the Cancan,” 72–121. The connotations of the cancan may also have mitigated their use in family-oriented entertainment. Ibid., 116–22. Jacques Lemaire, “Sans-Puits-House,” Casino program in F-Pn 8-RO-10954. Jeanne Litini performed the roles of courtesans Diane, Théodora, and Môme Pétrolette. F-Pn WNA-214 (1899–1900), program, September 30, 1899. Strapontin, “Les grandes courtisanes,” Paris la Nuit—Aux Folies-Bergère, Gil Blas, May 15, 1899; and Un Monsieur du Balcon, “Les grandes courtisanes,” Spectacles et Concerts, Le Figaro, May 15, 1899. This changed briefly after the arrival of the Ballets Russes in Paris. Robert Quinault came over from the Opéra-Comique to dance in Mme Mariquita’s ballets for the Folies-Bergère in the 1910s. Born in Marseille in 1872, Mlle Micheline made her debut in Lyon at the age of seven. She performed in dramas and comedies in Marseille as a child and teen, then traveled around France and Belgium, performing in operettas. Her Paris debut took place at the Eden-Concert, after which she performed at the Eldorado, Folies-Bergère, and Olympia. She was described as a singer, comedian, actress, seductive little devil, and artist with a remarkable career. “La Chula et Sardanapale,” Olympia, Le Théâtre Illustré 6, no. 21. Martha Fugère may have been an actress and mime. Born in Brussels, she made her Paris debut in 1887 at the Théâtre des Varitétés in small revue roles. She then made a name for herself replacing a succession of principals when they fell ill. She left that theater in 1893 to create Fleur de Lotus at the Folies-Bergère, then moved to the Nouveau-Théâtre where she created roles in La Prétentaine and Miss Dollar. “Théâtre des Variétés, Une semaine à Paris,” Le Théâtre Illustré 5, no. 4. Mlle Mercédès, who was listed as a premier sujet in the press, alternately danced secondary female roles and principal travesty roles in the early 1890s. She was soon joined by her sister, Marie. One of the sisters, most likely the elder, is listed in the Opéra corps in 1875. Angelina Correnti can be traced through Folies-Bergère programs and reviews as a premier sujet in the late 1880s and early 1890s, but she was best known for her performances in travesty. She premiered travesty roles in Le roi s’ennuie, Paris-turf, Une répétition aux Folies-Bergère, Les perles, Les chansons, Le rêve d’or, Le miroir, Fleur de Lotus, and Merveilleuses et gigolettes. Performances of the ballet the following year were again danced by Lina Campana (première bayadère, première danseuse-étoile) and mimed by Louise Willy (Fleur de Lotus) and Mlle Rampont (Goutte de Rosée). The cast for the principal characters of the premiere is listed in the printed piano score, Desormes, Fleur de Lotus, front matter. Surviving programs are dated March 28, 1894, F-Pn WNA-214, and April 13, 1894, F-Pn 8-RO-11091. For a history of mime in ballet, see Poesio, “The Origins of Ballet Mime.” My thanks to Matilda Butkas Ertz for her help with this topic. See Butkas Ertz “Nineteenth-Century Italian Ballet Music,” 95, 99, 109–10; and Poesio, “Blasis, the Italian Ballo, and the Male Sylph,” 132–33 for more on the differences between French and Italian styles of dancing in Italian ballet.

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notes to pp. 112–114

43. Butkas Ertz “Nineteenth-Century Italian Ballet Music,” 28, 143; and Poesio, “Blasis, the Italian Ballo, and the Male Sylph,” 135–36. 44. See, for example, cast divisions for Luigi Manzotti’s Amor (1886) listed in Il Teatro Illustrato 14, no. 8 (February 21, 1886). 45. What these women danced is open to speculation. It is possible that principal dancer-mimes who performed 1880s music-hall ballets were not classically trained but instead specialized in character dancing. Few had Italian names and few French-trained dancers could have performed virtuosic ballet in an academic idiom. Even the Opéra rarely produced locally trained étoiles of note. 46. Jeanne Lamothe was one of the era’s great dancers, and she may have danced in both a popular and academic style. Touted as Mme Mariquita’s best student, she premiered several roles at the Théâtre de la Gaîté and the Folies-Bergère. Érastène Ramiro, Cours de danse fin-de-siècle (1891), reprinted in Avril, Mes Memoires, 209. 47. I have not found a program for this ballet, and reviews, exceptionally, do not mention the name of the ballerina. 48. Mérode was trained at the Opéra and danced there for several years as a première danseuse but never as an étoile. She was commended in the press for dancing “variations” in music-hall ballets, but a different dancer was cast for the strictly classical role of star ballerina, and it was the latter who performed the ballet variations in the work’s divertissements. Phryné was created by Mérode in Royan and was later restaged at the Folies-Bergère (starring Jane Margyl) and at the Olympia (starring Mérode). Mérode, Le ballet de ma vie. On Phryné see pages 132–33, 143–47; on Lorenza and Mme Mariquita see pages 236–43. 49. Mlle Enriu was a première danseuse étoile. She premiered roles in the Casino’s ballets Étoile de mer, Vassilissa, Vénus à Paris, and Les amoureux de Venise, as well as in productions staged by the Nouveau-Théâtre. 50. The structural and stylistic overlap between the two may be seen in the Opéra ballet L’étoile (1897), the lone pantomime-ballet staged by the state theater between 1893 and 1902. L’étoile narrates the rise through the ranks of the Opéra of a talented but humble Parisian girl, Zénaïde. The tale features a convoluted, pantomime-heavy first act set in a Parisian square, and a second almost entirely danced act made up of exams for the various ballet classes at the Opéra. Although set in 1797, L’étoile was the first ballet at the Opéra to feature Parisians in Parisian dress—something much commented on by critics who noted ballet’s belated espousal of naturalism in comparison to literature and art. The score was the most criticised aspect of the production. Many complained of a brassy din better suited to the Folies-Bergère than the Opéra (see, for example, J. H. [Jules Huret], [L’étoile], Les Théâtres—L’Opéra, Le Figaro, June 1, 1897). The ballet did not feature the flirtations of Une répétition aux Folies-Bergère, and costuming was less skimpy (see press illustrations from L’Univers Illustré and Le Monde Artiste, and one by Navellier on BnF Gallica). 51. Even when the occasional ballet had a score worthy of the Opéra, other characteristics would have made its performance at the state theater inappropriate. Based on the score alone, Vidal might have premiered his 1893 Opéra ballet La Maladetta at the Olympia, and his 1901 Olympia ballet L’impératrice at the Opéra. But the plot of L’impératrice made it an unlikely candidate for the state theater: it featured a ruler falling in love with a peasant and dying a violent death at the hands of the peasant’s betrothed. La Maladetta stuck to the time-honored trope of a mortal man punished by death for falling in love with a supernatural creature.

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Chapter Six 1. 2. 3.

4.

5. 6.

7.

One, the “Danse des petits fous de cœur” in Lecocq’s Barbe-Bleue, was simply a repetition of its initial period: AAʹAʹʹAʹʹʹ. Even Edouard Lalo’s much-criticized, unusually symphonic and harmonically complex ballet, Namouna, closely followed these musical-narrative conventions. Similar musical depictions of storm scenes appear in Ferdinand Hérold’s La fille mal gardée, Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, Rossini’s Guillaume Tell, and Ambroise Thomas’s La tempête, to name a small sample. G. V., “Théâtre de Paris, Folies-Bergère,” January 26, 1899, and “Premières représentations,” January 26, 1899 (unattributed press clippings) in “Recueil factice concernant La princesse au sabbat,” F-Pn 8-RO-10980. This, too, was typical of operas set in exotic lands. Locke, Musical Exoticism, 59–64. Phryné, by August Germain and Louis Ganne, was created for the Casino de Royan in 1896 with choreography by Mme Stichel. It was restaged by Mme Mariquita at the Folies-Bergère in 1897 and by Alfredo Curti for the Olympia in 1904. See Locke, “Reflections on Orientalism in Opera” and “Constructing the Oriental ‘Other’”; Bellman, The Exotic in Western Music ; Scott, “Orientalism and Musical Style”; and McClary, Georges Bizet. See also Jowitt, Time and the Dancing Image, 49–66. The “Coffee” (Arabian dance) in Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker is perhaps the bestknown example of this tradition in ballet, with its serpentine lyrical lines, accented weak beats, and chromatic alterations.

Chapter Seven

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1.

Gaston Serpette, Premières représentations—Casino de Paris, Gil Blas, September 21, 1899. It was also important for the music to be easy enough to play with few rehearsals. Notices in the press confirm a standard rehearsal period of two weeks before the premiere of a given ballet. 2. For a discussion of music’s role in nineteenth-century Russian ballet, see Wiley, Tchaikovsky’s Ballets, 5–8. 3. “Premières représentations—Folies-Bergère,” clipping in “Recueil factice concernant Madame Bonaparte,” F-Pn 8-RO-10956. 4. “Premières représentations—Folies-Bergère,” January 26, 1899 (added in ink), press clipping in F-Pn 8-RO-10980. 5. “La belle aux cheveux d’or,” press clipping in “Recueil factice sur La belle aux cheveux d’or,” F-Pn 8-RO-10981. 6. “La belle aux cheveux d’or,” Premières représentations—Olympia, May 4, 1900 (added in ink), press clipping in F-Pn 8-RO-10981. 7. For a discussion of light music versus serious music in Austro-German music criticism, see Scott, Sounds of the Metropolis, 87–92. 8. Box-office receipts for Le château de Mac-Arrott totaled 105,544 francs over forty-one performances. Nightly receipts in May were high, peaking at 4,917 francs on May 15. It was rare for receipts to reach the 4,000-franc mark in the late 1880s. F-Psc “Registres-recensement, Folies-Bergère, 1886–1917.” 9. Lecocq’s Barbe-Bleue is the exception. 10. It also recalls the Menuet of Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin, which it predates.

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11. Ganne’s La princesse au sabbat, written only four years later, was, at least for a work destined for a popular market, harmonically even more adventurous, with unexpected harmonic progressions and unusual modulations. As shown in chapter 6, functional harmony in the introduction and opening scene of La princesse au sabbat is undermined by augmented triads and whole-tone scales, and the central waltz makes use of a broader and more colorful harmonic palette than most. Yet like Ganne’s earlier works, La princesse au sabbat maintains the conventions of nineteenth-century pantomime-ballet. Its harmonic complexity is never without dramatic motivation: his most peculiar writing always occurs in conjunction with the appearance of sinister characters or unsavory creatures, and he reverts to simpler functional harmonies when the ballet calls for standardized dances such as variations. 12. See, for example, clippings in F-Pn 8-RO-10980 for reviews such as the one included at the beginning of the chapter. 13. See list of theater critics in Noël and Stoullig, Les annales du théâtre et de la musique (1894), 620. 14. Pédrille, “Bouton d’or,” Paris au Théâtre, Le Petit Journal, January 4, 1893. 15. Pédrille, “Les manœuvres du printemps,” Paris au Théâtre, Le Petit Journal, April 12, 1893. 16. J. H. [Jules Huret], Les Théâtres: L’Opéra, Le Figaro, June 1, 1897. “Quoi, le tapage cuivré des Folies-Bergère à l’Académie nationale de musique! proférait-on dans les couloirs.” 17. Francis Thomé, Le Prince Désir, F-Po Fonds Thomé, 2. Thomé’s handwriting is often almost completely illegible. Several English music-hall ballets and Eden-Théâtre ballets survive in full score in London (GB-Lv) and Paris (F-Po). 18. Several music-hall ballets included voice, sometimes texted, but more often not. 19. The widely spaced triadic 86 melody heard in Le château de Mac-Arrott when the old hag reveals herself to be a fairy, for example, returns with each of her subsequent appearances. Eric, the poor peasant, is assigned a stepwise melody with a somewhat pedestrian accompaniment (and with a slightly awkward functional harmony inflected by a common-tone diminished seventh), and his beloved, the wealthy Diana, is characterized by a more lyrical line with lighter textures (her music never recurs exactly). 20. The few works created at the Opéra in the very last years of the century were nearly indistinguishable from those staged in popular venues. Between 1893, the year Vidal’s La Maladetta was created, and 1902, when Alphonse Duvernoy’s Bacchus was premiered, the Opéra staged only one pantomime-ballet, L’étoile (1897) by Wormser, and two independent ballet-divertissements: Fête russe (1893) with music arranged by Vidal, and Danses de jadis et de naguère (1900), also with a patchwork score. The two divertissements were barely remarked upon by the press and quickly forgotten. Wormser’s L’étoile, the Opéra’s last new pantomime-ballet of the century, was musically and dramatically more interesting, but it was startlingly similar to music-hall ballets and serves as an ideal example of an Opéra ballet that with few alterations could have been staged in any one of the main Parisian halls. 21. If anything, L’impératrice is musically more interesting than Vidal’s ballet La Maladetta presented by the Opéra eight years earlier. Vidal wrote two ballets for the Opéra-Comique, Maître Corbeau (1901) and Le ballet des nations (1914), both choreographed by Mme Mariquita. 22. Paul Vidal, “Thematic table, L’impératrice,” L’Art du Théâtre (June 1901): 92.

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notes to pp. 153–163 321 23. There is one short article about Ganne’s La princesse au sabbat that included reproductions of hand-written fragments of his music. Jean Lorrain and Louis Ganne, “La princesse au sabbat—Folies-Bergère,” Les Feux de la Rampe, February 15, 1899. 24. The last phrase of the B section is made up of four measures of 42 and eight measures of 86 that function as a transition back to Aʹ. 25. There is no record of dancers complaining about difficult music as they sometimes did for musically dense state-theater productions. (However, no music-hall ballet came close to matching Edouard Lalo’s Namouna, the most famously difficult of the Opéra’s late nineteenth-century ballets.) 26. For a discussion of the definition of popular nineteenth-century music and its relationship to function, venue, and reception, see Scott, Sounds of the Metropolis, 87–88. 27. Music-hall ballet scores had a definite commercial basis. They were written for ephemeral productions with the goal of turning a profit, and once a ballet’s stage life was over, excerpted dances were sold in piano reduction and arranged for performance by dance bands or amateur ensembles. Commercial success, functionality, simplicity, and intent to entertain do not, however, imply a lack of intrinsic artistic worth. See Traubner, Operetta: A Theatrical History, for a similar take on operetta.

Chapter Eight

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1.

2.

3.

4.

5. 6. 7.

My study of music-hall ballet subjects is based on a combination of manuscript librettos from F-Pan F18 1045 (censor’s files), scenarios printed in programs and in the Folies-Bergère’s newspaper (Les Folies-Bergère, Journal Quotidien Indépendant), stage action printed in piano scores, and when no other sources were available, synopses in press reviews. This chapter also relies in part on Hélène Laplace-Claverie’s study of turn-of-the-twentieth-century ballet librettos, Écrire pour la danse, which includes discussions of ballet librettos written for popular venues. Laplace-Claverie does not, however, differentiate between the librettos written for music halls and other theaters but rather looks at tendencies across theatrical boundaries. It is possible to read social malaise into a few ballets that hint at political instability, ennui, decadence, or pessimism (Le roi s’ennuie, L’araignée d’or, La princesse au sabbat, and L’impératrice); the demise of social or political orders (Néron and Cléopâtre), and political tensions (Vassilissa). Mimes d’or may make reference to the stock crash of 1882. Ballet subjects were remarkably similar from one hall to the next. The halls’ comparable performance contexts, staging practices, and audiences, as well as their constant exchange of creative and performing artists, ensured a relative uniformity of subjects and themes. See Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 138–222, for an in-depth study of the types of plots common to pantomime-ballets in all major Parisian theaters at the turn of the century. Slapstick was more common in English music-hall ballets than in French ones. The ballet most likely traded on the popularity of the Musée Grévin, a hugely successful wax museum that opened in Paris in 1882. Since the ballet had been out of the repertory for twenty years, audience members could have known the story of Giselle, but few would have seen the ballet.

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322 8. 9. 10.

11.

12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18.

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21. 22.

23. 24.

25. 26.

notes to pp. 163–169 The text in the piano score includes the remark that Goutte de Rosée scattered grains like Petit Poucet. Desormes, Fleur de Lotus, 18. Giselle may have included a bathing scene for the Wilis. See Kopckick Spencer, “The Jardin des Femmes,” 294–95. In her work on the “marriage plot,” Sally Banes notes that many nineteenth-century ballets nevertheless questioned the values of marriage and monogamy. See Dancing Women, introduction and chapters 1 and 2. As Smith points out, characters in Opéra ballets were also given permission to stray as long as they returned home afterward. Smith, Ballet and Opera in the Age of Giselle, 71. The ballet was probably based on the popular French song “Malbrouck s’en va-t-en guerre.” McMillan, France and Women, 152–57. McMillan notes that the nouvelle femme was primarily a persona created and promulgated by writers and artists who feared or vilified her. Ibid., 141–43. These ballets came close on the heels of a revival in France of eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century music and dance, both on the concert and operatic stage and in aristocratic salons. See Ellis, Interpreting the Musical Past; Gibbons, Building the Operatic Museum; and Pasler, Composing the Citizen, 498–506. This was the only major pantomime-ballet to have been written by a woman. For a discussion of the femme fatale, see for example, Dijkstra, Evil Sisters, and Idols of Perversity. Until the breakdown of generic regulations imposed by the Napoleonic theatrical laws described in the introduction, the Opéra was the only institution granted permission to stage ballets that featured the heroes, kings, and gods of history and mythology. After 1867, any venue could produce works that drew on these sources. Wild, Dictionnaire des théâtres, 308; and Jacq-Mioche, “Le ballet à Paris,” 107–8. See also Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 144. There were additional mythological ballets staged in other Parisian and provincial music halls and theaters, including the Eden-Théâtre. Ancient history provided the backdrop for most romantic dramas. Between 1897 and 1900, the halls staged five ballets that drew on ancient sources: Phryné (FB, 1897), Sardanapale (O, 1897), Néron (O, 1898), L’enlèvement des Sabines (FB, 1898), and Cléopâtre (C, 1900). The Olympia’s 1906 production of Cléopâtre had different authors and a different plot from the 1900 version. Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 145. Ibid., 170–71. Offenbach’s La belle Hélène may have made serious balletic interpretations of mythology impossible and may explain the proliferation of mythological parodies in music halls. For an introduction to La belle Hélène and its reception, see Kracauer, Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of His Time, 273–80. Sari’s failed attempts at initiating symphonic concerts at the Folies-Bergère offered early proof of this. Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 170. As Laplace-Claverie notes, P. L. Flers’s and Caillavet’s L’heure du berger, written for the 1900 Paris Exposition Palais de la Danse, also features Saturn calmly reading a newspaper in a bourgeois home setting. Laplace-Claverie describes how these ballets relied on anachronisms and deconstructions of myths to humanize gods and heroes in Écrire pour la danse, 175–77. “Les grandes courtisanes,” La Soirée Parisienne, La Gazette Anecdotique, November 6, 1899.

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notes to pp. 169–171 323 27. Although Armand Silvestre’s La fée du rocher seems never to have been staged, it provides a good example of a ballet in which a fairy is deflated and given human characteristics. The work begins with a throwback to Romantic ballet with peasant dances and pantomime scenes followed by a transformation into a fairyland as the male protagonist, the fiancé, dreams of being seduced by a fairy (several traits lend it a La sylphide -like feel). But the fairy of this fairy tale has bourgeois mores, lives in a bourgeois home, and has bourgeois aspirations of marriage and motherhood. Silvestre, Thomé, and Chéret, La fée du rocher. See Laplace-Claverie’s discussion of deflated heroes and androgyny in late nineteenth-century ballets at the Opéra in Écrire pour la danse, 179–82. 28. There were many works based on this myth, including Flaubert’s La tentation de Saint Antoine from 1874. 29. “Portant sa robe de bure, mais costumé, rasé, frisé, comme le plus coquet des clubmen.” Roger Milès and Egidio Rossi, Tentations, program synopsis, F-Pn 8-RO-11468. 30. This production was often called a ballet in the press, but it may have been a pantomime. 31. Other ballets replaced time-honored allegorical figures with up-to-date, fashionably Parisian substitutes. In ballets such as Les demoiselles du XXe siècle (1894), Merveilleuses et gigolettes (1894), and Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts, courtesans and demimondaines are cast as the modern goddesses of Beauty and Love. 32. Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 176. P. L. Flers was the pseudonym of PierreLouis Puyol. 33. Roucet was a pseudonym for the fashion designer and couturier Jacques Doucet. On Doucet, see François Chapon, Mystère et splendeurs de Jacques Doucet (Paris: J.-C. Lattès, 1984). For an introduction to his connections with the ballet world, see Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 291; Davis, Classic Chic, 24–25; and Davis, Ballets Russes Style, 129. 34. Laplace-Claverie notes that ballet had long featured allegories and that Flers modernized this tendency by imagining two ridiculous [dérisoires] idols who reflected to the viewers an image of their own vanity. Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 176. 35. The women take part in various physical activities: polo, boxing, football, cycling, dance, and swimming. 36. Such works were not unusual when compared to dramatic and lyrical productions in boulevard and other popular theaters, but it was new for ballets to have this critical edge. 37. For more on the subject, see Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 183. 38. Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 184. Laplace-Claverie posits that the gender inversions of this ballet were all the more powerful and more threatening to the established order for the ballet’s taking place in a realistic setting rather than in women’s traditional realm of myth or fairy tale, distanced from reality. The ballet was, however, set at least fifty years earlier in the kingdom of Illyria, not in 1900s Paris. 39. Alfred Delilia summed up the ballet in Le Figaro as a laugh: “en effet—un éclat de rire.” Delilia, Spectacles et Concerts, Le Figaro, January 25, 1905. 40. For more on women in turn-of-the-century French society, see Foley, Women in France since 1789 ; McMillan, France and Women, 1789–1914; Holmes and Tarr, eds. A “Belle Epoque?”; and Roberts, Disruptive Acts. 41. As Deborah Jowitt points out, many French and Russian ballet heroines of the preceding generation had strong wills and asserted themselves to find happiness.

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42. 43.

44. 45. 46.

47.

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50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55.

notes to pp. 171–174 Jowitt writes: “The ballet women did, however, fight for their liberty, assert the primacy of their desires, and refuse to be ruled by any restraints but their own will, even though, because they were women, their will was to submit themselves to the mate they chose, and ‘liberty’ simply meant marital happiness.” Time and the Dancing Image, 57. There was, however, a difference between finding happiness in the marital partner of one’s choice and having the freedom to flirt without marrying or flirt after marriage. Strapontin, [Le voyage de Madame la Présidente], Paris la Nuit, Gil Blas, January 25, 1905. English music halls staged sporting ballets beginning in the 1870s. Examples include Rumsgate at the Metropolitan, Sport staged by South London Palace in 1875, and Sport staged by London’s Metropolitan in 1879. See, for example, Tilburg, Colette’s Republic, especially chapter 2. See also Holt, “Women, Men and Sport in France, c. 1870–1914.” Sources for Les demoiselles du XXe siècle are too fragmentary to leave a clear impression of the plot. One of the most striking changes in newspaper reporting of cultural events in the 1890s is the increased number of columns devoted to sporting events. They became so popular in the late 1890s that dailies, including the great promoter of music-hall ballet, Le Figaro, began granting more space to sports than to reviews of ballets. For a study of the rise of physical education for women and its ties to performance culture and morality, see Tillburg, Colette’s Republic, and “The Triumph of the Flesh.” There remains a vast difference between performances by music-hall ballet corps girls pretending to be athletes in order to show off their bodies and those by artists such as Colette (even when she performed nude), but the two ran in parallel and the performance and reception of one informed the other. The ballet played for three months in 1908, but the SACD catalogues suggest that only the first act was performed. F-Psc, Registres-recensement, Folies-Bergère, 1886–1917. The Opéra was known for its libertine balls. Reports in newspapers and notices about complaints of rowdiness in various Parisian balls in the early 1890s confirm that the Opéra balls were far from being restrained, refined affairs. This second ball was organized by Jules Roques, the editor of Le Courrier Français, and held at the Moulin Rouge, February 8, 1893. The court appearance took place June 24, 1893. Details of the event were printed in La Gazette des Tribunaux, June 24, 1893, and Le Matin, June 24, 1893. See also Felter-Kerley, “The Art of Posing Nude.” For a discussion of Brown’s satire of bourgeois femininity in which a working-class Jewish model portrays the notorious femme fatale, see ibid., 80–81. See articles about the Bal des Quat’z’Arts in Le Courrier Français, February 5, 1893, and February 12, 1893. Marie Lathers discusses the ensuing scandal and student protests in Bodies of Art, 245–48. Felter-Kerley, “The Art of Posing Nude,” 81, 86–87. “Le Bal du ‘Fin de Siecle,’” Le Fin de Siècle, February 15, 1893; “Notre redoute,” Le Fin de Siècle, February 25, 1893; “Notre redoute,” Le Fin de Siècle, March 4, 1893; “Notre bal,” Le Fin de Siècle, February 1, 1894; “Après le bal,” Le Fin de Siècle, February 8, 1894. Georges Courteline and Louis Marsolleau, Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts. F-Pan, F18 1045.

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notes to pp. 174–180 325 56. Ibid. 57. Ibid. According to one review, the striptease was more revealing for the dress rehearsal, but was censored. This is one of the two ballets never performed during matinées. It was undoubtedly considered too racy for families. Frimousse, “Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts,” La Soirée Parisienne, Le Gaulois, December 10, 1893.

Chapter Nine

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1.

F-Psc, Registres-recensement, Folies-Bergère, 1886–1917; Registres-recensement, Olympia, 1893–1913; and Registres-recensement, Casino de Paris, 1890–1914. 2. “Article de presse sur Cadet-Roussel,” F-Pn 8-RO-11125 and Cadet-Roussel program, F-Pa GD-27129. 3. Le scandale du Louvre, programme spéciale de la répétition générale, F-Pn 8-RO-11066. The choreographer, Rita Papurello, studied ancient Greek pottery at the Musée du Louvre to create the ballet’s dances and pantomime. 4. Spectacles et Concerts—À l’Olympia, Le Figaro, February 17, 1911. One critic described the ballet as “une intéressante reconstitution artistique [qui est] à chaque instant une évocation d’art pur.” TIC, “La création de Nitokris,” Soirée Parisienne—À l’Olympia, L’Écho de Paris, February 17, 1911. 5. Strapontin, Au Casino de Paris, Gil Blas, December 24, 1896. 6. Un Monsieur du Balcon, Au Casino de Paris, Le Figaro, December 24, 1896. See also Adrien Vély, “Les Amoureux de Venise,” Courrier des Spectacles—La Soirée, Le Gaulois, December 24, 1896. Vély remarks that the décor was extraordinary given the restricted dimensions of the Casino stage. Like the critics quoted above, Vély marveled at the canal and bridge with gondolas passing underneath, the vast greenhouse as the backdrop to the couple’s union, and the magical night scene lit with colored lights when the gondola was brought up to the greenhouse to collect the newlyweds. 7. Strapontin, Au Casino de Paris, Gil Blas, December 24, 1896. 8. “Casino de Paris et Nouveau Théâtre,” program in F-Pn 8-RO-10894. 9. Set designers worked together in various combinations. Amable alternately collaborated with Gardy, Menessier, Ronsin, Chambouleron, and Mignard; Menessier with Rubé and Cornil; Rubé with Moisson. Aside from Menessier, all worked for the Opéra. They also worked at different times for the Opéra-Comique, ComédieFrançaise, Odéon, Porte Saint-Martin, Gaîté, Châtelet, Variétés, Vaudeville, Renaissance, Ambigu-Comique, Bouffe-Parisiens, and Sarah Bernhardt. Wild, Décors et costumes du XIXe siècle à l’Opéra de Paris. 10. Golden, Anna Held and the Birth of Ziegfeld’s Broadway, 52–53. See also Mérode, Le ballet de ma vie, 223, 227. 11. Mérode, Le ballet de ma vie, 238. 12. Lenard Berlanstein makes a similar observation about links between fashion and a growing female audience for stage plays. He notes that as theatergoing became an increasingly feminized event, “the ties between women’s fashion and the stage, never lacking, grew stronger than before. It is not accidental that theater columnists began to stress the ever-escalating level of luxury in costumes after the founding of the Third Republic. Productions were now expected to include scenes the only purpose of which was to show off beautiful dresses and excite female spectators.” Berlanstein, Daughters of Eve, 168.

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notes to pp. 180–181

13. There are many images of costumes in the caricature and illustrated press, and in journals such as Le Théâtre Illustré and Les Feux de la Rampe, but these may have had little connection to actual costumes worn on stage. The press was more interested in selling papers than accurately documenting music-hall ballets, so they routinely depicted dancers in more revealing clothing than they could possibly have gotten away with on the stages of mainstream music halls. An engraving by Heidbrinck in Le Courrier Français of dancers in Press-Ballet, for instance, depicts the dancers in far more revealing clothing than does a rare photograph of a dancer from the same ballet. See “Croquis de Bode,” Journal du Théâtre, May 11, 1888, F-Pn ICO-THE-4381. 14. According to Eugen Weber, a ballgown for Otéro around this time cost 900 to 1,600 francs (well within her exorbitant salary). Weber, France, Fin de Siècle, 97. According to Muriand, Otéro made 35,000 francs per month in the years before WWI. Muriand, Les Folies-Bergère, 47. 15. St. Senoch, “Madame Bonaparte, ballet 1900–1901,” F-Pn (Photo-estampes) NB-474. The collection, bound in a leather album, is embossed with the ballet’s title and a dedication to Mme Mariquita. There is a second dedication to Mme Mariquita signed by St. Senoch on the flyleaf. 16. Three Olympia programs from 1894/95 also list the provenance of accessories and the name of the ballet’s coiffeur, but they are exceptions. See programs for Le fiancé de cire, Fée des poupées, and Le scandale du Louvre in F-Pn 4-RO-15747 and F-Po PRO.B.275. 17. See programs for Les filles de Bohème (1909), Papillon d’or (1910), L’enlèvement de Psyché (1910), and Nitokris (1911) in F-Pn 4-RO-15747 and F-Po PRO.B.275. 18. Stella also made use of machinery by M. A. Merten and electricity (unspecified) by M. Ch. Glocker. Programs in 4-RO-15722 and F-Po PRO.B.169. 19. Programs in F-Pn 4-RO-15700 (3). 20. Electrically lit or propelled inventions had intermittently captivated the imagination of Parisians since the 1878 Exposition and 1881 International Electrical Exhibition, but the city only began using electric lights in public buildings and streets in the late 1880s, and most people still lit their homes with gaslights. Soppelsa, “The Fragility of Modernity,” 201–2; and Holcombe, “The Electric Lighting System of Paris,” 122–24. 21. Most reviews of music hall inaugurations and several of season premieres rave about the halls’ magically bright lighting. See, for example, Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre’s descriptions of an “orgiastic flood of light” in La Soirée Théâtrale—Olympia, Le Figaro, April 12, 1893. 22. Manet’s painting Un bar aux Folies-Bergère (1882) depicts the Folies-Bergère’s electrically lit chandeliers. Electric lighting was used in Folies-Bergère ballets at least as early as 1884. See earlier discussion of Les sources du Nil. 23. Current and Current, Loie Fuller, Goddess of Light, 95–99. 24. Henry Fouquier, Les Théâtres, Le Figaro, January 4, 1893. 25. R. de Fréchencourt, Courrier des Théâtres,” La Gazette de France, October 12, 1893. The central ballet in Bouton d’or (1893) played with effects of lighting so that dancers seemed to materialize and vanish as if by magic in a whirl of changing colored lights. La Prétentaine, a vaudeville-operetta in four acts by Paul Ferrier and Raoul Bénédite with music by Léon Vasseur created the same year, likewise served as an excuse to present a ballet illuminated with colored lights. Music-hall directors sometimes tried to incorporate other incongruous attractions. A critic writing for L’Entr’acte in 1886 commented on the ridiculous intrusion of a dwarf in Volapük

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notes to pp. 181–186 327

26.

27. 28.

29.

30. 31.

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32.

33.

34.

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36.

37.

whom the director no doubt wanted to cast at all costs. Clipping about Ganne’s Volapük in F-Pn 8-RO-10863. See, for example, Calshas, Courrier des Théâtres, La Presse, April 12, 1893; Petites Nouvelles, Le Figaro, March 26, 1893; Théâtres, Le Temps, May 8, 1893; Georges Boyer, Courrier des Théâtres, Le Figaro, March 25, 1893; Georges Boyer, Courrier des Théâtres, Le Figaro, April 4, 1893; and an untitled clipping in F-Pn 8-RO-15722. E. D. [Émile Duret], [Fleur de Lotus], Courrier des Théâtres, La Presse, March 27, 1893. Fleur de Lotus, for example, had a relatively short initial run toward the end of the 1892/93 season and had only mediocre box-office returns: 3,771.50 francs per night in March dwindling to nightly averages of 1,500 in May. But the ballet was deemed popular enough to warrant restaging the following year, when it played to a full hall for three months (February 24– May 30, 1894) with average earnings of 3,600 francs/night. F-Psc Registres-recensement, Folies-Bergère. Such a curtain had already been used twice with great success by the Alhambra, once in 1866 [see Guest, Ballet in Leicester Square, 17, note 10], and again in 1892 for Aladdin. Thanks to Jane Pritchard for bringing this to my attention. The glass curtain for the 1892 Alhambra production of Aladdin was described as a “delicate curtain of ‘crystal lacework’ made out of 75,000 glass facets that were held together by twenty-four miles of wire and illuminated by lights of many different colors, the whole contraption weighing one and a half tons.” Era, December 24, 1892. Cars were used in Cythère (1900) and in the 1908 production of Sports. Le timbre d’or included a panorama-like series of backdrops. Concerts, Le Courrier Français, June 10, 1892; Jules Bois, Folies-Bergère, Le Courrier Français, January 10, 1892; J. R. [Jules Roques], Olympia, Le Courrier Français, October 15, 1893. J. R., [Sardanapale], Olympia, Le Courrier Français, October 3, 1897. “Aussi tous les bourgeois allumés par un bon diner, se presseront-ils chaque soir pour dévorer . . . des yeux cette orgie aphrodisiaque de ventres offerts, de jambes écartées, de fesses rebondies, de nichons de bois, etc.” Phryné included only one minor role for a man: that of an old man. The program listed the names of five women in principal danced or mimed roles, thirty-six women in unnamed roles, and an unnamed female ballet corps of unidentified number (thirty was the norm, but some ballets had corps of sixty or more). The era’s great male mimes—Thalès, Séverin, Cressonier, Mourès, de Gaspari, and Eugénio—were sometimes cast in lead male roles, and some may on occasion have been asked to perform social or even character dances, but they did not dance ballet. A few secondary roles were likewise assigned to male mimes, but even these were comparatively rare. The vast majority of principal male roles were performed by women, whether female mimes or dancers, and the ballet corps was entirely female. Even though many ballets included officers without a direct connection to the plot, these military figures would not have seemed incongruous to the music-hall public since officers were a reality of daily life in Paris and constantly in the public eye. Henri Justamant might have created Les réservistes à venir (1887) in response to social and political agitation over the removal of cantinières from the French army, but the ballet was far less concerned with social critique than with pageantry and dancing. Garafola, “The Travesty Dancer in Nineteenth-Century Ballet,” 37.

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38. For discussions of French Romantic ballet’s role as “erotic daydreaming,” see Robin-Challan, “Social Conditions of Ballet Dancers,” 25; Dawson, “Danseuses as Working Women,” 216–17; and Smith, Ballet and Opera in the Age of Giselle, 68–70. 39. Garafola, “The Travesty Dancer in Nineteenth-Century Ballet,” 39. 40. On sapphism in Romantic ballet, see Stoneley, A Queer History of the Ballet, 23–27, 34–37. 41. Nor was it restricted to ballet: travesty also had a long history in theater and opera. 42. A handful of critics reviled the very idea of the male dancer and disseminated vitriolic epistles that further debased the danseur. Jules Janin’s and Théophile Gautier’s writings about male dancers in the 1830s and 1840s famously heaped insults on the “frightful” and “ugly” male dancer while setting the “pretty dancing girls” on a pedestal. Quoted in Smith, “The Disappearing Danseur,” 33–34. 43. F-Po Opéra appointements 1872–1914: Personnel du ballet, PE 104–PE 112; Personnel de la danse, PE 74–82; Personnel de la figuration, PE 121–PE 127. 44. The Opéra lost its royal privilege in 1830, after which it depended on box-office earnings for a substantial portion of its revenues. The theater’s first director under the new regime, Louis Véron, saw ballet’s potential to attract a loyal following of wealthy male abonnées. He simplified plots, escalated the level of spectacle, and focused the limelight on “the young and beautiful dancer,” the ballet girl. His predominantly male audience, which included such famously voyeuristic wealthy clubmen as the Jockey Club, was then invited into the Foyer de la danse to mingle with and patronize the underpaid young dancers. Guest, The Paris Opéra Ballet, 44–46. Véron’s summary of what makes a ballet a success is quoted in Guest, The Romantic Ballet in Paris, 193. Dawson, “Danseuses as Working Women”; and Robin-Challan, “Danse et danseuses à l’Opéra de Paris, 1830–1850.” 45. Garafola, “The Travesty Dancer in Nineteenth-Century Ballet,” 35. Garafola argues that this shift reflects a move away from “a courtly, aristocratic art to an entertainment geared to the marketplace and the tastes of a new bourgeois public.” Its rampant use in music-hall ballet supports this view, though male mimes were highly valued by broad audiences. 46. Reviews, cast lists, imagery, and the music assigned to various characters confirm that lead male dancers were mere supports for their ballerina, while male dancers of lower ranks rarely danced. 47. Quinault, La danse en France sous la Troisième République. 48. Smith, “The Disappearing Danseur,” 48–51. Smith notes that the perception of the disappearance of the male danseur is largely a problem of historiography. See Garafola, “The Travesty Dancer in Nineteenth-Century Ballet,” 35–40; and Smith, “The Disappearing Danseur,” 33–57 for contrasting discussions of the role of men and travesty in French Romantic ballet. Collins contends that the danseur was very much present in late Romantic ballet. She notes the presence of several male dancers—nearly as many as women—in the 1856 Paris Opéra production of Le corsaire. Collins, “A Fresh Look at Le corsaire,” 290–99. 49. See names of men listed in Opéra ballet scores from the 1870s through early 1900s and personnel lists in F-Po Opéra appointements 1872–1914: Personnel du ballet, PE 104–PE 112; Personnel de la danse, PE 74–82; Personnel de la figuration, PE 121–PE 127. All of the Opéra’s ballets from the 1870s included several men at all ranks, but women played the lead male lover in Coppélia and Gretna Green. Like Bacchus (1902), La ronde des saisons (1905) included roles for a large number of men, but cast a woman in travesty as the lead male.

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notes to pp. 191–192 329 50. Widor, La Korrigane, front matter. 51. Duvernoy, Bacchus, front matter. Personnel lists and contracts rarely include first names. See F-Po Opéra appointements 1872–1914: Personnel du ballet, PE 104–PE 112; Personnel de la danse, PE 74–82; Personnel de la figuration, PE 121–PE 127. 52. Thomas, La tempête, front matter. 53. In 1879, the Opéra had on its personnel lists: 127 women (43 personnel de la danse, 84 personnel du ballet) and 52 men (14 danse, 38 ballet). In 1888 there were 123 women (49 danse, 74 ballet) and 46 men (16 danse, 30 ballet). In 1894 there were 138 women (53 danse, 85 ballet) and 45 men (13 danse, 32 ballet). These numbers include the maître de ballet, régisseur, and teachers, most of whom also mimed or danced. There were a few additional men and women hired as extras. Names and numbers vary slightly between sets of registers and collections of contracts, and names do not correspond exactly to those in printed cast lists. New men were hired every year or two when former danseurs retired, died, or moved up through the ranks. There was a huge turnover of dancers around 1900, and more men were hired. In 1903, there were 141 women (60 danse, 81 ballet) and 58 men (19 danse, 39 ballet). F-Po Opéra appointements 1872–1914: Personnel du ballet, PE 104–PE 112; Personnel de la danse, PE 74–82; Personnel de la figuration, PE 121–PE 127. 54. Guest, The Romantic Ballet in Paris, 33, 187. 55. Vasquez occasionally held the lead male role of lover, partnering the lead ballerina and dancing alongside her, and his dancing is at least occasionally mentioned in reviews. See, for instance, Noël and Stoullig, Les annales du théâtre et de la musique (1880), 57–58. 56. Ladam’s performance as Zénaide’s lover in L’étoile, for instance, called for character and historical dances, but not ballet. Ladam and Rémond may have acquired basic dance skills, since their names do occasionally appear in programs and scores as members of the dance ensemble, but these dances were, again, social, national, and historical dances, not ballet. 57. F-Pan Aj13 1020, Opéra appointements: Personnel de la danse. Cornet retired in 1887. F-Po PE 76, Opéra appointements: Personnel de la danse, 1886–88. 58. Ajas, Mérante, Hansen, and Pluque were occasionally praised for their performances in reviews of Opéra ballets, but always as character dancers with great miming abilities. Berthe Bernay considered Mérante and Pluque the best mimes of the period. Bernay, La danse au théâtre, 188. Édouard Pluque was the régisseur de la danse at the Opéra from 1870 to 1895, Louis Mérante was the Opéra’s ballet master from 1869 to 1887, and Joseph Hansen was the Opéra’s ballet master from 1887 to 1907. A. Ajas had a long career at the Opéra and late in life wrote a Traité pratique de la danse donnant la technique détaillée mise à la portée de tous (Paris: Garnier, 1910). 59. Reviews of late nineteenth-century Opéra ballets did sometimes mention men, but critics’ attitude toward them was ambivalent at best. See the review of La Korrigane published in Noël and Stoullig, Les annales du théâtre et de la musique (1880), 57–58. “Autant nous aimons la danse pour les femmes, dont elle semble être le monopole, autant nous la comprenons peu pour les hommes. Nous sommes forcé cependant de reconnaitre le succès de Vasquez, chez qui il faut applaudir l’élégance en même temps que la hardiesse des mouvements. Ajas compose avec souplesse le personnage grotesque de Paskou, et Mérante est non moins bien placé sous les longs cheveux du cornemuseux Lilez.”

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60. Other theaters that staged ballets with men in lead roles before the arrival of the Ballet Russes include the Folies-Marigny (1897–1900), the 1900 Paris Exposition Palais de la danse, and the Opéra-Comique (as of 1898). 61. Pritchard, “Enrico Cecchetti.” 62. Ibid. Pritchard notes that Marie Saracco played the lead roles of King Thule in Sieba and Roberto in La cour d’amour. Conversation, February 2012. 63. Pritchard, “Enrico Cecchetti.” 64. They did, however, have a disproportionate influence on French ballet as choreographers. 65. De Gaspari/de Gasperi/de Gasparis performed mimed character roles in EdenThéâtre ballets, then worked as a mime in music-hall ballets. For more on the Eden-Théâtre, see Ledout, “L’Eden-Théâtre (1883–1893),” 109–16. 66. On the great male dancers who performed in Diaghilev’s first ballet productions, see Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 399–402. 67. For a study of Diaghilev’s transformation of ballet into a realm of masculinity with a subsequent displacement of the ballerina, see Garafola, “Reconfiguring the Sexes.” 68. The tone in most reviews for a time was ambivalent at best. A critic who signed his review of Stella (1911) J. L., for instance, reported that Robert Quinault found favor with a now discerning Folies-Bergère audience primed by Nijinsky’s sensational dancing. Yet the critic seemed ill at ease with the subject of male dancers in general. After noting that the danseur remained in the shadow of the naturally nimble ballerina, J. L. wrote, somewhat cryptically, that the greatest praise he could give Quinault was merely to report that the dancer was able to please his public. J. L. “Eh bien, M. Quinault a réussi à plaire; c’est, semble-t-il, le plus grand éloge à lui addresser que de le constater simplement.” Clipping in F-Pn RO-10992. 69. Few male dancers moved between the Opéra and music halls. Men from the Opéra sometimes staged ballets and choreographed for the music halls, but they did not dance in music-hall ballets. The same was true of the Opéra-Comique until Mme Mariquita brought Quinault with her to the Folies-Bergère. 70. Four of the six ballets staged in 1897 at the Folies-Bergère, Olympia, and Casino included bathing scenes. 71. Women and children were present at matinées and they may well have enjoyed displays of the female body, but since men usually paid the entrance fee, they were the primary market for music-hall ballets. 72. Richard O’Monroy [de Saint-Geniès], [Brighton], La Soirée Parisienne, Gil Blas, October 14, 1893. 73. O’Monroy, [Un déjeuner sur l’herbe], La Soirée Parisienne, Gil Blas, July 3, 1897. 74. Dawkins offers a glimpse into censorship and spectatorship of the nude in imagery of the period in The Nude in French Art and Culture. 75. Victor Roger, “Sardanapale,” Courrier des Théâtres, Le Petit Journal, September 15, 1897. No mention was made of allusions to Manet’s painting in reviews of Un déjeuner sur l’herbe. 76. Silvestre, Le nu au salon. 77. For more on the Silvestre scandal, see Dawkins, The Nude in French Art and Culture, 54–63. 78. In Bacchus (1905), for instance, Yadma is sent to seduce the enemy, Bacchus, with “provocative” exotic dances. A later tableau offers a bacchanal, which Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre likens to the Quat’z’Arts (Le Figaro, November 27, 1902), and a

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notes to pp. 198–204 331

79. 80. 81. 82.

83. 84. 85.

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86. 87.

88.

89.

90.

suggestive dance of veils. In La ronde des saisons, Été tries to charm Tancrède with a “voluptuous” dance while Tancrède pleads for the return of the woman he is in love with. Busser, La ronde des saisons. There are many similar examples from earlier Opéra ballets (see Smith, Ballet and Opera in the Age of Giselle) and Bournonville ballets (for example, the bewitching sea nymphs in Bournonville’s Napoli). The creatures that emerge from the waters are labeled dryads in the score. The cast list incudes both naiads and dryads. Delibes, Sylvia, 8. Stoneley, A Queer History of the Ballet, 23–24. See also Guest, The Romantic Ballet in Paris, 88, 203; and Jowitt, Time and the Dancing Image, 33–34, 37, 49, 61–63. Stoneley, A Queer History of the Ballet, 22–45. Robert le diable played at the Opéra until 1893. In La tentation, demons deposit the unwitting voyeur, Antoine, in the midst of an oriental harem. In La révolte au sérail, the King of Granada’s favorite and her companions frolic in baths, then emerge to dress, finish their toilettes, admire themselves in the mirror, and dance coquettishly. Smith, “Ballet at the Opéra,” 323; and Kopchick Spencer, “The Jardin des Femmes.” Feminine scenes also appear, for instance, in the ballets La Volière (1838), La Péri (1843), and Ozaï (1847). Smith, “Ballet at the Opéra,” 13. Théophile Gautier, “La Tarentule,” Feuilleton de la Presse—Opéra, La Presse, July 1, 1839, cited in Smith, “About the House,” 219. “Les sept péchés capitaux,” Paris Qui Chante, October 18, 1903, 8–9. See appendix B for titles of ballets performed by professional beauties. From the mid-1890s on, professional beauties, including Liane de Pougy, Émilienne d’Alençon, and Caroline Otéro, frequently held starring roles in music-hall ballets, as did actresses such as Louise Willy, Jane Margyl, and Jane Thylda, noted for their voluptuous charms, and dancers such as Angèle Héraud, prized for their looks and coquettish performances. See Mérode, Le ballet de ma vie, 125, for a photograph of the Falguière statue. Only one critic commented on the ballet’s reference to the Mérode scandal. Un Avertisseur, “La vie de Paris, Cléo de Mérode et ses deux sculpteurs,” Le Figaro, November 4, 1901. Mérode’s antics were too well known and her life too frequently discussed in society journals for these connections to have gone unnoticed by at least a segment of her audience. Émilienne aux Quat’z’Arts and Une répétition aux Folies-Bergère were never performed at a matinée. It is not clear from reviews or from synopses why the latter was considered inappropriate family entertainment. There are conflicting reports of when nudity was first seen at the Folies-Bergère. According to Muriand, Maurice Verne stated that the first was in an operetta by Hugues Delorme in 1910. Paul Derval recalled that the first was a blonde who personified Love sitting immobile on a flowered chariot in 1912. Muriand, Les FoliesBergère, 43; and Derval, Folies-Bergère, 65. A similar trick was used to represent a nude Thaïs in Massenet’s comédie-lyrique premiered at the Opéra in 1894. The role of Thaïs was sung by Sybil Sanderson, a top-earning star with great sex appeal, but the brief scene of her unveiling was performed by a supernumerary, and even then the audience saw her only from the back. Steven Huebner notes that Sanderson also insisted that the supernumerary wear enough to appear decent. Like Mérode’s Phryné, the exhibition was more titillating for the imagination than the eye, but it was nonetheless a favorite scene for many. Huebner, French Opera at the Fin de Siècle, 111.

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91. Mérode, Le ballet de ma vie, 144–45. Jowitt makes this point by comparing descriptions of another famously erotic scene, the “Ballet of Nuns” from Robert le diable. See Jowitt, Time and the Dancing Image, 37. 92. Montorgueil, Année feminine, 76–77. 93. See Rudorff on “the great erotic legend of fin-de-siècle Paris.” Rudorf, Belle Époque, 61. 94. For descriptions of a few early striptease pantomimes, see Montorgueil, Année feminine, 37–39, 58–77. 95. For a discussion of the predecessors of pinup imagery, see Buszek, Pin-Up Grrrls.

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Bibliography Archival Sources Archives nationales, Paris, France (F-Pan). Bibliothèque-Musée de l’Opéra, Paris, France (F-Po). Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, France (F-Pn). Bibliothèque de la Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques, Paris, France (F-Psc). Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Great Britain (GB-Lv).

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Scores Banès, Antoine. Olympia, ballet en deux actes. Paris: Choudens, ca. 1893. Bouval, Jules. Le scandale du Louvre, ballet mimé en un acte. Paris: Enoch, 1895. Busser, Henri. La ronde des saisons, ballet en trois actes. Paris: Poulalion, 1905. Cieutat, Henri. Le château de Mac-Arrott, ballet-féerie en cinq tableaux. Paris: J. V. Durdilly, 1888. ———. La Fiammina. Paris: Léon Grus, 1896. Delibes, Léo. Coppélia, ou la fille aux yeux d’émail, ballet en deux actes et trois tableaux. Paris: Heugel, ca. 1870. ———. Sylvia, ou la nymphe de Diane, ballet en trois actes et cinq tableaux. Paris: Heugel, 1876. Desormes, Louis. Fleur de Lotus, ballet-pantomime en deux tableaux. Paris: E. Meuriot, 1893. ———. Mars et Vénus. Paris: Ch. Egrot, 1882. ———. Le miroir, ballet-pantomime en deux tableaux. Paris: E. Meuriot, 1892. ———. Pierrot volage. Paris: Paul Ollendorff, 1886. ———. Rêve d’or, ballet-pantomime en un acte et deux tableaux. Paris: Roger, 1892. Diet, Edmond. Rêve de Noël, ballet-pantomime en un acte et trois tableaux. Paris: A. Noël, 1897. Duvernoy, Alphonse. Bacchus, ballet en trois actes et cinq tableaux. Paris: Heugel, 1902. Ganne, Louis. L’heureuse rencontre. Paris: Enoch Frères et Costallat, 1892. ———. Merveilleuses et gigolettes, ballet-pantomime en deux actes et trois tableaux. Paris: Enoch, 1895. ———. Phryné, ballet-pantomime en trois actes. Paris: Enoch, 1897. ———. La princesse au sabbat, ballet en trois tableaux. Paris: Constella, 1898. ———. Les sources du Nil. Paris: Lissarrague, 1882. Gastinel, Léon, Le rêve, ballet en deux actes et trois tableaux. Paris: Hartmann, 1890.

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Hervé. Faust à l’Olympia. Paris: Heugel, 1901. ———. Faust à l’Olympia, MS full orchestral score. F-Po Fonds Hervé 130. ———. Les sphinx, divertissement en trois tableaux. Paris: Choudens, 1879. Hirschmann, Henri. Néron, ballet en trois tableaux avec chœurs. Paris: Choudens, 1898. Hubans, Charles. Les abeilles, valse brillante. Paris: F. Mackar, 1878. Lagoanère, Oscar de. Bains de dames, ballet en un acte. Paris: P. Humblot, 1896. Lalo, Édouard. Namouna, ballet en deux actes et trois tableaux. Paris: J. Hamelle, 1882. Lecocq, Charles. Barbe-Bleue, ballet-pantomime avec chœurs en trois tableaux. Paris: Choudens, 1898. Messager, André. Les deux pigeons, ballet en trois actes. Paris: Enoch, 1886. ———. Fleur d’oranger. Paris: Henry Lemoine, 1878. ———. Mignons et vilains. Paris: s.n., 1879. ———. Les vins de France. Paris: E. Menier, 1879. Messager, André, and Georges Street. Scaramouche. Paris: Choudens Fils, 1892. Pfeiffer, Georges. Cléopâtre: Orchestral Score of Excerpts. Paris: Paul Dupont, 1900. Pierné, Gabriel. Bouton d’or. Paris: Choudens Fils, 1893. Silvestre, Armand, Jules Chéret, and Francis Thomé. La fée du rocher. Paris: Chaix, 1894. Thomas, Ambroise. La tempête, ballet fantastique en trois actes et six tableaux. Paris: Heugel, 1889. Thomé, Francis. Le Prince Désir, MS full score. F-Po Fonds Thomé (1−4). Varney, Louis. La Princesse Idaea. Paris: Léon Grus, 1895. Vidal, Paul. L’impératrice, ballet-féerie en deux actes et un prologue. Paris: Choudens, 1903. ———. La Maladetta, ballet en deux actes et quatre tableaux. Paris: Choudens, 1893. Wenzel, Léopold. Brighton; ou Les plaisirs de la plage. F-Pn Vm12g.14679 and F-Po Res. 1064 (1−8). Widor, Charles-Marie. La Korrigane, ballet fantastique en deux actes. Paris: Heugel, 1880. Wormser, André. L’étoile, ballet-pantomime en deux actes. Paris: E. Biardot, 1897.

Published Sources Abbot, Mary. A Woman’s Paris: A Handbook of Every-Day Living in the French Capital. Boston: Small, Maynard, 1900. Albright, Ann Cooper. Traces of Light: Absence and Presence in the Work of Loïe Fuller. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2007. Allen, Robert. Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. Andrieu, Pierre. Souvenirs des frères Isola: Cinquante ans de vie parisienne. Paris: Flammarion, 1943. Arkin, Lisa, and Marian Smith. “National Dances in the Romantic Ballet.” In Rethinking the Sylph: New Perspectives on the Romantic Ballet, edited by Lynn Garafola, 11−68. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1997.

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Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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bibliography 343 Pappacena, Flavia, ed. Excelsior. Chorégraphie: Studi e recherché sulla danza [Excelsior: Documents and Essays]. Rome: Di Giacomo, 1998. Parfitt-Brown, Claire. “Capturing the Cancan: Body Politics from the Enlightenment to Postmodernity.” PhD diss., Roehampton University, 2008. Pasler, Jann. Composing the Citizen: Music as Public Utility in Third Republic France. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Patry, Jacques. “Jean Richepin.” in Le nouveau dictionnaire des auteurs, N-Z, p. 2708. Poitiers: Éditions Robert Laffont, 1994. Perloff, Nancy. Art and the Everyday: Popular Entertainment and the Circle of Erik Satie. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991. Pessis, Jacques, and Jacques Crepineau. Les Folies-Bergère. Paris: Fixot, 1990. Pierre, Constant. Le conservatoire national de musique et de déclamation: Documents historiques et administratifs. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1900. Poesio, Giannandrea. “Blasis, the Italian Ballo, and the Male Sylph.” In Garafola, Rethinking the Sylph, 131−42. ———. “The Origins of Ballet Mime.” Parts 1−3. Dancing Times (1995): 1135−37; (1995): 24−25; (1995): 155−57. Pougy, Liane de. Mes cahiers bleus. Paris: Plon, 1977. Priddin, Deirdre. The Art of the Dance in French Literature from Théophile Gautier to Paul Valéry. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1952. Pritchard, Jane. “Collaborative Creations for the Alhambra and the Empire.” Dance Chronicle 24, no. 1 (2001): 55−82. ———. “Divertissement Only: The Establishment, Development and Decline of the Music Hall Ballet in London.” Unpublished manuscript, 2005. ———. “Enrico Cecchetti and the Restoration of the Danseur in Ballets Presented on the London Stage at the End of the Nineteenth Century.” In An International Celebration of Enrico Cecchetti. Society for Dance Research Online Publication: http://www.sdr-uk.org/publications (2005): 1−9. ———. “The ‘Empire’ in Manchester.” Dance Research 13, no. 2 (1995): 11−27. ———. “‘The Great Hansen’: An Introduction to the Work of Joseph Hansen, a Forgotten European Choreographer of the Late Nineteenth Century, with a Chronology of His Ballets.” Dance Research 26, no. 2 (2008): 73−139. Quinault, Robert. La danse en France sous la Troisième République. Typed text, n.d. F-Po AID 2209. Ratchiffe, Barrie M., and Christine Piette. Vivre la ville, les classes populaires à Paris (1ère moitié du XIX e siècle). Paris: La Boutique de l’Histoire, 2007. Rearick, Charles. Pleasures of the Belle Époque: Entertainment and Festivity in Turn-of-theCentury France. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985. Richardson, Joanna. The Courtesans: The Demi-Monde in Nineteenth-Century France. London: Phoenix, 2000. Roberts, Mary Louise. Disruptive Acts: The New Woman in Fin-de-Siècle France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Robin-Challan, Louise. “Danse et danseuses à l’Opéra de Paris, 1830−1850.” PhD diss., Université de Paris IV, 1983. ———. “Social Conditions of Ballet Dancers at the Paris Opera in the Nineteenth Century.” Choreography and Dance 2, part 1 (1992): 17−28.

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Index

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An italic ex following a page reference indicates a music example; an italic f following a page reference indicates a figure; an italic t following a page reference indicates a table in the appendices. À la foire (FB, 1885), 218 abeilles, Les (FB, 1877), 83, 84–85f, 217, 311n25 accompaniment figures, 134–35 acrobats, 11, 16, 28, 29, 35f Adam, Adolphe, Le corsaire, 316n28, 328n48 Adrien, G.: À la foire, 218; La fête de Ménilmontant, 218; Les Gitanos, 208t; La rosière de Montretout, 218 aéroplane, L’ (O, 1910), 227 ailes, Les (FB, 1910), 21, 177, 215t, 278t Ajas, A. (dancer), 191, 192, 329nn58–59 Akar, Charles, 59; L’heureuse rencontre, 228t; Le scandale du Louvre, 221t Aladdin (Alhambra, 1892), 182, 327n29 Alévy (Armand Lévy; librettist), CadetRoussel, 230t Alfano, Franco, 68, 306n57; Lorenza (see title entry); Napoli, 213t Alhambra Theatre of Varieties (London): choreographers, 72, 73, 74, 309n76, 309n82, 310n88; conductors, 65; mime scenes, 314n10; success and influence of, 4, 9, 286n14 Alhambra Theatre of Varieties (London), productions: Aladdin, 182, 327n29; Au Japon, 30, 224t; Brighton, 65, 220t; Les cygnes, 212t; Paquita, 225t Allemand, M. and Mme (Folies-Bergère owners), 13–14, 289nn32–33 almées, Les (FB, 1888). See under fausses almées, Les

Amable (set designer), 179, 325n9 Amarillo (FB, 1881), 217 Amourettes d’atelier (O, 1893), 227 amoureux de Venise, Les (C, 1896): Casino production, 229t; crowd scenes, 101; Enriu’s star role, 114, 318n49; libretto, 302n17; lighting effects, 181; set and costume designs, 27, 177, 178–79, 325n6; slapstick comedy, 162; synopsis, 254t animal acts, 290n44 animal characters, 86–87 Antinoa (FB, 1905): descriptive subtitle, 93; Folies-Bergère production, 21, 214t; revue-like spectacle, 74, 176; synopsis, 268t Appel, F., 311n19; Marine poster, 187f araignée d’or, L’ (FB, 1896): descriptive subtitle, 94; Folies-Bergère production, 39, 212t; Lorrain’s libretto for, 58, 94, 167, 301n10, 321n2; Pougy’s star role, 39, 113, 252t; synopsis, 252t arc-en-ciel, L’ (FB, 1893): Avril’s star role, 19, 113, 243t; Folies-Bergère production, 211t; rainbow tableau, 101–2; synopsis, 243t Arkin, Lisa, 97, 101 Arlette (O, 1896), 221t, 252t Armandi brothers, La Posada (FB, 1876), 13, 216 Arnould, G., Les trois couleurs, 94, 227 atelier fin de siècle, Un (FB, 1890), 210t, 239t Athénée-Comique, 288n21, 305n50

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athletic acts and routines, 12, 173 Au bois (FB, 1883), 87, 217 Au Japon (O, 1903), 30, 224t, 267t, 310n88 Au music-hall (O, 1905), 30, 227 Aubert, Charles: Le roi blanc, 219; Le roi s’ennuie, 209t audiences, 31–54; at Folies-Bergère, 31–43, 67–68, 180; gentrification of, 37–40, 65–67; images of, 32–35, 41–42f, 45, 46–47f, 50–51f, 299n58; named in reviews, 38–40, 44, 48–49; at Olympia, 43–47, 67; ticket prices, 40, 45, 47, 49, 52–54, 299–300nn64–73, 300n71; tourists, 15–16, 40–41, 43, 296–97nn27–30, 297n38, 298n50; women in, 41, 43, 180, 297n33, 325n12, 330n71 Auvray, Georges, 62; Garden Party, 218; Les marionettes javanaises, 217 Aux porcherons (FB, 1877), 216 aventure de la Guimard, Une (Opéra, 1900), 303n34 aventures de Mlle Clo-Clo, Les (O, 1909): descriptive subtitle, 93; Olympia production, 225t; scenario, 30, 164–65; synopsis, 276t Avril, Jane, 19, 101, 113, 243t Bacchantes, Les (Opéra, 1912), 167 Bacchus (Opéra, 1902): exotic/sensuous scenes, 198; male dancers in, 191–92, 328n49; male lead role, 191; Opéra production, 191, 320n20 Badet, Régina, 20 baigneuses, Les (FB, 1889), 95, 194, 209t, 237t Bains de dames (O, 1895): bathing suits, 95, 194; harmonic simplicity, 141; historical scenario, 165; musical style, 134; Olympia production, 176, 221t; scenario, 165, 250t; set design, 177; waltz, 108, 135, 139ex, 141 Bal des Quat’z’Arts, 173–74, 183, 197 Balbiani, Achille, 69, 73, 193, 309n83; La Manille, 227; Sardanapale, 221t; Vision!, 222t

ballerinas: character dances for, 105; domination of pantomime-ballet, 188–91; photographs of, 83, 103, 104–5f; roles played by, 113–14; star dancers, 76, 103, 111, 113–14; training for, 76, 104, 111; variations for, 103, 111. See also ballet corps; male dancers (danseurs); women ballet (classical ballet, danse d’école), 4–5, 73, 102–4; Italian-trained dancers, 76, 193; modernization of, 27. See under ballet Ballet blanc (O, 1893), 28, 93, 220t, 313n43 ballet corps: character dances for, 104– 8; training and precision, 3, 104, 286n13; travesty dancers in, 185, 286n13; women in, 185, 327nn33–34 ballet des lumières, Le (FB, 1884), 219 ballet des nations, Le (Opéra-Comique, 1914), 320n21 Ballet des pifferari (Porte Saint-Martin, 1868), 308n71 ballet noir, Le (FB, 1877), 216 ballet scores, 115–32; characteristics of, 115, 133–34; commercial basis for, 321n27; dramatic dance music, 126, 128–31; dramatic music, 116, 120–24, 127ex, 135, 141; dramatic tableaux, 100; form, 149–52; function of, 133–34; harmonic language and complexity, 135–45; light/ popular style, 133–34, 137; melodies and thematic material, 135, 137; for Opéra ballets, 115; orchestral rehearsals for, 319n1; orchestration, 129, 146–47, 146–49; stage action in, 134; texture and accompaniment patterns, 134–35 ballet variations. See variations Ballets Russes: audiences for, 53–54; forerunners of, 285n6, 312n28; impact of, 2–3, 193, 317n38, 360n60 ballo grande. See Italian spectacle ballets Banès, Antoine, 65, 67, 68, 137, 302n18, 305n47; ballets: Olympia (see title entry); Tohu-Bohu, 86, 218

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index Banes, Sally, 322n10 Bannel, Clément, 21, 291n65 Barbe-Bleue (O, 1898): character dances, 105, 107; classical ballet, 107; crowd scenes, 101; episodic structure, 150; harmonic palette, 135, 139ex, 141; musical complexity, 134; Olympia production, 29, 222t; subtitle, 94; synopsis, 258t Baron (House of Baron), 179 Barrison (Sisters Barrison), 16, 17f bataillon des amours, Le (FB, 1872), 216 bathing scenes and bathing-suit ballets, 95, 194–95, 196f, 199, 331n82 Bayer, Joseph, La fée des poupées (Die Puppenfee), 65, 214t, 220t, 222t, 313nn48–49 bazar d’esclaves, Le (FB, 1878), 217, 311n14 Beaumont, Edmond, Fleurs et plumes, 208t Bécarre! (FB, 1880s), 217 Bedeau, H., Le bataillon des amours, 216 Beissier, Fernand, 58, 61, 301n5, 302n23 Beissier, Fernand, ballets: Arlette, 221t; La Camargo, 230t; Les joujoux, 96, 228t; Les mouches de la St. Jean, 218; Vénus à Paris, 169, 229t; Le voyage de Madame la Présidente, 170–72, 231t, 302n17 belle aux cheveux d’or, La (O, 1900): Diet’s score, 133; Lorrain’s libretto, 58, 301n10; Olympia production, 29, 223t; synopsis, 263t belle et la bête, La (FB, 1895): character dances, 105; corps dances, 104; crowd scene, 101; d’Alençon’s star role, 113; fairy-tale scenario, 163; Folies-Bergère production, 211t; synopsis, 248t Belloni (choreographer): Madame Malbrouck, 230t; La montagne d’aimant, 230t; Le tzigane, 230t Bénédite, Raoul, Un déjeuner sur l’herbe, 165, 221t Bensusan, S. L., Au Japon, 224t

349

Béranger, René, 174 Beretta, Raphaël, 21, 30, 294n111 Berger, Rodolphe, Paris s’éveille, 214t Bergerie (FB, 1886), 218 Berky, Vova, Les fanfreluches de l’amour, 226t Berlanstein, Lenard, 325n12 Bernac, Jean: Cléopâtre (1900), 230t; Conte de mai, 227 Bernay, Berthe, 309n80, 314n8, 329n58; choreography: Barbe-Bleue, 222t; Conte de mai, 72, 227; Folles amours, 227; Néron, 222t; Les sept péchés capitaux, 222t Bertol-Graivil, Eugène, 58; Pierrot au hammam, 221t; Vers les étoiles, 224t Bertotto, M. (choreographer), 70, 76, 307n64; Les faunes, 13, 216; Les fiancés du Béarn, 13, 216; Les frisonnes, 217; Une nuit vénitienne, 216 Blanc et noir (O, 1911), 227 Blavet, Emile: description of Casino de Paris, 22; description of FoliesBergère, 17–19, 38–39, 97; description of Olympia, 28; as Monsieur de l’Orchestre, 296n14 Bois, Jules, 23, 183, 292n75 Boislève, Albert, 8, 287n9 Bompar, Georges de: Orsowa, 210t; Volapük, 208t bonbons, ou Le fidèle berger, Les (FB, 1881), 86, 217 Bongnard, Joseph, Amourettes d’atelier, 227 Boni, Aïda, 104, 114, 257t, 315n23 Bonis-Charancle, Antinoa, 214t Bonnamy, Émile, 69, 306n61; Antinoa, 21, 74, 93, 214t, 268t bonne aventure, Une (FB, 1882), 217 Bordin, Maria, 105f Borney, Louis, 22, 293n89 Bosc, Auguste, 69, 306n61; Montmartre (see title entry) Bouffes-Parisiens: light theater at, 58, 67; Mariquita at, 71 boulevard theaters, 3, 70–72

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Bouton d’or (NT, 1893): lighting effects, 181, 293n86, 326n25; NouveauThéâtre production, 26, 228t; orchestration, 146; synopsis, 245t Bouval, Jules, 159; Le scandale du Louvre, 134, 221t box-office returns: for Casino de Paris, 292n70; choreographers’ share of, 302n21; for Olympia, 298n43; for Opéra, 328n44; relation to spectacle, 176 boxeurs, Les (FB, 1875), 216 boxing tournaments, 289n41 Boyer, Georges, 299n56 Brambilla, Mlle (dancer), 83 brasserie, La (Eden, 1886), 303n36 Brighton (O, 1893): contemporary scenario, 173; costumes, 95, 183, 194, 195, 196f; as a divertissement, 93, 95; London production, 65, 220t; Olympia production, 195, 220t; synopsis, 244t Bucourt, M. (choreographer), 72; La fée des poupées, 222t Busser, Henri, La ronde des saisons. See title entry Butel (set designer), 179 Byng, Georges W., Paquita, 30, 225t, 275t Cadet-Roussel (C, 1900): Casino production, 230t; Héraud’s star role, 171, 190f, 264t; historical scenario, 167, 177–78; synopsis, 264t; travesty dancers, 186, 190f Cailar, Albert, 27, 293n89 Caillavet, Gaston Armand de, L’heure du berger, 322n24 Camargo, La (C, 1901): Casino production, 230t; historical scenario, 107, 167; set designs, 177; star “ballerina” role, 103; synopsis, 266t Cambon, Olivier, 69, 306n61; Cléopâtre (1906) (see title entry); Venise à l’Olympia, 227 Caméléon-ballet (O, 1895), 227 Campana, Lina, starring roles: 104, 316n24; in L’arc-en-ciel, 113; in

Fleur de lotus, 112, 317n40; in Rêve d’or, 112; in Les sept péchés capitaux, 315n20 cancan dancing (cahuts), 25, 109, 110 Caorsi, Ettore, 194 Capitaine Charlotte, Le (C, 1890), 26, 228t, 239t capricorne, Le (FB, 1870s), 216, 302n22 Carman (composer), Les Gitanos, 208t Carré, Albert, 285n6, 309n76 Carré, Michel, fils, 301n5; Bouton d’or, 228t Cartes postales (O, 1905), 227 Cas, Henri, 304n42 Casadessus, The Flower Ballet, 227 Casino de Paris —audiences: audience demographics, 48–51, 68; prostitutes, 23, 297n33; ticket prices and box-office returns, 49, 53, 292n70 —building and management: connection with Nouveau-Théâtre, 22–23, 25–27, 48, 49, 51, 299n59, 299n60, 300n75; directors and owners, 27, 293n89; documentation for, 48; images and descriptions of, 24–25f, 48–49, 50–51f; location and size, 22–23, 48, 298n50; promenoir, 22, 23, 53, 297n33 —programming: ballets/divertissements premiered at, 91, 228–32t, 233; celebrity composers, 67; as a dance hall, 23, 25; programs, 22–27, 26f; revues at, 27, 293n89 Casino de Royan, premiere of Phryné, 30, 113, 152, 155, 224t, 309n78, 318n48 Catarina, La (FB, 1875), 216 Cendrillon (O, 1902), 163, 224t censorship: involving Richepin, 301n9; involving Silvestre, 57, 198; parodies of, 9, 57, 174, 198; scenarios on file, 88, 303n28; of striptease scenes, 311n18, 325n57 Cernusco, Mme (choreographer), 20; Luxuria, 231t; Nitokris, 226t

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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index Chambouleron (set designer), 181, 325n9 Champagne (FB, 1870s), 76, 216 Champsaur, Félicien, Au Japon, 224t Chancel, Jules, 27, 293n89 Chand d’habits (FB, 1896), 290n50 Chansons (FB, 1891): Folies-Bergère production, 210t, 290n52; Héraud’s role, 317n39; libretto, 302n22; synopsis, 240t Chapelle, Pierre, Paska, 231t character dancers, 104–8; dance music for, 116; historical dances, 105, 107, 142; in male roles, 192, 316n24; portrayal of inanimate objects, 107–8; in principal roles, 111; in story line, 105–6 Charles, Jacques, 30, 291n65, 293n89, 294n111 Charlin, La mer et les cocottes, 216 charmeuses, Les (O, 1917), 226t, 294n112, 301n11 Chasles, Jeanne, 290n50, 316n27 Chassang, Maurice, Fruit défendu, 232t château de Mac-Arrott, Le (FB, 1887): accompaniment patterns, 135, 137ex; action scenes, 100; character dances, 107; descriptive subtitle, 93, 94; dramatic music, 120, 121ex, 122, 125ex; Folies-Bergère production, 64, 176, 208t, 319n8; harmony and thematic material, 137–39, 140ex, 141, 149, 320n19; musical complexity, 134; as a romance, 162; set design, 177; storm scene, 122, 125ex; synopsis, 236t; waltz, 108 Chauvin, G. (choreographer): Cocorico, 218; La folie de l’or, 227 Chekri-Ganem, Les ailes, 215t Chéret, Jules: costumes designs, 179; Fleur de Lotus poster, 183, 184f; portrayals of Folies-Bergère, 9, 12, 32, 33 chevalier aux fleurs, Le (Folies-Marigny, 1897), 57, 303n34, 304n44 Chez le couturier (FB, 1896): costume design, 180, 200; Folies-Bergère

351

production, 212t; as a parody, 169– 70, 302n16; synopsis, 252t choreographers, 69–74; authors’ rights for, 302nn20–21; background and influences on, 54–55, 69–70; librettos by, 60, 302n20; status of, 69; terminology for, 307n63; versatility of, 69–70; women as, 306–7n62. See also individual choreographers Choubrac (costume designer), 179 Choudens, Paul de, Les charmeuses, 226t, 294n112 Cieutat, Henri, ballets: Cadet-Roussel (see title entry); Le château de Mac-Arrott (see title entry); Fiammina, 229t; Les joujoux (1894), 95, 96, 228t, 248t; Vénus à Paris (see title entry) Cieutat, Henri, career, 66, 67, 68, 304n39 Cigarette (FB, 1870s), 76, 216 circus acts, 12, 13, 34, 35f Clark, T. J., 11, 288n18, 288n21 classical ballet. See ballet Cléopâtre (C, 1900): Casino production, 26, 230t; historical scenario, 167, 168, 178, 321n2, 322n20; posed tableau, 102; synopsis, 264t Cléopâtre (O, 1906): historical scenario, 167, 322n20; Olympia production, 224t; synopsis, 272t Clérice, Justin, 69, 306n60; Paris-Fêtard, 93, 224t; Le timbre d’or (see title entry); Vercingétorix, 306n60 Clown-ballet (FB, 1870s), 76, 216 Clowns et clownesses (FB, 1887), 218 Cocorico (FB, 1884), 87, 218 Coèdes, Auguste-Charles, 62, 302n24; Les folies amoureuses, 216, 312n36 Cohen, Félix, Le fiancé de cire, 29f, 162– 63, 220t, 247t Collins, Willa, 328n48 Colomb, André, 68; Diamant, 166, 213t, 257t, 290n48 comedy: in pantomime-ballet, 110; romantic comedies, 102, 162, 163, 164–65, 195; slapstick, 86, 162, 165, 169, 171, 321n5

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index

Comolli, Enrichetta, 172, 238t composers, 61–69; background and influences, 55–56; as critics, 302n18; in-house conductor-composers, 61, 64–65, 67–68; light music specialists, 65, 67–68, 69, 137; women as, 69. See also individual composers conscrits espagnols, Les (FB, 1870s), 216 Conte de mai (O, 1898), 72, 94, 227 contemporary/topical scenarios, 172–75; costumes and contemporary fashions, 200, 325n12; divertissements, 87, 95; origins of, 311–12n28; scenarios for, 60, 95, 161, 312n34, 323n31 Contesse, Henri, Paska (arr.), 231t, 277t Coppélia (Opéra, 1870), 96, 191, 313n48, 316n25, 328n49 Coppi, Carlo, 69, 193 Coppi, Carlo, choreography: Au Japon, 224t, 310n88; Le Capitaine Charlotte, 26, 228t; Les grandes manœuvres, 228t; Scaramouche, 228t, 293n85 Cornet (character dancer), 192, 329n57 Cornil (set designer), 325n9 Correnti, Angelina, 112, 172, 316n29, 317n39 corsair, Le (Opéra, 1856), 316n28, 328n48 costumes: in bathing scenes, 194–95, 196f; contemporary fashions as, 180, 325n12; descriptions and images, 180, 183–84, 326n13; designers and creators, 179–80; extravagance, 325n12, 326n14; revealing designs, 183, 199–200, 204, 326n13; for travesty dancers, 81, 180, 186, 187–90f, 200; tutus, 104, 196f, 311n19, 315n22 Cottens, Victor de, 30, 291n58, 294n109; La tulipe noire, 231t coucher de la mariée, Le (O, 1895), 28, 294n100, 297n38, 305n46 cour d’amour, La, 330n62 Courteline, Georges, Émilienne aux Quat’z’ Arts, 59, 173–74, 211t

Covent Garden (London), 73, 104, 315n23 Crémieux, H., Faust, 214t, 223t Cressonier, M. (mime), 185 crevette, La (FB, 1870s), 76, 216, 302n22 crowd scenes, 100–101 Crystal Palace (London), 286n14 Cuers, H. de, Volapük, 208t Curti, Alfredo, career, 69, 74, 193, 310nn86–88 Curti, Alfredo, choreography: Antinoa, 74, 214t; Au Japon, 224t; Au musichall, 30, 227; La belle aux cheveux d’or, 223t; Cartes postales, 227; Cendrillon, 224t; L’enlèvement de Psyché, 30, 225t; Faust, 21, 214t, 223t; La fée des poupées, 21, 214t; L’impératrice, 223t; Merveilleuses, 227; Olympia revue, 30; Papillon d’or, 226t, 294n110; Paquita, 30, 225t; Paris-cascade, 223t; Paris-fêtard, 224t; Paris qui chante, 30; Phryné, 224t, 319n6; Le réveil des fleurs, 227; Les saisons de la Parisienne, 74, 224t; Les sept péchés capitaux, 21, 214t; Venise à l’Olympia, 227; Watteau, 223t cygnes, Les, 212t, 251t Cythère (FB, 1900): car in, 327n30; female lead role, 164, 169; FoliesBergère production, 18f, 213t; mythological scenario, 167, 169; set designs, 177; synopsis, 262t D’Alençon, Émilienne, starring roles, 17, 28, 200, 331n85; in La belle et la bête, 248t; in Émilienne aux Quat’z’ Arts, 113, 200, 244t; in Faust, 113; in Les mille et une nuits, 261t; in Néron, 113 dance music, 115–16, 134–35, 136–38ex Dans l’inconnu (FB, 1888), 177, 208t, 237t Danses de jadis et de naguère (Opéra, 1900), 320n20 danseuses étoiles. See ballerinas Darzens, Rodolphe, Lorenza, 20, 214t Dauty (dancer), 192

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index David, Adolphe, 65, 305n48; Le fiancé de cire, 29f, 162–63, 220t, 247t Daynes-Papurello. See Papurello, Rita De Consoli (ballerina), 200, 201f De Gaspari (mime), 327n34, 330n65 De Gaspari, Mme (ballet teacher), 316n24 Debelly, A., Tohu-Bohu, 86, 218 Defoursy, Louis, Fleur d’oranger, 217 déjeuner sur l’herbe, Un (O, 1897): descriptive subtitle, 94; Olympia production, 221t; scenario, 165–66; set designs, 177; striptease bathing scene, 166, 195, 197, 200; synopsis, 255t déjeuner sur l’herbe, Un (painting), 165–66, 197 Delibes, Léo, 13, 296n10; Coppélia, 96, 191, 313n48, 316n25, 328n49; Sylvia, 167, 198–99, 331n179 Delilia, Alfred, 58, 59; Un atelier fin de siècle, 210t; Olympia, 173, 220t Delorme, Hughes, 331n89 Delsol, Maurice, Paris-Cythère, 49, 50f, 299n58 Delune, Louis, Fruit défendu, 232t, 276t Demay, Rose, 186 Demoget (set designer), 178 demoiselles du XXe siècle, Les (FB, 1894): contemporary scenario and costumes, 60, 95, 173, 200, 323n31; as a divertissement, 95; Folies-Bergère production, 211t; synopsis, 246t Depret, Maurice, Éternel triomphe, 231t Derille, Laurent, 62, 303n28; Bergerie, 218 Dérouville, Henri, 69, 306n61; Soledad, 231t Derval, Paul, 21, 289n35, 331n89 Desormes, Louis, career and works, 21, 56, 63, 64, 65–66, 67, 68, 289n42, 304n38 Desormes, Louis, ballets: À la foire, 218; Un atelier fin de siècle, 210t; Chansons (arr.) (see title entry); Clowns et clownesses, 218; Dans l’inconnu, 177, 208t, 237t; Les demoiselles du XXe siècle (see

353

title entry); Deux coqs, 87–88, 218; Divertissement écossais, 94, 219; Divertissement espagnol, 94, 219; Divertissement militaire, 219, 313n45; Émilienne aux Quat’z’ Arts (see title entry); La fête de Ménilmontant, 218; Flagrant délit, 98, 209t, 237t; Fleur de Lotus (see title entry); Les Folies Parisiennes (see title entry); France-Russie (see title entry); Le grand prix de Paris (see title entry); Joujoux-ballet, 95, 96, 209t, 237t; Les gandins, 218; Les mouches de la St. Jean, 86–87, 218; Marine (see title entry); Mars et Vénus, 88, 167, 217; Les mimes d’or, 102, 177, 212t, 249t; Miroir (see title entry); O’Ménéné, 57; Les perles (see title entry); Pierrot volage, 185, 208t, 235t; Une répétition aux Folies-Bergère (see title entry); Les réservistes à venir (see title entry); Rêve d’or (see title entry); Le roi s’ennuie (see title entry); La rosière de Montretout, 218; La seguidilla, 219; Sur la plage (see title entry) Desprez, Armand, 22, 293n89 Desvignes, Hubert, Les grandes courtisanes, 169, 213t deux baisers, Les (O, 1897), 94, 227 Deux coqs (FB, 1884), 87–88, 218 deux jocrisses, Les (FB, 1881), 217 deux pigeons, Les (Opéra, 1886): Covent Garden production, 315n23; mime/ dance proportion, 98; striptease and nudity, 198; success, 191, 286n11, 303n34 Deux sous d’amour (O, 1908), 177, 225t, 273t, 310n88 deux tentations, Les (C, 1895): Casino production, 229t; seduction scene, 110, 166, 169; synopsis, 251t D’Harcourt, Eugène, 64, 304n40; Paristurf (see title entry) Diaghilev, Sergei, 2–3, 193 Diamant (FB, 1898), 166, 213t, 257t, 290n48 Diet, Edmond, career, 21, 66, 67, 68, 133, 135, 302n18, 305n50

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index

Diet, Edmond, ballets: L’araignée d’or (see title entry); La belle aux cheveux d’or (see title entry); La belle et la bête (see title entry); Rêve de Noël (see title entry); Sardanapale (see title entry); Watteau (see title entry) Divertissement (FB, 1898), 219 Divertissement écossais (FB, 1888), 94, 219 Divertissement espagnol (FB, 1887), 94, 219 Divertissement hongrois (FB, 1895), 94, 219 Divertissement militaire (FB, 1891), 219, 313n45 Divertissement-revue (FB, 1880), 217 Divertissement rustique (C, 1909), 233 divertissements, 4–5, 75–96; animal or insect characters, 86–87, 311nn25– 26; as autonomous pieces, 94–95; ephemerality of, 75–76; at FoliesBergère, 75–80, 216–19; generic or descriptive subtitles, 91–94; Huysmans’s description of, 80–81; images vs synopses, 81–83; librettos labeled as, 311n22; narrative and plot, 77–80; as one-act ballets, 95–96; pantomime-ballets compared to, 75, 83–85, 88–92, 94–96; as pictorial vignettes, 76–77; premiere dates for, 313n44; sexual or suggestive content, 80–83; subjects for, 85–88; terminology for, 91–94; untitled, 94–95 Domergue (composer), Cartes postales, 227 Don Juan aux enfers (C, 1897): Boni’s star role, 114; Casino production, 27, 229t; seduction scene, 110, 166, 170; synopsis, 257t Doucet, Jacques (Roucet), 170, 323n33 dragon vert, Le, 293n88 dragonade, Une (FB, 1881), 217 dramatic dance music, 126, 128–31, 135 dramatic music, 116, 120–24, 127ex, 141 dramatic tableaux, 100 Dubruck, Alfred, 64, 304n41; L’arc-enciel, 211t

Dufort, M.: Les aventures de Mlle Clo-Clo, 225t; Trianon ballet, 225t Dumas, Guy, 293n89 Dumas, Rougé, 293n89 Dupré, Blanche, 114 Dutreil, Charles, L’enlèvement des Sabines, 213t Duvécu, M., 287n9 Duvelleroy, M. (mime), 185 Duvernoy, Alphonse, Bacchus (see title entry) eccentric dances, 25, 54, 109–10, 204 Échec et mat (FB, 1877), 217 Eden-Concert, 65 Eden-Théâtre: ballet corps, 286n13; choreographers, 73; composers writing for, 26, 67; influence of, 4, 73, 111, 287n16; Italian spectacle ballets, 3, 4, 6, 65, 101–2, 112, 287n16; male dancers, 193; mime roles and split casting, 112 Eden-Théâtre, productions: La brasserie, 303n36; Le cœur de Sita, 316n24; Excelsior, 4, 104, 287n16; La tentation de Saint-Antoine, 316n24 Edwards, Alfred, 293n89 Eldorado: ballet and light theater, 21, 57, 58, 68; owners, 289n33; ticket prices, 300n71 Elwall, George, L’étoile de mer, 229t Émilienne aux Quat’z’ Arts (FB, 1893): contemporary scenario, 173–74, 323n31; costumes, 183; crowd scene, 101; d’Alençon’s star role, 113, 200, 244t; eccentric dances, 109; evening performances, 331n88; FoliesBergère production, 19–20, 211t; libretto, 59; striptease and nudity, 174, 197, 200; synopsis, 174, 244t Empire Theatre (London), 30, 286nn14–15, 314n10 emprunt, L’ (FB, 1872), 216 English music-hall ballets: animal/ insect characters, 311n26; episodic spectacles, 74; influence on French ballet, 4; Italian dancers and

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index choreographers, 73; legislation for, 286n15; slapstick comedy, 321n5; sporting scenarios, 324n43; topical scenarios, 311–12n28 enlèvement de Psyché, L’ (O, 1910): descriptive subtitle, 93; mythological scenario, 167; Olympia production, 30, 225t; synopsis, 279t enlèvement des Sabines, L’ (FB, 1898): Folies-Bergère production, 213t; historical scenario, 167, 176, 178, 322n20; synopsis, 258t Enriu, Mlle G., 114, 293n86, 318n49 Éternel triomphe (C, 1906), 231t étoile, L’ (Opéra, 1897): choreography for male lead, 329n56; contemporary scenario, 318n50; mime/dance proportions, 98; Opéra production, 313n2, 320n20; Wormser’s score for, 146 étoile de mer, L’ (C, 1894): Casino production, 229t; Enriu’s star role, 114, 318n49; synopsis, 247t Eugénio, M. (mime, choreographer), 20, 185, 327n34 Excelsior (Eden, 1883), 4, 104, 287n16 exotic scenarios and dances: for divertissements, 86, 94; eroticism in, 130– 31, 132ex, 204; harem scenes, 86, 194, 196, 331n82; music for, 128–29, 146, 156–58 Fairy Doll, The. See fée des poupées, La fairy tales, 96, 100, 163 Falguière, Alexandre, 200–201, 203f fanfreluches de l’amour, Les (O, 1913): descriptive subtitle, 93, 312n38; Olympia production, 226t; scenario, 30; synopsis, 283t fashion designers: collections launched at Folies-Bergère premieres, 40; costumes created by, 179–80; parodied in Chez le couturier, 170, 180 faunes, Les (FB, 1872): Folies-Bergère production, 13, 76, 216; scenario, 77, 80

355

fausses almées, Les (FB, 1874), 71, 76, 216; new production (Les almées, FB, 1888), 209t, 237t Faust (O, 1900): Casino production (excerpts, 1911), 233; d’Alençon in, 113; Folies-Bergère production (1902), 21, 214t; Olympia production (1900), 93, 223t; synopsis, 264t favorites, Les (O, 1898), 227 fée des poupées, La (The Fairy Doll; Die Puppenfee) (O, 1894): choreographers, 291n63, 313n48; synopsis, 247t fée des poupées, La (The Fairy Doll; Die Puppenfee) (O, 1894), productions: Olympia (1894), 21, 65, 93, 220t; Olympia (1899), 21, 222t; Mariinsky (1903), 313n49; Folies-Bergère (1904), 21, 214t fée du rocher, La, 323n27 femmes chevaux, Les (FB, 1878), 217 femmes de feu, Les (FB, 1874), 216 Ferrier, Paul: La Prétentaine, 326n25; Vers les étoiles, 224t fête à Séville, Une (O, 1908), 113 Fête champêtre (O, 1896), 94, 227 fête de Guy, La (FB, 1878), 217 fête de Ménilmontant, La (FB, 1885), 218 fête du dragon vert, La (1893), 293n88 fête du printemps, La (C, 1910), 233 Fête russe (Opéra, 1893), 320n20 Fiammina (C, 1895), 229t fiancé de cire, Le (O, 1894), 29f, 162–63, 220t, 247t fiancés du Béarn, Les (FB, 1876), 13, 14f, 76, 216 fin d’un monde, La (C, 1892), 228t, 242t Fiocre, Eugénie, 191 Flagrant délit (FB, 1889), 98, 209t, 237t Flamm, R., La rose d’amour, 232t Flers, Paul Louis (Pierre-Louis Puyol), career, 58, 61, 291n65, 302n23, 323n32 Flers, Paul Louis, librettos: Chez le couturier, 169, 212t, 252t, 302n16; L’heure du berger, 322n24; Les pantins de Paris, 231t; Sports, 169, 173, 212t, 302n16

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index

Fletcher, C., La tulipe noire, 231t Fleur de Lotus (FB, 1893): censorship parody, 198; Chéret’s poster, 183, 184f; costume design, 183; crowd scene, 101; Desormes’s score, 116, 117–19ex, 123–24, 128–29, 134–36, 146; exotic dance music, 123, 127–29ex; Folies-Bergère production, 17f, 19–20, 210t, 327n28; glass curtain, 181–82; Lorrain’s libretto, 57; mime/dance proportions, 98; orchestration, 146; program, 17f; Silvestre’s libretto, 163, 164; similarity to Giselle, 163, 197–98; special effects, 181–82; split casting, 111–12; star roles, 99, 317n39; storm scene, 123–24, 126ex, 181; striptease and posed tableau, 102, 195, 197–98; synopsis, 57, 243t Fleur d’oranger (FB, 1878): FoliesBergère production, 217, 310n9; Messager’s score, 62, 77, 78–79ex; sensuous component, 80 fleurs, Les (FB, 1870s), 76, 216 Fleurs et plumes (FB, 1887), 64, 208t, 235t, 303n37 Flower Ballet, The (O, 1897), 227 folie de l’or, La (O, 1896), 94, 227 folies amoureuses, Les (FB, 1872), 216, 312n36 Folies-Bergère —audiences and publicity: audience demographics, 31–43, 67–68, 180; barmaids, 9; gentrification of, 31–32, 37–40; literary and artistic representations of, 9–12; posters, 9, 12, 33f; premieres, 40; programs, 14f, 17–18f; prostitutes, 9–10, 15, 287–88n12, 288n21, 297n33; ticket prices, 40, 52; tourists, 15–16, 40–41, 296–97nn27–30, 297n38, 298n50 —building and management: acoustic deficiencies, 288n26; amphitheater, 15; electric lighting, 15, 289n36, 326n22; elegance and ill repute, 15–16; gentrification of, 52; grand staircase, 9; hall, 42f; location, 295n2;

promenoir, 9, 10f, 41–42f, 52, 299n58; renovations, 15, 315n16; wings, 292n77; winter garden, 9, 10f, 32, 34f —creators: artists and writers, 31, 53; choreographers, 70, 71, 74, 172; composers, 62, 67–68; conductors, 63–64, 65–66, 67–68, 304n42 —directors and owners: Allemands, 13–14, 289nn32–33; Clément Bannel, 21, 291n65; Raphaël Beretta, 21, 30, 294n11; Jacques Charles, 30, 291n65, 293n89, 294n111; Paul Derval, 21, 289n35, 331n89; Isola brothers, 20, 289n35; Édouard Marchand, 13–21, 52, 63–65, 70, 172; Paul Ruez, 21, 291n64, 294n108; Léon Sari, 8–13, 36–37, 52, 62–64, 287n9, 289n31; Léon Volterra, 21, 293n89 —programs presented: ballets and divertissements, 75–80, 208–15t, 216–19t; dance galas, 294n106; male dancers, 193; orchestral concerts, 13, 36–37, 289n31, 322n23; political speakers, 8, 287n8; singing and dancing girls, 16–17; variety shows, 12–13, 14f, 16–20, 34, 35f Folies-Dramatiques, 67 Folies-Marigny, 21, 43, 57, 67 Folies Parisiennes, Les (FB, 1892): FoliesBergère production, 19–20, 210t, 290n54; La Goulue’s role, 109; synopsis, 241t Folles amours (O, 1899), 227 Forain, Jean-Louis, 9, 12, 32, 34, 53; Le bar aux Folies-Bergère, 295n4 form (musical), 115–16, 149–52 Fouchtra (FB, 1877), 217 Fragonard, Jean-Honoré, 86, 311n24 France-Russie (FB, 1893): Folies-Bergère production, 19, 211t; synopsis, 243t; topical military scenario, 19, 60, 95, 186, 313n46 Franck, César, 305n50 Franck, Paul, 30, 194, 294n111 Frappa, José, Les deux tentations, 169, 229t Freydet, M. (composer), Luxuria, 231t

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frisonnes, Les (FB, 1877), 217 Fruit défendu (C, 1909), 232t, 276t Fuchs, M., Noce bohème (arr.), 216 Fugère, Martha, 112, 113, 317n39 Fuller, Loie: lighting effects by, 181, 245t, 293n86; performances by, 17, 28, 32, 38–39, 41, 52 Fumées d’opium (C, 1908), 177, 181, 231t, 274t Galnem, Auguste: Deux coqs, 218; Ivresses!, 218; Le pensionnat de Mme Laïk, 218 gandins, Les (FB, 1883), 218 Gandon, La mer et les cocottes (arr.), 76, 80, 216, 310n4, 312n29 Ganne, Louis, career, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 133, 293n85, 303n37 —ballets: Les ailes, 21, 177, 215t, 278t; Au Japon, 30, 224t, 267t, 310n88; Cythère (see title entry); La fin d’un monde, 228t, 242t; Fleurs et plumes, 64, 208t, 235t, 303n37; L’heureuse rencontre, 228t, 242t, 292n78, 302n17, 303n37; Merveilleuses et gigolettes (see title entry); Ophélia, 218; Phryné (see title entry); La princesse au sabbat (see title entry); Le réveil des fleurs, 227; Les sources du Nil (see title entry); Volapük, 64, 208t, 235t, 303n37, 326n25 —other theatrical works: dance tunes, 289n42; Hans, joueur de flûte, 303n37; Miss Bouton d’or, 227; Les saltimbanques, 303n37 Garafola, Lynn, 186, 306–7n62, 312n28, 328n45 Garden Party (FB, 1884), 218 Gardy (set designer), 179, 325n9 Gaul, P., La fée des poupées, 220t, 222t Gautier, Léon, Soledad, 231t Gayda, Joseph, Pierrot volage, 208t Gerbaut (costume designer), 179 Germain, Auguste, 58, 59, 60 Germain, Auguste, librettos: Cythère, 213t; Fumées d’opium, 231t; Paris-cascade, 165, 173, 223t; Paris-turf, 209t; Phryné, 212t, 224t, 309n78, 319n6

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Giot, L., Éternel triomphe, 231t Giselle, 124, 163, 197, 314n3, 321n7, 322n9 Gitanos, Les (FB, 1887), 208t Giuri, Mlle, 104, 316n25 glass curtains, 181–82, 327n29 Gondinet, Edmond, 58 Gorsse, Henri de, Le timbre d’or, 214t Goublier, Gustave, 68; Divertissement, 219; Sports (see title entry) Gounod, Charles, 13, 296n10 grand prix de Paris, Le (FB, 1882): contemporary scenario, 87, 95, 311–12n28; Folies-Bergère production, 217 grandes courtisanes, Les (FB, 1899): Desvignes’s libretto, 177; Folies-Bergère production, 39, 213t; set designs, 177; stylized cancan, 110; synopsis, 260t grandes manœuvres, Les (C, 1891), 169, 228t grands ballets, 93 Grédelue, Émile, 70, 308n71 Grédelue, Émile, choreography: À la foire, 218; Bécarre!, 217; Le château de Mac-Arrott, 208t; Fleurs et plumes, 208t; Garden Party, 218; Les Gitanos, 208t; Pierrot volage, 208t; Une scène au camp, 218; Volapük, 208t; Vulcain, 218 Gregh, Louis, Arlette, 221t Grenet-Dancourt, Ernest, 59, 302n18; Les amoureux de Venise, 162, 179, 229t, 302n17; Paris-fêtard, 224t; Paris qui danse, 230t Gretna Green (Opéra, 1873), 191, 328n49 Grillet, L., Le sabbat, 217 Guérande, Pierre, Le Prince Désir, 213t Guilbert, Yvette, 16 Guillemot, Maurice, La montagne d’aimant, 230t Guiraud, Ernest, 57, 289n31, 296n10, 305n50 Halévy, Ludovic, Le réveillon, 165 Hamburg, H. (conductor), 304n42

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Hansen, Joseph: choreography for Les cygnes, 212t; as a dancer, 72, 191, 192, 286n11, 307n66, 329n58 Haring, Ch., Pierrot et Pierrine, 232t, 280t harmonic language: complexity of, 135–45; exoticism, 156–58; modal harmonies, 158; simplicity of, 137, 141 Hartmann, G., La fée des poupées, 220t, 222t Hassreiter, Joseph, La fée des poupées, 220t, 222t, 313n48 haute gomme, La (FB, 1870s), 216 Henrion, Paul, 62, 302n25; Le bataillon des amours, 216 Héraud, Angèle, 171, 190f, 264t, 267t, 270t, 331n85 Herbert, Robert, 11, 12, 288n21 Hermil (librettist), Les turlutaines de l’année, 221t Héros, Eugène, La Manille, 227 Hervé (Florimond Ronger), 63; Cendrillon, 224t; Faust (see title entry); Le petit Faust, 214, 264t; Le sabbat, 217; Les sphinx (see title entry) heure du berger, L’ (Palais de la Danse, 1900), 322n24 heureuse rencontre, L’ (C, 1892): Casino production, 228t; Ganne’s score, 292n78, 303n37; Roger-Milès’s libretto, 302n17; synopsis, 242t Hirschmann, Henri, 67, 68 Hirschmann, Henri, ballets: Les favorites, 227; Folles amours, 227; Les mille et une nuits, 93, 163, 222t, 261t; Néron (see title entry); Les sept péchés capitaux (see title entry); Vers les étoiles, 30, 177, 224t, 272t historical ballets, 167–70, 177–78 historical dances, 107, 142 Holzer, M., Sports (see title entry) Hubans, Charles, 63, 64, 67, 68 Hubans, Charles, ballets: Les abeilles, 83, 84–85f, 217, 311n25; Les baigneuses, 95, 194, 209t, 237t; La fête de Guy, 217; Les frisonnes, 217; Les noces de Polichinelles, 217; La petite muette, 217;

Presse-ballet (see title entry); Les sauterelles, 218; Les tziganes, 217 Huebner, Steven, 295n1, 331n90 Hugo, Victor, 100, 315n12 Huguenots, Les (Opéra, 1836), 199 Huret, Jules, 146, 299n56 Huysmans, J.-K., descriptions of Folies-Bergère, 7, 9, 10–11, 12, 80–81, 129 Idylle dans les blés (O, 1918), 226t, 295n112 impératrice, L’ (O, 1910): descriptive subtitle, 93; mime/dance proportions, 98, 152–53; musical interest and complexity, 134, 142, 150, 152–54, 320n21; Olympia production, 29, 91, 223t, 301n8, 318n51; Otéro’s star role, 113, 153, 179, 180, 197, 266t; Richepin’s libretto, 58, 301n8, 301n11, 321n2; striptease scene, 195, 197, 200; synopsis, 266t; Vidal’s score, 29, 91, 301n8 Iris (O, 1906), 227 Isba, L’, 303n34 Isola brothers: programming for FoliesBergère, 20, 74, 289n35, 291n57, 291n58; programming for Olympia, 28–30, 74, 294n100 Italian spectacle ballets (ballo grande), 3, 4, 69–70, 73–74, 112 Italian-trained dancers and choreographers, 69–70, 73, 76, 193 Ivresses! (FB, 1885), 218 Jacobi, Georges, Les cygnes, 212t, 251t Jaime, Adolphe, 58; Les baigneuses (FB, 1889), 209t; Faust, 214t, 223t Jambon (set designer), 179 Jazet, Alexandre, 198 Joncières, Victorin de, 57, 289n31, 296n10, 314n11 jonquina, La (FB, 1875), 76, 216 José, Henri, career, 65, 66, 68, 304nn44–45 José, Henri, ballets, 25, 65; Les amoureux de Venise (see title entry); Don Juan aux

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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index enfers (see title entry); L’étoile de mer (see title entry); La montagne d’aimant, 26, 230t, 261t; Les pantins de Paris, 231t, 267t; Paris qui danse (arr.), 164, 230t, 267t; Sans-Puits-House (see title entry); Tentations (see title entry); Le tzigane, 102, 133, 230t, 262t; Vassilissa (see title entry) Jouanneau, Georges, 69, 306n61; Nitokris, 30, 93, 178, 226t, 281t joujoux, Les (C, 1894), 95, 96, 228t, 248t joujoux, Les (FB, 1876), 13, 76, 77, 80, 81, 96, 216 Joujoux-ballet (FB, 1889), 95, 96, 209t, 237t Jouy, Jules, 59; Merveilleuses et gigolettes, 211t Jowitt, Deborah, 323–24n41, 332n91 Juge et partie (comic opera), 305n51 Jusseaume (set designer), 179 Justamant, Henri and/or Charles: attributions and identity, 215n4, 307n65; careers, 70–71, 72, 307n65 Justamant, Henri and/or Charles, choreography and/or librettos: Les almées, 209t; Les baigneuses, 209t; Clown-ballet, 216; Clowns et clownesses, 218; Les conscrits espagnols, 216; Dans l’inconnu, 208t; Divertissement écossais, 219; Divertissement espagnol, 219; Les femmes chevaux, 217; Flagrant délit, 209t; Joujoux-ballet, 96, 209t; Ophélia, 218; Presse-ballet, 208t; Les réservistes à venir, 208t, 327n36; Les sauterelles, 218; La seguidilla, 219; Le voyage dans la lune, 307n65 Kerf, Christine, 200, 201f, 265t kermesse hollandaise, Une (FB, 1883), 218 Korrigane, La (Opéra, 1880), 98, 191, 286n11, 329n59 La Goulue, 109, 241t, 300n77 Lacôme, Paul, Le rêve d’Elias, 57, 213t Lacour, Mme Léopold, Don Juan aux enfers, 166, 229t

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Ladam, M. (dancer, choreographer), 191, 192, 329n56; La Camargo, 72, 230t Laffitte, Pierre, Les mimes d’or, 212t Lafitte, Jacques, 21 Lafrique, Armand, Les sources du Nil, 217, 312nn32–34 Lagoanère, Oscar de, career, 28–29, 65–66, 304–5n46 Lagoanère, Oscar de, ballets: Bains de dames (see title entry); Le coucher de la mariée, 28, 294n100, 297n38, 305n46; Fête champêtre, 94, 227; La folie de l’or, 227; Les turlutaines de l’année, 94, 221t LaGrange, E. (photographer), 42f, 45, 46f, 49, 51f Laisne, Victoria, 82, 84f Lalo, Edouard, Namouna, 319n2, 321n25 Lambert, Marius: Pierrot aux manœuvres, 223t; Vénus cantinière, 227 Lamothe, Jeanne, 113, 318n46 Lamy, R., 83, 85f Landloff (House of Landloff), 179, 180 Lanner, Katti, Brighton, 220t lapins, Les (FB, 1884), 87, 218 Laplace-Claverie, Hélène, 93–94, 321n1, 322nn24–25 Laporte, Louis, 304n42 Laroche, E., Pierrot et Pierrine, 232t lascivious dances (danses lascives), 15, 79, 110, 128–29, 130, 169 Laurens, Edmond, 62; Une scène au camp, 218 Laurent, M. (mime), 185 Le Prevost, Marc, Le grand prix de Paris, 217 Le Roy, M. (choreographer): Les aventures de Mlle Clo-Clo, 225t; Noël à Séville, 225t; Trianon ballet, 225t Leba, Henri, Cléopâtre (1900), 230t Lebel, Gaston, 308n70 Lecocq, Charles, 67, 159; Barbe-Bleue (see title entry) leçon de danse, La (FB, 1875), 76, 216

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Lefèvre, Maurice, Scaramouche, 228t, 293n85 legislation. See theater laws leitmotivs (motivic or melodic recurrences), 89, 120, 149–50, 151, 153 Lemaire, Gaston, 62, 302n26; Les lapins, 87, 218 Lemaire, Jacques, career, 58, 60, 61, 302n23 Lemaire, Jacques, librettos: Bécarre!, 217; Merveilleuses et gigolettes, 211t; Presse-ballet, 208t; Rêve d’or, 162, 210t; Sans-Puits-House, 229t Lemarchand, Louis: Idylle dans les blés, 226t, 295n112; Les muses, 227 Lemoine, Thierry, Madame Bonaparte, 170, 213t Lemonnier (set designer), 179 Lemonnier, A. (librettist), Cendrillon, 163, 224t Levesque, Pauline, 83 Lévy, Charles, 32, 295n5 Lévy, Emile: posters, 32, 33f, 34, 295n7, 311n19; for La pile du calife, 311n25; for Sur la plage, 82f, 87 Lhéry, Mlle, 200, 202f libertine romances, 163–66 librettists, 56–61; background and influences, 55, 56–58; bohemian culture, 59; box-office earnings, 60; choreographers as, 60; collaborations among, 60–61; as critics, 59–60; specialization in light theater, 58–59. See also stories of pantomime-ballets lifestyle modernism, 312n28 lights and lighting technology: electricity for, 326nn20–22; light projections, 181; special effects with, 89, 181–82, 293n86, 326n25 Lincourt, Olivier, Une noce alsacienne, 217 Linke, Paul, 289n42, 304n42 Lippacher (composer), 62; Le pensionnat de Mme Laïk, 218 Lointier, Louis and Paul, 22 Lorenza (FB, 1901): contemporary/historical scenario, 200; costumes, 179,

183; Folies-Bergère production, 20, 40, 214t; Mérode’s star role, 113, 179, 200–201, 203f, 291n56; striptease, 197, 200–201, 203f; synopsis, 265t Lorrain, Jean (Paul Duval), career and lifestyle, 57, 58, 59, 60, 301n6 Lorrain, Jean, librettos: L’araignée d’or, 94, 167, 212t, 301n10; La belle aux cheveux d’or, 223t, 301n10; La princesse au sabbat, 213t, 301n10; Rêve de Noël, 221t; Watteau, 223t Louis, René: Les sept péchés capitaux, 214t, 222t; Stella, 215t Louvigny, Eugène: Garden Party, 218; Les marionettes javanaises, 217 Lunel, F. (engraver), 183 Lux, Mme Clarine, La montagne d’aimant, 230t Luxuria (1907), 231t Madame Bonaparte (FB, 1900): female lead role, 164, 170; Folies-Bergère production, 213t; historical scenario, 18, 107, 165, 167, 170; photographs, 180; synopsis, 263t Madame Malbrouck (C, 1898): Casino production, 26, 230t; crowd scene, 101; female lead role, 27, 164, 170; historical scenario and dances, 107, 165, 167; synopsis, 259t Mademoiselle ma femme (Menus-Plaisirs, 1893), 305n49 Mainguy, François, 174 Maizeroy, René, 59; Miroir, 210t; Noël à Séville, 225t Maladetta, La (Opéra, 1893): compared to L’impératrice, 320n21; corps dances, 104; lascivious dances, 316n32; mime/dance proportion, 98; Opéra production, 91, 286n11, 318n51; Vidal’s score, 320n21 male audiences (for ballet), 199, 328n44, 330n71

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index male dancers (danseurs), 191–94; ballet training, 192, 193; in Ballets Russes, 193; critics’ comments on, 328n42, 329n59; disappearance of, 328n48; Mariquita’s choreography for, 72, 193–94; in Opéra ballets, 189, 191, 328n49, 329n53; supporting roles for, 191, 328n46 male roles: played by male mimes, 111, 170, 172, 185, 316n26; played by travesty dancers, 185–86, 316n26, 327nn34–35, 328n49 Manet, Édouard: Un bar aux FoliesBergère, 9, 11–12, 32, 53, 288n21, 295nn3–4, 296n28, 326n22; Un déjeuner sur l’herbe, 165–66, 197 Manet, Julie, 43, 297n37 Manille, La (O, 1897), 227 manœuvres du printemps, Les (C, 1893): Casino production, 146, 228t; Marval’s score, 146; Mercklein’s libretto, 164–65; synopsis, 245t Mante, Louise, 191 Marcelles, Paul (Marcel Fournier), 68; L’enlèvement des Sabines (see title entry) Marchand, Édouard: death, 20, 43; marriage, 289n33; role as FoliesBergère director, 13–21, 31, 37–43, 63–65, 112–13, 182, 289nn35–37, 291n58, 297n33, 312n35 Marenco, Romualdo, 65; Le Capitaine Charlotte, 26, 228t, 239t Margat, Jules, Flagrant délit, 209t Margyl, Jane, 98, 318n48, 331n85 Marine (FB, 1890): Appel’s poster, 186, 187f; choreography, 60, 98; as a divertissement, 95; Folies-Bergère production, 209t; synopsis, 238t; travesty dancers in, 95, 186, 187f Marinelli, H. B., 30, 294n109 marionettes javanaises, Les (FB, 1882), 86, 217 Mariquita, Madame: birthdate, name, and death, 307n66, 308n67; career and accomplishments, 56, 70–72, 307n66; contemporary/topical

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ballets, 172; as a dancer, 76, 310n4; income and SACD membership, 302n20, 308n67, 309n75; mime scene by, 314n9; students of, 316n24, 316n27, 318n46; stylized cancan, 110; work with male dancers, 193–94 Mariquita, Madame, choreography: Les ailes, 21, 215t; L’araignée d’or, 212t; L’arc-en-ciel, 211t; Un atelier fin de siècle, 210t; Le ballet des nations, 320n21; Le bataillon des amours, 216; La belle et la bête, 211t; Chand d’habits, 290n50; Chansons, 210t; Chez le couturier, 212t; Les cygnes, 212t; Cythère, 213t; Les demoiselles du XXe siècle, 211t; Diamant, 213t; Divertissement militaire, 219, 313n45; Émilienne aux Quat’z’ Arts, 211t; L’enlèvement des Sabines, 213t; Les fausses almées (Les almées), 71, 76, 209t, 216, 237t; Fleur de Lotus, 184f, 210t; Fleur d’oranger, 217; Les folies amoureuses, 216; Les Folies Parisiennes, 210t; France-Russie, 60, 211t, 313n46; Les grandes courtisanes, 110, 213t; Les joujoux, 13, 96, 216; Les papillons noirs, 216; Lorenza, 214t; Madame Bonaparte, 213t; Maître Corbeau, 320n21; Marine, 60, 209t; La mer et les cocottes, 216; Merveilleuses et gigolettes, 211t; Les mimes d’or, 212t; Le miroir, 210t; Montmartre, 21, 72, 194, 215t; Napoli, 213t; Noce auvergnate, 214t; Orsowa, 210t; Paris s’éveille, 214t; Paris-turf, 209t; Les perles, 210t; Phryné, 155, 212t, 319n6; Le Prince Désir, 213t; La princesse au sabbat, 213t; La Princesse Idaea, 211t; Une répétition aux Folies-Bergère, 60, 209t, 309n81; Le rêve d’Elias, 213t; Rêve d’or, 210t; Le roi s’ennuie, 209t; RomiTchavé, 21, 194, 215t; Sports, 212t; Stella, 21, 72, 103, 215t, 309n81 Marius, H., Mousses et loup-de-mer, 218 Mars et Vénus (FB, 1882), 88, 167, 217 Marsan, Maurice de, Les sept péchés capitaux, 214t, 222t

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Marsolleau, Louis, 59; Émilienne aux Quat’z’ Arts, 59, 173–74, 211t mass culture, 315n12 Massenet, Jules, 13, 296n10, 301n5, 305n51; Thaïs, 331n90 matinées: family entertainment, 19, 204, 297n33, 325n57, 330n71, 331n88; similarity to evening programs, 204; ticket prices, 52–54, 300n70 Maupassant, Guy de, Folies-Bergère descriptions in Bel-Ami, 9, 11, 32, 34, 36, 40, 53, 288n18 Maurey, Max, 58; Les mille et une nuits, 163, 222t; Néron, 168, 222t; Sardanapale, 221t Mayeur, Louis, 62; Amarillo, 217; Au bois, 217; Une noce alsacienne, 217; La pile du calife, 217 McMillan, James, 322n14 Meilhac, Henri, Le réveillon, 165 men. See male audiences; male dancers; male roles Mendès, Catulle, Chand d’habits, 290n50 Menessier (set designer), 179, 325n9 Mengal, August: Au bois, 217; Une kermesse hollandaise, 218; Ouverture de Guillaume Tell, 218 Menus-Plaisirs, 58, 305n49 mer et les cocottes, La (FB, 1871), 76, 80, 216, 310n4, 312n29 Mérante, Louis, 191, 192, 329nn58–59 Mercédès, Marie, 317n39 Mercédès, Mlle (sister of Marie), 112, 317n39 Mercklein, Abel, career, 59, 60–61, 290n48, 302n23 Mercklein, Abel, librettos: Cléopâtre (1900), 230t; Les demoiselles du XXe siècle, 211t; Les manœuvres du printemps, 164–65, 228t; Vénus à Paris, 169, 229t Merlai (choreographer), Cléopâtre (1900), 230t Merlet, Jean François-Louis, Nitokris, 226t

Mérode, Cléo de, career and starring roles, 113, 200, 318n48; in Lorenza, 20, 179, 200–201, 203f, 265t, 291n56; in Phryné, 204, 205f, 291n55, 318n48, 331n90; scandal, 200–201, 331n87 Merveilleuses (O, 1900), 227 Merveilleuses et gigolettes (FB, 1894): character dances, 107, 108; Correnti’s travesty role, 317n39; Folies-Bergère production, 211t; Ganne’s score, 134, 135, 138ex, 141–45, 143–45ex, 303n37; historical scenario and characters, 165, 167; male roles, 185; modern goddesses, 164, 323n31; set designs, 177; synopsis, 246t Messager, André, career, 21, 303n34, 315n23 Messager, André, ballets: Une aventure de la Guimard, 303n34; Le chevalier aux fleurs, 57, 303n34, 304n44; Cocorico, 218; Les deux pigeons (see title entry); Fleur d’oranger (see title entry); L’Isba, 303n34; Mignons et vilains, 63, 217, 310n9; Miss Dollar, 293n88, 317n39; Scaramouche (see title entry); Les vins de France, 63, 217, 310n9 Métra, Olivier, career, 12, 13, 14f, 62–63, 76, 216, 303n31 Métra, Olivier, ballets: Aux porcherons, 216; Le ballet noir, 216; Les boxeurs, 216; La Catarina, 216; Champagne, 76, 216; Cigarette, 76, 216; Clownballet, 76, 216; Les conscrits espagnols, 216; Échec et mat, 217; Les faunes (see title entry); Les femmes de feu, 216; Les fiancés du Béarn, 13, 14f, 76, 216; Les fleurs, 76, 216; Fouchtra, 217; La Jonquina, 76, 216; Les joujoux (1876), 13, 76, 77, 80, 81, 96, 216; La leçon de danse, 76, 216; Les fausses almées (Les almées) (see title entry); Noce bohème, 76, 216; Une nuit vénitienne (see title entry); Les papillons noirs, 76, 216; La Posada, 13, 76, 216; Les volontaires, 216; Yédda, 303n32

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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index Metropolitan (London), 286n14, 312n28, 324n43 Meyan, Paul, 58, 59, 60 Meyan, Paul, librettos: Le capricorne, 216, 302n22; Chansons, 210t, 302n22; La crevette, 216, 302n22; Les Folies Parisiennes, 210t, 302n22; Les mimes d’or, 212t, 302n22; Les perles, 210t, 302n22 Michelet, Jules, 287n8 Micheline, Mlle (mime), 112, 113, 317n39 Michelucci (choreographer): Les pantins de Paris, 231t; Paris qui danse, 230t Mignard (set designer), 325n9 Mignons et vilains (FB, 1879), 63, 217, 310n9 mille et une nuits, Les (O, 1899), 93, 163, 222t, 261t Millet (fashion designer), 179 Milliet, Paul, 301n5, 302n18; Napoli, 213t mimes: as dancers, 318n45; male roles played by, 316n24, 327n34; mime roles, 98–99, 111–13, 191, 192–93. See also pantomime sequences mimes d’or, Les (FB, 1985), 102, 177, 212t, 249t miroir, Le (FB, 1892): Correnti’s travesty role, 317n39; crowd scene, 101; Folies-Bergère production, 210t, 290n52; historical dances, 107; mime/ dance proportions, 98; set and costume designs, 177, 178; sexual elements, 183; simple musical style, 134; synopsis, 242t miroir magique, Le (Porte Saint-Martin, 1876), 308n71 Miss Bouton d’or, 227 Miss Dollar, 293n88, 317n39 Missa, Edmond, career, 66, 67, 68, 305n51 Missa, Edmond, ballets: Un déjeuner sur l’herbe (see title entry); Les deux baisers, 94, 227; Les grandes courtisanes (see

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title entry); La Manille, 227; Noussima, 94, 227; Vision!, 222t Mize, Edmond, Diamant, 166, 213t Moisson (set designer), 325n9 montagne d’aimant, La (C, 1899), 26, 230t, 261t Montagnes Russes, 27, 293n91 Montmartre (FB, 1913): costumes, 180; descriptive subtitle, 93; FoliesBergère production, 176, 215t; Mariquita’s choreography, 21, 72, 194, 215t; Quinault’s lead role, 194; synopsis, 282t Montorgueil, Georges, 204, 311n18 Moreau, Amédée: L’arc-en-ciel, 211t; Les demoiselles du XXe siècle, 211t; La Princesse Idaea, 211t Moreau, Henry, Cléopâtre (1906), 168, 224t Morisot, Berthe, 43 Mortier, Arnold, 288n13, 288n21, 296n10 mouches de la St. Jean, Les (FB, 1883), 86–87, 218 Moul, Alfred, L’enlèvement de Psyché (see title entry) Moulin Rouge, ballets at, 291n67 Moulin Rouge, dancers at: (Avril), 19, 101, 113; (La Goulue), 109, 300n77; eccentric dancing and naturalist quadrilles, 25, 54, 109 Mourès (mime), 327n34 Mousses et loup-de-mer (FB, 1885), 218 Mouveau (set designer), 178 Muriand, Raoul, 331n89 muses, Les (O, 1915), 227 music-hall ballet: documentation for, 48, 69, 73, 134; early period (1871– 86), 61–63; gentrification of, 65–67; golden age (1886–1901), 63–68, 152; influenced by boulevard theater, 111; influenced by Opéra ballets, 72–73, 309n81, 313–14n2; late period and decline (1901–13), 30, 68–69, 114, 182; musical styles,

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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music-hall ballet—(cont’d) 133–60; Opéra ballets compared to, 5–6, 97–98, 114, 115, 131, 320nn20–21; orchestral rehearsals for, 319n1; origins and precedents, 3–4; prevalence and popularity of, 1–2; and social dance, 108, 316n30; terminology for, 91–94. See also English music-hall ballets Mythe, R., Le château de Mac-Arrott, 100, 162, 208t mythological ballets, 167, 168–69 Nadar (House of Nadar) ballet portraits, 103; Laisne in Les abeilles, 83, 84f; Lhéry in Sardanapale, 200, 202f; Pougy and Régina in Rêve de Noël, 106f Namouna (Opéra, 1882), 319n2, 321n25 Nanteuil, Georges: Paris-fêtard, 224t; Le timbre d’or, 214t Napierkowska, Stacia, 20, 30 Napierkowska, Stacia, star roles: in Les ailes, 278t; in 1909! Des femmes, 294n106; in Romi-Tchavé, 275t Napoli (1901), 107, 164, 213t, 265t naturalist quadrilles, 5, 25, 109 Néron (O, 1898): d’Alençon’s star role, 113; leitmotivs, 150, 151ex; libretto, 321n2, 322n20; musical complexity, 134; musical repetition, 150–52; Olympia production, 29, 222t; opening divertissement, 150–52; synopsis and historical setting, 167, 168, 178, 259t Néronde, Chassaigne de, 292n77, 308n73, 314n9 Neuville, G. de la, Presse-ballet, 208t Nijinsky, Vaslav, 193, 330n68 1909! Des femmes, rien que des femmes, 294n106 Nitokris (O, 1911), 30, 93, 178, 226t, 281t noce alsacienne, Une (FB, 1882), 217 Noce auvergnate (FB, 1901), 214t Noce bohème (FB, 1876), 76, 216

noces de Polichinelles, Les (FB, 1878), 217 Noël à Séville (O, 1908), 225t Noussima (O, 1896), 94, 227 Nouveau-Théâtre: connection with Casino de Paris, 22–23, 25–27, 49, 51, 292n70, 292n74, 299nn59–60, 300n75; expansion as Théâtre Réjane, 293n89; lighting machinery, 181; programming, 22–23, 25–27, 65, 292n84; stage and auditorium, 292n70 nouvelle femme, 164, 171, 322n14 Noyer [Moyer?], Les lapins (La chasse), 218 nudity. See striptease and nudity nuit vénitienne, Une (FB, 1877): FoliesBergère production, 76, 216; scenario, 77; sensuous component, 80, 81 Offenbach, Jacques, 306n52; La Belle Hélène, 322n22; Le voyage dans la lune, 307n65 Oller, Joseph, 27, 28, 65, 293nn90–91 Olympia (O, 1893): Banès’s score, 134; contemporary/mythological scenario, 60, 167, 173; Olympia production, 220t; set designs, 177; subtitle, 93; synopsis, 244t Olympia (theater) —audiences: audience demographics, 43–47, 67, 298n43; opening gala, 43–44; ticket and drink prices, 45, 47, 53, 67 —building: compared to Casino, 48–49; images of, 45, 46–47f; location, 43; owners and directors, 20, 65, 294n108; size and décor, 27–28, 293n94 —programming: ballets and divertissements, 220–26t, 227; celebrity composers, 65, 67; compared to Opéra, 91; development of, 28–30; English productions, 65, 294n105; revues, 29–30, 68; rivalry with FoliesBergère, 22, 29; variety and circus acts, 28, 29

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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index Olympia revue (1903), 30 O’Ménéné (Eldorado, 1894), 57 O’Monroy, Richard (de St. Geniès), 44, 59, 60, 195 O’Monroy, Richard (de St. Geniès), librettos: Barbe-Bleue, 222t; La belle et la bête, 163, 211t; Le tzigane, 230t Opéra (Paris Opéra): ballet corps, 3, 286n13; ballet productions, 97–98, 188–93, 198–200, 286n11, 320n20; balls at, 132n48; choreographers and choreographic tradition, 285nn7–8, 313–14n2; male roles, 188–91; Mariquita’s choreography for, 71, 308nn69–70; monopoly and royal privilege, 3, 328n44; personnel lists, 329n53; revealing costumes and striptease, 189, 198–206; set designers, 325n9; similarities with musichall ballet, 5–6, 72–73, 199–206, 309n81, 313–14n2, 320nn20–21; Véron’s directorship, 189, 199, 328n44 Opéra-Comique: male dancers at, 188– 92, 317n38; Mariquita’s choreography for, 71, 285n6, 309n76; owners and directors, 291n64 Ophélia (FB, 1885), 218 Orazi, poster for Rêve de Noël, 186 orchestration: brass-heavy instrumentation, 146–47; exoticism and color, 129, 146 Orchestre du Concert de Paris, 36–37, 289n31 Orsowa (FB, 1892), 210t, 241t Otéro, Caroline: gowns for, 179, 180, 326n14; as a music-hall star, 17–18f, 28; role in Une fête à Séville (O, 1908), 113; role in L’impératrice, 113, 153, 179, 180, 195, 197, 200, 266t Ouverture de Guillaume Tell (FB, 1884), 218 Palace Theatre of Varieties (London), 73 pantins de Paris, Les (C, 1902), 231t, 267t

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pantomime-ballet, 97–114; danced component of, 102–8; vs. divertissements, 75, 88–94, 312n36; eclipsed by revues, 68, 74, 114; focus on female body, 108–10; as hybrid genre, 97–98; mime elements, 97–99, 111–14, 314n10; as mimed dramas with dancing, 97–98; nondanced scenes, 98–102; photographs of, 103, 104–5f; split casting in, 111–14; terminology for, 91–94 pantomime sequences: choreography, 314n9; with divertissements, 76, 313n42; melodies and themes, 137; musical support and guestures, 120, 134, 135; types of, 314n8. See also mimes pantomimes, 28, 29, 290n50 Papillon d’or (O, 1910): choreography, 194, 294n110; Olympia production, 30, 226t; synopsis, 279t papillons noirs, Les (FB, 1870s), 76, 216 Papurello, Rita (later Mme DaynesPapurello), 20 Papurello, Rita, choreography: Arlette, 221t; Un déjeuner sur l’herbe, 221t; Les deux baisers, 227; Faust excerpts, 233; Fête champêtre, 227; La fête du printemps, 233; The Flower Ballet, 227; La folie de l’or, 227; Noussima, 227; Paquita, 225t; Pierrot au hammam, 221t; Pierrot et Pierrine, 232t; Rêve de Noël, 221t; Le scandale du Louvre, 221t, 235n3 Paquita, ou Les filles de Bohême (O, 1909), 30, 225t, 275t Paradis-Latin, 21, 73 Paris-cascade (O, 1901), 165, 173, 223t, 266t Paris Exposition (1900), 297n29; Palais de la Danse, 71–72, 315n23, 322n24, 330n60 Paris-fêtard (O, 1906), 93, 224t Paris qui chante (1903, revue), 30 Paris qui danse (1901), 164, 230t, 267t Paris s’éveille (FB, 1901), 214t

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index

Paris-turf (FB, 1890): contemporary scenario, 60, 95, 101; Correnti’s travesty role, 317n39; crowd scenes, 101; Folies-Bergère production, 209t; synopsis, 238t Paris-vacances (O, 1908), 225t Parlato, Mme: Deux sous d’amour, 225t; Paris-vacances, 225t parodies, 167–71, 174, 198, 302nn16–17 Paska (C, 1909), 231t, 277t Pasler, Jann, 289n31, 301n1 Pastorini, Benedetto, 193 Pastorini, Benedetto, choreography: Amourettes d’atelier, 227; Bains de dames, 221t; Ballet blanc, 220t; Caméléon-ballet, 227; Le fiancé de cire, 220t; Olympia, 220t; Premiers-soupirs, 227; Les turlutaines de l’année, 221t Patusset, Alfred, 68, 306n57; Noce auvergnate, 214t Paul, Antoine, 71, 308n69 Paulin, Gaston, 64, 304n41; Conte de mai, 72, 94, 227; Orsowa, 210t Pascaud (House of Pascaud), 179, 180 Pavane (C, 1895), 233 pensionnat de Mme Laïk, Le (FB, 1885), 218 perle du Cantal, La (Folies-Dramatiques, 1895), 305n49 perles, Les (FB, 1891): accounts of nudity in, 183; Correnti’s travesty role, 317n39; Folies-Bergère production, 210t, 302n22; synopsis, 240t Perrin, Paul: Pierrot aux manœuvres, 223t; Vénus cantinière, 227 Petipa, Marius, 313n48 petite muette, La (FB, 1878), 217 Pfeiffer, Georges, 67, 133, 302n18; Cléopâtre (1900) (see title entry); Madame Bonaparte, 213t Phryné (1897): choreographers, 154–55; costumes, 183, 204; dances, 155–60; descriptive subtitle, 94; exoticism and eroticism, 130–31, 132ex; Ganne’s score, 130–32, 134, 141, 154–60, 303n37; Germain’s libretto, 154;

historical scenario, 105, 167, 322n20; male mime role, 327n33; Mérode’s role and striptease, 113, 197, 204, 205f, 291n55, 331n90; mime/dance proportions, 98; synopsis, 254t Phryné (1897), productions: Casino de Royan (1896), 30, 113, 152, 155, 309n78, 318n48; Folies-Bergère (1897), 30, 154, 212t, 318n48, 319n6; Olympia (1904), 30, 154, 224t, 318n48 Pierné, Gabriel, 65, 292n84; Bouton d’or, 26, 146, 228t, 245t Pierrot au hammam (O, 1897): costume designs, 196f; harem bathing scene, 177, 194; Olympia production, 221t; synopsis, 256t Pierrot aux manœuvres (O, 1900), 223t Pierrot et Méphisto (FB, 1881), 217 Pierrot et Pierrine (C, 1910), 232t, 280t Pierrot volage (FB, 1886), 185, 208t, 235t pile du calife, La (FB, 1882), 86, 217 Place au jeûne (revue), 291n58 Pluque, Edouard, 192, 329n58 Pollonnais, Gaston, Le coucher de la mariée, 28 Pomé, J., Danses anglaises for Le timbre d’or, 214t Poncin, Eugène, Nitokris, 226t pornographic films, 314n6 Posada, La (FB, 1876), 13, 76, 216 posters, dancers portrayed in, 183, 311n19; for Fleur de Lotus (Chéret), 183, 184f; for Folies-Bergère (Chéret), 9, 12; for Folies-Bergère (Lévy), 32, 33f, 34, 295n5, 295n7; for Marine (Appel), 187f; for Rêve de Noël (Orazi), 186 Pouget, Léo, 69, 306n61, 331n85; Fumées d’opium, 177, 181, 231t, 274t; Le voyage de Madame la Présidente (see title entry) Pougy, Liane de, starring roles, 17, 28, 113, 331n85; in L’araignée d’or, 39, 113, 252t; in Rêve de Noël, 106f, 113, 186, 253t; in Watteau, 263t poule aux œufs d’or, La, 311n27

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index Pradels, Octave, 59 Pradels, Octave, librettos: Bains de dames, 221t; Les deux tentations, 169, 229t; Les favorites, 227; Madame Malbrouck, 164, 170, 230t Pratesi, Giovanni, 69, 73, 193, 309n82; Cadet-Roussel, 230t Premiers-soupirs (O, 1894), 227 Presse-ballet (FB, 1888): contemporary scenario, 95; costumes and character dancing, 108, 109f; Folies-Bergère production, 208t; mime/dance proportions, 98; synopsis, 236t Prétentaine, La (vaudeville operetta), 181, 317n39, 326n25 Prince Désir, Le (FB, 1900): Folies-Bergère production, 18f, 213t; synopsis, 260t; Thomé’s score for, 134, 146–47 princesse au sabbat, La (FB, 1899): dramatic music, 121–22, 123ex, 126, 128; Folies-Bergère production, 176, 213t; harmonic palette, 320n11; lascivious dances, 110, 128; libretto, 58, 301n10, 321n2; musical complexity, 134, 135, 303n37; musical repetition, 150; orchestration, 146, 147–48, 149ex; set designs, 177; synopsis, 260t; valse mélancolique, 135, 140ex, 147–48, 149ex; witches’ dance, 126, 147, 149ex Princesse Idaea, La (FB, 1895), 97, 134, 211t, 249t Pritchard, Jane, 286n11, 294n110, 307n65, 309n76, 327n29, 330n62 programs: advertisements in, 298n47; details about sets and costumes in, 178, 180–81; spectacle and sensuality emphasized in, 176 promenoir cocottes, 9, 10–11 promenoirs: at Casino de Paris, 22, 23, 53, 297n33; at Folies-Bergère, 9, 10f, 41–42f, 52, 299n58; at Olympia, 28 prostitutes: artistic or fictitious representations of, 9–12, 32–34; at Casino de Paris, 23, 297n33; at FoliesBergère, 9–10, 15, 52, 287–88n12, 288n21, 289n35

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Puech, Lucien, Sardanapale, 221t Pugno, Raoul, Le chevalier aux fleurs, 57 Puppenfee, Die. See fée des poupées, La Quénel, Charles, Cléopâtre (1906), 168, 224t Quinault, Robert, choreography by, 20; on danseurs, 191; and Mariquita, 193–94, 317n38, 330n69; in Montmartre, 194; in Romi-Tchavé, 194, 275t; in Stella, 105f, 194, 330n68 Rampont, Mlle (Goutte de Rosée), 317n40 Rathner, Alfred, La fée des poupées, 220t Ravel, Maurice, Le tombeau de Couperin, 319n10 Régina, Mlle, 106f Renée, Gabrielle, 114 répétition aux Folies-Bergère, Une (FB, 1890): Correnti’s travesty role, 317n39; Desormes’s score, 19; eccentric dance, 110; Folies-Bergère production, 209t; male roles and travesty, 172, 317n39; Mariquita’s choreography, 60, 172, 309n81; mime/dance proportions, 98; representation of ballet in, 19, 103, 173; synopsis, 238t Repossy, M., Amourettes d’atelier, 227 réservistes à venir, Les (FB, 1887): FoliesBergère production, 176, 208t; military scenario and costumes, 95, 176, 188f, 327n36; synopsis, 236t rêve, Le (Opéra, 1890), 198, 316n32 Rêve de Noël (O, 1896): corps dances, 104; libretto and male/female leads, 58, 104, 106f, 113, 164, 186; musical style, 108, 134; Olympia production, 44, 221t; Orazi’s poster, 186; synopsis, 253t rêve d’Elias, Le (FB, 1898): descriptive subtitle, 93; exotic set design, 177; Folies-Bergère production, 213t, 290n48; libretto, 57; lighting effects, 181; posed tableau, 102; seduction scene, 110, 166; synopsis, 257t

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index

Rêve d’or (FB, 1892): divertissement in, 105, 107; Folies-Bergère production, 210t, 290n52; light musical style, 134; moral overtones, 162; principal roles, 103–4, 105f, 111–12, 317n39; reviews, 183; as a romance, 162; sensuous elements, 183; synopsis, 241t réveil de la Parisienne, Le, 20 réveil des fleurs, Le (O, 1903), 227 reviewers’ comments: on celebrities in audiences, 38–39, 44, 48–49; on dancers’ bodies and costumes, 183, 195; on male dancers, 192, 328n42, 329nn58–59, 330n68; on motivic repetition (leitmotivs), 150; on orchestration, 146; on sensational elements, 176, 183, 185; written by librettists or composers, 59–60, 302n18 révolte au sérail, La (Opéra, 1833), 199, 331n82 revue des Folies-Bergère, La, 291n58 revues: ballet precursors for, 94; at Casino, 27, 293n89; danced divertissements in, 30, 74, 313n42; at Folies-Bergère, 20–21, 291n58; at Olympia, 29–30, 68; pantomimeballet eclipsed by, 68, 74, 114 Rianza, Yetta, 194, 283t Richepin, Jean, career, 21, 57–59, 301nn8–9 Richepin, Jean, librettos: Les charmeuses, 226t, 294n112, 301n11; L’impératrice, 58, 98, 153, 223t, 301n8, 301n11; Romi-Tchavé, 21, 215t, 301n11 Richepin, Tiarko, Romi-Tchavé, 21, 194, 215t, 275t, 301n11 Rizzo, M. (choreographer): Divertissement rustique, 233; Fruit défendu, 232t; Paska, 231t; La rose d’amour, 232t; Soledad, 231t; Le voyage de Madame la Présidente, 231t Robert le diable (Opéra), 199, 331n80, 332n91 Rochegrosse, Georges, La mort de Babylone, 173, 197

Roger, Victor, ballets: La Camargo (see title entry); Cendrillon, 163, 224t; Chez le couturier (see title entry) Roger, Victor, career, 66, 67, 68, 302n18, 306n52 Roger-Milès, Léon, 59 Roger-Milès, Léon, librettos: L’heureuse rencontre, 228t, 302n17; Le scandale du Louvre, 221t; Tentations, 169, 228t; Vassilissa, 229t; Vision!, 222t roi blanc, Le (FB, 1890), 219 roi s’ennuie, Le (FB, 1890): Correnti’s travesty role, 317n39; Folies-Bergère production, 209t; scenario, 321n2; set design, 177; synopsis, 239t romances, 162–66 Romi-Tchavé (FB, 1909): Folies-Bergère production, 21, 215t; Mariquita’s choreography, 21, 194; Richepin’s libretto, 301n11; synopsis, 275t ronde des saisons, La (Opéra, 1905): corps dances, 104; exotic dancing and striptease, 198, 316n32, 331n78; male roles, 191, 328n49 Ronsin (set designer), 181, 325n9 Roques, Jules, 183, 185, 324n49 rose d’amour, La (C, 1909), 232t, 277t rosière de Montretout, La (FB, 1886), 218 Ross, Novelene, 9 Rossi, Alexandre, Don Juan aux enfers, 229t Rossi, Egidio, 73, 193, 309n82 Rossi, Egidio, choreography: Les amoureux de Venise, 179, 229t; Bouton d’or, 228t, 293n86; Les deux tentations, 229t; L’étoile de mer, 229t; La fête du dragon vert, 293n88; Fiammina, 229t; La fin d’un monde, 228t; L’heureuse rencontre, 228t; Les joujoux (1894), 96, 228t; Les manœuvres du printemps, 228t; Les mille et une nuits, 222t; Pierrot aux manœuvres, 223t; SansPuits-House, 229t; Tentations, 228t; Vassilissa, 229t; Vénus à Paris, 229t; Vénus cantinière, 227 Rossini, Gioachino, Guillaume Tell, 218

Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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Roucet (Jacques Doucet), 170, 323n33 Rouget, F., Idylle dans les blés, 226t, 295n112 Rouvray, Fernand, Les muses, 227 Rubé (set designer), 179, 325n9 Ruez, Paul, 21, 30, 291n64, 294n104, 294n108 Rumsgate, 324n43 sabbat, Le (FB, 1880), 217 SACD. See Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques St. Mary, 62; Les gandins, 218; Ivresses!, 218; Une kermesse hollandaise, 218; Sur la plage, 82f, 218 St. Senoch, Edgar de, 180, 315n22 Saint-Saëns, Camille, 13, 296n10; Henry VIII, 57 Saint-Valentin, La (Bouffes-Parisiens, 1895), 305n49 saisons de la Parisienne, Les (O, 1905): Olympia production, 30, 224t; pantomime scene, 195; set designs, 177; synopsis, 269t; as a variety show, 74 Salvayre, Gaston, 21 Sans-Puits-House (C, 1895): Boni’s star role, 115; Casino production, 26f, 229t; crowd scenes, 101; eccentric dances, 109; gymnastic scene, 173; synopsis, 250t Sardanapale (O, 1897): exoticism and sexuality, 100, 110, 183, 197, 200, 202f; male roles and mimes, 185; Olympia production, 176, 221t; pseudohistorical scenario, 167, 178; sources for, 314n11, 322n20; synopsis, 256t Sari, Léon, 8–13, 36–37, 52, 62–64, 287n9, 289n31 sauterelles, Les (FB, 1887), 87, 218 scandale du Louvre, Le (O, 1895): authentic designs and choreography, 178, 325n3; descriptive subtitle, 93; light musical style, 134; Olympia production, 176, 221t; synopsis, 250t scandals: about Bal des Quat’z’Arts, 174; involving Mérode, 200–201, 203f,

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331n87; involving Silvestre, 57, 198; parodies of, 198 Scaramouche (NT, 1891): Messager’s score, 26; Nouveau-Théâtre production, 25–26, 228t, 293n85; synopsis, 240t scène au camp, Une (FB, 1884), 218 Schneklüd, G. A., 62; Mousses et loup-demer, 218 Seales, Julia, 261t seduction scenes and dances, 79–80, 85–86, 108–10, 166–67, 316n32 seguidilla, La (FB, 1887), 219 sept péchés capitaux, Les (O, 1899): choreography, 72; costume design, 199–200, 201f; dancers, 201f, 315n20; Folies-Bergère production (1903), 21, 214t; Olympia production (1899), 21, 176, 222t; posed tableau, 102; seduction scene, 110, 166, 199–200; synopsis, 261t Serpette, Gaston, 133, 302n18 set designs, 177–82, 325n9 Séverin, Gaston Léon, 99, 194, 314n7, 327n34; Les sept péchés capitaux, 214t Sicard, Félix, 20; Cléopâtre (1906), 224t; Le timbre d’or, 214t; Vers les étoiles, 224t Sieba, 330n62 Silvestre, Armand, career, 57, 58, 198 Silvestre, Armand, librettos: Le chevalier aux fleurs, 57; La fée du rocher, 323n27; Fleur de Lotus, 57, 163, 184f, 197–98, 210t; O’Ménéné, 57; Le rêve d’Elias, 57, 213t Sims, Géo, La tulipe noire, 231t Sisters Barrison, 16, 41 slapstick comedy, 86, 162, 165, 169, 171 Smith, Marian, 97, 101, 199, 313–14n2, 328n48 Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques, La (SACD): choreographers in, 307n63; works catalogued by, 94, 311n23, 312n35, 313n40 Soledad (C, 1908), 231t sources du Nil, Les (FB, 1882): dramatic and dance music, 89, 90–91ex; Folies-Bergère production, 217,

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312nn32–34; Ganne’s score, 63, 65, 88, 312n32; as a pantomime-ballet, 88–89, 303n37; popular musical style, 89; recurrent themes, 89, 91–92ex, 149; special effects, 89 South London Palace of Varieties, 286n14, 312n28, 324n43 special effects, 181–82; cars, 327n30; electricity for, 326n18, 326n20; glass curtains, 181–82, 327n29; with lighting, 89, 181–82, 293n86, 326n25, 326nn20–22; machinery for, 179; stage sizes and limitations, 179, 180–81 spectacle and spectacle ballets, 99–100, 167–72, 176; Italian ballo grande, 3, 4, 69–70, 73–74 sphinx, Les (FB, 1879): dramatic music, 310–11n13; Folies-Bergère production, 217; mime/dance proportions, 77, 88; spectacle and exotic sensuality, 77, 79, 80 split casting, 111–14 Sport (London, 1875 and 1879), 312n28, 324n43 Sports (FB, 1897): contemporary/mythological scenario, 101, 167, 173, 200; Folies-Bergère production, 21, 212t, 304n42; as a parody, 169–70, 302n16; restaged version (1908), 173, 327n30; revealing costumes, 195, 200, 297n37; set designs, 177; synopsis, 255t Staats, Léo, 30, 191; Les charmeuses, 301n11; Les fanfreluches de l’amour, 226t Stella (FB, 1911): costumes, 105f, 180; Folies-Bergère production, 21, 176, 215t; Mariquita’s choreography, 72, 103, 194, 309n81; special effects, 326n18; star dancers, 103, 105f, 330n68; synopsis, 280t Stichel, Mme (Louise Manzini), 20, 72, 154, 309n78, 319n6 stories of pantomime-ballets, 161–75; allusions to art and theater, 165–66; contemporary/topical scenarios,

60, 95, 161, 172–75, 323n31; fairy tales, 163; historical/mythological scenarios, 161, 165, 167–68; portrayals of marriage, 164–65; romances, 162–63; socio/political issues in, 161, 175, 321n2, 327n36. See also librettists Strapontin (critic), 39, 40, 48, 171 Street, Georges, 65; Bécarre!, 217; Scaramouche, 228t striptease and nudity (déshabillés), 194–206; artists’ models, 194, 198; bathing scenes, 95, 194–95, 196f, 197, 199, 331n82; at FoliesBergère, 331n90; high-art context, 166, 197–98; images of, 183; in pantomime-ballets, 108; performed by supernumeraries, 331n90; pornographic films, 314n6; rationale and limitations of, 194–95, 201, 204–6; rehearsals for, 325n57; sensational accounts of, 176, 183, 185; suggested by ballet titles, 166; theatrical antecedents for, 311n18 striptease pantomimes, 20, 204, 294n100; Le coucher de la mariée, 28, 294n100, 297n38, 305n46; Le réveil de la Parisienne, 20 Sur la plage (FB, 1883): bathing scenario, 86, 87, 194; Folies-Bergère production, 218; Lévy’s poster for, 82f Surtac (Gabriel Astruc), Paris s’éveille, 214t Sylvia (Opéra, 1870), 167, 198–99, 331n179 tableaux: for pantomime-ballets, 100, 101–2; for striptease/nude scenes, 195, 197, 199, 204 Tagliaferro, P., score for Vulcain, 218 Tallet, Gabriel, Fruit défendu, 232t Tarentule, La (Opéra, 1839), 199 technology. See special effects tempête, La (Opéra, 1889), 98, 104, 192, 198, 319n3 tentation, La (Opéra, 1832), 199, 331n82

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index Tentations (C, 1893): Casino production, 228t; seduction scene, 110, 166, 169; synopsis, 246t Terrasse, Claude, 68; Stella, 21, 215t Thalès, Théodore: mime roles, 99, 133, 194, 314n7, 327n34; in Barbe-Bleue, 258t; in Sardanapale, 185 Thalès, Théodore, mise-en-scène (staging) for: La belle aux cheveux d’or, 223t; Conte de mai, 227; Faust, 223t; Fumées d’opium, 231t; Les mille et une nuits, 222t; Néron, 222t; Pierrot aux manœuvres, 223t; Les sept péchés capitaux, 222t; Soledad, 231t; Vénus cantinière, 227; Watteau, 223t theater laws: in Britain, 286n15, 287n18; in France, 3, 8, 286n9 Théâtre de la Gaîté: ballet at, 3, 285n7; dancers, 83, 104; light theater, 58; Mariquta at, 70, 71, 308n74; set designers, 325n9; ticket prices, 300n71 Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin: ballet at, 3, 83; choreographers, 70, 71, 73, 308n71; light theater, 58; set designers, 325n9; ticket prices, 300n71 Théâtre de la Renaissance: choreographers at, 70; light theater at, 67; set designers, 325n9 Théâtre de l’Odéon, 43, 58, 325n9 Théâtre des Nouveautés, 67 Théâtre du Châtelet: ballets, 2, 3; choreographers, 70, 71, 73; set designers, 325n9; ticket prices, 300n71 Théâtre du Vaudeville, 58, 67, 185, 325n9 Théâtre-Lyrique, 62, 67 Thierry, Augustin: Les mille et une nuits, 163, 222t; Néron, 168, 222t Thomas, Ambroise, La tempête, 98, 104, 192, 198, 319n3 Thomé, Francis, 21, 67, 159, 292n84; Le Prince Désir (see title entry) Thylda, Jane, 98, 258t, 263t, 331n85 ticket prices, 40, 45, 47, 49, 52–54, 299–300nn64–73

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Tiller, John: Blanc et noir, 227; Deux sous d’amour, 225t, 273t, 310n88; Parisvacances, 225t timbre d’or, Le (FB, 1906): backdrops, 327n30; bathing scene, 195; descriptive subtitle, 93; Folies-Bergère production, 214t; revue structure, 21; synopsis, 271t Tivoli Gardens (Copenhagen), 310n3 Tohu-Bohu (FB, 1883), 86, 218 topical ballets. See contemporary/topical scenarios Toulmouche, Frédéric, career, 6, 68, 294n99, 305n49 Toulmouche, Frédéric, ballets: Les deux tentations (see title entry); Madame Malbrouck (see title entry); Pierrot au hammam (see title entry); Les trois couleurs, 94, 227 tourism, 15–16, 40–41, 43, 296– 97nn27–30, 297n38, 298n50 toy ballets, 77, 96 travesty dancers, 185–94; ballet training, 316n29; casting of, 111–14, 185, 186; costumes for, 81, 180, 186, 187–90f, 200, 201f; in military roles, 95, 185–86, 187–89; at the Opéra, 188–91, 328n49; in parodies, 170. See also women Trebla, M.: Pierrot aux manœuvres, 223t; Vénus cantinière, 227 Trébor (author), Fumées d’opium, 231t Trianon ballet (O, 1908): historical scenario, 165, 167, 177; Olympia production, 30, 225t; synopsis, 273t trois couleurs, Les (O, 1899), 94, 227 Trompette, G., Un déjeuner sur l’herbe, 165, 221t Trouhanova, Natalia, 20, 30, 294n106 tulipe noire, La (C, 1907), 231t turlutaines de l’année, Les (O, 1895), 94, 221t tutus, 104, 196f, 311n19, 315n22 tzigane, Le (C, 1899), 102, 133, 230t, 262t tziganes, Les (FB, 1878), 217

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Valéry, Odette (Marpha de Vasiliadis), 104, 316n25 Vallin, A., La fin d’un monde, 228t Valton (set designer), 179 Valverde (composer), Noël à Séville, 225t variations (ballet variations): music for, 115–16, 135, 140ex, 142, 144ex; in pantomime-ballets, 73, 103, 111 Varney, Louis, 57, 66, 67, 68, 306n53 Varney, Louis, ballets: Les mousquetaires au couvent (operetta), 306n53; Pariscascade, 165, 173, 223t, 266t; La Princesse Idaea, 97, 134, 211t, 249t; Les saisons de la Parisienne (see title entry) Vaslin (Pédrille), 146 Vasquez, Miguel, 191, 192, 329n55, 329n59 Vasseur, Léon, 63, 303n36; La brasserie, 303n36; La Prétentaine, 181, 317n19, 326n25 Vassilissa (C/NT, 1895): Casino/ Nouveau-Théâtre production, 25, 49, 229t, 292n84; character dances, 107; Enriu’s star role, 318n49; lighting effects, 181; political element, 321n2; set design, 177; synopsis, 251t Vaugneux, Henri, Scaramouche, 228t, 293n85 veillée de noces, La (Menus-Plaisirs, 1888), 305n49 Vély, Adrien, reviews, 39, 49, 59, 325n6; Cadet-Roussel, 230t; L’enlèvement des Sabines, 213t Venise à l’Olympia (O, 1906), 227 Vénus à Paris (C, 1896): Casino production, 229t; contemporary/mythological scenario, 27, 60, 167; crowd scenes, 101; eccentric dances, 110; Enriu’s star role, 114, 318n49; set designs, 177; synopsis, 253t Vénus cantinière (O, 1899), 94, 227 Vercingétorix, 306n60 Vergané, Henriette, 111–12, 113, 316n29 Véron, Louis, 189, 199, 328n44 Vers les étoiles (O, 1906), 30, 177, 224t, 272t

Vidal, L. (Casino de Paris director), 27, 293n89 Vidal, Paul, ballets: Le ballet des nations, 320n21; Les charmeuses, 226t, 294n112, 301n11; Fête russe (arr.), 320n20; L’impératrice (see title entry); Maître Corbeau, 320n21; La Maladetta (see title entry) Vidal, Paul, career, 67, 68, 134, 135 Vieu, Jane, 69; Les fanfreluches de l’amour (see title entry); Merveilleuses, 227 vins de France, Les (FB, 1878), 63, 217, 310n9 Vision!, 104, 222t, 258t Vivier, Eugène, Diamant, 166, 213t Volapük (FB, 1886), 64, 208t, 235t, 303n37, 326n25 volontaires, Les (FB, 1870s), 216 Volterra, Léon, 21, 293n89 voyage dans la lune, Le (Gaîté), 307n65 voyage de Madame la Présidente, Le (C, 1905): Beissier’s portrayal of nouvelle femme, 164, 165, 170–72, 302n17; Casino production, 231t; as a modern ballet, 27; as a parody, 170–71, 302n17; synopsis, 270t Vrécourt, H. de, Les trois couleurs, 94, 227 Vulcain (FB, 1886), 218 Walter, Jules, 65; Ballet blanc, 220t; Caméléon-ballet, 227; Premiers-soupirs, 227 waltzes, 108, 116, 135, 139–40ex, 142, 143–45 Watteau (O, 1900): descriptive subtitle, 93; historical scenario and dances, 107, 177; Lorrain’s libretto, 58; Olympia production, 223t; synopsis, 263t Weber, Eugen, 326n14 Wenzel, Léopold: Brighton (see title entry); Papillon d’or (see title entry) Widor, Charles Marie, La Korrigane, 98, 191, 286n11, 329n59 Willette, Adolphe, 59; Montmartre, 21, 215t, 282t Willy, Louise: in Fleur de Lotus, 99, 317n40; as a mime/striptease

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170–72, 322n14; as professional beauties or courtesans, 17, 28, 113– 14, 200, 331n85; as seductresses, 166–67. See also ballerinas; travesty dancers Wormser, André: Le dragon vert, 293n88; L’étoile (see title entry) Ziegfeld, Florenz, 291n66 Zittel, G., 27, 293n89 Zola, Émile, 9–10, 32, 36, 53, 295n9

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artist, 99, 113, 133, 294n100, 317n40, 331n85; in pornographic films, 314n6 women: athleticism for, 173; as barmaids and waitresses, 9, 11–12; as choreographers, 306–7n62; as composers, 69; and feminization of pantomime-ballet, 185, 189, 192–94; and modernization of ballet, 27; in music-hall audiences, 41, 43, 180, 297n33, 325n12, 330n71; nouvelle femme in modern ballet, 164–65,

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Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

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SARAH GUTSCHE-MILLER

is assistant professor of musicology at the University

of Toronto.

Cover image: Folies-Bergère poster for Marine, printed by F. Appel, 1890. Reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (F-Pn ENT DN-1 [APPEL, F. /7]-ROUL).

668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620-2731, USA P.O. Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913, University of Rochester Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, www.urpress.com http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4397512. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2020-12-19 06:05:08.

PARISIAN MUSIC - HALL BALL ET

“Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871–1913 is a riveting study of a phenomenon that until now has remained virtually unknown. As Sarah Gutsche-Miller so brilliantly shows, far from disappearing, ballet flourished in Paris of the Belle Epoque. The gold standard of popular entertainment, French music-hall ballet was an international phenomenon that left a mark across the field of dance, sharing artists and even audiences with high-art institutions from St. Petersburg to Milan.” —LY N N G A R A F O L A , Barnard College, Columbia University

G u ts che -Miller

This pioneering study of Parisian music-hall ballet brings to light a vibrant dance culture that was central to the renewal of French ballet at the turn of the twentieth century. Long thought a lost period for ballet in France, the fin de siècle in fact saw a flourishing of choreographic activity. More than four hundred ballets were created to great acclaim, half of which were full-scale pantomime-ballets, with entertaining narratives, catchy music, titillating choreography, lavish sets and costumes, attractive corps girls, and star ballerinas. Most of these productions were staged not at the elite Paris Opéra but in the city’s trendiest commercial venues: music halls. Between 1871 and 1913, the Folies-Bergère, the Olympia, and the Casino de Paris brought together the era’s leading authors of light theater and comic opera to produce a flurry of imaginative ballets that combined the conventional structures of high art with the popular idioms of mass entertainment. They also drew unprecedented numbers of people who had never before attended ballet. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871–1913 rediscovers this repertoire and culture, supplying a missing chapter in the history of French dance.

PA RISIA N M U SIC -HA LL B A L LE T 1871–1913

Sarah G u tsche -Miller