Pécourt, who was “premier danseur et maître des ballets de l’Opéra,” made his début only in 1672. His style was what is known as “demi-caractère,” and he is said to have had notable effect on the ladies of his day, his amazing lightness fairly turning their heads.
Blondi, a nephew of Beauchamps; Ballon, who became maître à danser to Louis XV; Baudiery-Laval, a nephew of Ballon, who succeeded his uncle as dancing-master to the Royal Family and maître des ballets at Court; Michel-Jean Baudiery-Laval, son of the last-named, who was not only a maître à danser, but is said to have been the first stage manager to have used lycopodium powder, which used to be the chief means of producing stage lightning; these were some of the lesser stars of the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries in France, and they were to be followed by Louis-Pierre Dupré, who came to be known as Le Grand Dupré, and who surpassed all his forerunners by the grace and the dignity of his dancing, and the noblesse of his poses. He made his début in 1720, was long the premier danseur at the Opera, and did not retire till 1754.
To hark back, however, to 1672, when there were only men to play the women’s parts. The reason for the dearth of feminine stars was quite simple. The Academy was in its infancy. There were no properly qualified professional danseuses, and the courtly amateurs were too courtly—and too much amateurs—to appear to advantage on the stage. The Academy came to alter all that.
It revived a genuine interest in dancing as an art worthy of serious consideration; and Lulli, that inspired monkey of a dancing-musician, did the rest; for it was his opera-ballet, “Le Triomphe de L’Amour,” produced on May 16th, 1681, which brought the presence of women dancers to the boards.
Various high ladies of the Court, the Dauphine, la Princesse de Conti, Mlle. de Nantes, and others, formed a useful background, but the entire feminine personnel of the dancing school numbered only four—Mlle. Lafontaine, Mlle. Le Peintre, Mlle. Fernon, and Mlle. Roland, the first-named being the leader, the première des premières danseuses, and accorded the title so often granted to successive premières since then, of Reine de la Danse.
That admirable historian of French opera, Castil-Blaze, has given excellent account of the state of affairs towards the end of the seventeenth century.
“The lack of good dancers,” he says, “was doubtless an obstacle in the way of the introduction of grand ballet at the Royal Academy. ‘Les Fêtes de L’Amour et de Bacchus,’ ‘Le Triomphe de L’Amour,’ and all productions of the same kind commonly called at that time Ballets, were really nothing less than Operas treated in such a way as to give a little more freedom for the introduction of dances, the singing being nevertheless still the main object. Pécourt, who made his début in ‘Cadmus,’ shared the honours of the dance with Beauchamps, with Dolivet, a capital mime, and another good dancer named L’Etang. The company of singers also included some notable personalities, and though the functions of singer and dancer were usually kept pretty well apart, one actress, Mlle. Desmatins, managed, in the opera of ‘Perseus,’ to score a double success as singer and dancer, a very unusual combination, as it is seldom indeed that a dancer is good for much as a vocalist. Vigarani, an Italian theatrical machiniste, of great talent, had charge of the theatres of the Court; and another Italian, Rivani, and Francis Berein, fulfilled a similar function with regard to the Opera.”
Italian ballets, executed by Italian dancers, were among the favourite diversions of the French Court towards the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, which accounts for the frequency with which they appear in the paintings of Watteau, Lancret, and other artists of the period. That of “L’Impatience” had been partly translated into the French in order that Louis XIV might take part in it, and was, like all the comedy-ballets of the time, a series of detached scenes quite independent of each other, merely depicting the various amusing examples of impatience which one usually finds—in other people!
The taste, however, for the Italian ballet, by no means interfered with the development of the native type, which received not only the support of the nobility, but increasing support on the professional and technical side, for authors, musicians, and dancers were beginning to realise that ballet was a form of art which had long been too neglected, and that it was worthy of attention.