From Vienna he went to the Court of Milan, where he was created Chevalier of the Order of the Cross; then to the Courts of Naples and Lisbon; then to London, and finally again to Paris, in 1775, on the invitation of his old pupil, Marie Antoinette, who made him Maître des Ballets en Chef at the Imperial Academy of Music, and Director of the fêtes at the Petit Trianon; finally retiring at the outbreak of the French Revolution, to London, where it is possible—or, at any rate, in England—some of his descendants may yet be living.
A translation of these wonderful Lettres sur la Danse et sur les Ballets was published in London in 1780, and was dedicated to the then Prince of Wales, later George IV. In the preface the anonymous translator says: “The works of Monsieur Noverre, especially the following letters, have been translated into most of the European languages and thought worthy of a distinguished place in the libraries of the literati.” To which, let me add, they should be so thought to-day, at least in their original French form, for they are of uncommon interest and literary charm.
In the somewhat stiff manner of the English of the late Georgian period, his translator remarks of Noverre’s work in the original: “His manner of writing is chaste, correct and elegant; perfectly master of his subjects, he treats of them with the utmost perspicuity; and by the connection which he proves to exist between the other arts, and that of dancing, the author lays down rules and precepts for them all; so that the poet, the painter and the musician may be greatly benefited by the perusal of his works.”
The translator follows with a short history of dancing, and three extremely interesting epistles to Noverre from the great Voltaire, in the first of which, apropos the publication of Noverre’s Lettres, he says: “I have read, sir, your work of genius: my gratitude equals my esteem. You promise only to treat of dancing, and you shed a light on all the arts. Your style is as eloquent as your ballet is imaginative.” In another he remarks: “I have for admiring you, a reason personal to myself; it is that your works abound with poetical images. Poets and painters shall vie with each other to have you ranked with them.” Again he says: “I am surprised that you have not been offered such advantages as might have kept you in France; but that time is no more when France sets the example to all Europe”; but elsewhere remarks, curiously enough: “I believe that your merit will be fully recognised in England, for there they love Nature.”
Jean Georges Noverre
It was just this love of Nature and “natural” acting which brought Noverre and Garrick together in mutual admiration and friendship, to the latter of whom, by the way, the French maître pays the highest tribute in his tenth letter. To turn, however, to the first: “Poetry, painting and dancing are, or ought to be, the faithful copy of Nature ... a ballet is a piece of painting, the scene is the canvas; in the mechanical motions of the figures we find the colours ... the composer himself is the painter.
“Ballets have hitherto been the faint sketch only of what they might one day be. An art entirely subservient, as this is, to taste and genius, may receive daily variations and improvements. History, painting, mythology, poetry, all join to raise it from that obscurity in which it lies buried; and it is truly surprising that composers have hitherto disdained so many valuable resources.... If ballets are for the most part uninteresting and uniformly dull, if they fail in their characteristic expression which constitutes their very essence, the defect does not originate from the art itself, but should be ascribed to the artists. Are then the latter to be told that dancing is an imitative art? I am indeed inclined to think that they know it not, since we daily see the generality of composers sacrifice the beauties of the dance and forego the graceful naïveté of sentiment, to become servile copyists of a certain number of figures known and hackneyed for a century or more.... It is uncommon and next to impossible now to find invention in ballets, elegance in the forms, neatness in the groups, or the requisite precision in the means of introducing the various figures.”
“Ballet masters should consult the productions of the most eminent painters. This would bring them nearer to Nature and induce them to avoid as often as possible that symmetry of figures which, by repeating the object, presents two separate pictures on one and the same canvas. A ballet, perfect in all its parts, is a picture drawn from life, of the manners, dresses, ceremonies and customs of the various nations. It must be a complete panto-mime and through the eyes speak, as it were, to the very soul of the spectator. If it wants expression, if it be deficient in point of situation and scenery, it degenerates into a mere spectacle, flat and monotonous.
“This kind of composition will not admit of mediocrity; like the art of painting it requires a degree of perfection the more difficult to attain in that it is subordinate to a true imitation of Nature, and that it is next to an impossibility to achieve that all-subduing truth which conceals the illusion from the spectator, carries him, as it were, to the very spot where the scene lies; and inspires him with the same sentiments as he must experience, were he present at the events which the artist only represents.