world of blue gleams and slate-colored hues which a
stage moonlight spreads abroad in the realms of the
modern theater. She attached the seal of classicality
to an art which had been mincing artificially, coquet-
tishly, wantonly, in the domains of the ancien regime.
Taglioni not only etherealized the dance but she de-
tailed a more elaborate performance than the dan.-
seuses who preceded her. A reference to Blasis's
work proves this conclusively. It is true that she did
not follow what was called "the school" so closely as
they, yet following the dry rules of "the school" does
not produce a star, for none of the ballerines from
Salle and Camargo to Taglioni is remembered merely
for her dancing. The fact that Taglioni's skirts were
slightly convex and were shorter and stiffer than those
of her predecessors indicates that she accomplished
more expert pas than had ever been known.
In the first place, she indulged somewhat in pointe
dancing, whereas that had not been practiced by either
her male or female predecessors. There is no chapter
on pointes in the book of Blasis. He speaks of them,
but his illustrations show that he means what are called
nowadays demi-pointes ā balancing on the toe, not on
the tip of the toe ā an altogether different and more
difficult performance. Furthermore, Taglioni was the
first to claim the grande vigueur for her sex, and to
create the ballon for which she is famous. The ballon
is one of the most exhausting and crucial exhibitions on
the ballet stage, yet the word is scarcely mentioned, if
at all, by Blasis.
100 French Essays and Profiles
This fully explains the significant result of the Ta-
glionization of the dance, namely, that the scepter of
Terpsichorean glory was therein definitively snatched
by woman from the hand of man. Before Taglioni's
day, most of the distinctively great dancers were men,
and to them the art owed most of its progress. Since
her time, nearly all the leading artists have been
women; the transformations of the dance have been due
to their revelations; and it has indeed become almost
wholly their own prize. The point of departure for
the new and aerial art of Taghoni lay in the free and
dexterous use of the legs. In their skill of flight she
could buoy up her lightness and grand ballon and make
herself seem a shapely form floating hither and thither.
Her arms, face and body entered fully into the easy
harmony of her evolutions, so that one part of her
person was not sacrificed for another, and she was
therefore able to present a perfect ensemble of volatile
grace such as is fancied in a sylph.
When one muses over the Taglioni tradition, he
may think of the contrast offered by this striking pas-
sage in the "Journal" of Alfred de Vigny : "If I were a
painter, I should like to be a Raphael-black; angelic
form, somber color." Were one a dancer, would she
not divinely long to be a Taglioni-white ; sylphine form,
color of the cool Pentelic?
The Elsslers were Germans. The two sisters came
to Paris in 1834. Therese was a tall, large woman,
and the Viennese called her The Majestic One. Energy
and virility characterized her. She was a very correct
The Great Era of the French Ballet loi
and schooled danseuse. Her more celebrated sister,
Fanny, was born in Vienna in 1810. About 1840 she
toured in America where, as she wrote Gautier with de-
light, "people throw flowers into my carriage and men
lift their hats to me in the street."
A sketch of her is thus traced by a contemporary:
"Inimitable delicacy, gentleness, a fine and light dis-
tinction in bearing, a supple agihty, a coquetry always
active and ardent, the art of fascination, a sensuous in-
telligence which is reflected by her whole body, and,
finally, a delicious mincing air, are the outlines of her
portrait. Her person is in accord with her talent. Her
body is slender; her face noble and piquant, and its ex-
pression distinguished, spirituelle and provoking; her
glances are soft and caressing, and speak without ef-
frontery. She even transforms some defects into at-
tractions. Her feeble and wearied appearance appears
to testify that secret ardors burn within her. She
dances to charm, to trample the spectator under foot.
Taglioni revealed to us the dance of heaven; Elssler
desires the love of man. If the one is the sister of the
angels, the other is the most adorable of the daughters
of earth."
The usual memorial of her is about as follows: ā
Her beauty was frail and delicate. She possessed great
talent, but the expression of the pantomime, substituted
for the charm of the dance, was what people admired in
her. She had grace and executed tours de force on the
pointes. She was reproached for a lack of lightness,
yet her mobile face and the vivacity of her gestures lent
102 French Essays and Profiles
themselves marvelously to the play of the passions, and
she left traditions in all her roles. The cachucha* was
her triumph, and she made all Europe know its signifi-
cation. With her castanets and her mimicry full of
meaning and admirably served by entrancing music, she
caused the public to forget Taglioni for a moment,
though she did not equal the latter in the art of the
dance. Elssler never approached the stage without
terror, but her fear gave way to a furious gayety as
soon as the orchestra struck up. ā
It was remarked that she had no grand elans, still
she exhibited a highly-wrought finish, and executed a
trill of battements like Paganini's bow. Gautier says,
in speaking of her as the cachucha incarnate compared
with Taglioni as the incarnation of a sylph: "She is
masculinity effeminated, like Antlnoiis. Her move-
ments are made up of this dual nature: with all her
amorous languor and feminine gentleness, one feels
the brusque strength and the steel-limbed agility of a
young athlete. She is the first to introduce at the
Opera ā the sanctuary of the classic pirouette ā a
fougue, a petulance and a passionate temperament.
"They call her, by way of compliment, a Spaniard of
the North. This double trait is a subject for criticism,
not praise. She is German by reason of her smile,
whiteness of her skin, form of face, placidness of brow;
she is Spanish by reason of her hair, her little feet, her
small, slender hands, the somewhat bold curving at
the hips. Two natures, two temperaments, combat
* The cachucha is a Spanish dance which combines the qualities of
the rapid fandango with those of the more majestic bolero: that is
to say, it is sometimes calm, sometimes gay, sometimes passionate.
The Great Era of the French Ballet 103
each other in her, and her beauty would gain if it could
decide for one or the other of these two types. She
is pretty, yet she lacks a race; she hesitates between
Spain and Germany. And this indecision announces it-
self in the matter of sex: her hips are but slightly de-
veloped and her chest does not exceed the curves of
the antique Hermaphrodite. While she is a very charm-
ing woman, she would be the most charming boy in the
world."
Referring to her in 1838, Gautier wrote: *'Fanny
has a fire, an entrain, and a suppleness beyond imagina-
tion. She accords to her poses a proud, spirited ac-
cent ā something so bravely voluptuous that it would
make the most enraged dancers of Seville burn with
envy. Her cachucha is becoming thoroughly Spanish.
She daily gives way more and more to this divine dance
strewn with languors and petulances. It seems rather
singular that a Spanish dance has been brought to us
by a German; but genius, is it not of all countries?"
It is apparent that Fanny Elssler lacked the mytho-
logical, aerial grace of Taglioni. She was a woman
first, a danseuse afterward. She associated the dance
with her Germanic passion for music, and consumed all
in the glowing sensuousness of a strongly feminine
nature. Hence she was good in pantomime. Her
mimicry was "full of finesse in that she imitated turn by
turn, and with remarkable truth, comedian, coquette,
quarreling page, and libertine."
This preeminence of beauty, sensuous coquetry, ver-
tiginous vivacity, and disposition to indulge in tours de
force, made her, in the ballet era since 1829, the first
104 French Essays and Profiles
and most celebrated danseuse de demi-caractere, and
the companion in fame of Taglioni, the impersonal per-
fection of the danse noble. Fanny Elssler moved not
along the classic lines of a generalized ideality that
seems of no race nor epoch; but she characterized her
dance by her warm-limbed individuality, and by her
sentiments of locality and nationality, as immortalized
in her cachucha. By these terre-a-terre and more real-
istic features of the dance, she made up so very largely
for her comparative lack of the grander Taglioni
motives ā grande vigueur, grand ballon.
Carlotta Grisi quickly danced into Parisian favor in
1840. She was taught by the famous Perrot who be-
came her husband. She created "Giselle," one of the
renowned -ballets of the century. Its libretto was partly
from the pen of Gautier, who seemed always to look
back upon "Giselle" with a satisfacti-on only surpassed
by that with which he recalled the battle of Hernani.
"Giselle" was the greatest triumph of the Grisi, al-
though in "la Peri" she accomplished a perilous leap
which, it is said, has never been undertaken in the same
way by any one. She danced for pleasure ā coming,
going, bounding hither and thither, and charming all
hearts with her bright, laughing face as well as by the
perfection of her method.
Gautier, who soon came under her spell and aban-
doned somewhat his ardor for the art of Elssler,
writes of Carlotta: "Her dance is light and correct.
She is aerial, and modest like Elssler, and has a happy
and communicative gayety. She was a singer and loved
music, and her career hesitated sometime between Eu-
The Great Era of the French Ballet 105
terpe and Terpsichore. Carlotta has rhythmic har-
mony of movement, finish of detail, and elegance and
neatness of pose. In pantomime, she omits no traits
of gentleness, naivete, sentiment and expression, and
her play has grace and vigor. She dances as if sport-
ing, and all scenes are easy for her."
Carlotta Grisi married the art of Elssler to that of
Taglioni, Indeed, she "held an intermediate place be-
tween them." She added lightness to the one and joy-
ousness to the other without equaling either. She gave
a delicate, classic form to the dance of Elssler and,
possessed of a birdlike and sunny Italian temperament,
she capered from Taglioni's realm into the domain of
demi-caractere. La Grisi was Elssler and Taglioni
blended in miniature. She suggested perhaps one of
Gautier's own "Emaux et Camees" enlivened into joy-
ousness. What Elssler had done for Germany and
Spain, vis-a-vis the mythological (the Greek) concep-
tion of Taglioni, Grisi did for Italy. Her memory, so
lauded by Gautier, remains one of the most delightful
souvenirs that haunt the Paris Opera.
During the epoch of Grisi, there was seen in Paris
a danseuse of whom very little information can be
gathered from literature. It was Priora. She is said
to have been a large, elegant, distinguished looking
person, and was of so cold a nature that she never
laughed or smiled on or off the stage. Those who
saw her say that she perfected the danse noble: that
she had more correctness and reach, more stately
grandeur, more of a lofty flight, than Taglioni.
After Grisi, one comes to a new variety of dance
io6 French Essavs and Profiles
which was impersonated by the dainty and piquant
Cerrito. She was of Italian origin. She came to the
Opera in Paris in 1847, ^"^ was reengaged five years
later. In London about 1845, she had danced a pas
de quatre with Taglioni, Elssler and Grisi. The world
will doubtless never witness again such a group of
danseuses as was this, for therein the four most hon-
ored fairies of the modern dance interlaced their steps.
Fanny Cerrito took up the wreath of glory which
Grisi had left behind in the French capital. It appears
that she was as light as a caprice, that her dance was
wholly one of fantasy, that she captivated by her en-
train, and that the Italians called her "the fourth
Grace" because of the charm of her person. The
flowery though commonplace bust of her in the private
foyer of the Paris Opera shows a sweet face delicate-
ly textured and neatly compact, a mincing yet mobile
mouth, and shoulders that sloped in wonderful curves
downward. Saint-Leon writes only this of his wife:
"Cerrito is a reproduction of Taglioni but more
naive. She is a dancer of inspiration and nature, with
less school than either Taglioni or Elssler."
Cerrito created the danse de fantaisie. It came and
went with her. No one has ever put a competent foot
in any part of her repertoire Her cajolery seems to
have been indefinably fanciful and light-trimmed ā
something that the eye and pen could scarcely seize. It
was not her dancing that won, for she was not really
a remarkable danseuse. She triumphed with her co-
quetry, and with her witching manner. It was the
art of the ingenue spiced up by an experienced woman.
The Great Era of the French Ballet 107
Much of the credit of her creations was due to her
husband.
Another Italian, Rosati, furnished a type quite dif-
ferent from any yet described. She came to Paris in
1853. Her tradition runs after this fashion: ā A
woman with a feverish head and a look lugubrious and
Satanic. She excelled in the genre vigorous, noble and
pathetic; scarcely less striking in laughing and informal
roles; unequaled when she expressed passion. The
most delicate nuances were rendered by her mimicry
with precision and distinctness. Nothing vague in
her sentiments; yet she endeavored to ignore details,
thinking that a few well selected traits sufficed to pro-
duce the most surprising effects. Her gestures were
simple, and her attitudes full of grace and harmony.
She left, notably in "la Sonnambula," ineffaceable sou-
venirs. Ingenious and intelligent in the conception of
impersonations, now fiery and then affecting, now en-
gulfed in despair, and then ravished as if by the ecstasy
of delightful reveries, she realized in pantomime what
Ristori accomplished in the drama. ā Those who
danced with her say that Rosati was a pretty, well-pro-
portioned brunette of about the size of Mile. Subra,
and that she was the greatest of all pantomime bal-
lerines, and also an exceptionally good comrade.
Here at length entered the drama into the dance.
Rosati was a tragic actress who expressed the grander
moods of human nature with everything but the voice.
In her there seethed the black passions of Italy as if
she had come from some brimstone Vesuvius. She
exalted the danse de demi-caractere into epic mimicry;
io8 French Essays and Profiles
she had the gift of heroic contours. She was the last
as well as the first in France, in the nineteenth century
at least, to outline the loftiest reach and effectiveness
of the pantomime,
Ferraris made her debut in Paris in 1856. Her tri-
umph in the "Elfes" and in "Orfa" was noteworthy.
She surpassed herself in "Graziosa" (1861), and was
called "the rival of Elssler." It is recorded that she
had brilliant and varied action, that she was light and
graceful with an expressive pantomime, that her play
was bold and that she conceived the dance (de demi-
caractere) in its purest, most elevated, most erudite
Italian type.
In poor Emma Livry, a French girl, the Parisians
were promised a revival of the danse noble of Taglioni.
She had but commenced her career when she became
the victim of a horrible accident. Her costume caught
fire at a rehearsal and, after eight months of a martyr-
dom of torture, she died. All Paris suffered with her
pain, and did full honor to her memory at the inter-
ment.
Her bust in the Opera exhibits a large-framed, home-
ly face, yet one that is intelligent, sympathetic and
kind ā in marked contrast to that of the dainty and
simpering Cerrito, its companion in the private foyer.
Emma Livry first appeared in 1858 in "la Sylphide,"
Taglioni's magical creation, and the public hailed her
classic art with a national pride. Taglioni herself came
from her villa on Lake Como to welcome her latest
rival in fame. She one day gave her portrait to the
young danseuse, with this happy conceit: "Make me
The Great Era of the Frencll Ballet 109
forgotten; do not forget me." Emma Livry intro-
duced only two roles. One of them was "le Papillon"
ā a ballet composed in part by Taglioni who, at that
epoch, tarried in Paris some time. Emma Livry was
truly a danseuse noble. She confined the dance to its
classic simplicity and nymphean elegance.
Gautier, the admirer of all ballerines, thus speaks of
her: "In catching a glimpse of her across the trans-
parences of her draperies, whose borders her feet
scarcely lifted, one would have said she was a happy
shadow, an elysian apparition, sporting in a bluish ray.
She had an imponderable lightness, and her silent flight
traversed space without our hearing even a thrill in the
air. She imitated the butterfly in 'le Papillon' ā a
butterfly that poses on flowers and does not bend them.
And alas! like one, she burned her wings in the flames;
and two white butterflies, as if they wished to escort
the funeral cortege of a sister, winged their snowy way
above her white coffin during its whole journey to the
cemetery.
"This incident, in which the Greeks would have seen
a poetic symbol, was remarked by thousands of per-
sons in the great multitude that followed the burial
chariot. On her tomb what epitaph shall be traced if
not the one that was conceived by an ancient poet for
some Emma Livry of antiquity? ā 'O earth, weigh
lightly upon me; I have weighed so lightly upon thee.'
The public wished to honor the modest virtue of this
pure life, in whose presence scandal has ever been
silent. If anything can console the sorrow of the
mother, it is the fact that there were in the proces-
no Frciicli Essays and Profiles
slon, among the celebrities of the Opera, two sisters of
charity who had cared for her daughter in the Chris-
tian agony of the poor girl."
Boschetti, a danseuse from Milan, came to Paris
about 1 863 and met with much enthusiasm. Pretty and
small, she was only seen, as a rule, in "little ballets."
It is claimed that she had, to French eyes, a rival in
the correct, graceful and modest Mourawieff. Bos-
chetti, it is said, reveled in prodigious bounds and delir-
ious pirouettes. She displayed a passionate fougue
and a voluptuous suppleness.
The usual French comment on her was about as fol-
lows: ā This Italian has been criticized because she de-
ployed an exaggerated mimicry; but it has been over-
looked that the Italian choregraphs have always ele-
vated the pantomime to a degree of expression reached
in no other country. Boschetti has transported to our
stage the historic, traditional pantomime of which our
dilettants know little. Her style consists more of the
Neapolitan tarantella than of the Spanish bolero. It is
not without grace, nobility and majesty, in spite of
its impetuosities. She recalls an ardent sky and a
burning earth's surface. In 1864 her triumph was
complete in Brussels where she executed the dances
of many races. ā
The dance of Boschetti, like that of Rosati, was an
Italian transposition of the danse de demi-caractere
into the realm of pantomime. But she did not tread
along such grandiose lines of the art as Rosati: she
seems to have given the furor of the tarantella to the
ballet, and the frolic of Pulcinella to the pantomime.
The Great Era of the French Ballet iii
Rita Sangalli was a Milanese, and created In New-
York the principal role in "Black Crook." She danced
throughout the United States from east to west, and
experienced various characteristic phases of frontier
life in America. In the Far West she often went armed
in order to defend herself from the Indians; and many
times she took gold dust and game in pay for her per-
formances in mining towns where coins and bills were a
scarce medium of exchange.
She was first billed at the Opera in Paris in 1872.
The occasion was the revival of "la Source" of Delibes,
wherein she met with a gratifying success as the fairy
in the enchanted grotto. She shared In the ceremonies
in connection with the opening of the New Opera in
1875. It appears, however, that Sangalli was not an
accomplished ballerine. Those who can speak from
personal knowledge say that she was comparatively
ignorant of the art; that when she was engaged at the
Opera, she had to have lessons for eight months be-
fore she was considered ready to grace its boards;
that her superb physique and her marvelous tours des
reins, not her dancing, brought her fame.
In Leontlne Beaugrand, a Parislenne, the Opera had
a child of its own. She began to assume important
roles In 1864. Gautier spoke of her dance as "grace-
ful, correct and light-winged." She was called "an
ornamentist who, in a flight, makes a design of her
taquetes and her pointes. It is exquisite, slender, deli-
cate, like a fabric of lace." Banville wrote of her:
"She is simple, true and elegant by nature; she is cor-
rectly spirited; she is born of the rules of the dance and
112 French Essays and Profiles
of its purest traditions." Beaugrand's greatest success
is said to have been in "Coppelia" in 1871, in which she
took up the score left by Bozzacchi. This role was
conceived originally for Beaugrand.
Notwithstanding all this praise, it appears that
Beaugrand had "no chance" ā was not favored of for-
tune. Nearly always she saw the best roles distributed
to strangers, for the reason that the Opera public gen-
erally prefers the exotic sensation of a foreign baya-
dere. A native ballerine, however excellent her art,
does not magnetize so much money into the coffers of
the Opera as a danseuse who comes from afar.
Beaugrand had the French traditions of delicacy,
lightness and refinements coupled with pointes of steel.
Her lofty bearing made her known, despite her dimin-
utiveness, as "the marshal of the dance." Her sudden
retirement from the Opera raised a storm of protests,
though without avail. The "Beaugrand question" was
the theme of the day, and called out tributes for her
even from such distinguished pens as that of Sully
Prudhomme who arabesqued her neat fame in one of
his most fragile sonnets. Although a danseuse noble
in type, she was so small that she presented, as It were,
the danse noble of a little girl. She fully understood
herself, and dignified her profession, even if in a minia-
ture way.
Mile. Fonta was an intelligent and finished danseuse
noble ā the most truly noble of any ballerine at the
Opera toward 1890, for she had what Beaugrand
lacked, namely, size. She retired from the stage, but
was to be seen for several years in the drawing rooms
The Great Era of the French Ballet 113
of the French metropolis. Of Marie Vernon, Fioretti,
Granzow, Mourawieff, Merante, Salvioni, Fatou, little
has been written, and they did not contribute in a note-
worthy way to the development of the dance. Boz-
zacchi, who created the principal role in "Coppelia,"
died prematurely in Paris during the siege. She prom-
ised a decided talent.
Coming to the two stars who were preserving at the
close of the century the best memorials of the dance
at the Paris Opera, one found the danse noble illus-
trated by Mile. Subra and the danse de demi-caractere
by Mile. Mauri. Born in Paris and educated entirely
there, Subra had what is called "school." She made
her debut in 1881 in the ballet of Thomas's "Hamlet,"
and in 1882 took Bozzacchi's role in "Coppelia." She
was considered an unusually beautiful ballet woman,
and was corseted in a neat and refined distinction of
grace. Her beauty and elegance of manner outrivaled
her dancing.
Her person, however, showed what a well-meaning
yet awkward artisan Nature sometimes is. She had,
with good height and a pretty face, a large, squarish,
handsome body with an ample bust. As a result her
body, expressing neither litheness nor emotion, was
plethorically refractory to all dances. And her limbs
did not belong to it. They were trim, sculptural and
full of poseful cadences. Her legs, in their daintiness
and natty chasteness, recalled those of Diana of Gabies.
While her body gave her a fine presence and elevation
for the danse noble, her thin limbs destroyed in her
the possibility of realizing its perfection.
114 French Essays and Profiles
Her grace, then, was that of the limbs and not of