The story of “Sylphide” is of the love of a sylph for a handsome young Highland peasant, who is haunted by visions of her in his dreams and memories of the vision on awaking, so much so that the heart of his own betrothed is broken and his brain is turned by the manifestation of his aerial love, who herself becomes the victim of an unhappier fate by a terrible spell cast on her by infernal powers and woven during a witches’ sabbath, which forms one of the more impressive scenes of the ballet. The plot was adapted from Charles Nodier’s story, Trilby, by Adolphe Nourrit, and the music by Schneitzhöffer was pronounced “excellent” by Castil-Blaze, who remarked that it was an “Œuvre infiniment remarquable dans un genre qui peut devenir important lorsqu’un homme de talent et d’esprit veut bien l’adopter.” He also reports of the first production of “Sylphide” in Paris, that it had a succès merveilleux.
Elsewhere Taglioni’s success was no less remarkable. Indeed, wheresoever she went she achieved a triumph. At Petrograd such tempting offers were made by the Emperor and Empress that she prolonged her stay for three years, and left laden with gifts from their Imperial Majesties. At Vienna, on one occasion, having been called before the curtain twenty-two times, when she finally got away from the Opera House her carriage was drawn to her hotel by forty young men of the leading Austrian families. In London she was worshipped by the public, and was one of the special admirations of the youthful Queen Victoria, some of whose dolls (as in the case of Brocard, Pauline Leroux, and other dancers) were dressed to represent the characters Taglioni played, and may be seen to-day in the London Museum.
Marie Taglioni
(From a lithograph dated 1833).
The Pas de Quatre of 1845
(Lucille Grahn, Fanny Cerito, Carlotta Grisi, and in the centre Marie Taglioni).
Taglioni was married to Gilbert, Comte de Voisins, in 1835, but the marriage was not a happy one and was dissolved in 1844. She retired for a little time, but returned to the stage again and appeared in London, with triumphant success, in 1845.
The climax of a great season came in July of that year, when, at the request of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, the Pas de Quatre, to which reference has already been made, was arranged for the four great dancers, Taglioni, Cerito, Carlotta Grisi and Lucile Grahn. One critic remarked that the appearance of four such stars on the same boards and in the same pas was “truly what our Gallic neighbours call une solennité théâtrale, and such a one as none of those who beheld it are likely to witness again.”