I
Maria Taglioni was born at Stockholm in 1804 of an Italian father and Swedish mother and made her début in Vienna in 1822, in the ballet Reception d’une jeune Nymphe à la Court de Terpsichore, written by her father, M. Taglioni, who was a ballet master in the Swedish Royal Opera. Inspired by the ideas of Noverre, M. Taglioni laid a solid foundation for his daughter’s training in dancing. Though she was successful in her début in Vienna, the father did not think that she was sufficiently ripe for public appearances in a larger style, so he continued to instruct the girl himself and secured for her education other celebrities of the time. Even when she appeared five years later in Le Sicilien, in Paris, she did not arouse any enthusiasm. It was only in Les Bayaderes and, above all, in La Sylphide, that her art attained the utmost limits of spirituality and she was hailed as one of the most ethereal appearances that the European stage had ever seen.
Taglioni appeared in Paris in La Vestale, Mars et Venus, Le Carnaval de Venise, and many other ballets, which marked the beginning of her career. A French critic of that time writes: ‘Her talent, so instinct with simple grace and modesty, her lightness, the suppleness of her attitudes, at once voluptuous and refined, made a sensation at once. She revealed a new form of dancing, a virginal and diaphanous art, instinct with an originality all her own, in which the old traditions and time-honored rules of choreography were merged. After an appearance of a few days only on our boards, this charming mirage vanished to shine in great triumph at Munich and Stuttgart. But she came back, and an enthusiastic reception awaited her. And in the midst of these brilliant successes, taking the hearts of the people by storm, admitted to the intimate friendship of the Queen of Wurtemberg, she remained sweet, simple and reserved.’
Besides her choreographic training, Taglioni was a highly educated girl in every other respect, and was of the most charming personality and manners. The people, and even her many rivals, loved and adored her as a great artist and great woman. Though not pretty in any sense, as so many other dancers were, she was fascinating through her distinct spiritual appeal. This same note of spirituality manifested itself in her dance. Her admirers used to say that she looked in La Sylphide like some supernatural being always ready to take wing and soar up in the air. Her steps were pure and innocent, as were all her gestures and mimic expressions. Even in her romantic dances she failed to suggest any symptoms of voluptuous or sensual emotions. Throughout her life she remained as poetic as she was in her art.
In London she appeared first in 1830 in Didelot’s ballet Flore et Zéphire and made an instantaneous success. On nights when she was announced to appear the London theatre was literally besieged. Thackeray immortalized her in his ‘The Newcomes,’ saying, ‘you can never see anything so graceful as Taglioni.’ She received in London £100 a night, and insisted on handsome sums for her family, as well as £600 for her father as ballet master, £900 to her brother and sister-in-law, together with two benefit performances. She was so much the fashion of the hour that women wore Taglioni hats, gowns, and coats, and even a stage coach was called after her.
With all her charm and refinement, Taglioni was in many respects an undeveloped girl emotionally, capricious and sentimental to her finger-tips. It is said that one evening when Perrot, her partner, happened to receive a greater amount of applause than she, she refused to continue the performance, and accused her surrounding stage people of having intrigued against her for malicious reason. She received immense sums of money, but she spent everything just as lavishly as it was received, not so much on herself as for her relatives, friends and the poor. She married Comte Gilbert des Voisins in 1832, but their married life was of short duration. There is a story that she met him some years later at a dinner at the Comte de Morny’s, when he had the effrontery to ask to be introduced to Maria Taglioni. She replied that she thought she had made the gentleman’s acquaintance in 1832, the year of her marriage. In 1837 she went to Russia and remained there for five years as prima ballerina of the Imperial Ballet.
Taglioni’s freedom and style had a great influence upon the development of the ballet at that juncture. Her dress, a long tunic of white silk muslin which reached almost to her ankles and fell in graceful folds from her figure, was the first of this kind. Through this she was able to reveal the plastic lines of her body, and thus made her movements free from the artificial stiffness that had prevailed before her. She was a reformer in many ways, and in this her father, as a practical ballet-master, was of material help. It was not until Fanny Elssler appeared in 1847 that Taglioni began to lose her hold upon the public. Little by little her art grew old-fashioned to the novelty-loving audiences, as the dancing of Elssler brought a new note of more romantic nature to the stage. Actually this change was nothing but a turn of public sentiment indicative of some new social fad. Trying to maintain her living by giving dancing lessons in various European capitals, she died in Marseilles in 1884, in great poverty, forsaken by all her previous adorers and frenzied audiences.