Marie Sallé
(From an engraving by Petit after a picture by Fenouil).
This form of entertainment became so popular as to rival seriously the power of London’s two chief theatres, Drury Lane and Haymarket, mainly through Rich’s enterprise in securing all the best opera-singers, dancers, acrobats and other performers from the Continent. In fact, he may fairly be described as London’s earliest music-hall manager, for the entertainment provided at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields theatre was much like that of a modern variety house. It was thus he came to engage Mlle. Sallé and her brother, who made their first appearance here as dancers in an English comedy, “Love’s Last Shift,” in October, 1725.
Next year also they appeared in London, and in April, 1727, Mlle. Sallé was given a complimentary benefit, in which she and her brother introduced some of their youthful pupils. In that same year she made her début at the Paris Opera, where she remained till, for some obscure reason, she broke therefrom, and in October returned to London, once more under John Rich’s management.
The reason for the break may have been that professional jealousy did not give her the place which her talents should have justified; or may have been over the question of costume-reform, which was a matter of burning interest to some of the younger spirits in those days. Or it may have been merely as the result of managerial changes at the Opera in 1728. But whatsoever the reason, what Paris lost London gained, and her greatest triumph here came at the end of 1733, when she made her first appearance at Covent Garden, following it up with still greater success in the spring of the following year, when she achieved a striking success in a classic ballet, “Pygmalion,” in more or less correct costume, instead of in the absurdly befrilled garb, with laced cuirasse, powdered hair and plumed helmets, which were considered de rigueur on the stage at that absurdly artificial period.
Marie Sallé was not only a dancer of exquisite lightness and grace, she was a woman of taste and sense, and, forestalling Noverre’s fight on the same ground, had tried to bring about costume-reform at the Académie Royale in Paris, only to find that those in authority were strong in—authority, and convention! She rejoiced, therefore, in a return to London, that gave her more scope for the expression of her artistic ideas, and two ballets of her own composition, “Pygmalion” (February, 1734) and “Bacchus et Ariane” (March, 1734), were mounted with more regard for classic feeling. Her appearance in both caused a furore. Royalty came to Covent Garden on the nights she danced. The whole town flocked to see her, and numerous duels were fought by ardent young gentlemen who trod on each other’s toes when jammed in the crowds that endeavoured to enter the theatre.
Mlle. Sallé must have been a woman of character. In a loose era she was cordially detested by her stage colleagues in Paris for her virtue! It was such a reflection on them that one should not be as they!
Another aspect of her is revealed in a significant little anecdote. The great Handel, having admired her in Paris, had offered her three thousand francs to appear at Covent Garden, and specially composed for her a ballet, “Terpsichore.” Hearing of this, Porpora, Handel’s great rival and manager of the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, promptly offered her three thousand guineas, and had the tact to suggest that she might accept it as she had not yet signed a contract with Handel. To which proposal Sallé replied with quiet scorn: “And does my word then count for nothing?”
London was delighted with the novelty of Mlle. Sallé’s ideas in the production of Ballet, and with the personal grace of the young dancer herself. One of the older historians of the dance has described her in the following glowing terms: “Une figure noble, une belle taille, une grâce parfaite, une danse expressive et voluptueuse, tels étaient les avantages de Mademoiselle Sallé, la Taglioni de 1730.”
As an influence in the revolution of the Dance and Ballet she might perhaps not incorrectly be described as the Isadora Duncan of her period. True, she did not dance barefoot, but she came to loosen the bonds of tradition, and to free the spirit of the Dance from the stiffening conventionalities which had grown up around Ballet as seen at the Paris Opera. In London she had greater freedom, and—greater success; indeed, so triumphant was her final season that when she did return to Paris she was welcomed by Voltaire with the following verses:
“Les Amours, pleurant votre absence,