CHAPTER XXIV
THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY
Though it had not died during the Revolutionary period, either in Paris or London, the art of Ballet, from the death of Louis XV was really of little artistic interest, and was to remain so until the famous ’Forties of last century.
The dancers were mostly mechanical; the ballets uninspired; the mounting meretricious; and it was not till the ’forties of last century that a new and all-surpassing danseuse, Marie Taglioni, came to infuse a new spirit into the art and found a tradition that holds to-day.
In London Ballet was in almost the same state as in Paris, but not quite, possibly because having been always imported at its best, it had had less opportunity of becoming hide-bound by tradition at its worst, as in the case of an old-established continental school. For the continued production of soundly artistic ballet the existence of a good school is a necessity, a school founded and sustained on right principles. But in its continued existence there is inevitably danger of ultimate stultification from the “setting” of the very tradition it has created, unless there is a perpetual infusion of new ideas.
In Paris the new idea was not then encouraged, if it came counter to the traditional technique of which the Vestris, father and son, were the supreme exponents.
In London there was more freedom, because there was less of tradition; and while we had to wait until the mid-’forties for the productions which were to the Londoners of the early Victorian period what the Russian ballet has been to Londoners in recent years, there was some fairly sound work being done here from 1795 to 1840.
I have, among my books, a volume of libretti of ballets composed by Didelot and produced at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, from 1796 to 1800. It contains “Sappho and Phaon,” grand ballet érotique, en quatre actes; “L’Amour Vengé,” ballet épisodique, en deux actes, dans le genre anacréontique; “Flore et Zephire,” ballet-divertissement, in one act; “The Happy Shipwreck, or The Scotch Witches,” a dramatic ballet in three acts; “Acis and Galatea,” a pastoral ballet in one act; and “Laura et Lenza, or The Troubadour,” a grand ballet in two acts, “performed for the first time for the benefit of Madame Hilligsberg,” who played Laura.
“Laura and Lenza,” is of particular interest to us to-day, for among the performers, in addition to M. Didelot, who played the troubadour hero, Lenza, was a M. Deshayes—a capable dancer and producer of ballet in London and Paris—and a Mr. d’Egville, bearer of a name which is well-known in both cities at the present day.