The scene represented a garden such as you see in so many of his paintings, and those of his school, primarily reminiscent of Pater’s “Conversation Galante” and Watteau’s “Fête Galante,” “L’amour au Théâtre Français,” and the “Terrace Party.” One of the young Court ladies reminded one of the central figure in the “Bal sous une Colonnade.” A minuet was in progress. All was stately and dream-like, made the more so by the music.
For all the gaiety of the huntsmen’s entrance it was gaiety demure, as if restrained by an inherent sense of fitness with stately surroundings; and so with the troupe of dancers, introduced for the diversion of the Marquise Belle Etoile, and the Court ladies and courtiers grouped about her. The mood of all, demurely gay, or gaily demure, was suffused with a stately languor, a dream-like grace that found an echo in the subtle colour-harmonies of the old-world garden in which the people moved.
And when the opera-dancer, L’Hirondelle, and Passepied the master of the revels, began their pas de deux, the climax of exquisite illusion was reached, and Camargo was before us—the Camargo of Lancret’s famous picture, with the soft, full white skirts, trimmed with garlands of small pink roses and falling almost to the ankle; Camargo with the red-heeled, red-rosetted shoes; with blue shoulder-knot and powdered hair adorned with pale blue ribbons.
As the fête drew to a close the picture mellowed in the amber light of a waning day; and, amid fallen leaf and chestnut bloom, slowly marquise and prince, Court lady and courtier, dancer and page, began in stately fashion to dance, their shadows lengthening in the failing light, the music growing slower and dreamier as, little by little, the picture was re-formed into the likeness of the opening scene, and the falling curtain brought one back into the world of living things to-day.
Another brilliant reconstruction of the Past was achieved by Mr. Wilhelm in his creation of “The Débutante” (November 15th, 1906), which revivified the men and maids and modes, the dance of life, and the life of the dance, of that strangely interesting period of the ’thirties and ’forties, the days of Pauline Duverney, Leroux, Fanny Elssler, and Taglioni’s earlier years. The scene represented the Salon de Danse attached to an opera-house, the story dealing with the refusal of a star to take up her part in a ballet which is on the eve of production, her place being taken at the eleventh hour by a débutante (Mlle. Génée) with almost miraculous abilities. For this production, and in order that the style of the earlier dances should be represented on the stage with regard for accuracy and tradition, Mme. Katti Lanner, who had left the Empire in 1905, was induced to withdraw from her retirement temporarily at the request of the Directors, and out of personal friendship towards Mr. Wilhelm, with whose artistic aims she had so constantly shown her sympathy. Her reappearance to take another “call” proved another personal triumph. The ballet was indeed a charming work, fascinating to students of the dance and mime; and it proved so successful that a new one was not required until “Sir Roger de Coverley,” by Adrian Ross and Dr. Osmond Carr, staged by Mr. Wilhelm, came into the bill on May 7th in the following year. As its title betokens, it dealt with the period of Queen Anne and showed a charming representation of the life of old Vauxhall. This, too, ran for some months and was succeeded on September 30th by “The Belle of the Ball,” which delighted many old frequenters of the Empire with its recollection of scenes from many of the earlier operatic favourites of the ’sixties and ’seventies, such as “Madame Angot,” “The Grand Duchess,” and other light operas, coming up to more recent productions, such as “The Belle of New York,” “The Geisha,” and others.
Mlle. Adeline Génée
The production marked the début of that brilliant young English dancer, Miss Phyllis Bedells, and also the end of Mlle. Génée’s unbroken ten years’ reign at the Empire Theatre, the tenth anniversary of her first appearance being celebrated on November 22nd, when the house was packed from floor to ceiling with a crowd whose growing enthusiasm culminated in a perfect tornado of applause on the falling of the curtain and something like a score of “calls”; the dancer having achieved by her personality and technique such a triumph as had not been known in London since the great days of Taglioni and the famous Pas de Quatre of the ’forties. She left to carry her influence to America, but there were of course return visits which concern us not at present in dealing only with what may be styled her ten years’ reign.
But in watching that decade closely with all its procession of successes, one thing there is that strikes one very forcibly. It was only the natural corollary of the previous decade before the advent of Mlle. Génée. For some twenty years the artistic influence of one mind had been, never obtrusive, but invariably evident; never obtrusive, that is, to the detriment of that balance of the arts which makes a perfect ballet; I mean the artistic influence of Mr. C. Wilhelm. Before the coming of Mlle. Génée they had had some good dancers and some great artistic successes; but there had hardly been, perhaps, quite that unity and perfection of ensemble which the coming of a dancer of superb technique made possible, and which, it may be, enabled a designer of ballet, already of great experience and inspired always by high artistic motives—not only to aim at, but to count on, achieving just the effect at which he aimed. Theatrical art must always be a somewhat composite art, but its best achievements come from a perfect blending of artistic sympathies, forming a source of mutual inspiration. So, while the personality and technical accomplishment of Mlle. Génée must have proved a stimulus to the poetic imagination of an artist like Mr. Wilhelm, so, too, the famous Danish danseuse could well afford to admit a debt of inspiration to the refined, sensitive and poetic art of Mr. Wilhelm, who has provided so invariably a worthy and gracious medium for her supreme art as dancer-mime.