The real favorite of the eighteenth century opera habitués was Mlle. Camargo. Her success is said to have been so sensational that the crowds around the doors of the theatre in London fought for the mere privilege of seeing her. She was also famous for her enchanting body and fascinating personality. Though born in Brussels, she was the daughter of a Spanish ballet-master, therefore she had at her command all the impassioned art of the ancient Caditians. At the age of ten she was sent by the Princess de Ligne to Paris and became a pupil of Madame Prévost, the foremost dancing teacher of that time. At the age of eleven she made her début at Rouen; but she continued her study until she was sixteen when she appeared for the first time at the Opera in Paris with unparalleled success. ‘Nimble, coquettish, and light as a sylph, she sparkled with intelligence,’ writes Castil-Blaze. ‘She added to distinction and fire of execution a bewitching gayety which was all her own. Her figure was very favorable to her talent: hands, feet, limbs, stature, all were perfect. But her face, though expressive, was not remarkably beautiful. And as in the case of the famous harlequin Dominique, her gayety was a gayety of the stage only; in private life she was sadness itself.’
Camargo is credited with having brought about an absolute revolution in opera by her fanciful and ingenious improvisations. In spite of the prevailing stiffness and rigid rules in the ballet she made a special place for herself by depicting the characters that she had to personify on the stage. She delighted in the conquering of technical difficulties. Stormy love affairs affected her so much that for six years she retired from the stage. But she quitted public life in 1741 and lived in seclusion the rest of her life. She left two children with the Duc de Richelieu and Comte de Clermont. She died at sixty years of age and ‘was remembered as the grave, sweet woman whose last years had been spent in loneliness and meditation.’
Madeleine Guimard, whose fame loomed up soon after the retirement of Camargo, remained for forty years a commanding figure in the French ballet. Born in Paris in 1743, she made her début at the age of eighteen and was acclaimed as an artist of exquisite figure, marvellous grace, and extremely distinguished manners. She knew how to make money out of her rich patrons but she was also most reckless in the expenditure of her wealth and her affections. She possessed two elaborate villas, one at Pantin, the other in the Chaussée d’Antin, in both of which she had built little stages on which she and her contemporary stage celebrities gave performances to the high society of Paris. Fleury says that ‘it was a gala day for one of our actors when he could escape from the desert of the Comédie Française and disport himself on the boards of a theatre so perfectly arranged.’ She entertained the guests of the court at her houses and loved to make her arrangements to clash with those given at the court. She was said to be pensioned by a Royal prince, a banker and a bishop, but lost nearly everything in the revolutionary storms. Retiring from the Opéra in 1789, she married the dancer Despreaux, who died soon after. Her old age was verging on misery and she died neglected in a miserable three-room apartment in the Rue Menars, at the age of seventy-three.
A great dramatic ballerina after Camargo was Mlle. Allard, whose partners were Vestris, Dauberval and Gardel. Her frenzied admirers claimed that she far surpassed Camargo because of her added fire, her unusual agility and the expressive beauty of her poses. At one time she would be an ideal Sylvia, gentle and graceful to her finger-tips, then again she was the terrible Medea; now she personified the ethereal charms of a goddess of youth, then the voluptuous passions of a sultana. She figured as the prima ballerina in many of the ballets written by Maximilian Gardel, Milon, Mozart and Rossini.
Of other dancers of the French school who enjoyed public favor under the Republic and the early Napoleonic era Duport is the only conspicuous figure. Being a special favorite with Napoleon, he was the star in the ballets of Blasis and Blache. He composed some ballets himself in which he played the leading rôles. But these gained little success. Napoleon wrote to Cambaceres from Lyons that it was inconceivable to him why Duport had been allowed to compose ballets. ‘This young man has not been in vogue a year. When one has made such a marked success in a particular line, it is a little precipitate to invade the specialty of other men, who have grown gray at their work.’ This clearly shows how much the great emperor was interested in the ballet, and how well he could criticize its artistic values.
The Napoleonic era stopped temporarily the development of the ballet. Pieces composed during this time gained production more easily on foreign stages than at home. Thus the brilliant Antoine et Cléopatre, with music by Kreutzer, lived a few performances at home, whereas it became one of the most successful ballets abroad. The same was the case with Blache’s ballets ‘Don Juan,’ ‘Gustave Vasa’ and ‘Malakavel,’ which became the favorites of the St. Petersburg audiences, while they remained unknown at home. It seems as if the political events which marked such a great step towards democratic ideas in France and Europe became a serious stumbling-stone to the evolution of the dance. Democratic England always relied on autocratic France, Italy, Austria and Russia for stimulation in dancing. All the great ballet celebrities of continental Europe found in England responsive and generous audiences, but never any serious rivals. Who of the great French prima ballerinas or male dancers, from Mlle. Sallé till Carlotta Grisi, did not make pilgrimages to Drury Lane?
Danseuses en Scène (The Ballet)
Painting by E. Degas
Though to the period of the Renaissance and the European national awakening belong all the immortal musical geniuses, like Bach, Mozart, Gluck, Beethoven, Schubert and others, who laid the foundations of the opera and symphony, yet these men seemed to ignore the ballet (if we leave out of consideration their inferior or incidental works). Gluck wrote a few pieces of this order, and so did Mozart; but they are not the works of their inspiration. Scribe, Rossini, Auber, Weber and Meyerbeer gave occasional expression to ballet music, particularly in connection with their operas, but they regarded these works as inferior to their operas. There are two reasons for this: ecclesiastical prejudice and the revolutionary mob. Just as a fanatical clergy branded the dance as Pagan and immoral, so the mob has always regarded the ballet as an aristocratic luxury. Science seems to us essentially democratic; but from the arts there breathes an air of snobbishness and luxury. The history of civilization has not yet recorded a truly democratic art, particularly a democratic ballet.