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Pantomime-Ballet on the Music-Hall Stage: the Popularisation of Classical Ballet in Fin-De-Siècle Paris

Pantomime-Ballet on the Music-Hall Stage: the Popularisation of Classical Ballet in Fin-De-Siècle Paris

Pantomime- on the -Hall Stage: The Popularisation of in Fin-de-Siècle

Sarah Gutsche-Miller

Schulich School of Music McGill University

A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Ph.D. in musicology

April 2010

© Sarah Gutsche-Miller 2010 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract and Résumé iii Acknowledgements iv

Introduction 1

Chapter 1. The Origins of Parisian Music-Hall Ballet 19 Opéra Ballet 19 The Legal Backdrop 24 Ballet in Popular Theatres 26 English Music-Hall Ballet 37

Chapter 2. Elegant Populism: The Venues and the Shows 45 The Folies-Bergère, 1872-1886 47 Marchand’s Folies-Bergère, 1886-1901 54 The de Paris 81 The 92

Chapter 3. Music-Hall Ballet’s Creative Artists 105 Librettists 107 Composers 114 Choreographers 145

Chapter 4. The Music-Hall 163 The 1870s: The Popular Divertissement 164 The 1880s: From “Divertissement” to “Ballet” 171 The 1890s: From Divertissement to -Ballet 189

Chapter 5. Popular Ballet’s Conventions 199 A Traditional Structure 200 Music as Storyteller 229

Chapter 6. Up-to-Date Popular Spectacles 253 Pantomime-Ballet : Conventions and Distortions 254 The Popular Surface 275

Chapter 7. The Music of Popular Ballet 319 Popular Ballet Music at its Height 348

Conclusion 363

Appendix A 371 Appendix B 387 Bibliography 403

ii ABSTRACT

This dissertation explores the history and aesthetic of ballet in Parisian music halls at the turn of the twentieth century. Although the phenomenon is now long forgotten, ballet was for more than four decades a popular form of for a large audience. Between 1872 and 1918, nearly two hundred were staged in Paris’s music halls, more than half of which were premiered by the three most prominent halls: the Folies-Bergère, the Olympia, and the .

These newly written, composed, and choreographed ballets were often complex productions with lavish scenery and costumes, large ballet corps, and star ballerinas. Although they were in many ways structurally comparable to ballets staged at the Paris Opéra, music-hall ballets reflect the preferences of their fashionable, pleasure-seeking audiences through their emphasis on catchy up-beat music, stage spectacle, and the female body. My doctoral research brings to light this important ballet culture and repertoire. I begin with an overview of the historical circumstances that made it possible for variety theatres to adopt ballet. I then examine ballet’s new context in order to establish the institutional features that helped shape music-hall ballet, and provide biographical information about the artists who created and performed them. This is followed by analyses of music-hall ballet’s conventions, with sections on the types of subjects favoured by librettists, the formal structures of popular ballets, the choreographic elements that were typically incorporated, and the musical characteristics of the genre. I end with an exploration of the visual and musical elements that distinguish music-hall ballet as a “popular” genre, and discuss its mediation of high and lowbrow features and intersections with contemporary popular culture.

iii RÉSUMÉ

Cette thèse examine l’histoire et l’esthétique du ballet dans les music-halls parisiens au tournant du XXe siècle. Quoiqu’on l’ait longtemps oublié, le ballet constitua pour plus de quatre décennies une forme de divertissement populaire auprès d’un vaste public. Entre 1872 et 1918, près de deux cent nouveaux ballets furent mis en scène dans les music-halls de Paris, dont plus de la moitié furent créés dans trois établissements proéminents, les Folies-Bergère, l’Olympia et le

Casino de Paris. Ces œuvres aux partitions, chorégraphies et livrets originaux constituaient fréquemment des productions complexes et spectaculaires, faisant appel à des décors et costumes flamboyants, un important et des danseuses étoiles. Bien que les ballets de music-halls aient été comparables, sous plusieurs aspects, aux ballets contemporains présentés à l’Opéra de Paris, ils reflètent néanmoins les préférences de leur audience épicurienne par l’importance accordée à une musique vive et entraînante, au spectaculaire et au corps féminin. Ma recherche met en lumière l’importance de la culture et du répertoire du ballet de music-hall. Je me penche d’abord sur les circonstances historiques qui permirent aux music-halls d’adopter le ballet. J’examine ensuite ce nouveau contexte de représentation du ballet afin d’établir les caractéristiques institutionnelles qui contribuèrent à façonner les ballets de music-hall, et offre de l’information biographique sur les artistes qui créèrent et interprétèrent ceux-ci. J’analyse les conventions du ballet de music-hall, les types de sujets abordés par les librettistes, les structures formelles des ballets populaires, les éléments chorégraphiques communément incorporés et les aspects du langage musical propres au genre. En terminant, j’explore les attributs visuels et musicaux caractérisant le ballet de music-hall comme un genre « populaire », discute de la façon dont il amalgame des éléments « légers » et « sérieux » et examine ses points communs avec la culture populaire contemporaine.

iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A great many people have contributed to this dissertation and made the process an enjoyable one. Above all, I would like to thank my advisor, Steven Huebner, and second reader, Lloyd Whitesell for their advice, insights, and encouragement throughout the process of writing my dissertation. I wish to extend a special thanks to Julie Cumming, who has consistently supported my work and offered her advice both for parts of this dissertation and for the many grants that have allowed me to pursue my research. I am grateful to Marian Smith, who went far beyond the call of duty in reading and providing suggestions for what became three chapters, and to Jane Pritchard for her generosity in sharing her knowledge of English music-hall ballet and French popular ballet, and for bringing my attention to a multitude of documents in the Victoria and Albert Theatre Archives that have greatly enriched this project.

Since my work is grounded in archival research, I have relied on the kindness and resourcefulness of many unidentified librarians and archivists who have helped me turn up arcane bits of information. I would especially like to thank the magasiniers of the Opéra, who took it upon themselves one summer to devote several hours to unearthing three scores listed as “missing,” and to Vincent

Warren of the Grands Ballets de Montréal library for presenting me with several rare documents from the library’s treasure trove of old journals and iconography. Several friends and fellow musicologists, including Samuel Dorf,

Willa Collins, Matilda Butkas, and Stephanie , have also generously shared material and information.

v This dissertation would not have been possible without substantial research and travel funding, including a Canadian Graduate Scholarship and travel grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Elizabeth

Bartlet research travel grant from the American Musicological society, and

McGill Alma Mater travel grants. A McGill Schulich Graduate Scholarship also allowed me to focus on writing in my last year of the Ph.D.

I could not have completed this dissertation without the support and practical help provided by friends and family. Dana Gorzelany-Mostak did wonders with the footnotes and bibliography, Julie Pedneault with the translation of my abstract at the eleventh hour, Andrew Deruchie with teaching me how to negotiate the Byzantine world of the BnF, and Nathan Martin with teaching me how to negotiate the field. All were also wonderful colleagues and friends. As well as prepare most of my musical examples, Steven Vande Moortele patiently answered all of my analysis questions and offered suggestions for nearly every chapter. My mother, Clara Gutsche, proved a phenomenal editor and my father,

David Miller, a wonderful copy editor. Above all, I would like to thank Mom,

Dad, Wilbur, and Steven for their intangible but all the more valuable contributions of love and encouragement.

vi INTRODUCTION

In the late nineteenth century, a popular form of ballet emerged in Paris’s foremost music halls, first at the Folies-Bergère in the 1870s, then at the Casino de

Paris and Olympia in the 1890s. For more than four decades, music halls rather than ballet’s traditional home, the Opéra, were the settings of a vibrant culture. Music halls had the money, artistic ambition, and public visibility to attract the era’s best creative and performing artists, and the profitable staging practices to support the production of a constant stream of spectacular ballets.

Performed to full houses night after night alongside acrobatic acts and popular song-and-dance routines, these ballets catered to a diverse but increasingly upscale audience that came for evenings of light entertainment and social encounters.

Music hall ballets were initially no more than short similar to those integrated into large-scale lyrical and dramatic productions staged at mainstream Parisian theatres. In the 1870s and early 1880s, the Folies-Bergère regularly produced little illustrative ballets with slight plots that served as pretty and sometimes titillating backdrops to an evening of socialising. They proved immediately popular, and ballet quickly became a favourite form of music-hall entertainment. Soon the Folies-Bergère was creating new ballets at a rate of three to four per year and producing them on an ever grander scale. By the late 1880s, the hall was staging large-scale pantomime-ballets—ballets with extended narratives conveyed through a combination of mime and dance.1 Pantomime- ballet in turn became a staple of Parisian music-hall entertainment.

1 Music halls also presented popular in the “numbers” section of the programme that had nothing to do with ballet. These included “eccentric” dances, dancing “girls,” English step or skirt 1

As the Folies-Bergère grew to be the pre-eminent in Paris and as ballet became an increasingly important element of its success, other venues took notice. When the Casino de Paris and the Olympia became music halls in

1890 and 1893, they looked to the Folies-Bergère as a model and patterned their activities on the already famous and profitable hall. Between 1890 and 1909, all three halls presented new pantomime-ballets on a regular basis, each vying to stage more exciting and impressive productions than the others. In the 1890s alone, the Folies-Bergère created thirty pantomime-ballets, the Casino sixteen, and the Olympia eighteen, each of which was performed on a nightly basis for several months. Ballet had become everyday entertainment for a broad public.

The vogue for ballet in popular venues quickly spread beyond Paris. In the

1860s and 1870s, ballet could be seen in only eight French cities, and always in established grands théâtres and municipal theatres. Of the forty-eight ballets staged in the regions of between 1860 and 1878, twenty-two were created in Lyon and sixteen in Bordeaux—historically the two centres of French ballet outside of Paris—and all were staged in established theatres.2 When ballet caught the attention of the general public, many of the commercial entertainment venues springing up across the country kept pace, producing a remarkable number of ballets in just a few years. In the 1880s, not only did the number of ballets staged in France nearly double, these works were presented in nineteen different venues,

dances, Spanish or other foreign dances, and Loïe Fuller’s “new” dances involving mesmerizing repetitive manipulations of her long skirts beneath coloured lights. 2 The span of dates for these statistics corresponds with the publication dates of the Catalogue général des oeuvres dramatiques et lyriques faisant partie du répertoire de la Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD), période 1860-1878 (Paris: Typographie Morris, 1882); période 1879-1888 (Paris: Typographie Morris, 1891); période 1889-1898 (Paris: Typographie Morris, 1900); période 1899-1909 (Paris: Imprimerie Cerf, 1910). My statistics are compiled from these catalogues so they only include ballets recorded by the SACD. See also Hélène Laplace- Claverie, Écrire pour la danse: les livrets de ballet de Théophile Gautier à Jean Cocteau (1870- 1914) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2001), 70-71.

2 including several regional music halls such as the Lyon Folies-Bergère, the

Bordeaux Folies-Bergère, and the Bordeaux Alcazar. Between 1899 and 1910,

165 different ballets were staged in sixty-eight venues in thirty-seven locations.

Nearly all were popular entertainment establishments. After 1900, urban music halls and popular theatres in spas such as Aix-les-Bains and Vichy outnumbered traditional theatres, which nonetheless continued to present new works every year.

Combined, French regional theatres and music halls produced at least 310 new ballets between 1870 and 1909. Over the same forty years, Parisian music halls and popular theatres alone created at least 250 independent ballets (mainly pantomime-ballets) and more than 300 divertissements within other large-scale spectacles and dramatic genres.3

Until recently, this vibrant ballet culture has been entirely ignored. Indeed, the turn of the twentieth century has long been considered a dark period for ballet in France. Few ballets were thought to have been created or restaged, and there were, supposedly, no more than a half a dozen popular or critical successes.

Historical surveys of ballet usually skip over these years altogether, while the historians who do cover the era describe it as one of decline and decadence.4 In her seminal work on the , Lynn Garafola similarly downplays the

3 These numbers do not include the many ballets staged for special cultural events or the many ballet divertissements not recorded in the SACD catalogues. They also do not include ballets staged at the Opéra and Opéra-Comique in the same period. The total number of ballets produced in France between 1870 and 1909 is likely far greater than what I have counted. 4 See Ivor Guest, The Paris Opéra Ballet (Princeton: Princeton Book Co., 2006); Léandre Vaillat, Ballets de l’Opéra de Paris: ballets dans les opéras et nouveaux ballets (Paris: Déchaux, 1947); and Robert Quinault La Danse en France sous la troisième république (Typed text, n.d. [F-Po AID 2209]). Many other dance histories mention the period in passing under revealing chapter headings. See Paul Bourcier, “Le Coma prolongé de la danse à l’Opéra,” in Histoire de la danse en Occident (Paris: Seuil, 1978), 201-2; Marie-Françoise Christout, “Le Déclin progressif du ballet en occident,” in Le Ballet occidental: naissance et métamorphose (Paris: Desjonquères, 1995), 80-87; , “Décadence du ballet,” in La Danse académique et l’art chorégraphique (Paris: Gonthier, 1965), 66-68; and Troy Kinney and Margaret West Kinney, “Ballet in its Dark Age,” in The Dance: Its Place in Art and Life (New York: Tudor Publishing, 1936), 228-40.

3 existence of a creative ballet culture in Paris in the years immediately preceding the arrival of the in 1909.5 This view is so widely held that in his recent History of Western Music, Richard Taruskin blithely reiterated the established narrative, proclaiming the death of French ballet d’action after the

Opéra’s creation of (1876) and giving sole credit for keeping the genre alive over the turn of the twentieth century.6

The inaccuracy stems from the way in which French ballet history has been documented and narrated. Nearly all histories of ballet focus on dance in state- funded “high art” institutions, which in France has meant a nearly exclusive concentration on works created for the Paris Opéra. The 1870s did mark the beginning of a long period of relative inactivity at the Opéra for the creation and performance of independent ballets (as opposed to ballets in lyrical productions).

Whereas the state theatre created over sixty new ballets between 1820 and 1870, production dropped to twenty-five over the next fifty years; only four were created in the 1890s. As I will discuss in Chapter 1, institutional apathy also led to a significant decline in the level of creativity and performance quality of Opéra ballets.

However, the Opéra was far from being the only institution to stage ballet.

As demonstrated above, a cursory glance at theatre listings in newspapers and contemporary catalogues of theatrical performances paints a very different picture from the one constructed by canonical ballet history. Although ballet was

5 Looking at the Opéra, Garafola writes that “ballet in France was socially and artistically déclassé, isolated from the cultural mainstream and patronized by the most philistine stratum of the male upper class.” Lynn Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 274. She later notes the presence of le Tout-Paris and Astruc’s use of glamorous society beauties to add to the spectacle of early Ballets Russes gala performances (Garafola, 294-95), but this was not new to the Ballets Russes: it was an extension of music-hall practices, which Astruc would have known as he was the author of a Folies-Bergère ballet in 1901. 6 Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 4 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 138. Taruskin therefore also dismissed the few successful ballets d’action created by the Opéra during this period.

4 floundering at the Opéra, the actual number of ballets staged in Paris and the number of theatres in which they were performed rose exponentially over the last three decades of the nineteenth century. Ballet did not disappear from the Parisian stage at the end of the nineteenth century; it simply changed venues.7

By the time brought his first productions of Russian ballet to the Paris Châtelet theatre in 1909, there was a large and diverse ballet- going audience. His productions may have drawn a new musical and artistic crowd, but the arrival of the Ballets Russes did not spark a sudden revival of ballet in the French capital as has long been assumed.8 Rather, they marked a turning point in the history of an ever-changing genre. Music-hall ballet marked another.

This dissertation explores the history and aesthetic of Parisian music-hall ballet at the three most prominent venues: the Folies-Bergère, the Olympia, and the Casino de Paris. My interest is both in the works themselves and in the context in which they were created and performed. Music-hall ballets were newly written, composed, and choreographed by the era’s pre-eminent artists of popular theatre, music, and dance, and they were often impressive productions with lavish scenery and costumes, large ballet corps, and internationally acclaimed star ballerinas and mimes. While they were grounded in the formal conventions of traditional nineteenth-century French pantomime-ballet, they form a distinct body of works that was influenced by a range of contemporary choreographic trends and popular genres and that reflected the visual and musical preferences of music- halls’ pleasure-seeking audiences.

7 Ballet had long been a staple of popular entertainment, but usually as one element within other large-scale forms such as , féeries, or pièces à grand spectacle (see Chapter 1). 8 Ballet’s popularity in fin-de-siècle Paris spurred Albert Carré to add ballet to the Opéra- Comique’s repertoire when he became that theatre’s director in 1898. Carré hired Mme Mariquita to choreograph pantomime-ballets and ballet divertissements for , which she did until 1918. The Opéra-Comique was for a time the focal point of innovative French ballet, and was another important predecessor of and counterpoint to the Ballets Russes.

5 Music-hall ballet was, in the broadest sense, “classical ballet.”9 Although contemporary popular dances were occasionally integrated into a production, music- hall ballets were based in the French choreographic tradition of telling stories through mime and dance. As commentary in the press confirms, the danced component of a music-hall ballet comprised a variety of types of , including ballet for a star ballerina on pointe and dances for the ballet corps performed in an academic idiom. Chorus girls, exotic dancers, “eccentric” or quadrille dancers, or other popular dancers often appeared on the same programmes as ballets, but music-hall ballet was a separate large-scale theatrical genre.

Music-hall ballet can be subdivided into two overlapping categories: pantomime-ballet and divertissement. Pantomime-ballet was the standard term used in the nineteenth-century to describe large-scale ballets that incorporated a significant amount of mime to convey a developed narrative. The term divertissement referred to short danced works that were virtually plotless and therefore had few mime sequences. Divertissements were typically integrated into large-scale genres such as , but they could also be performed as independent productions. The independent divertissement was the first type of ballet seen in

Parisian music halls; at the height of popular ballet production, music halls staged both pantomime-ballets and divertissements. As I will discuss at length in

Chapter 4, the two had different characteristics and historical trajectories.

Although most independent ballets staged by the Opéra de Paris in the nineteenth- century were pantomime-ballets and do not constantly need to be referred to as such, I use the term pantomime-ballet throughout this dissertation to differentiate

9 The term “classical ballet” has in English-language dance history come to be associated with the works produced by for the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatre at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I am using it here to refer more generally to danced works that used the codified steps and poses of nineteenth-century academic ballet.

6 the large-scale narrative-based music-hall ballets of the late 1880s through early

1900s from the smaller illustrative divertissements that continued to be presented alongside them.

Literature review

This dissertation is the first in-depth study of Parisian music-hall ballet, and one of the few to look at any facet of French ballet at the turn of the twentieth century. It is also the only book-length study to examine popular ballet music. Most histories of French ballet focus on the romantic era or on the Ballets Russes and avoid the period in between; general surveys and textbooks look only at state-subsidized institutions and therefore also overlook this phase of the genre’s history.

Studies of the romantic era and Ballets Russes are, however, essential for tracing the historical precedents of music-hall ballet and its connections with subsequent developments in the field of ballet.10 A substantial portion of my discussion of the narrative, choreographic, and musical conventions of music-hall ballet in Chapters 4 to 6 relies on Marian Smith’s Ballet and Opera in the Age of

Giselle, as well as on her articles about ballet and ballet music including “The

Orchestra as Translator: French Nineteenth-Century Ballet,” “Borrowings and

Original Music: A Dilemma for the Ballet-Pantomime Composer,” and “National

Dances in the ” with Lisa Arkin. These same chapters also draw on several articles in Rethinking the Sylph: New Perspectives on the Romantic

Ballet edited by Lynn Garafola, Sylvie Jacq-Mioche’s dissertation Le Ballet à

Paris de 1820-1830, Ivor Guest’s books on French romantic ballet and ballet at

10 For the latter, see in particular Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.

7 the Paris Opéra, and Sally Banes’s Dancing Women: Female Bodies on Stage.11

Other studies of dance that are central to a Parisian music-hall ballet aesthetic include Davinia Caddy’s “Variations on the Dance of the Seven Veils” and

Patricia Tilburg’s “‘The Triumph of the Flesh:’ Women, Physical Culture, and the

Nude in the French Music Hall, 1904-1914,” both of which focus on nudity and overtly sexual performances. As well, Garafola’s “The Travesty Dancer in

Nineteenth-Century Ballet” and Smith’s “The Disappearing Danseur” provide an historical context for the music halls’ use of cross dressing in ballet.

Only two works include substantial discussions of turn-of-the-twentieth- century French ballet and both were written by scholars of .

Hélène Laplace-Claverie’s comprehensive analysis of turn-of-the-century ballet librettos, Écrire pour la danse: les livrets de ballet de Théophile Gautier à Jean

Cocteau (1870-1914), includes those from the music halls; and Guy Ducrey’s

Corps et graphies: poétique de la danse et de la danseuse à la fin du XIXe siècle, looks at representations of dance in French literature and art at the end of the nineteenth century. Laplace-Claverie’s book has been the single most important reference on Parisian ballet from the period, and it inspired my own more detailed study of music-hall ballets.12 Although much of her work is devoted to literary analyses of librettos as an independent genre and includes a typology of grammar and form and studies of rhetoric, the first section provides an overview of all venues for ballet in Paris from 1870 to 1914, biographical sketches of librettists,

11 See also Susan Leigh Foster, Choreography and Narrative: Ballet’s Staging of Story and Desire (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996). 12 Although prior to reading her work I had come across the performance catalogues of the SACD and had been intrigued by the dozens of ballets premiered in a period that I had been led to believe was devoid of ballet, I remained sceptical about its cultural significance for some time. Laplace- Claverie’s introductory chapter about Parisian venues for ballet at the turn of the century, which included a survey of the halls and their artists, prompted me to pursue research into this repertoire and phenomenon. Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse.

8 and a discussion of ballet subjects. She does not, however, separate music-hall ballets from those staged at popular or state theatres so does not examine music- hall ballet as a discrete phenomenon.

English music-hall ballet has received considerably more scholarly attention than its French counterpart. Since English variety theatres were models for Parisian music halls, this literature has proven a vital source of information and has made it possible to compare the two traditions. By the 1890s, each had several distinctive characteristics. Studies of English music-hall ballet include

Ivor Guest’s survey of English music-hall ballet institutions, artists, and ballet plots, Ballet in Leicester Square: the Alhambra and the Empire, Alexandra

Carter’s study of representations of music-hall dancers, in

Victorian and Edwardian Music Hall Ballet, and Jane Pritchard’s case studies,

“Collaborative Creations for the Alhambra and the Empire” and “The Empire in

Manchester.” Although unfortunately not available to the broader scholarly community, Jane Pritchard’s unfinished dissertation, “Divertissement Only: The

Establishment, Development and Decline of the Music Hall Ballet in ,” examines the repertoire in far greater depth than any other survey. There are no analyses of English music-hall ballet music.

Due to the lack of studies that treat French music-hall ballet and its artists, studies of the institutions themselves or of other music-hall acts have provided a window into music-hall ballet’s performance context and overall aesthetic.

Histories of Parisian music halls, such as Raoul Muriand’s Les Folies-Bergère,

Jacques Pessis and Jacques Crepineau’s Les Folies-Bergère, and André Sallé and

Philippe Chauveau’s Music-hall et café-concert, contain information about the halls’ administration, artists, and acts. These are all, however, popular in

9 orientation with a preponderance of images and little critical text. Also, aside from mentioning a few successful productions, ballet is all but forgotten even in these volumes. More rewarding for a sense of the halls’ ambiance and aesthetic are studies of the art work inspired by music halls, including Manet’s Bar at the

Folies-Bergère by Novalene Ross and 100 Years of Posters of the Folies-Bergère and Music Halls of Paris by Alain Weill, and, to a lesser extent, The Dancer:

Degas, Forain, Toulouse-Lautrec edited by Annette Dixon and Degas, Sickert and

Toulouse-Lautrec: London and Paris 1870-1910 by Anna Gruetzner Robins and

Richard Thomson. Studies of English music-hall and popular-theatre culture are again more abundant, and since they tend to be more analytical and critical, they are a useful source of complementary ideas. These include Rhonda Garelick’s

Rising Star: Dandyism, Gender, and Performance in the Fin-de-Siècle, Barry

Faulk’s Music Hall and Modernity: The Late-Victorian Discovery of Popular

Culture, Dagmar Kift’s The Victorian Music Hall: Culture, Class and Conflict, and Michael R. Booth’s Victorian Spectacular Theatre: 1850-1910.

Works that discuss related forms of popular entertainment have also proven fruitful. These studies range from Charles Rearick’s Pleasures of the Belle

Époque, Martinez’s La Pantomime: théâtre en mineur (1880-1945),

Florian Bruyas’s Histoire de l'opérette en France, 1855-1965, Richard Traubner’s

Operetta: A Theatrical History, and Benoît Duteurtre’s L'Opérette en France, to

Vanessa Schwartz’s Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siècle

Paris, Robert Allen’s Horrible Prettiness: and American Culture, and

John McCormick’s Popular Theatres of Nineteenth-Century France. While no published study has done more than mention popular ballet music, Derek Scott’s

Sounds of the Metropolis: The Nineteenth-Century Popular Music Revolution in

10 London, New York, Paris, and proved instrumental to my exploration of a late nineteenth-century popular style in music.

Primary Sources

This dissertation is primarily a documentary project based on archival research.

Although there is considerable evidence of the existence of a popular form of ballet, tracing the nature of these productions and the history of their creation has posed many challenges. Music-hall ballets were an ephemeral art form: most were written by in-house staff as fleeting entertainment for a specific time and audience, and virtually none was restaged beyond the few years following its premiere. Because music halls were privately owned and managed, only a fraction of their documentary legacy has been preserved in public libraries or state archives.13 What has survived in library collections is often incomplete and provides only tantalising hints of what a given production might have been like.

Nevertheless, several sources do exist that shed light on music-hall ballet, including performance catalogues, librettos and synopses, scores, programmes, iconography, tourism guidebooks, contemporary biographical dictionaries, and hundreds of press reviews. The most complete source of basic historical information about pantomime-ballets (divertissements were never listed) is the series of performance catalogues compiled by the Société des Auteurs et

Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD). The SACD’s catalogues, published every ten years, list the title, date of first performance, genre, authors, and venue of all theatrical productions staged in France. The SACD has also preserved the

13 Not even the theatres themselves, several of which thrive today as venues for popular singers and , have retained information about past productions or artists.

11 detailed registers that recorded the daily box-office earnings for all three halls.14

These inventories have allowed me to track the length of performance runs, which works were restaged (these are never recorded in performance catalogues), the popularity of individual works, and how much authors earned in rights.

The dozens of music-hall programmes that are filed individually by title and in collected programme dossiers by hall and stored at the Bibliothèque nationale de France départment des Arts du spectacle and the Bibliothèque de l’Opéra are important sources of contextual, biographical, and generic information. Nearly all list the ballet’s title and specific genre, authors, costume and set designers, cast lists, a list of the variety acts that surrounded it, and intermittently, synopses, artists’ biographies, and photos of artists and the halls.

Extant ballet librettos and synopses are also relatively abundant. Only a few librettos were published, but dozens of printed synopses originally slipped into programmes on loose leaf have been preserved by title in individual files at the

Bibliothèque nationale. Additional synopses can be found in reviews of premieres, though these are sometimes contradictory or fragmentary, and in published ballet scores in piano reduction that often include descriptive text directly above the staff. The French Archives nationales have also preserved an incomplete but substantial collection of Folies-Bergère ballet librettos sent to the censors in the 1870s, 1880s, and early 1890s.

I have located thirty full scores for ballets staged at the three principal music halls.15 Two are manuscript drafts in complete orchestral score, but the rest are published piano reductions (see bibliography). Most are stored in the Paris

14 The SACD kept these registers to ensure the correct calculation of royalties each author was contractually entitled to collect. 15 There are also many published dances excerpted from music-hall ballets available in the Paris archives and other libraries.

12 Bibliothèque nationale (Musique and Opéra); five not available in Paris have been located in the London Dance Archives, New York Public Library for the

Performing Arts, Harvard Theatre Collection, and British Library.16 The scores form the basis for my analyses of music-hall ballet’s conventions and for my definition of a popular style in ballet music. Since most piano scores include stage action above the staff, and since all ballet music was written to match a specific scenario, scores were also helpful in tracing the large-scale choreographic structure and visual conventions of the genre.

Reconstructing choreography is speculative at best. Choreographies were never notated, and few reviews include detailed descriptions of dance sequences.

My discussion of music-hall ballet’s choreography therefore relies on a combination of descriptions in reviews, treatises, memoirs, and imagery.17 There are a few studio photographs of music-hall dancers in costume, a handful of sketches of scenes from music-hall ballets in illustrated journals, caricatures in the comic press, and several music-hall advertisement posters by Chéret, Appel, and Pal. Although the posters never portray specific scenes, they complement the drawings and paintings by Manet and Forain to provide a sense of a work’s tone or the hall’s ambiance.

Much of my work relies on the contemporary press. Reviews have been an invaluable source of information about the halls’ history, ambiance, and

16 The Bibliothèque nationale has several additional scores from productions staged at the Eden- Théâtre, the 1900 Paris Exposition Palais de la danse, and the Folies-Marigny that are useful for comparative purposes. There are also hundreds of piano and band arrangements of dances from music-hall ballets, but orchestral parts have been lost or destroyed for all but two ballets. 17 Dance treatises and memoires include Charles Aubert, L’Art mimique, suivi d’un traité de la Pantomime et de Ballet (Paris: E. Meuriot, 1901), Jane Avril, Mes mémoires suivi de Cours de danse fin-de-siècle (Paris: Phébius, 2005), Berthe Bernay, Cours de danse fin de siècle, 1892 (Paris: E. Dentu, 1892) and La Danse au théâtre (Paris: E. Dentu, 1890), Edmond Bourgeois, Traité pratique et théorique de la danse (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1901), Edouard Espinosa, And Then He Danced (London: S. Low, Marston and Co., 1948), and Cléo de Mérode, Le Ballet de ma vie (Paris: Pierre Horay, 1985).

13 audiences, and about the visual characteristics and reception of a given production. Le Courrier français, Le Figaro, Le Gaulois, and Gil Blas were the most consistent and detailed chroniclers of music-hall ballets, and many other papers printed reviews on a more sporadic basis, including L’Écho de Paris, Le

Journal des débats, Le Petit journal, and Le Temps. Numerous papers carried obituaries of the artists, which is sometimes the only biographical information available for these individuals. For example, the career of music-hall ballet’s most celebrated choreographer, Madame Mariquita, would have been impossible to trace without the many obituaries published in the daily press. Le Journal amusant, Les Feux de la rampe, and Le Théâtre illustré often printed sketches of ballets, drawings of characters in costume, or photos of dancers and mimes.

Musical journals were less forthcoming, though Le Ménestrel did occasionally publish short articles on music-hall productions.

Dissertation Overview

My dissertation is presented in two parts. Part one, which includes chapters 1 to

3, explores the context in which music-hall ballet was created and performed. The first chapter provides an overview of the historical circumstances that led to the adoption of ballet by music halls and introduces the institutions and genres that were most influential in the development of Parisian music-hall ballet. I begin by outlining the changes to French theatrical laws that allowed for large-scale with costumes and decor to be staged in venues other than state- subsidized theatres such as the Paris Opéra. I then examine the floundering Paris

Opéra ballet, which left a creative vacuum at the turn of the twentieth century that made it possible for music-hall ballet to become the dominant choreographic

14 genre of the era.18 The first chapter also examines other popular institutions and forms of ballet that were central to the evolution of Parisian music-hall ballet, including divertissements and spectacles staged in Parisian theatres such as the

Gaîté or Châtelet, and ballets presented by London’s Alhambra and Empire music halls.

Chapter 2 examines the performance context of popular ballet in order to establish the institutional features that helped shape the genre. I begin with a history of the Folies-Bergère, the Casino de Paris, and the Olympia, then consider the environment in which ballets were presented, with sections on the halls’ licentious café-concert ambiance, their programmes of acrobatic and variety acts, and their increasingly fashionable and elegant, but always hedonistic audiences.

As with any performing art, music-hall ballet evolved to suit the preferences of a particular venue and audience. Music halls were private enterprises without any form of government support that needed to go beyond recouping costs to make a substantial profit. Ballets created in music halls reflect the need to appeal to these broad audiences: they were at once artistic and entertaining, attractive to the eye and pleasing to the ear; they catered to those who came to see opulent costumes and scenery and to those who came to see soft pornography.

Chapter 3 presents biographical information about the artists who created music-hall ballets. Although many were household names in their day, nearly all have long since been forgotten. Recovering these artists’ careers is a valuable addition to the historical record in its own right that also has important implications for our perception of the genre. The preconception that the halls are lowbrow venues is belied by the high calibre of music halls’ authors, composers,

18 As mentioned above, the Opéra-Comique was another important ballet centre between 1898 and the early 1910s.

15 and choreographers, all of whom moved freely between mainstream theatres and popular entertainment venues and created works in a variety of genres and registers. As music halls rose in prominence and ballet became a key feature of their programming, the halls attracted an increasingly prestigious group of creative artists, some of whom produced ballets in the 1890s and early 1900s that stand out as masterpieces of the genre.

The second part of my dissertation examines the ballets themselves. In

Chapter 4, I explore the narrative, visual, and musical conventions and style of the music-hall divertissement, the earliest form of music-hall ballet. I begin this chapter with a discussion of the ballets staged at the Folies-Bergère between 1872 and 1886 when the divertissement was the principal form of music-hall ballet, then examine their successors, the divertissements and divertissement-like ballets staged by all three halls alongside the large-scale pantomime-ballets created at the height of music-hall ballet production between 1886 and 1904. Chapter 5 examines the visual and musical conventions of music-hall pantomime-ballet. A first section is devoted to the choreographic elements that were typically incorporated into the ballets, and the second section looks at the musical characteristics of the genre. This chapter explores the close connections between music-hall and traditional French state-theatre ballet, as well as music-hall ballet’s distinctive formal attributes.

My last two chapters explore the narrative, visual, and musical attributes that characterize music-hall ballet as a “popular” genre. Music-hall ballet maintained many of the structural conventions and the choreographic and musical vocabulary of state-theatre ballet, but its visual and musical style was shaped by an interest in appealing to a broad audience in search of light entertainment.

16 Librettists, for instance, were usually less concerned with dramatic continuity than with providing opportunities for spectacle and sensuousness: all ballets had extravagant costumes and scenery, all included travesty roles for women in tightly-fitted costumes, and many incorporated lascivious dances or provocative tableaux for women in various stages of undress. Music-hall ballet scores likewise had certain “popular” traits: although scores from the 1890s ranged in complexity, most ballets were written to be pleasing to the ear with colourful orchestrations and catchy tunes played over an often repetitive chordal accompaniment. Chapter 6 examines the narrative and visual elements that characterize music-hall ballet as a “popular” genre, and discusses music-hall ballet’s connections with contemporary popular culture. My last chapter offers analyses of popular ballet music’s internal formal structures, phrasing, accompaniment figures, thematic material, harmonic idioms, musical-dramatic devices such as recurring melodies, and dramatically-motivated key structures.

I conclude the dissertation with a brief exploration of music-hall ballet’s mediation between highbrow art and popular entertainment. Parisian music halls thrived on variety and novelty, and their success lay primarily in the hybrid nature of their . By offering an endlessly shifting array of theatrical genres and circus-style amusements that drew interchangeably on elements of elite and popular culture, the music halls appealed to and attracted a broad cross- section of Parisian society, from store clerks and civil servants to wealthy socialites. In an era and city characterised by an expanding and ever more diverse entertainment industry and an increasing fluidity of audiences between different

17 types of establishments, music halls stand out as symbols of this cultural fluidity and complexity, and embodied fin-de-siècle Parisians’ taste for eclecticism.19

Music-hall ballets reflected this eclecticism and cultural permeability, mirroring shifts in audience tastes, and absorbing a variety of cultural and theatrical trends. They defy any single category, and may instead be characterised by a layering of several different registers, styles, generic conventions, and artistic intentions. Music-hall ballets had remarkably varied librettos, scores, and choreographies that were consistently acclaimed by critics; they were newly written and choreographed by highly respected artists who moved freely between music halls, boulevard theatres, and state institutions; and their principal roles were performed by internationally renowned dancers and mimes. These productions were in many ways traditional nineteenth-century pantomime-ballets that depended on a previous knowledge of the genre’s conventions for comprehension. Yet the overriding objective of music-hall ballet was to amuse.

Music-hall ballets were frequently the artistic portion of the evening’s entertainment, but their overall tone and musical and visual style were grounded in popular culture, and it is these aspects that appealed to broad audiences and assured a ballet’s commercial success.

19 For an in-depth discussion of Parisian cultural eclecticism and its ties to the socio-political environment of Third Republic France, see Jann Pasler, Composing the Citizen: Music as Public Utility in Third Republic France (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009), in particular chapters 6 and 8.

18 CHAPTER 1. THE ORIGINS OF PARISIAN MUSIC-HALL BALLET

Ballet was an integral part of French popular culture throughout the nineteenth century just as it was a staple of monarchist and state-theatre fare. Ballets were staged in and alongside operas, , , , and in both state-subsidized and private theatres, and they were a standard addition to boulevard-theatre féeries and pièces à grand spectacle. By the last decades of the century, ballet had become a ubiquitous form of Parisian entertainment. When new venues that presented mixed entertainments began springing up across Paris in the 1870s, it was an obvious genre to integrate into evening-long programmes of variety acts.

The emergence of ballet in music halls was the result of a confluence of several factors: changes to French theatre laws in 1864 and 1867 allowed for the staging of theatrical dance in any type of establishment and triggered a proliferation of commercial entertainment venues; the decline in the 1870s of ballet at the Opéra provided space for new forms of ballet to emerge in Paris; and a tradition of presenting danced divertissements in popular theatres set a precedent for original choreography geared towards a mass audience. Parisian music-hall ballet also had an important model: English music-hall ballet. This chapter explores the choreographic milieu into which Parisian music-hall ballet was born and outlines cultural developments and institutions that were central to its development.

Opéra Ballet

Ballet by no means vanished from the Paris Opéra in the late nineteenth century, but it was no longer the flourishing art form that it had been only a few decades

19 earlier. Declining numbers of performances alone give a sense of the languishing state of ballet at the Opéra. As noted in the introduction, the Opéra staged more than sixty new ballets between 1820 and 1870, many of which were periodically restaged as part of its repertoire. In the fifty years following 1870, the theatre staged only twenty-five ballets, and most were quickly forgotten. This creative hiatus is even starker if one looks only at the years around 1900. Between 1890 and 1905—the years that marked the height of music-hall ballet production—the

Opéra created only seven ballets. Two of these were divertissements.20

In his historical overview of ballet at the Opéra, Ivor Guest characterised the era as one of decline and decadence, writing with the elitism typical of his time that “the combined effect of an impoverished repertory and the eclipse of the male dancer had brought French ballet to an abysmal level of decadence. Greater vitality was to be found even in London, where ballet had taken root in the plebeian surroundings of the music hall.”21 While his terminology is overstated and now largely discredited, his observations have their basis in truth. Not only were fewer ballets staged by the Opéra over the turn of the twentieth century, their quality perceptibly deteriorated.

Although the Opéra never entirely gave up its position as the home of academic ballet, few productions created over the turn of the century were artistically noteworthy.22 Contemporary reviews indicate that while many were

20 One of the divertissements used pre-composed music. It should be noted, however, that there were an additional twenty ballet divertissements created within opera productions. 21 Ivor Guest, The Paris Opéra Ballet (1876, repr. Princeton: Princeton Book Co., 2006), 68. Guest seems to have had no knowledge of or interest in Parisian music-hall ballet. 22 The Opéra did stage the occasional successful production during this period. Charles Marie Widor’s La Korrigane (1880) was performed only eight times in its first year, but it was frequently restaged and received fifty-four performances after six years (it was restaged every year between 1880 and 1886). ’s La Maladetta (1893), though not especially well received at the outset, received 176 performances by the time it was dropped in 1927. Messager’s Les Deux Pigeons had an even more impressive performance history. It was one of the only ballets to exceed ten performances in its first year (it was presented twelve times), and it remained in the

20 entertaining, they were either reproductions of romantic ballets, long divertissements with little dramatic significance, or pale imitations of popular

Italian spectacle ballets seen at the Eden-Theatre in the 1880s. In the 1890s, critics also began to protest a growing similarity to music-hall ballets; by the early

1900s, they were openly disparaging of what they felt was a general decline of

Opéra ballet. Arthur Pougin, writing for Le Ménestrel, and Alfred Bruneau, writing for Le Figaro both lamented the shift from pantomime-ballet to what they felt were dramatically impoverished divertissements. They also complained of a rigid adherence to worn-out choreographic and musical conventions, which they believed had precipitated a stagnation of the genre.23 In his review of L’Étoile, for instance, Alfred Bruneau remarked:

Every time the Opéra presents a new ballet—which doesn’t happen often since La Maladetta [...]—I notice that out of all the arts, the art of choreography is the most static, growing each day more sterile, locked in its own conventions, in the arbitrariness of the “steps,” and I foresee the hour when it will struggle from want of

repertory until 1949, by which time it had been performed 196 times. Guest, The Paris Opéra Ballet, 143-44. It was the fourteenth most performed ballet at the Paris Opéra in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As Jane Pritchard points out, longevity and commercial success are rarely indicators of artistic innovation or quality, but they do speak to the continued presence and popularity of ballet at the Opéra at a time long thought to have been devoid of choreographic activity. Jane Pritchard, “‘The Great Hansen’: An Introduction to the Work of Joseph Hansen, a Forgotten European Choreographer of the Late Nineteenth Century, with a Chronology of His Ballets,” Dance Research 26, no. 2 (Winter 2008): 86. Although Hansen had few opportunities at the Opéra to choreograph large-scale ballets, as Pritchard rightly notes, many are worth closer study. 23 In a review for Le Ménestrel of the Opéra’s 1897 ballet L’Étoile, Arthur Pougin commended the theatre for its good intentions in staging a “real pantomime-ballet” (even while reproaching Wormser for a score that lacked originality), and lamented the glory days of ballet that integrated dance and to “enchant” its public. Arthur Pougin, “Semaine théâtrale—Opéra. L’Étoile,” Le Ménestrel, 6 June 1897. For Bruneau, not only did contemporary ballets lack creativity, dramatic depth, and in the case of L’Étoile, musical interest, but the genre itself had not evolved as had other theatrical genres. It had remained a static series of distinct pantomime scenes and dances that did not work together towards a unified artistic goal. Alfred Bruneau, “Les Théâtres—Opéra: L’Étoile,” Le Figaro, 1 June 1897. Bruneau’s criticism is redolent of Wagnerian ideals, and says as much about theatrical tastes of the era as it does about the state of academic ballet.

21 having followed modern movement, of having obeyed the laws of rejuvenation and renewal that grant eternal sovereignty.24 As these and other reviews suggest, Opéra audiences had few awe-inspiring encounters with ballet choreography.25

There were many reasons for the protracted weakening of academic ballet at the Paris Opéra. In 1870 alone the theatre lost three central dance artists. The promising star ballerina Giuseppina Bozzachi died of smallpox during the Siege of Paris, Marie Taglioni retired from her teaching post, and the choreographer

Arthur Saint-Léon died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of forty-nine. When

Louis Mérante took over as and choreographer, he had little experience, no star ballerina, and difficult working conditions owing to the

Franco-Prussian war and Siege. The Opéra’s trials only increased from there. In

1873, the Opéra, then situated on rue Le Peletier, burned down, taking with it nearly all of the costumes and scenery for current productions.26 In 1894, the

Opéra Garnier warehouse was destroyed by fire, and all costumes for both opera and ballet were again lost. Fifteen productions were chosen to be restored; only one was a ballet.27 The Opéra’s loss of ballet personnel and property was compounded by a more general decline in institutional interest in dance:

24 Alfred Bruneau, “Les Théâtres—Opéra: L’Étoile,” Le Figaro, 1 June 1897. “Toutes les fois que l’Opéra joue un ballet inédit—ce qui n’arrive pas de façon très fréquente car, depuis La Maladetta, c’est-à-dire depuis un peu plus de quatre ans, aucun ouvrage de ce genre n’a été représenté à notre Académie nationale de musique et de la danse—je constate que l’art de la chorégraphie, seul de tous les arts, s’immobilise, se stérilise chaque jour davantage dans la convention, dans l’arbitraire des “pas” et je prévois l’heure où il agonisera, faute d’avoir suivi le mouvement moderne, d’avoir obéi aux lois de rajeunissement et de renouvellement dont la souveraineté est éternelle.” 25 Even Jane Pritchard, who has recently brought Hansen’s career to light and shown him to be a more important choreographer than he has hitherto been credited for, notes that his creative period was largely over by the time he was hired by the Opéra. Pritchard also notes, however, that the conditions at the Opéra were not conducive to creativity. Pritchard, “The Great Hansen,” 87. 26 Guest, The Paris Opéra Ballet, 59. 27 Ibid., 67. Guest does not record which ballet was restored.

22 successive directors of the Opéra preferred paying fines to commissioning the requisite number of new ballets they were officially mandated to create.28

The Opéra never lost its reputation for top-notch star ballerinas, yet its ballets were no longer performed to the highest standards. 29 Administrative indifference to ballet and changes in audience expectations together occasioned a significant decline in the quality of training offered to dancers. Although the theatre continued to present talented ballerinas in principal roles, these dancers were almost without exception of foreign extraction and training. Dancers in the ballet corps, in contrast, received only nominal instruction and were probably lacking technical skills.30 Comments made in reviews suggest that they were primarily decorative: they were not normally required to perform complex ballet sequences and they had little discipline as an ensemble.31 All were girls or

28 Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 74; and Vivianne Deschamps, “Histoire de l’administration de l’Opéra de Paris: Second Empire, Troisième République” (PhD dissertation, Université de Paris IVI, 1987), 318. According to Guest, Pedro Gailhard, intermittently the Opéra’s director from 1884 to 1907, favoured opera to the near exclusion of ballet. Given that Gailhard wrote the to Paul Vidal’s reasonably well-received La Maladetta in 1893, he was likely not as hostile towards ballet as Guest makes out. See Guest, The Paris Opéra Ballet, 66-67. See also Robert Quinault, La Danse en France sous la Troisième République (conference). Typed text, n.d. (F-Pn AID 2209), 2. 29 There are conflicting reports about Opéra dancers’ technical skills at the turn of the century. According to Gabi Vettermann, Henri Justamant left the Opéra after only one year in 1868-69 because of poor working conditions and a poorly trained troupe with too little discipline. See “In Search of Dance Creators’ Biographies: The Life and Work of Henri Justamant,” in Les Choses Espagnoles: Research into the Hispanomania of 19th Century Dance, ed. Claudia Jeschke, Gabi Vettermann, and Nicole Haitzinger, (Munich, E-Podium, 2009), 130. Maurice Brillant, on the other hand, defended the Opéra as having maintained a high level of performance and choreography throughout the period. For him, the Opéra preserved its supremacy as the centre of French ballet from the 1880s to WWI—what he has termed a “difficult and thankless period for French ballet”—though he later admitted that ballet did stagnate in the 1890s. Maurice Brillant, “Du Romantisme à Jacques Rouché,” in L’Art du ballet: des origins à nos jours, ed. Robert Bernard, Maurice Brianchon, et al. (Paris: Éditions du Tambourinaire, 1952), 78-84. 30 Dancers were also poorly paid and no longer received the kind of financial support from the Opéra’s abonnés that they had enjoyed during the Second Empire. For a fascinating in-depth discussion of working conditions for Opéra dancers, see Jennifer Anne Dawson, “Danseuses as Working Women: Ballet and Female Waged Labor at the , 1830-1860” (PhD dissertation, University of California, Riverside, 2005). 31 Criticism of the lack of discipline of the Opéra ballet corps came up frequently in reviews of Eden-Theatre ballets, in which Opéra dancers were compared to those of the Eden. Eden-Theatre dancers were, in contrast, commended for their almost military precision as a group.

23 women who were recruited for their appealing physique, and they were used to add to the visual spectacle and please the abonnés of the parterre.32 With the

Opéra in a state of flux and with few major works left in its repertory, the stage was set for other venues to take the lead.

The Legal Backdrop

The Opéra was at no point in the nineteenth century the only institution to stage ballet, nor was it always the dominant venue for original choreography. At mid- century, ballet could be seen in disparate venues including the Théâtre Italien or

Opéra-Comique, the Théâtre de la Gaîté, the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin, the

Ambigu-Comique, or the Cirque Olympique.33 However, the Opéra’s position as the pre-eminent centre for ballet had never truly been threatened despite suffering from periods of decline at different points in the century and despite competition from other establishments. The Opéra had a considerable advantage over other theatres: until 1864, the Opéra was by Imperial decree the one theatre permitted to stage pantomime-ballet.34 Other theatres could only present divertissements.

The differentiation between divertissement and pantomime-ballet was not as rigid in practice as official decrees dictated. Secondary Parisian theatres routinely pushed the boundaries of generic classifications to produce so-called

32 Opéra ballets relied increasingly on travesty dancers and on props such as garlands and palms to create visual interest. Guest, The Paris Opéra Ballet, 12. See also the review by Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “,” Le Figaro, 27 November 1902, in which he described the ballet’s spectacular attributes in language that recalls that used for reviews of music-hall ballets. 33 See Nicole Wild, Dictionnaire des théâtres parisiens au XIXe siècle (Paris: Aux Amateurs de Livres, 1989); Félicien de Ménil, Histoire de la danse à travers les ages (Paris: A. Picard et Kaan, 1905); and Ivor Guest, “Appendix E,” in Ballet of the Second Empire (London: Pitman, 1974). 34 The Opéra benefited from privileges accorded by Napoleonic theatre laws between 1807 and 1864. By fixing the genres allotted to each theatre through privileges and by controlling the content of texts through censorship, the government held the theatres under tight control; it effectively decided repertoire for all Parisian establishments for an entire era. Wild, Dictionnaire des théâtres, 10.

24 divertissements that were in effect pantomime-ballets with developed narratives.

The Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin in particular was in the 1820s and 1830s the

Opéra’s most important competitor in the realm of ballet, staging pantomime- ballets that vied with those of the Opéra in grandeur and artistry.35 The risk was retaliation through court battles and heavy fines: the Porte-Saint-Martin frequently incurred the wrath of the Opéra’s administration, which jealously guarded its monopoly.36

In 1864, the Napoleonic system of privileges was repealed. From then on, as long as a formal declaration was made to the Ministry of Arts, anyone could open a theatre and all theatres were allowed to stage all genres. Certain theatres such as the Opéra still received government support, and all theatres were subject to censorship; nevertheless the year marked the beginning of free-market enterprise for the performing arts in Paris.37 At first this decree had little effect on the many private entertainment venues such as café-concerts and circuses that had sprung up over the course of the century without the designation of “theatre.”38 In

1864, cafés were permitted to present instrumental and vocal music, but without costumes, decors, or transvestism, and without mixing prose, pantomime, or dance.39 Three years later, in 1867, a second decree made it possible for all types of venues to present any genre in any manner. It was therefore only after 1867

35 For an introduction to ballet at the Porte-Saint-Martin, see Sylvie Jacq-Mioche, “Le ballet à Paris de 1820-1830” (PhD dissertation, Université de Paris I, 1993). 36 L’Académie Royale de Musique, jealous of the Port-Saint-Martin’s success, tried at various times to ban the popular theatre from presenting “noble and graceful” ballets and ballet d’action that were supposed to be the exclusive domain of the Opéra. Ibid, 7-8. 37 Even prior to 1864, rules had not been enforced in the provinces to the same extent as in Paris. 38 Napoleon, “Décret relatif a la libération de l’industrie théâtrale, 6 January 1864, in Recueil des lois, décrets, arrêtés, règlements, circulaires se rapportant au théâtre et aux établissements d’enseignement musicals et dramatiques compiled by the Ministère de l’instruction publique et des Beaux-Arts, Législation théâtrale (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1888), 10-11. 39 Vaillant, “Circulaire explicative du précédent décret, 1864,” in Recueil des lois, décrets, arrêtés, 14-15.

25 that establishments such as music halls could present full-scale pantomime-ballets with sets and costumes.40

Within a few years of the annulment of the Napoleonic theatre laws, Paris was dotted with music halls. Many staged ballet. With its focus on the body and on stage spectacle, ballet was well-suited to variety-theatre entertainment: not a single review of a ballet staged in a music hall ever mentioned its incongruity.

Ballet was also considered a suitable music-hall number because several popular forms of ballet already existed. As mentioned above, private Parisian theatres had a long history of staging ballets both as independent productions and as divertissements in large-scale lyrical or spoken genres. As of the 1860s, English music halls were also making waves with divertissements staged alongside curiosities and circus-style amusements. In the 1880s, a new venue, the Eden-

Theatre, was built in Paris to accommodate the extravaganzas that were all the rage throughout Europe. The emergence of ballet as a key element of

Parisian music halls and its evolution into an autonomous subgenre seems in retrospect almost inevitable.

Ballet in Popular Theatres

Three popular theatres had a particularly vibrant ballet culture at the end of the nineteenth century: the Théâtre de la Gaîté, the Théâtre du Châtelet, and the

Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin. All three staged large-scale extravaganzas— féeries, dramas, pièces à grand spectacle, and opéras-comiques à grand

40 Wild, Dictionnaire des théâtres, 9-19.

26 spectacle—centred on over-the-top spectacle.41 A thin narrative or theme provided excuses for grand pageants and glittering tableaux, impressive stage effects, lavish sets and costumes, and ballet. Ballet was an essential ingredient of these spectacles, and féeries or pièces à grand spectacle typically included one to three divertissements and “grands ballets,” some of which were extensive, independent choreographed interludes lasting twenty minutes or more. Despite being but one element of a larger work, ballets in féeries and other spectacles were arranged by the leading ballet masters of the day—the same people who created music-hall ballets. Two of the most celebrated choreographers of ballet divertissements for private-enterprise theatre spectacles, Henri Justamant and

Madame Mariquita, were also two of the most illustrious creators of music-hall ballets (see Chapter 3). The line of influence between the two popular ballet subgenres was direct.42

The types of choreography presented in nineteenth-century popular theatres could be vastly different from one establishment to the next: some favoured academic ballet, others character or social dances, and still others various forms of freely conceived dances without any reference to danse d’école steps or poses. All three styles found their way into music-hall ballets. Although it is far beyond the limits of the present study to examine the ballets staged in all popular theatres, I will provide thumbnail sketches of two contrasting examples of ballets incorporated into boulevard-theatre extravaganzas to offer a sense of the

41 Féeries were massive spectacle productions with multiple tableaux that involved several hundred dancers, singers, extras, opulent costumes and decor, and impressive stage effects. They often, but in the late nineteenth century did not always, have fairytale plots. Pièces à grand spectacle were grand comic or dramatic plays involving similarly large performing forces and display. 42 Mariquita danced in several of Justamant’s ballets in the 1860s (possibly also in the 1870s) and was his successor at the Gaîté and Folies-Bergère. Her choreographic idiom, therefore, may have been marked by his.

27 choreographic diversity of late nineteenth-century popular ballet. The first of these examples was created by Justamant in 1888, the other by Mariquita in

1893.43

Justamant was one of the few choreographers of the period to record his ballets, and his many surviving notations offer an entry into the choreographic language and style of the era. Since his ballets for popular spectacles were well known to contemporary choreographers and large audiences alike, and since

Justamant himself was instrumental in shaping music-hall ballet while at the

Folies-Bergère in the 1880s, it is tempting to view his spectacle ballets as direct influences on music-hall ballets, and his notations as examples of what his music- hall ballets might have looked like. Such an endeavour has its risks. His works for both types of venue may well have been similar, but the lack of documentation of 1880s music-hall ballets precludes a definitive assessment. Also, while his notations preserved by the Paris Opéra do share a general choreographic idiom, they evince a considerable in tone and complexity.44 The examples I include here lean towards a purely academic language and are chosen to illustrate the “classical” side of popular ballet.45

Despite being integrated into a spectacle geared towards a mass audience,

Justamant’s two ballets for the 1888 féerie, Le Pied du mouton, used a standard nineteenth-century danse d’école vocabulary.46 Both were reminiscent of the so-

43 This late ballet may have been choreographed by Charles Justamant, Henri Justamant’s younger brother. The name listed on notations is written by hand in cursive and looks like a “Ch,” though it could also be a florid small caps “H.” Attached press clippings refer to him as M. Justamant or M. Justament so they do not provide clarification. For more on conflicting information about Justamant, see Chapter 3. 44 My work is based on the Justamant notations in F-Po. 45 Other ballets by Justamant relied to a greater extent on props and posed arrangements, with fewer danced sequences. 46 Henri (?) Justamant, “Les Fleurs guerrières et Les Flocons de Neiges,” F-Po B-217 (14). The féerie was staged at the Eden-Theatre when the Eden was losing ground as a venue for spectacle ballets. These are not among Justamant’s most famous ballets, but they are intriguing since they

28 called “white acts” prevalent in romantic ballets staged at the Opéra: the first, titled “Les Fleurs guérrières,” and the second, “Les Flocons de neiges,” were comprised of series of abstract dances that centred on constantly shifting arrangements of dancers who performed simple movements in synchrony to produce pleasing visual patterns. Dances were performed either by the entire corps—half women, half women in travesty—by small groups of sujets, groups of children, the solo star ballerina, or by the ballerina and her travesty partner.

All steps and poses would have been familiar to late nineteenth-century

French audiences: most dances were built on combinations of pas de bourrés, jetés, and glissades, while chassés glissés, assemblés, and arabesques also appear regularly in the descriptive text underlying Justamant’s stick-figure diagrams. A few dances were framed by figurantes and corps dancers holding giant props such as palm trees or operating horse-drawn carriages and sleighs. Justamant’s visual style was defined by a striking pursuit of symmetry and balanced patterns. When dancers performed a series of steps on one foot or entered from one side of the stage, the same steps were always repeated on the other side; arrangements of ensembles, whether dancing or posed, were likewise always symmetrical.

Although they were created on a grand scale and employed an unusually large number of dancers, Justamant’s ballets for Le Pied du mouton exhibit clear ties to nineteenth-century ballet traditions. A ballet for an extravaganza choreographed by Mariquita only five years later provides an example of a work from the other end of the ballet spectrum—one that inverted expectations and departed from nineteenth-century ballet conventions. Mariquita’s much talked- about ballet incorporated into the Gaîté’s 1893 pièce à grand spectacle, Les

might have stylistic links with a couple of music-hall ballets (and divertissements within music- hall ballets) that have similar titles.

29 Bicyclistes en voyage, included a dance that placed a premium on legs and new fads. The work had few demonstrable connections to ballet. Marcel Hutin, writing for l’Art musicale, described the ballet as being composed of:

four quadrilles of young women on bicycles covered in ribbons and flowers. In their midst, other cyclists, momentarily on foot and pushing their bikes, move about in circles and zigzags as the four pedal around them. Then, , Mlle Litini [a travesty performer] and Mlle Labounskaya [a star character dancer from the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatre], enter and add a note of grace to this ensemble, in the middle of which some perform fantastic turns.47 The differences between Justamant’s and Mariquita’s works cannot be explained by their individual approaches to choreography alone. While each no doubt had his or her own style, they were choreographing the same genres for the same or similar commercial institutions and audiences, and were using the same dancers, many of whom moved back and forth between mainstream popular theatres and music halls. The two also had close professional ties. Mariquita danced Justamant’s ballets at the Porte-Saint-Martin for several years and was later his successor at the Folies-Bergère. Although Mariquita’s work consistently leaned towards an idiosyncratic style, she was classically trained and her ballets were grounded in the conventions of traditional French pantomime-ballet (see

Chapters 3 and 5). The existence of Justamant’s notations confirms that many of his ballets were based in a traditional language and style, but visual representations and press commentary suggest that many of his ballets included a

47 Marcel Hutin, “Premières à venir,” L’Art musicale 32, no. 19 (5 October 1893): 28. “[Le ballet est] composé de quatre quadrilles de petites femmes montées à bicyclettes fleuries qui évoluent sur scène. Au milieu de ces cyclistes roulantes se pavaneront en musique d’autres cyclistes momentanément à pied et qui feront des grâces en rond et en zigzag pendant que les quatre pédaleront sur la scène. Enfin, un couple de mimes ballerines, composé de Mlle Litini en gommeux cycliste et de la jolie Mlle Labounskaia (sic) […] ajoutera une note gracieuse à cet ensemble, au milieu duquel quelques clowns exécuterons des tours fantastiques.” By quadrilles, Hutin meant groups of four dancers and not contemporary popular cancan dancers.

30 recognisably popular element.48 The examples described above are not meant to represent the dominant style of each choreographer, but rather to give a sense of the range of possible choreographic influences on Parisian music-hall ballet.

Music halls, as we will see, offered a similar aesthetic of contrasts, a frequent blending of different registers or styles, and the juxtaposition of academic ballet and freely choreographed dances. They also perpetuated a tradition of frivolous spectacle, presenting light-hearted subject matter as the backdrop for visual displays with an emphasis on the female body.49

Eden-Theatre Ballet

While ballet divertissements presented in private-enterprise theatre spectacles left an indelible mark on music-hall ballet throughout the history of the genre, one

Parisian theatre in particular had a direct influence on the evolution of large-scale music-hall pantomime-ballets in the late 1880s and 1890s: the Eden-Theatre. Just when the Opéra’s ballets were beginning to garner as much criticism as praise, when the féerie was beginning to wane, and when music halls still staged relatively small-scale ballets, the Eden-Theatre burst onto the scene with lavish and skilfully-executed choreographed displays on an unprecedented scale. The

Eden’s first production in 1883, a restaging of the Italian ballet Excelsior, took

Paris by storm, attracting hundreds of spectators night after night for more than

48 See, for example, a review by August Vitu in Le Figaro of Justamant’s féerie ballet for the 1883 restaging of Peau d’Ane at the Gaîté in which the critic notes Justamant’s legitimate inspiration from certain effects “vulgarized” by the Eden-Theatre. Undated clipping in F-Po 217 (17). 49 Music-hall ballets became so popular that they likely hastened the waning of the féerie and related genres. The aesthetic of the féerie and extravaganza, however, lived on in music-hall ballets, later to reappear in altered form in .

31 ten months.50 A second Italian ballet spectacle, Sieba, was equally successful.

Virtually overnight, the Eden-Theatre had become the Parisian centre for ballet.

The impact of the Eden-Theatre’s ballets on choreography in Paris was out of proportion with the institution’s short duration: the theatre was in operation for just under ten years. In addition, even though twenty-five ballets were staged during this time, the Eden’s most important productions were its first Italian ballets. By 1891, the Eden had invested so completely in an aesthetic of spectacle that when audiences grew tired of seeing the same formula repeated in slightly different guises, the theatre could no longer attract enough people to cover its costs and went bankrupt.51 Its last ballets from around 1890 were also very similar to music-hall ballets, which, as I will show, had by then grown in scale and were attracting a similarly select audience. In the mid-1880s, however, the supremacy of the Eden’s ballets in Paris was undeniable. A study of the Eden-

Theatre and its ballets would greatly contribute to our understanding of late nineteenth-century French ballet, but an in-depth investigation lies beyond the scope of the present study. The following overview is therefore intended only to complete my sketch of the dance culture in which music-hall ballets were created.

The Eden-Theatre’s raison d’être was spectacle. Situated on the rue

Boudreau around the corner from the Opéra, the Eden vied with the state-theatre in scale and in grandeur. The Eden could seat only 1200, but it had a stage nearly as large as the Opéra’s and was equipped with an impressive array of stage

50 Excelsior was premiered January 7, 1883 and played for 300 consecutive performances. For a discussion of the ballet, see Flavia Pappacena, ed. Excelsior. Chorégraphie: Studi e recherché sulla danza [Excelsior: Documents and Essays] (Rome: Di Giacomo, 1998). 51 See reviews about the Eden-Theatre by Edouard Noël and Edmond Stoullig originally published in Les Annales du théâtre et de la musique (Paris: Ollendorff, 1875-1916) and collected in “L’Eden-Théâtre, 1884-1893” (n.d., n.p.) F-Pn RT-2979.

32 machinery.52 Even more remarkable was its ostentatious and eclectic decor. The theatre’s facade made reference to Hindu architecture, and the auditorium was built to resemble a Hindu pagoda with massive arabesque-adorned colonnades and statues of Indian women atop elephant heads.53 Social spaces on each side of the auditorium were decorated with an assortment of exotic styles: a room to the left of the auditorium was lined with mirrors and filled with Indian objects; and one to the right was arranged as a combined tropical and desert garden of cacti, palms, banana trees, and aloe. A large central promenoir gave onto yet another Hindu- inspired room that had a magnificent frescoed ceiling by Clairin depicting women of various nations. In the foyer, barmaids dressed in colourful European national costumes—Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Swiss, etc—served drinks during intermissions.54

The Eden-Theatre’s first Italian ballet, Excelsior, by Luigi Manzotti with music by Romualdo Marenco, had recently been premiered in Milan to great acclaim.55 Excelsior was an extravaganza of magnificent proportions: it consisted of more than ninety minutes of dancing and pageantry, it had several entirely different elaborate stage sets, an array of colourful costumes, and a cast of several hundred. The succession of choreographed tableaux, character dances and ballet,

52 Annie Ledout, “L’Eden-Théâtre (1883-1893),” internationale de musique française 6, no.17 (June 1985): 109-16; Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 88-93; and Philippe Chauveau, Les Théâtres parisiens disparus, 1402-1986 (Paris : Éditions de l’Amandier, 1999), 205-8. 53 For descriptions of the hall see reviews of the ballet’s premiere. This sketch is primarily taken from Émile Abraham, “L’Éden-Théâtre,” Le Petit Journal, 8 January 1883. 54 The auditorium could be reached without passing through the promenoir, allowing families to bring their young girls to the show. Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “La Soirée théâtrale: inauguration de l’Éden-Théatre,” Le Figaro, 8 January 1883. According to Stoullig, although the Italian theatres staged Excelsior without intermissions, there were two for productions staged at the Eden to give the prostitutes of the promenoir a chance to meet their clients. Noël and Stoullig, “L’Eden-Théâtre, 1884-1893,” 389. 55 Romualdo Marenco, Excelsior (Paris: Editions Ricordi, 1883). It was subsequently restaged all over Europe.

33 processions, and action scenes combined the ostentation of the féerie with the technical virtuosity of academic ballet.56

Excelsior had virtually no plot, but was instead a grand celebration of human invention that featured new technological or scientific discoveries from all around the world.57 It began with the allegorical figure of Obscurity standing over the desolate ruins of an ancient city, after which the figure of Light broke out of her shackles to transport the audience into the illuminated kingdom of progress and activity. A series of great inventions presided over by Civilisation were then paraded before the audience’s eyes: the first trains, the invention of the battery by

Volta, the telegraph, the completion of the tunnel through Mount Cenis, and the opening of the Suez . The various self-contained tableaux had thin narratives that provided excuses for endless dances or choreographed configurations; all were framed by sumptuous sets and colourful national costumes. Light, in the end, triumphed over Obscurity after nearly two hours of unremitting and dazzling exhibitions of colour, light, and movement.58

One of the most talked-about qualities of the Eden’s Italian ballet was the high standard of its dancing. The theatre’s stars ranked amongst the most talented and acclaimed of —then the centre of virtuosic ballet—and the corps dancers were trained to a higher standard than any in Paris. Elena Cornalba, or “La

Cornalba,” in particular garnered lasting fame. The most celebrated ballerina in

Paris, she was ranked by critics above any Paris Opéra star dancer and attracted a devoted following of connoisseurs, artists, intellectuals, and amateurs. Her

56 Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 89. 57 As Laplace-Claverie notes, librettos were not of primary importance in Italian ballet. A libretto was judged a success if it provided opportunities for choreographic display and scenic effects. Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 91. 58 One of the best descriptions of the show and its reception is Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre’s long review of the premiere, “La Soirée théâtrale: inauguration de l’Éden-Théatre,” Le Figaro, 8 January 1883.

34 unparalleled technical abilities and agility on pointe initiated a craze for dazzling ballet variations whenever a dramatic excuse for them could be contrived. If some critics and choreographers later complained of empty virtuosity in late nineteenth- century ballet, audiences were enthralled and encouraged this trend.59

Casting practices in music halls reflect this fascination with Italian virtuoso ballerinas: for more than a decade the halls hired the very best Italian ballerinas to star in their ballets. Some dancers, including the Folies-Bergère’s and Olympia’s long-time star Lina Campana, came from the ranks of the Eden-

Theatre.60 One notable difference between imported Italian ballets and Paris’s usual Opéra or music-hall fare was the use of the male dancer. While male dancers were only rarely cast in central and secondary roles in French ballets, men could both mime and dance in Italian productions, and most of the Eden’s ballets had multiple danced and mimed roles for men.61 This held true even when the

Eden turned to staging newly created ballets by French artists.62

One of the Eden’s most famous attractions was its ballet corps.

Numbering in the hundreds, the entire troupe was trained to move in perfect synchrony. The result was ensemble choreography based on formal lines and shifting geometric patterns.63 Reviewers report with awe the dancers’ almost

59 This was in part an argument over the relative worth of French and Italian ballet styles. Italian ballet’s more athletic, virtuosic style was eye-catching and for a time captivated late nineteenth- century French audiences. It quickly became the scapegoat of critics who felt that French ballet was turning into mere gymnastics routines in emulation of what they felt was Italian ballet’s empty, flashy technique. 60 Press clippings in F-Pn 8-RO-12400. Music-hall dancers whose names appear on Eden-Theatre programmes include Mlle Briffaut (as a child), Correnti, Rivolta, Blanche Dupré, Rosa and Francesca Mainardi, Jeanne Litini (as a mime), and Emilia and Enrichetta Vergani. 61 The names of many of the Eden’s male stars turn up on music-hall programmes as mimes and choreographers in Paris and London in the years after the demise of the Eden-Theatre. 62 The male dancers did not draw as much attention in the French press as did the women. 63 Jane Pritchard, “Divertissement Only: The Establishment, Development and Decline of the Music Hall Ballet in London” (Unfinished thesis, University of Kent, London Contemporary Dance School, 2005), 186-87.

35 military precision, and these critics never tired of describing the effect produced by several hundred arms and legs moving as one. Although precision ensemble dancing did not find its way into the music halls on anywhere near as grand a scale, a propensity towards creating kaleidoscopic effects using the ballet corps did.

While Excelsior was the most widely celebrated and critically acclaimed

Eden-Theatre ballet, it was by no means the theatre’s only spectacular production.

Although none ever took in the extraordinarily high box-office receipts accrued by

Excelsior, the Eden staged a series of large-scale ballets of a similar ilk through the mid- to late 1880s. Some of these were pre-existing Italian productions; others were written and composed by French artists. Many of the late ballets resembled music-hall ballets, in part because of an infiltration of local influences, and in part because music-hall ballets had grown similar to the Eden’s spectacles.64

As the following small sample illustrates, all of the Eden’s ballets after

Excelsior were structured around grandiose display: Sieba, based on a

Scandinavian legend, had a cast of 500 and sets that included a military camp, the gates of heaven, hell, a grotto, and a shipwreck; Djemmah, set in 6th century

Persia, had whirling dervishes, slave dances, a bacchanal, a long cortège, military scenes, and lascivious dances; Messalina, a ballet based on Roman history, included elephants, horses, circus games with gladiators, massive crowd scenes, and several fantastical divertissements.65 Reviews of all Eden ballets praised the

64 Although the Eden is mainly remembered for its ballets featuring chains of dances, pageants, and action scenes, many of its French ballets did have fairly detailed narratives, if simple overarching plots. Scores reveal that several had as many pantomime scenes as dances, sometimes integrated throughout as in traditional ballet d’action. 65 Manzotti, Sieba (Paris: Société Anonyme de publications périodiques, 1883); Recueil factice de presse, Djemma, F-Pn RO-11161; and Recueil factice de presse, Messalina, F-Pn RO-11156.

36 lavish inventory of shimmering costumes and magical backdrops—an “orgy of colour” glittering beneath a flood of electric lighting.66

The influence of the Eden-Theatre’s productions on Parisian ballet culture would be difficult to measure in precise terms. Its Italian ballets were a revelation for many and for a time altered the style of ballets staged at the Opéra and in popular venues. The theatre’s more nebulous and far-reaching influence resulted from the productions’ broad appeal: they drew artists and intellectuals, the middle classes, and the fashionable elite into a popular venue to see choreographed spectacles geared towards pleasing a mass audience. The phenomenon thus triggered a shift in expectations towards a ballet aesthetic of spectacle and light music.67 The theatre’s unprecedented success also spurred other establishments to stage more ballet in an effort to win audiences back.

Although the Eden-Theatre brought a popular ballet style to the forefront of Parisian theatre culture and inspired the production of new large-scale spectacle ballets in music halls, popular ballet was already well-established in Parisian music halls. The Eden had a demonstrable impact in the 1880s, but the most important precedent for Parisian music-hall ballet, and the one that had the longest lasting influence, was English music-hall ballet.

English Music-Hall Ballet

Parisian music-hall ballet was directly inspired by English music-hall ballet. By the time Sari took ownership of the Folies-Bergère in 1872, London music halls already had a thriving tradition of including ballets alongside circus attractions and

66 For various examples, see reviews in Noël and Stoullig, “L’Eden-Théâtre, 1884-1893.” 67 For a sense of who was in the audience for the premiere of Excelsior, see Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “La Soirée théâtrale: inauguration de l’Éden-Théatre,” Le Figaro, 8 January 1883.

37 song-and-dance numbers in variety theatres. The first hall to present large-scale ballets on a regular basis was London’s Alhambra Theatre of Varieties in Leicester

Square.68 Established by Frederick Strange in 1864 as a music hall with a license for singing and dancing, the Alhambra quickly became the pre-eminent centre for ballet in London.69 The hall had a large stage and seating for 3000, its own troupe, and a series of ballet masters and music directors who provided the choreography and scores for most of its ballets.70 It also had a comfortable café-concert ambiance: patrons came and went freely throughout the evening, dropping in for a particular ballet or other attraction, wandering the grand promenade to meet with prostitutes, or lounging about with a drink and cigarette.71 The hall presented two to three ballets every night, each lasting a half an hour to forty-five minutes.72

Collectively, these ballets played a pivotal role in the development of music-hall ballet and were key to establishing many of the stylistic features and performance practices common to the genre throughout its history in England and France.

The Alhambra’s ballets proved to have great appeal, and between 1864 and 1870, the hall staged forty-five new productions. In 1871, however, the

Alhambra obtained a full theatre licence and turned from variety fare to staging comic operas and féerie-type extravaganzas.73 Although the latter included a

68 The history of English music-hall ballet stretches back to the 1850s, but these were small ballets in comparison to productions from the 1860s-90s. Guest mentions some of the theatres besides the that staged ballets in the 1850s. Ivor Guest, Ballet in Leicester Square: The Alhambra and the Empire 1860-1915 (London, Dance Books, 1992), 3. 69 As in Paris, the rise of music-hall ballet coincided with a decline and near cessation of ballet in opera houses and royal theatres. Pritchard, “Divertissement Only,” 43. 70 The Alhambra’s ballet masters during its early years include Luiza Collier, John Milano, and Henri Dewinne, and its conductor-composers include J. W. Hird and Jules Rivière. See appendices in Guest, Ballet in Leicester Square, 148-49. 71 Ibid., 15; and Jane Pritchard, “Collaborative Creations for the Alhambra and the Empire,” Dance Chronicle 24, no. 1 (2001): 63. 72 Pritchard, “Collaborative Creations,” 63. Programmes often listed the hour of performance for each number and ballet so that patrons would not miss their favourites. Ballets were sometimes trimmed down towards the end of their run and were rotated every few months. 73 W. F. Craies, “The Censorship of Stage Plays,” Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation, n.s., 8, no. 2 (1907): 196-202.

38 substantial choreographed component, ballet was for several years relegated to a subordinate role. It was not until 1884, when the Alhambra returned to music-hall status, that the hall was once again a trendsetter in the realm of music-hall ballet subjects and styles.

Strange’s formula for the Alhambra in the 1860s was so successful that it was soon emulated by many of the music halls that cropped up around London: the Empire, the Metropolitan, the South London, Lusby’s, the Canterbury, the

Oxford, and the Palace all had ballet troupes, ballet masters, and important danced entertainments at different periods in the late nineteenth century.74 As Jane

Pritchard points out, it was actually the suburban halls—in particular the

Metropolitan, the South London, and Lusby’s—that insured the perpetuation of an

English music-hall ballet tradition through the 1870s and brought new developments to the genre.75

The zenith of English music-hall ballet productivity and popularity coincided with that of Parisian music-hall ballet. The Alhambra returned to staging independent large-scale ballets in 1884 with a licence for variety fare, and the Empire, soon its arch rival, was established as a theatre of varieties on the other side of Leicester Square in 1887.76 Both housed sizable dance troupes and employed some of the best ballerinas, ballet masters/choreographers, and popular composers of the era. The Alhambra boasted a succession of famous artists:

Joseph Hansen and Carlo Coppi choreographed dances that were at once imaginative and popular, George Jacobi wrote several appealing scores, and star ballerinas Emma Palladino, Emma Bessone, and raised the level

74 Guest, Ballet in Leicester Square, 6; and Pritchard “Collaborative Creations,” 55-56, 77-79. 75 Pritchard, “Collaborative Creations,” 55-56; and “Divertissement Only,” 75-84. 76 According to Pritchard, the Alhambra’s most creative years were 1884-1892 and the Empire’s 1887-1896. Pritchard, “Divertissement Only,” 100; and “Collaborative Creations,” 56.

39 of English music-hall ballet performance to that of Europe’s great opera houses.77

The Empire’s ballets were in turn choreographed by the lead ballet mistress in

London, Katti Lanner, whose collaborations with the designer Charles Wilhelm and composers Hervé and Léopold Wenzel for a time turned the Empire into one of the foremost ballet establishments in Europe.78

The types of ballets staged in English music halls changed over time and were slightly different from one hall to the next. In its early years, the Alhambra staged a roughly equal mix of comic ballets and post-romantic ballets.79 Comic ballets drew on the Commedia dell’arte and of British pantomime and involved a great deal of acrobatics, illusions, and ; post-romantic works featured the otherworldly spirits, idealised rural communities, kingdoms, and exotic locales of French romantic ballet.80 When suburban halls took the lead in music-hall ballet production between 1870 and 1884, they developed a new type of ballet: up-to-date topical ballets that drew on social events and pastimes.

Ballets featuring seaside holiday resorts became increasingly prevalent, as did works about sports or other contemporary leisure activities.81 As Pritchard shows, these topical ballets foreshadowed the more famous up-to-date productions staged by the Alhambra and Empire theatres in the 1880s and 1890s.

The Alhambra and the Empire produced a wide variety of works at their peaks in the late nineteenth century: they continued for a time to produce the comic and post-romantic ballets of earlier years, and they presented ballets

77 Guest, Ballet in Leicester Square, 35; and Pritchard, “Divertissement Only,” 100. Legnani is now more famous for her thirty-two fouettés in the premiere of the St. Petersburg version of . 78 Guest, Ballet in Leicester Square, 91-102. The Empire upstaged the Alhambra after 1897 when it hired the brilliant Danish ballerina Adeline Genée. Guest, Ballet in Leicester Square, 55. 79 Pritchard, “Divertissement Only,” 47-48. By post-romantic ballet, Pritchard is referring to the ballet of the Paris Opéra created after 1870 in a romantic style. 80 Ibid., 47-48. 81 Ibid., 75-84.

40 derived from myths, fairytales, and literature, but they also adopted the practice of choreographing contemporary subjects, presenting scenes from everyday life, illustrating specific events, or reflecting social concerns of the day.82 After the advent of touring Italian ballets such as Excelsior in 1885, spectacle and novelty took on increased prominence, pushing post-romantic ballet aside. At all points in its history, the scope of English music-hall ballet was far broader than Parisian- music ballet, but this was especially true during its final decade. By the late

1890s, English music-hall productions had few ties with academic ballet: subjects were not conducive to danse d’école choreography for an academically-trained ballet corps, and there were virtually no roles for star ballerinas.83 Instead, up-to- date revue-like ballets took the fore, often performed by “professional beauties” such as Emilienne d’Alençon or by popular specialty dancers.84 This trend, as I will show in later chapters, had its corollary in Paris, but Parisian music-hall ballet always maintained a closer affinity with traditional pantomime-ballet.

The Folies-Bergère, modelled on the Alhambra, adopted the format of

English music-hall programming, and from the 1870s through the 1890s presented ballets that reproduced subject matter already popular with English audiences.

Titles of Parisian ballets in the 1880s, for instance, recall those of English ballets from the 1860s and 1870s: English ballets such as Divertissement espagnole

(1865) and The Watteau Fête (1866) were later matched by Divertissement espagnole (1887) and a series of Watteauesque ballets in Paris. At the height of music-hall ballet, similar themes crop up on both sides of the Channel: whereas the Empire staged The Sports of England (1887), Cleopatra (1889),

82 Ibid., 147. 83 Ibid., 127. 84 Ibid., 133-34.

41 (1891) Round the Town (1892), On Pier (1894), (1895), Beauty and the Beast (1898) and The Press (1898), Parisian halls produced Presse-Ballet

(Folies-Bergère, 1888), Les Baigneuses (1889), Paris-Turf (Folies-Bergère, 1890),

Tentations (1893), La Belle et la bête (1895), Sports (Folies-Bergère, 1897), Faust

(Olympia, 1900), Cléopâtre (Casino, 1900), and Paris qui danse (1901). The ballets The Swans (1884), By the Sea (1891), and In Japan (1902) were directly imported from London to Paris; Scaramouche, premiered in Paris in 1891, was restaged in London in 1893.

There were nevertheless many differences between the themes favoured by

English and Parisian audiences. For example, although both English and French halls staged stylized representations of leisure activities, in England this meant a rise in the number of ballets about seaside resorts, sports, and London’s famous sights, while in France this led to an increase of scenes set in dance halls and popular balls. English ballets tended more often towards the mode of high and slapstick, the French towards flirtation and explicit sexual provocation. French ballets also remained closer in concept and style to those of the romantic era, whereas English ballets frequently incorporated any number of extra popular dances, acrobatic acts, or other music-hall “turns.”85

English and French music-hall ballets also had one important structural difference due to theatre laws. English ballets were always divertissements and not pantomime-ballets. Although many had a simple storyline with some mime, the focus was on dance, poses, and action, and not on detailed narrative. Parisian music halls, in contrast, staged both divertissements and pantomime-ballets. In

England, pantomime-ballet, or ballet d’action, fell under the category of “stage

85 Ibid., 6, 147-48.

42 plays,” works with developed storylines.86 Under the Lord Chamberlain laws, only selected licensed theatres were permitted to present stage plays, and while

“pantomime-ballet” was not specifically included in these laws, any ballet staged by a variety theatre that leaned too far towards conveying a story was considered to fall under the category of stage play and hence was subject to fines. As mentioned above, Parisian music halls were no longer constrained by specific theatre laws, although as I will show, vestiges of obsolete laws did leave their mark on the structure and subject matter of Parisian music-hall ballets. English music-hall ballet was the inspiration for the adoption of a similar culture in Paris, but once ballet was established as a key element of French variety entertainment, it evolved along an independent trajectory, influenced by a range of local cultural practices, institutions, artists, and choreographic genres.

86 Ibid., 5-6. Pritchard uses the synonymous term ballet d’action rather than pantomime-ballet.

43 44 CHAPTER 2. ELEGANT POPULISM: THE VENUES AND THE SHOWS

“It is ugly and it is superb,” declared J.-K. Huysmans in his 1879 sketch of the

Folies-Bergère, “it is in both exquisitely good and outrageously bad taste.”87 With these words Huysmans summed up what was for many the allure of the legendary music hall, a venue celebrated as much for its resplendent decor and comfortable club-like surroundings as for its theatrical productions and circus acts.

Huysmans’s sketch, a prose tour of the hall structured to resemble a music-hall programme, offers vivid descriptions of the hall’s decor, audiences, and entertainments. Patrons swarmed the halls, creating a seemingly constant frenzy of noises, smells, images, and interactions; the air was thick, dusty from the seat cushions and carpets, and filled with cigar smoke and the scent of women; the crowds were lively and noisy, the courtesans ever-present and alluring.

Huysmans conjures up a world seemingly rife with contradictions, evoking an atmosphere at once elegant and rowdy, refined and vulgar:

It is also unfinished, like anything that aims to be truly beautiful. The faux jardin, with its raised walkways, its arcades of rough wooden latticework with solid lozenges and cut-out trefoils stained red ochre and gold, its canopy of pompommed and tasseled material, striped garnet-red and greyish-brown, its fake Louvois fountains with three enormous women back-to-back sandwiched between two enormous saucers of imitation bronze set amid green tufts, its pathways carpeted with tables, rattan divans and chairs, with bars tended by amply made-up women, resembles at one and the same time the restaurant on the Rue and a Turkish or Algerian bazaar.88

87 J.-K. Huysmans, “The Folies-Bergère in 1879,” in Parisian Sketches, trans. Brendan King (Sawtry: Dedalus, 2004), 43. 88 Huysmans description continues: “Alhambresque à la Poyet, Moorish à la Duval, with, what’s more, the vague smell of those bar-saloons in the old suburbs decorated with oriental columns and mirrors, this theatre, with its auditorium whose faded reds and tarnished golds clash with the brand-new luxury of the faux jardin, is the only place in Paris that stinks so deliciously of the make-up of bought caresses and the desperation of depravities that fail to excite.” Ibid., 43-44.

45 The Folies-Bergère was part theatre and part café-concert. Variety numbers and theatrical amusements were provided on stage in an auditorium situated at the back of the music hall, but members of the audience chatted continuously and came and went freely throughout performances. Patrons could sit with a drink in the vast, ornately-decorated front lobby (Figure 2.1), or they could wander around the hall’s promenoir, a social space that ran around the outer perimeter of the auditorium (Figure 2.4).89 Regardless of whether people came to the hall to socialize, to have a drink in luxurious surroundings, or to watch a theatrical performance, all came for a light-hearted and entertaining night out.

Although the Folies-Bergère was altered and redecorated several times in the 1880s and 1890s, and although it attracted an increasingly upscale audience, its ambiance remained remarkably constant. The hall also set the tone for the

Casino de Paris and the Olympia, both of which by 1900 became its rival in opulence, quality of entertainment, and ability to draw le Tout-Paris.

This chapter traces the history of the Folies-Bergère, the Casino de Paris, and the Olympia with a focus on the context in which popular ballets were performed. As descriptions of the halls’ ambiance will reveal, music halls were a new and very different kind of venue for ballet, but one that competed with the city’s popular and state-subsidized theatres for audiences.

89 André Sallé and Philippe Chauveau, Music-hall et café-concert (Paris: Bordas, 1985), 155. For the first few years, patrons could also smoke inside the hall as in a café-concert. The lobby was first filled with plants and fountains to resemble an oriental garden and was later carpeted and transformed into a winter garden.

46

Figure 2.1. Drawing by Yves & Barret of patrons and prostitutes milling about the bars in the Folies-Bergère’s lobby. The auditorium and promenoir are beyond the arch. “The Folies-Bergère, 1878,” clipping in F-Pn (Photo-estampes), “9e arrondissement, Folies-Bergère.”

The Folies-Bergère, 1872-1886: Variety Shows and Other Entertainments

The Folies-Bergère was inaugurated in May of 1869 and was the first establishment of its kind in Paris. The venue was not, however, an immediate success.90 Despite inviting space, a richly decorated lobby, a comfortable auditorium, and programmes that featured standard popular fare of operettas, comic pieces, and songs, attendance was often poor.91 From 1869 to 1871 the hall

90 The Folies-Bergère was inaugurated 2 May 1869 by Albert Boislève. Raoul Muriand, Les Folies-Bergère (Paris: La Sirène, 1994), 12. It is now a venue for show girls and popular musical productions. 91 The hall at the time had a relatively low entrance fee of 1 franc or 1 franc 50.

47 closed then reopened several times, the victim of poor box-office returns and financial instability, as well as of the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war and the

Siege of Paris. The Folies-Bergère had one brief period of relative success following the war: it was one of several theatres used as a stage for political speakers seeking election in the Commune.92 Always filled for these events, the hall was granted eight months of publicity, at least in terms of name recognition.

The Folies-Bergère’s history as a performance venue began in earnest in

September 1872 when Léon Sari took over as director.93 Since the hall was not architecturally well-suited to spoken dialogue or singing—one critic wrote, tongue-in-cheek, that the “hall was ingeniously engineered…for the acoustics of a pantomime!”—Sari dropped the spoken pieces and had far fewer sung numbers than did most analogous venues.94 Instead, he presented a wide array of performances and curiosities that included anything from bearded ladies, lion tamers, Egyptian dancers, and trapeze artists, to pantomimes, operettas, and ballet divertissements (Figure 2.2).95 An orchestra of forty musicians led by Olivier

Métra played popular dance tunes between the numbers.96 Though the precise content of programmes would change somewhat in successive directorships, the formula remained constant.

92 Several of the large Parisian theatres were used for this purpose. The Folies-Bergère became famous due to the pre-eminence of the speakers who presented their platforms there. Muriand, Les Folies-Bergère, 13. The speakers included Jules Michelet and Henri Rochefort. Sallé and Chauveau, Music-hall et café-concert, 155. 93 Léon Sari, formerly the director of the Délassements Comiques, inaugurated the hall on 13 September 1872. Sallé and Chauveau, Music-hall et café-concert, 155. 94 “Une salle très ingénieusement agencée...pour l’acoustique de la pantomime.” Quoted in Ibid., 154. Original in L’Eclipse, 16 May 1869. Muriand claims that Sari was aware of the acoustic deficiencies of his hall. Muriand, Les Folies-Bergère, 20. If so, it is all the more surprising that Sari wanted to present symphonic concerts in 1881. 95 See Muriand, Les Folies-Bergère, 22-26, for descriptions of specific numbers and entertainers. 96 The Folies-Bergère also gave masked balls in the winter gardens that attracted many foreign tourists. These were so successful that in 1879, when Léon Vasseur replaced Olivier Métra as conductor, the theatre remained open for the summer. Ibid., 21.

48

Figure 2.2. Drawing by DeBeaurepaire (?) of circus entertainments at the Folies- Bergère in 1872. “Folies-Bergère—Représentation des frères Hanlon-Lees et de Little Bob (1872),” clipping in F-Pn (Photo-estampes) NE.63.

49 The Folies-Bergère regularly staged ballet divertissements throughout the

1870s and 1880s, but ballet was not yet the mainstay of the hall’s entertainment.97

A rare collection of programmes for two consecutive months of the Folies-

Bergère’s 1876-77 season stored in the archives of the Paris Musée de l’Opéra gives a sense of staging practices under Sari.98 Rather than present one central theatrical production framed by circus acts and musical numbers as would later be the custom, Sari tended to offer two or three short theatre pieces interspersed with circus numbers (Figure 2.3).99 Theatrical productions were almost always an operetta, a pantomime, and a ballet-divertissement. Changes to the programme were staggered so that returning audiences were guaranteed a selection of novelties along with reruns of popular favourites.

Ballet-divertissements were initially treated the same way as any other variety number. Some divertissements were performed for as little as a few days, while others ran for up to four weeks (the same was true of operettas and pantomimes); they were then replaced by a new divertissement or by one only recently removed from the programme. A glance at programmes from November and December 1876 shows that there was an almost constant turnover of old and new ballets. In mid-November, a new divertissement titled Les Faunes, choreographed by M. Bertotto to music by Olivier Métra, was added to a programme that already featured an operetta and pantomime.100 Three weeks later,

97 Programmes did not include cast lists for the ballets. There is therefore no way to know whether the theatre employed classically trained danseuses étoiles for principal roles or whether mime artists were assigned roles as they would be in later pantomime-ballets. 98 Folies-Bergère programmes, F-Po PRO.B.169 (1876-1877). This is the only collection of early Folies-Bergère programmes that has so far turned up in archives and the only consecutive run of programmes for any hall. 99 Programmes also included incidental . Scores for these orchestral numbers were listed on programmes as being for sale at the “Comptoir de musique des Folies-Bergère.” 100 According to programmes, Olivier Métra was the conductor of the Folies-Bergère orchestra from 1872 to 1879. F-Pn 4-RO-3902.

50

Figure 2.3. Folies-Bergère programme, 13 November 1876, F-Po PRO.B.176

51 on December 9, a divertissement titled La Posada by the Armandi brothers and

Métra succeeded Les Faunes. After only two days, another divertissement was added—Les Fiancés du Béarn by the Armandi brothers, again arranged by

Bertotto with music by Métra. La Posada was soon dropped in favour of a restaging of Les Faunes. The two ballets, Les Faunes and Les Fiancés du Béarn, then played together until they were replaced on December 24 by a new divertissement choreographed by Mlle Mariquita—Les Joujoux, to music by

Métra.101 On December 29, Les Fiancés du Béarn was brought back to play alongside Joujoux. In just six weeks, audiences would therefore have had the opportunity to see four different ballets, of which two were repeated. Throughout this time, operettas and pantomimes came and went, short acts were periodically added and removed, and musical numbers were gradually altered.

The Folies-Bergère was also notorious for a form of entertainment readily available to its more affluent male clients: the prostitutes and courtesans of the promenoir.102 Although not advertised on the hall’s programmes, the presence of these women was well known to the public and well documented by artists and writers, who were drawn to the grittiness. Three early illustrations of this are

Jean-Louis Forain’s cartoon of a promenoir cocotte, published in Le Monde

101 Joujoux, premiered in March 1876, was restaged as a Christmas ballet later that year. It was a true divertissement with virtually no plot or mime: dolls and toys, brought to life by a fairy, dance the night away. Towards the end, the shopkeeper returns, tries to order the toys back onto the shelves, and is rendered immobile by a wave of the fairy’s wand. The storyline is described by “Fantasia” in programmes dating from 27 December 1876 to 1 January 1877, F-Po PRO.B.169 (1876-1877). Faunes was a bucolic pastoral divertissement featuring flirtatious wood nymphs and faunes in amorous dalliances. Fantasia, Folies-Bergère programme, 9 November 1876, F-Po PRO.B.169 (1876-1877). 102 The promenoir was created by Léon Sari. Sallé and Chauveau, Music-hall et café-concert, 155. The prostitutes apparently sometimes caused disturbances by fighting amongst each other. When the Isolas took over in 1901, they distributed special entrance cards to the most elegant prostitutes, who also had from then on to register with the police. It is therefore possible to trace prostitutes who worked at the Folies-Bergère in the early twentieth century. Muriand, Les Folies- Bergère, 44.

52 parisien in 1879 and reproduced in Novalene Ross’s Manet’s Bar at the Folies-

Bergère and the Myths of Popular Illustration, Édouard Manet’s Un Bar aux

Folies-Bergère, and Huysmans’s description of the hall’s prostitutes in his

Parisian Sketches. Forain’s drawing shows a well-dressed man in top-hat and overcoat leaning with what Ross describes as a provocative leer towards a tightly- corseted young woman. The caption below it reads: “And what is your name?”

“Zoé… the rest of the conversation has been deleted by the censor.”103

Huysmans’s account, which was, according to Ross, inspired by Forain’s drawing, describes them in more explicit terms:

They are outrageous and they are magnificent as they march two by two round the semicircular floor of the [promenoir], powdered and painted, eyes drowned in a smudge of pale blue, lips ringed in startling red, their breasts thrust out over laced corsets, exuding waves of opoponax which they disperse by fanning, and which mingles with the strong aroma of their underarms and the subtle scent of a flower expiring on their bust. You watch, entranced, as this gaggle of whores passes rhythmically by, against a dull red backdrop broken only by windows, like wooden merry-go-round horses that twirl in slow motion to the sound of an organ around a bit of scarlet curtain embellished with mirrors and lamps; you watch their thighs churn under dresses the bottoms of which are edged by white petticoats that flounce, like eddies of foam, under the hem of the material. You gasp as you follow the skill with which these women’s backs slide between the bellies of men who, coming in the opposite direction, open and close again around them, revealing a glimpse, through the gaps between the men’s heads, of the backs of their chignons, lit on each side by the golden gleam of a piece of jewellery, by the flash of a gemstone.104

These “dames de petite vertu” were a favourite attraction and an integral part of the evening’s experience. As a result, the Folies-Bergère’s entrance hall and

103 Novelene Ross, Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergère and the Myths of Popular Illustration (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1982), 79. The drawing was printed in Le Monde parisien, 6 December 1879. 104 Huysmans, Parisian Sketches, 34.

53 promenoir at times vied with the hall’s official stage as the focal point of the evening’s spectacle as members of the audience and prostitutes alike paraded about in front of each other (Figure 2.4).

Figure 2.4. Drawing by H. Alberti of patrons milling about the Folies-Bergère’s promenoir. The auditorium is directly behind them. “Une Répétition aux Folies- Bergère,” c. 1900, clipping in F-Pn 4-ICO THE 4376.

Marchand’s Folies-Bergère, 1886-1901

Music-hall ballet might have remained in the realm of the divertissement had it not been for the vision of Edouard Marchand, the artistic director of the Folies-

Bergère between 1886 and 1901. By the mid-1880s, Sari’s Folies-Bergère was floundering and near bankruptcy. Although his evenings of variety entertainment had been lucrative throughout the 1870s, Sari grew increasingly ambitious and made programming changes that would prove to be his demise. In order to add

54 artistic prestige to his establishment, he initiated a series of symphonic concerts in

1881 under the direction of a committee composed of Gounod, Massenet, Saint-

Saëns, Delibes, Joncières, and Giraud with the newly named Orchestre du Concert de Paris.105 The concerts were a financial disaster and ended one month later.

Sari quickly reverted to music-hall entertainments to attempt to recover his former audience, but his business losses, compounded with his gambling habits, proved ruinous. He held out for four more years then declared bankruptcy in 1885 and was forced to sell the Folies-Bergère the following year.106 The new directors, the

Allemands, a wealthy couple with no knowledge of the theatre business even though they already owned the Parisian music hall La Scala, handed over the artistic direction to their son-in-law, Édouard Marchand.107

Marchand’s reign from 1886 to 1901 proved to be a golden age for ballet in the music hall: forty-nine new pantomime-ballets were staged in fifteen years, with thirty new works produced in the 1890s alone, and each, as the reviewers for

Le Figaro repeatedly declared, was staged with more “delightful” music,

“ravishingly beautiful” dancers, “elegant and graceful” mimes, “luxurious” costuming and decor, and “exquisitely arranged” choreography than the last.108

The Marchand-directed Folies-Bergère of the 1890s was arguably an even more paradoxical and multifaceted institution than it had been in the 1870s and

105 Eugène Héros, “Les Folies-Bergère,” in La Revue des Folies-Bergère (Paris: Art Editions, 1923), described in Sallé and Chauveau, Music-hall et café-concert, 155. 106 See the first newspaper clipping summarizing the history of the Folies-Bergère in F-Pn, 8-RO- 15722 (1-14). The Allemands paid 252,000 francs for the hall. The annual rent for the hall, which belonged to the Hospice des Quinze-Vingts, was then 72,000 francs. Jacques Charles, Cent ans de music-hall (Geneva: Jeheber, 1956), 157. Jacques Charles worked as secretary to the Isola brothers when they took over the Folies-Bergère. He then took over the directorship of the Olympia when the Isola brothers withdrew from that music hall three years later. 107 Édouard Marchand had recently married the niece of the Allemands. The Allemands also bought the Eldorado in 1887 and left it to Marchand to run. 108 The superlatives appear with increasing frequency in Le Figaro reviews from the 1890s signed Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre and Un Monsieur du Balcon.

55 1880s. All of the incongruities of decor, entertainment, and audience so vividly described by Huysmans not only remained the hall’s defining attributes, they also became increasingly marked. Surroundings were made ever more luxurious, audiences became more affluent, and theatrical productions were increasingly spectacular, but the hall never lost its salacious edge. Prostitutes were an ever- present attraction in the promenoir, groups of leg-shaking chorus girls became a favourite attraction on stage, and even the most imaginative, multifaceted large- scale ballets offered semi-nudity, lascivious dances, or seduction scenes.

The Hall: Luxury and Decadence

The Folies-Bergère was remodelled twice in Marchand’s first years: major renovations were undertaken in 1888 and cosmetic alterations were made in 1893.

In both cases, the changes brought the hall closer in layout and function to a theatre and seem to have been geared towards a higher class of audience than Sari had been able to attract. Marchand’s first renovations were to the space itself.

Some of the changes were structural and likely little noticed by audiences. The auditorium floor was raised to be level with the entrance hall, and ventilators were installed. Others, however, had a significant impact on how performance and social spaces were used. New bars were installed in the galleries and a thin separation was created between these and the auditorium.109 Although one could still socialize in any part of the music hall and could still move freely between the auditorium, galleries, entrance hall, and promenoir, the auditorium itself lost some of its café-concert feel. Seating arrangements by then also resembled those of a standard theatre, with rows of individual upholstered seats rather than benches at

109 Muriand, Les Folies-Bergère, 16.

56 the orchestra level (see Figure 2.2), boxes behind them, and a balcony with additional boxes above.

The decorative changes made to the hall in 1893 created a more sophisticated atmosphere. The hall’s interior was revamped to transform an already luxurious space into one of refined elegance (Figure 2.5). According to various theatrical columnists, the walls were repainted in softer tones and adorned with white and gold Louis XV mirrors, and lighting was supplied by electric lamps cleverly concealed beneath yellow satin light shades. Soft, thick, blue and white carpeting covered the entire expanse of the hall from the street to the stage,

Figure 2.5. Composite photograph by E. LaGrange of people gathered for drinks in the Folies-Bergère’s entrance hall, c. 1900. “Le Hall des Folies-Bergère, quinze minutes d’entracte,” clipping in F-Pn 4-ICO THE 4376.

57 and a beautiful royal blue velvet curtain hung from the stage, pulled back with huge draw strings.110

Despite its new-found sophistication, the hall never lost its fundamental tension between elegance and ill repute, and audiences still came seeking an evening of light entertainment and distraction. As the author of a tourism guidebook published in 1900 reported,

The Folies-Bergère, with their winter gardens in which plays an orchestra of Viennese ladies and where little tables are scattered about on thick carpeting that stands in for the fresh grass of lawns, with its circular promenade that runs around the auditorium, its boxes and galleries just two steps from the boulevard, the Folies-Bergère is visited by all those who find life too short to spend it in boredom, and who wish to feast their eyes on the prettiest women in Paris.111 Likewise, the promenoir, still teeming with prostitutes, remained a favourite attraction:

One is entertained, one is amused, as much by the scenes that play themselves out in the boxes, in the promenades, and in the garden as by the varied show taking place on the stage. The aristocracy of the demi-monde does not scorn the boxes of the Folies-Bergère and on certain nights one may cast one’s lorgnette over the entire army of Paris’s high gallantry. […] The intermissions are themselves like a succession of tableaux vivants, a sort of cinematography in which parades Paris’s gallantry and night life.112

110 Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “La Soirée théâtrale,” Le Figaro, 15 September 1893. The theatre critic for Gil Blas, who went by the pen name Asmodée, provided a similar description in a review of the hall’s opening: “À la salle déjà coquette de l’an dernier a succédé une autre salle d’une élégance raffinée. Les murs d’une tonalité douce sont ornés de glaces Louis XV blanc et or, qu’éclairent des bougies électriques dissimulées sous de mignons abat-jour en soie jaune. Depuis la rue Richer jusqu’au premier rang des fauteuils d’orchestre, on marche sur un tapis bleu et blanc, épais et moelleux.” Asmodée, “Aux Folies-Bergère,” Gil Blas, 16 September 1893. 111 “Les cafés-concerts et music-halls, Folies-Bergère,” in Guide des plaisirs à Paris. Paris le jour, Paris la nuit (Paris: Éditions Photographique, 1900), 50-51. “Les Folies-Bergère, avec leur jardin d’hiver où joue l’orchestre des dames viennoises, et où des petites tables sont disséminées sur un tapis moelleux qui remplace le frais gazon des pelouses, avec son promenoir circulaire tout autour de la salle de spectacle, ses loges et ses galleries à deux pas du boulevard, les Folies-Bergères (sic) sont fréquentées par tous ceux qui trouvent la vie trop courte pur la passer à s’ennuyer, et qui veulent régaler leurs yeux par la vue très proche des plus belles filles de Paris.” 112 Ibid., 50-51. “On s’y divertit, on s’y amuse autant par les scènes qui se jouent dans les loges, dans les promenoirs et le jardin, que par le spectacle varié qui se déroule sur les planches. L’aristocratie du demi-monde ne dédaigne pas les loges des Folies-Bergères (sic) et il est tels soirs où l’on peut promener sa lorgnette sur tout l’armorial de la haute galanterie parisienne. […] Les

58 Circus Acts and other Popular Numbers

Marchand’s programmes were similar to those presented by Sari, with only a few subtle changes. Entertainment was presented in two parts and included a selection of first-class acts discovered in world-wide talent hunts (usually a mix of circus numbers, international song and dance acts, and performing animals), musical interludes played by a forty-piece orchestra (normally , waltzes, and marches), and at least one pantomime-ballet (see Figures 2.6, 2.7, and 2.8).113

“Exotic” musical entertainment, such as an orchestra of gypsies or of women from

Budapest, was presented in the entrance hall during the fifteen-minute intermission. This programming, which was directly modeled on London’s

Alhambra Variety Theatre, proved extraordinarily successful and drew a mixed but increasingly fashionable and affluent public night after night.

Star attractions, circus numbers, and exotic dancers were occasionally the showcased features of the programme. Whereas ballets ran for two to three months, individual acts were more quickly replaced, usually in the space of a couple of weeks. Emile Blavet, one of the most dedicated chroniclers of the

Folies-Bergère’s activities, described this practice in one of his reviews for Le

Figaro:

When I don’t know what to do of an evening, I go to the Folies- Bergère. I do not know of a more pleasant, more relaxing pastime, and especially of a more amusing variety. … Every fortnight brings with it a new surprise, offers a novel attraction. entr’actes eux-mêmes sont comme une succession de tableaux vivants, une sorte de cinématographe où défilent toute la vie galante et la vie nocturne de Paris.” The author then quotes Huysmans but without crediting him. 113 Many of the incidental dance tunes played by the music-hall orchestra—waltzes, polkas, marches, and mazurkas—were composed by the hall’s conductor and by composers of popular ballets or pantomimes. Louis Desormes and Louis Ganne regularly apppear on Folies-Bergère programmes, as does Paul Linke in the last years of the century. Other composers advertised in the 1890s include Johann Strauss, Ch. Dubois, Fahrbach, Cayrou, P. Monteux, R. Sigaloff, Gangloff, Fournier, L. Jacket, Malfeijt, Hambourg, Laporte, E. Broustet, Suppé, Courtois, J. Focheux, H. Rosès, H. José, Manotte, L. Halet, G. Goublier, Eilemberg, L. Mège, Lafitte, and Coquelet.

59 They do not wait until a number becomes stale before it is removed from the programme; it is withdrawn before it ceases to please.114

Advertisements in the theatrical columns of newspapers periodically announced new acts or attractions, occasionally focusing on these to the exclusion of the ballet that remained on the programme.115 Reviews of ballet premieres also frequently devoted a portion of the column to the short acts that were presented

Figure 2.6. Folies-Bergère programme, 28 March 1894, F-Pn 8-RO-11091

114 Blavet wrote under the pseudonym Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre for Le Figaro. Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “La Soirée théâtrale,” Le Figaro, 29 May 1889. Blavet mentions that the hall was sold out and that some were turned away. 115 See, for example, Abel Mercklein’s column in Le Figaro, 4 May 1898, in which he details the new numbers added to the Folies-Bergère’s programme but says nothing about the two ballets still featured: Rêve d’Elias and Diamant.

60

Figure 2.7. Folies-Bergère programme cover, 1897, F-Po PRO.B.169

61

Figure 2.8. Three Folies-Bergère programmes: 11 November 1899, 28 July 1900, and 16 December 1900, F- Po PRO.B.169 (1898-1949)

62 the same night. Nearly all reviews of new ballets in Le Figaro, for example, include at least a list of favourite attractions performed on the same bill, while some allot as much space to the short numbers as to descriptions of the ballets.

Though new acts were rarely given lengthy reviews, they were sometimes praised in separate short announcements in theatrical columns.116 Ironically, these acts are what the hall is now remembered for, and popular histories of the Folies-

Bergère concentrate on them to the nearly complete exclusion of ballet.117

In his picture-book survey of the Folies-Bergère, Raoul Muriand lists many of the legendary acts that Marchand brought to the hall during his directorship. Initially, a large proportion of these acts were circus and side-show attractions. Notable examples were the giants Chang (2.45 m) and Constantin

(2.59m), the family of the Burmese pseudo-king Theebaw, whose faces were completely covered in hair, and Captain Constentenus, tattooed from head to toe.

Clowns, magicians, and jugglers made frequent appearances, as did Charlie

Chaplin’s famous predecessor, Little Tich.118 Several lion tamers were featured over the years, among whom Sam Lockart was a popular repeat performer. Other animal acts, such as performing elephants, bears, bulls, snakes, pigs, and dogs punctuated the evening’s performance.119 The hall was also famous for its high- quality circus performers, which included tight-rope walkers, acrobats, and

116 The one exception to this is Loïe Fuller, whose dances were given at least as much, if not more, space in the press than any ballet. 117 See for example Muriand, Les Folies-Bergère; Charles Castle, Les Folies-Bergère (London: Methuen, 1982); Paul Derval, Folies-Bergère: souvenirs de leur directeur (Paris: Les Éditions de Paris, 1954); Jacques Pessis and Jacques Crepineau, Les Folies-Bergère (Paris: Fixot, 1990); and Jean-Pierre Verheggen, Les Folies-Bergère (Paris: Seuil, 1990). 118 Muriand, Les Folies-Bergère, 22. 119 Examples of these include Sam Lockart’s (1889) and later Géo Lockart’s (1895) elephants, Nala Damajanti and her snakes (1890), Douroff and his rats (1893), Jane Derval and her pig (1899), and Marvelle’s performing cats (1890). Ibid., 22. 63 trapeze artists, as well as gymnasts and athletes.120 In the 1890s, theatrical entertainments were occasionally replaced by boxing tournaments, both with humans and with kangaroos.121

Although clowns such as Little Tich remained a favourite act, as did performing animals and gymnastics routines, Marchand abandoned freak shows and the lower brow circus numbers early in his term. In 1890, Marchand brought in the first group of singing and dancing “girls,” the English Sisters Barrison, who drew huge crowds to the hall for the duration of their stay.122 Tableaux vivants were a long-standing favourite—many were brought over from London—as were pantomimes. Technological wonders were sporadically introduced: velocipedes

(bicycles) appeared on the stage numerous times in the early to mid-1890s, while the American biograph, an early form of cinematography, became a popular final number in the last years of the century.123

The Folies-Bergère was not primarily known as a venue for popular song, but the most famous singers, including La Cavalieri, Polaire, Yvette Guilbert, and

Paulin all performed at the Folies-Bergère during this period. The hall also regularly presented the most admired popular dancers and personalities of the day.

The era’s so-called three graces, Emilienne d’Alençon, Liane de Pougy, and

Caroline Otéro, were frequently the stars of the evening, at first in their own numbers and later as the central characters of pantomime-ballets.124 Of the three,

120 The most famous of the gymnasts were: la belle Geraldine (1889), les merveilleux Eugènes (1889-1890), Les Lockfords (1898), and les soeurs Leamy (1901). Acrobatic acts such as the Scheffers were very popular through 1890s. Ibid., 23. 121 There was a much-publicized two-month-long tournament in 1894 between black champion Peter Jackson and Welsh champion David Saint John. See Le Figaro theatrical listings in the spring of 1894. 122 Sallé and Chauveau, Music-hall et café-concert, 155. 123 The American Biograph is listed on several Folies-Bergère programmes from 1898 and 1899. 124 These women were remembered by audiences more for their beauty and personalities than for their performances. Marchand writes that it is not known whether they were demi-mondaines or courtesans, authentic dancers or cocottes.

64 Caroline Otéro, usually referred to as La Belle Otéro, attracted the largest number of devoted admirers. Yet it was the modern dancer Loïe Fuller, who made her

Paris debut at the Folies-Bergère in 1892, who arguably achieved the most enduring fame. Her avant-garde performances of colour, light, and shifting patterns of movements, which both embodied and presaged so many artistic currents from art-nouveau to symbolism, drew huge crowds night after night and became the most sought after show in the city.125 Of all the Folies-Bergère’s attractions and performers, Fuller, as I will show, also had the most profound and enduring impact on the make-up of the hall’s audiences.

Pantomime-Ballet on the Music-Hall Stage

One of the most significant changes to the Folies-Bergère’s programmes in the late 1880s was the shift from presenting variety acts interspersed with several short theatrical numbers—operettas, pantomimes, and divertissements—to staging one large-scale pantomime-ballet as the focus of the show.126 These pantomime-

125 Giovanni Lista, Loïe Fuller, danseuse de la belle époque (Paris: Stock, 1994), 25. Lista writes that Fuller embodied “le lyrisme panthéiste de l’impressionnisme, le mythe de l’Art total du romantisme wagnérien, le naturalisme spiritualiste du japonisme, les évocations végétales et l’ornement linéaire de l’, le goût et la recherche de la forme artificielle des décadents, le vitrail coloré et traversé par la lumière de l’architecture néo-gothique, la fascination pour les apparitions spirités entraînées par la vogue des sciences occultes, enfin la doctrine des synesthésies et le ‘spectacle idéal’ rêvés par les symbolistes trouvent en effet plus qu’un simple écho dans l’art de Loïe Fuller.” See also Frank Kermode, “Poet and Dancer Before Diaghilev,” in What is Dance? Readings in Theory and Criticism, ed. Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), and Mindy Aloff, Loïe Fuller: Goddess of Light (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997). For recent studies on Fuller, see Ann Cooper Albright, Traces of Light: Absence and Presence in the Work of Loïe Fuller (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2007), and Rhonda K. Garelick, Loïe Fuller’s Performance of (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). 126 Although ballets were the mainstay of the Folies-Bergère’s programmes in the 1890s, the hall did occasionally present important pantomimes as the evening’s theatrical entertainment. Catulle Mendès’s wildly successful pantomime in four tableaux, Chand d’habits (1896), was the hall’s main entertainment for three months without an accompanying ballet production. It was periodically restaged at the Folies-Bergère until 1907. Chand d’habits did, however, feature a significant ballet divertissement choreographed by Mme Mariquita and performed by the hall’s ballet corps and current star (including the Opéra’s Jeanne Chasles in 1900 and 1906). See programmes in F-Pn WNA-214 (1896-97) and 8-RO-11378. It was staged at several other theatres

65 ballets played a central role in the hall’s reputation, and, as will be discussed in following chapters, contributed greatly to the genre in terms of choreographic and musical creativity. Indeed, in a review for the hall’s 1890 ballet Une Répétition aux Folies-Bergère, Emile Blavet (writing as Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre) attests both to the importance of ballet for the hall’s status and to the importance of the

Folies-Bergère’s ballets for the art form:

A good deal of their [the hall’s] fame is due to the ballets they present. And it is not only for their pretty faces and pretty legs that their ballets recommend themselves, but especially for their art, taste and elegance so rare in places in which choreography is nothing but an accessory […]. Also, the most expert composers of this special art, Métra for example, have not shied away from providing exquisite scorelettes [i.e. mini scores]. It is here that Messager’s fortunes were born. Today Desormes reigns, and the ballet that has been the surprise tonight, Une Répétition aux Folies-Bergère, is, from a musical standpoint, a true pearl.127

Every ballet was performed nightly for a minimum of two months, while a popular production could remain on the programme for three months or more.

The Folies-Bergère tended to stage one ballet production at a time, but in the

1890s, the hall often left an old ballet on the boards after a new production was premiered, or restaged one from the preceding year after interest in a new ballet had begun to flag. For a few years, it was therefore relatively common for a

through the 1920s, including the Funambules (1898), F-Pn 8-RO-11379; the Ministère du Commerce (1900), F-Pn 8-RO-11380; the Olympia (1920), F-Pn 8-RO-11382; the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (1921), F-Pn 8-RO-11383; and the Théâtre de la Gaîté-Lyrique (1922), F-Pn 8- RO-11385. 127 Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “La Soirée théâtrale,” Le Figaro, 8 November 1890. “Une bonne part de leur célébrité, c’est au ballets qu’elles la doivent. Et ce n’est pas seulement par les jolis visages et les jolies jambes que se recommandent ceux des Folies-Bergère, mais surtout par cette note d’art, de goût et d’élégance, si rare dans les endroits où la chorégraphie n’est qu’un accessoire, et, disons-le, un simple numéro. Aussi les compositeurs les plus experts dans cet art spécial, Métra, par exemple, n’ont pas craint d’y donner des partitionnettes exquises. C’est de là qu’est partie la fortune de Messager. Aujourd’hui c’est Desormes qui règne, et le ballet dont nous avons eu ce soir la surprise, Une Répétition aux Folies-Bergère, est, au point de vue musical, une véritable perle.”

66 programme to include two major ballet productions. Since the halls always took in higher box-office receipts in the first few weeks of a ballet’s run, it was in the best interest of music-hall directors to stage new ballets at regular intervals and to bring back popular successes when the current production ceased to draw crowds.

As the registers of box-office receipts kept by the Société des Auteurs et

Compositeurs Dramatiques reveal, this meant that music-hall audiences were exposed to a lot of ballet. The production schedule of the Folies-Bergère’s 1893-

1894 season provides a good case in point.

In this one season alone, which ran from 14 September 1893 to 23 June

1894, the Folies-Bergère premiered three pantomime-ballets and one divertissement, and restaged two major productions from the previous year. The season opened with a bang. Arc-en-ciel, a ballet that starred the Moulin-Rouge dancer Jane Avril, was premiered alongside a repeat performance of the previous year’s runaway box-office hit, Les Folies parisiennes.128 The two appeared together until mid-October when Les Folies parisiennes was replaced by a topical divertissement, France-Russie. Arc-en-ciel remained on the billboards, and either

Les Folies parisiennes or France-Russie played alongside for the remainder of

October and November. When Emilienne aux Quat’z’arts was premiered in

December, this latest spectacle ballet ran for three months accompanied either by

Arc-en-ciel or France-Russie (the hall never staged all three on the same programme). In February 1894, Les Folies parisiennes was brought back to play with Emilienne aux Quat’z’arts, while France-Russie and/or Arc-en-ciel appeared on matinee programmes, replacing the racier Emilienne at a time of day when the hall was opened to families. Fleur de lotus, another hit from the spring of 1893,

128 Les Folies parisiennes had a run of five months in 1892, an unprecedented length for any Folies-Bergère production.

67 was restaged in February, at which time it ran alone for three months. In the last month of the season, the hall saw a veritable flurry of ballet: both Les Folies parisiennes and Emilienne aux Quat’z’arts were alternately brought back to play alongside Fleur de lotus, so that audiences could see repeats of the hall’s three most popular ballets from the previous two years. In this same season, the Folies-

Bergère staged only one theatre production that was not a ballet: a pantomime titled Le Reveil de la parisienne.

The Folies-Bergère’s Audiences in the 1870s and Early 1880s

The Folies-Bergère’s audiences seem always to have been somewhat mixed in gender and in social backgrounds.129 Occasional references in press reviews to individual patrons, groups of spectators, or to altercations amongst audience members imply that the hall initially attracted a small contingent of rowdy spectators, a handful of writers and artists, and a range of middle and possibly upper middle classes. High society probably did not to attend in large numbers.

The etching of the hall’s entrance from 1878 reproduced in Figure 2.1 appears to contradict this view with its depiction of elegantly dressed men and women, but many of the women are in pairs or are absorbed in attending to men so at least some were likely prostitutes. It is also possible that the drawing recorded an audience attending a gala performance or season’s opening, which in later years cost more and always drew an elite crowd.

129 The Folies-Bergère’s audience base seems at all times to have been predominantly bourgeois: the petite bourgeoisie was present in greater numbers in the hall’s early years and the haute bourgeoisie attended more frequently in the 1890s. However, as Steven Huebner points out in “Opera Audiences in Paris, 1830-1870,” the category of bourgeoisie is notoriously variegated and unstable, and includes people from a broad range of economic and social backgrounds. Music & Letters 70 (1989): 206. Given the lack of detailed records of music-hall audiences, their exact make-up must remain to some degree speculative.

68 Unfortunately, it is virtually impossible to reconstruct the Folies-Bergère’s earliest audiences with any greater precision. There are no extant subscription records since all tickets were purchased at the door until the mid-1890s, and reviews of early ballets do not provide detailed descriptions of the hall’s audiences or report specific names of patrons.130 While this suggests the absence of high society throughout Sari’s term, particularly since theatre critics were quick to record their presence in later years, it does not give a sense of who did attend.131

Ticket prices in the 1870s similarly suggest a fairly broad but largely middle-class clientele. For one franc, one could enter the hall and promenoir, but a seat near the stage cost two to five francs. Tickets were therefore neither inexpensive enough for the lower working classes to attend on a regular basis, nor expensive enough to create a climate of exclusivity that would entice the city’s most privileged.

Regardless of social class, the Folies-Bergère’s patrons would have been well aware of the hall’s reputation for vice and prurient entertainment, and would have returned to the hall expecting to partake in such amusements. Comments made in a series of notices printed in Le Ménestrel in the spring of 1881 that chronicled Sari’s change in programming from variety numbers to symphonic concerts make no mention of class, but they confirm that the Folies-Bergère’s audience was a popular one, interested only in frivolous distractions. When Sari first announced his decision to turn the Folies-Bergère into a concert venue, many were apparently surprised and doubted that the hall’s traditional audience would

130 There is evidence in reviews that boxes could be rented ahead of time for season premieres but I have not come across any patron registers. 131 There are also few surviving images from the 1870s and 1880s. Photography was not yet capable of capturing movement indoors, and few graphic artists had as yet “discovered” the hall (Manet’s Bar aux Folies-Bergère [1882] is a well-known exception. Chéret and Toulouse-Lautrec would only begin documenting music-hall artists in the 1890s).

69 appreciate an evening of symphonic music. On the first of May, the Ménestrel’s critic sceptically declared, “The Folies-Bergère, which must be revamped, is in the midst of completing this interesting and delicate operation.”132 After the first concert had taken place later that month, the critic remarked that despite Sari’s best efforts, the new concert series had not rid the hall of its former reputation and had therefore not attracted a new audience. The old audience, not interested in concert music, had stayed away:

The Concerts de Paris attempted, this week, to purify the profane Folies-Bergère.—Were they successful? We would not dare to confirm it, despite the admirable efforts of the artistic community that was dedicated to this regeneration. The truth is that M. Sari offered his public the most elegant and comfortable concert hall available in Paris and assembled a respectable orchestra and choir; and yet the dilettanti have not yet made up their minds to visit the rue Richer, while the former clientele of the Folies-Bergère has defected. That is the exact situation: the lovely Mlle Marie Vachot and the brilliant staccati of her voice were applauded, but as yet do not attract a crowd. Would not a more appropriate star for the Folies-Bergère have been Johann Strauss?133

The Ménestrel’s final notice on the subject of Sari’s concerts confirms that a “serious public” did not believe it possible for the hall to present “programmes of good music” so did not even go to see. The hall was restored to its original form, and light-hearted Parisians, we are told, were once again content.134 Taken

132 Le Ménestrel, 1 May 1881. “Les Folies-Bergère, qui doivent faire peau neuve, sont en train d’accomplir cette intéressante et délicate opération.” 133 Le Ménestrel, 22 May 1881. “Les Concerts de Paris ont tenté, cette semaine, de purifier la salle profane des Folies-Bergère.—Y ont-ils réussi? Nous n’oserions l’affirmer, —malgré les louables efforts du comité artistique qui s’est dévoué à cette régénération. La vérité est que M. Sari a offert au public la plus élégante et la plus confortable salle de concerts qui soit à Paris, qu’il a réuni un orchestre et des chœurs au moins convenables et que pourtant les dilettante ne se sont pas encore décidés à prendre le chemin de la rue Richer, —tandis que l’ancienne clientèle des Folies-Bergère y fait défection. Voilà l’exacte situation des choses: la jolie Mlle Marie Vachot et les staccati de sont brillant soprano y sont applaudis, mais jusqu’ici n’amènent pas la foule. L’étoile qu’il fallait et qu’il faudrait aux Folies-Bergère ne serait-ce point Johann Strauss?” 134 Le Ménestrel, 5 June 1881. “Les Folies-Bergère en sont revenues à leurs premières amours: la pantomime, le ballet, les acrobates, et le reste. Le public sérieux n’a pas voulu croire à des programmes de bonne musique, et il n’y est même pas allé voir….Bref les Folies-Bergère sont

70 together, the articles suggest that early Folies-Bergère audiences were not artistically inclined and that they were not interested in entertainments of too

“learned” a nature.

Folies-Bergère audiences during Sari’s last years as the hall’s director and

Marchand’s first seem to have remained mixed in gender and class, with a predominantly middle-class base and range of artists, dandies, and colourful characters. Though sources still lack precision, audiences are somewhat better documented during this interim period than for the preceding decade: tourism guidebooks, later reviews that comment retrospectively on former patrons, and fictional accounts of music-hall audiences together allow for at least a partial reconstruction of the hall’s patrons in the 1880s.

In the first chapter of his 1885 novel Bel-Ami, Guy de Maupassant uses the

Folies-Bergère as a backdrop for a character sketch of his main protagonist,

George Duroy. We first meet Duroy wandering about the streets of Paris near the

Opéra contemplating his next meal. Although, through deception, he eventually rises up through the ranks of Parisian society, when the story opens he is portrayed as a down-and-out former military officer who works as a poorly-paid clerk for the Northern Railway office. He is forced to count his pennies, yet he sometimes prefers to treat himself to a drink rather than spend his few coins on a good meal, and he likes to frequent localities patronised by low-class women.

Shortly after we are introduced to him, he happens upon his former military acquaintance, Monsieur Forestier, now a political journalist for La Vie française. The two have a drink together, then Duroy suggests they wander over to the Folies-Bergère. Duroy has never been, but Forestier frequently partakes in

aujourd’hui ce qu’elles étaient naguère… Les étrangers ne s’en plaignent pas, le monde parisien, au coeur léger, non plus.”

71 a journalist’s privileges of free entrance. They are shown to their places in one of the boxes, but instead of paying attention to the acrobats on stage, Duroy cannot take his eyes away from the promenoir behind him. Forestier is likewise more interested in his fellow spectators and describes the audience, first in the hall, then in the promenoir:

Look at the stalls; nothing but middle-class folks with their wives and children, good know-nothings who come here to see the show. In the boxes men about town, some artists, some second-rate girls; and, behind us, the strangest mixture in Paris. Who are these men? Watch them. There are some of every kind, of every profession and every caste, but blackguardism predominates. There are clerks, shopmen, reporters, pimps, officers in civilians’ clothes, swells in evening dress, who have dined out, and who have dropped in here on their way from the Opéra to the Théâtre des Italiens; and then again, too, quite a crowd of suspicious folk who defy analysis. As to the women, only one type. We have known them for the last ten years; we see them every evening all the year round in the same places, except when they are making a sojourn at St. Lazare or at Lourcine.135 According to Maupassant, the Folies-Bergère’s audience was predominantly middle class, but included representatives of nearly every cross-section of the

Parisian population from prostitutes and “suspicious folk” to families and the city’s elite. Despite the broad cross-section of society, however, all are portrayed as being of somewhat dubious character.136 Both Forrestier and Duroy subsequently turn their attention to the promenoir, and the rest of the chapter is devoted to descriptions of prostitutes and to Duroy’s conversations and interactions with one of them.

135 Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami, trans. A.E. Henderson, Mme. Quesada, et al. (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1910), 13. 136 The tone of the original French implies a slightly more sinister audience, or at least one of more dubious character, than does the English translation. See also T.J.Clark’s interpretation of the passage in The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1896), 244.

72 Although the promenoir was the exclusive domain of male patrons and prostitutes, “respectable” women were welcome in all other parts of the hall. An anonymous author of A Woman’s Paris: A Handbook of Every-Day Living in the

French Capital warns, for example, that “ladies ought positively not to go unattended to [café-concerts such as the Ambassadeurs],” but he gives them no such precautions against the Folies-Bergère, mentioned in the same paragraph.137

He does, however, assume that the hall’s audience was predominantly male, writing a few pages earlier that “the proud Parisian will tell you first of the

Française and the Odéon and the Gymnase; of the two operas, Grand and

Comique […]; and of the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt. But he will spend his evenings at the Nouveautés and the Folies-Bergère and the Marigny, while his wife and children sit demurely at the Française or at the Opéra, or stay at home.”138

Women are always mentioned in prose descriptions of audiences, and they appear in all surviving visual representations, whether in paintings (Manet’s Bar aux Folies-Bergère), advertisement posters, newspaper sketches (Figure 2.1), or, later, in photographs (Figures 2.4 and 2.5). While it is tempting to give documentary priority to the photographs, they are cut-and-paste composite images

137 A Woman’s Paris: A Handbook of Every-Day Living in the French Capital (Boston: Small, Maynard and Company, 1900), 123-24. 138 Ibid., 123-24. The Folies-Bergère was always a favourite tourist destination. The hall is listed in all French, English, and American guidebooks that include a chapter on Parisian theatres or entertainment venues, and it is frequently warmly recommended (The Folies-Bergère, along with the Olympia, Folies-Marigny, and, on occasion, the Casino de Paris, are interchangeably included under the headings theatre, café-concert, music-hall, or circus). See Guide book titles listed in the bibliography, including Katherine S. MacQuoid and Gilbert S. MacQuoid, In Paris, A Handbook for Visitors to Paris in the Year 1900 (Boston: L. C. Page and Company, 1900), 83; A Woman’s Paris, 111, 113, 123; and Guide des plaisirs à Paris, 50. There are also references to Parisian music halls in English newspapers. The presence of English tourists at the Folies-Bergère may have been signalled in Manet’s Bar by the strategic placement of English beer bottles at the bar. Their prominent place on the counter might also be a reference to consumer culture; or, placing champagne and beer bottles together might be a signal of mixed patron class.

73 that have clearly been altered. The most glaring evidence of intentional alteration is demonstrated by the comparison of two photographs from around 1900, an interior of the Folies-Bergère and an exterior of the Olympia, that show the same well-dressed couple against different backgrounds (see Figures 2.5 and 2.12).139

Whether the decision to insert the couple in the foreground of both photographs was made for formal reasons or to establish the “high-class” tone of the halls remains a mystery.

The presence of prostitutes does seem to have discouraged some women from attending music-hall performances. After the opening of the Casino de

Paris, one theatre critic suggested it would have been desirable to make available a second entrance for women and children that bypassed the promenoir.140 This never happened, but Marchand instituted a more practical and financially advantageous solution at the Folies-Bergère: matinées held every Thursday and

Sunday afternoon. For a reduced entrance fee, and with programmes advertised as being geared towards families, Marchand could further amortise his production costs. In reality, advertisements in newspapers that detailed upcoming programmes and listings in the SACD registers confirm that evening and matinee performances were usually exactly the same: ballets, along with risqué song and dance routines, appear to have been presented without alterations.141 The only difference was the absence of prostitutes in the hallways.

139 The photographs held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France have dates penciled onto the corners of the images. The photograph included here of the 1900 Folies-Bergère premiere has turned up both at F-Pn (Arts du spectacle) and F-Pn (Photo-Estampes) with the same date attribution. 140 Jules Bois, “Le Casino de Paris,” Le Courrier français, 26 October 1892. 141 The two exceptions, Emilienne aux quat’z’arts and Une Répétition aux Folies-Bergère, will be discussed in the conclusion.

74 An Elegant Public for Popular Ballet

Within a few years of Marchand’s tenure as the hall’s director, the Folies-Bergère had risen sufficiently in status to attract patrons from among the wealthy and fashionable. The change was nevertheless gradual. Even in the early 1890s, the hall remained so closely associated with coarse entertainment and unsophis- ticated audiences that Le Figaro’s critic Emile Blavet had to remind his readers repeatedly that he was not the only respectable spectator to return regularly to the hall. The Folies-Bergère, he wrote many times, could boast a certain number of select devotees, among them the famous librettist .142

Blavet in particular seems to have been fascinated by the shift towards a more fashionable audience. In the mid-1890s, he wrote several columns in which he compared the hall’s new chic patrons with the rowdier crowds of the previous generation. Two in particular offer a valuable retrospective window onto the

Folies-Bergère before Marchand:

Of all the pleasure establishments that without properly being theatres come closest to being one, the Folies-Bergère […] has, without a doubt, attained the top rank. This conquest has not been easy: it was necessary to fight against prejudices that were more or less legitimate, against that renown—how should I say it?— of loose and dubious conduct that kept “good company” at a distance. Rowdy at the outset, the Folies-Bergère had kept this mark despite serious efforts to shift the house’s genre and general appeal towards a superior ideal. […] This metamorphosis [of Marchand’s] was a gamble; he risked, in batting his eyelashes at a select clientele, losing the one that was….less so. But the audacious young man had faith in the proverb. And for once, the proverb did not lie. Little by little, the fusion took place, and now the great circles that give the theatre its tone have their box at the music hall of the rue Richer as at the customary theatres, and so do the most refined of Parisian ladies and gentlemen. I greeted, a few moments ago,

142 See, for example, Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “La Soirée théâtrale [Répétition aux Folies- Bergère],” Le Figaro, 8 November 1890; Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “La Soirée théâtrale [Arc- en-Ciel],” Le Figaro, 15 September 1893; Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “La Soirée théâtrale [Le Roi s’ennuie],” Le Figaro, 14 September 1890.

75 emerging from a corbeille of lovely women, the faithful Meilhac; Bishoffsheim, Arsène Houssaye, and so many others whose presence mark a definitive consecration of the theatre. The Folies- Bergère is a chic theatre.143

What was the Folies-Bergère before M. Marchand presided over its destiny? Without a doubt a popular and well attended establishment, but where the artistic was sacrificed to questions of an inferior order, in which dominated a public of a rather…mixed category, and in which high society did not risk itself unless for reasons of debauchery and then under the veil of the most hermetic incognito. Today the Folies-Bergère is classified amongst the sites of pleasure that have artistic tendencies; it has become, through gradual purification, a centre of good company, where honest women are seen openly showing their faces and corsages, their cavaliers in black suits and white ties. Today, the Folies-Bergère not only has a select day as do the regular theatres, but all days without distinction are select.144

That these reviews date from 1893 and 1894 respectively is not a coincidence. As mentioned above, Loïe Fuller’s performances during the 1892-93 season marked a turning point in the history of the Folies-Bergère. Not only did

143 Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “La Soirée théâtrale,” Le Figaro, 15 September 1893. “Entre tous les établissements de plaisir qui, sans être, à proprement parler, des théâtres, se rapprochent le plus du théâtre, les Folies-Bergère […] ont, sans conteste, conquis le premier rang. Cette conquête n’a pas été facile : il a fallu lutter contre des préventions plus ou moins légitimes, contre ce renom— de—comment dirai-je? –de laisser-aller et de tenue douteuse qui tenaient la ‘bonne compagnie’ à distance. Beuglant au début, les Folies-Bergère avaient gardé la marque du beuglant, malgré de sérieux efforts pour tourner le genre et les allures générales de la maison vers un idéal supérieur. […] Il jouait gros jeu, dame, à tenter cette métamorphose ; il risquait, en faisant les yeux doux à la clientèle select, d’effaroucher celle qui l’était…moins. Mais le jeune audacieux avait foi dans le proverbe. Et, pour une fois, le proverbe n’a pas menti. Peu à peu, la fusion s’est faite; et maintenant les grands cercles, qui donnent le ton, ont leur loge au Music-Hall de la rue Richer comme dans les théâtres d’ordre, et aussi les Parisiens et Parisiennes les plus raffinés. J’y ai salué tout à l’heure, émergeant d’une corbeille de jolies femmes, Meilhac, un fidèle; Bishoffsheim, Arsène Houssaye et tant d’autres dont la présence est la consécration définitive. Les Folies- Bergère sont un théâtre chic.” 144 Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “La Soirée théâtrale,” Le Figaro, 16 September 1894. “Qu’étaient les Folies-Bergères (sic) avant que M. Marchand présidait à leur destinées? Un établissement populaire sans doute, bien achalandé, mais où la note d’art était sacrifié à des questions d’ordre inférieur, où dominait un public de catégorie plutôt…mixte, et où la “belle société” ne se risquait qu’en partie de débauche et sous le voile du plus hermétique incognito. Aujourd’hui, les Folies- Bergères (sic) sont classés parmi les endroits de plaisirs à tendances artistiques; elles sont devenues, par une épuration lente, un centre de bonne compagnie, où les honnêtes dames se montrent à visage et corsage découverts, et leurs cavaliers en habit noir et cravate blanche; aujourd’hui, les Folies-Bergère ont non seulement leur jour select, comme les théâtres d’ordre, mais tous les jours sans distinction y sont des jours select.”

76 she draw audiences in vast numbers, she also attracted new segments of the population: artists, intellectuals, and the landed gentry. Undeterred by the hall’s former reputation and fascinated by Fuller’s mesmerizing dances, the who’s who of Paris swarmed the theatre, giving it credence and wiping away the last remnants of social stigma that lingered about its halls. As Blavet writes,

since Loïe Fuller has been on the programme, the lovely theatre has become the rendez-vous point for those who love all that Paris has to offer that is rare, elegant, and select. They come from everywhere, and the faubourg of Saint-Germain itself—oh, sign of the times—has no anxiety about rubbing shoulders with the lower orders of society. Their set sends imposing delegations each evening. The hall is rented fifteen days beforehand, and people are sent away from the box office.145

By the mid-1890s, the Folies-Bergère had become a hall for the elite. The members of Paris’s most select clubs had their boxes, and the aristocracy filled the choicest seats. Amongst them, according to Blavet, were Henri d’Orléans, prince Tcherbakoff, prince Bariatinski, the prince of Sagan, the duke of

Leuchtenberg, the marquis of Montozon, the prince of Lucinge, the count of

Olivaes, the count of Penha Longa, Edmond de Goncourt, and Jean Béraud.146 It

145 Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “Courrier des théâtres,” Le Figaro, 17 November 1892. “Depuis que la Loïe Fuller est au programmeme des Folies-Bergère, ce joli théâtre est devenu le rendez- vous de tout ce qu’il a d’amoureux de choses rares, d’élégant et de select dans Paris. On y vient de partout, et le faubourg Saint-Germain lui-même—ô signe des temps!—ne craint pas d’y coudoyer les nouvelles couches. Les cercles y envoient, chaque soir, d’imposantes délégations. La salle est louée quinze jours à l’avance, et on refuse du monde aux guichets.” 146 Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “Concerts et spectacles,” Le Figaro, 8 May 1896. Three years later another critic wrote: “Je ne me souviens pas d’avoir vu, ni dans un théâtre, ni dans un music- hall quel qu’il soit, une salle de première plus élégante que celle des Folies-Bergère samedi soir. On me dira, je le sais, que cet établissement a acquis une vogue inouïe, qu’il est devenu, par l’habileté de son directeur, le rendez-vous des gens chic. … Un coup d’oeil dans la salle avant le lever du rideau. Voici, dans la grande avant-scène de première: La Cavalieri, délicieusement jolie, et Jane Michel; puis Biana Duhamel; Suzanne Orlandi; Jane Dupavé; Suzanne Derval; Isabelle de Lineuil; Jane Derval; Angèle de Lignières; Marpha; Robinson; l’exquise Douglas; Jane de Luxille; Medal; Paule Andral; Marguerite de Nestle; Jane Yvon; que sais-je encore? Voici empilés dans les loges de Jockey et de l’Épatant: le prince Baviatinsky; le prince Galitzine; MM. le comte d’Hunolstein; de Vagliano; de Gontaut-Biron; de Castellane; Perrin; Faubry; de Torrès; Demonts; marquis de Mausabré, etc.” Strapontin, “Paris la nuit: aux Folies-Bergère, Les Grandes Courtisanes,” Gil Blas, 15 May 1899.

77 should nevertheless be noted that the hall still attracted the midde classes. Critics would have been expected to name the nobles in attendance to heighten the sense of occasion and create a feeling of exclusivity (as well as reflect well on the critics and the journals that carried reviews of these evenings). However, like the composite photograph of the Folies-Bergère audience in 1900 included at the beginning of this chapter (Figure 2.5), reviews that emphasize the elegance of audiences at premieres serve to distract readers from the continued presence of its audience base—the far less chic clientele that patronized the hall on a regular basis alongside the new fashionable crowd. Ticket prices were higher than during

Sari’s time—each category cost one franc more and boxes could now be rented ahead at a higher price—but many seats were still within the means of the professional classes.

The haute bourgeoisie and aristocracy continued to frequent the hall long after Fuller’s contract was terminated. Reviews in Le Figaro, Le Gaulois, and Gil

Blas of ballets premiered in the mid- to late 1890s continue to list the names of fashionable and famous patrons and testify to spectators’ enthusiasm for all of the acts, including circus performers and the more risqué of the popular dancers.

According to the press, 1890s audiences were also avid supporters of the ballets, which were always well attended and much applauded. Even though the Folies-

Bergère’s audiences doubtless remained mixed in social and cultural backgrounds, programmes from these years reveal a shift towards slightly more refined types of entertainments that would appeal to a self-consciously elegant public. Although circus attractions remained an essential element of programmes, and although shows as a whole never lost their popular tone, freak shows, as already mentioned,

78 gave way to more pantomimes, tableaux vivants, and other performative numbers such as singing and dancing chorus girls.

Ballets also took on an increasingly important role in the Folies-Bergère’s programming. Just as Marchand had from his earliest days included pantomime- ballets on his programmes to lure a more bourgeois audience, once he had captured the imagination of that audience, he catered to their tastes by presenting increasingly impressive large-scale ballet productions. The norm in the early

1890s was to stage one-act ballets, some of which had such thin plots as to be better described as long divertissements. However, by the end of the decade most of the hall’s productions were large-scale pantomime-ballets with a developed narrative portrayed by mime and ornamented with virtuosic classical ballet and national or popular dances.147

Marchand’s death precipitated the demise of pantomime-ballet at the

Folies-Bergère. Marchand’s last great contribution to the music hall was the 1901 production of Lorenza, a three-tableaux ballet by Rodolphe Darzens with music by Franco Alfano. Always on the lookout for ways to add to the spectacle and hype-up his productions, Marchand invited the Opéra’s famous ballet , Cléo de Mérode, to join the Folies-Bergère’s troupe to premiere the leading role.148

Lorenza was a major success both for the hall and for Mérode. Marchand fell ill during its run, but performances continued under the supervision of the Isola brothers, then the directors of the Olympia. Marchand was eventually forced by poor health to sell the hall to the Isolas, and while the two former Folies-Bergère magicians and conjurers initially maintained the hall’s standard ballet-centred

147 Ballet divertissements still sometimes appeared on programmes. See Chapter 4. 148 As I will discuss in the conclusion, Cléo de Mérode was initially surprised by Marchand’s invitation for her to create a lead ballerina role for a major new ballet at the Folies-Bergère, which she thought was a venue for exotic dancing. Mérode, Le Ballet de ma vie, 236-40.

79 variety programming, they soon began producing revues—loosely connected theatrical pieces that included topical skits, songs, dances, and the occasional choreographed divertissement.149 Although the Isola brothers restaged a handful of ballets between 1901 and 1904 and premiered another six important pantomime-ballets between 1902 and 1913, revues proved more lucrative and quickly became the favoured form of entertainment at the Folies-Bergère.150

Music-Hall Ballet Conquers Paris

The Folies-Bergère was Paris’s pre-eminent popular venue for pantomime-ballets in the 1890s, but it was by no means the only one. The Paradis-Latin staged three important ballets in 1889 composed by Edmond Diet, André Messager, and

Jacques Laffitte, the Eldorado staged a couple of ballets by Louis Desormes in the mid-1890s, and between 1897 and 1899, the Folies-Marigny produced three large- scale ballets with music by Messager, Francis Thomé, and Gaston Salvayre. Most popular venues only staged pantomime-ballets sporadically, interspersed between other theatrical genres, but beginning in the 1890s, the Folies-Bergère had two serious rivals: the newly opened Casino de Paris and Olympia, both of which produced a string of highly successful and popular pantomime-ballets in the 1890s and early 1900s. Since the two new halls began staging ballets in reaction to the success of such productions at the Folies-Bergère, their programme formats and performance practices were similar to those of their model. They were also

149 The Isola Brothers had appeared at the Folies-Bergère as magicians in 1886. They paid 700 000 francs for the music hall, a relatively low price for the building since there were only three years left on its lease. They were able to renew it with a raise in rent from 78 000 francs/year to 120 000/year. Charles, Cent ans de music-hall, 162. 150 The SACD’s performance registers reveal an increasing discrepancy in box-office earnings between ballets and revues. Although the ballets brought in very high box-office earnings, the revues did even better and did so for up to six months, thus amortising production costs to an even greater extent than did the ballets. Marchand had staged a first successful revue in 1886 but at the time ballets were less expensive and more profitable.

80 constructed on as grand a scale as the Folies-Bergère, and both were as opulently decorated. Within just a few years, all three halls were competing for audiences and producing ballets of equivalent scale and style.

The Casino de Paris

The Casino de Paris was inaugurated as a music hall in 1890 on the site of the former skating hall of the rue Blanche.151 It was enormous. It took up the better part of a block, stretching from 15 rue Blanche to 16 rue de Clichy (one could enter from either side), and according to Emile Blavet, it measured two thousand square meters and had vaulted ceilings eighteen meters high. Slated to be the biggest and most impressive music hall in the world, the Casino included an elaborate oriental garden, a theatre, and a vast hall and promenoir, which together could supposedly accommodate six thousand people. Blavet also claimed that the theatre itself had room for 1600 spectators: one thousand could be seated in rows, boxes, and a balcony, and there was additional standing room for six hundred.152

While it is possible that the Casino could theoretically hold this many people, box-office earnings imply a slightly lower attendance even on busy

Saturday evenings. With the exception of the hall’s opening gala night, which brought in 11 849 francs in box-office receipts, nightly earnings rarely exceeded the 6000 franc mark and sometimes brought in no more than 3000 francs. Since one could enter the hall for 2 francs and get a seat in the theatre for 3 to 4 francs, it is unlikely that the hall ever admitted more than 3000 on any given evening even if all came only to wander the promenoir and never entered the theatre.153

151 Its first director was M. Lointier. 152 Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “La Soirée théâtrale—Au Casino de Paris,” Le Figaro, 19 October 1890. The reviewer claimed that this was slightly more than the Théâtre des Variétés, and slightly fewer than the Opéra-Comique. 153 Box-office receipts for the Casino are considerably lower after the hall split.

81 The Casino’s decor was as sumptuous as the space was majestic. In a review of the hall’s grand opening, Blavet rhapsodized about the hall’s fairytale- like appearance and magnificent layout.

Once through the main entrance and into the hall you find yourself in the midst of a fairyland, in a dream from the Thousand and One Nights. The first impression is blinding: it seems that, amongst other noteworthy numbers, M. Lointier has hired the Sun, so much has electricity been exploited. It is an orgy of lighting in the midst of which, at first sight, all blends together and is obscured. But little by little your eyes get used to this violent lighting and all becomes clear and precise, and the admirable hall appears in its radiant splendour with its circle of elegant Italianate boxes, its svelte double row of columns…154 Unfortunately, the Casino’s director, M. Lointier, considerably overextended his finances in building such a grand space, and the hall and its subsidiary theatre went bankrupt within a year. In October of 1891, the hall was bought by M.

Borney and M. Desprez, who split it into two spaces: the Casino proper and the

Nouveau-Théâtre. Although each had its own access point (one entered the

Nouveau-Théâtre from the rue Blanche and the Casino from the rue de Clichy), the hall and theatre were initially connected by a passage that allowed patrons to wander between them. Casino patrons wanting to attend Nouveau-Théâtre performances had to pay a supplemental fee to enter the Nouveau Théâtre, while

Nouveau-Théâtre patrons could wander in to see Casino entertainments during

154 Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “La Soirée théâtrale—Au Casino de Paris,” Le Figaro, 19 October 1890. “On y pénètre indifféremment par l’une ou l’autre rue; mais si vous voulez avoir, dès le seuil, un avant-goût des magnificences qui vous attendent à l’intérieur, il faut entrer par la porte principale de la rue de Clichy, une merveille d’architecture. Et vous voilà dans le Hall, en pleine féerie, en plein rêve des Mille et une Nuits. La première impression est une impression d’aveuglement : il semble que, entre autres ‘numéros’ de marque, M. Lointier ait engagé le Soleil, tant l’électricité fait rage. C’est une orgie d’éclairage, au milieu de laquelle tout se trouble et se confond au premier abord. Mais peu à peu l’œil s’habitue à cet éclairage violent, tout se dessine, se précise, et l’admirable salle apparaît dans sa rayonnante splendeur, avec sa ceinture d’élégantes loggias à l’italienne, avec sa svelte rangée de doubles colonnes, au façites desquelles, supportant la toiture vitrée au velum de neige semé de fleurs d’or, s’arrondissent les voluptueux contours d’adorables cariatides.”

82 intermissions or they could join in the balls after the show without extra charge.155

The Casino presented traditional music-hall entertainment, while the adjoining

Nouveau-Théâtre staged large-scale plays, pantomimes, operettas, and other light lyrical works.156 Both staged ballets.

Following the loss of its impressive theatre, the Casino became a true music hall in look and feel. The space still included a stage for formal entertainments, but this platform was strangely unsuited to theatrical productions: it was fairly small and seems to have lacked wings, making entrances and exits difficult.157 The hall’s layout was also awkward: the audience had to enter the hall by coming around the back of the stage and there was little seating room in front of it. In one review, Jules

Bois remarked that due to the impractical placement of the entrance, those performing on the stage were forced to compete for attention with the human comedy taking place beside them. He also noted that it was difficult to hear theatrical performances when not right up by the stage.158 Despite these limitations, the Casino mounted a steady stream of ballets as part of its standard variety-show programming.

Most of the hall’s space was given over to a grand promenoir.159 As at the

Folies-Bergère, the Casino’s promenoir was the favoured meeting point for social gatherings and the area in which prostitutes could find clients. The Casino also doubled as a dance hall. After the curtain fell on the evening’s last stage performance, the hall was transformed into a venue for public balls and couples came together to dance the rest of the night away.160

155 Le Rideau de Fer, “Concerts: Casino de Paris,” Le Courrier français, 25 September 1892. 156 The Nouveau-Théâtre opened as an annex to the Casino’s “Salle de bal et café-concert” on 17 October 1891. Nicole Wild, Catalogue de l’Opéra II, les arts du spectacle en France: affiches illustrées 1850-1950, (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1976), 237-38. 157 Sallé and Chauveau, Music-hall et café-concert, 131. 158 Jules Bois, “Casino de Paris,” Le Courrier français, 11 October 1891. 159 Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “La Soirée théâtrale,” Le Figaro, 19 October 1890. 160 Geneviève Latour and Florence Claval, eds., Les Théâtres de Paris ([Paris]: Délégation à l'action artistique de la ville de Paris, 1991), 246. Latour and Claval mention that the hall

83 The Casino lost half of its space, but its decor was no less sumptuous than it had been prior to the split. In a 1900 French guidebook to the pleasures of Parisian night life, an anonymous writer praised the hall’s spectacular surroundings, its colonnade-supported galleries flooded with the light of golden lamps, its soft tones of pale green, white and gold, its plethora of flowers that adorned the boxes, and its rows of mirrors that everywhere reflected the hall’s gaiety back upon its revellers

(Figure 2.9).161 Jules Bois, who described the hall in similar terms for Le Courrier français in 1891, was likewise effusive in his congratulations to the architect and directors for the hall’s comfortable design and dazzling mirrors and lighting.

Casino Audiences: Bourgeois or Proletarian?

Although connected, the Casino and Nouveau-Théâtre did not share the same audience. Whereas the Nouveau-Théâtre attracted a relatively affluent public, the

Casino’s clientele was of a slightly lower social class—one that apparently preferred the lurid and the sensational over novel theatrical productions. In a long review published in Le Courrier français, a columnist who wrote under the pseudonym Rideau de Fer contrasts the fun-loving Casino crowd with the

Nouveau-Théâtre’s more uptight, even hypocritical bourgeois audience:

resembled a room for balls and was better suited to these than to staged performances as the platform itself was narrow (p. 246). Programmes list various “choreographic” attractions presented during late-night balls, most of which featured the high-kicking “naturalist quadrille” dancers Grille-d’Égout, Hirondelle, Rayon d’Or, Môme-Fromage, La Sauterelle, and La Glu. 161 Guide des plaisirs à Paris, 53. “Du seuil de la Grande (sic) salle, le coup d’œil est superbe. Des colonnes légères soutiennent des galeries en encorbellement inondés de feux de lampadaires dorés. Partout des glaces, dans cette salle dont le joli ton vert pale, avivé de blanc et d’or, jette de la gaîté autour de vous, et en rempli vos yeux. Dans les loges du pourtour, séparées par de légères cloisons qui permettent à chacun d’être chez soi, c’est comme une floraison, un véritable bouquet de fleurs, vivantes et palpitantes.” Jules Bois provides a similar description: “On ne peut que recconaître le confortable du grand hall et féliciter à la fois l’architecte et les directeurs. Les glaces et les lumières surabondent, les yeux sont éblouis, le cadre est irreproachable. La galerie circulaire est excellente…”. “Casino de Paris,” Le Courrier français, 25 October 1891.

84

Figure 2.9. Photographs of the Casino de Paris hall and auditorium from opposite ends of the room, Casino de Paris programme, Cadet-Roussel, F-Pn RO-11124.

85

We consider the Casino to be, like the Moulin-Rouge, more of a ball than a concert, and the nocturnal public that makes up the better part of the clientele of these two establishments cares little about what happens before 10 or 10:30 at night once is over (Figure 2.10).162

This crowd clamoured for the latest, most audacious skirt-lifting, leg-displaying dancers—performers that the directors were seemingly loath to present for fear of offending the patrons of the Nouveau-Théâtre who sometimes turned up at the

Casino during intermissions. Le Courrier français’s columnist, irritated by what he saw as the Casino’s directors’ misguided pandering to this segment of the audience, pokes fun at both. The directors, he writes, find themselves

obliged to negotiate the prudish sensibilities of the Nouveau- Théâtre’s bourgeois public who, unknowingly, come to the ball during intermissions. If the Nouveau-Théâtre’s bourgeois clientele “risks itself” in the hall it is precisely to see what social prejudice does not allow him: the bourgeois, in his hypocrisy, wants a pretext. Here the excuse is the theatre with the view of going to the ball. What he sees—oh! Such horrors, my dear madam!—it is not his fault…it was…by accident…at the theatre…he went to the Casino for a breath of air because it is so big […]. And she or he will return, because they will have the excuse here that they do not have for going to the Moulin-Rouge.163

162 Le Rideau de Fer, “Concerts: Casino de Paris,” Le Courrier français, 25 September 1892. “Pour nous, nous considérons que le Casino de Paris est, comme le Moulin-Rouge, plutôt un bal qu’un concert; et le public noctambule qui forme la principale clientèle de ces deux établissements ne se préoccupe guère de ce qui se passe avant dix heures ou dix heures et demie du soir, une fois le concert terminé.” 163 Ibid. “…ils les trouvent dans l’obligation de ménager les susceptibilités pudibondes du public bourgeois venant au Nouveau-Théâtre et qui, inconsciemment, vient aux entr’actes voir le bal. Qu’ils se détrompent : Si la clientèle bourgeoise du Nouveau-Théâtre ‘se risque’ dans le hall, c’est justement pour y voir ce que les préjugés sociaux lui défendent; car, dans son hypocrisie, le bourgeois cherche un prétexte : ici, le prétexte est le théâtre avec comme but, le bal. Il a vu : ‘Oh! des horreurs, madame, ma chère!’ Mais ce n’est pas de sa faute…il était…un hasard…au théâtre, et, pour prendre l’air, il est rentré dans le Casino, parce que c’est grand; s’il ou si elle a vu ceci ou cela…vous savez pourquoi. Et il ou elle y retournera, car ils auront le prétexte qui leur fait défaut au Moulin-Rouge où on ne peut aller que pour voir.”

86

Figure 2.10. Drawing by Lagarte of revellers at the Casino de Paris. “Casino de Paris—Le Hall,” in Maurice Delsol, Paris-Cythère: étude de moeurs parisiennes (Paris: Imprimerie de la France artistique et industrielle, 1893), 1.

87 Casino Ballets vs. the Nouveau-Théâtre Ballets The Casino and Nouveau-Théâtre were initially so closely linked that it is sometimes difficult to establish unequivocally whether a specific ballet was performed at the Casino proper or at the neighbouring theatre. Programmes alternately bear the names Casino de Paris, Nouveau-Théâtre, Casino de

Paris/Nouveau-Théâtre, or Casino de Paris et Nouveau-Théâtre. Although I was able to locate the performance registers of both establishments in the archives of the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques, the two books were mislabelled and a few works that were definitely performed at the Nouveau-

Théâtre appear amongst others definitely performed at the Casino. The Casino register lists works staged at both the Casino and Nouveau-Théâtre until 1893, after which time it lists works that were listed in journal columns as having been staged at the Nouveau-Théâtre; the new book is labelled Nouveau-Théâtre but lists works that were probably performed at the Casino. The two books are likely simply reversed from 1893 on, but since a few programmes cross-list certain works, some questions remain.164 One pantomime-ballet, Vassilissa (1895) by

Roger Milès and Egidio Rossi with music by Henri José, shows up on two different programmes in the same year, one of which announced the venue as the

Casino de Paris, and the other as Casino de Paris Salle du Nouveau-Théâtre

(Figure 2.11).165

164 These registers list box-office earnings for every single night between 1890 and WWI. They were used by the SACD to calculate the percentage of royalties owed to a work’s authors. 165 Programme for “Casino de Paris Salle du Nouveau Théâtre [Vassilissa],” F-Pn 8-RO-11065; and programme for “Casino de Paris [Vassilissa],” F-Po PRO. B. 62. Vassilissa may have been performed at the Nouveau-Théâtre as part of the Casino’s programming as if the two were once more a single venue. One critic complained after the premiere of Vassilissa that the Nouveau- Théâtre was taking a step backwards by presenting a ballet worthy of music-hall entertainment, and not like what he considered the more artistic productions by composers such as Pugno, Pierné, Messager, Street, and Thomé usually staged at the theatre. Paul-Emile Chevalier, “Semaine Théâtrale,” Le Ménestrel, 15 September 1895.

88 Despite this lack of clarity, the differences between the few productions that can be identified as having been performed in one or the other establishment suggests that performance context and audience had a significant impact on the productions’ dimensions and style. Whereas most of the Casino’s ballets were one-act pantomime-ballets, a full half of which were composed by the Casino’s orchestra conductor Henri José, the Nouveau-Théâtre’s productions were created on a grander scale and were composed by already established composers.

Scaramouche (1891) and Bouton d’or (1893), both premièred at the Nouveau-

Théâtre, were unusual productions by the standards of early 1890s music-hall pantomime-ballets. Scaramouche, a two-act pantomime-ballet composed by

André Messager and George Street, was almost twice as long as music-hall ballets from the same period, and was more complex both in terms of narrative and music. The was an Italian-trained ballerina as was the custom for all ballets, but she was accompanied by several male actors and dancers in secondary roles, some of whom were recruited from major Parisian theatres.166

Gabriel Pierné’s Bouton d’or, premiered two years later to critical acclaim, was a hybrid work that mixed singing, mime, spoken roles, and ballet under the subtitle Fantaisie lyrique.167 Although it is listed in the SACD catalogues as a

166 The libretto was written by Maurice Lefèvre and Henri Vaugneux, the choreographer was Carlo Coppi, and the composer was André Messager. This was Messager’s sixth ballet and fourth for the music halls. Louis Ganne, who became one of the best music-hall ballet composers, conducted the performances of Scaramouche, which was premiered 17 October 1891. André Messager and George Street, Scaramouche (Paris: Enoch et Cie, 1890), and programme for “Casino, Nouveau- Théâtre [Scaramouche],” F-Pn 8-RO-10951. 167 The critic for Le Petit journal, Pédrille, describes the work as a fantaisie à spectacle in “Paris au théâtre,” Le Petit journal, 4 January 1893. The SACD catalogues list it as a fantaisie-ballet. The first act has a couple of long mime scenes followed by a long divertissement (which takes up nearly half of the act), and the second act has a long central divertissement, mime scenes on each side, and a few additional dances mixed in between mime segments. The ballets were choreographed by Rossi and the danseuse étoile was Mlle G. Enriu, a ballerina who starred in several Nouveau-Théâtre divertissements and pantomime-ballets.

89

Figure 2.11. Casino de Paris programme,Vassilissa [1895], F-Po 8-RO-11065

90 fantaisie-ballet, the designation of ballet is not entirely accurate. The presence of solo singing, spoken roles, and chorus were too great a departure from ballet’s traditional format, though a handful of pantomime-ballets did include sung choruses. Ballet divertissements nevertheless played an important role in Bouton d’or. They made up half of the work’s total length and were the highlight of the evening.168 The production was, like Scaramouche, far grander and dramatically more complex than anything performed at the Casino in the early 1890s.

Even taking into account the ballets with unknown performance locations, the Nouveau-Théâtre did not stage as many ballets as did the Casino. Ballet divertissements were occasionally integrated into large-scale Nouveau-Théâtre productions, but ballet was never a focal point of the theatre’s programming.169 In contrast, the Casino produced approximately twenty-five new ballets in just under twenty years. Most of these were one-act pantomime-ballets and divertissements, but the Casino did also occasionally produce large-scale productions that might not have seemed out of place if presented at the Nouveau-Théâtre. The Casino’s very first ballet, Le Capitaine Charlotte (1890), composed by the Eden-Theatre’s famous Italian ballet composer Romualdo Marenco and choreographed by Carlo

Coppi, was a two-act, four-tableaux ballet performed by an enormous cast that included the usual danseuse étoile and principal travesty, four female and four male secondary roles, nine dancers listed as sujets (soloists), twenty-four members

168 One of the ballets was designed to showcase new lighting equipment operated by Loïe Fuller: shifting coloured lights obscured entrances and exits so that dancers appeared and disappeared as if by magic (see Chapter 6). The inventor of its “trucs et machinerie,” M. Cabourg, is listed in the score and programme, as is M. Collet, the creator of the coloured electrical projections so frequently praised in press reviews. 169 The Nouveau-Théâtre mainly staged non-danced theatrical works, though several of these included divertissements. Messager’s operetta Miss Dollar (1893) included a two-tableaux ballet, and André Wormser’s pièce lyrique (or fantaisie exotique) Le Dragon vert had a ballet by Rossi in the fourth tableau titled La Fête du dragon vert. See Entr’acte theatrical listings for 1893 and 1894. 91 of the ballet corps (these would all have been women), and one hundred and twenty “people on stage” as part of the “personnel of the ballet” (presumably women in walk-on roles for crowd scenes).170 The ballet may have had unusual proportions for a music-hall production because it was performed on the large platform and in the proper theatre space of what later became the adjoining

Nouveau-Théâtre, but George Pfeiffer’s four-tableau spectacle ballet Cléopâtre

(1900) staged at the Casino a decade later was equally grandiose, with extravagant sets, impressive crowd scenes, and dazzling stage effects.171

Like the Folies-Bergère, the Casino produced its most dramatic large-scale works in the years around 1900, and it continued to stage major pantomime- ballets until 1909. While it is possible that the Casino stopped producing ballets in 1909 because of the success of Diaghilev’s first Parisian season of Russian ballet, the Casino had always presented an array of theatrical entertainments— particularly pantomimes, operettas and revues—and had since 1902 staged more of these than pantomime-ballets. Following the example of the Folies-Bergère, the Casino made the transition in the early 1910s to staging revues to the exclusion of all other popular genres.172

The Olympia: An Elite Hall for Elite Audiences

The Olympia was the last of the three major popular ballet venues to open. It was inaugurated on April 12, 1893 by Joseph Oller, the force behind many of Paris’s

170 “Casino de Paris programme [Capitaine Charlotte],” Matinée, 25 January 1891, F-Pn 8-RO- 10797. 171 Madame Malbrouck (1898) and La Montagne d’aimant (1899) were light works that centred on flirtations and love intrigues but they had four and five tableaux respectively so were likely fairly long. Madame Malbrouck (1898) was composed by Frédéric Toulmouche and Henri José, and La Montagne d’aimant (1899) was composed by Henri José. I have not found scores for either of these so I cannot judge their musical complexity. 172 The Casino turned to staging revues as its sole form of entertainment in 1913.

92 most famous entertainment venues including the Jardins de Paris, the Nouveau

Cirque, and the .173 Oller’s sense of spectacle and popular entertainment were immediately apparent in both the Olympia’s outward appearance and in all of the hall’s attractions and theatre productions.174 Built on the site of the demolished Montagnes Russes, one of Oller’s earlier enterprises, the new hall was as grandiose as the Folies-Bergère.175 It was also opulently decorated: “Once through the brass-studded doors, it is a delight to behold,” wrote the anonymous author of a Parisian guidebook, “with bright and gay decor in blue and gold, like a young girl’s dream. Carpeting abounds, like a bed of moss beneath your feet. One walks between isles of flowers, as if in the land of eternal spring.”176 There were flowers everywhere—in the boxes and suspended from the balconies—and the foyer was adorned with a double row of palms. Some chroniclers likened the hall to an orientalist fantasy, others to the carefree atmosphere of the Côte d’Azur.177

The space itself was immense, an architectural wonder lit by ten giant chandeliers, each of which, according to Blavet, produced as much light as the lone chandelier at the Opéra. There were double galleries with gilded railings that

173 Oller had previously created a hall called Les Fantaisies Oller, which he turned into a theatre in 1878 under the name Les Nouveautés (it was later moved to the rue des Italiens). Sallé and Chauveau, Music-hall et café-concert, 170. 174 He also created a wax museum, the Musée Oller, in the basement of the Olympia. Charles, Cent ans de music-hall, 173. 175 Oller had brought the Montagnes Russes over from England in 1888. They were built entirely of wood and were deemed a fire hazard by the prefecture de police in 1892. 176 “L’Olympia,” in Guide des plaisirs à Paris, 55-56. “Aussitôt les portes capitonnées de cuir frachies, c’est un coup d’œil délicieux, un décor riant et gai, bleu et or, comme un rêve de jeune fille. On foule des tapis qui mettent comme un lit de mousse sous vos pas. On marche entre les allées de fleurs, comme au pays d’un éternel printemps.” 177 According to Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “Dès le seuil, on est en pleine féerie. La façade polychrome, avec son éclairage original, vaudrait à elle seule une longue description. … Passé le contrôle, la féerie continue. La double rangée de palmiers qui borde le vestibule lui donne un faux air de promenade des Anglias ou de Croisette, On se croirait transporté d’un coup d’aile aux bords de la côte d’Azure. Et c’est la côte d’Azur, en effet, don’t le peintre Corneiller a, sur des panneaux d’une tonalité charmante, reproduit tous les sites paradisiatiques: Marseille, Cannes, Antibes, Nice, Monaco, Monte-Carlo, Menton, etc.” “La Soirée théâtrale: Olympia,” Le Figaro, 12 April 1893.

93 ran around the theatre, and large boxes behind which stretched a promenoir

“spacious enough to hold thousands with ease without rubbing up against each other or causing confusion as at analogous establishments.”178 The theatre also had an invisible orchestra pit, which Blavet compared to the one at Bayreuth, and state-of-the-art staging equipment. Changes of scenery, he wrote, were done instantly with machinery before the audience’s eyes, something which was in advance of regular theatres.179 Despite its first-class theatre, the Olympia maintained the laid-back café-concert ambiance typical of music halls. As Blavet noted, the hall was “half theatre, half concert, […] conducive to digestion, with the freedom to come and go, and with the freedom to drink and smoke cigars as one likes.” 180

The Olympia, situated on the Boulevard des Capucines a stone’s throw from the Opéra, was from the start a music hall that appealed to the upper classes

(Figure 2.12). Reviews frequently mention that the hall was the meeting place of

Parisian high society, and writers sometimes named individual aristocrats or famous personalities.181 Richard O’Monroy (St. Geniès), a critic for Gil Blas

178 Ibid. “un large promenoir où des milliers de personnes peuvent circuler à l’aise, sans ces froissements, ces heurts et ces remous qui se produisent dans les établissements analogues.” E.D.- H. similarly wrote in “Courrier des Théâtres,” La Presse, 13 April, 1893: “The true curiosity was the hall itself, marvelously decorated and lit up with thousands of lights like a fairy palace. This immense hall, of which the centre is occupied by the theatre and seats, is surrounded by a vast promenoir and edged by open boxes: these are reached by a wide corridor cheered up to great effect by decorative palms and panels representing exotic subjects.” 179 Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “La Soirée théâtrale,” Le Figaro, 12 April 1893. “On m’affirme que cette petite scène, dans ses modestes proportions, est machinée de telle sorte que les changements s’opèrent à vue et que les décors se substituent instantanément les uns aux autres par un très ingénieux système d’ascenseurs. Encore un progrès où le café-concert aura l’honneur d’avoir devancé le théâtre.” 180 Ibid. “[…] un de ces établissments de plaisir, moitié théâtre, moitié concert, —propices à la digestion, avec la liberté du va-et-vient, du bock et du cigar…” 181 See, for example, Calchas, “Courrier des théâters,” La Presse, 9 June 1893.

94

Figure 2.12. A. LaGrange, “Sur le Boulevard—Sortie de l’Olympia,” in Le Panorama, Paris la nuit, 46, c.1900, clipping in F-Pn 4-ICO-THE (4463-4487).

95 and librettist of several music-hall ballets, described the gala opening of the hall as having drawn le Tout-Paris:

All around the promenoir and the boxes, most of which are already rented, were, it seemed, all of the great circles of Paris: the Jockey club of the rue Royale; the Mirlitons, the Sporting-Club, etc. In the grand avant-scène, I recognized the prince of Sagan, the count Hubert Delamarre, the duke and duchess of Morny, the princess of Poix, etc.182 An 1896 premiere of the Olympia’s Christmas ballet Rêve de Noël drew a similarly distinguished crowd: in attendance were the “grand-duke Alexis, prince

Henri d’Orléans, the marquis de Pierrefeu, the marquis de la Charme, prince

Soltikoff, the count Nicolai, the baron of Annery, the baron of Bournac, the grand duchess of Leuchtenberg, etc.”183

Oller’s programmes for the Olympia showcased the same types of variety entertainments routinely presented by the Folies-Bergère—some stars, including

Loïe Fuller, Caroline Otéro, Liane de Pougy, and Emilienne d’Alençon, alternately appeared at both halls—along with theatrical entertainments that included ballets, pantomimes, and operettas (Figures 2.13 and 2.14).184 His programmes also included acts of a more sensuous bent that spilled over from his other theatrical ventures. Concurrently the director of the Moulin Rouge, Oller brought to the Olympia the Moulin Rouge’s famed “eccentric” dancer, , who performed “naturalist quadrilles,” or wild cancan-like dances, after the end of

182 Richard O’Monroy, “Soirée parisienne: à l’Olympia,” Gil Blas, 14 April 1893. “Tout autour le promenoir, puis les loges dont la plupart sont déjà louées, paraît-il, par les grands cercles de Paris; le Jockey, de le rue Royale; les Mirlitons, le Sporting-Club, etc. Dans la grande avant-scène de gauche, je reconnais le prince de Sagan, le comte Hubert Delamarre, le duc et la duchesse de Morny, la princesse de Poix, etc.” O’Monroy was a pseudonym for Richard de l'Isle de Falcon de Saint-Geniès. 183 O.S. [?], “Premières représentations: À l’Olympia,” Gil Blas, 5 December 1896. 184 Two Olympia programmes from 1896 and 1897, for instance, featured the operetta Tante Agnès (1897) and the pantomime-operetta Un Marriage au violon (1897), both of which had ballet divertissements.

96

Figure 2.13. Olympia programme, Néron, 10 December 1898, F-Pn 8-RO-11008

97

Figure 2.14. Olympia programmes, c. 1894 and 13 October 1901, F-Pn PRO.B.275

98 an evening’s programme of varieties. Other notable shows included one of the precursors of the striptease, Le Coucher de la mariée, a wildly successful pantomime written in 1895 by Gaston Pollonnais that showcased the beautiful mime Louise Willy in various stages of undress.185

In 1896, Oller, who quickly grew bored with each of his ventures, handed over the directorship of the Olympia to the hall’s conductor Oscar de

Lagoanère.186 The programming format was maintained, but Lagoanère was ill- suited to the task of finding new curiosities and the hall quickly slipped in stature.

He handed the Olympia over to the Isola brothers only two years later and stayed on as music director. 187 The Olympia flourished under the Isola brothers: emulating the methods of the Folies-Bergère’s director, they toured the world looking for world-class acts that would draw le Tout-Paris. They also continued the practice of staging important theatrical works as the centrepiece of their programmes.

Ballet was a popular attraction at the Olympia and the focal point of many of the hall’s programmes. Between 1893 and 1910, the Olympia premiered two to three new pantomime-ballets each year as well as several divertissements, and it continued to present pantomime-ballets on a sporadic basis until 1918. As I will show in later chapters, many of these were from a musical standpoint amongst the best music-hall ballets ever produced. They also rivalled those of the Folies-

Bergère in opulence, artistry, and popularity. Ballets such as ’s

Barbe-Bleue (1898), Henri Hirschmann’s Néron (1898), and Paul Vidal’s

L’Impératrice (1901) were large-scale productions with scores written by

185 This early striptease will be described in greater detail in Chapter 6 in relation to the seduction and nudity scenes frequently incorporated into pantomime-ballets. 186 Jacques Feschotte, Histoire du music-hall (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1965), 110. 187 Sallé and Chauveau, Music-hall et café-concert, 171. They also bought the Gaïté-Lyrique. 99 composers well known to theatre audiences outside of the music halls. They were widely acclaimed by the press, and judging by the length of their performance runs, they were certainly popular. Significantly, a far greater number of scores for the Olympia’s ballets were published than were scores for ballets created at the

Casino.

The Folies-Bergère, the Casino de Paris, and the Olympia were profit- oriented establishments that presented trendy popular entertainments for a large and diverse public. With their extravagant decor, brightly lit inviting spaces for socialising and consumption, and promises of glamorous stars, spectacle, and, whether on stage or in the halls, at least the fantasy of seduction, the three halls were part of a burgeoning leisure industry that catered to those in pursuit of pleasure.188 Their raison d’être was glitz and revelry. But this does not mean that the halls were lowbrow venues or that their audiences were low class. The Folies-

Bergère and Olympia, and to a lesser extent the Casino de Paris, stood at the forefront of this industry: they were the elite among venues of their kind and they were a magnet for Parisian high society.

Although the Folies-Bergère likely did not initially draw the highest segments of society, audiences were at least broadly middle class and may have included a few patrons from the upper middle and leisured classes. In the 1870s, the cheapest ticket one could buy cost one franc, which allowed middle-class professionals to come often but was beyond the means of the lower working

188 Vanessa Schwartz, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 1. Schwartz’s study offers a fascinating discussion of several manifestations of late nineteenth-century Parisian spectacle and mass entertainment that ran parallel to music-hall culture. 100 classes.189 Comments in the press confirm that audiences became increasingly select as the century drew to a close, and by the late 1890s the city’s fashionable elite were regular patrons.190 The journals that carried reviews in the 1890s reflected this trend; the papers that most consistently published reviews were were those that catered to the prosperous bourgeoisie and upper classes: Le Figaro, Gil

Blas, and Le Gaulois.

Ticket prices similarly help give a sense of who could have attended in the last years of music-hall ballet production. In 1900, the Folies-Bergère charged two francs to enter the promenoir and hall, three to seven for a single seat in the balcony or at the orchestra level, and 24 to 40 francs for a box that seated four or five (boxes could at this point be rented ahead of time at a slightly inflated price; seats for matinee performances cost less).191 The Olympia charged three francs just to enter the promenoir, individual seats ranged between three and six francs, and tickets for boxes purchased at the door cost up to fifty francs (more if rented ahead, less for matinees). The Casino was less exclusive, with tickets available at two francs for the promenoir and four to five francs for a seat in front of the stage.

Music-hall tickets at the highest end remained low in comparison to major theatres, likely encouraging frequent returns to the halls, but the cheapest two- franc tickets that only allowed entrance into social spaces and three-franc tickets

189 According to Charles Rearick, an unskilled laborer in Paris earned around three fancs a day in the late 1890s and skilled workers such as masons earned seven. Rearick, Pleasures of the Belle Époque: Entertainment and Festivity in Turn-of-the-Century France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 95. 190 In his 1900 book about Paris titled Paris of To-Day, Richard Whiteing remarks that “fashionable Paris is no longer to be confounded with aristocratic Paris. The two things are separate and distinct. Fashion has outgrown its old bounds of the old families, and aristocracy, as a governing force, has become a mere survival of habit....” (New York: The Century Co., 1900), 125-26. 191 The cheapest tickets for music-hall matinées were 1 franc. 101 for a seat in the auditorium would have kept the working classes away.192 In comparison, the cheapest available tickets for a seat in the highest balcony of the

Opéra cost two francs, and most mainstream theatres, including the Opéra-

Comique, Porte-Saint-Martin, Châtelet, and Gaîté, had tickets available at one franc—less than any of the three big music halls.193 The Opéra, however, charged up to seventeen francs for the choicest seats, and the most expensive tickets for the theatres mentioned above ranged between nine and twelve francs.

By the 1890s, the audience base for the three music halls was relatively upscale, but nevertheless broad in provenance and interests. In consequence, the shows on offer tended towards the easily accessible: they were neither as risqué as some of the dances seen at the more licentious dance halls such as the Moulin

Rouge, nor as subversive as some of the skits or songs heard in avant-garde . 194 Instead, the three halls presented a safe selection of world-class acrobatic acts, clowns, singing and dancing sensations of the day, and theatrical genres that were popularised versions of art forms traditionally seen in high art venues—genres that would be familiar to the elite but attractive and accessible to all.195

192 There may well have been class divisions between the halls’ social spaces and auditoriums and select seating areas within the auditoriums. 193 The most expensive tickets available at the Opéra were triple what one needed to pay for the choicest seats in the music halls. 194 Bernard Gendron, Between and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant- Garde (: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 48; Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, ed. Randal Johnson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 46-49, 84. 195 For a look at the use of high culture diluted for mass sales, see Joseph Horowitz, Understanding Toscanini (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 6-7, who quotes Dwight Macdonald, “Masscult and Midcult,” in Against the American Grain (New York: Random House, 1962). Critics never complained of inappropriate entertainments, and they were considered suitable for families. On the rare occasions that a hall presented overtly erotic quadrille dancers such as the Moulin Rouge’s La Goulue, they were always the last number on the programme or were part of after-hour balls, after families and the more fastidious members of the audience would have left. 102

The halls may have shared a large number of patrons with Paris’s mainstream popular theatres and state-subsidized institutions, but audience expectations changed upon entering the Folies-Bergère, Casino de Paris, or

Olympia. People came to the halls for a high-spirited night out on the town in a libertine café-concert atmosphere, to enjoy the most acclaimed popular diversions of the moment, and to see the latest hits in the world of light opera, pantomime, or ballet. This new creative and performance context had a profound impact on late nineteenth-century French ballet, prompting the development of a distinctly popular form of the genre.

103

104

CHAPTER 3. MUSIC-HALL BALLET’S CREATIVE ARTISTS

Between 1872 and 1918, more than 150 writers, composers, and choreographers created ballets for Parisian music halls. They were with few exceptions highly esteemed artists, routinely praised by critics and admired by large audiences. Yet virtually all have been forgotten. Their art was ephemeral, and many worked predominantly for undervalued institutions that have received little critical attention; their place in Parisian theatrical history was therefore transient. Louis

Desormes, for instance, a long-time conductor for the Folies-Bergère, was famous in his day not only for his dozens of ballets, but also for his many popular songs and dance tunes. Yet Desormes is now so little known that only one current music dictionary, Fauquet’s Dictionnaire de la musique en France au XIXe siècle, includes a biographical notice, and the entry only runs to 130 words.196 I have also not located an artist’s dossier for Desormes in any of the French archives or libraries, and the one filed in the New York Public Library in the mid-twentieth century is tellingly brief. This uncatalogued dossier, labelled “L.C. Desormes,” contains a single typed document that begins: “This contemporary French composer is so obscure that not even his first two names are known.”197 The file lists the title of one composition. He wrote over 500.

196 Christian Goubault, “Desormes, Louis César Marchione, dit,” in Dictionnaire de la musique en France au XIXe siècle, ed., Joël-Marie Fauquet (Paris: Fayard, 2003), 378. 197 US-NYp, “L.C. Desormes,” uncatalogued clippings file. The full document reads: “This contemporary French composer is so obscure that not even his first two names are known; his name is listed in only one Musical Dictionary, the Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians, published in 1888 by Scribner, edited by John Denison Champlin, Jr., with William Foster Apthorp critical editor. The information given below is found on page 419 of the first volume of the work. The date of birth is not given, and although he is called a contemporary, he is not active at present if still alive, for his name does not appear in the indices of either the New York Times or of Musical America back as far as 1930.” The information copied from the 1888 Cyclopedia describes him as a Parisian composer of operettas and lists a few of his chansons and dance music. 105

Similarly, Madame Mariquita, the Folies-Bergère’s choreographer in the

1890s and 1900s, was one of the most prolific, versatile, and creative of the period, yet she too has fallen into complete obscurity. Madame Mariquita was so revered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that literally dozens of newspapers in Paris, London, and New York ran obituaries the week following her death in 1922. At present, however, there is not a single biographical notice or article about Mariquita in any dance dictionary or encyclopaedia.198

My goal in this chapter is to retrieve from obscurity the most prolific, popular, and critically acclaimed artists involved with the creation of music-hall ballets. I begin with a brief survey of librettists and end with a biographical sketch of Madame Mariquita, but my focus is on ballet composers. Now either forgotten or disparaged as profit-oriented artisans who produced commercial music, many music-hall ballet composers were beloved by large audiences for their lively, entertaining music and were acclaimed in their day for their skill at devising myriad variations to familiar themes within a stable set of generic expectations. Music-hall ballet composers appealed for the most part to a popular audience, but their impact on musical culture was no less significant. These celebrated composers of popular music deserve as much serious study as the era’s mavericks: it is, after all, the combination of these voices that marked the musical culture of the period. Since it is outside the parameters of the present study to delve into the network of influences that existed between popular and “art”

198 The one article that includes an overview of Mariquita’s career and a discussion of women’s roles as choreographers in France is Lynn Garafola, “Where Are Ballet’s Women Choreographers?,” in Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance, ed. Lynn Garafola (Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press, 2005), 215-30. 106 composers, the survey and biographical vignettes that follow are a first step towards creating a more complete view of the period’s musical practices.199

Recovering these artists’ careers also adds a valuable layer to our understanding of the history and evolution of popular ballet and has important implications for our perception of the genre. Shifts in the professional experience and perceived eminence of composers commissioned by the halls, for example, mirror changes to the halls’ status in the final years of the century and reflect the increased importance of ballet in their programming. At a broader level, a study of artists’ careers reveals how often authors, composers, and choreographers moved among venues and between genres. The resulting interconnections had a direct impact on popular ballet librettos, music, and choreography: all drew on the languages and conventions of the different genres they concurrently produced, and these multiple influences left their mark on music-hall ballets both in terms of form and style.

LIBRETTISTS

Music-hall ballet librettists were a varied group who came from a range of literary quarters. Some were bohemian artists or authors of boulevard-theatre fare, some were poets, novelists, and short-story writers, and others were journalists and theatre critics (see Table 3.1, p. 113).200 There was no dividing line, at least in theory, between those who wrote for popular venues and those who wrote for state theatres. Armand Silvestre, for example, was a French Parnassian poet, critic, and author of theatrical and lyrical works that ranged from the learned to the

199 For a parallel study of conductor-composers who wrote incidental music in this period, see Peter Lamothe, “Theater Music in France, 1864-1914: ‘À accompagner, à soutenir, à souligner’,” PhD diss, University of North Carolina, 2008. 200 An analysis of the effect that librettists’ literary backgrounds and interests had on the tone of popular ballets would make for an interesting study. 107 popular.201 Prior to his writing Fleur de lotus for the Folies-Bergère in 1893,

Silvestre had authored librettos for operas by Ernest Giraud, Victorin de Joncières, and Louis Varney staged at the Opéra-Comique, and the libretto for Camille

Saint-Saëns’s opera Henry VIII premiered at the Opéra. His poetry had also been set to music by Gabriel Fauré, , and Cécile Chaminade. Yet he was equally comfortable creating works for the music halls. Fleur de lotus, Silvestre’s first foray into popular ballet, was a distinct success and was followed by collaborations on other music-hall ballets: O’Ménéné with Desormes at the

Eldorado (1894); Le Chevalier aux fleurs with André Messager and Raoul Pugno for the Folies-Marigny (1897); and Le Rêve d’Elias with Paul Lacôme for the

Folies-Bergère (1898).202

Jean Lorrain and Jean Richepin, who wrote some of the most remarkable music-hall librettos, were likewise adept at moving between different literary modes.203 Lorrain was primarily a poet and journalist for popular society newspapers, and wrote a few comedies, , operettas, and dramas for such disparate theatres as the Menus-Plaisirs, Bouffes-Parisiens, Nouveautés, and

Théâtre de l’Odéon.204 He was also known as a provocateur and eccentric who identified with Bohemian lifestyles, and he would have been well known to music-hall audiences before writing his first ballets. His music-hall ballets were

201 Catulle Mendès, known for an equally broad range of works including poetry, novels, plays, journalism, and sensationalist stories, wrote two of the Folies-Bergère’s all-time most successful pantomimes, Le Docteur blanc and Chand d’habits, both of which included substantial ballet divertissements. 202 Silvestre also wrote the libretto to the ballet La Fée du rocher, which, while never performed, survives in an exquisite large-format special edition with Chéret drawings and musical excerpts composed by Francis Thomé. Armand Silvestre, Jules Chéret, and Francis Thomé, La Fée du rocher (Paris: Chaix, 1894). 203 Several other authors, including , Fernand Beissier, and Michel Carré fils, had works staged at the Opéra-Comique. 204 Lorrain penned five music-hall ballet librettos for the Folies-Bergère and Olympia, of which L’Araignée d’or (1896), La Princesse au sabbat (1899), and La Belle au cheveux d’or (1900) stand out as having unusually rich and often odd storylines. 108 among the more subversive of the genre in terms of the level of sexual freedom they advocated (see Chapter 6), though they remained well within the realm of accepted bourgeois social norms.205

Richepin, an even more notorious Bohemian author and provocateur, became involved with music-hall ballet long after establishing his literary reputation.206 Richepin was a poet, novelist, and short-story writer, and prior to writing his first music-hall ballet, L’Impératrice, for the Olympia in 1901, he had several theatre works staged by Paris’s most highly regarded art-house theatres: the Opéra and Odéon. His writing was not usually geared towards the world of mainstream commercial entertainment, and his music-hall ballet aroused considerable curiosity. In a review of the premiere of L’Impératrice for Le

Figaro, the critic writing as Un Monsieur du Balcon registered surprise that the

Olympia would stage a work by Paul Vidal and Richepin and concluded that it was done to astonish Parisians.207 It was an unmitigated success, and Richepin went on to collaborate on the ballet Romi-Tchavé for the Folies-Bergère in 1909, and on Les Charmeuses premiered in in 1913 and restaged by the Olympia in 1917.

205 In general, Lorrain’s librettos recalled themes that resurface in his articles on the mores and lifestyles of fin-de-siècle Parisians, and their tone was consistent with that of his journalistic oeuvre. 206 After his first book was censored and he received a one-month jail sentence for indecency, Richepin actively courted scandal, shocking his readers with often grotesque sensuous writing. Daniel Madelénat, “Jean Richepin,” in Dictionnaire des écrivains de langue française, ed. Jean- Pierre Beaumarchais, Daniel Couty, and Alain Rey (Paris: Larousse, 1994), 1548-49, and Jacques Patry, “Jean Richepin,” in Le Nouveau dictionnaire des auteurs, N-Z (Poitiers, Fr.: Éditions Robert Laffont, 1994), 2708. 207 The critic does not mention Richepin’s literary reputation for unrestrained salaciousness, nor does he ever comment on the status, appropriateness, or literary background of any other author. He then confirmed that Parisians came in droves to witness the event. Un Monsieur du Balcon, “Spectacles et concerts: L’Olympia—L’Impératrice,” Le Figaro, 7 April 1901. The critic could have been Emmanuel Arsène, who wrote the columns by Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, or Abel Mercklein or Alfred Delilia, who wrote the columns “Courriers des theaters” and “Courriers des concerts.” See Stoullig, Les Annales du théâtre et de la musique [1901], 427. The year 1902 is missing from Gallica. 109

Lorrain and Richepin were among the most famous literary figures to become involved with music-hall ballet, but they were not the only ones with ties to Bohemian culture. Jules Jouy, Ernest Grenet-Dancourt, Octave Pradels, and L.

Roger-Milès likewise had connections to Montmartre Bohemian café culture and the Chat Noir.208 Although it is beyond the scope of the present study to delve into the impact that such associations had on music-hall ballet librettos, one might well ask to what extent Bohemian thinking or aesthetic values had an influence on music hall ballets. An affinity with Bohemian artistic sensibilities may explain the increased prevalence of parodies towards the end of the 1890s and may have encouraged greater freedom in the way sexuality was handled on stage. Yet this influence was limited. Music-hall ballets often included a provocative sensual element, but these productions were not intended to shock or provoke scandal.

They were meant only to titillate within the boundaries of fin-de-siècle bourgeois social codes of moral and physical decency. Librettos by Bohemian writers allowed for the occasional superficial visual transgressive element, suggesting at least a trace of a Bohemian cultivation of the unconventional, but with the exception of Lorrain and Richepin, these authors leaned towards self-consciously trendy subject matter without any interest in pushing the boundaries of the genre’s thematic or structural conventions.

In practice, most music-hall ballet librettists specialized in light repertoire for the popular theatres. Jacques Lemaire, Max Maurey, , Paul

Meyan, Bertol-Graivil, Fernand Beissier, and Alfred Delilia were writers of comedies, operettas, revues, and à-propos; P.L. Flers and Adolphe Jaime

208 Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 60. See also Jerrold Siegel, Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830-1930 (New York: Viking, 1986) for a discussion of Parisian Bohemian culture. 110 predominantly wrote librettos for revues, vaudevilles, and ; and

Auguste Germain was best known for his comedies. Most had their works performed in small popular venues such as the Alcazar, Scala, Eldorado, Menus-

Plaisirs, Théâtre de l’Application, and Bouffes-Parisiens, but a few had works staged at major boulevard theatres such as the , Porte-Saint-Martin, or

Gaîté. A handful had their works produced in such disparate venues as the

Moulin Rouge and the Théâtre Français.209 Since nearly all of these theatres and music halls catered to a broad public that was likely similar to that of the Folies-

Bergère, Olympia, and Casino de Paris, and since the productions they staged had an equivalent tone and style, authors would have slipped easily between these different venues and genres.

Many librettists also doubled as theatre critics for the popular daily press.

Richard O’Monroy and René Maizeroy wrote for Gil Blas, August Germain and

Charles Akar contributed to L’Écho de Paris, Jean Lorrain to Le Courrier français and L’Écho de Paris, Jean Richepin to Le Gaulois, Gil Blas, and Le Journal, and

Paul Meyan to Le Petit journal.210 While this gave librettists a platform from which to promote or criticise each other’s ballets—a self-interested project that nevertheless benefited popular ballet as a whole by raising its profile—their involvement with the mainstream press also made them aware of current events, tastes, and trends, which they often exploited in their music-hall ballet librettos.

In-house ballet masters occasionally wrote their own scenarios, but almost exclusively for divertissements and not pantomime-ballets. Since ballets written

209 See works listed by author in Charles Beaumont Wicks, The Parisian Stage: Part V (1876- 1900) (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1979). This is only a partial list and is intended to give a sense of what authors were predominantly known for. The range of genres and theatres is greater when all works are accounted for. See also Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 60-61. 210 This is far from an exhaustive list. Composers were likewise active as music and theatre critics: George Pfeiffer, for example, wrote for Le Voltaire and Victor Roger for Le Petit journal. 111 by choreographers were often light crowd-pleasers with a preponderance of dance and pageantry, they may have been created at the request of music-hall directors looking to add short popular dance numbers to the programme. Mariquita’s

France-Russie was, for instance, a colourful exhibition of women in military outfits specially designed to celebrate the arrival of Russian naval officers in

France. Her Répétition aux Folies-Bergère, a self-reflexive behind-the-scenes ballet from 1890, afforded endless opportunities for showing dancers off in form- fitting rehearsal outfits. Neither was a full-scale pantomime-ballet.211

The financial temptation for authors, regardless of their literary background or inclination, to try writing for the music halls would have been great. With the exception of a handful of works from around 1900, ballet librettos were relatively short and did not involve complex ideas or intricate plot twists; they would likely have been relatively easy to churn out.212 A work accepted for production was guaranteed nightly performances for two to three months, with the possibility of two hundred performances or more if the work was restaged. As each author received a two- to three-percent cut of the box-office receipts, these earnings could be substantial.213 Not surprisingly, authors frequently wrote more

211 Choreographers’ names frequently appear paired with those of writers in the SACD catalogues. While this might imply that they had a hand in shaping more librettos than programmes suggest, including their names alongside those of literary authors may have been a strategy to insure they collected royalties. Choreographers were not considered independent authors until the turn of the twentieth century. Mme Mariquita is one of the first to have been acknowledged an “author” in her own right. She was inducted into the ranks of the SACD in 1890 and received her fair share of profits for her choreographic work from that point on. Conversation with Corinne Lebel, curator, SACD archives, Paris, 9 July 2008. Mariquita’s total earnings collected for her by the SACD make clear the advantages of her being a member of the society. Between 10 February 1890 and 10 January 1898, Mariquita earned 44 457.85 francs (an average of 5557.20 francs per year). This was presumably in addition to a steady salary she earned as ballet-mistress. F-Pse “Madame Mariquita, dossier,” and F-Pse “Registres-recensements: Folies-Bergère, 1886-1917.” 212 Indeed, many were hastily written judging from their minimal literary quality. 213 According to Jules Martin, authors of theatrical works for the Folies-Bergère received 10% of box-office earnings. Jules Martin, Nos auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques, portraits et biographies (Paris: Ernest Flammarion, 1897), 600. He perhaps meant all authors combined. According to the SACD, most authors were allotted 2% or 3% of box-office earnings. 112

Folies-Bergère Olympia Casino

G. Adrien Fernand Beissier Fernand Beissier (4) Charles Aubert Bertol-Graivil Michel Carré fils Edmond Beaumont Félix Cohen Ernest Grenet-Dancourt George de Bompar (2) Alfred Delilia Mme Léopold Lacour Rudolphe Darzens Auguste Germain Jacques Lemaire Alfred Delilia Hermil Abel Mercklein (3) Hubert Desvignes Jean Lorrain (3) Richard O’Monroy P.L.Flers (2) Richard O’Monroy (2) S. de la Neuville Joseph Gayda Octave Pradels Octave Pradels Auguste Germain (3) Jean Richepin (2) L. Roger-Milès (2) Pierre Guérande L. Roger-Milès (2) Henri Justamant (3) Vanara Alévy & Adrien Vély Jacques Lemaire (2) Jules Walter Maurice Lefèvre & Henri Thierry Lemoine Vaugneux Jean Lorrain (2) Raoul Bénédite & G. Clarine Lux & Maurice René Maizeroy Trompette Guillemot Jules Margat Gardel-Hervé fils & A. Mercklein & Jean Mme Mariquita (5) Lemonnier Bernac Abel Mercklein J. Hassreiter & P. Gaul A. Mercklein & F. Paul Meyan (4) Max Maurey & Augustin Beissier Paul Milliet Thierry (2) L. Roger-Milès & Amédée Moreau (2) M. Maurey & Lucien Charles Akar R. Mythe Puech Octave Pradel & José Richard O’Monroy L. Roger-Milès & Frappa G. de la Neuville Charles Akar Henri Rosès Maurice de Marsan & Armand Silvestre (2) René Louis Surtac (Gabriel Astruc)

Georges Courteline & Louis Marsolleau

P.L.Flers & J. Lemaire Jules Jouy & J. Lemaire P. Meyan & Pierre Laffitte

Ed. Mize & Eu. Vivier Adrien Vély & Ch. Dutreil

Table 3.1. Music-Hall Ballet Librettists, 1886-1904.214

than one ballet libretto, either for a given hall or for any combination of the three.

Paul Meyan, for example, had six ballets staged at the Folies-Bergère.215 Jean

214 Authors in bold wrote librettos for more than one music hall; numbers in brackets refer to the number of librettos each wrote for a given hall whether singly or in collaboration. 215 Meyan’s ballets were Le Capricorn, La Crevette, Les Perles, Les Chansons, Les Folies parisiennes, and Mimes d’or. 113

Lorrain wrote two for the Folies-Bergère and three for the Olympia; Auguste

Germain produced three for the Folies-Bergère and one for the Olympia; Jacques

Lemaire and Abel Mercklein wrote for the Casino as well as for the Folies-

Bergère; and Richard O’Monroy wrote for all three. Authors, some of whom already had experience writing ballet librettos as individuals, frequently paired up to write them in collaboration: P.L. Flers, Jacques Lemaire, Abel Mercklein and

Fernand Beissier all produced single-authored librettos then teamed up to create additional ballets.216 In the 1890s alone, more than fifty authors contributed librettos to one or more of the three music halls.

COMPOSERS

Music-hall ballet composers were as versatile and polyvalent as their literary colleagues. A few specialised in writing popular songs or light dance music

(usually waltzes, polkas, and marches) and only occasionally composed large- scale works, but the vast majority were primarily composers of theatrical music.

With few exceptions, the latter were equally adept at writing comic operas for state theatres, ballets for music halls, and operettas for major boulevard theatres; many did so interchangeably throughout their careers.

The professional backgrounds and level of expertise of composers who wrote ballets for music halls shifted over the course of the genre’s history and can be divided into three overlapping categories that were dominant at different periods. The earliest divertissements were typically written by conductor- composers, by young aspiring composers, and by popular music specialists; the first pantomime-ballets from the 1880s were likewise written by specialists of

216 P.L. Flers, for example, wrote with Jacques Lemaire, and Abel Mercklein with Fernand Beissier. 114 light music and young composers. When music-hall ballet gained in prestige, however, scores were increasingly written by established and already celebrated composers of theatrical music. This trend continued through the 1890s until renowned composers of operetta and comic opera and established popular ballet composers outnumbered in-house specialists and young musicians. In all, at least sixty composers wrote scores for the Parisian music halls, half of whom composed ballets between 1886 and 1904 at the height of the ballet craze (Table 3.2).

The Early Years—Ballet-Divertissements, 1871-1886

The Folies-Bergère had a long history of relying on its orchestral conductor for theatrical and incidental music. In its early years, conductors were responsible for composing nearly all of the hall’s music. Olivier Métra, the Folies-Bergère’s conductor from 1872 to 1879, composed popular dances played between variety acts, several operettas, and the scores for most of the hall’s divertissements.217

Léon Vasseur, his successor from 1879 to 1884, did the same. The broad trajectories of Métra’s and Vasseur’s careers were nevertheless strikingly different. Whereas Métra specialised in the creation and performance of popular music throughout his life, Vasseur’s career path was somewhat unconventional for a music-hall composer. After graduating from the École Niedermeyer, Vasseur took a position as an organist at the Église Saint-Symphorien. Over the next few years, he published a treatise on organ playing and wrote several religious pieces,

217 Olivier Métra (1831-1889) wrote, amongst other pieces, two hundred waltzes, quadrilles, polkas, and mazurkas. He is now more famous for having conducted the Opéra’s balls in the 1880s. F-Pn 4-RO-3902. He also wrote the ballet Yedda for the Opéra in 1879. Constant Pierre, national de musique et de déclamation: documents historiques et administratifs (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1900), 813; and France-Yvonne Bril, “Métra,” in Dictionnaire de la musique. Both list Métra’s tenure at the Folies-Bergère as 1872-1877, not 1872-1879. According to Pierre, Métra wrote thirty-four ballets for the Folies-Bergère. 115

Folies-Bergère Olympia Casino/N-T

Franco Alfano (2) Antoine Banès Henri Cieutat (4) Rodolphe Berger (Joseph Bayer) George Elwall Henri Cieutat Jules Bouval Louis Ganne André Colomb Colo-Bonnet Henri José (8) Louis C. Desormes (20) Adolphe David Maraval Edmond Diet Edmond Diet (4) Romualdo Marenco Alfred Dubruck Louis Ganne (2) André Messager & Louis Ganne (6) Louis Gregh Georges Street (NT) E. d’Harcourt (Hervé) Georges Pfeiffer Henri Hirschmann Henri Hirschmann (3) Gabriel Pierné (NT) M. Holzer & Gustave Oscar de Lagoanère (2) Victor Roger Goublier Charles Lecocq Frédéric Toulmouche (2) Charles Hubans (2) Edmond Missa (2) (G. Jacobi) Victor Roger Paul Lacôme Frédéric Toulmouche Paul Marcelles Louis Varney (2) Edmond Missa Paul Vidal Armand Patusset (2) (Léopold Wenzel) Gaston Paulin Georges Pfeiffer Victor Roger Francis Thomé Louis Varney

Table 3.2. Music-Hall Ballet Composers, 1886-1904.218

and in 1870 was awarded the coveted post of organist for the Cathedral of

Versailles.219 His promising career in the church did not prevent him from having a second one in the theatres. Two years after his appointment to the Versailles

Cathedral, he had a first operetta, La Timbale d'argent, performed at the Bouffes-

Parisien. The work was a resounding success, running for over 200 nights and rescuing the theatre from bankruptcy.220 This box-office hit made Vasseur’s name in the world of light music.221

218 Boldface indicates that the composer wrote for more than one hall, parentheses are used when the composer wrote the ballet for a different venue, and numbers in parentheses indicate how many ballets a composer wrote for a given hall. 219 France-Yvonne Bril, “Vasseur, Félix-Augustin-Léon,” in Dictionnaire de la musique, 1258-59. 220 Léon Vasseur was born in Bapaume, 28 May 1844 and died in Pas-de-Calais, 25 May 1917. Lamb records Vasseur’s conducting post at the Folies-Bergère as beginning in 1890, but this is incorrect. , The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 2001), s.v. “Vasseur, Léon” (by ). Bril writes that Vasseur succeeded 116

During periods when the Folies-Bergère did not have a permanent music director, as was the case in the early 1880s, ballet scores were either written by light-music specialists or by young composers. Of the former, many remained so little known during their lifetimes that even consulting contemporary sources reveals little biographical information. Composers such as Paul Henrion, Laurent

Derille, G.A. Schneklüd, St. Mary, Lippacher, August Coedès, Gaston Lemaire, and Edmond Laurens, for instance, whose names appear written in script on the librettos sent to the censors that are now stored at the Archives nationals, either devoted their careers to writing light music for popular venues and for the amateur market, or disappeared from the public sphere altogether after writing for the halls.222

Several of the young composers, including Francis Thomé, Charles

Hubans, Antoine Banès, Louis Desormes, and Louis Ganne, went on to have successful careers in the popular theatres and later returned to the halls to write pantomime-ballets in the late 1880s and 1890s. Louis Desormes and Louis Ganne became important figures in the world of music-hall ballet, the former as one of the most prolific conductor-composers and the latter as one of the most highly regarded popular ballet and comic opera composers of the period. Another

Hervé as conductor of the Folies-Bergère in May of 1880. France-Yvonne Bril, “Vasseur, Félix- Augustin-Léon,” in Dictionnaire de la musique, 1258-59. 221 Along with his ballet and numerous dance tunes for the Folies-Bergère, Vasseur wrote nearly three dozen operettas for popular theatres and music halls. F-Pn 8-RO-4451. 222 Not all names written on librettos are legible, and many are lacking given names. There are biographical notices for Gaston Lemaire in Martin, Nos Auteurs, 340-41, and for Auguste-Charles Coèdes (1840-1884) and Alexandre Ferdinard (dit Paul) Henrion (1817-1901) in Dictionnaire de la Musique. Coèdes was a chef de chant at the Théâtre-Lyrique and a composer of romances, songs, melodies, and light stage works for the Folies-Bergère, the Menus-Plaisirs, the Théâtre des Nouveautés, and the Folies-Dramatiques. Henrion was an apprentice clockmaker and . He composed nearly 1300 songs, including 600 romances, and many piano salon pieces. He also sang at the Chat noir, accompanying himself at the piano. Jean-Eugène-Gaston Lemaire studied at the École Niedermeyer then became a music critic for La Presse and a composer of theatrical works for salons, , and small theatres. He also wrote songs, , and a handful of orchestral works including a couple of symphonic poems. 117 extraordinarily successful composer of divertissements, André Messager, became a celebrated composer of comic opera and an important figure in late nineteenth- century French music.223

Messager rose to greater prominence and artistic prestige than most, but his career trajectory was typical of many music-hall ballet composers: he wrote divertissements for the hall in his youth, then returned to the halls as an established comic-opera composer to write pantomime-ballets in an era when the halls regularly commissioned Paris’s best theatrical composers. All of Messager’s ballets were popular and critical successes. His 1878 ballet for the Folies-Bergère,

Fleur d’oranger, garnered him extravagant praise in the press, and he was hailed a talented composer of theatrical music. He was immediately commissioned to write two more, and the following year produced Les Vins de France and Mignons et villains. Messager then went on to compose the comic operas for popular and national theatres for which he is now known, as well as ballets for both the

Opéra—Les Deux pigeons (1886)—and for the Opéra-Comique—Une Aventure de la Guimard (1900). Eleven years after writing his first ballet for the Folies-

Bergère, and when already a regular contributor to Paris’s most prestigious venues and the artistic director of the Opéra-Comique, Messager returned to the music halls with L’Isba for the Paradis-Latin in 1889 and Le Chevalier aux Fleurs for the inaugural programme of the revamped Folies-Marigny in 1897.224

Early Pantomime-Ballet: 1886-1894

The practice of relying on conductors to compose a substantial portion of a hall’s ballet music continued into the mid-1890s. Roughly half of all ballets staged at the

223 New Grove Dictionary, s.v. “Messager, André” (by John Wagstaff and Andrew Lamb). 224 Ibid., 490. 118

Folies-Bergère between 1886 and 1895 were written by the hall’s conductor, Louis

Desormes. The remaining half were again written by young composers or specialists of light music. Only two, Louis Ganne and Charles Hubans, had already composed ballets for the Folies-Bergère, and both were still in the early stages of their careers.

The same pattern held true at the Casino de Paris and the Olympia. Although the first ballets staged at the Casino or its subsidiary venue, the Nouveau-Théâtre, were written by established composers including Marenco, Messager, Ganne, and Pierné, from 1893 until 1900 the hall fell back on its conductor, Henri José, for eight of its fifteen ballets. Two other composers of light theatre music, Henri Cieutat and

Frédéric Toulmouche, accounted for five of the remaining seven.225

At first glance, the Olympia appears to have had a more interesting roster of composers, with few works written by its long-time conductor, Oscar de

Lagoanère. The Olympia’s practice of drawing on external composers to provide ballet scores was, however, in large part due to the hall’s having opened in 1893, by which time music-hall ballet was an established genre. The hall’s hiring practices were, in fact, similar to those of the Folies-Bergère and the Casino, but with a more condensed timeline. The Olympia’s earliest ballets were either composed by Lagoanère, or were pre-existing works brought in from other theatres: its 1893 production of Léopold Wenzel’s Brighton was premiered at

London’s Alhambra (Wenzel was the Alhambra’s conductor), and Josef Bayer’s

La Fée des Poupées was a restaging of a Viennese ballet. Also, although

Lagoanère contributed only two ballets to the hall during his tenure as music director, he wrote several scores for operettas and pantomimes.

* * *

225 Cieutat and Toulmouche also wrote for the Folies-Bergère and Olympia. 119

Music-hall conductor-composers were light-music specialists. Their music for ballets, operettas, and pantomimes were well suited to the halls’ noisy environments and often inattentive audiences. Scores by conductor-composers were almost invariably the shortest, lightest, and simplest of the music-hall ballets that I have studied, and they were heavily dependent on conventions and musical stereotypes (these will be taken up in the next two chapters). Conductor- composers also wrote many of the dance tunes played between variety numbers.

Although these waltzes, polkas, and marches were usually newly composed, some were arrangements of favourite dances from ballets (either from their own or from those of their colleagues). Conductor-composers did write additional works for other venues, but only rarely. Their schedules were, after all, hectic: as well as composing dance tunes and at least two theatrical works each year, they conducted performances every night and two matinées each week, they held daily rehearsals for the two weeks prior to any new production and were likely on site for rehearsals without the full orchestra.226

The halls did not always have a long-term conductor who could fulfill these composition duties. Several who took appointments for only one or two years did not compose any ballets, though most did write dance tunes. Of the five conductors listed on Folies-Bergère programmes between 1894 and 1900—H.

Hamburg, Gustave Goublier, Paul Linke, Louis Laporte, and Henri Cas—only

Goublier composed a ballet score, Sport, which was not performed until the year after he left the hall. All Folies-Bergère conductors wrote incidental dances.227

226 I have, however, occasionally run across references in programmes and press clippings to secondary conductors, who may have rehearsed the company. The beginning of the rehearsal period of a new work is occasionally mentioned in newspaper theatrical columns. 227 Armand Patusset, the Folies-Bergère’s conductor in the early 1900s, did write a couple of ballets in 1901. 120

The biographical sketches included below provide a few more details about the careers of the three conductors from the 1880s and 1890s who contributed the most to music-hall ballet: the Folies-Bergère’s Louis Desormes, the Casino’s Henri José, and the Olympia’s Oscar de Lagoanère. The three had a significant impact on music-hall ballet both in terms of the length of their conducting contracts and the number of ballets they wrote for their respective halls.

Conductor-Composers, 1886-1900

Louis Desormes was, of all popular ballet composers, the most closely associated with Paris’s music halls. Born in the early in Algiers, Louis César

Marchione Desormes moved to Paris sometime during his youth and attended the

Paris Conservatoire, where he studied harmony with Antoine Elwart.228 Although now remembered solely for one of the most famous patriotic French songs of all times, En revenant de la revue, Desormes was an extraordinarily prolific composer.229 His theatrical composition career began in 1869 with two short operettas for the Eldorado, La Leçon de musique and Un Oncle de Carcassone, and a saynète-bouffe, Deux beautés d’autrefois, premiered at the Alcazar.230 He went on to compose more than 500 works over a span of thirty years: 200 songs and romances, 300 pieces for piano or orchestra (many of these were popular dances and arrangements), more than a dozen operettas, 30 pantomime-ballets and

228 According to Jules Martin, Desormes was born in Algiers in 1845. Martin, Nos Auteurs, 170- 71. Desormes’s birth date and place are recorded as Algiers, 1841 by Franz Stieger, Opernlexikon, Komponisten III (Tutzing: Verlegt bei Hans , 1978), 263, and , 15 December 1840 by Christian Goubault, in Dictionnaire de la musique, 378. There is no record of his Conservatoire studies in Pierre, Le Conservatoire national de musique. 229 En revenant de la revue was first sung by Paulus at the Alcazar d’été 14 July 1886. The rhythmic march is said to have come from a ballet staged at the Folies-Bergère that year. Christian Goubault, “En revenant de la revue,” in Dictionnaire de la musique, 378. 230 Martin, Nos Auteurs, 170-71. 121 ballet-divertissements, and a handful of other popular theatrical works including a saynète, vaudeville, revue, and pantomime.231

In the 1870s and early 1880s, Desormes wrote primarily for the Eldorado and for small popular theatres such as the Pépinière, Galerie Vivienne, and

Théâtre Déjazet. His operettas included Le Maître Luc (1873), Le Rêve d’Yvonette (1874), Le Menu de Georgette (1876), La Lune de miel normande

(1876), Antoine et Cléopâtre (1877), Les Commis voyageurs par amour (1879), and Quand les chats sont parties (1882); his saynètes or saynètes-bouffes included

Prunelle et Piffard (1872), Les Virtuoses de Gonesse (1876) L’Amour et l’appétit

(1877), and Cocodès et (1882).232 During the same period, Desormes also conducted the orchestras of the Café de l’Horloge and the Ambassadeurs.

In the early 1880s, Desormes turned from composing and conducting operetta to composing and conducting ballet, a change of career path that coincided with the beginning of his association with the Folies-Bergère. Between

1882 and 1886—the four seasons that preceded his appointment as the hall’s conductor—he wrote at least ten ballet divertissements for the Folies-Bergère.

Although only one of these early scores survives, that of Mars et Vénus (1882),

Desormes’s name appears on the manuscript librettos of nine early Folies-Bergère divertissements, none of which was recorded in theatre performance catalogues:

Le Grand prix de Paris, written by Marc Le Prevost (1882), Sur la plage, written and composed by Desormes (1883), Les Gandins, by St. Mary (1883), Les

Mouches de la St. Jean by Fernand Beissier (1883), Deux coqs, by Auguste

Galnem (1884), Ophelia, by the hall’s ballet master Grédelue (1885), and La fête

231 Ibid., 170-71. Martin credits Desormes with thirty-seven ballets for the Folies-Bergère. 232 The scores for all of these are available at the music department of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. 122 de Ménilmontant (1885) and La Rosière de Montretout, both divertissements- pantomimes by G. Adrien (1886).233

As the Folies-Bergère’s music director and conductor from 1886 to 1895,

Desormes composed an additional twenty-one ballets (mainly pantomime-ballets), all of which were box-office successes and some of which were critically acclaimed.234 He was also the conductor of the Opéra balls in 1895 and 1896.235

Though now obscure and considered a minor composer, he was a well known

Officier de l’Académie at the height of his career, and his music was always enthusiastically received by theatre critics.236

Henri José was, like Desormes, a conductor and composer who made his name in Parisian music halls and popular theatres. Although reviews attest to his having garnered a fair degree of success in the 1880s and 1890s, I have found little information about him beyond the most basic outline of his career. His artist’s dossier filed in the Collection Rondel (F-Pn Arts du spectacle) contains only one clipping, and the SACD has preserved only an incomplete list of his works.237 This document includes José’s date of death—13 April 1937—but despite this information, I have not yet come across any obituaries. José was born

7 April 1856 and grew up in , where he received musical training and conducting lessons from Johan Coenen. He arrived in Paris in 1885 and soon established himself as a conductor in popular theatres and music halls. His posts

233 All of the manuscript librettos for these divertissement are preserved in the censors’ files of the Archives nationales, F-Pan F18 1045 (Folies-Bergère). The divertissement-pantomimes had sections that were danced, though it is not clear from their librettos whether these were classical ballet variations or simple group dances for the corps. 234 Desormes also had two ballets performed in the provinces in 1895: La Castilliane (Toulouse), and Surprise par l’orage (Marseille). Stieger, Opernlexikon, Komponisten III, 263. 235 Martin, Nos Auteurs, 171. 236 “Nécrologie,” Le Ménestrel, 25 September 1898. 237 F-Pn 8-RO-3607. 123 included, in succession, the Menus-Plaisirs, the Théâtre des Nouveautés, the

Théâtre de la , the Casino de Néris-les-Bains, and the Nouveau-

Théâtre. He became the music director of the Casino de Paris around 1894 and remained there until the turn of the century, composing theatre music and popular dance tunes on a regular basis. He may have held temporary appointments elsewhere: in 1897, while still the Casino’s music director, he was the music director of the Folies-Marigny, where he conducted of Messager’s ballet Le

Chevalier aux fleurs.238

I have not been able to trace José’s career beyond his last ballet for the

Casino in 1901, but works lists and theatre performance registers attest to his having remained active as a composer for several years: he had at least two revues performed at the Casino in the early 1900s—the ballet-revue Paris qui danse

(1901) and the revue Les Patins de Paris (1902)—and his operetta, Le Mendiant d’amour, was performed at the Théâtre Molière, Brussels in 1908.239 José’s

Casino ballets were rarely praised outright by theatre critics—one was even described as dull, which would have been sharp criticism given the generally enthusiastic reception of music-hall ballet scores—yet they were popular successes. Each of his nine ballets received between 125 and 250 performances, and the most popular dances were excerpted and published in piano reduction for the amateur market.240 José was also a prolific composer of songs, marches, polkas, and waltzes, and he frequently made arrangements of favourite dances, not

238 Ibid. José may have conducted for the Folies-Marigny on a regular basis. 239 This operetta is his only surviving full score. Other works for the popular theatres include La Tziganie dans les ménages, Un Siècle de grace, Un Bon oncle, Les Pigeons voyageurs, and the comic opera Le Florentin. See F-Pn (Musique) card catalogue and Stieger, Opernlexicon, Komponisten III, 542. Les Patins de Paris in listed in the SACD catalogues as a pantomime-ballet by P.L. Flers, but José is not credited as its composer. 240 There are published piano scores at F-Pn (Musique) for excerpts from José’s Vassilissa and Tentations, among others. 124 only from his own ballets, but also from those by other music-hall ballet composers.

Oscar de Lagoanère was simultaneously active as a conductor, teacher, accompanist, and composer. Although less prolific that Desormes, Lagoanère wrote a steady stream of light works for music halls and popular theatres that brought him a certain measure of fame. Born Oscar Louis Antoine Ferdinand de

Lagoanère in Bordeaux on August 5, 1853, Lagoanère first studied Greek and

Latin at the Bordeaux Lycée; but he was irresistibly drawn to music and in 1869 moved to Paris to attend the Conservatoire. There he studied piano with Antoine-

François Marmontel, harmony with Jules Duprato, and accompaniment with

Augustin Savard. He does not seem to have been awarded any prizes while at the

Conservatoire, and after only two years left to begin his career as an accompanist for the Bouffes-Parisiens.241 In 1873, he was also certified to teach music in the

Paris school system, which he did for most of his life despite steady employment in the theatre.242 His career in the theatres continued with a series of conducting posts, first at the Théâtre de la Renaissance (he was initially an accompanist, then for five years its conductor), then at the Folies-Dramatiques, the Porte-Saint-

Martin, the Menus-Plaisirs (1887-1889 and 1891-1893), and the Bouffes-Parisiens

(1889-1891).243 During this decade, Lagoanère composed several one-act lyric works alternately listed in performance catalogues and biographical notices as comic operas or operettas that included Il était une fois (Menus-Plaisirs), L’Étape d’un sept jours, (Folies-Marigny), Un Ménage au violon (Variétés), Fillette et

241 Martin, Nos Auteurs, 319-20. 242 “O. de Lagoanère,” Le Courrier français, 18 November 1900. 243 Martin, Nos Auteurs, 319-20, and F-Pn 8-RO-3627. 125 loup garou (Horloge), and Les Deux panthères (Bouffes-du-Nord). He also wrote musique de scène for the Porte-Saint-Martin, and composed many mélodies, romances, waltzes, and other dance tunes.

Lagoanère’s involvement with the Olympia began in 1894, when he became the hall’s music director. He held posts there until 1900, mainly as its conductor, but also briefly—from 1896 to 1898—as general director.244 He wrote only a handful of ballets for the Olympia, all of which were either divertissements, such as Fête champêtre (1898) and La Folie d’or (1898), or divertissement-like, as was the pantomime-ballet Les Baigneuses de Trianon (1895).245 They were well received, but Lagoanère was better known for his many pantomimes and operettas; these, more than his ballets, confirmed his reputation as a popular music-hall composer. Of his scores for the Olympia, the most famous and longest-remembered was written to accompany Le Coucher de la mariée, Gaston

Pollonais’s wildly popular and renowned striptease-like pantomime.246

* * *

Conductors were responsible for a significant portion of the music performed in their halls, but by no means all. In the 1880s and early 1890s, half of the ballets staged at the Folies-Bergère, Casino, and Olympia were composed by musicians not directly associated with one of the halls. As mentioned earlier, most were either new to the field or specialists of popular music, several of whom went on to become important composers of light opera and ballet in the following decade. Cieutat, for instance, who composed Le Château de Mac-Arrott for the

244 Ibid., 319-20. Lagoanère was made an Officier de l’instruction publique in 1891. 245 Lagoanère composed one more major ballet towards the end of his career, Nedjéma, premiered at the Bordeaux Grand Théâtre in 1910. 246 A short pornographic silent film of the same title was filmed in Paris in 1896 starring Louise Willy. Lagoanère’s works for Parisian theatres include the one-act operas L’Étape d’un 7 jours, (Folies-Marigny), Un Ménage au violon (Variétés), Fillette et loup garou (Horloge), and Les Deux panthères (Bouffes-du-Nord). 126

Folies-Bergère in 1887 at the age of twenty-six, later wrote popular operettas, as well as two ballets for the Casino de Paris. Music-hall ballet composers from this period were as a general rule more distinguished than their predecessors and many had already begun to gain recognition in small Parisian theatres and music halls before writing music-hall ballets. Although none has been canonised in the New

Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, several have received at least short notices in French music dictionaries. The following vignettes represent a cross- section of composers who wrote ballets in the first years of music-hall pantomime-ballet production: young and amateur composers, established (but not illustrious) theatre composers, and popular-music specialists.

Pantomime-Ballet Composers, 1886-1894

Antoine Banès (1856-1924), the composer of the Olympia’s very first ballet,

Olympia (1893), was considered an amateur.247 He was initially trained at the

Paris Conservatoire, but left to complete his studies in arts administration, and his primary career was as an archivist.248 He was a librarian for the Opéra-Comique and the Opéra—work for which he was awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur in 1913—but he also regularly contributed music criticism to Le

Figaro, and composed several theatrical works for both private and state theatres.

Banès made his debut as a composer of musical fantasies at the Eldorado, and later wrote several successful comic operas including Toto (Menus-Plaisirs, 1892),

Madame Rose (Opéra-Comique, 1893), Le Bonhomme de neige (Bouffes-

Parisiens, 1894), Le Roi Frelon (Folies-Dramatiques, 1895), and La Soeur de

247 He is referred to in biographical notices as an amateur without pejorative connotations; he was labeled as such simply because composition was not his primary means of making a living. 248 Banès studied at the Conservatoire with Emile Durand. He was born in Paris, 8 June 1856 and died suddenly in Paris, 11 December 1924. F-Pn 8-RO-2418. 127

Jocrisse (Opéra-Comique, 1901).249 Despite the label of amateur, Banès was an established composer of popular theatrical music when he wrote the score for the

Olympia’s inaugural ballet and he had already written a successful ballet for the

Folies-Bergère, Tohu-Bohu, produced under Sari in 1883. Choosing him for the

Olympia’s first production would have been a safe gamble.250

Charles Hubans, born Charles-Joseph Hubant (1828-1904), was one of the

Folies-Bergère’s first conductors.251 After leaving the Conservatoire in 1844 with an accessit (the school’s equivalent of honourable mention or runner up), Hubans became a specialist of light music, writing dozens of songs, short instrumental pieces, dances, and transcriptions and fantasies based on theatre music.252 He soon became an established conductor-composer for popular venues: he conducted in turn for the Cirque-Olympique, the Concert Musard, the Alcazar, the

Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens, and the Folies-Bergère, and he composed operettas, vaudevilles, and ballets for, among others, the Bouffes-Parisiens, the

Athénée, and the Folies-Bergère.253 His Folies-Bergère ballets, written in the first years of Marchand’s directorship when the hall was at a crossroads between presenting divertissements and pantomime-ballets, were all divertissement-like:

Les Sauterelles (1887), Presse-Ballet (1888), and Les Baigneuses (1889) were

249 Martin, Nos Auteurs, 31. 250 This was his only music-hall ballet, but he later had several staged in the provinces and abroad in the early 1900s, including Mademoiselle cyclamen (Aix-les Bains, 1903), Le Péage (Genève 1904), and Zilda (1905). 251 There is no record in extant programmes of his having conducted the Folies-Bergère orchestra but Hubans is mentioned in the press as the conductor of the Folies-Bergère in the late 1870s. 252 Pierre, Le Conservatoire national de musique, 776. 253 G.E., “Chronique parisienne,” L’Art musicale, 22 August 1878. His operettas and comic operas include Le Tour de Moulinet (1874), La Belle Lina (1875), Deux coqs vivaient en paix (1880), La Clarinette (1882), La Cour d’amour (1883), and Rien qu’un jour! (1889), and his saynètes include L’Ordonnance du commandant (1870), Une fausse gélatine (1870), and Ragivore et Collodium (1873). He also had operettas and ballets performed in the provinces. 128 one-act ballets with more dancing, posed tableaux, and pageantry than detailed pantomime. He also wrote one earlier ballet, Les Abeilles (1881), premiered at one of the first provincial music halls to be modeled on Paris’s Folies-Bergère:

Bordeaux’s “Folies-Bergère.”

Like Banès, Henri Cieutat (1861-1906) received some musical training but was primarily an arts administrator for the Ministry of Fine Arts.254 Although considered an amateur, Cieutat was a recognised composer of light music and had several works performed in café-concerts, music halls, and small popular theatres.255 He began his career by writing short instrumental pieces for the

Eldorado and Scala music halls, then composed operettas and comic operas for music halls and popular theatres both in Paris and in the provinces.256 His œuvre included comic operas for the Menus-Plaisirs: Le Rêve (1888), Le Collier (1888), and Pierrot puni (1889); operettas for the La Scala music hall: Un Marriage à bout portent (1892), Procès verbal (1893), and La Chaste Suzanne (1894); and operettas for the Divan Japonais: La Crémaillière (1893) and La Miniature

(1893).257 Although Cieutat’s one very popular and skilfully written early music- hall pantomime-ballet, Le Chateau de Mac-Arrott, was staged at the Folies-

Bergère in 1887 when he was twenty-six, he wrote most of his ballets—Les

Joujoux (1894), Fiammina (1895), Vénus à Paris (1896), and Cadet-Roussel

(1900)—for the Casino de Paris at the height of his career, which coincided with the height of music-hall ballet production.

254 Cieutat was born in Paris, 15 July 1861 and died in Paris, 30 November 1906. He studied composition with Samuel Rousseau. “Nécrologie,” Le Ménestrel, 1 December 1906. 255 Ibid. 256 Ibid. These little pieces may have been songs; dozens survive in the archives of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, along with several operetta scores and excerpts from his ballets. 257 Martin, Nos Auteurs, 124-25, and Stieger, Opernlexikon, Komponisten III, 206. 129

Frédéric Toulmouche (1850-1909), a specialist composer of light theatrical music, had already written several successful works before composing his first ballet in 1895. He was born in Nantes and studied at the Nantes lycée, and after completing his baccalaureate, he went to Paris to study composition with Victor

Massé at the Conservatoire.258 He began his career writing short orchestral works, but he quickly found greater success writing for the theatre and soon abandoned instrumental music for light opera. Although well received, his operettas were mainly composed for small venues and tended to be very light. The best of these were, according to his obituaries, La Veillée de noces (Menus-Plaisirs, 1888),

Mademoiselle ma femme (Menus-Plaisirs, 1893), du Cantal (Folies-

Dramatiques, 1895), and La Saint-Valentin (Bouffes-Parisiens, 1895); all four were published in piano reduction.259 Toulmouche also composed the score for one of the Olympia’s all-time most acclaimed operettas, an operette-bouffe titled

Tante Agnès that was staged in 1896. His music-hall ballets postdate all of these and were, like Cieutat’s, written at the height of his career: Les Deux tentations and Madame Malbrouck were staged in 1895 and 1898 by the Casino, and Pierrot au hammam was premiered at the Olympia in 1897, two years after his box-office hit operetta Tante Agnès. Toulmouche was not only a composer of light music.

As well as writing for the popular theatres, he worked for several years as the chef de chant, or vocal coach, for the Opéra-Comique, a position he held until his death at the age of 59.260

258 Frederic Michel Toulmouche was born in Nantes, 3 August 1850 and died in Paris, 23 February 1909. F-Pn 8-RO-4435. His date of death is listed in Le Ménestrel as 20 February 1909. “Nécrologie,” Le Ménestrel, 27 February 1909. 259 Ibid. 260 Ibid. 130

Music-Hall Ballet on the Rise, 1895-1898

The 1895-1896 season marked a shift in the status of composers who wrote ballets for the music halls: conductor-composers were almost entirely replaced by external composers who, increasingly, were established and already celebrated musicians. This shift was in part the result of changes to the halls’ personnel. As noted earlier, Desormes gave up his conducting post at the Folies-Bergère around

1895, and in 1896 Lagoanère took on the responsibilities of general director for the Olympia, thus likely reducing the time he could devote to composition.

There was, however, a second, and possibly more important, reason for this move towards commissioning external composers—one that paralleled the rising status of the halls. Desormes, Lagoanère, and José could have continued to write scores into the late 1890s had it been advantageous for their respective halls.

Although it appears from programmes that Desormes occasionally returned to conduct the Folies-Bergère orchestra until his death in 1898 and composed three new ballets during this time, all three were staged in the provinces. Lagoanère, who handed over the hall’s administration to the Isola brothers in 1898, remained at the hall as the conductor for at least two more years and returned to composing music on a regular basis, but he wrote only two new ballet-divertissements. The

Casino underwent no administrative upheavals, yet even José, who conducted the orchestra without interruption until the turn of the century, wrote fewer ballet scores than he had in the early 1890s.

The shift towards attracting more prominent composers to write ballets can most likely be attributed to the increased artistic importance of the halls’ productions and increased social status of the halls themselves. As described in the previous chapter, the Folies-Bergère, the Olympia, and to a lesser extent the

131

Casino, had become the meeting grounds for le Tout-Paris, and all three were staging increasingly grand, complex, and important ballet productions. The halls no longer entrusted the composition of ballet music to conductors, light music specialists, or as yet untried youth. Rather, the halls sought out already known composers—just as they relied on established star performers—to continue to draw ever larger and more elegant crowds.

By the late 1890s, the external composers who contributed scores were established composers of operetta, comic opera, and ballet. Nearly all were mid- career (in their late 30s and early 40s) and were already known to audiences, either from the popular theatres, or from previous engagements in the music halls.

Of the most important music-hall ballet composers between 1895 and 1898—

Cieutat, Toulmouche, Ganne, Diet, Missa, Roger, and Varney—the first three had previously composed for the halls and had since made names for themselves in mainstream theatres; the four new recruits to the halls—Diet, Missa, Roger, and

Varney—were already celebrated composers of comic opera and operetta who wrote for all of the major Parisian popular theatres.

At first glance this practice appears little different from that of the early

1890s. Many pantomime-ballets from the beginning of the decade had been written by established composers of light opera. But there was one important development: whereas music-hall ballet composers from the early 1890s achieved prominence in small venues such as the Eldorado, Scala, Divan Japonais, or

Menus-Plaisirs, by the late 1890s, music-hall composers were more likely to be involved with Paris’s major lyric theatres. Edmond Diet, Edmond Missa, Louis

Varney, and Victor Roger, the most prolific and important of the new music-hall ballet composers in the mid-1890s, had already had works performed at the

132

Bouffes-Parisiens, Folies-Dramatiques, Nouveautés, Renaissance, and Vaudeville.

Missa had also had an opera staged at the Opéra-Comique; Diet would a decade later. Many later profited from greater fame after their involvement with the halls, and became the leading popular composers of their generation.

The following vignettes outline the careers of the four new composers who became regular contributors to the music halls in the mid-1890s—Diet, Missa,

Varney, and Roger—along with the single most important music-hall ballet composer, Louis Ganne. The two other important composers from this period,

Cieutat and Toulmouche, have already been discussed above. Tellingly, a far higher percentage of composers who wrote music-hall ballets after 1895 have at least short biographical notices in the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and/or the Grove Dictionary of Opera.

The Pre-eminent Composers of Music-Hall Ballet I: 1895-1898

Edmond Diet was a composer of popular music born and trained in Paris. He completed a baccalaureate and was slated to enter the École des Beaux-Arts in architecture to follow in his father’s footsteps, but Diet was musically inclined and instead enrolled at the Conservatoire.261 There, with the express goal of becoming a composer, Diet took organ and improvisation classes with César Franck, and counterpoint, fugue, and orchestration with Giraud.262 He left without receiving any prizes, then floundered for a few years while he wrote an assortment of

“serious” pieces—sonatas for piano and violin, oratorios, and other instrumental works that received little public or critical attention.263 Eventually realising that

261 Diet was born in Paris, 25 September 1854 and died in Paris, 30 October 1924. Joël-Marie Fauquet, in Dictionnaire de la musique, 385. 262 Ibid. 263 “Edmond Diet,” Le Théâtre illustré [Olympia: Rêve de noël], 6e année, no. 13. 133 he was on the wrong path, Diet turned to composing light music. He wrote dozens of popular songs, piano pieces, and dance tunes (particularly waltzes and marches) for the amateur market, and had several vaudevilles, pantomimes, operettas, and ballets performed in Parisian theatres and music halls. His comic opera Stratonice (1887) was, for example, staged by the Menus-Plaisirs, his ballet

Scientia (1889) was written for the opening of the Paradis-Latin (a short-lived theatre on the left bank), the vaudeville-operetta Fleur de vertu (1894) was staged at the Bouffes-Parisiens, and the operetta Madame Putiphar (1897) was performed at the Athénée-Comique.

Diet’s reputation increased steadily throughout the 1880s and 1890s, and in 1906, his comédie-lyrique, La Revanche de l’iris, was premiered at the Opéra-

Comique.264 Although Diet initially made his name in lyric theatres, his success was due, arguably more than most composers, to his music-hall ballets. He wrote six ballets for the music halls in five years: four for the Olympia—Rêve de Noël

(1896), Sardanapale (1897), La Belle aux cheveux d’or (1900), and Watteau

(1900)—and two for the Folies-Bergère—La Belle et la bête (1895) and

L’Araignée d’or (1896). All were box-office successes and some attracted critical attention.

Edmond Missa was one of the most prolific and celebrated light opera composers of his day.265 He was born into a family of organists and received considerable musical training, first from his mother, then at the École

Niedermeyer, and finally at the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied composition

264 Fauquet, Dictionnaire de la musique, 385; and Martin, Nos Auteurs, 174. Diet also wrote religious music and mélodies. 265 Despite this, none of his works have remained in the repertory. 134 with Jules Massenet.266 Missa garnered acclaim quickly: while at the

Conservatoire, he entered the 1881 and received an honourable mention for his cantata Geneviève; he left two years later with a deuxième prix in counterpoint and fugue.267 In 1886 his first comic opera, Juge et partie, won the

Prix Cressent—a coveted prize for young French composers—and was staged at the Opéra-Comique.268

Missa had a multifaceted career, working simultaneously as an organist at the churches of St. Thomas-d’Aquin and St. Honoré-d’Eylau in Paris, and as a composer of popular theatrical music. His more than twenty comic operas and handful of pantomimes and ballets were staged in venues ranging in orientation and prominence, including the Menus-Plaisirs, Bouffes-Parisiens, Opéra-

Comique, Casino de Paris, and Olympia.269 He also wrote mélodies and romances, and works for choir, for piano, and for orchestra.270 Although still young when he wrote his ballets Un Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1897) and Vision

(1898) for the Olympia and Les Grandes courtisanes (1899) for the Folies-

Bergère, Missa had already established himself as one of the era’s foremost composers of popular theatre music. Missa did not look to the music halls to help further his career; rather his fame lent cachet to the halls.

266 New Grove Dictionary, s.v. “Missa, Edmond” (by Jacques Tchamkerten). Missa was born in Reims, 12 June 1861 and died in Paris, 29 January 1910. 267 Pierre, Le Conservatoire national de musique, 815. 268 New Grove Dictionary, s.v. “Missa, Edmond” (by Jacques Tchamkerten). 269 Martin, Nos Auteurs, 405-6. 270 Missa’s works include comic operas Muguette (1903; later performed in London, Hamburg, Moscow, and Geneva), Le Chevalier timide (Menus-Plaisirs, 1887), La Belle Sophie (Menus- Plaisirs, 1888), La Princesse Nangara (Reims, 1892), Le Marriage gratuit (Menus-Plaisirs, 1892), Ninon et Lenclos (Opéra-Comique, 1895), Les Deux peuples (Olympia, 1896); pantomimes Doctoresse, (Bouffes-Parisiens, 1890) and L’Hôte (Casino de Paris, 1893); comédie lyrique Dinah (Comédie-Parisienne, 1894); and revue Le Dernier des Marigny (Folies-Marigny, 1896). New Grove Dictionary, s.v. “Missa, Edmond” (by Jacques Tchamkerten). 135

Both Louis Varney and Victor Roger were, to an even greater extent than

Missa, established and celebrated composers of operetta and comic opera: both were prolific and at the height of their respective careers, and both were household names long before they wrote their first popular ballets. Louis Varney was the

Offenbach of his time. He was born into a musical family and grew up listening to and studying Offenbach’s music while his father, a famous violinist, conducted at the Bouffes-Parisiens.271 Varney received his formal music training at the Paris

Conservatoire, studying with Antoine Elwart and Louis Clapisson, and then returned to the popular theatres to pursue his career.272 After a brief stint as a conductor, Varney turned exclusively to composition, and following in

Offenbach’s footsteps, quickly became one of the great operetta composers of his generation. Varney’s operettas, composed over twenty-five years at a rate of approximately two a year, were staged in all of the major Parisian popular theatres: the Bouffes-Parisiens, the Nouveautés, the Renaissance, the Théâtre de la

Gaîté, and the Folies-Dramatiques.273 His best-known operetta, Les

Mousquetaires au couvent, premiered in 1880 at the Bouffes-Parisiens, ran for more than 700 performances and remains in the repertory today.274 Although nowhere near as profitable, his Folies-Bergère ballet, La Princesse Idaea (1895),

271 Varney was born in , 30 May 1844 and died in Paris, 20 August 1908. New Grove Dictionary, s.v. “Varney, Louis” (by Andrew Lamb). 272 Varney is not listed in Pierre’s Le Conservatiore national de musique and I have not come across any other biographical information that indicates whether he took any prizes at the Conservatoire. 273 Varney’s theatrical works include comic operas Les Petits mousquetaires (Folie-Dramatique, 1885), L’Amour mouillé (Nouveautés, 1887), La Fille de Fanchon (Fol.-Dr., 1891), La Femme de Narcisse (Renaissance, 1892), Miss Robinson (Fol.-Dr., 1892), Les Petits Brebis (Cluny, 1895), and, though not all box-office hits, operettas La Fée aux chèvres, Le Vénus d’Arles, Le Brillant Achille, and Mademoiselles Georges. F-Pn 8-RO-4450 and F-Pse “Louis Varney.” 274 F-Pn 8-RO-4450. 136 was a popular success. He subsequently produced two revue-like ballets for the

Olympia in the early 1900s: Paris-Cascades and Les Saisons de la parisienne.275

By the time Victor Roger wrote his first music-hall ballet, Chez le , for the Folies-Bergère in 1896, he had already written over twenty operettas.276 Roger, born in in 1853, was the son of a musician and received his formal musical training at the École Niedermeyer. Like many of his predecessors, Roger began his career writing songs and operettas for the Eldorado then made a career composing light theatrical music for a range of popular venues including the Bouffes-Parisiens, Folies-Dramatiques, Menus-Plaisirs,

Renaissance, and Nouveautés.277 He also wrote one pantomime-ballet each for the Folies-Bergère, the Olympia, and the Casino de Paris, all of which were major productions. The score for Chez le couturier was singled out for praise in Le

Figaro, and the Casino’s La (1901) had an unusually long run of nearly five months. Roger would have been a major draw for any of the three halls.278

Louis Ganne was involved with all stages of music-hall ballet history, and his works closely mirror developments in popular ballet. He received his earliest musical training from the Frères de Saint-Nicolas, then trained at the

275 Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “La Soirée,” Le Figaro, 28 March 1895. Although I have not found scores for either of these, synopses and descriptions of these works in the press suggest that these were not pantomime-ballets. 276 Victor Roger was born in Montpellier, 22 July 1853 and died in Paris, 2 December 1903. New Grove Dictionary, s.v. “Roger, Victor” (by Andrew Lamb). Jules Martin notes Roger’s birthdate as 21 July 1854. Martin, Nos Auteurs, 476-77. 277 New Grove Dictionary, s.v. “Roger, Victor” (by Andrew Lamb). Roger’s first great success was the opéra-bouffe Joséphine vendue par ses soeurs, a parody of Méhul’s Joseph, staged at the Bouffes-Parisiens in 1886. Roger’s operas and comic operas include Oscarine (Bouffes-Parisiens, 1888), Cendrionnette with (Bouffes-Parisien, 1890), Le Fétiche (Menus-Plaisirs, 1890), Samsonnet (Nouveautés, 1890), Le Coq (Menus-Plaisirs, 1891), Sa Majesté l’amour (Eldorado, 1896). He also wrote for the Renaissance and Folies-Dramatiques in the 1890s. Martin, Nos Auteurs, 476-77. 278 Roger also worked as a theatre and music critic for La France and Le Petit journal and acted as the general secretary for the Opéra balls. 137

Conservatoire, where he studied with Dubois, Franck, and Massenet. He graduated in 1882 with a premier prix in harmony and premier accessit in organ.279 Ganne, who showed great promise as composer, chose from the start to concentrate on writing for the popular theatres. His very first work, written the year he graduated, was a one-act ballet for the Folies-Bergère titled Les Sources du Nil. It was an immediate success and Ganne, at age twenty, was acclaimed as a talented composer of popular music. He also became a sought-after conductor: in the early 1890s, he conducted for the Nouveau-Théâtre, then succeeded Métra as the conductor of the bals de l’Opéra in the late 1890s. He was later the Monte

Carlo Casino’s musical director for several years in the early 1900s.

Ganne wrote more than two hundred works over the course of his career, most of which were popular dance tunes, songs, salon pieces, and instrumental works (one of these was a set piece, or morceau de concours, commissioned for the Conservatoire’s flute exams in 1901). He also had some success as a writer of comic opera: his operetta, Les Saltimbanques (1899), and comic opera, Hans,

Joueur de flûte (1906), are still occasionally performed today. His greatest successes were his ballets.

In all, Ganne wrote ten ballets for the Parisian music halls over a thirty- year period. Les Sources du Nil was his only divertissement for the Folies-

Bergère under Sari, but he returned to write several ballets for the hall during

Marchand’s directorship that reflect the staging practices of the time: Volapük

(1886) and Fleurs et plumes (1887), written at the beginning of Marchand’s tenure, followed the format of one-act ballets then in vogue: like many ballets

279 Louis Ganne was born in Buxières-les-Mines, 5 April 1862 and died in Paris, 14 July 1923. See Pierre, Le Conservatoire national de musique, 759, for Ganne’s prizes at the Conservatoire, and J.M. Lechevin, Les Origines et le destin du compositeur Louis Ganne (Moulins: Les Cahiers Bourbonnais, 1974) for a detailed biography. 138 created in these years, Volapük was structurally a cross between a divertissement and a pantomime-ballet. Ganne’s Casino ballet, L’Heureuse rencontre, also reflected music-hall practices of the time: it was written while he was conducting at the neighbouring Nouveau-Théâtre at a time when most ballets were written by in-house staff.

Ganne’s most important ballets and greatest successes in terms of box- office returns were composed at the height of music-hall ballet production. His

Merveilleuses et gigolettes (1894), an historical that relied on visual spectacle for dramatic impact, ran for more than 200 consecutive performances.280 Phryné, a complex three-act pantomime-ballet premiered in

Royan in 1896, was a runaway success and was restaged at the Folies-Bergère in

1897 and at the Olympia in 1904. Two of the last ballets Ganne wrote for the

Folies-Bergère, La Princesse au sabbat (1899) and Cythère (1900), were popular and critical successes.281 Ganne did not write any new ballets for the Parisian halls for several years while he was the conductor at the Monte Carlo Casino (the

Olympia’s production of his ballet Au Japon was a restaging of a work created for

London’s Alhambra in 1902). In 1910, however, he returned to the Folies-

Bergère long after it had ceased to be Paris’s pre-eminent centre of ballet to compose the score for Les Ailes, one of the pantomime-ballets that Mariquita was invited specially to choreograph. This was Ganne’s last music-hall pantomime- ballet and one of the last to be staged in any of the three main Parisian halls.

280 Radiguer, “Le Petit poucet,” Journal des concerts militaires no. 45, 6 August 1896, clipping in F-Pn 8-RO-3191. 281 La Princesse au sabbat, a dark witches’ tale written by Jean Lorrain, had one of the more dramatic plots and one of the most evocative and colourful scores of any of the ballets I have studied. 139

Music-Hall Ballet at its Height: 1898-1904

By the end of the 1890s, the dominant pattern for all three halls was to commission famous composers of theatrical music. There nevertheless remained slight variations in the halls’ hiring practices. While the Folies-Bergère’s ballets continued to be critically acclaimed, and while the hall continued either to attract or commission important popular ballet and comic-opera composers, the hall also continued to rely on its conductor for music, and to commission promising young composers and specialists of light music. In 1898, for example, the Folies-

Bergère’s ballets were written by the young composers of light music André

Colomb and Paul Marcelles (pseudonym for Marcel Fournier), and by Gustave

Goublier, the conductor of the Eldorado and a composer of songs, instrumental pieces, and operettas for café-concerts and music halls.282 In 1901, three of the hall’s four ballets were composed either by the twenty-six-year-old Franco

Alfano, now famous for completing Puccini’s Turandot, or the hall’s new conductor, Armand Patusset.283 The Folies-Bergère’s remaining ballets from

1898 to 1901 were written by well known composers of theatrical music: Missa wrote one, Ganne returned to write two, Pfeiffer came over from the Opéra-

Comique to write another, and Thomé, who made his name as a ballet composer at the Eden-Théatre nearly a decade earlier, wrote one.284

The Olympia, in contrast, hired a stream of famous opera and ballet composers. Varney, Roger, and Ganne continued to compose for the hall, along

282 Jean-Claude Fournier, “Gustave Goublier (1856-1926),” Opérette, http://74.125.47.132/search? q=cache:1s6zRdrgk1wJ:pagesperso-orange.fr/anao/composit/goublierpere.html+%22gustave+ goublier%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=ca (accessed 14 July 2009). 283 On Alfano, see New Grove Dictionary, s.v. “Alfano, Franco” (by John C.G. Waterhouse). Patusset was the Folies-Bergere’s conductor for most of the decade. He composed a couple of ballets as well as the music for the hall’s early revues. 284 The Folies-Bergère did not premiere any ballets between 1902 and 1906, but did stage new productions of ballets premiered at the Olympia. The hall then returned to staging ballets between 1906 and 1913, but did so only intermittently. 140 with new recruits who had already had works performed in Paris’s major lyrical theatres: Henri Hirschmann, Charles Lecocq, and Paul Vidal. Lecocq had composed stage works for the Bouffes-Parisiens, Renaissance, Nouveautés,

Folies-Marigny, and Opéra-Comique, Hirschmann for the Opéra-Comique and

Théâtre Lyrique, and Vidal for the Opéra-Comique and Opéra. In 1900 and 1901, even the Casino attracted a couple of major names from the world of light opera:

Georges Pfeiffer and Victor Roger. The former had already written a ballet for the Folies-Bergère, and the latter for the Olympia.

To some extent, the music halls had a far more impressive roster of famous composers at the end of the century because several composers who made their name in the halls as apprentices returned after establishing successful careers in other theatres. Ganne, Cieutat, Toulmouche, José, and Diet all wrote scores over a ten to twenty-year period, and although they began later, Missa, Roger, and

Varney wrote ballets on a regular basis after 1895. The combination of long- running, profitable productions and increased status of the halls would have encouraged loyalty for composers as it did for librettists.

The increased celebrity of music-hall ballet composers at the turn of the century is partly reflected in the greater number and length of entries that document their careers in canonical musicological dictionaries.285 Whereas of the early divertissement and pantomime-ballet composers only Ganne has a biographical notice in the Grove Dictionary and Die Musik in Geschichte und

Gegenwart, most popular ballet composers from the late 1890s, including Missa,

Varney, Roger, Lecocq, Vidal, Alfano, and Pfeiffer, appear in the Grove

285 Although not always an accurate measure of the importance of a given musician during his or her own lifetime, inclusion in musicology’s foundational texts is at least an indication of the value musicologists have ascribed to their music in posterity. 141

Dictionary of Music and Musicians and/or Grove Dictionary of Opera.286

Hirschmann is the exception in not having an entry in either dictionary. The biographical vignettes of music-hall ballet composers from the turn of the twentieth century included below are therefore no more than thumbnail sketches.

The Pre-eminent Composers of Music-Hall Ballet II: 1898-1904

Although Henri Hirschmann (1872-1961) was very young when he wrote his ballets for the music halls, he was already an award-winning composer.287 He studied at the Conservatoire with Massenet, and at the age of twenty, was awarded the Prix Rossini by the Académie des Beaux-Arts for his cantata, Ahasverus, performed by the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire.288 Four years later, in

1896, he won the Prix Cressent for L’Amour à la Bastille, a comic opera performed at the Opéra-Comique.289 Despite his burgeoning career as a composer of “art” music for national institutions, Hirschmann must have viewed writing for the music halls as an equally valid outlet for his creative talents. In the space of two years, he wrote five popular ballets for the Olympia. Néron, written in 1898 when he was twenty-six years old, was a distinct success and was followed the next year by two more pantomime-ballets—Les Septs pêchés capitaux and Les

Milles et une nuits—and two divertissements: Les Favorites and Folles amours.

Hirschmann went on to write operas and instrumental works that were performed in the most prestigious venues in France, including the Théâtre des Variétés, the

Gaîté Lyrique, the Théâtre Lyrique, and the Opéra; yet he also kept a foot in the

286 Both dictionaries include biographical notices for the same composers with the exception of Thomé, who is included in Grove but not MGG. 287 Hirschmann was born in Saint-Mandé, 30 April 1872 and died in Paris, 3 November 1961. “Folies-Bergère: Les Septs péchés capitaux,” Paris qui chante, F-Pn 8-RO-10995 (1). 288 The work was performed 26 November 1893. 289 “Folies-Bergère: Les Septs péchés capitaux,” Paris qui chante, F-Pn 8-RO-10995 (1). 142 door of the popular world by writing operettas under the pseudonym Henri

Herblay.290

Charles Lecocq, Francis Thomé, and Paul Vidal were all Conservatoire- trained composers of theatrical music. Lecocq and Vidal were particularly successful, winning recognition early in their careers and quickly gaining entry into Paris’s highest musical institutions. Both composed popular comic opera and operetta and were well-established before composing music-hall ballets.291 By the time Lecocq wrote his pantomime-ballet Barbe-Bleue for the Olympia in 1898, he had already had forty-five comic operas and operettas performed in popular venues such as the Bouffes-Parisiens, Folies-Marigny, Athénée, Variétés, Folies-

Dramatiques, Renaissance, and Nouveautés.292 Vidal, though not quite as prolific, had won the Prix de Rome and had had operas performed at both the Opéra and

Opéra-Comique before composing his 1901 ballet L’Impératrice for the Olympia.

He had also already had a ballet divertissement and a pantomime-ballet staged at the Opéra.293

290 Hirschmann’s Suite Symphonique en quatre parties was performed at the Opéra concerts. Other works include operas Amour à la Bastille (Châtelet, 1897; restaged Opéra-Comique 1898), Lovelace (Variétés, 1898), Hernani (Gaîté, 1909), and La Dame au domino (Gaîté Lyrique, 1927), the comédie lyrique to Richepin’s libretto La Nuit embaumée (Opéra-Comique, 1939), and the drame lyrique La Danseuse de Tanagara (Nice Opéra, 1911). 291 All three also wrote in other theatrical genres and composed instrumental pieces and songs. See their individual entries in the New Grove Dictionary. 292 He was also the Opéra’s choir director. He would later become the principal conductor of the Opéra, he founded the Concerts de l’Opéra (1895–7) with Georges Marty, and was, from 1914 to 1919, musical director of the Opéra-Comique. See New Grove Dictionary, s.v. “Vidal, Paul” (by David Charlton). 293 His Opéra ballets were La Maladetta (1893) and Fête russe (1893). He also had an important ballet, Les Cygnes, choreographed by Mme Mariquita at the Opéra-Comique the year following his success at the Olympia. In the same year that Vidal’s music-hall ballet was staged, he also had the pantomime-ballet Les Deux font la paire performed at the Trocadéro in 1901 (choreographed by Hansen) and Le Maître corbeau performed at the Opéra-Comique the same year (choreographed by Mme Mariquita). 143

Thomé and Pfeiffer had somewhat different career trajectories. Thomé was mainly a composer of ballets, pantomimes, and incidental music, and was one of the only music-hall ballet composers to have specialized in these rather than in light opera.294 Now best known for having composed the music for Raoul de

Najac’s humorous and grisly pantomime Barbe-Bleuette, Thomé achieved recognition composing the ballets La Folie parisienne (1886) and Djemmah

(1886) for the Eden-Théâtre.295 George Pfeiffer, the composer of two important pantomime-ballets in 1900—Cléopâtre (Casino) and Madame Bonaparte (Folies-

Bergère)—wrote in an unusually broad range of genres. Along with his comic operas (two were performed at the Opéra-Comique), he composed instrumental and vocal works including mélodies, pieces for orchestra or piano, three piano concertos, a symphony, and études for the French Conservatoire system.296

Hirschmann’s, Lecocq’s, Roger’s, and Vidal’s careers in particular highlight the extent to which the halls had acquired prestige. All four composers were already celebrated composers for Paris’s mainstream popular theatres: the cachet they leant to the halls would have been considerable. Yet by the late

1890s, the halls themselves had risen sufficiently in status to appeal to recognised composers. The halls also attracted audiences similar to those that patronised the

294 Francis Thomé was naturalized French but was born in Port-Louis on Ile Maurice, 18 October 1850. He died at age 58. F-Pn 8-RO-4430. While at the Conservatoire, he studied piano with Marmontel, harmony and accompaniment with Duprato, counterpoint, fugue, and composition with and Chuvet, and organ with César Franck. Thomé also taught piano. See notice in “Concerts et soirées,” Le Ménestrel, 29 May 1887. 295 Thomé also wrote the ballets (Théâtre-Lyrique, 1888) and Le Mannequin (Théâtre Mathurins, 1904). Thomé’s works include La Folie-Parisienne, pantomime (1886), le Papillon (Théâtre Lyrique, 1888), and Les Saisons (1897). His 1886 Eden-Théâtre ballet Djemma was a popular success and was later restaged at the Alhambra in London. 296 Martin, Nos Auteurs, 447. Pfeiffer wrote two comic operas for the Opéra-Comique: L’Enclume (1884) and Le Légataire universel (1901). He was one of the few composers of late music-hall ballets not to have studied at the Paris Conservatoire. 144 major lyric theatres for which these same composers were regular contributors. It would no longer have been considered a step down for these composers to write popular ballets. The halls, then, could still help to promote these composers, just as they had done for their less illustrious predecessors. Their symbiotic relationship based on aspirations of commercial success remained stable; both were simply more famous.

CHOREOGRAPHERS

At the time called ballet masters or mistresses, choreographers were often considered artisans or specialist-technicians—staff hired to arrange dances that conformed to institutional styles.297 Choreographers have been the most difficult to trace of music-hall ballet’s creative artists. Their names were frequently omitted from programmes and performance catalogues, and they were not always mentioned in the press. A few critics even neglected to name choreographers when praising their dances.298 One can nevertheless follow at least the basic outline of their careers through a combination of advertisement posters and newspaper listings, press reviews, performance catalogues, and programmes.

Music-hall ballet masters and mistresses, whom for clarity I will anachronistically refer to as “choreographers” from here onwards, were as

297 Lynn Garafola writes in connection to women choreographers of the period that choreographers’ association with popular institutions not always interested in innovation led to many being discredited by the 1920s as perpetuators of “house” styles. Garafola, “Where Are Ballet’s Women Choreographers?,” 219. While this was sometimes true, reviews suggest a greater degree of creativity and imagination than Garafola is willing to grant them. 298 A study of nineteenth-century popular theatres not only reveals the presence of several important choreographers from this period, but also of several important women choreographers. As Lynn Garafola has argued in her article “Where Are Ballet’s Women Choreographers?,” the perceived dearth of women choreographers in dance historiography is not due to an actual lacuna, but to theatres’ creative practices and to current perceptions of the value of these institutions and their productions. Most nineteenth-century women choreographers, as Garafola has noted, worked for the popular theatres, for circuses, or for pleasure grounds—less prestigious venues that, as I have already pointed out, are rarely, if ever, studied in mainstream academia. Ibid., 215-30. 145 versatile as their literary and musical colleagues. All were former dancers or mimes who turned to choreography after careers as performers in Europe’s major theatres, all taught and choreographed both for mainstream theatres or popular venues, and all created dances of different types or styles. Egidio Rossi, the

Casino’s choreographer from 1893 to 1897, was trained at La Scala, Milan. He performed as a premier danseur both at La Scala and Paris’s Eden Theatre, and later taught at La Scala before returning to Paris as a ballet master. In Paris, Rossi worked for the Porte-Saint-Martin and Châtelet before taking the post of ballet master at the Casino.299 Pratesi, one of his successors at the Casino, and Balbiani, a choreographer for the Olympia, both danced for La Scala before turning to choreography. They both made the transition to Parisian ballet through the Eden

Theatre. 300 Both also had experience in English music halls and Parisian popular theatres. Pratesi choreographed productions for London’s Alhambra, and Balbiani choreographed ballets for London’s Covent Garden and Palace Theatre of

Varieties, and Paris’s Paradis-Latin and Châtelet.301 Alfredo Curti, who choreographed several hits for both the Folies-Bergère and the Olympia in the early 1900s, was an internationally renowned mime. He performed in London,

New York, Berlin, Moscow, Brussels, Bordeaux, Marseille, and Paris, and later gained recognition as a choreographer in Parisian and English music halls.302

Since the career paths of music-hall ballet choreographers were similar, rather than present a series of short biographies of all of the choreographers

299 F-Pn 8-RO-16324. He later choreographed ballets for the Alhambra. 300 On Pratesi, see Nadia Scafidi, “Le Théâtre de la Scala,” in Le Ballet en Italie: La Scala, La Fenice, Le San Carlo du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours, ed. Flavia Pappacena, trans. Marylène Di Stefano (Rome: Gremese Editore, 1998), 53-54. Balbiani’s career is outlined in Jane Pritchard, “Divertissement Only,” 40, note 26. Balbiani was trained in then performed as a premier danseur in Milan, Rome, and abroad. 301 Pritchard, “Divertissement Only,” 40, note 26. 302 “Olympia: Les Saisons de la Parisienne,” Le Théâtre illustré (Paris: Bureau de la revue, 1905), in F-Pn 8-RO-10804. 146 known to be involved with music-hall ballet, I will focus on the most important and, at the time, most famous one, the Folies-Bergère’s ballet mistress from 1890 to 1913, Madame Mariquita.

When Mariquita died in 1922, she was a prominent choreographer, best known for her ballets staged at the Opéra-Comique between 1898 and 1918. Her longer obituaries also eulogized her popular ballets created in boulevard theatres and music halls. Over the course of her fifty-year career as a choreographer,

Mariquita created at least two hundred documented ballets, and very likely more.

The pinnacle of her career in the 1890s and 1900s was marked by multiple performances of a range of types of ballet: she had anywhere between three and six major works staged each year in prominent ballet venues such as the Folies-

Bergère and the Opéra-Comique, as well as several shorter divertissements or character dances integrated into boulevard-theatre spectacles or presented in

Parisian concert venues and provincial theatres. Prior to becoming a choreographer, Mariquita had been a popular ballerina and character dancer, and earlier still an acclaimed child performer. She was one of the greatest dancers and choreographers of the era, but she left few traces of her career and fewer still of her life.

Mariquita was born in the vicinity of Algiers sometime between 1838 and

1840. Orphaned at an early age, she knew virtually nothing about her origins or ancestry, and likely did not know her exact date of birth. Surviving documents provide few clues. Her obituaries rarely mention her age, and when they do they are contradictory, alternately stating that she was 82 or 84 when she died in 1922.

Her application for membership into the French Society for Author’s Rights

147

(SACD) lists her date of birth as December 25, 1840, but this was probably fabricated for bureaucratic purposes. The year is possible, but it seems a stretch since most accounts place her on the Paris stage in 1845 around the age of seven or eight; she probably chose Christmas day at random.303 Her death certificate did not list a date of birth.

Mariquita’s full name also remains a mystery. Her death certificate and application of membership to the SACD respectively listed her name as Marie

Thérèse Gamaléry and Marie Gamalein, while the Moulin Rouge dancer Jane

Avril recorded the variant Marie Gamaléra in her memoirs.304 However,

Mariquita never used any variants of this surname in official correspondence. In

April 1857, she wrote a letter asking the director of the Opéra for an audition to join the theatre’s troupe and signed it Mariquita Tanzi.305 The following year she is listed in the Opéra’s personnel registers under this assumed professional name.306 She may have retained the name Tanzi for some time. A for piano by Gerolamo Faccioli published in Paris around 1860 features an etching of a ballerina under the name Mariquita written in large bold letters. The dedication above her name, written in smaller bold letters, reads “A la senorita Mariquita

Tanzi” (Figure 3.1).307 Mariquita Tanzi may well have been her stage name, but she dropped it sometime in the 1860s for Mlle Mariquita, and as of the 1890s she

303 Oddly, a second document in her SACD file lists her birth date as 1845, the year she arrived in Paris. A couple of obituaries place her in Paris at as early an age as five. F-Pn 8-RO-11776. According to Charles Akar, her debut at the Funambules was at age eight in a vaudeville by Auguste Jouhaud. Charles Akar, “Mariquita,” Echo de Paris, 6 October 1922. 304 Mariquita’s death certificate is archived in the city hall of the 9e arrondissement, Paris. See also Avril, Mes mémoires. 305 F-Pan AJ13 453 [demandes d’auditions, personnel Opéra]. 306 F-Pan AJ13 649 (1858) [État des appointements: sujets de la danse]. 307 I am grateful to Debra Sowell for bringing this score to my attention and sending me a copy. 148 was known to all as Madame Mariquita: the latter was her stage name and her nickname, but also the one she used in all formal correspondence.308

Although Mariquita left few written records of her life, she did occasionally relate her story of how she came to be a dancer. According to the Opéra-Comique’s director Albert Carré, who provided the most detailed account of Mariquita’s tale in his memoir, Souvenirs de théâtre, the young Mariquita was found one day near a fountain in Aumale, Algeria by a passer-by who adopted her. This woman was a dancer, and Mariquita learned to dance before she learned to read.309 Mariquita soon began to perform in cafés in Algiers and, according to some independent reports, also performed with a group of strolling players, presumably alongside her adoptive mother.310 When her adoptive mother died only a short time later, Mariquita was brought to Paris by an impresario in the hopes of furthering her stage career. She soon made her début in a vaudeville at the Funambules, performing the role of a dwarf under the assumed name of Fanny.311 She met with considerable success, and subsequently appeared in several popular productions as a child actor and dancer.312

There is also some evidence that she received formal classical dance training in the

1850s or 1860s. According to one obituary by Léonce Balitran, Mariquita took lessons from Paul “l’aérien,” by whom he probably meant Antoine Paul, a French premier danseur known for his technical agility.313

308 GB-Lv [Mme Mariquita letters]. My thanks to Jane Pritchard for showing me these letters. 309 Michel Carré, Souvenirs de théâtre (Paris: Plon, 1950), 219. Carré hired Mariquita in 1898 to be the theatre’s ballet mistress. 310 Cyril Beaumont, “Mariquita: Javotte,” in Complete Book of Ballets: A Guide to the Principal Ballets of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1938), 533. 311 Mariquita, performing under the assumed name of Fanny, replaced the dwarf Carolina at short notice and was an immediate success. Unattributed clipping in F-Pn 8-RO-11776. 312 Sebastien Voirol, “Mariquita, An Appreciation,” Dancing Times, n.s., 146 (November 1922), 119. 313 Léonce Balitrand, “Mariquita est morte,” Le Petit parisien, 6 October 1922. Antoine Paul was born in 1798 and died in 1871. He was the choreographer of the famous with Mme de Montessu, his sister, and Marie Taglioni. 149

Figure 3.1. Mariquita Tanzi on the cover of Gerolamo Faccioli, Polka varsoviana, c. 1860. Courtesy of the Madison U. and Debra H. Sowell Collection, Provo, Utah.

150

Regardless of where or how she got her ballet training, Mariquita was by all accounts a highly skilled dancer. As a youth, she gained a reputation as one of the era’s best character dancers (Figures 3.2 and 3.3), but both images and prose descriptions indicate that she was also a talented ballerina who could perform in an academic style with technical prowess. The most frequently reproduced photograph of Mariquita—a picture of the eighteen-year-old dancer wearing a —does not provide any information beyond that she may have danced in classically-oriented divertissements (Figure 3.4), but a composite photograph from the London Illustrated News published in 1907 suggests that Mariquita was not only recognized by contemporaries as a pre-eminent classical dancer, but also as one of the best. The montage, titled “The Evolution of Ballet Costume: Stars of

Yesterday and To-Day” and created as a snapshot costumes, places Mariquita, again wearing a tutu, in the foreground surrounded by the great ballerinas of the era (Figure 3.5).

Additional evidence of Mariquita’s skill as a ballerina is found in the

English dancer Edouard Espinosa’s short text on the history of ballet, Technical

Vade Mecum, The Art of the Ballet. He ranks Mariquita alongside the best of the

Opéra’s French ballerinas, writing “In the great outstanding PREMIERE

ETOILES, FRANCE gave us: LEGRAND, BEAUGRAND, DOR, MARIQUITA and SUBRA [capitals original].”314 The above-mentioned etching on the cover of

Faccioli’s polka likewise links Mariquita to academic ballet and suggests that

314 Edouard Espinosa, Technical Vade Mecum, The Art of the Ballet (London: Eve Kelland, 1948), 14. Espinosa listed all of the great male and female dancers of the French, Italian, and Russian schools who danced in France. 151

Figure 3.2. Photograph by Bert of Figure 3.3. Photograph by J. Delini Mariquita reproduced in Gaston of Mariquita’s début reproduced in Lebel, “Madame Mariquita se retire “La Matinée d’adieux de Madame du théâtre,” clipping in F-Pn 8-RO- Mariquita,” Comœdia, 17 April 11776. 1920, clipping in F-Pn 8-RO-11776.

Mariquita was known to audiences as a ballerina. The etching depicts Mariquita in arabesque balancing delicately on pointe, and although she is wearing a tutu that could have been appropriate for a , the image echoes etchings

152

Figure 3.4. Mlle Mariquita, photograph on the cover of Musica, 7e année, no. 75 (December 1908).

153

of the famous romantic ballerinas of the preceding generation (see Figure 3.1).

Espinosa elsewhere characterised Mariquita as one of the most memorable dancers he had ever seen. In his autobiography, And Then He Danced, he describes a performance of hers that took place some sixty years earlier, in 1879.

If the date is correct, 1879 would probably have been the last year that Mariquita ever danced professionally. The number consisted of a Chinese character dance for Mariquita and Edouard’s father, Léon Espinosa:

My first impression of my father and Mariquita is a very vivid one. It was at the Porte St. Martin Theatre, in a play entitled Les Enfants du Capitaine Grant. My father and Mariquita were dressed as Chinese boys: both were exactly the same height (about four feet ten inches), both had at the time exactly the same elevation [height of jumps], and they came forward together, hand-in-hand down the stage, with a series of entre- chats eight [jumps in which the feet beat together eight times]. I can visualise them now. It was wonderful.315 According to the dance writer Sebastien Voirol, Espinosa also later recalled that he had never seen anything like that since: “It is, perhaps, seeing such execution as this that prevents my going into ecstasies over the dancers of to-day.”316

Mariquita’s ability to execute character dances and classical choreography with equal skill led to a great demand for her in all of the top Parisian theatres. In

1855, Offenbach saw her dance at the café-concert of the Palais-Royal and offered her a contract at his newly opened Bouffes-Parisiens.317 From the Bouffes-

Parisiens she went to the Opéra, but she did not remain there long. Personnel

315 Espinosa, And Then He Danced, 3. Espinosa described his first trip to Paris in 1879 when his parents were engaged to dance at the Châtelet in La Vénus noire. Other descriptions of Mariquita mention her tiny size, though most write that she was five feet tall. 316 Voirol, “Mariquita, An Appreciation,” 121. 317 “Mariquita, Noted Ballet Mistress, is Dead in Paris,” New York Herald, cable from Paris, 14 October 1922. Ivor Guest mentions in Appendix E of Ballet in the Second Empire that Mariquita danced in the divertissement Le Bergers de Watteau by Mathieu and Placet that premiered at the Bouffes-Parisiens 24 June 1856. Guest, Ballet of the Second Empire. Mariquita was apparently paid 15 francs a week; this was the first time that she appeared under her own name. 154

Figure 3.5. Composite photograph of past and present dancers. Mariquita is third from the left in the front row. “The Evolution of Ballet Costume: Stars of Yesterday and To-Day,” London Illustrated News, 1907. Uncatalogued clipping from the Bibliothèque de la danse Vincent-Warren, Montreal.

155 registers of Opéra staff held at the Archives nationales list Mariquita for only two months: January and February 1858. She was classified as a “sujet” amongst the

“artistes de la danse” and was initially paid 1000 francs per year—the lowest paid of the ballerinas but higher than the top-earning corps dancer—which was raised to 1200 francs per year in February. According to Gaston Lebel, the author of one of her obituaries, and to an anonymous biographical article written in 1897,

Mariquita was ill-suited to the conservatism of the Opéra and left of her own accord with a 4000-franc fine for breaking her contract.318 As the author of the unattributed 1897 article wrote, “birds, dreamers, and poets are not suited to these beautiful official and guilded cages.”319

After her brief stint at the Opéra, Mariquita went to Madrid, where she performed as a première danseuse.320 She returned to Paris sometime around

1860 to dance in the spectacle féeries staged by Marc Fournier at the Porte-Saint-

Martin, and she remained there for more than fifteen years. She garnered considerable acclaim and created roles in the theatre’s famous productions from the 1860s and 1870s such as Biche au bois, Le Pied du mouton, La Fée aux chèvres, and Le Tour du monde en 80 jours.321 At this time, Mariquita became

Marc Fournier’s partner—several contemporary sources refer to her as his wife,

318 This exhorbitant fine had been the standard since the mid-century. See Dawson, “Danseuses as Working Women,” 119-20. 319 Untitled clipping in F-Pn 8-RO-11776. “Les oiseaux, les fantaisistes et les poètes ne sont pas faits pour ces belles cages officielles et dorées.” See also Gaston Lebel, “La célèbre danseuse et maitresse de ballet Mariquita est morte,” 6 October 1922, clipping in F-Pn 8-RO-11776. 320 Balitrand, “Mariquita est morte,” Le Petit parisien, 6 October 1922. 321 Lebel, “La célèbre danseuse,” 6 October 1922, in F-Pn 8-RO-11776. See also Akar, “Mariquita,” 6 October 1922, in F-Pn 8-RO-11776. Mariquita’s name appears in cast lists at the Porte-Saint-Martin from the 1860s and 1870s. She danced in ballets such as “La Fête du soleil” in the drama Les Filbustiers de la Sonore (1864) and “Fleurs et papillons” in La Nonne sanglante (1864). Although Mariquita did not dance there as often in the 1870s as she had in the 1860s, she danced in the famous first production of Le Tour du Monde (the production reached its 1550th performance in 1898). Some of the Porte-Saint-Martin ballets, including Ballet des pifferari (1868) and Le Miroir magique (1876), were choreographed by Justamant and Grédelue, both of whom were ballet masters at the Folies-Bergère before Mariquita. 156 but they were never legally married—and remained with him until his death in

1879.322 Although she continued to dance for the Porte-Saint-Martin throughout the 1870s, she also danced for other theatres, including the Théâtre des Variétés and the Folies-Bergère.323 If there was one constant in her career, it was her ability to negotiate multiple contracts and perform or choreograph for several venues simultaneously.

Mariquita began her long association with the Folies-Bergère shortly after the hall opened. She was hired for the first time in 1871 as the star ballerina in a nautical ballet titled La Mer et les cocottes, and returned to dance in Folies-

Bergère divertissements through the early 1870s.324 She made her first forays into choreography during this time, collaborating with the Folies-Bergère’s conductor- composer Olivier Métra to produce the divertissements Les Fausses almées, Les

Papillons noirs, Les Joujoux, and Les Faunes.325

By 1880, Mariquita had turned almost exclusively to choreography and teaching. In that year alone, she arranged divertissements for the Skating of the rue Blanche and the Gaîté-Lyrique, then worked as a ballet mistress for the

Châtelet.326 She proved a creative and skilled choreographer, and that same year was offered the post of ballet mistress at the Gaîté, then a theatre with a prominent ballet component and sizable dance troupe. Mariquita remained there for more

322 Fournier’s death is recorded in Arnold Mortier, Les Soirées parisiennes, 1879 (Paris: Dentu, 1884), 6:5. Mariquita’s death certificate lists her as celibate and there are no records of a marriage at any time. Mariquita seems to have changed her title from Mlle to Mme around the time of her union with Fournier. 323 She also appeared at the Theatres des Variétés in 1868 in La Comédie bourgeoise, which included a ballet. 324 Adrien Laroque, “Revue des théâtres,” La Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, 19 November 1871, 329. The author writes that the dancer who headed the ballet, i.e. Mariquita, was the same as the one applauded in Porte-Saint-Martin féeries. 325 See programmes and clippings in F-Pn 8-RO-11776. 326 Garafola, “Where are Ballet’s Women Choreographers?,” 217. Mariquita had a corps of around 200 dancers at the Gaité. A. de Saint-Albin, “Au Jour le jour, Mariquita,” clipping in F-Pn 8-RO- 11776. The Skating later became the Casino de Paris. 157 than twenty years, and her divertissements and mises en scènes were popular additions to the theatre’s féeries, dramas, and operettas.327 They were also noticed by Edouard Marchand, who offered her a contract in 1890 for the position of ballet mistress at the Folies-Bergère.328

From the early 1890s through the 1910s, Mariquita was a coveted choreographer, always in high demand. She continued to choreograph popular dance numbers for the Gaîté until the early 1900s; she choreographed all forty- five of the Folies-Bergère’s ballets between 1890 and 1904 and returned every year or two between 1904 and 1913 to create new pantomime-ballets; and from

1898 to 1918, she was the ballet-mistress for the Opéra-Comique, where she choreographed opera divertissements and pantomime-ballets (Figure 3.6).329

In 1900, she was also named the official choreographer for the Paris Universal

Exposition Palais de la Danse, where she staged a range of works including classical ballet, character dances, and reconstitutions of eighteenth-century dance.

Her fame stretched far beyond Paris. Directors at London’s Alhambra Theatre of

Varieties tried twice to bring her to London to stage a ballet—once in 1903 and again in 1911—but she was both times prevented from leaving the Opéra-

327 The Gaîté changed names several times during this period. I am referring to it as the Gaîté for simplicity. Mariquita choreographed ballets for, among others, et la fourmi, Grand Magot, Les Cloches de Corneville, , La Poupée, , and Mam’zelle Quatre sous. Unattributed clipping in F-Pn 8-RO-11776. 328 Akar, “Mariquita,” L’Echo, 6 October 1922. According to one critic, Mariquita drew authors such as Jean Lorrain and Catulle Mendès to write for the halls. Unattributed clipping in F-Pn 8- RO-11776. 329 Mariquita’s Opéra-Comique pantomime-ballets for which there are surviving scores are: Le Cygne (Lecocq, 1899), Javotte (Saint-Saëns, 1899), Phoébé (Gédalge, 1900), Une Aventure de la Guimard (Messager, 1900), Cigale (Massenet, 1904), La Danseuse de Pompéi (Nouguès, 1912), Djali (Ménier, 1913), La Péri (Dukas, 1914), and Elvya (Picheran, 1917). She also choreographed several opera divertissements including those for the Opéra-Comique’s popular revivals of Gluck’s operas. In 1920, two years after she retired from the Opéra-Comique, the theatre held a variety- show-style matinée in her honour with sung, acted, and danced numbers performed by notable actors and dancers of the day, such as , M. de Max, Mme. Carré, , Robert Quinault and Sonia Pavloff, and Mme Kousnitzoff. “Aujourd’hui,” Comœdia, 16 April 1920, and J. Delini, “À l’Opéra-Comique: La matinée d’adieux de Mme Mariquita,” Comœdia, 17 April 1920. 158

Comique for the required month due to timing and prior commitments in Paris.330

Her busy schedule did not, however, prevent her from also accepting occasional choreographic projects in smaller theatres and in the provinces. Mariquita continued to teach and give advice until she fell ill around the age of eighty.

Despite her fame and very long career, she spent the last couple year of her life in near poverty.331 She died October 5, 1922.

Mariquita’s oeuvre reflected the types of venues for which she choreographed: she created titillating spectacles for the popular theatres, and academically-oriented, but still often sensuous dances for the higher-brow national institutions.332 She was also original. Although some of her works drew on classical ballet and others were distinctly popular in tone, many could not be easily categorized or described. These show signs of having moved away from the standardized steps and stylized poses or gestures of ballet and may have leaned towards , perhaps incorporating the influence of dancers such as

Loïe Fuller, who performed at the Folies-Bergère when Mariquita worked there.

Critics describe these works in nebulous terms and speak of Mariquita’s renewal of gesture and dance, of her bringing “truth” of expression to dance, or of her infinitely varied combinations of old and new.333 Many described Mariquita as a great artist who created a personal style, and who was endlessly creative and

330 She could not leave the Opéra-Comique due to contractual constraints imposed by Carré. Mariquita was amenable to both appearances. Her letters of acceptance are held at the Victoria and Albert Theatre Archives, GB-Lv. Thanks to Jane Pritchard for bringing these to my attention. 331 “Mariquita, Noted Ballet Mistress, is Dead in Paris,” New York Herald, 14 October 1922. 332 Many of these dances were inspired by Greek imagery. As Samuel Dorf has noted in his studies of the uses of antiquity in early twentieth-century dance, Mariquita, along with many other dancers of the period, used evocations of antiquity as an exotic framework in which to create sensuous spectacles with mass appeal. See Samuel Dorf, “Listening between the Classical and the Sensual: Neoclassicism in Parisian Music and Dance Culture, 1870-1935,” PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2009. 333 These terms were mainly used in reference to her ballets staged at the Opéra-Comique. See clippings in F-Pn 8-RO-11776. 159

Figure 3.6. Photograph by Bert of Mme Mariquita surrounded by Natalia Trouhanova, Marthe Lenclud, and Régina Badet, reproduced in “Comment Mariquita monte un ballet,” Comœdia illustré, 15 December 1908.

imaginative.334 Robert Quinault, a star dancer and former pupil, wrote that her conception of dance at the Opéra-Comique was so new that not only was she not guaranteed a warm reception, she also made enemies in the dance world.335 In the

1900s, Mariquita herself spoke of her dislike of academic forms of classical ballet, which she felt had become stilted and acrobatic. She advocated a free interpretation of music using the entire body, and was famous for eliminating the gymnastics routines and the tutu from classical ballet. She described her approach to choreography as instinctive, writing that she had an irresistible penchant for

334 See Obituaries by Charles Akar, Montaudran, and Gaston Lebel in F-Pn 8-RO-11776, Albert Carré, Souvenirs de théâtre (Paris: Plon, 1950), 219, and Quinault, La Danse en France, 18-20. 335 Quinault, La Danse en France, 18-19. 160 independence.336 While it would be impossible to recreate her dance style with precision, she was by all accounts creative and imaginative.337

What is perhaps most striking about Mariquita’s professional life, at least from today’s perspective, is the extent to which she remained involved with the production of popular entertainment after entering “high art” institutions. Despite international fame and a stable position at the relatively prestigious Opéra-

Comique, Mariquita continued to create light fare for the popular theatres. While this was no doubt in part due to the poor remuneration granted to dance personnel at any level of the theatre business, she may also have remained loyal to the music halls and boulevard theatres because of their openness to a variety of forms of dance. Venues such as the Folies-Bergère, the Gaîté, and even the Palais de la danse allowed her to have a broader, more flexible definition of ballet than was possible at the more conservative state theatres. Moving from one theatre and genre to another was not, however, unusual.

Although Mariquita was singled out for her versatility and creativity, the polyvalent nature of her career was in many ways typical. Henri Justamant,

Mariquita’s predecessor at the Folies-Bergère, and Madame Stitchel, her successor, were equally versatile and moved just as frequently between different types of performance venues. Justamant began his choreographic career in the

French provinces and Brussels, then between the mid-1860s and late 1880s created ballets for most of Paris’s major theatres: the Porte-Saint-Martin, the

Théâtre des Variétés, the Théâtre de la Renaissance, the Paris Opéra, the Théâtre de la Gaité, the Théâtre du Châtelet, the Eden-Théâtre, and in the last years of his

336 Mme Mariquita, “L’Eurythmie du geste,” Musica-Noël, in “19th-Century Ballet” clippings file, GB-Lv. My thanks to Jane Pritchard for bringing these clippings to my attention. 337 French critic and film director Louis Delluc gave Mariquita the epithet of the French Fokine—an epithet later echoed by Quinault and the Opéra-Comique’s director Albert Carré. Louis Delluc, “Madame Mariquita et le Ballet Français,” Comoedia illustré 5, no. 4 (20 November 1912): 155-57. 161 life, the Folies-Bergère.338 Madame Stichel (born Louise Manzini), a dancer at the

Folies-Bergère in the late 1870s and at the Opéra in the 1880s, likewise created dances for a broad range of venues.339 She was the ballet mistress at the Monte

Carlo Theatre in the early 1890s, she staged the first version of August Germain’s and Louis Ganne’s Phryné at the Casino de Royen in 1896, she choreographed spectacular féeries at the Châtelet in early 1900s, and she was the Opéra’s ballet mistress for the 1910-1911 season.340 After leaving the Opéra, Stichel continued to choreograph in Paris and the provinces, and was for several years in the 1910s and early 1920s the ballet mistress at the Folies-Bergère.341 Her late works include dances for the Gaîté Lyrique, the Opéra-Comique, and the Casino de Nice.

Tracing the careers of music-hall authors, composers, and choreographers reveals a multifaceted network of Parisian music and theatre culture. All moved among different theatres, and all produced works in a variety of genres, styles, and registers. The artists involved with music-hall ballet were adept at creating works that would appeal to and entertain diverse audiences, but they were far from being anonymous hacks hired to churn out formulaic potboilers. Rather, they were among the most celebrated and popular artists of the era who brought creative diversity to the music halls.

338 For a biographical overview of Justamant, see Vettermann, “In Search of Dance Creators’ Biographies,” 124-136. There is some evidence that Henri Justamant’s younger brother Charles also choreographed for the Folies-Bergère. Although notices in the press indicate that Mariquita succeeded Justamant as ballet mistress in January of 1890, they do not specify a first name. According to Gabi Vettermann, a death certificate filed at the Paris Archives nationales lists Henri Justament’s date of death as 2 January 1886. Vettermann, “In Search of Dance Creators’ Biographies,” 131. Yet there remains a mystery. Most reviews and programmes from the late 1880s list the hall’s ballet master as Justamant/Justament without providing a first name, but a couple specify either Charles Justamant or Henri Justamant. 339 For a brief look at Mme Stichel’s career, see Lynn Garafola, “Where Are Ballet’s Women Choreographers,” 219-20. 340 Ibid., 219-20. 341 See Folies-Bergère programmes in F-Pn WNA-214. 162

CHAPTER 4. THE MUSIC-HALL DIVERTISSEMENT

The ballet divertissement was a standard feature of Parisian music-hall entertainment long before pantomime-ballet became a popular addition to variety- theatre programming. Music-hall divertissements were typically light, topical danced numbers with little or no plot, and they were accompanied by music of utmost melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic simplicity. They did not require concentrated attention, and could be enjoyed as autonomous dances, comic sketches, or background visual diversions. They were structurally conservative, thematically frequently derivative, and almost always created by in-house staff likely more concerned with profit than innovation. Nevertheless, their importance to music-hall ballet should not be underestimated.

The divertissement was the first form of ballet to be adopted by music halls, and short topical ballets continued to be staged alongside large-scale pantomime-ballets well into the twentieth century. By the 1890s, they were a ubiquitous form of music-hall entertainment, both for the three principal popular ballet venues—the Folies-Bergère, the Olympia, and the Casino de Paris—and for the many smaller halls that sprang up in the 1870s and 1880s in emulation of the

Folies-Bergère. These ballets constitute a self-contained repertoire that was adapted to the expectations of music-hall audiences, but that also reflected influences of state-theatre opera divertissements and of those presented in or alongside theatre works in boulevard theatres or other popular venues.

Divertissements were important predecessors of music-hall pantomime- ballets. A few features were unique to the divertissement repertoire of a given period, but many were either carried over into large-scale ballet, or prompted new developments both in pantomime-ballet and late music-hall divertissements.

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Early divertissements therefore form the context in which music-hall pantomime- ballet as a genre was perceived and understood, and our own understanding of popular pantomime-ballet depends in part on a familiarity with the forms, structures, topics, musical practices, and visual characteristics of early music-hall divertissements. This chapter provides an introduction to the early music-hall divertissements staged by the Folies-Bergère, along with an overview of those staged by the three principal halls in the 1890s when the norm was to produce pantomime-ballets.

The 1870s: The Popular Divertissement

In the first fifteen years of the Folies-Bergère’s history, the hall staged at least sixty ballet divertissements.342 There are virtually no records of the earliest of these ballets; they were truly ephemeral productions. A few titles have surfaced in occasional press reviews or advertisements, in memoirs, and in biographical notices for authors and composers, but I have so far recovered only the one consecutive set of programmes from 1876-1877 described in Chapter 2, and have not come across any librettos or scores. Evidence for music-hall divertissements staged in the late 1870s and early 1880s is comparatively plentiful, but records are incomplete even for these. I have turned up six divertissement scores written between 1876 and 1882—three by Messager and one each by Hervé, Desormes, and Ganne—and have studied the nearly fifty manuscript librettos sent to government censors that are now preserved at the Paris Archives nationales. I

342 I have been able to trace the titles of more than sixty divertissements in manuscript librettos held at F-Pan, in scores, programmes, press reviews, and advertisements at F-Pn and F-Po, and in authors’ or dancers’ biographies. None were recorded in the SACD performance catalogues. 164 have, however, found few reviews or other prose sources that describe these ballets.

Although divertissements were occasionally mentioned in passing in theatrical journals, these dances seem not to have been considered artistically or dramatically important enough to warrant extensive written or visual documentation. They were also not reviewed in the mainstream daily press—by far the best source of information for music-hall pantomime-ballets. Nor were they recorded by the SACD, which only included large-scale ballets in its performance catalogues, and then only if they were formally “declared” to the author’s union by the author himself.343 The only other surviving form of documentation of Folies-Bergère divertissements is a small collection of studio photographs of dancers posing in costume. The latter offer fascinating glimpses into the visual aesthetic of early music-hall ballet costumes, but since they do not present the dancers in choreographic poses or formations, they say more about the kinds of images people collected as commercial print media than they do about the dances these women performed on the public stage.

What little information that can be gleaned from these limited records suggests that the earliest music-hall ballets were short, traditional divertissements that featured series of dances rooted in a nineteenth-century danse d’école idiom.

Divertissement titles from the 1870s, such as La Crevette, Les Joujoux, Les

Abeilles, Les Fleurs, Les Fausses almées, or Les Faunes, hint at very simple picturesque or illustrative ballets without developed storylines. The few cast lists that survive in the press and in scores likewise point to simple danced numbers:

343 Authors were responsible for informing the SACD of performances of their works in order to collect royalties. Conversation with Florence Roth, archivist at the SACD, October 2009. Authors of divertissements may have been paid a set fee or negotiated private contracts with the hall. Since many of the Folies-Bergère’s divertissements were created by in-house staff, such productions may have been expected as part of their regular contract. 165 they usually only mention a ballerina and a corps, with few named secondary characters that would have implied detailed narrative. Early divertissements almost surely included a few mimed passages to set the scene and likely had the occasional mimed action scene, but the focus of the ballet was on dance.344

Synopses of two divertissements included in the 1876-1877 Folies-Bergère programmes noted above provide further proof of the narrative simplicity and illustrative nature of early music-hall ballets. The description of Bertotto’s and

Métra’s Nuit vénitienne (1876), for instance, suggests that the divertissement consisted of a series of dances set against a picturesque rustic backdrop:

On a bridge that could be the Pont-des-Soupirs, two young lords, masked and wearing stone grey coats, young noble-women. Behind them, the Lazzaroni, fishermen and women, come listen. Then begins the joyful dancing of local children who are soon joined by lords and ladies… A is followed by a solemn dance, in turn replaced by a high-spirited ensemble dance. Gaiety peaks and the curtain falls amidst applause.345 Les Joujoux (1876), one of Mariquita’s earliest recorded choreographies created while she was a ballerina in the Folies-Bergère’s troupe was likewise a pictorial divertissement -made for dancing. Set in a toy shop, Les Joujoux provided ample opportunity for colourful sets and costumes, and had virtually no plot: a fairy doll awakens the dolls, pierrots, soldiers, and other toys sitting on shelves in a toyshop and all dance the night away. The ballet had one section towards the

344 Since I have not been able to trace many of the dancers, I do not know if the hall regularly hired academically-trained ballerinas who could perform virtuosic variations. 345 Fantasia, “Folies-Bergère Programme,” 10 February 1877, F-Po PRO.B.169 (1876-1877). “Sur un pont qui pourrait être le Pont-des-Soupirs, de jeunes seigneurs masqués et drapés dans des manteaux couleur de muraille, viennent donner une sérénade à de nobles dames. Au second plan, les Lazzaroni, pêcheurs et pêcheuses, viennent écouter. Puis commence la danse joyeuse des enfants de peuple, auxquels se mêlent bientôt dames et seigneurs… A la tarentelle succède la danse grave, à son tour remplacée par une danse folle et générale. L’entrain est à son apogée quand la toile tombe au milieu des applaudissements….” These programmes included a theatrical column with discussions of selected works presented each week. 166 end that was likely entirely mimed: the shopkeeper returns, tries to order the toys back onto the shelves, and is rendered immobile by a wave of the fairy’s wand.346

Neither the titles nor synopses of early music-hall ballets contain explicit sexual overtones, nor do they hint at the sensuous dances or titillating mime scenes popular in the next generation. Given that these divertissements were performed in venues that openly doubled as the meeting point for prostitutes and their clients, one would expect the ballets to be the visual counterparts to the carnal activities taking place around them. In many cases, divertissements likely did include a sensuous or salacious element, but it was a visual one not entirely dependent on plot. Synopses and titles give only a partial account of a work’s narrative content. Contemporary descriptions and studio photos offer conflicting views.

Huysmans’s description of an early music-hall ballet in his 1879 prose sketch of the Folies-Bergère provides a rare account of an early divertissement and serves as testimony to the visual sensuousness of a conventional exotic ballet.

He begins by characterising the show as unsophisticated, even crude entertainment performed by amateurish “dancing girls” of dubious extraction and talent.

The ballet begins. The scenery vaguely suggests the inside of a seraglio, full of hooded women who waddle about like she- bears. A fancy-dress Ottoman, head wrapped in a turban and mouth furnished with a chibouk, cracks his whip. The hoods fall away, revealing dancing girls, enlisted from the depths of some suburb, who start to skip around to common dance-hall music, enlivened from time to time by the tune of “Old Bugeaud’s Cap,” no doubt introduced into this mazurka to justify the arrival of a bevy of women dressed like spahis.

346 Fantasia, “Folies-Bergère Programme,” daily programmes from 27 December 1876 to 1 January 1877, F-Po PRO.B.169 (1876-1877). The plot of Joujoux is described in one of the programmes as an inconsequential Christmas ballet that has been restaged for the holidays. 167

Huysmans then outlines the “ballet divertissement” section of the performance, a hold-over from mid-century state-theatre ballet and an essential component of even the simplest, most popular ballets. This ballet, typical of divertissements found in later pantomime-ballets, featured a classically-trained ballerina performing the poses and steps of academic ballet accompanied by a corps of dancers in traditional tutus. In keeping with the popular tone of the music-hall divertissement, the ballerina is, however, decked out in a sequined tutu, and she ends her dance with a melodramatic flourish.

It’s at this moment, under the streams of electric light that flood the stage, that a whirlpool of white tulle appears, spattered with blue fire and with naked flesh writhing at the centre; then the première danseuse, recognisable by her silk leggings, does a little pointe work on her toes, shakes the false sequins that surround her like a ring of golden dots, leaps up and collapses into her skirts, simulating a fallen flower, petals on the ground and stalk in the air. The sketch ends with the most titillating aspect of the ballet: the performance of male roles by women in travesty. As Huysmans describes below, the ritual appearance of these women, eroticized in tight-fitting male costumes, was for many the favourite feature of popular ballets. It was also, as I will show later, one of the defining characteristics of the genre.

But all this bank-holiday bursting like a loud grand finale cannot distract the connoisseur, who, out of all these great lumps of women rhythmically shaking themselves silly, is interested only in one, the one dressed as a spahi officer, with her large, billowing blue pantaloons, her dainty red boots, her gold-braided spencer and her little scarlet waistcoat, skin- tight, moulding her breast (sic) and showing off their erect tips. She dances like a goat, but she is adorable and common, with her braided kepi, her wasp waist, her large backside, her

168

retroussé nose, and her look of pleasantly roguish tom- boy.…347 Without Huysmans’s colourful description, a synopsis of this same ballet would likely appear as innocuous and innocent as Nuit vénitienne and Les Joujoux. If these ballets had a sensational element—and as Huysman’s account above suggests, at least some surely did—it was a visual one, not dependent on narrative.

Librettos that hinted excessively at open sexuality would, after all, have been censored.348

Surviving images also point to a layering of a visual sensuousness over straightforward, unremarkable plots. A series of portraits attributed to ’s studio displays unnamed Folies-Bergère dancers in stage costumes that range from the skimpy but classical to the bizarre and outrageous. All are shown baring as much cleavage or leg as possible. A ballet by Charles Hubans titled Les Abeilles inspired the most revealing costumes of all: a tight corset and with the barest hint of a skirt (see Figures 4.1 and 4.2). Other unattributed insect costumes may have been created for this same ballet, but these images might also have existed only as cabinet cards. Images of music-hall dancers, in contrast to ballet synopses, suggest that divertissements were nothing more than titillating leg shows.

347 J.-K. Huysmans, Parisian Sketches, 38-9. I have not yet located the ballet described by Huysmans. 348 Although censorship laws had loosened considerably by this time, Georges Montorgueil’s descriptions of the theatrical antecedents of the striptease suggest that many productions, including those staged in music halls, were still subject to rules regarding decency and public exposure. Montorgueil, Année feminine: les déshabillés du théâtre (Paris: H. Floury, 1896), 76. 169

Figure 4.1. Mlle Dupré in Charles Hubans’ Les Abeilles, House of Nadar

Figure 4.2. Victoria Laisne in Charles Hubans’ Les Abeilles, House of Nadar

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The 1880s: From “Divertissement” to “Ballet”

The 1880s were a transitional period for ballet at the Folies-Bergère. The hall’s productions varied too much in length, complexity, and structure to classify them collectively as divertissements, but as a general rule they did not yet have the scale or developed narratives of later pantomime-ballets. There were no fixed patterns or norms that indicate a specific genre; rather, they spanned the gamut of generic possibilities.349 Several 1880s ballets were effectively short pantomime-ballets with relatively elaborate plots and roughly equal proportions of mime and dance, but many more were light sketches with opportunities for a succession of dances.350 One source points to 1880s music-hall ballets still being considered divertissements: they only rarely appeared in the listings compiled for the SACD catalogues, suggesting that they were not yet considered important works on a dramatic level.

The transition towards producing larger-scale ballets, or towards music- hall pantomime-ballet, began long before Marchand took over as director of the

Folies-Bergère and continued without any significant or sudden changes after Sari sold the hall to Marchand. It was a gradual shift that reflected the increasingly important role that ballet had to play on an economic level; what was profitable was repeated and expanded. When Sari experienced grave financial difficulties following his disastrous attempts in 1881 to bring serious music into his house of frivolous pleasures, staging ballet proved one of his best options for recovery. His

349 The distinction between “divertissement” and “pantomime-ballet” did not, after all, need to be as clearly delineated as it had been prior to the loosening of the Napoleonic theatre laws in 1867. See Chapter 1. There was considerable variation in ballet structure even at the height of theatrical censorship in the mid-nineteenth century. 350 F-Pan F18 1045 (Censures. Folies-Bergère). Most of the librettos in the file are from the 1880s. I have not yet come across a significant number of earlier librettos. In the first couple of years of Marchand’s tenure, half of the surviving librettos are titled divertissements. They are consistently labelled “ballet” only after 1888. The ballets titled as such do, for the most part, have longer, more complex librettos with more opportunities for mime. 171 productions were commercially successful enough to warrant the creation of several new ballets—anywhere between five and seven every year— and these productions increased steadily in scale and intricacy. Nevertheless, despite the lack of clear defining features, most of the ballets produced by Sari remained in the realm of the divertissement, if only because of their subject matter.

Divertissement Subjects for 1880s Ballets

Subjects favoured in the 1880s varied widely. Most ballets were light comedies with romantic intrigues, some were light comedies in exotic settings, a few had fashionable contemporary topics, and the rest were fantasies. The one constant was a propensity towards sensuousness and sexual teasing. Music-hall divertissements with traditional romantic topics might, for instance, rely on the age-old theme of two young lovers uniting after overcoming an obstacle, but as the backdrop for flirtations and seductions. Les Bonbons, ou Le Fidèle berger

(1881), for example, a light divertissement set in a village during the time of

Fragonard, depicted a pretty shepherdess and her flirtatious shepherd husband whose fidelity is tested by seductive dancing candies. After various pas de deux, ensemble dances, and dances by candies, he is rescued from his seductresses by the queen of candies—the star ballerina—and is reunited with his shepherdess amidst yet more ensemble dances.351

Ballets with exotic themes alternately recalled scenes from traditional nineteenth-century ballets (i.e. state-theatre romantic ballets) and English music- hall ballets. Such topics were again excuses for exhibitions of the female body,

351 Although no mention is made of references to specific paintings by Fragonard, the ballet may have recalled libertine scenes depicted in his work. The reference to Fragonard in the scenario may also have been intended as a more general reference to an atmosphere of licentiousness. 172 whether as scantily-dressed women performing exotic sensuous dances, or as women dressed as officers and foreign rulers. On the more restrained side was the divertissement Les Marionettes javanaises (1882), set in a sultan’s palace and gardens. Les Marionettes javanaises included ensemble dances for local fisherwomen awaiting their pearl-fishermen husbands’ return from sea, and dances for a bayadère during royal festivities. La Pile du calife, also staged in

1882 and again set in a sultan’s harem,—this time an international harem populated by women lounging about wearing the costumes of their various native homelands—had lascivious dances performed by almées (beautiful exotic dancers) to music performed by eunuchs (in travesty). It also had a pas de deux for a young officer (in travesty) and the sultan’s French concubine. Both dances and posed tableaux in the latter seem from the scenario to have gone beyond the accepted level of open sexuality exhibited in equivalent scenes in Opéra ballets.

Exotic ballets sometimes leaned towards slapstick comedy. Set on a remote exotic island, the 1883 ballet Tohu-Bohu featured various grotesque dances performed by cannibals who captured a young European couple that unintentionally wandered into their kingdom. The ballet also had a savage cortège and a self-contained divertissement—royal festivities called for by the king of savages—that included dances performed by the captured couple for the savages, a comical twist on the exotic dances so often incorporated into ballet’s stereotypically Euro-centric divertissements.

A few 1880s Folies-Bergère ballets were frankly bizarre. Les Mouches de la Saint-Jean (1883), Les Sauterelles (1887), and Cocorico (1884) all featured insects and animals. At first glance Les Mouches de la Saint-Jean was a standard ballet about a poor boy who loves a wealthy girl and who is helped out by a

173 beggar who turns out to be a fairy. But it had a peculiar twist: after giving the old beggar woman something to eat, the woman reveals herself to be the queen of the flies, and help for the boy comes in the form of a swarm of flies sent to break up his beloved’s forced marriage to another. Les Sauterelles was also about bugs: a band of grasshoppers, freed from nets by passing beetles, turn on their human captors, pricking, biting, and scratching them. The ballet ends with a wild bug dance. Several roles in Cocorico and Les Lapins were performed in animal costumes. Cocorico narrated a day in the life of a group of chickens and their interactions with a local cook in a series of pantomimed tableaux that were liberally interspersed with comic dances.352 Les Lapins (1884; originally titled La

Chasse), a ballet about hunters and their women partners, featured both ensemble and solo dances for rabbits and hares. Animals did occasionally turn up on the stages of subsidized theatres in the nineteenth century, but music-hall animal and bug divertissements were closer in conception and style to boulevard-theatre divertissements, and were likely an extension of these earlier popular ballets (such creatures also turn up in English music-hall ballets, but since many of these were created in response to French boulevard-theatre ballets, the origins of influence may never be untangled).

One category of themes specific to music-hall ballet was the topical divertissement featuring fashionable people and places. The first Parisian music-

352 The ballet begins at sunrise: a rooster enters and crows. Pas de reveil. A cook prepares brioches for the chickens and roosters. Pas de la Picorée. The cook dances a comic dance. Two chickens arrive and sing Cocorico together. New roosters arrive and fight with established roosters. Dance—combat of roosters. Chickens intervene. Dance of reconciliation. The chickens return to the pen; cocks remain. Chickens sing a joyous song as they return carrying an egg. Cortège of the egg. Cocks create a nest of palms and lay an egg in it. Joyous dance around the nest. Suddenly, they hear a noise, and the egg cracks open to reveal a chick. Dance of the chick. Festivities. Joyous ensemble. They hear a door grind: the cook returns. All run to the henhouse frightened. The cook mimes his search for a victim for his dinner. He holds out a giant brioche in temptation. He is surrounded by chickens who force him into the henhouse. Pas de la Délivrance. 174 hall ballets to present contemporary characters performing everyday activities appeared early in the genre’s history. Such topics quickly gained a foothold in the repertory, and by the end of the decade were nearly as common as romantic comedies. As mentioned in Chapter 1, the earliest contemporary ballets were reminiscent of similar works staged in English halls, and may well have been created in response to the success of these trendy divertissements. Two English ballets titled Sport, one staged by South London Palace and the other by London’s

Metropolitan in 1875 and 1879, were followed by Le Grand prix de Paris at the

Folies-Bergère in 1882.353 Whereas the 1875 version of the English ballet Sport depicted a university boat race and derby, the French Le Grand prix de Paris was set in front of Paris’s le Moulin de la galette and featured bookmakers, gamblers, and the elegant spectators of horse races. The Folies-Bergere’s Sur la plage

(1883), which allowed for dances by women wearing the latest bathing costumes, was an early example of another growing trend in music-hall ballet on both sides of the Channel: that of presenting women wearing little clothing in everyday scenes. As I will discuss in Chapter 6, these ballets were particularly successful with popular audiences since they increased a ballet’s sexual innuendo by collapsing the distance between viewer and performer.354

353 Pritchard, “Outline of Music Hall Ballets in London 1860-1915,” Appendix in “Divertissement Only,” 9, 11. 354 Both of these ballets had scores by Louis Desormes. Sur la plage was circumspect compared to later bathing-suit ballets: after dancing, fisherwomen awaken swimmers who emerge from their huts to dance. They realize they are being watched by gommeux—fashionable men of leisure— and return to their huts, during which time the disappointed men dance with the fisherwomen. When the fishermen return to find their wives dancing with other men, the women explain that they were simply giving the bathers time to get dressed. The dressed bathers emerge, all is forgiven, and all dance together. 175

Divertissement or Pantomime-Ballet?

Subjects for 1880s music-hall divertissements reveal closer ties to earlier music- hall or boulevard-theatre divertissements than to traditional pantomime-ballets, but studies of the choreographic and musical structures of these same transitional divertissements do not reveal such a clear-cut delineation between the subgenres.

Though usually shorter than ballets staged in the 1890s, 1880s divertissements were not necessarily mere danced numbers. Even before Marchand took over as director and promoted the creation of large-scale ballet productions, the structural division between divertissement and pantomime-ballet was collapsing.

Approximately half of the librettos stored in the Archives nationales Censors’ files are short and read as vignettes with excuses for dancing. These librettos also lack the detailed instructions for stage action and the spoken dialogue that was to be translated into gestures that often appear in 1890s pantomime-ballet librettos. Yet the other half of the librettos resemble miniature pantomime-ballets, with fully developed plots that would allow for mime and dance in roughly equal proportions.

Divertissement scores reveal a similar pattern and provide further evidence that the parameters of the music-hall divertissement were quite flexible. The six scores from early Folies-Bergère divertissements that I have examined are Les

Vins de France (1879), Mignons et vilains (1879), and Fleur d’oranger (1881) by

André Messager, Sphinx (1879) by Hervé, Mars et Vénus (1882) by Louis

Desormes, and Les Sources du Nil (1882) by Louis Ganne.355 All have relatively

355 There is a discrepancy in the titling of Louis Ganne’s ballet. The title of the printed score is Les Sources du Nil (Paris: Lissarrague, 1882), but the title on the manuscript libretto is Les Ondines du Nil (F-Pan F18 1045 Censures. Folies-Bergère). There is also a reference to the ballet in the Catalogue de vente Drouot: “authograph signé: Les Ondines du Nil, 132 pages in-fol. Partition complète de cette œuvre écrite à vingt ans. « Ballet en un tableau joué au Théâtre des Folies- Bergère le Samedi 11 Novembre 82 », sur un scénario de A. Lafrique. La page titre porte la date 176 simple plots and tend towards including more dance numbers than prolonged scenes of intricate pantomime, but they nevertheless vary significantly in their proportions of mime and dance. They also vary in length. Most are short, playing for fifteen or twenty minutes, but Hervé’s and Ganne’s ballets would have run for approximately forty minutes, the length of the shorter 1890s pantomime-ballets.356

Their variations in length correspond with variations in choreographic structure. Messager’s Fleur d’oranger is, for example, a perfect divertissement in the strictest formal sense.357 It is short—only 21 pages in piano reduction—and has so little mimed action that one might say it has no plot at all. Instead, the pastoral divertissement depicts a young shepherd wooing his shepherdess through a series of dances held together by the thinnest narrative thread. Nearly all of the scenes are self-contained dances that are structurally and stylistically predictable: each is unified in key, tempo, and time signature, and each is made up of periodic repetitions of phrases in simple binary and ternary forms. Textures are clear and themes are light and danceable (Example 4.1). There are a few very short, perfunctory segments of contrasting music, but these appear only at the beginnings of scenes and are intended to set the dramatic tone and accompany characters as they enter the stage (Example 4.2).358

« 26 Mai 1882 ». Partition d’orchestre avec ratures et corrections; le manuscrit a servi pour la représentation et porte les annotations du chef d’orchestre.” 356 Ganne’s Les Sources du Nil and Hervé’s Mars et Vénus are forty-seven pages long in piano reduction. 357 André Messager’s first Folies-Bergère ballet, Fleur d’oranger (1878), was a hit and was performed two hundred times. René Dumesnil, “Un Centenaire: André Messager,” Le Monde, 16 December 1953. He was subsequently commissioned to write two other ballets for the Folies- Bergère: Les Vins de France and Mignons et Vilains, both of which were performed in 1879. 358 Differences between dance and dramatic music will be explored in depth in Chapter 5. There are no titled variations, but there are several Pas, including solo dances for the central character who was probably classically trained. 177

Example 4.1. André Messager, Fleur d’oranger, Valse des bergères

Hervé’s and Desormes’s scores, on the other hand, are structurally closer to pantomime-ballets.359 Even if both have more scenes appropriate for dancing than would be found in a typical 1890s pantomime-ballet, Sphinx and Mars et

Vénus include several sections that feature successions of short passages of

359 The Queen of the Sphinxes was danced by Mme Stichel, later the choreographer for the Opéra in 1910-1911 and for Folies-Bergère revues from 1915 through the 1920s. 178

Example 4.2. André Messager, Fleur d’oranger, Entrée des chasseurs

contrasting music suitable for detailed mime and action. This pantomime music was also typical of later large-scale ballets in its marked attention to the dramatic needs of the scenario.360 Characters are musically delineated and contrasted, and stage action is carefully matched by evocative musical writing. In Hervé’s

Sphinx, for instance, the sunrise at the beginning of the desert scene is suggested

360 These scores include text above the staff as in pantomime-ballet scores, suggesting a deliberate emphasis on musical-dramatic relationships. 179 musically through the gradual building of a chord: the scene begins with a single held note, to which one new note is added in each successive bar.361 This becomes a tremolo, increasingly widely spaced and shifting in harmony, and is soon accompanied by a slow, lyrical melody (Example 4.3). A similar thickening of textures and increased melodic and harmonic activity likewise characterises the subsequent awakening of the sphinxes (Example 4.4).

Regardless of structure or dramatic complexity, the music for these divertissements was very light. Like the popular orchestral dance numbers played between music-hall variety routines, ballet divertissements were entirely composed of catchy tunes with lively, repetitive rhythms and simple melodies over repetitive chordal bass lines.362

There was at least one exceptional early music-hall ballet. Les Sources du

Nil (1882), a divertissement by Armand Lafrique with music by Louis Ganne, was a perfect miniature pantomime-ballet.363 At first glance, the ballet does not stand out from contemporary music-hall divertissements. The scenario is straight- forward and dramatically unremarkable: an explorer and his men lose their way

361 Sphinx is about a young astrologer, Chéops, who is in love with a star, Diamantine, whom he watches through his telescope. A young woman, Nubia, tries to distract him with lascivious dances but to no avail. Chéops is helped in his quest to find Diamantine by an old fakir who brings him to the pyramid in the Egytian desert where Diamantine lives. After playing seductive tunes on a golden harp to distract the sphinxes that guard the pyramid (before the arrival of the men the sphinxes perform grotesque animal dances), the two men enter and discover a fairytale scene of personified precious stones, who descend from their platforms and . The sphinxes and their queen, angered by the trick played on them, find the men and try to tear them apart, but the men are saved by the more powerful Diamantine, queen of the precious stones. Diamantine and Chéops are united and his friend is rewarded with four beautiful stone-women of his own. 362 Although it is impossible to generalise from these few ballets, it would be surprising if other early music-hall divertissement scores were not similarly accessible. As the hall’s musical practices seem almost identical to those of the following two decades, and since a few unpublished divertissement scores were written by composers who later wrote pantomime-ballets for which there are surviving scores, one may speculate that the aesthetic and structure of ballet- divertissement and pantomime-ballet music were likely fairly consistent; these three divertissements are similar in style and language to the lighter of the pantomime-ballets staged in the following decade. 363 Les Sources du Nil was Louis Ganne’s debut as a composer. It played for 80 performances. Clipping in F-Pn 8-RO-10863. 180

Example 4.3. Hervé, Sphinx, Lever du soleil

181

Example 4.4. Hervé, Sphinx, Animation des sphinx

during an expedition to find the source of the Nile and are saved by the Nile fairy and her undines.364 It was little more than a series of vignettes for women in travesty and fairies in light tunics set against a picturesque exotic backdrop. The ballet was also topical, in keeping with the trend towards staging ballets that were dramatizations of everyday experiences or events. Parisian audiences would have known of recent attempts to find the source of the Nile and of controversies surrounding conflicting reports of explorers’ discoveries. Lafrique’s version of events added fairies to the mix and was wholly inaccurate from a scientific standpoint, but the subject matter reflected current interest in European exploration of the African continent.365

364 The manuscript libretto for Les Sources du Nil, titled Les Ondines du Nil, is in F-Pan F18 1045 (Censures. Folies-Bergère). It called for a 1re danseuse, danseur comique, travestis, and named characters. 365 There were several African explorations in the 1860s-1880s, including those by Samuel Baker (1821-1893), Richard Burton (1821-1890), John Hanning Speke (1827-1864), and Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904). 182

Despite Les Sources du Nil being titled a divertissement, its simple storyline is the only characteristic in keeping with the formal norms of the genre.

The ballet’s length, choreographic structure, and music belie that designation. At forty-seven pages in piano reduction, Les Sources du Nil is as long as several of the one-act pantomime-ballets staged later in the century and roughly twice the length of most early divertissements. Scale alone was enough for an author to designate a work a “ballet” or “pantomime-ballet” rather than “divertissement,” or for a work to be taken seriously by theatre critics. While in this case large scale did not entail dramatic complexity, the production was closer in layout to a pantomime-ballet. Both the libretto and score suggest a relative parity of mime and dance—pantomime makes up slightly more than half of the ballet—and different kinds of dances were interwoven with action scenes and sequences of detailed pantomime.

A more detailed look at the storyline again demonstrates the generic flexibility of music-hall ballets from this period. The curtain rises to reveal a grotto scene in which the sleeping Nile fairy and her partner, Old Nile, are surrounded by undines. When the Nile fairy awakens, she signals for her undines to dance. A pas d’ensemble is followed by a ballet variation and a mazurka performed by her two favourite undines. Then comes a series of short mime passages: first the undines signal the presence of lost travellers and the Nile fairy orders her undines to hide behind the rocks. Next one of the travellers appears, miming his thirst and exhaustion. This is followed by a repetition of the same scene performed by his fellow travellers who likewise demonstrate their fatigue, showing their empty gourds and staggering about the stage. Then the fairy and her undines come to their aid. After a brief love scene between the undines and

183 the travellers, they perform a long waltz together. From this point on, the focus shifts to dancing. Following the waltz, there is only one brief pantomime in which the main traveller explains that his mission was to find the source of the Nile. The fairy leads him to the source in her grotto, and all dance together in an ensemble finale.

Although many of the ballet’s visual characteristics were common to both music-hall divertissements and pantomime-ballet, spectacle played an greater part in Les Sources du Nil than in most contemporary divertissements, anticipating the emphasis on spectacle typical of large-scale music-hall ballets a decade later. The plot’s combination of humans and supernatural creatures in an exotic context was utterly conventional—merely an excuse for picturesque rustic scenery and an array of colourful costumes. Also following the norms of popular ballet from any era, the corps was entirely female and great emphasis was placed on exposing the female body. Costumes for the undines would have been minimal, and while those for the “male” travellers performed by women in travesty no doubt concealed more of their torsos, the women’s legs would have been left bare.366

In addition to these standard elements of display, the ballet featured technological wonders such as a real waterfall and a grotto with electrical lighting.

As the curtain rose, a grotto opened dramatically before the audience’s eyes to reveal a lit-up waterside scene with the sleeping fairy and her undines. This illuminated grotto later became the backdrop for the ballet’s finale in which the

Nile fairy exposed the grotto’s waterfall and lead the explorer to the source of the

Nile. It was also the backdrop for the apotheosis tableau. This was by no means

366 The phenomenon of travesty performers in music-hall ballet will be discussed in Chapter 6. As etchings and sketches of ballets from the period illustrate, fairies were often dressed in filmy gauze which, especially in music-hall ballet performances, became increasingly transparent as the century progressed. 184 the first popular ballet to introduce running water on stage, but electricity in the theatre was still a novelty in 1882 and was unusual enough to be expressly indicated in the libretto.

The music that accompanied Les Sources du Nil was, of all of the ballet’s components, the one that moved the farthest beyond the requirements of an early music-hall divertissement. Ganne’s score is varied and imaginative, and while entirely written in a popular style—textures, harmonies, rhythmic patterns, and melodic material are upbeat, catchy, and always simple—the music never descends into the banal.367 Unlike composers of other extant music-hall divertissement scores, Ganne rarely resorts to repetitive oom-pah-pah or boom- chick accompaniment figures, never repeats the same chord throughout an entire phrase, frequently varies rhythmic and melodic patterns even within antecedent- consequent phrases, and constantly modifies textures. Melodies in Les Ondines du Nil are also never based on outlining triads as they are in many music-hall ballets. On a broader level, Ganne’s score conforms to the large-scale structural norms and musical-dramatic conventions of nineteenth-century pantomime-ballet: the music closely follows the dramatic and structural contours of the libretto, with writing that is descriptive during pantomime sections, and rhythmically, melodically, and formally balanced for dances (Examples 4.5 and 4.6).

Ganne’s score for Les Sources du Nil is also unusual for its attention to internal musical-dramatic cohesion. Although he does not seem to have been interested in assigning dramatic significance to given keys (after an introduction

367 J.G. Prod’homme and Andrew Lamb make the same observation in their article on Louis Ganne for the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 185

Example 4.5. Louis Ganne, Les Sources du Nil, “Le vieux Nil dort toujours” in E flat, the ballet proper begins in A and ends in G), he incorporates two thematically related recurring melodies that are often fragmented, sometimes combined contrapuntally, and always woven into the score’s continually varied texture (see, for instance, Examples 4.7.1 to 4.7.3).

186

Example 4.6. Louis Ganne, Les Sources du Nil, Mazurka des ondines

Since the two melodies are interchangeably associated with the undines, the undine fairy, and Old Nile, both seem to have been devised in the interest of creating musical cohesion rather than as aids for narrative clarity. They also appear in the ballet’s introduction and as the final melodic gesture in the apotheosis finale, again displaying an unusual attention to thematic unity for a popular ballet score, and particularly for such an early one.

187

Example 4.7.1. Louis Ganne, Les Sources du Nil, introduction, mm. 45-52

Example 4.7.2. Louis Ganne, Les Sources du Nil, opening scene, mm. 105-108

Example 4.7.3. Louis Ganne, Les Sources du Nil, mm. 454-467 188

The 1890s: From Divertissement to Pantomime-Ballet

Although for the sake of clarity I have in earlier chapters assigned 1886—the year

Marchand took over the direction of the Folies-Bergère—as the starting point for the consistent staging of pantomime-ballets at the Folies-Bergère, the shift from popular divertissement to popular pantomime-ballet was gradual. The hall had, as

I have shown, previously staged works that could have been termed pantomime- ballets, and it continued after 1886 to stage divertissement-like ballets that were not labelled “divertissement.”368 Nevertheless, beginning in the late 1880s and continuing through the 1890s, the general trend was towards staging pantomime- ballets of ever larger dimensions. Whereas in the early 1890s the Folies-Bergère mainly staged one-act or one-tableau ballets, by the end of the decade, most productions had two to three acts or tableaux. They also had developed narratives portrayed by mime, ornamented by a variety of classical and popular dances, and underscored by dramatic and musically intricate scores.

This same evolution played itself out in the newly opened Casino and

Olympia. The Casino’s first ballets were little more than glorified divertissements, while several staged around 1900 were large-scale pantomime- ballets. The Olympia staged increasingly impressive works with developed narratives and virtuosic dancing in the mid-1890s, and by 1900 was regularly producing pantomime-ballets that in scale and structure would not have been out of place in mainstream theatres.369

The delineation between divertissement, ballet, and pantomime-ballet remained fluid throughout the history of music-hall ballet. In the late 1880s, the

368 Marchand’s appointment in 1886 as the hall’s director and his subsequent changes to programming coincide with the beginning of the SACD’s systematic cataloguing of music-hall ballets. 369 As I will show in Chapter 6, the visual aesthetic of these large-scale late ballets was nevertheless popular in orientation. 189 all-encompassing term “divertissement” was dropped in favour of the equally vague label “ballet,” but this designation had no more clearly defined implications for a work’s structure than “divertissement” had a decade or two earlier. The confusion is further amplified in the 1890s by the frequent use of the term pantomime-ballet for works that were no different from the simplest and shortest

“ballets” or divertissements staged a few years earlier. Regardless of their official genre designation, many of these works could alternately be divertissements or pantomime-ballets in terms of their narrative complexity and balance of mime and dance, and many were hybrids that adopted the formal components and stylistic characteristics of other popular genres including operettas and pantomimes.

Terms were so flexible that the word “pantomime” was also sometimes used to refer to music-hall ballets, and not always for works that had a preponderance of mime over dance. The same ballet could, for instance, interchangeably be identified by different critics as a ballet or as a pantomime.

This ambiguity was in many cases warranted: pantomimes, particularly

“pantomimes à grand spectacle,” usually had significant ballet divertissements built into them. Consequently, they were sometimes structurally indistinguishable from ballets that had a preponderance of mime.

The 1890s saw a further complication of generic definition due to the proliferation of imaginative subtitles. The Olympia, for example, listed the ballets

Brighton, Fée des poupées, Faust, and Watteau as “grand ballet,” Olympia as a

“ballet-prologue,” Le Scandale du Louvre as a “ballet mimé,” as a

“ballet fantaisiste,” and Les Milles et une nuits and L’Impératrice as “ballets- féeriques.” Cieutat’s Le Château de Mac’Arrott was advertised in Le Figaro as a

“légende-ballet écossais” and Lacôme’s Le Rêve d’Elias as a “ballet aérien.” In

190 some cases, descriptive terms were added to specify the era or location in which the ballet was to take place (ballet-antique, ballet-bohemian, or ballet-breton), or in reference to its general subject matter or tone (ballet-historique, ballet-militaire, or ballet-comique).

The range of subtitles given to music-hall ballets might point to an internal breakdown of traditional structural features or to a diversification of types of ballet, but in fact such designations may have had little generic significance.370 As

Laplace-Claverie writes, many turn-of-the-century ballets that were given descriptive titles had those titles altered or removed when the ballets were restaged in different venues. L’Araignée d’or, a ballet by Jean Lorrain premiered at the Folies-Bergère in 1896, began life as a “légende dansée,” became a “conte féerique” on programmes, was referred to as a “conte mimé” in the press, and was listed simply as a pantomime-ballet in the SACD catalogues. Similarly, Cieutat’s

Le Château de Mac’Arrott was initially subtitled a “légende-ballet écossais” and was later designated a “ballet-féerie” in the printed piano score. In most cases such inventive titles were likely a marketing gimmick and not a reflection of formal differences. Laplace-Claverie speculates, and I agree, that such titles were used to mask the works’ fundamental uniformity.

Subtitles did occasionally reflect actual changes to the manner in which ballet was used in theatrical productions. Several works created around 1900 are listed in programmes and the SACD catalogues as “ballet-revue,” “ballet- operette,” “ballet-opera,” and “ballet avec chants,” suggesting an increased interest in hybrid genres.371 Though some, including Ganne’s Phryné and

370 Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 112-13. 371 Subtitles are not always listed in the SACD catalogues or in programmes; they also sometimes conflict. 191

Lecocq’s Barbe-Bleue, merely include the occasional sung chorus, others, such as the Olympia’s Les Turlutaines de l’année (1895), a revue-ballet with no listed authors, and Missa’s Un Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1897), an operetta-ballet, were likely precursors of the music-hall revue and the musical.372 The one exception to this elasticity of terminology was in the use of the label “divertissement.” After

1890, divertissements titled as such were almost always true divertissements with all of the genre’s formal implications.373

The 1890s Divertissement or “Divertissement-Like” Ballet

For all the ambiguity of labelling and fluidity of generic parameters of 1890s music-hall ballets, and despite the ever-expanding proportions of pantomime- ballet through the early years of the twentieth century, all three halls continued to stage a significant number of works that are best described either as divertissements or divertissement-like. I include in this category all ballets that were explicitly titled “divertissement,” as well as those titled “ballet” or

“pantomime-ballet” which, by their small scale, minimal narrative, and episodic choreographic or musical structure, adhere more closely to the textbook characteristics of the divertissement than of pantomime-ballet. The two— divertissements and divertissement-like ballets—were separate entities with different historical trajectories, different functions, and different themes.

Titled divertissements remained entertaining crowd-pleasers throughout the 1890s, yet had little demonstrable impact on late music-hall ballets; they were

372 Unfortunately, as few scores for these have yet to be located, it is virtually impossible to make any more precise statements on the nature of these productions. The opera-ballets of the eighteenth century of course prefigure the ballet-operette and ballet-opera; the emphasis in these productions was, however, on dancing rather than singing. 373 Ganne’s L’Heureuse rencontre for the Casino is a notable exception. It is relatively short and the storyline is simple, but it has the balance of mime and dance characteristic of contemporary pantomime-ballets. 192 holdovers from an earlier period that overlapped with new forms of the genre.

While they were rare after the mid-1880s, they never entirely disappeared from the music-hall stage. A few were added to programmes that already featured a pantomime-ballet, and others ran as the sole independent choreographed number amidst the usual variety fare.374 The Olympia staged by far the greatest number of autonomous divertissements, most of which had titles similar to those found on early music-hall programmes.375 Between 1896 and 1899 alone, the hall staged the divertissements Noussima (divertissement japonais), Fête champêtre, La Folie de l’or, Vénus cantinière, Les Trois couleurs, Les Deux baisers, and Conte de mai, all of which had scores written by established music-hall ballet composers such as

Edmond Missa, Oscar Lagoanère, and Frédéric Toulmouche.376 The Folies-

Bergère only occasionally produced divertissements in the 1890s, almost all of which were exotic ballets with non-specific titles such as Divertissement hongrois,

Divertissement espagnole, or Divertissement écossais. A couple of divertissements are lacking even these vague descriptors and are simply listed on programmes as “Divertissement.” Untitled divertissements similarly show up on

Casino programmes, usually alongside a pantomime-ballet or other theatrical

374 Others were integrated into the pantomimes that frequently ran concurrently with pantomime- ballets. Paul Martinetti’s and Louis Desorme’s 1894 spectacle-pantomime Un Duel après le bal, for instance, included a ballet arranged by Mme Mariquita. This pantomime played side by side with a ballet titled Les Demoiselles du XXe Siècle. Although the SACD catalogues list the latter work as a ballet, programmes list it as a ballet-divertissement. The two remained on the programme together for nearly three months. 375 The Olympia’s longest-running ballet, Ballet blanc, appears to have been virtually plotless— abstract dances for a star ballerina and corps de ballet. Entr’acte lists Ballet blanc as a divertissement fantaisiste. See also E. D.-H., “Courrier des Théâtres,” La Presse, 13 April 1893, and Pédrille, “Foyers et Coulisses,” Le Petit journal, 14 April 1893. 376 The following dates are years in which they appear on programmes (some appeared in two consecutive years). It would be difficult to pin down the dates of their first performances since, as mentioned, contemporary performance catalogues never listed divertissements and they were not reviewed in the daily press. Those for which there are existing programmes are Noussima, divertissement japonais (Missa, 1896), La Manille (Missa, 1897), Les Deux baisers (Missa, 1897), Fête champêtre (Lagoanère, 1898), La Folie de l’or (Lagoanère, 1898), Vénus cantinière (Marius Lambert, 1899), Les Trois couleurs (Toulmouche, 1899), and Conte de mai (Gaston Paulin, 1899). 193 production. These ballets seem to have been devoid of detailed narrative— programmes do not even list character names—and they were neither listed in performance catalogues nor reviewed by either the mainstream or theatrical press.

The little available documentary evidence suggests that in general, the range of subject matter for 1890s divertissements in all three halls was narrower than it had been during Sari’s years at the Folies-Bergère: many exhibit persisting connections to the light pastoral, amorous, and exotic ballets common in music halls and boulevard theatres in the preceding generation, but none seems to have been as comical or bizarre. With the exception of Hansen’s Swans, staged at the

Folies-Bergère in 1896 after a successful run in London, animals were virtually eliminated from all but the occasional minor role. Insects disappeared altogether.

Divertissement-like “Ballets” played a far more significant role in late music-hall ballet than did the divertissement proper. They were taken more seriously as theatrical productions and were considered important enough to warrant registration with the SACD and reviews in the daily press. Although not necessarily larger in scale or structurally different from the divertissement—there was too great a variability to differentiate them according to formal organisation— these ballets form a distinct category that was transitional in nature, providing a link between the Sari-era divertissement and the full-scale pantomime-ballets performed of the 1890s. Their most distinctive feature was their subject matter.

Divertissement-like “Ballets,” unlike actual divertissements, did disappear in the mid-1890s as the vogue for large-scale spectacles intensified, but their subject matter lived on, recycled in different forms or reappearing in different guises.

Divertissement-like ballets were one-act productions with plots that were at least as simple as those of divertissements proper. All were geared towards

194 exhibition with a preponderance of dances, posed tableaux, and pageants, and all were as light in tone as can be. A few were clearly holdovers from an earlier era or imitations of successful English music-hall ballets. Ballets such as the Japanese divertissement Dans l’inconnu and the short exotic Les Almées, both staged at the

Folies-Bergère in the late 1880s, were reminiscent of earlier divertissements staged at the Folies-Bergère and in London music halls. Others foreshadowed the growing trend towards staging contemporary subjects or characters. One of the earliest such ballets, Presse-Ballet (1888), combined a predilection for impersonations with a love of pageantry. The ballet was composed of a series of parades and posed tableaux of women sporting pennants bearing the names of

French newspapers.

One of the most popular types of divertissement was the toy ballet: light productions that depicted toys set in motion by fairies. Animated toys have a long choreographic history, both on the popular stage (whether boulevard theatres or music halls) and in opera houses. Léo Delibes’s Coppélia, Tchaikovsky’s

Nutcracker, and Joseph Bayer’s Viennese ballet The Fairy Doll are the best- known and most enduring examples of this tradition still in the repertory today, but there were also several now long-forgotten popular divertissements created on the same theme.377 One of the most important of the popular toy ballets was

Mariquita’s and Métra’s 1876 Folies-Bergère divertissement Les Joujoux, the

Christmas ballet about toys brought to life by a fairy described at the beginning of the chapter. Mariquita’s divertissement, which ran intermittently for over a year, was the acknowledged inspiration for The Fairy Doll (Die Puppenfee, or, as it was

377 Poupenfee was restaged in Vienna as recently as the summer of 2008. 195 known in Paris, La Fée des poupées).378 In turn, The Fairy Doll was a runaway success that travelled all over Europe. It was repeatedly staged in Parisian music halls: twice at the Olympia—in 1894 and 1899—and once at the Folies-Bergère in

1904.379 Mariquita’s Les Joujoux also spawned local imitations: Justamant and

Desormes created their own Joujoux-ballet for the Folies-Bergère in 1889 and

Beissier, Rossi, and Cieutat staged a divertissement-like ballet Les Joujoux for the

Casino in 1894. Toy ballets do not seem to have inspired scenes of an overtly sexual nature, though toy soldiers would have worn the requisite travesty costume of bodice and leggings. Instead, like earlier music-hall divertissements that included animals and like contemporary popular balls in which participants dressed up as babies, toy ballets likely appealed to their audiences because they were cute, amusing, and elicited feelings of nostalgia.380

While these toy ballets proved enduring crowd favourites, divertissement- like ballets of a more sexually explicit bent were, based on longevity and numbers, even more popular. In the early 1890s, these were created for the sole purpose of displaying women’s bodies without any kind of narrative veil. Certain themes lent themselves to such entertainments and therefore recurred frequently. Judging by the number of posters and caricatures they elicited, women seen in bathing costumes were a favourite with music-hall audiences, as were military displays performed by women in travesty. Les Baigneuses (1889), Brighton (1893), and

Bains de dames (1895), for example, all have very thin plots that revolve around women cavorting about in form-fitting swimsuits. Similarly, the Folies-Bergère occasionally presented military tableaux without detailed narratives to justify

378 Selma Jeanne Cohen, ed., The International Encyclopedia of Dance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), s.v. “Die Puppenfee,” (by George Jackson). Die Puppenfee was created by J. Hassreiter, Franz Gaul, and Joseph Bayer. 379 It was re-choreographed by the hall’s ballet master for each new performance. 380 Louis Morin, Carnavals parisiens (Paris: Montgrédien, 1898), 9. 196 seeing women in tights. The principal goal of Les Réserviste à venir (1888) and

Marine (1890), both of which centred around tableaux and parades for soldiers and officials, was the presentation of women in travesty. The Folies-Bergère’s

1893 “patriotic ballet” France-Russie had a similar structure and visual effect.381

Divertissement-like ballets were immensely popular throughout the early and mid-1890s, consistently taking in profitable box-office receipts and generating excitement amongst ever-growing numbers of spectators and theatre critics.

However, light divertissement-like ballets were so popular that they led to their own extinction. The demand for spectacle encouraged the production of ever larger-scale ballets, and by the late 1890s, the halls had dropped the divertissement-like ballet for pantomime-ballets with multiple acts of tableaux.

But the shift towards the consistent staging of large-scale pantomime-ballets did not put an end to the subject matter or tone of the divertissement. Pastoral sketches, amorous flirtations, dances for inanimate objects, exotic vignettes, and, most importantly, tableaux or pageants for women in suggestive costumes remained at the core of the music-hall ballet, subsumed as one scene or tableau within large-scale pantomime-ballets and colouring the tenor of these spectacular productions.

381 France-Russie was written and choreographed by Mariquita. This is only one of the many theatrical displays occasioned by the visit of the Russian navy in France. Disparate Parisian theatres, including the Concert-Parisien, Concert des Décadents, and Opéra, staged songs and topical divertissements the week the Russian officers were in Paris. Pédrille, “Foyers et coulisses,” Le Petit journal, 13 October 1893, and “La Soirée dans les théâtres,” Le Petit journal, 22 October 1893. 197

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CHAPTER 5. POPULAR BALLET’S CONVENTIONS

It’s a ballet, a real ballet worthy of the Opéra itself and not only a divertissement mixed with dances that the Folies-Bergère has given us yesterday evening, with exquisite music by Varney […]. One needn’t be a particularly clever prophet to predict a great success for this new work, the Princesse Idaea, which will cause all of Paris to come running to M. Marchand’s music hall.382

Although Blavet’s pronouncement, made in response to the 1895 premiere of La

Princesse Idaea, is excessively enthusiastic in light of its overall reception—La

Princesse Idaea was one of the few ballets to receive mostly lukewarm reviews and its box-office earnings were no more than average—it offers contemporary testimony of how closely 1890s music-hall ballets had come to resemble those at the Opéra. At their height, music-hall ballets were true pantomime-ballets in the tradition of the nineteenth-century ballet d’action: they told stories through mime, dance, and music, and their visual and musical components were patterned after their state-theatre models. If one were to study only the formal conventions of music-hall pantomime-ballets, one could easily mistake many of these works for ballets produced by the Opéra. This chapter examines the structural framework, choreographic components, and musical conventions of music-hall ballets in order to demonstrate the generic proximity of music-hall productions to traditional nineteenth-century pantomime-ballets and demonstrate the extent to which this popular repertoire was an extension of French romantic ballet.

382 Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “La Soirée—Princesse Idaea,” Le Figaro, 28 March 1895. 199

A Traditional Structure

The most immediately apparent connection between music-hall and state-theatre pantomime-ballet is structural. As the term implies, pantomime-ballet was a hybrid genre that combined mime and dance to tell a story. All nineteenth-century pantomime-ballets were composed of these two basic components, and while proportions of each varied considerably from one ballet to the next, mime was at least as important as dance. Lisa Arkin and Marian Smith have shown in their work on romantic ballet that “It is more accurate, in fact, to conceive of these ballets as mimed dramas that called for dancing from time to time.”383 Mimed scenes in , for example, made up roughly half of the total length of the ballet, while the remaining half was composed of different types of dances.384 On average, music-hall pantomime-ballets from the 1890s and early 1900s preserved this balance, but there were many exceptions. As I have noted earlier, several music-hall ballets were divertissement-like in their emphasis on dance, and many others resembled pantomimes with interpolated divertissements.

The sequence of danced and mimed scenes in music-hall productions was fairly flexible, and there were only a few standardized practices. The majority of dances were grouped together into formally distinct divertissements, and if there were multiple acts or tableaux, these divertissements were usually incorporated into a work’s second and/or third tableau. Ballets also usually began with mime or action scenes and ended with ensemble dances and an apotheosis tableau. It was common to have entire scenes or series of several short scenes that were

383 Lisa Arkin and Marian Smith, “National Dances in the Romantic Ballet,” in Rethinking the Sylph: New Perspectives on the Romantic Ballet, ed. Lynn Garafola (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1997), 20-21. 384 Giselle, for example, had fifty-four minutes of mime and action and sixty minutes of dance. Marian Smith, Ballet and Opera in the Age of Giselle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 175. 200 entirely devoid of dancing, and dances, even in divertissements, could be interrupted by mime.385 Otherwise, librettists were given a free hand and could design their ballets to suit their own preferences.

The disparity in the number of dances and differences in formal layout between two ballets of equivalent scale and complexity could be great. Germain’s and Ganne’s Phryné had several discrete mime and action scenes, but dances were integrated throughout, and the ballet had a very long central divertissement.

Danced scenes and choreographed cortèges account for slightly more than half of the ballet. Richepin’s and Hirschmann’s L’Impératrice, on the other hand, had far more pantomime than dance despite its subtitle ballet-féerique. There is only one danced divertissement, a relatively short interlude in the first tableau that had character dances, a variation, and a waltz. Where in the final tableau one would typically find a danced divertissement, Richepin calls for a formally separate diegetic pantomime, framing the last tableau as a pantomime within a pantomime.

Pantomime

Mimed, or, more accurately, non-danced scenes came in many different forms, of which three were present in virtually every music-hall production: gestural pantomime (performed either by a single character or by several “in conversation”), action scenes and processions, and posed tableaux. Pantomime, performed by any character and integrated at any point, relied on stock gestures to illustrate specific concepts or convey dialogue. Mime was, of course, by definition one of the fundamental components of all nineteenth-century pantomime-ballets, but it played a particularly important role in music-hall ballets.

385 This was again true of romantic ballet. Arkin and Smith, “National Dances in the Romantic Ballet,” 20. 201

Pantomime was so central to the genre that professional mimes were routinely hired to play both central and secondary roles. Jane Margyl and Jane Thylda, both of whom frequently starred in music-hall ballets for the Folies-Bergère and

Olympia, were trained as actresses and were famous for their skills in the art of gesture, not dance. Louise Willy, who made her name in music-hall ballets and pantomimes, was likewise a famous mime, coveted for her beauty and grace. She later turned to the silver screen, performing in some of the earliest pornographic films. In the late 1890s, the halls drew two of the most famous male mimes of the era: Thalès and Séverin. Both made names for themselves in pantomime prior to their engagements at the Folies-Bergère and Olympia, and both created several mimed title roles in music-hall ballets.386 All five, along with many other transient mime artists, were coveted performers and guaranteed box-office draws.

For all music-hall ballet’s emphasis on pantomime, even the longest and most detailed passages of mime were, in terms of gesture, likely simple. Although music halls only provided synopses before a show and not complete librettos, critics of music-hall ballets never complained about obscure or confusing mime as they did in response to Opéra ballets in the 1830s and 1840s.387 Gestures in music-hall productions may have been so conventional that anyone could understand them. First, they needed to be very clear since music-hall ballets were not designed primarily for the connoisseur but for neophytes and tourists. Second, although the plot remained the most important aspect of a ballet and was typically

386 Gaston-Léon Séverin was born in Paris in 1879 and trained in comedy at the Conservatoire. During his student years, he performed in various theatres including the Athénée, Mathurins, Union Artistique, and music halls, and made his professional début at the Odéon in 1901. Jules Martin, Nos Artists (Paris: L’Annuaire Universel, 1895), 329. Théodore Thalès was born and trained in Marseille, and was already well known by the age of twelve. He performed and directed mime in Marseille until 1896, then moved to Paris to take up a career performing in and directing music-hall productions. F-Pn 8-RO-11632. 387 See Smith, Ballet and Opera in the Age of Giselle, 116-19 202 what guaranteed a work’s critical success, most spectators were probably more concerned with visual spectacle than with narrative clarity. Also, many spectators would have been distracted by social interactions and by the bustling crowds that surrounded them, or they would have been watching from a distance and would not have focused on the ballet. Finally, since the same ballet could be seen unaltered up to nine times each week, including matinees, for up to three months, audiences would have had ample opportunities to see the ballet repeatedly if they were interested in the details of a particular scenario.388

Action scenes were as indispensable to ballet as detailed pantomime. They account for a large percentage of any given music-hall ballet and were often the focal point of the show. Action scenes usually involved crowds, which in turn allowed for display and pageantry—essential components of any popular ballet. It was common to see entire villages spill out onto the stage to watch, comment upon, or participate in an argument or duel, or for ballets to include battle scenes, military processions, royal cortèges, weddings, or any other scene that could justify collecting as many people together as the stage could hold.

Many action scenes common to music-hall ballets were holdovers from an earlier era. Traditional plot devices such as village, wedding, and royal celebrations were routinely incorporated into music-hall scenarios to allow for mimed festivities, danced divertissements, cortèges, and other crowd scenes.

Fleur de Lotus, for instance, had a cortège and danced divertissement as a part of royal entertainments; La Belle et la bête had a cortège of village friends and

388 It seems that Parisian music-hall ballets were presented in their entirety for the duration of the run with all pantomime scenes intact. This is at variance with English music-hall practices, which progressively cut lengthy mime scenes throughout a ballet’s run until most of the mime was entirely trimmed from the production. The ballets were often reduced to dances and spectacular tableaux by the end of their stage life, by which time they were performed alongside new complete productions. See press clippings from the 1890s in GB-Lv Alhambra Scrapbook (cuttings) (Alhambra box 4, 5, and 6). 203 neighbours followed by village dances to mark the departure of Beauty’s father on his ill-fated journey; and Barbe-Bleue, Le Miroir, Les Amoureux de Venise, and

Mme Malbrouck all began or ended with wedding celebrations that included both cortèges and dances.

Other action scenes were extensions of state-theatre ballet traditions, but with a popular twist. In Paris-Turf, Sport, and Le Couturier, the standard royal cortèges and village processions were replaced by pageants of Parisians displaying the latest fashions at the social gatherings of the day: sporting arenas and dress shops. Ballets such as Vénus à Paris, Sans-Puits-House, and Emilienne aux

Quat’z’arts similarly played with the tradition of festive social gatherings, replacing rustic village dances and royal celebrations with contemporary ballroom or dance-hall scenes.389

A typical ballet included at least two or three action scenes, and some many more. For example, the first act of Mythe’s and Cieutat’s fairytale ballet Le

Château de Mac-Arrott, created for the Folies-Bergère in 1887, is built around several traditional action scenes. The ballet begins with highlanders performing

Scottish dances—a rationale for presenting scores of dancers sporting colourful national costumes—then shifts to pantomime scenes as they gather to await the arrival of the laird. Detailed mime sequences are then woven around a series of non-danced scenes including a royal cortège, an archery competition, and a storm scene, all of which allowed for high drama and the continued presence of crowds of picturesque villagers milling about in the background (see page 237 for a more detailed synopsis).

389 See Chapter 6. 204

Action scenes were so well suited to the tastes of music-hall audiences that several ballets from the turn of the century were composed of a string of such scenes with only occasional pantomime sequences to tie them together and occasional dances to add diversity to the visual spectacle. The Olympia’s 1897 ballet Sardanapale, for instance, was centred on non-danced scenes. The ballet, based on the ancient legend of an Assyrian monarch (though surely filtered either through Byron’s 1821 tragedy, Delacroix’s 1827 painting The Death of

Sardanapalus, or Victorin de Joncières’s 1867 opera), opens with a religious ceremony in honour of the god Baal attended by Sardanapale and his people.390

During the ceremony, Sardanapale catches a glimpse of a beautiful woman, and in a moment of chaos, abducts her. Back at his palace, he orders his slave girls to dance and an orgy ensues. Action scene is then layered upon action scene as tension builds towards a final climax: the orgy is interrupted by a revolt of the people, and Sardanapale’s palace is stormed by warriors. Sardanapale then transforms his throne into a giant pyre, orders his women to be thrown on, and steps into the blaze as the populace swarms into his palace.

Music-hall ballets also routinely incorporated various forms of posed tableaux. Some were similar to tableaux vivants, recreating or making reference to famous paintings. The second tableau of Sardanapale, for instance, was identified by critics as having been inspired by a then-famous historical painting by Georges Antoine Rochegrosse, La Fin de Babylone (1891).391 The tableau

390 For a discussion of the Joncière opera see David Grayson, “Finding a Stage for ,” in Music, Theater, and Cultural Transfer: Paris, 1830-1914, ed. Annegret Fauser and Mark Everist (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2009), 127-54; on the Delacroix painting, see Elizabeth A. Fraser, “Delacroix’s Sardanapalus: The Life and Death of the Royal Body,” French Historical Studies 26, no.2 (2003): 315-49. 391 Victor Roger, “Courrier des théâtres: Sardanapale,” Le Petit journal, 15 September 1897. 205 was, according to Le Figaro’s Henry Fouquier, a superb display that evoked the voluptuous and bloodstained [sanglant] world of ancient Persia.392

Although there are no detailed contemporary descriptions of actual movements or poses from this scene, it is tempting to conclude from Fouquier’s and other critics’ comments that the orgy choreographed in the middle of this tableau made reference to the scene of nude women lounging on rich draperies and Persian carpets depicted in the Rochegrosse painting. More often, however, static tableaux evoked the ambiance of a collection of paintings, as did the many ballets that made reference to Watteau and his world, without reproducing individual works of art.

Other tableaux used dancers or figurantes in decorative formations as backdrops for pas de deux or as posed displays unto themselves. In an etching of a scene from Presse-ballet (Folies-Bergère, 1888), women sporting pennants bearing the names of Parisian dailies pose in diagonal formations behind the central couple performing a pas de deux (Figure 5.1).393 The same diagonals frame a woman parading down the catwalk in Chez le couturier (Folies-Bergère,

1896) (Figure 5.2). The women holding these configurations may at times have danced, but they more likely moved as a group from one formation and pose to the next. As Arkin and Smith demonstrate, nineteenth-century criticism shows that

“in ensembles the choreography was often intended to delight the eye more by the design and placement of groupings than by active, kinetic movement.”394 This was no less the case for music-hall ballets. Arc-en-ciel, a fairly complex pantomime-ballet that mixed characters of the commedia dell’arte with rainbow

392 Henry Fouquier, “Les Théâtres,” Le Figaro, 1 October 1897. See also the review from the same edition by Un Monsieur du Balcon, “La Soirée,” Le Figaro, 1 October 1897. 393 Etchings and photographs of the English version of this ballet, The Press, suggest similar static poses for groups of women sporting the colours and banners of different English dailies. 394 Arkin and Smith, “National Dances in the Romantic Ballet,” 22. 206

Figure 5.1. Drawing by Bode of a pas de deux in Presse-Ballet reproduced in Le Courrier français, 3 February 1889.

fairies, featured a divertissement for two groups of seven dancers dressed in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet-coloured tutus who form kaleidoscopic patterns then come together to form a rainbow—an arresting tableau much admired by the public and theatre critics alike.395 Reviews of this production are remarkably spare in their descriptions of the work as a whole despite its narrative complexity and star-studded cast, but several remarked upon the rainbow tableau, and all described it as the highlight of the show.

The posed formation that ended the rainbow fairies’ dance suggests the presence in music-hall ballets of another type of tableau derived from earlier

395 Francisque Sarcey, “Critique théâtrale,” Le Temps, 18 September 1893. Mariquita in particular was admired for her striking use of ensembles. See clippings in F-Pn 8-RO-11776. 207

Figure 5.2. Drawing by Ihamonin (?) of Chez le couturier, 1895, clipping in F-Pn 4-ICO THE 4386.

208 choreographic practices: the use of what Arkin and Smith have termed “frozen pictures,” in which “actors often froze in tableaux or ‘pictures,’ sometimes at moments of high drama in the middle of a scene, sometimes just before the fall of the curtain.”396 It may well have been a standard practice to integrate such pictures into the fabric of music-hall ballets. There is little documentary evidence to support a definitive conclusion, but there are hints of such formations in scores and reviews of music-hall ballets.

There is one clear example of a frozen picture incorporated into the middle of a music-hall ballet. In the second act of Silvestre’s and Desormes’s Fleur de

Lotus, the title character sets off in search of her sister who has been tempted away from their humble cottage by a noble suitor. Just as Fleur de Lotus grows too exhausted to proceed, she wanders by a lake filled with beautiful lotus flowers.

The lake is guarded by a sleeping royal servant and populated by Péris, water nymphs who have been dancing by moonlight. The Péris reveal themselves to

Fleur and help to undress her so that she may bathe. Fleur then sits by the lake and admires her reflection, marvelling at her own beauty. She unties her long hair, letting it fall around her, then places one of the precious flowers in it and poses. Her pose coincides with the end of the second A section of a short ABA form, and the long, harmonically static coda that follows is marked “tableau plastique.” As I will discuss in Chapter 6, posed tableaux of this kind made reference to other forms of erotic visual imagery, and were incorporated into music-hall ballets as excuses for displaying the nude female body without incurring the wrath of censors.

396 Arkin and Smith, “National Dances in the Romantic Ballet,” 22. 209

Whether or not frozen pictures were commonly integrated into the middle of a music-hall ballet, they were a standard closing device. Most scores conclude with a section labelled “apothéose” that functioned as a musical coda and could only have supported a static formation. Librettos and synopses likewise often list a final apothéose that suggests a posed tableau. These were almost invariably pictorial representations of the resolution of a conflict or tableaux glorifying the union of a ballet’s amorous protagonists. In Les Septs pêchés capitaux, for example, the seven sins unite under a banner proclaiming their submission to “Love, vanquisher of evil.”

In Tzigane and Rêve d’Élias, united lovers pose after a final embrace, framed by friends and family. The union in death of Anthony and Cleopatra is similarly frozen for a final spectacular tableau in Cléopâtre, while in Mimes d’or, the apotheosis depicts a personified Fortune surrounded by credit notes and stock bills.

Dance

There were as many forms of dance in music-hall ballets as there were types of mimed scenes. At the broadest level, these can be divided into two categories: classical ballet and character dances. Classical ballet, by which I mean the abstract patterns, codified movements, and gestures of nineteenth century danse d’école, was concentrated in formally distinct divertissements set apart from the central narrative using rationales such as weddings, royal entertainments, village festivities, dreams and other fanciful phenomena.397 Classical dances for soloists, or “variations,” were the focal point of the divertissement, and a ballerina normally performed one or two variations in each divertissement (the number of divertissements and variations depended primarily on the scale of the ballet as a

397 See Smith, Ballet and Opera in the Age of Giselle, 17, for an equivalent list of divertissement rationales in romantic ballet. 210 whole). Variations typically had no direct dramatic connection to the plot, with the exception of self-reflexive ballets that featured a ballerina in the starring role of “ballerina” such as or Bouton d’or. They were instead short self- contained numbers integrated into the divertissement as a vehicle for showing off a ballerina’s technical virtuosity.

The choreographic language of music-hall ballet variations was probably similar to that of Opéra ballet variations but stylistically closer to Italian ballet. Prose descriptions of variation choreography are extremely rare and usually vague, but when critics do remark upon the steps or poses of a given music-hall variation, they use the same terminology as when describing these dances in Opéra ballets. A ballerina’s skills on pointe were frequently remarked upon and her pirouettes routinely praised. She was also often commended for her lightness of step, her grace, and her delicacy.398 However, since music-hall ballerinas were almost exclusively trained in Italy, they would have performed with the flamboyant virtuosity characteristic of the more athletic Italian school.399 The ballerinas themselves were occasionally favourably compared to Opéra or Eden-Theatre stars, or they were described more generally as accomplished ballerinas of the “grande école.”

Regardless of performance style, the ballerinas hired by Parisian music halls were as accomplished as their peers hired by the Opéra, and they were certainly capable of performing in an academic style. At least one, Aida Boni, was the star ballerina for several music-hall ballets before becoming a star ballerina at the Opéra-Comique under Mariquita, and then at the Opéra.400

398 See reviews of ballets through the 1890s printed in Le Figaro. 399 The Italian and French schools grew similar in the late nineteenth century due to an influx of Italian stars into the Opéra. However, while the Italians influenced Opéra ballet, the Italian’s athleticism was tempered by institutionalized French tastes and the continued presence of locally-trained dancers. 400 Aida Boni was born in Milan and trained at La Scala. She made her début in Florence as a prima ballerina at the age of sixteen, then went to Paris, first dancing at the Théâtre Marigny, then at the Folies-Bergère and Casino. She quickly attracted attention, and in the late 1890s was hired by the 211

Figure 5.3. Drawing by L. Hussop of dancers waiting in the wings of the Folies- Bergère, clipping in F-Po “Estampes, Folies-Bergère.”

Visual representations of music-hall ballet, though largely limited to studio photographs and drawings, offer a few additional clues about the style of music-hall ballet’s classical component. Costuming for star ballerinas who performed in music- hall ballet variations was consistently limited to the knee-length gauze tutus typical of the period (Figure 5.3), though sometimes with fewer layers of gauze than might have been appropriate at the Opéra (see Figure 5.4). The dancers are occasionally photographed holding basic poses that would have been used in any nineteenth- century ballet, but etchings or photographs of dancers performing steps or holding

Opéra-Comique to dance as an étoile. She created principal roles there and at the Paris 1900 Exposition Palais de la danse, then danced for several seasons at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels, and La Scala, Milan. While performing in Les Deux pigeons at Covent Garden, London, André Messager noticed her and hired her as a star ballerina for the Opéra, where she danced for the remainder of her career. F-Pn 8-RO-12397. 212

Figure 5.4. Lina Campana, Cabinet card in F-Po “Estampes, Lina Campana”

poses from a given work are unfortunately rare. One of the most convincing photographic corroborations of the classical nature of divertissement dances in music-hall ballets comes from well outside the chronological limits of this study.

213

The picture, taken in 1911 when photography had become a slightly more common means of documenting dance, captures a pose performed during a pas de deux from Mariquita’s Folies-Bergère ballet Stella: the male dips the female, whose tutu, pointe shoes, arms en couronne, and feet firmly turned out and held in fifth position attest to the classical nature of their dance (Figure 5.5).401

Figure 5.5. Maria Bordin and Robert Quinault in Mariquita’s Stella, 3 September 1911, newspaper clipping in F-Pn 8-RO-10992.

Divertissements also occasionally included classical dances for the entire ballet corps that likely drew on a danse d’école vocabulary. Several titles of ensemble numbers in scores and descriptions of these dances in librettos call to

401 Press clipping in F-Pn 8-RO-10992. 214 mind dances in Opéra ballets grounded in an academic idiom that relied on geometric patterns and simultaneous ensemble movements for their choreographic appeal. Rêve de noël, for example, had a waltz for snowflakes, and Visions! had a dance for perfumes and a waltz for flowers that suggest at least nominal ties to dances such as the “Jardin animé” in Le Corsair, waltzes for flowers and snowflakes in Petipa’s Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker, or dances for flowers and snowflakes in Justamant’s ballets discussed in Chapter 1.402 Many dances for the corps were, however, simply titled “ensemble” and were performed after variations to close divertissements with a flourish.

Most dances in music-hall ballets were character dances—folk, national, social, or other titled dances not grounded in academic ballet—which could be performed by the corps, the star ballerina, a secondary soloist, or a specialty dancer brought in to add novelty and variety to a production. Ballets included any number of these in any combination. Many character dances were integrated into the plot to reflect a ballet’s setting. Choreographing historical dances in historical ballets was an obvious way to call attention to the period in question while providing an entertaining variety of dances and a sense of historical exoticism.

Mme Bonaparte, Mme Malbrouck, Watteau, La Camargo, Le Mirroir, and

Merveilleuses et gigolettes all included eighteenth-century dances such as the minuet or the gavotte in ballroom scenes. While these dances no doubt added to the sense of visual realism projected by accurate period reproduction sets and costumes, they also contributed to the nostalgic feel of these works and to their overall aura of sumptuous display—a winning combination that was surely the

402 Such dances were prevalent in nineteenth-century ballet. See Willa Collins, “’s Ballet at the Paris Opéra, 1856-1868: A Source Study” (PhD dissertation, Cornell University, 2008), 324, and Pritchard, “‘The Great Hansen’,” 98. 215 impetus for the creation of so many ballets on the theme of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century parties.

Folk or national dances similarly helped establish a ballet’s geographic setting while providing opportunities for ensemble dances in brightly-coloured costumes. Le Château de Mac-Arrott’s opening Scottish Gigue, for example, sets the scene and begins the ballet with a splash of colour; the Parisian heroine of

Napoli is introduced to the Tarantella during an Italian sojourn; and in Vassilissa,

Russian students perform unspecified national dances during their trek to Siberia.

Eroticised “exotic” dances associated with foreign characters—normally of

Middle Eastern or Mediterranean origin—fall into a similar category with the exception that these were almost always restricted to divertissements.

Many music-hall character dances depicted a given character or group in a more abstract way. These dances were titled, but they relied more on dramatic context and costuming for connections to the plot than they did on specific steps or patterns. For the most part, these dances likely borrowed their movements either from a basic classical vocabulary or from social dances. Many would have been imaginative, freely choreographed dances designed to set the ballet corps in motion with only tenuous connections to the ongoing story. Titles give some idea of the range of these dances. Merveilleuses et gigolettes had a pas des esclaves

(valse), a ronde de gardes, a danse des oiseaux de nuit, and a ballet des sorcières, all of which were choreographed outside of divertissements. In Rêve de noël, one waltz was titled danse des flocons de neige and the other pas de la séduction. The principal difference between folk, national, or exotic dances in music-hall ballets and character dances in traditional nineteenth-century ballet was in number: there

216 were far fewer such dances in music-hall ballets than in romantic productions.

Also, most character dances in music-hall ballets were for ensembles, not soloists.

Character dances, unlike variations, could be incorporated into both divertissements and into the main storyline. For instance, the divertissement from

Desormes’s Rêve d’or, which took up the better part of the second of two tableaux, was made up of a classical solo variation, a polka for large coins, a waltz for monetary bills (valse des millions), an interpolated scene, and a final gallop for the entire ensemble. There was only one additional dance outside the divertissement, a pas de deux for the lead couple performed towards the beginning of the first tableau that was likely classical in style but without the technical virtuosity of ballet variations (the distinction is due to casting practices, which will be discussed below).403

In contrast, Lecocq’s Barbe-Bleue had as many dances outside as within the divertissement, and the ballet’s classical variations were, exceptionally, not integrated into the main divertissement. The ballet also had an unusually large number of different types of dances. The divertissement, which accounted for most of the third and final tableau, was the work’s principal vehicle for ensemble dances. It had, in succession, a ballet des paysannes et des fleurs, a pas des moissonneurs, a pas de la paysanne, and an ensemble coda. The ballet’s were interspersed between dramatic scenes. Towards the beginning of the first tableau, the ballet has a choral number titled menuet that presumably had a danced component, and towards the end, a danse des petits fous de cours, a ballet des clés (part of which was accompanied by the chorus) and a solo valse de la clé

403 Though the dance may have been based on classical steps and poses, the dancers who performed these two characters, Henrietta Vergani and Angelina Correnti (travesty), were not ballerinas of the highest rank and did not normally perform roles that required academic skills. 217 d’or for the star ballerina. The second tableau included dances for bats (a danse des chauves-souris and a musically more formal pas des chauves-souris), an unspecified ensemble dance, a pas de la clé d’or—the solo classical variation— and a pas de l’hésitation, which, judging by the accompanying music, may also have been in an academic style.

The types of character dances included in music-hall ballets varied wildly from one work to the next: one might have several titled character dances, another a string of contemporary or historical social dances, and yet another folk or national dances, or any combination of all of these. Only one dance type was indispensable: the waltz. Every music-hall ballet, regardless of structure, length, setting, or plot, had at least one waltz. The waltz was consistently the longest dance in every score I have seen, the most frequently excerpted for publication in piano or band arrangements, and the most commented upon and praised musical number. Waltzes could be introduced at any point in a ballet. Some had dramatic links to the plot as diegetic ballroom dances, but the majority were set as titled character dances, either for specific characters—valse de Diana, valse de la clé d’or—or as ensemble dances for the ballet corps.

A significant number of waltzes had dramatic connections to love or seduction. The central pas de deux for the two young lovers in Le Château de

Mac-Arrott is danced to waltz rhythms under the heading valse lente duo d’amour, the bathing ladies in Bains des dames beg their suitors for their clothing to the sounds of a waltz, and in Merveilleuses et gigolettes, couples attending a ball coquettishly flirt their way though a waltz at the same time as an officer declares his love to the invited ballerina, then spins her around the dance floor. Comically, this last waltz takes place during a ball in a Bonaparte-era salon shortly after the

218 performance of a minuet. Waltzes were so much a part of music-hall ballet that no one objected to such anachronisms, even in productions praised for their apparently accurate historical scenery and costumes. The waltz was still a favourite in fin-de-siècle dance halls and ballrooms, and its association with popular culture and mass market entertainment made it a natural, even essential element of music-hall ballet.404

Curiously, aside from the ubiquitous waltz, music-hall ballets included relatively few of the social dances common to contemporary ballroom culture.

Polkas, gallops, and mazurkas occasionally turn up in music-hall ballet scores, but they are comparatively rare. This does not mean that music-hall ballets were any less directly tied to the social dance cultures of their time than were traditional nineteenth-century pantomime-ballets; as I will show in the next chapter, popular theatrical and social dance cultures were at least as intricately linked as were their more exclusive predecessors and contemporaries.405 Rather, music-hall ballets routinely incorporated new popular forms of dance not commonly seen in traditional Opéra productions.

Other Types of Dance and Mime

All of the choreographic elements that I have so far discussed were in type, if not always in appearance, essentially identical to those of romantic pantomime- ballets. Indeed, a comparison of this section of my study with Marian Smith’s

404 See Arkin and Smith, “National Dances in the Romantic Ballet,” 20, on ballets mirroring popular ballroom dances. 405 Ibid., 16, 20. See also Stephanie Schroedter, “Topologien Pariser Tanzkulturen des 19. Jahrhunderts: Tänzerisch-musikalische Schwellen-Räume zwischen Bühne, Ballsaal und musikalischem Salon,” in Musiktheater im Fokus: Gedenkschrift Paul Becker, ed. Werner Breig, Sieghart Döhrung, and Sabine Henze-Döhring (forthcoming, 2010), and Marie-Françoise Bouchon, “Les Représentations du bal dans le ballet du XIXe siècle,” in Histoires de bal: vivre, représenter, recréer le bal (Paris: Cité de la musique/ Centre de ressources musique et danse, 1998), 153–78. 219 analyses of French romantic ballet in Ballet and Opera in the Age of Giselle reveals just how similar they were at a basic structural level. With few exceptions, Smith’s descriptions of the choreographic conventions of mid- nineteenth-century Opéra ballets could be applied to the ballets staged by music halls half a century later. Music-hall ballets did, however, include a few dance types and dramatic scenes not commonly seen at the Opéra. Most were extensions of traditional choreographic elements adapted to suit music-hall ballet’s popular setting, and a few were new. All had one thing in common: they were sensuous, titillating, or provocative numbers that focused on the female body. The most prevalent of these were cancan-like dances, so-called lascivious dances (danses lascives), and mimed seduction scenes. The first were brought in from popular dance halls, but lascivious dances and seductions were variants of dances common to earlier state-theatre ballets.

Cancans, along with their late nineteenth-century variants, “eccentric” dances and “naturalist quadrilles,” were not as frequently integrated into music- hall ballets as one might expect. When they were woven into a ballet, they were usually introduced as diegetic numbers in scenes set in dance halls or music halls.

In Sans-puits-house, for instance, students out for an evening of partying perform what are described in the synopsis as “dances representing the joys of modern dance halls;” in Vénus à Paris, the gods participate in a dance-hall redoute. In other ballets, the cancan served a dramatic purpose. In Les Grandes courtisanes, for example, Mariquita had the dancer who portrayed one of the great courtesans of the early nineteenth century perform an 1830s-style cahut to evoke that era and world. The dance was a huge success. According to both the Figaro’s and Gil

Blas’s theatre critics, the cancan in Les Grandes courtisanes received a veritable

220 ovation and was given an encore performance the night of its premiere.406 It must, however, have been stylised: it is referred to as a pas de cancan in Le Figaro and as “an amusing sort of 1830s cahut” in Gil Blas.

A provocative dance more commonly seen in music-hall ballets was the sexually-charged “lascivious dance.” Lascivious dances were titled as such in scores and librettos, and they were frequently remarked upon in reviews. They could either be integrated into the narrative as dances for characters already identified as sensuous, or interpolated into divertissements as dances for slaves and other exotic characters. In La Princesse au sabbat, for instance, the princess performs a lascivious dance in the witches’ den when under a spell, whereas in

Sardanapale, the danses lascives were performed by slaves during a royal ceremonial divertissement. As I will discuss at the end of the chapter, danses lascives were also frequently associated with exoticism.

Seduction scenes were even more prevalent than lascivious dances. They could be either mimed or danced, and they could be performed by the protagonist, a secondary soloist, or by the entire ballet corps. Seductions became so popular that by the mid-1890s, nearly all ballets had some excuse built into their plots for the introduction of a temptress or two; temptresses were even occasionally the central motive of a ballet’s plot. Ballets that features seductresses varied greatly in tone. On the darker side was Jean Lorrain’s L’Araignée d’or, a ballet about an enchantress who lures any passing man—knight, landowner, or shepherd—into her cave and ensnares him in her net. Once captive, the men lie passively at her feet. A zealous youth, , hears of their plight and travels across snowy

406 Strapontin, “Paris la nuit: aux Folies-Bergère, Les Grandes courtisanes,” Gil Blas, 15 May 1899. Un Monsieur du Balcon, “Spectacles et concerts, Les Grandes courtisanes,” Le Figaro, 15 May 1899. Oddly, the two reporters named different dancers as the starring cancan artist: Langoix II in the former, and Céleste Mogador in the latter. 221 mountains to the spider’s cave to rescue the victims. He resists the enchantress’ seductive dances, awakens the men, and leads them to the cave’s entrance only to face a golden spider on her giant web. Amadis tries to pierce the spider’s heart but fails, and he and his fellow captives fall asleep at the seductress’s feet. The ballet seems to have been unusually dramatic, even briefly sinister. The enchantress is one of the few music-hall seductresses to wield power over men by her own will without instruction from a higher power: she is dangerously in control. One can also assume that the work was more openly licentious than most.

Its protagonist was performed by the courtesan Liane de Pougy, whose beauty and charm and history as a seductress made her the perfect candidate to play a heroine who tempts male victims to an uncertain fate.

Far more common were ballets that incorporated temptresses into a comic storyline with the sole purpose of exhibiting the female body in provocative poses.

More than half of the ballets written after 1895 included some form of seduction or temptation. The conceit was the same in virtually all: beauties were sent by an omniscient fairy or other higher power to test a man’s fidelity or moral fortitude.

For example, two Casino ballets that poked fun at Saint Anthony, Tentations and

Les Deux tentations, centred on various seductions impersonated by women sent to tempt the hermit. Diamant, a ballet about a young jeweller, includes a divertissement in which the entire ballet corps performed seductive dances. When on the brink of discovering how to cut diamonds, the ballet’s hero is surrounded by enchantresses dressed as precious stones who dance about him to distract him from the diamond’s overwhelming beauty. In Le Rêve d’Elias, fairies entice a curious Elias into their cave with bewitching dances; in Les Sept pêchés capitaux, the seven deadly sins, personified, dance before Pierrot in an attempt to wrest him

222 from his Pierette; and in aux enfers, Don Juan is subjected to an endless series of enchantresses, sent to torment him in retaliation for breaking the hearts of so many women. There were many other such ballets. Unlike the mythical fin- de-siècle femme fatales of symbolist art and literature, however, music-hall ballet’s seductresses, with the possible exception of the principal character in

L’Araignée d’or and the temptresses of Don Juan aux enfers, were neither dark nor dangerous characters: most were ineffectual, and their male victims always in the end escaped their snares unscathed.407 These women were decorative rather than demonic.

Pantomime vs. Ballet

One significant difference between music-hall and state-theatre ballet was the manner in which danced and mime scenes were performed. Rather than cast a ballerina in the lead female role and a premier danseur (or, occasionally, a travesty premiere danseuse) in the lead male role as was the practice in contemporary

Opéra ballets, principal roles in music-hall ballets were usually split into three categories: the lead female role was performed either by a female actress or popular dancer, the lead male role by a travesty actress or dancer, and the classical ballerina role by an academically-trained ballerina. Lead male roles were on occasion performed by famous male mimes, particularly if the role was an historical figure such as Napoleon or Nero, but they were never played by male dancers.408 A music-hall ballet’s two principal dramatic roles—usually the heroine and her lover—were, in other words, held by performers skilled in the art

407 For a discussion on the femme fatale, see for example, Bram Dijkstra, Evil Sisters: The Threat of Female Sexuality and the Cult of Manhood (New York: Knopf, 1996), and Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 408 This changed after the arrival of the Ballets Russes in Paris. Robert Quinault came over from the Opéra-Comique to dance in Mariquita’s ballets for the Folies-Bergère in the 1910s. 223 of mime and proficient in various forms of popular and character dances, but not academic ballet.

Principals (popular dancers or actresses) performed all of the pantomime and action scenes, danced character or popular dances (and occasionally performed a pas de deux that drew on a basic ballet vocabulary), but they did not perform classical ballet variations. Ballet in a strict academic style was instead performed by a different dancer—the hall’s Italian-trained star ballerina, or première danseuse étoile. Star ballerinas, though always given equal billing in programmes, normally danced only in divertissements and did not have central dramatic roles. As a result, there was a relatively strict division in music-hall ballets between dances in formally self-enclosed, extra-dramatic divertissements, and character or popular dances integrated into a ballet’s narrative. With only a few exceptions, such as Barbe-Bleue mentioned earlier in this chapter, a ballet plot could not accommodate the appearance of a ballerina without the excuse of a separate divertissement.

The splitting of roles was gradual and never entirely consistent. In the

1880s, most ballets were performed as they would have been in any French theatre: the main character both mimed and danced whatever the plot required of her. It was only in the early 1890s that the halls began to stage ballets in which the main characters were portrayed by women skilled in the art of mime; ballerinas were then relegated to secondary roles such as bayadères, fairies, or other fanciful characters that one might find in a festive divertissement, a fairy glen, or a dream. In Rêve d’or (1892), for example, the principal roles of the two young lovers were performed by Henriette Vergané and Angelina Correnti.

Vergané was a corps member at the rank of deuxième danseuse—she often

224 performed secondary titled danced roles in the early 1890s—and Correnti was a top-ranked travesty performer who premiered most of the principal trouser roles for the Folies-Bergère in the same years.409 The Italian-trained première danseuse

étoile, Lina Campana, impersonated Fortune during a dream sequence.410

This trend towards a new hierarchy intensified after 1893 when the Folies-

Bergère (and soon after the Olympia) began hiring famous personalities rather than classically-trained dancers to perform the starring roles in their ballets. As a comparison of cast lists and biographical information reveals, the women who played lead roles in 1890s music-hall ballets came from diverse backgrounds, but they rarely, if ever, had classical training. The three ballets staged at the Folies-

Bergère in 1893 alone provide a representative sampling. Arc-en-ciel starred the popular Moulin-Rouge dancer Jane Avril, who was by all accounts a brilliant dance-hall performer but not a ballerina by any standard.411 She and the talented young dancer Jeanne Lamothe, who later became a premiere danseuse but not an

étoile, played the ballet’s central roles of Pierrot and Pierette.412 The star ballerina, Lina Campana, appeared in the divertissement as a rainbow fairy. Fleur de Lotus featured mime artists Mlle Micheline and Martha Fugère in the principal female roles, and travesty dancers Angelina Correnti and Mlle Mercédès in the

409 Vergané is sometimes listed in programmes as Vergani. Her sister Emilie Vergané (or Vergani) also danced as a deuxième danseuse at the Folies-Bergère in the early 1890s. 410 Lina Campana trained in Turin with Mme Legrain, completing her studies in 1889 at the age of sixteen. She then came to Paris to dance at the Eden-Theatre, where she premiered roles in Le Cœur de Sita and La Tentation de Saint-Antoine. She continued her training in Paris with Mmes de Gasparis and Mariquita, and created several star ballerina roles in productions staged at the Porte-Saint-Martin, Gaîté, and Folies-Bergère. She also at different points in her career danced for the Alhambra in London and the Royal Theatre of Turin. Clipping in F-Pn 8-Ro-12400, and Le Théâtre Illustré, F-Pn 8-RO-10995 (2). 411 Avril, Mes Mémoires. 412 Jeanne Lamothe was one of the era’s great dancers, and she may have danced both in a popular and academic style. She was touted as Madame Mariquita’s best student (Lamothe was said to have been at the Folies-Bergère from 1875 to 1902), and she premiered several roles choreographed by Madame Mariquita at both the Gaîté and the Folies-Bergère. Érastène Ramiro, Cours de danse fin-de-siècle (1891), reprinted in Avril, Mes Memoires, 209. 225 supporting trouser roles.413 Campana danced ballet variations as a bayadère during royal entertainments.414 Emilienne aux Quat’z’arts starred the courtesan and music-hall dancer Emilienne d’Alençon opposite Jeanne Lamothe, who this time performed a trouser role. I have not yet discovered who the star ballerina was, but she would have danced the lead fairy in the ballet’s final scene.415

Beauty and fame were the most highly prized assets for music-hall dancers, and by the late 1890s, courtesans were more frequently the stars of ballets than were classically-trained ballerinas. The era’s so-called “three graces,”

Emilienne d’Alençon, Liane de Pougy, and Caroline Otéro, were the most sought- after guest stars, as were the mime and striptease artist Louise Willy, and the

Opéra’s première danseuse and beauty icon Cléo de Mérode. Emilienne aux

Quat’z’arts was specially written for Emilienne d’Alençon, whose beauty and magnetic personality assured her inclusion in several later music-hall ballets

413 Born in Marseille in 1872, Mlle Micheline made her debut at the age of seven in Lyon. She performed in dramas and comedies in Marseille as a child and teen, then traveled around France and Belgium, performing in operettas. Her Paris debut took place at the Eden-Concert, after which she performed at the Eldorado, Folies-Bergère, and Olympia. She was described as a singer, comedian, actress, seductive little devil, and artist with a remarkable career. “Olympia, La Chula et Sardanapale,” Le Théâte illustré, 6e année, no. 21. Martha Fugère was likely an actress and mime. Born in Brussels, she made her Paris debut in 1887 at the Théâtre des Varitétés in small revue roles. She then made a name for herself replacing a succession of principals when they fell ill. She left that theatre in 1893 to create Fleur de Lotus at the Folies-Bergère, then moved to the Nouveau-Théâtre where she created roles in La Prétentaine and Miss Dollar. “Théâtre des Variétés, une semaine à Paris,” Le Théâtre illustré, 5e année, no. 4. Mlle Mercédès, who was listed as a premier sujet in the press, alternately danced secondary female roles and principal travesty roles in the early 1890s. She was soon joined by her sister, Marie; the two often danced small character roles in the same Folies-Bergère ballets in the mid-1890s. One of the sisters, presumably the elder, is listed in the Opéra corps in 1875. Angelina Correnti can be traced through Folies-Bergère programmes and reviews as a premier sujet in the late 1880s and early 1890s, but she was best known for her performances in travesty. She premiered travesty roles in Le Roi s’ennuie, Paris-turf, Une Répétition aux Folies-Bergère, Les Perles, Chansons, Le Rêve d’or, Le Miroir, Fleur de Lotus, and Merveilleuses et gigolettes. 414 Performances of the ballet the following year were again danced by Lina Campana (première bayadère, première danseuse-étoile) and mimed by Louise Willy (Fleur de Lotus) and Mlle Rampont (Goutte de Rosée). The cast for the principal characters of the premiere is listed in the printed piano score, Louis Desormes, Fleur de Lotus (Paris: E. Meuriot, 1894). Surviving programmes are dated 28 March 1894, F-Pn WNA-214, and 13 April 1894, F-Pn 8-RO-11091. 415 I have not found a programme for this ballet and reviews do not mention the name of the ballerina. 226 including Néron, La Belle et la bête, and Faust. The courtesan Liane de Pougy created tailor-made roles in L’Araignée d’or and Rêve de Noël, while the popular

Spanish dancer Caroline Otéro starred in L’Impératrice and Une Fête à Séville.

Two wildly successful spectacle ballets created in 1896 and 1901, Phryné and

Lorenza, were created for the purpose of showing off the Opéra’s Cléo de Mérode, invited in turn by the Casino de Royan and the Folies-Bergère to create the title roles.416 All of these ballets had separate roles for a classically-trained star ballerina.

Oddly, several ballets from the late 1890s did not assign star ballerinas titled dramatic roles per se. It seems that splitting roles had by then become so common and accepted a practice that it was no longer necessary to devise a dramatic excuse to have these dancers appear outside the central narrative. Star ballerinas continued to be listed on programmes as premières danseuses étoiles, but without an accompanying character name, and their variations in scores were likewise left untitled. They were no less important than they had previously been.

All ballets still included classical variations, étoiles continued to be billed in large bold fonts alongside cast members who performed dramatic roles, and they were still routinely praised in reviews.

There were exceptions to the practice of splitting roles at all three halls, and roughly half of the Casino’s productions were staged with traditional casting.

The Casino’s star ballerina Enriu, for instance, sometimes danced variations in ballets that called for split roles, but she also frequently performed standard principal female roles that called for both mime and ballet. Enriu performed the

416 Mérode was trained at the Opéra and danced there for several years as a première danseuse but never as an étoile. Whether she had the requisite skills to perform variations remains a mystery. She was commended in the press for her variations in music-hall ballets, but a different dancer was cast for the strictly classical role of star ballerina, and it was the latter who performed the variations in the work’s divertissements. 227 purely danced role of an in L’Étoile de mer as a danseuse étoile while the principal fisherman and his fiancée were performed by secondary dancers Blanche

Dupré and Gabrielle Renée, then she held the title role of Venus in Vénus à Paris, and the lead female character and object of Céno’s love, Dionisia, in Les

Amoureux de Venise.417 Aida Boni, one of the great star ballerinas of the era both in music halls and at the Opéra-Comique and Opéra, likewise performed combined roles for the Casino in Sans-puits-house and Don Juan aux enfers.

The practice of splitting principal danced and mimed roles was not unique to Parisian music halls and did not originate in France. Although it was neither common in French state theatres nor English music halls, there was an Italian precedent. Italian ballet, which tended to place greater emphasis on mime and always required dancers to be skilled as dramatic interpreters, often cast mime artists in principal dramatic roles.418 In mid-nineteenth-century Italian ballet, the primi ballerini seri/dell’ rango francese (dancers who specialized in academic dancing) were largely only called on to performed dances such as pas de deux and ballabiles in an academic style. Purely dramatic roles were performed by primi mimi.419

French romantic ballet also had a long tradition of casting certain character types in mimed roles. Parents, grandparents, old misers, witches, and other comic or grotesque characters were normally mimed, and this practice continued into the

417 Mlle Enriu was a premiere danseuse étoile. She premiered roles in the Casino’s ballets Étoile de mer, Vassilissa, Vénus à Paris, and Les Amoureux de Venise, as well as in productions staged by the Nouveau-Théâtre. 418 For a history of mime in ballet, see Giannandrea Poesio, “The Origins of Ballet Mime,” pts.1-3, Dancing Times (September 1995): 1135-37; (October 1995): 24-25; (November 1995): 155-57. 419 My thanks to Matilda Butkas, who is currently completing her dissertation, “Nineteenth- Century Italian Ballet Music Before National Unification: Sources, Style and Context,” for providing me with this information at the eleventh hour. Roles were split well into the late nineteenth century. See, for example, cast divisions for Luigi Manzotti’s Amor (1886) listed in Il Teatro illustrato 14, no.8 (21 February 1886). 228 twentieth century. Parisian audiences were therefore used to seeing mime and ballet as separate entities. Audiences would also have been used to seeing separate ballet divertissements in popular pantomimes, and seeing pantomimes performed alongside divertissements in music halls. It would have been a small step from these practices to that of dividing principal dramatic and danced roles between mimes and ballerinas in music-hall pantomime-ballets.

MUSIC AS STORYTELLER Music-hall ballet music was formally virtually identical to that of state-theatre ballet. Written to complement a particular libretto, ballet music closely followed the dramatic contours of a given plot and was intended to set the scene, delineate characterisation, elucidate the scenario, and act as a support for mime and dance.

Dance and dramatic music were separate entities, each with its own function and conventions.

Dance Music

Dance music was highly standardized and had a narrow stylistic range. Written to keep time and inspire movement, dance music needed to have a steady pulse with rhythms that propelled a dancer forward, a predictable numbers of measures, and balanced phrases. Dance music also needed to be simple enough to recede into the background and not distract from the visual spectacle. Virtually all dances were therefore made up of repetitions of tuneful periodic melodies in either small binary or ternary forms.

Of all dance types, ballet variations were subject to the most rigidly observed set of conventions. Nearly all were written in ABA forms with a two or four-bar lead-in to set the tempo and a brief, sometimes more rapid coda to

229 underscore bravura finales. Variations could be as short as three sets of absolutely square sixteen-measure periods—no more than brief vignettes for the ballerina to make a ritual appearance on stage—but most were at least twice that length.

Variations usually had contrasting A and B sections with rhythmic patterns appropriate for different types of movements. One might be suitable for delicate steps on pointe and turns in one spot, the other for small jumps and turns across the room.

The bayadère’s two variations danced in the second divertissement of

Desormes's Fleur de Lotus perfectly illustrate the conventions of classical dance music. Although one can only speculate about music-hall ballet choreography, the music for the bayadère’s first variation (ABA’B’) suggests a combination of standard technical feats such as pointe work, turns, or jumps. The A sections, with their up-beat flute and clarinet melody over a pizzicato chords, might have showcased series of steps on pointe or pirouettes. The faster-paced phrases of slurred dotted rhythms of the B sections that propel forward and the final accelerated tutti cadential flourish could have accompanied more ostentatious movements or turns that move quickly across the entire expanse of the stage

(Example 5.1).420 The bayadère’s second variation, with its light rising pizzicato sequences over a chordal accompaniment, all of which accentuate weak beats, could again have been appropriate for delicate foot work on pointe: the ballerina might take mincing steps or small jumps and turns, showing off her grace and delicacy after the showier first variation (Example 5.2).

420 While this is highly speculative—choreographies were not systematically notated during this time—performance traditions, passed down from one dancer, teacher, or choreographer to the next, have maintained a relatively conservative set of movements associated with certain types of nineteenth-century French and Russian ballet music (Justamant is the exception: he did routinely notate his ballets, several of which have been preserved at the BnF Opéra). Even nineteenth- century ballets for which there are greatly varying productions have danced variations that are remarkably similar in overall contour and types of step sequences, if not exact movements. 230

Example 5.1. Louis Desormes, Fleur de Lotus, tableau 2, first variation, mm. 1-63.

231

Example 5.1. (Continued)

Character dances, whether national dances, theatrical versions of social dances, or dances with fanciful titles, were formally nearly as standardized as variations (see Example 5.3 and 5.4). They were entirely composed of repetitions of antecedent-consequent phrases organised either into small ternary or binary forms (most often AABB, sometimes ABA’). Many had introductions, again to set the tempo and allow dancers to take their places, but none of these dances had

232

Example 5.2. Louis Desormes, Fleur de Lotus, tableau 2, divertissement, second variation, mm. 1039-1076

the rapid codas characteristic of ballet variations’ final virtuosic flourishes.421 The one exception to this structural pattern was the waltz. Waltzes, the longest dances

421 One, the “Danse des Petits Fous de Cœur” in Lecocq’s Barbe-Bleue, was simply a repetition of its initial period: AA’A’’A’’’. 233

Example 5.3. Charles Lecocq, Barbe-Bleue, Pas des moissonneurs in any ballet, were always multi-sectional. Many were in a loose rondo form, but some were episodic and were comprised of a series of contrasting sections connected only by virtue of repetitive accompaniment patterns and a generic similarity of triadic melodic figures.

234

Example 5.4. Charles Lecocq, Barbe-Bleue, Pas de la paysanne

Dramatic Music

The bulk of a music-hall ballet score was made up of dramatic music. Dramatic music was written to evoke a given time or place, feeling or atmosphere, to delineate characterisation, or to help convey the meaning of specific pantomimic gestures. Since composers were not bound by the formulaic requirements of dance music, dramatic music tended to be formally and stylistically far more

235 flexible and varied. Music for detailed pantomime scenes, for instance, could be made up of repeated phrases in a series of stylistically contrasting sections that followed the general outlines of a dramatic scene, but it could also be formally free, even -like in its metrical and rhythmic flexibility, following a mime’s gestures.422 Dramatic music also tended to be more interesting on a purely musical level. When not a backdrop for dance, and when not written to support detailed pantomime, composers could write music with more complex harmonies and thicker textures—music that would elsewhere distract the dancers and mimes, or divert attention away from them.

When writing dramatic music, composers relied for dramatic intelligibility on a combination of musical conventions and stereotypes, recurring melodies, and mimetic sounds. Composers rarely borrowed from or quoted older works, but they frequently made allusions to already established stylistic traits that might evoke a particular place, era, or character type. These musical signs were then

422 As one might expect, the pantomime music found in ballets closely resembles that of pantomimes as a genre. The music for both, after all, has the identical function of conveying drama and narrative through gesture and visual expression. Pantomimes, like ballets, combine dramatic musique de scène at the beginnings of scenes to establish the mood and portray character types, sections of simple background accompaniment for pantomimic tableaux, and mimetic passages, some of which mickey-mouse stage actions. Oscar de Lagoanère’s Le Coucher de la mariée, a one-act pantomime with a scenario by C. Pollonnais, for example, could be a pantomime scene out of a ballet: as the curtain rises, a maid about the room making the final arrangements to the honeymooner’s evening retreat. The upcoming nuptials are suggested by music, which the maid can hear, as if coming from a party below. As various characters enter the stage, the musical style shifts to match each new appearance: heavy-footed accentuated chords accompany the entrance of an important gentleman, still-accentuated chords that alternate low-high-low-high are played as groups come in for the wedding (as if musically representing the back-and-forth movements of walking), and lyrical melodic material conveys loving last-minute advice that the mother gives her daughter; similarly lyrical music returns as the couple later comes in together, alone for the first time. Mimetic devices include a descending chromatic line over tremolos to suggest dropping tears as the mother, taking leave of her daughter, takes out a handkerchief and dries her eyes. The most interesting use of music to convey more subtle meaning comes at the end of the pantomime, at which time the central “event” takes place: a long striptease as the shy young bride, hiding from her peeking husband, undresses behind a screen as she gets ready for bed, all to the sounds of a waltz. The waltz, with its persisting connotations of immorality or licentiousness, would have been the perfect musical backdrop for this famous antecedent to the striptease. 236 reinforced through the use of recurring melodies or musical styles associated with a given character or situation. Explicit mimetic gestures were woven into the musical texture whenever the narrative allowed for them. When a character knocked on a door, the orchestra invariably provided the associated sound by playing three short chords followed by silence while all listened for a response.

Characters running down stairs or fairies slipping into a lake were typically accompanied by rapidly descending scales, laughter was mimicked by short descending patterns and repeated notes, the snores of an old man sleeping were imitated by trills in the bassoons, and so on.

A short and unusually condensed pantomime sequence from Cieutat’s Le

Château de Mac-Arrott offers a good illustration of how music could be used to help elucidate narrative. The scene takes place in the Scottish countryside on the lands of Mac-Arrott, a wealthy laird. He has offered his daughter’s hand to the man who wins an archery competition, and all watch as one after another fails.

Mac-Arrott's daughter, Diana, has her eye on , her penniless young lover who sits nearby, miserable at the thought of his beloved’s impending union to another.

He had earlier been assured of help in his quest for Diana’s hand from a fairy—a transformed old woman to whom he had offered assistance—but this brings him little comfort. The pantomime sequence in question begins as Diana gives Eric an arrow. He takes it, but is despondent. Just as he is about to shoot, the fairy appears and seems to direct his arrow; he hits the bull’s-eye.

In just eighteen measures, Cieutat combines all three of the standard musical techniques listed above—musical conventions, recurring melodies, and mimesis—to increase narrative clarity. Diana's pleading gestures are underscored by a gentle rising eight-bar melody, the lyricism of which was typical of music for

237 ballet heroines. Her “feminine” lyricism immediately contrasts with Eric’s more pedestrian line, a passage heard earlier in the ballet and already associated with this character. When the fairy appears, Eric's plodding line is suddenly interrupted by a triadic melody in 9/8 followed by two measures of tremolos. Tremolos were a characteristic marker of otherworldly creatures as well as common device for signalling tension or suspense, and this particular 9/8 melody is a fragment of the theme played two scenes earlier when the fairy first revealed herself to Eric. The chromatic scale and final chord mimic the flight of the arrow and hitting of the bull’s-eye (Example 5.5). Cieutat’s music is unmistakably in the service of the drama: the sequence is entirely composed of fragments, and changes in musical style occur solely in relation to the narrative.

Example 5.5. Henri Cieutat, Le Château de Mac-Arrott, scene 9

Evocative dramatic music could be written to set the scene in a more general way. The opening of Lorrain’s and Ganne’s 1899 Folies-Bergère ballet

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La Princesse au sabbat is a particularly colourful example of this practice. The ballet features a beautiful but vain princess whose search for eternal beauty leads her into the sinister world of black magic. As the curtain rises, decrepit old witches and their savage companions are seen skulking about in semi-obscurity, guarding a giant cauldron. The set is grotesque: a crumbling, dilapidated stone cave filled with reptile skeletons, taxidermied animals, and vials of green liquid, all infused with a lurid reddish light. It is a world of mystery and fantasy, at once alluring in its dramatic potency yet sinister. Ganne’s music evokes this sinister and mysterious world as of the ballet's very first chord. The musical introduction to La Princesse au sabbat, a fifteen-measure passage marked “fairly slow and sombre,” begins with what one eventually hears as a dominant sonority—V7 of the tonic established in the first scene—but it is inflected by a diminished fifth (Example 5.6).

Example 5.6. Louis Ganne, La Princesse au sabbat, introduction

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Although the dominant is well-enough established by the end of the passage to act as a lead-in to the first scene as conventions dictated, harmonies are always clouded by whole tone sonorities, obscuring functional harmonic relations and creating a sense of tonal ambiguity. In the first scene, functional harmony is once again undermined: the opening C is connected to the concluding C major chord by a series of augmented triads underpinned by a descending whole-tone scale

(Example 5.7).

Example 5.7. Louis Ganne, La Princesse au sabbat, scene 1, opening

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The practice of conveying a dramatic narrative with the help of closely correlated music was a common feature of even the most musically dense and intricate Opéra ballet scores from the end of the century, but the close correspondence of music to stage action tended to be more conspicuous in music- hall ballet scores. Since music halls did not provide detailed librettos before performances as did the Opéra, musical conventions or formulas needed to be all the more distinct, even clichéd, to be comprehensible for music hall’s diverse, sometimes inattentive audiences.423

Storm scenes from different ballets, for instance, sound remarkably similar as composers made use of musical devices standardized through associations to earlier repertoire.424 At the end of the first tableau of Cieutat’s Le Château de

Mac-Arrott, shortly after Mac-Arrott has learned of the low class of his future son- in-law and threatens to annul the engagement, a storm gathers on the horizon—an obvious symbol of the father’s anger and fitting excuse for chaos and noise. The storm suddenly bursts and Diana and Eric flee to safety together. The onset of the storm is made immediately clear through the use of conventional musical signs.

Thunder and wind are represented by frenzied tremolo chords and rapidly descending and ascending streams of chromatic sixteenth notes, sometimes rushing by in quintuplets, sometimes made more intense through rising sequences.

Melodic material, restricted to ponderously accentuated triads in quarter and dotted half notes, conveys a sense of doom and adds to the feeling of heightened tension produced by an unusually wide instrumental range, a constant ff dynamic, a lack of cadences, and irregular, erratic phrase fragments (Example 5.8).

423 Even Edouard Lalo’s much-criticised, unusually symphonic and harmonically complex ballet, Namouna, closely followed these musical-narrative conventions. 424 Similar musical depictions of storm scenes appear in Ferdinand Hérold’s La Fille mal gardée, Mozart’s , and Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, to name a small sample. 241

Example 5.8. Henri Cieutat, Le Château de Mac-Arrott, l’orage

These same devices were used by Desormes to represent the storm scene that marks the climax of the first tableau of Fleur de Lotus. In Desormes’s score, thunder and wind are musically depicted through tremolos, series of rising and descending chromatic chords in the strings, and sequences played by basses of arpeggios rising to a held-note climax then descending to ever greater depths

(Example 5.9). Textures throughout this section are thick, creating a foil for the

242 pattering rain-like off-beat eighths in a central section. Tension builds towards the end with a frantic chromatic sequence of tremolo chords rising nearly two octaves to a fff before fading out on the descent. Even without casting a glance towards the dancers, members of the audience surely would in both cases have been able to identify the type of scene playing out on stage.

Example 5.9. Louis Desormes, Fleur de Lotus, tableau 1, l’orage, mm. 376-393

The musical delineation of character types was equally dependent on stereotypical gestures. Male and female characters were often musically set apart using melodic or rhythmic attributes thought to sound feminine or masculine, peasants were usually accompanied by folk-like melodies over drones, dotted tutti chords announced the arrival of royalty, and fairies were usually represented by tremolos, often played by high-pitched instruments. Desormes’s music for Fleur de Lotus perfectly encapsulates all of these. The first appearance of the Indian

243 peasant girls, Fleur de Lotus and Goutte de Rosée, inside their rustic cottage is accompanied by a simple folk-like melody over a tonic pedal (Example 5.10).

Example 5.10. Louis Desormes, Fleur de Lotus, scene 1, mm. 67-84

This is offset musically by the entrance of a royal cortège in the second scene: the gentle duple melody over drones is replaced by ponderous dotted rhythms in 6/8 (Example 5.11). The girls and their suitors are subsequently given gendered musical styles. The two female protagonists are almost always accompanied by flowing lyrical lines, while their lovers are given more prosaic stepwise material.

Example 5.11. Louis Desormes, Fleur de Lotus, scene 3, royal cortège

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Fairies who emerge by a lake in the second tableau are likewise characterised using conventional musical gestures. As night falls, violins play a long pianissimo tremolo followed by silence. The silence is broken by a rising arpeggiated flourish on the flute, an indication that something mysterious is about to appear. This is repeated, equally softly, an octave lower (Example 5.12). As the tremolos are rhythmically slowed down to semi-tone eighth-note alternations, a mincing, delicate melody is heard in a higher voice as if mimicking the air-borne footsteps of some ethereal being. For any audience member familiar with Giselle or later ballets written in a similar vein, such music could only signal the arrival of otherworldly creatures.

Example 5.12. Louis Desormes, Fleur de Lotus, tableau 2, scene 3, mm. 689-696

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Dramatic Dance Music

Dances integrated into a ballet’s dramatic thread could be as descriptive or evocative as dramatic music. Dances for witches in La Princesse au sabbat, for instance, were written with as much attention to evoking the appropriate atmosphere and delineating characterisation as was Ganne’s dramatic music in the same ballet. Although the ballet des sorcières is a straightforward variation-like dance with simple functional harmonies, the Bacchanale et Ronde infernale incorporates augmented and diminished sonorities to produce an eerie effect. The latter dance also includes a parody of the Dies Irae, played by trombone, bassoon, and double bass, that adds to the dance’s infernal quality.425

Exotic dances, and therefore exotic characters, were musically delineated using a particularly narrow set of musical signs. As a comparison of a slave dance in Desormes’s Fleur de Lotus and Phryné’s lascivious dance in Ganne’s Phryné illustrates, exotic dances were often remarkably similar in musical construction.

Both Desormes’s and Ganne’s dances have sinuous melodic lines with chromatic alterations of b2 and #4 to the scale within the minor mode, augmented seconds, off-beat 16-note alternations, and broken chords. Desormes’s dance, a quintessential example of stereotyped musical exoticism, also has off-beat 32-note flourishes and accentuated weak beats. Appoggiaturas in the melodic line occasionally highlight second beats, and broken chords accentuate the third beat in the accompaniment. Desormes’s orchestration would also have contributed somewhat to this exotic sound. Although the orchestral score is missing, indications in the piano score suggest that wind instruments were predominant: the scene begins with a counterpoint of clarinet and bassoon against an oboe melody

425 G.V., “Théâtre de Paris, Folies-Bergère,” 26 January 1899, and “Premières représentations,” 26 January 1899, unattributed press clippings in F-Pn 8-RO-10980. 246 that is later taken up by a flute and punctuated by cymbal crashes. The broken chords played on third beats and the thirty-second-note flourishes in the lower voices may have been intended to mimic the sound of the sitar or any one of a number of related instruments (Example 5.13).

Example 5.13. Louis Desormes, Fleur de Lotus, tableau 2, divertissement, mm. 1000-1009

Exoticism in music-hall ballets was usually intended to conjure up the same imagined sensuousness of the “Middle-East” that so often appears in nineteenth-century state-theatre ballets and operas.426 In Desormes’s Fleur de

Lotus, the “exotic” dance is performed by the prince’s slave during a divertissement presented as royal entertainments. Although Fleur de Lotus is set in India, dance is the only number that musically suggests an exotic setting. While there are no descriptions of the choreography associated with this

426 See Deborak Jowitt, Time and the Dancing Image (New York: Wiliam Morrow and Co., 1988), 49-66; Ralph Locke, “Constructing the Oriental ‘Other’: Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila,” Cambridge Opera Journal 3, no.3 (1991): 261-302; Jonathan Bellman, ed., The Exotic in Western Music (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998); Derek B. Scott, “Orientalism and Musical Style,” Musical Quarterly 82, no.2 (1998): 309-35; Susan McClary, : Carmen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). The “Coffee” or Arabian dance in Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker is perhaps the best-known example of this tradition in ballet, with its serpentine lyrical lines, accented weak beats, and chromatic alterations. 247 particular dance, its musical characteristics and interpretation by a slave suggests an adherence to the prevailing custom of associating exoticism and sensuality. In

Phryné, Ganne likewise wrote the most obviously exotic music to accompany the ballet’s most obviously erotic dance.

Ganne’s Phryné offers an unusually striking example of the link between lascivious dances and exoticism. Towards the end of the second tableau, directly following a long danced divertissement, Phryné performs what is described in the score as a “very voluptuous dance with lascivious movements and gestures.”427

Her dance is so openly sensuous that she is subsequently convicted for impropriety and is summoned before a court to establish her purity. Phryné’s dance was the last of a series of dances that included variations for the sacred courtesan and national dances intended to represent Persians, Phoenicians,

Assyrians, Egyptians, and Greeks. Although most of these dances had slightly unusual harmonic or rhythmic traits (see Chapter 7), Phryné’s dance was the only one accompanied by music that was unmistakably and stereotypically “exotic.”

Whereas the music for all of the above-mentioned national dances and those for the courtesan were firmly grounded in a mid- to late-nineteenth-century diatonic idiom, Phryné’s lascivious dance incorporated many of the stereotypical musical markers of Middle-Eastern exoticism common to nineteenth-century

French opera and ballet. As mentioned above, minor-mode melodic lines are inflected with augmented seconds and chromatic alterations of b2 and #4 over a tonic pedal, and simple rhythmic patterns are embellished with off-beat 16-note alternations and arpeggiated chords to mimic strumming (Example 5.14).

427 Phryné, by August Germain and Louis Ganne, was created for the Casino de Royan in 1896 with choreography by Madame Stichel. It was restaged by Madame Mariquita at the Folies- Bergère in 1897 and by Alfredo Curti for the Olympia in 1904. 248

Significantly, when Phryné is later called upon to prove her innocence in court, she performs the same dance, but it has been transformed musically. Her dance is now entirely diatonic. It is no longer recognised as being exotic and she is deemed chaste, devoid of all unseemly sensuality (Example 5.15).

The practice in music-hall ballets of associating sexually-charged dances with exoticism, and the association of exotic sensuousness with the forbidden and dangerous, were extensions of an already well-established trope carried over from nineteenth-century French opera and ballet. Such dances in music-hall ballets were, however, rarely fraught with semantic tension of any kind. Phryné aside, exotic characters usually had no bearing on the central story and never posed a real threat to the established social order. Their presence was merely an excuse for sexually explicit dances.

Example 5.14. Louis Ganne, Phryné, Danse de Phryné, mm. 1-16

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Example 5.15. Louis Ganne, Phryné, Danse mystique de Phryné

A study of the subjects, structure, and basic choreographic and musical components of music-hall ballets reveals a remarkable generic similarity to French romantic ballet. Both told stories through a combination of mime and dance, and both relied for theatrical effect on a previous knowledge of the same set of dramatic, choreographic, and musical conventions. Indeed, analyses of these conventions suggest that music-hall ballets were traditional nineteenth-century pantomime-ballets. In many respects, they were. Yet as I will demonstrate in the following chapter, the surface elements of music-hall ballets were grounded in popular culture. It is these that appealed to broad audiences and assured the

250 ballets’ combined artistic and commercial success, and these that marked music- hall ballets as a distinct genre—one that maintained many of the formal elements characteristic of nineteenth-century French romantic and post-romantic ballet, but that used them as the framework for novel productions with an up-to-date, popular sensibility.

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CHAPTER 6. UP-TO-DATE POPULAR SPECTACLES

Music-hall ballets adhered to the formal conventions of nineteenth-century state- theatre ballet, but they were not strictly speaking “classical” ballets. Moulded by the needs of the trendy, profit-oriented institutions for which they were created, music-hall ballets were distinctly popular in tone: they were conceived as inconsequential entertainment for those in pursuit of amusing distractions. Box- office earnings attest to the commercial success of ballets geared towards novelty and spectacle, and critics faithfully reported and praised any attributes that contributed to a work’s light-hearted character. Blavet’s review of the Folies-

Bergère’s 1893 ballet Arc-en-ciel, representative of hundreds of virtually identical descriptions of music-hall ballets in the mainstream press, sums up what music- hall audiences were looking for in a popular ballet:

The scenario, by M. Amédée Moreau, is simple, clear, and poetic; the music by M. Alfred Dubruck is light and danceable; Amable and Gardy have framed this likable tale in ravishing decors; Landolff, with drawings by Choubrac, has clothed it in an exquisite manner; it is also danced to perfection by Mlle Jeanne Lamothe, the former star of the Gaîté and favourite pupil of Mariquita, by the divine Campana, by the all-graceful Jane Avril and by the most beautiful legs of the corps de ballet that counts amongst its ranks the loveliest girls in Paris.428 The most important attributes of a music-hall ballet were, in other words, entertaining plots, lively, accessible music, charismatic mimes and talented dancers, opulent sets and costumes, and dozens of pretty women showing off their

428 Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre, “La Soirée Théâtrale—Arc-en-ciel,” Le Figaro, 15 September 1893. “Le scenario, de M. Amédée Moreau, est simple, claire, et poétique; la musique, de M. Alfred Dubruck, est facile et dansante; Amable et Gardy ont encadré cet aimable conte bleu de décors ravissants; Landolf, sur les dessins de Bac, l’a costumé de façon exquise; il est, en outre, dansé à ravir par Mlle Jeanne Lamothe, l’ex-danseuse étoile de la Gaîté, l’élève favorite de Mariquita, par la divine Campana, par la toute gracieuse Jane Avril et par les plus belles jambes de ce corps de ballet qui compte les plus jolies filles de Paris.” 253 legs. In this chapter, I explore the narrative and visual elements that mark music- hall ballet as a “popular” genre.

Pantomime-Ballet Librettos: Conventions and Distortions

Themes for music-hall pantomime-ballets staged in the early 1890s were at first little different from those treated in divertissements. The halls continued to stage love stories in various settings, sketches that depicted contemporary characters and places, and light pastoral or pictorial pieces. However, in the mid- to late

1890s, the range of ballet topics seen on the music-hall stage broadened considerably. Along with the halls’ increasing tendency towards staging more complex and larger-scale productions came an interest in new types of ballet.

Contemporary sketches, light pastoral pieces, and love stories continued to appear, but in expanded or altered forms, and as of the mid-1890s, a vogue emerged for ballets that drew on mythological and historical subjects. Thus by 1900, music- hall audiences could see a wide variety of ballets, from romantic comedies, traditional fairytales, and exotic fantasies, to titillating contemporary sketches, mythological parodies, and historical spectacles. As Hélène Laplace-Claverie observes, the proliferation of subjects considered appropriate for choreographic interpretation was one of the most significant developments in ballet writing at the turn of the century.429

Ballet subjects were remarkably similar from one hall to the next.430 The halls’ comparable performance contexts, staging practices, and audiences, as well

429 See Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 138-222, for an in-depth study of the types of plots common to French ballets at the turn of the century. 430 My study of music-hall ballet subjects is based on a combination of full librettos from the P- Pan F18 1045 Censor’s files (printed and in manuscript), scenarios printed in programmes, stage action printed in piano scores, and when no other sources were available, synopses printed in press reviews. Since the latter are often incomplete or contradictory, my discussion of music-hall ballet 254 as their constant exchange of creative and performing artists, insured a relative uniformity of subjects and themes. I will therefore compare and discuss music- hall ballet scenarios from the 1890s and early 1900s according to subject matter rather than divide them by institution. Since Laplace-Claverie’s comprehensive study of turn-of-the-twentieth-century ballet librettos, Écrire pour la danse, includes those written for popular venues, my discussion will rely in part on her work, drawing out and adding to her writing on the ballets staged in the music halls. Laplace-Claverie does not strictly differentiate between the librettos written for music halls and state theatres, but rather looks at general tendencies across theatrical boundaries. Those written for the halls do, however, exhibit distinct attributes and should be set apart from those staged at the Opéra, Opéra-Comique, and other major theatres.

Romance

Regardless of scale or narrative structure, the theme that resurfaces most frequently in music-hall ballets of any era is love (for thumbnail sketches of all available music-hall scenarios, see Appendix B). Ballets that treated themes of love came in a variety of forms and ranged greatly in tone. Love triangles and tales of two lovers overcoming an obstacle remained staple plot archetypes, as did romances woven into fairytales. On occasion, the halls staged stories of star- crossed lovers imbedded in a . As the decade drew to a close, amorous flirtations and seductions were seen with increasing frequency, and all ballets that had romantic underpinnings included increasingly explicit sexual material.

topics cannot be entirely comprehensive. This is also an overview: Hélène Laplace-Claverie provides more detailed discussions of several music-hall ballet librettos in Écrire pour la danse. 255

Ballets about love were often entirely conventional. One of the most common plot archetypes in the late 1880s and early 1890s was the union of a poor young man with a wealthy young woman, usually after overcoming the objections of the girl’s domineering father. R. Mythe’s Le Château de Mac-Arrott (1886) discussed in the last chapter falls under this category, as does Jacques Lemaire’s

Rêve d’or, written for the Folies-Bergère in 1892. Lemaire’s ballet relates the tale of two lovers kept apart by the girl’s father, who is on the lookout for a wealthy suitor for his only daughter. The daughter’s lover is poor and can only dream of how he will win her hand. When the young man finds a banker’s wallet full of money, he falls asleep while deliberating what to do with it and dreams of wealth

(his dream takes the form of a danced divertissement for coins and bills). Upon awakening, he returns the wallet to its rightful owner and is duly rewarded for his honesty with a large enough dowry to marry the object of his affections.

Rêve d’or had one unusual trait: it was one of the few Parisian music-hall ballets with explicit moral overtones.431 Ballets about lovers uniting after overcoming an obstacle were more often light-hearted comedies, some of which had elements of slapstick.432 For example, Ernest Grenet-Dancourt’s Les

Amoureux de Venise (Casino, 1896) is a romance about a Doge’s son who dresses up as a poor musician to court his aristocratic lover. He serenades her, and she promises her hand in marriage without her father’s consent. When the young man is caught sneaking into her house, he reveals his true identity and their union is blessed. The Olympia’s Le Fiancé de Cire created two years earlier borders on the farcical and farfetched. A poor boy who is in love with a rich young lady is helped out by the director of wax museum who devises a ruse to bring the two

431 It was relatively common for English music-hall ballets to include a moral message. 432 Slapstick comedies were more common in English music-hall ballets than French. 256 together. The boy pretends to be a wax statue so that he and the girl, brought to the museum by her father, might speak to each other.433 The father discovers the ruse and throws a wax statue into the river thinking that it is the boy. The father is tried for attempted murder, but when the truth is revealed he is acquitted on condition that his daughter be granted permission to marry her poor lover.

Beginning in the mid-1890s, ballets with traditional love plots began to display slight changes of tone. Edmond Mize’s and Eugène Vivier’s Diamant

(Folies-Bergère, 1898) is at first glance a standard ballet about a poor boy who finds a way to overcome the objections of a protective father to marry a wealthy girl: a jeweller’s apprentice discovers how to cut diamonds and wins the hand of the head jeweller’s daughter. However, the ballet’s climactic scene in which the boy makes his discovery—what might normally have been a dream-sequence divertissement for fairies or impersonated stones—features beautiful impersonated stones sent to seduce the hero to prevent him from uncovering the secret of the diamond’s beauty. Traditional otherworldly spirits become overtly sexual beings and the ordinary tale is transformed into a music-hall leg-show, if only for a single scene.

Jean Lorrain’s Rêve de noël, staged by the Olympia in 1896, is likewise a seemingly conventional love story, but one coloured by sexual innuendo. The ballet is about a count’s daughter who is in love with her page but engaged to a nobleman. When the count’s daughter is discovered in an ecstatic embrace with her page, the two are separated and the page is sent away. In a long and convoluted fantasy scene, the page is forced out into the snow where he battles the elements. The count’s daughter searches for him, and when they are reunited by

433 The ballet likely traded on the popularity of the Musée Grévin, a hugely successful wax museum that opened in Paris in 1882. 257 miracle towards the end of the ballet, the two again embrace. The young woman then demurely joins her noble suitor and heads off to marry him, with the page dutifully carrying her train.

A few ballets with romantic themes were imbedded within fairytales.

These could be dramatisations of standard tales, retellings based on familiar models, or fantasies that included fairies to help characters out of some predicament. Only three ballets were based on pre-existing fairytales. Richard

O’Monroy’s La Belle et la bête does not stray significantly from the basic outline of the ancient story, and neither Max Meyan’s and Augustin Thierry’s Le Mille et une nuits or A. Lemonnier’s was unusual enough to warrant synopses in the press. More often, librettists drew on common tales as the basis for up-to- date comedies. One of the best examples of this practice is Armand Silvestre’s romantic comedy Fleur de Lotus, created for the Folies-Bergère in 1893.

Fleur de Lotus is a romantic fairytale about two Indian peasant girls,

Goutte de Rosée and her sister Fleur de Lotus, who are discovered by a prince and his friend and brought to live in a palace. The ballet follows a basic plot archetype—an entire scene is devoted to the transformation of Goutte de

Rosée into a princess through the acquisition of a beautiful dress—but with variants that recall elements of Théophile Gautier’s Giselle.434 The ballet begins with Fleur de Lotus instructing her sister on how to avoid the undesired attentions of passing gallants: she is to cover her face in soot and dress in old rags to appear undesirable. Goutte de Rosée, left alone in their rustic hut while her sister is off taking their goat to pasture, hears a royal cortège approaching and covers her face as instructed. A young gallant—the prince’s friend—enters the stage, sees

434 Since the ballet had been out of the repertory for twenty years, most audience members could have known the story of Giselle but would not have seen the ballet. 258

Goutte’s hut and peers through a crack in the door. He suspects her ruse and throws water in her face to reveal her beauty; he falls in love, but the prince enters and he too falls in love with Goutte. The prince proposes marriage, and a couple of scenes later an enamoured Goutte follows the prince to his palace. Fleur returns, sets off in search of her sister, gets waylaid by a series of incidents involving fairies, finds her sister, and becomes engaged to the prince’s friend. The resulting scenario could be read (or seen) by any member of the audience as a conventional romantic comedy. For those familiar with the romantic repertoire,

Fleur de Lotus would have come across as an exotic retelling of Giselle with a few sexy interludes and a happy ending.

For all their adherence to conventions, music-hall ballets with traditional romantic themes conveyed very different messages than did their state-theatre counterparts. Whereas French romantic ballets that dealt with the union of young lovers almost invariably reminded viewers of the importance of maintaining the social order and marrying within one’s own community, music-hall ballets espoused a much more playful concept of love, one that involved a great deal of flirtation and seduction. Even ballets that had banal or hackneyed narratives about love and marriage were adapted to advocate principles in keeping with the general atmosphere of moral laxity and decadence that pervaded the halls. More often than not, the moral message espoused in popular ballets was one of sexual freedom: according to music-hall ballets, you could have your lover and not be punished (Rêve de Noël), you could marry outside your rank and live happily ever after (Fleur de Lotus), and if you took a lover, you could have your wife back when you were ready to return (Rêve d’Elias).435

435 As Marian Smith points out, characters in Opéra ballets were also given permission to stray as long as they returned home afterwards. Smith, Ballet and Opera in the Age of Giselle, 71. 259

Libertine Romance

Music-hall ballets also confirmed that one need not be married to have a good time, and that one could be married and also have a good time. Love and romance were frequently equated with flirtation and sexual intrigue. In the Casino’s 1893

Les Manoeuvres du printemps, for instance, the husband watches jealously as his wife flirts with a hussar officer. She suffers no repercussions for her dalliance.

Instead, the ballet descends into slapstick as the officer hides in a bear cave to avoid the woman’s husband and is forced to face an angry bear. Similarly, in

Madame Malbrouck (Casino, 1898), the title character flirts with a knight while her husband is off at war. Unbeknownst to her, she is soon found out by her husband. He fakes his own death in order to trick her, and she, believing herself free, becomes engaged to her knight. Her husband appears at her wedding, but when Mme Malbrouck does not recognize him, he leaves the new couple and returns to war.436 Significantly, both are set in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, thus lessening the impact of sexual intrigue by maintaining the pretext of an historical distance from their audience.

Flirtations set against a picturesque historical backdrop were among the most popular types of music-hall ballet in the 1890s. The French Régence and

Directoire—periods that were often associated with libertinage—inspired a large number of ballets that depicted illicit love.437 A few were inspired by Watteau’s paintings or included the character of Watteau himself. The 1900 Olympia ballet

Watteau casts the painter as the love-sick victim of scheming nobility who, for a

436 The ballet was no doubt based on the popular French song Malbrouck s’en va-t-en guerre. 437 For several articles on libertinage in eighteenth-century France, see Catherine Cusset, ed., Libertinage and Modernity, special issue, Yale French Studies 94 (1998). 260 laugh, trick him into revealing the name of his secret love. Others depict flirtations amongst the era’s famous personalities: Mme Tallien, Mme Récamier, and Napoleon can be seen flirting in Merveilleuses et gigolettes (Folies-Bergère,

1894), and Napoleon and his wife are caught flirting with different partners in

Madame Bonaparte (Folies-Bergère, 1900).

Not all ballets about flirtations preserved this historical distance. Several from the turn of the century were staged in everyday contemporary settings, providing an immediacy that heightened the impact of their sexual content.

Paris-Cascade, staged by the Olympia in 1901, was a light comedy about extra- marital liaisons that recalls Strauss’s Die Fledermaus. In the first tableau, a man flirts with a salesgirl in a Parisian dress shop and invites her to a ball. In the second, they meet up with each other at an Opéra ball and are in turn found out by the man’s wife. In retaliation, the wife, masked, tricks her husband into falling in love with her, then reveals her identity. She dances in triumph to taunt him.

In the Olympia’s 1897 Un Déjeuner sur l’herbe, a ballet likely intended to make allusion to Manet’s painting, a widowed businessman who owns a lingerie store in the Marais takes his employees to lunch in the countryside each Sunday.

The weekend picnics become the backdrop for scenes of amorous intrigue between the businessman and the young female employee he loves, and in turn, between this young woman and the young man she loves. Flirtations and pursuits are mirrored by a divertissement in which the sleeping widower has visions of scantily-clad dancing nymphs. The tale ends with the union of the young lovers after the widower is arrested for immorality.

Along with traditional if up-dated and increasingly explicit ballets about flirtations were the ballets depicting seductions described in Chapter 5. The

261

Casino’s Don Juan aux Enfers (1897) featured seductresses sent by Mme. Satan to torture Don Juan, Le Rêve d’Elias had impersonated seductive dancing fairies,

L’Araignée d’or starred a temptress, Tentations and Les Deux tentations centred on temptations sent to break the hermit’s resolve, Diamant included dances for impersonated seductive stones, and Les Sept péchés capitaux highlighted the seductive powers of the seven deadly sins. Such ballets were, as mentioned, nominally about men resisting the wily lures of beautiful women, but they were in reality created as excuses for women to perform lascivious dances or pose in suggestive tableaux.

Spectacles and Parodies

One of the most important developments in the late 1890s and early 1900s was the staging of large-scale historical and mythological ballets. Until the breakdown of generic regulations imposed by the Napoleonic theatrical laws described in

Chapter 1, the Opéra was the only institution granted permission to stage the

“noble and graceful” ballets that featured the heroes, kings, and gods of history and mythology.438 After 1867, any venue could produce works that drew on these sources, and they produced them in large numbers. For the three mythological ballets staged by the Opéra at the turn of the century—Sylvia, Bacchus, and Les

Bacchantes—at least a dozen were produced in the music-halls. The Olympia, for instance, staged Olympia (1893) and l’Enlèvement de Psyché (1910), the Casino,

Vénus à Paris (1896), and the Folies-Bergère, Cythère (1900).439 Ballets

438 Wild, Dictionnaire des théâtres, 308, and Jacq-Mioche, “Le ballet à Paris,” 107-8. 439 Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 144. See also Desormes’s Mars et Vénus (Folies- Bergère, 1882) mentioned earlier in this chapter. There were additional mythological ballets staged in other Parisian and provincial music halls and theatres, including the Eden-Theatre. 262 depicting legendary historical figures were likewise frequently seen on the music- hall stage but no longer favoured by the Opéra.

Mythological and historical ballets presented in the music halls departed in important ways from those previously staged by the Opéra. The characters and situations were familiar, but they were treated either as sources for opulent spectacle without concern for accuracy and narrative detail, or they were parodies.

In Laplace-Claverie’s view, returning to an earlier conception of such subjects as they were presented at the Opéra would have been too archaic, too “démodé.”440 I believe they also would have been out of place in popular venues, whose audiences would likely not have appreciated any production that leaned too far towards the learned.441

The use of history as a colourful backdrop for romantic comedies or flirtations led to the creation around 1900 of a handful of what can only be described as spectacle ballets. These productions were sumptuous displays that brought together all of the popular narrative and visual elements commonly found in music-hall ballets, but on an especially grand scale. Six in particular stand out for their emphasis on pageantry, exhibitionism, and visual spectacle: Phryné

(Folies-Bergère, 1897), Sardanapale (Olympia, 1897), Néron (Olympia, 1898),

L’Enlèvement des Sabines (Folies-Bergère, 1898), Cléopâtre (Casino, 1900), and

Lorenza (Folies-Bergère, 1901). The popular elements of the two Folies-Bergère ballets, Phryné and Lorenza, will be discussed below in the section on striptease and nudity; Sardanapale was described in Chapter 5 in relation to the construction of ballets around a string of opulent tableaux.

440 Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 170. 441 Sari’s failed attempts at initiating symphonic concerts at the Folies-Bergère offered early proof of this. 263

Although ballets with historical themes were set in many different periods, certain eras and locales lent themselves to spectacle and were therefore used more frequently. As seen above, the French Regence and Directoire were popular settings for ballets about extra-marital flirtations; Ancient history was the source for some of the steamiest large-scale productions. Of the historical ballets for which I have recovered a significant documentary trail, Néron and Cléopâtre stand out as having been particularly grandiose. In keeping with music-hall traditions, both made reference to real people and events, but the librettists of

Néron and Cléopâtre were clearly more concerned with salacious spectacle and sexual fantasy than with historical accuracy.

In Néron, a thin narrative framework serves as the backdrop for a series of tableaux and action scenes, each more extravagant than the last. The ballet centres on the ill-fated love of Claudius and the young Christian woman Marcella.

Poppea, whose love for Claudius is unrequited, swears vengeance and has

Marcella arrested by Nero; Marcella is condemned to die along with her father and several other Christians. This gives rise to circus games, which include gladiator fights, voluptuous slave dances, and classical ballet variations. Claudius pleads with Nero for Marcella’s life to be spared, and he is challenged to a duel to win her hand. He wins, but Nero remains bent on Marcella’s murder. Claudius and

Marcella are briefly united, but Marcella is soon fatally wounded by Nero’s men.

The bloody scene escalates into complete chaos as the public, now agitating against their cruel leader, swarms the royal loge. Nero escapes, and in revenge against his wayward people, orders that Rome be set ablaze. Claudius searches for his beloved amidst the inferno and finds Marcella surrounded by other bodies;

264 she dies in his arms and he kills himself. As the curtain falls, Nero can be seen in the distance contemplating the destruction he has unleashed.

Cléopâtre (1900) was as indifferent to historical accuracy as Néron, but it leaned towards the salacious rather than the gruesome. The ballet, an account of the famous ruler’s seduction of Marc Anthony, is built around seduction scenes, orgies, military displays, and festive danced divertissements set in sumptuous

Egyptian decors. Almost all scenes allow for some form of seduction. The ballet opens with a tableau in Cleopatra’s palace in which all but one man, Tersidius, succumb to the charms of Cleopatra’s ladies in waiting. Cleopatra enters and orders festive dances, after which Marc Anthony falls in love with her. A second tableau depicts Cleopatra giving her ladies in waiting lessons in seduction so that they might tempt the stalwart Tersidius; they fail. Marc Anthony, drawn by the noise, returns and again falls prey to Cleopatra’s guiles. The third tableau is labelled “orgy.” Marc Anthony, at the mercy of Cleopatra, is treated to songs, dances, and drinks; the city, in the meantime, is besieged. War cries are heard in the distance and the orgy is interrupted. In a final tableau, Cleopatra and Marc

Anthony die, entwined, as the palace is swarmed.

Fragmentary information about two other historical spectacles, Sardanapale and L’Enlèvement des Sabines, suggests that these too were over-the-top displays held together by the thinnest of narrative threads. As mentioned in Chapter 5, reviews of Sardanapale confirm that the ballet captivated audiences with its orgy of semi-nude women posed against colourful stage sets that reproduced

Rochegrosse’s historical painting, and a surviving etching of a scene from

265

L’Enlèvement des Sabines implies that its most memorable attraction was a battle scene for warriors in travesty (see Figure 6.1).442

Figure 6.1. Drawing by E. Mesplès of L’Enlèvement des sabines reproduced in Le Théâtre Illustré, 1898.

Mythology, by constrast, was primarily used by music-hall authors as fodder for humorous parodies. Some played with incongruities of chronology and register for comic effect. Cythère, premiered at the Folies-Bergère in 1900, featured a group of students sporting costumes typical of the 1830s who try in vain to awaken the love of a young woman. She is unmoved and resists the pleas of her admirer. The students are then helped out by Eros, dressed as a Parisian

442 As Laplace-Claverie contends, “far from attempting a scrupulous reconstruction of precise historical events, these ‘historical ballets’ cultivated a sort of chronological exoticism, the sole ambition of which was to excite [enthousiasmer] the public by offering sumptuous living frescos.” Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 145. 266 dandy, who arrives in his new automobile to take them to his mother on the island of Cythera. Once on the island, Venus attempts to lure the young woman into her cult by presenting her and her friends with a divertissement of lascivious dances performed by well known couples: , Elsa and Lohengrin, Estelle and Némorin.443 Eros then lances the young woman with his arrow of love and she swears eternal devotion to her admirer.

The adoption by music halls of mythological topics was not entirely straightforward despite the frequently humorous bent of these ballets. Several ballets reveal a marked interest in actively demystifying established gods and heroes by giving them human desires and frailties.444 In the Casino’s 1896 ballet

Vénus à Paris, Venus and Mars sneak off from Olympus after overhearing Jupiter tell Junon of the wonders he witnessed during his last escapades on earth. When

Jupiter discovers that they are missing and sets off in search of the two wayward gods, he discovers them drinking, dancing, and having a whale of a time at a

Parisian ball. He eventually orders them back to Olympus, but not before himself being seduced by the pleasures of the dance hall and joining in for a round. Les

Grandes Courtisanes, staged three years later at the Folies-Bergère, presents a chaste Diana keen on learning the art of seduction. Tired of her perpetual chastity and dreaming of knowing true earthly love, the goddess descends to earth and mixes with mortals. After being reincarnated as various famous lovers and courtesans, she discovers the inanities of earthly love and returns to Olympus.445

443 P.L. Flers’s and Caillavet’s L’Heure du Berger, written for the 1900 Paris Exposition Palais de la Danse, also features Saturn calmly reading a newspaper in a bourgeois home setting. See Ibid., 170. 444 As Laplace-Claverie writes, these ballets relied on anachronisms and deconstructions of myths to humanize gods and heroes. Ibid., 175-77. 445 “La Soirée parisienne, Les Grandes courtisanes,” La Gazette anecdotique, 6 November 1899. 267

A handful of works were more pointed in their attempts to deflate heroic figures. Tentations (1893) and Les Deux tentations (1895), both staged at the

Casino, strip the ancient hermit Saint-Antoine of his saintly status by painting him as a weak, even ridiculous figure.446 In Tentations, the hermit falls asleep hungry and fantasizes about earthly temptations. Metamorphosed into a Parisian dandy, he is no longer, as the libretto reads, “dressed in his robe, but rather costumed, shaved, and curled, like the most coquettish of clubmen.”447 Various enchantresses attempt to seduce him, and he comes dangerously close to succumbing. Just as he believes himself to be lost forever, he awakens and finds that it was merely a nightmare. The second ballet again casts Saint-Antoine as the helpless victim of seductions, this time sent by to test his strength of character. When Saint-Antoine chases the disguised Mephisto away, the latter sends in a sow who successfully seduces Saint-Antoine’s pig. The result would surely have been a comic dance for the two pigs.

On the flip side, new deities were to be found amongst society’s newly venerated contemporary heroes, figures that were, in the words of Laplace-

Claverie, often absurd, helping to debunk former representations of the divine.448

Both of P.L. Flers’ librettos for the Folies-Bergère, Chez le couturier (1896) and

Sports (1897), for example, make fun of the hero worship bestowed upon sports figures and fashion designers by transforming them into new Parisian gods.449 In

Chez le couturier, crowds swarm the “temple” of fashion, which is the workshop

446 There were many works based on this myth, including Flaubert’s Les Tentations de Saint- Antoine from 1874. 447 Roger Milès and Egidio Rossi, Tentations, synopsis in F-Pn 8-RO-11468. “[…] portant sa robe de bure, mais costumé, rasé, frisé, comme le plus coquet des clubmen.” 448 Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 176. 449 P.F. Flers was the pseudonym of Pierre-Louis Puyol. 268 of the grand priest of elegance, the tailor Roucet.450 His clients are caricatures of

Parisian bourgeoises, named Mlle Snobinette and Mme de Ventre y Potante, and demi-mondaines, thinly disguised behind the pseudonyms Manette Guilbert and

Emilienne de Rançon; they adoringly await the tailor’s oracle.451 In Sports, a new bride rejects the advances of her husband on her wedding night, and though he invokes the help of Love and Cupid, they are powerless to help him regain her favour. The bride, named Moderne, has already given her heart to Sport. We are then transported to the kingdom of Sport, where Sport sits on his throne and watches benevolently over his devoted ladies. The husband likewise watches as a of women take part in various activities: polo, boxing, football, cycling, dance, and swimming. Music halls also presented a new version of the goddess of beauty, an allegory represented by courtesans and demi-mondaines in ballets such as Les Demoiselles du XXè siècle (1894), Merveilleuses et gigolettes (1894), or

Emilienne aux Quat’z’Arts. These works are rare examples of a more self- conscious, reflexive than one typically finds in ballets, one that poked fun at the viewers and their values by presenting them with fictionalised portraits of themselves.452

Alongside ballets that undermined mythological gods or that did away with them altogether were a handful of parodies that dethroned or desublimated historical heroes. The result was a weakening of the male figure, a shift of characterisation that exacerbated the already languishing image of the danseur in

450 Roucet was a pseudonym for Doucet, the house of fashion in which the famous designer Paul Poiret showed his creations. For a discussion of his connections with the ballet world, see Lynn Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 291. 451 Laplace-Claverie notes that ballet had always featured allegories and that Flers modernised this tendency by imagining two ridiculous (dérisoires) idols who reflected back on their admirers the image of their own vanity. Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 176. 452 Such works were not unusual when compared to dramatic theatrical productions in boulevard and other popular theatres, but it was rare for ballets to have a critical edge. 269 late nineteenth-century ballet. Prince charming was the first to be deflated: once a heroic figure, he was now almost always played by a woman in travesty.453

Another approach was to subvert traditional expectations of masculinity for the few principal male roles that were performed by men, or to shift the focus of the ballet from its historically important heroes to their wives. Don Juan aux Enfers, which I have touched upon several times, provides a comical inversion of the well known tale of Don Juan. When Don Juan appears in the underworld, he immediately begins to flirt with Mme. Satan. Mr. Satan has little patience for this and gives orders for the heart-breaker to suffer the fate he has inflicted on his thousand and three victims: he is given a heart and is left in the charge of the powerful Mme. Satan, who takes on the role of torturer usually reserved for her husband. Don Juan is then brought to his knees by a parade of seductresses, many of whom he had formerly seduced, including Donna Anna, Donna Elvira, and

Zerlina. Interestingly, this was the only major pantomime-ballet to have been written by a woman.454

Historical and political figures were favourite subjects for parodies, and a handful of ballets from the years around 1900 make fun of known personalities in order to upset the established order. Nearly all of these were set during the

Napoleonic era, and Napoleon himself was frequently the central figure. Madame

Malbrouck, Madame Bonaparte, and Le Voyage de Madame la Présidente all present images of strong women and ineffectual male partners. Madame

453 Although Armand Silvestre’s La Fée du rocher seems never to have been staged, it provides a good example of a ballet in which a fairy is deflated and given human characteristics. The work begins with a throw-back to romantic ballet with peasant dances and scenes followed by a transformation into a fairyland as the male protagonist, the fiancé, dreams of being seduced by a fairy (several traits lend it a -like feel). But the fairy of this fairytale has bourgeois mores, lives in a bourgeois home, and has bourgeois aspirations of marriage and motherhood. See Laplace-Claverie’s discussion of deflated heroes and androgyny in late nineteenth-century ballets at the Opéra in Écrire pour la danse, 179-82. 454 I have not found any information about Mme Mary Léopold-Lacour. 270

Bonaparte, for example, opens with a party scene in which the Emperor’s wife is seen happily cavorting with friends while her husband is off at battle. When he returns, she dupes him into believing that they were celebrating his victory and he is appeased. Napoleon then joins the party and is seen dallying with the ballerina.

Madame Malbrouck, as shown above, features an adulterous wife whose husband is powerless to regain her favour.

Although outside the chronological bounderies of the present study, the

Casino’s Le Voyage de Madame la Présidente is a particularly good example of role reversals resulting in the subversion of a masculine power structure. In this

1906 ballet, Madame la Présidente, rather than her husband, is the powerful, policy-making head of state; Mr. President is nothing more than a domestic partner who has no influence in either household or foreign affairs. When he is refused permission to travel with Madame la Présidente on a foreign diplomatic tour, he dresses up as a female English journalist so that he may keep an eye on his wife. Laplace-Claverie points out that the irony of this role reversal is doubly marked: whereas the male lead in music-hall ballets would normally have been played by a woman in travesty, Madame la Présidente’s husband is played by a man. Yet this token role for a leading man requires him to be dressed in travesty as a woman. Not only does Madame la Présidente “wear the trousers,” her husband must literally wear a skirt.455 Laplace-Claverie remarks that the gender inversions of this ballet were all the more powerful and more threatening to the established order for the ballet’s taking place in a realistic setting rather than in women’s traditional realm of the mythical or the fairy-tale, distanced from reality.

455 Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 184. Irony and parody were staples of early modern theatre, literature, and art, but they are, as Laplace-Claverie writes, surprising in the context of ballet due to the place historically given to myth, fairytale, and the fantastical. 271

However, since the ballet degenerates into slapstick for the final scenes, I believe that any message about gender roles it might initially have conveyed is quickly undermined; by the end of the ballet, it is all but entirely eliminated. A studio photograph reproduced in the press implies that Madame la Présidente even performed an eccentric dance at some point—presumably amidst the wild revelries of the ballet’s final scenes (Figure 6.2).

In general, despite the presence of parodies on the music-hall stage, such ballets were in the minority and were, aside from their striking depictions of strong women and feminised men, far less politicised or critical than most contemporary theatrical or literary parodies. Despite their occasionally marked ironic edge, they were still light comic works with built-in excuses for sumptuous sets and costumes, humorous , and scenes of flirtation and seduction.

There was also a limit to the extent to which music-hall ballets transgressed traditional gender boundaries. Although a few librettos derived their from role reversals, and although most central male characters were performed by women, these were almost invariably characters who would have little real influence on societal views of gender roles. With the exception of Madame la

Présidente, characters who would in real life have wielded power were consistently performed by men. Political and historical figures such as Napoleon or Nero were, for instance, never performed in travesty but rather by male mimes—a marked deviation from music-halls’ usual casting practices. In Une

Répétition aux Folies-Bergère (1890), a behind-the-scenes ballet about a rehearsal at the music hall, Madame Mariquita (or the director—there is no way of knowing who was responsible for casting) faithfully recreated a typical theatre hierarchy: the Italian-trained ballerina Enrichetta Comolli played the ballerina and was

272

Figure 6.2. Angèle Héraud in Le Voyage de Madame la Présidente, clipping in F- Pn 8-RO-11195 partnered by Angelina Correnti in travesty, and the ballet master and stage director were played by men. Even secondary characters playing persons of authority such as fathers were normally performed by men.

273

In sum, a study of music-hall ballet subjects reveals a broad range of productions: traditional love stories and fairytales were staged alongside titillating historical divertissements, slapstick comedies, fashionable displays of everyday life, salacious historical spectacles, and mythological parodies. Peasants, nobility, officers, and fairies mingled with pierrots, harlequins, and columbines, and comic interpretations of past historical and mythological heroes turned up alongside contemporary figures such as sportsmen, demi-mondaines, and a markedly urbane, usually Parisian, bourgeoisie. The result was an eclectic mix of ballets that combined the familiar with the novel, the classical with the contemporary, the nostalgic and the fashionable—a combination once again calculated to win the devotion of a broad public.

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THE POPULAR SURFACE

No matter how intricate or imaginative a ballet’s plot was or how much space critics devoted to the story in reviews, the raison d’être of music-hall ballet was spectacle. Glamour and pageantry were what attracted large audiences and encouraged repeat visits, and glamour and pageantry were therefore what insured the financial success of a given production. Advertisement posters and short notices in the daily press announcing the imminent premiere of a new ballet were sure to include a reference to a favourite star dancer, travesty performer, or courtesan, to the scale of the production or number of people involved, to a new mechanical gimmick, to a given designer’s costumes and sets, or to the ladies of the ballet corps who would be showing off their lovely legs. Programmes listed all of these in bold letters and recorded any unusual feature or mechanical stage effect, and reviews of on-going productions sold ballets with descriptions of sumptuous costumes, lavish decor, special effects, sensational tableaux, and promises of mesmerising mime and dance artists.

Scenic Splendour

Music-hall ballets were the perfect vehicle for spectacular mises-en-scene and glittering costumes. With their episodic structures and successions of contrasting scenes and dances, ballets afforded opportunities for multiple stage sets and frequent changes of costume. When devising their librettos, authors made the most of this aspect of the genre, choosing eras and locations that would lend themselves to as many different kinds of costumes and backdrops as possible. To this end, many ballets featured at least two contrasting locations: a first act or tableau might take place in an idyllic forest clearing or in gardens and a second

275 inside a palace or lavishly decorated stately home (Le Château de Mac-Arrott,

Dans l’inconnu, Le Roi s’ennuie, Miroir, Merveilleuses et gigolettes, Les

Amoureux de Venise). Other ballets featured a combination of either rural and urban, or fantastical and urban settings (Un Déjeuner sur l’herbe, Les Perles, Les

Mimes d’or, Olympia, Vénus à Paris, Paris-cascade). Fantastical locations were also often juxtaposed with the sites of glitzy urban contemporary popular culture such as pleasure grounds and dance halls (Olympia, Vénus à Paris, Sports, Les

Grandes courtisanes).

The easiest way to devise excuses for endless shimmering fantasy was to set a ballet in an exotic locale. Librettists, as I described in the first section of this chapter, set their amorous intrigues in any number of eras and countries, usually for the sole purpose of giving rise to colourful sets and costumes. Poor young men fell in love with wealthy young women and were united after overcoming the objections of the young woman’s father in Scotland, Brittany, Japan, Spain,

Belgium, Holland, and India (see Appendix B for titles of specific ballets).

Lovers were likewise united in Ancient Greece, during the Roman Empire, in the

Middle Ages and Renaissance, in the eighteenth century, and during the

Napoleonic era. Several more found true love in fantastical or mythical eras— times when one was sure to find an abundance of pastoral arcadias—and youth flirted or cavorted about by the sea in England and Italy, in French port towns, and along the Danube river.

The halls, as I have shown, staged several historical ballets that made reference to real events, places, or people, but history also frequently served as the backdrop for nostalgic depictions of bygone eras without reference to actual historical events or without narrative connections to the period represented by the

276 sets and costumes. Versailles and the Château de Marly, for instance, were used as settings for several ballets about flirtations, including Les Baigneuses de

Trianon (Olympia, 1895), Watteau (Olympia, 1900), and Trianon Ballet

(Olympia, 1908). Versailles also served as the backdrop for La Camargo (Casino,

1901), a ballet about the famous ballerina of that name.456 Le Miroir (Folies-

Bergère, 1892), a romantic tale about a shepherdess and her itinerant musician lover, was arbitrarily set during the reign of Louis XV without any reference to historical events or people; Cadet-Roussel (Casino, 1900), the ballet about a young soldier who spurns his beautiful female admirers to serve his country, was set in the era of Louis XVI.457

Despite their partiality to fantasy and escapism, audiences were in part drawn to these historical ballets for their realistic costumes and scenery. Even when sets were incidental to a ballet’s storyline, scenery and costumes were expected to be authentic period reproductions and were appreciated as an art form unto themselves. Le Miroir, for instance, received considerable praise for its historically accurate costumes and sets, but no mention was made of their incongruity in relation to the plot. Cadet-Roussel was similarly admired for its carefully crafted reconstructions of Louis XVI sets and supposedly authentic period military costumes for their own sake (see Figure 6.3).458 As hundreds of

456 Trianon-ballet was staged at the Olympia in 1908. The ballet featured shepherds and shepherdesses in eighteenth-century costumes dancing and flirting in the Trianon park at Versailles. A wealthy young lady falls in love with a shepherd, spurning the attentions of an elderly but wealthy admirer. The elder gentleman finds an appropriate mate and the young lovers are united. All ends well with a double wedding. 457 The craze for “authentic” decor remained in vogue throughout the history of the genre. In 1911, the Olympia borrowed the designer for the Ballet Russes to create costumes for its latest exotic ballet, Nikitoris, set in Ancient Egypt. MM. Demoget and Mouveau apparently carried out research at the Louvre, British Museum, and Munich Pinacothèque to produce accurate replicas of costumes, jewellery, and accessories. “Spectacles & Concerts—À l’Olympia,” Le Figaro, 7 February 1911. 458 Clipping in F-Pn 8-RO-11125. One critic remarked: “Aussi, est-ce toujours avec joie que l’on voit sur la scène passer et repasser les brillants uniformes d’autrefois, les chasseurs, les hussards 277

Figure 6.3. Angèle Héraud in Cadet-Roussel, Casino de Paris programme F-Po PRO. B. 62 reviews confirm, costumes and sets were considered to be a fundamental component of a music-hall ballet. The halls spared no expense when mounting productions and invested in opulent costumes and decor crafted by the best

Parisian artisans. Designers and manufacturers such as Amable and Gardy,

aux aiguillettes d’or, aux dolmans chamarrés. Lorsque ces soldats sont représentés par des jolies femmes, le plaisir est double.” Unattributed clipping in F-Pa GD-27129. 278

Jambon, Ménessier, Landolff, and Choubrac received as much praise in the press as did authors or performing artist, and their creations were frequently described at length. All worked simultaneously for the foremost theatres of Paris, including the Opéra and Opéra-Comique, Porte-Saint-Martin and Gaîté, Odéon, and Théâtre

Libre.459

A few ballets turned the use of clichéd backdrops into a veritable art form.

Les Amoureux de Venise (Casino, 1896), set in Renaissance Venice for optimal pictorial charm, was one such ballet. The ballet’s decor, which according to one critic was inspired by Canaletto’s paintings, featured a real bridge with gondolas coming and going in a canal beneath it, a beautiful palazzo with an ornate balcony, and a greenhouse overlooking a canal.460 While Ernest Grenet-

Dancourt’s scenario was described by critics as charming, lovely, and engaging,

Henri José’s score praised for being one of his best, and Rossi’s choreography imaginative and poetic, all of their contributions were overshadowed by the ballet’s extraordinary staging. The decor, produced by Butel and Valton, and the costumes, designed by Choubrac and made by the house of Millet, were the true stars of the show.461 At a time when it was common for critics to provide a summary of a ballet’s storyline and give a cursory overview of the work’s highlights, reviews of Les Amoureux de Venise provided only an outline of the plot, but devoted several paragraphs to describing the ballet’s decor. Two in

459 The artisans involved with music-hall ballet were among the most famous craftsmen then working in Paris. Amable and Gardy were prolific creators of decor, as were Jambon, Ménessier, and Lemeunier. Illustrious costume designers included Choubrac, Japhet, and Chéret, whose costumes were produced by Baron and Landolff. By far the most famous costume designer, who produced most of the Folies-Bergère’s costumes through the 1890s, was Landolff, who worked as a team with his wife. Landolff was so highly skilled and sought-after that when M. Marchand offered Cléo de Mérode the starring role in Lorenza, one of his incentives was that she order her own costumes to be made by Landolff, who had created several marvellous costumes for her in the past. Mérode, Le Ballet de ma vie, 238. 460 Strapontin, “Au Casino de Paris,” Gil Blas, 24 December 1896. 461 “Casino de Paris et Nouveau Théâtre,” programme in F-Pn 8-RO-10894. 279 particular give a sense of the work’s opulence and capture the tone of the production as a whole.

Never has the mise-en-scène been more dazzling, never have Millet and Choubrac done better. Let us judge from this brief overview. In the first tableau, a Venetian square and palazzo complete with a real balcony; and behind it, a giant bridge beneath which gondolas—real gondolas [...]—cross paths. Against this exquisite setting: a continuous parade of people in gilded costumes—not to mention mandolinists of absolutely local colour. In the second tableau—a luxurious interior—we applauded the Pas du voile, one of the score’s pearls, danced by Mme Eurieu (sic) with this top-notch artist’s perfect artistry and customary charm. To crown the whole, the third tableau: a veritable apotheosis of gold, silk, and satin, with the arrival of a fairytale-like gondola covered in flowers lit by electric lights.462

The final act is a veritable apotheosis in which, amidst the dazzle of velour and silk and the sparkle of gems, twirl a graceful bevy of young women with provocative torsos and fetching legs. The gondola into which alight the young married couple before the curtain falls has a most beautiful effect: entirely bejeweled, it suddenly emitted multicoloured irradiations.463

462 Un Monsieur du Balcon, “Au Casino de Paris,” Le Figaro, 24 December 1896. “Jamais la mise en scène ne fut plus éclatante, jamais Millet et Choubrac réunis n’ont fait mieux! Qu’on en juge par ce aperçu rapide ! Au premier tableau, une place à Venise, avec palais au balcons praticables, et dans le fond un pont gigantesque, sous lequel passent et repassent des gondoles, de vraies gondoles, s’il vous plaît, qui feraient bonne figure devant le quai des Esclavons; et, dans ce cadre exquis, un mouvement ininterrompu de personnages dorés su toutes les coutures, sans omettre une théorie de mandolinistes tout à fait de couleur locale. Au second tableau—un intérieur luxueux—il nous a été donné d’applaudir le Pas du voile, une des perles de la partition, dansé par Mme Enrieu, avec l’art parfait et le charme habituel de cette artiste di primo cartello. Et, pour couronner le tout, le troisième tableau, véritable apothéose d’or, de soie et de satin, avec l’arrivée d’une gondole garnie de fleurs éclairées à la lumière électrique d’un aspect féerique.” See also Adrien Vély, “Courrier des spectacle—La Soirée, Les Amoureux de Venise,” Le Gaulois, 24 December 1896. Vély remarks that the decor was extraordinary given the restricted dimensions of the Casino stage. Like the reviews quoted above, Vély notes the canal and real bridge with gondolas passing underneath, the vast greenhouse as the backdrop to the couple’s union, and the magical night scene lit with coloured lights while the gondola was brought up to the greenhouse to collect the newlyweds. 463 Strapontin, “Au Casino de Paris,” Gil Blas, 24 December 1896. “A l’acte final, c’est un véritable apothéose, ou parmi l’éblouissement du velours, le miroitement de soie et l’étincellement des pierreries tourbillonne un gracieux essaim de jeunes femmes aux torses provocants et aux jambes affriolantes. La gondole, dans laquelle s’embarquent les deux jeunes époux, avant la chute du rideau, est du plus bel effet: elle est toute constellée de gemmes, qui s’embrasent soudain et produisent une irradiation multicolore. Cela frise le grandiose.” 280

Although I have found very few drawings or photographs of music-hall ballet sets or decors, I have recovered several images of dancers in costumes.

Some are drawings and may have had little connection to actual costumes worn on stage (Figures 6.4 to 6.6), but the handful of extant photographs available in Paris archives and theatre journals attest to the extravagance so often celebrated in the press. Due to reproduction restrictions imposed by the Bibliothèque nationale de

France, most visual material cannot be included here, but a photograph of one of the more spectacular costumes that I have come across was also published in Le

Théâtre in 1901. The photograph is of Caroline Otéro in the gown she wore as the

Imperial ruler in the Olympia’s L’Impératrice. The dress, made by Gerbault, was sensational: a marvel of silk, satin, sequins, beading, and embroidery that would have elicited the admiration of spectators and critics in any theatre (Figure 6.7).

According to Eugen Weber, a ball gown for Otéro around this time cost 900 to

1600 francs (which was well within her exorbitant salary);464 one wonders how much was spent on music-hall ballet costumes.

Otéro’s costume might have been more ornately adorned than most, but photographs of costumes likely worn for the Folies-Bergère ballet Madame

Bonaparte a year earlier suggest that ostentation was the norm. The collection of photographs was taken in 1900-1901 by Edgar de St. Senoch and bound in a leather album embossed with the ballet’s title and a dedication to Mme Mariquita

(there is a second dedication to Mme Mariquita signed by St. Senoch’s on the flyleaf).465 Inside are fifteen photographs of dancers and mimes posed standing or

464 Eugen Weber, France, Fin de Siècle (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), 97. According to Muriand, Otéro made an exorbitant 35 000 francs per month in the years before WWI. Muriand, Les Folies-Bergère, 47. 465 F-Pn (Photo-estampes) “Madame Bonaparte, ballet 1900-1901.” 281

Figure 6.4. Drawings of costumes for Néron, Le Théâtre illustré 7, no.32

282

Figure 6.5. Drawings of costumes for Barbe-Bleue, Le Théâtre illustré 7, no.29

283

Figure 6.6. Drawings of costumes for Sardanapale, Le Théâtre illustré 6 no. 21

284

Figure 6.7. Photograph by Reutlinger of Caroline Otéro in L’Impératrice, 1901, Le Théâtre, July 1901

285 sitting in full costume. A couple are of ballerinas in traditional knee-length gauze tutus, two more are of officers in their travesty costumes of tights and fitted jackets, and the rest are of women in a variety of luxurious gowns. All of the gowns are magnificent, made of rich cloths and ornamented with a quantity of embroidery and beading that one would only expect to see at established mainstream theatres such as the Opéra or Opéra-Comique.

Fantasy and Magic

Relatively few ballets were structured around novel stage effects. Stages were smaller than those of the state theatres, the Eden-theatre, or boulevard spectacle theatres such as the Châtelet, and since few music-hall acts besides ballets were likely to make use of stage equipment appropriate for theatrical effects, the halls may not have wanted to invest in the latest stage technologies. The few descriptions of special effects in the press are therefore largely restricted to the use of electric lighting. Coloured lights added to the magic of the fairytale apotheosis in Les Amoureux de Venise and gave the bejewelled cave scenes in Le Rêve d’Elias their fantastical quality. Similarly, during the Siberian winter scene of

Vassilissa’s second tableau, giant ice blocks are lit up by coloured light projections. The effect was attractive enough to elicit praise from critics, but these light projections were integrated into the ballet for no apparent reason: they were purely for spectacle.466

Lighting effects might also have been integrated into Vassilissa to make use of expensive machinery already owned by the Casino and Nouveau-Théâtre.

Two works presented on a Nouveau-Théâtre programme two years earlier had

466 Henry Fouquier, “Les Théâtres,” Le Figaro, 4 January 1893. 286 been designed to allow for the use of light machines previously purchased at Loïe

Fuller’s request for a series of dance performances. The central ballet in Le

Bouton d’or (1893) played with effects of lighting so that dancers appeared to materialize and vanish as if by magic in a whirl of changing coloured lights. La

Prétentaine, a vaudeville-operetta in four acts by and Raoul Bénédite with music by Léon Vasseur created the same year, likewise served as an excuse to present a ballet illuminated with different coloured lights in a random series.467

Every once in a while special effects did play a central role in a music-hall ballet. Although romantic intrigue, exotic costumes and decor, scantily-clad water nymphs, and a striptease were among the attractions of the Folies-Bergère’s 1893 ballet Fleur de Lotus, stagecraft was at least as important. According to the press, the most memorable scenes in Fleur de Lotus were a storm, with realistic effects of thunder and lightning and genuine rain that fell into a hidden trough at the front of the stage, and an apotheosis finale that featured a sparkling fairy-like “crystal curtain”—a giant sheet made up of thousands of fragments of glass held together with tiny metal wires that caught and refracted the stage lights.468

467 R. de Fréchencourt, “Courrier des théâtres,” La Gazette de France, 12 October 1893. Critics note that the theatre’s directors commissioned librettos both for Bouton d’Or and La Prétentaine that would allow for these lighting gimmicks. Bulle d’amour, written by and Francis Thomé for the Folies Marigny in 1898, was also commissioned to present a new gimmick: a bubble machine imported from England. The scenario, virtually devoid of narrative interest, centred on the powers of a bubble-making pipe to foretell which pairs of lovers would have long and happy unions. Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse, 132. Directors sometimes tried to incorporate other incongruous attractions. A critic writing for L’Entr’acte in 1886 commented on the ridiculous intrusion of a dwarf that the director no doubt wanted to use at all costs. Clipping about Ganne’s Volapük in F-Pn 8-RO-10863. 468 The effect of rain and the use of the crystal curtain were likely imports from English music halls. Such a curtain had already been used twice with great success by London’s Alhambra, once in 1866 [see Guest, Ballet in Leicester Square, 17, note 10], and again in 1892 for Alladin. Thanks to Jane Pritchard for alerting me to both productions. For the latter, the glass was described as a “delicate curtain of ‘crystal lacework’ made out of 75 000 glass facets that were held together by twenty-four miles of wire and illuminated by lights of many different colours, the whole contraption weighing one and a half tons.” Era, 24 December 1892. 287

Reviews of Fleur de Lotus were overwhelmingly enthusiastic, but even the one that was not—a review by E. Duret for La Presse that derides the plot for being thin and the spectacle garish—praised some aspects of the ballet’s staging and recognized that the public was likely to appreciate the very attributes that grated on him. Since his review sums up many of the production’s spectacular elements, it is worth including a substantial portion of it:

... But all ends well: Goutte de Rosée finds her own prince charming and the crystal curtain, shining with the most scintillating effect in a representation of a shower of diamonds, falls as the two couples tenderly embrace. One sees that the author did not invest much in terms of imagination but the mise en scene was sumptuous. […] The decor of the second act, with its gigantic chrysanthemums, its range of scintillating tones, its sky from which falls a golden dust, were ravishing. As for the natural rain showers of the first tableau, it went a little too far in its quest for realism in a pantomime ballet that dealt essentially with world..469

Staging that included gimmicks such as real rain and crystal curtains might have been expensive, but the Folies-Bergère’s director was doubtless astutely aware of the attraction that over-the-top spectacle had for his music-hall public.

Since this was no doubt what brought audiences back to see these ballets repeatedly, his costs could be amortized and recouped over the long run.470 In all,

469 E.D.[E. Duret], “Courrier des Théâtres,” La Presse, 27 March 1893. “Mais tout s’arrange, Goutte de Rosée trouve, elle aussi, son prince charmant, et un rideau de cristal scintillant du plus jolie effet représentant une pluie de diamants, tombe sur les deux couples tendrement enlacés. On voit que l’auteur ne s’est pas mis en grands frais d’imagination, mais la mise en scène est somptueuse. […] Le décor du deuxième acte avec ses gigantesques chrysanthèmes, ses gammes de tons chatoyants, ce ciel d’où tombe une poussière d’or nous a absolument ravis. Quant à l’averse naturelle du premier tableau, c’est pousser un peu loin le souci de la vérité dans un ballet- pantomime qui tient essentiellement du rêve. La tant jolie Micheline et Mlle Fugère, la première danseuse, la gracieuse Mlle Campana et tout le corps de ballet s’acquittent fort bien de leur tache. Cependant la chute du rideau a été accueillie avec un enthousiasme relatif.” A few press reviews suggest that opening nights may have had a more select audience in pre-paid loges than typically attended on any given night when all had to buy tickets at the door. 470 Fleur de Lotus, for example, had a relatively short initial run towards the end of the 1892-93 season and had only mediocre box-office returns: 3771.50 francs per night in March dwindling to nightly averages of 1500 in May. But the ballet was deemed popular enough to warrant restaging 288 the ballet received one hundred and eighty performances, including matinées, in just over a year, and the audience does seem to have appreciated the extravagant display. Le Figaro’s critic Un Monsieur du Balcon described the ballet as having been staged with great luxury and declared that the author, composer, and stage director alike were received with great acclaim;471 a notice that appeared in La

Presse the week following the ballet’s premiere mentioned that Fleur de Lotus continued each night to attract crowds as large as they were elegant;472 and an announcement of the Folies-Bergère’s summer closing in Le Temps stated that the audience gave repeated ovations for the evening’s programme and was particularly enthusiastic about Fleur de Lotus.473

Choreographing Contemporary Spectacles

The choreographic components of a music-hall ballet were at least as much about spectacle as were a production’s sets and costumes. As I have shown in Chapters

5 and 6, most forms of choreographic spectacle were extensions of earlier practices: crowd scenes, posed and choreographed tableaux for large ensembles, and cortèges or processions were staples of both traditional and popular ballet, as

the following year, when it played to a full hall for three months (24 February to 30 May 1894) with average earnings of 3600 francs/night.470 F-Psc “Registres-recensement, Folies-Bergère 1886-1917.” The Folies-Bergère was one of Paris’s top-earning venues. The only theatres to take in higher earnings were the Opéra, Opéra-Comique, Théâtre français, Porte-Saint-Martin, and Châtelet. The Folies-Bergère made 1 313 302 francs in its 1889-1890 season. “Théâtres et concerts,” Le Journal des débats, 25 July 1890. The Folies-Bergère’s receipts averaged 3500 francs/night in the early 1890s and up to 4500/night by the end of the decade. F-Psc “Registres- recensement, Folies-Bergère 1886-1917.” 471 Un Monsieur du Balcon, “Courrier des théâtres,” Le Figaro, 26 March 1893. Les Annales du Théâtre et de la musique lists Le Figaro’s Un Monsieur de l’Orchestre in 1893 as Emile Blavet but does not provide a name for Un Monsieur du Balcon. The column “Courrier des Théâtres” was usually written by Georges Boyer. 472 Calshas, “Courrier des théâtres,” La Presse, 12 April 1893. “La Loïe Fuller et Fleur de Lotus continuent d’attirer chaque soir, aux Folies-Bergère, une foule aussi nombreuse qu’élégante.” One from the night following the premiere notes that it was an unprecedented success. “Petites Nouvelles,” Le Figaro, 26 March 1893. 473 “Théâtres,” Le Temps, 8 May 1893. 289 were dances for the entire ballet corps and posed formations for the corps behind solo ballerinas. Such scenes and dances became so central to music-hall ballet that in some works they all but eclipsed traditional pantomime-ballet’s occasional contemplative interludes of conversational mime and more sober dances for the ballerina or for groups of soloists. The grandiose productions from around 1900, including the historical ballets Sardanapale, Néron, and Cléopâtre discussed earlier, were clearly more concerned with spectacle than classical dance.

This trend in music-hall ballet towards a focus on display is one of the central ways in which popular ballet can be distinguished from its more academically-oriented state-theatre counterparts. Another, and arguably more important difference between music-hall and state-theatre ballets was in the types of spectacle on offer. In the 1890s, popular ballet began increasingly to exhibit direct ties to new forms of contemporary popular culture. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, librettists and choreographers occasionally drew inspiration from new types of popular spectacle, including sporting events and fashion shows. Ballets such as Paris-Turf and Sports dealt directly with a burgeoning craze for competitive athleticism, and Sans-Puits-House and Les Demoiselles du XXe siècle included scenes for women performing gymnastics exercises to show off their assets.474 Even more prevalent were ballets that mimicked the aesthetic and customs of contemporary carnival balls, dance-hall entertainments, and popular music-hall diversions. Many music-hall ballets from the 1890s and early 1900s were, in other words, stylised representations of spectacles routinely encountered in everyday cultural events.

474 One of the most striking changes in newspaper reporting of cultural events in the 1890s is the increased number of columns devoted to sporting events. They became so popular in the late 1890s that dailies, including the great promoter of music-hall ballet, Le Figaro, began granting more space to sports than to reviews of ballets. 290

In the 1890s alone, the halls produced at least ten ballets that included a scene or dance that made reference to music-hall or dance-hall entertainments.

Les Chansons and Les Folies parisiennes, for instance, showcased past and contemporary popular songs and popular singers personified by dancers and choreographed into revue-style ballets. Les Folies parisiennes also featured a final number for the famous Moulin-Rouge “naturalist quadrille” dancer La

Goulue, who either danced the eccentric number herself or was imitated by a member of the Folies-Bergère’s troupe. Eccentric dances were also integrated into Une Répétition aux Folies-Bergère, Bouton d’or, Vénus à Paris, Le Voyage de Madame la Présidente, and likely into Brighton and Sans-Puits-House.

In virtually all of these ballets, the incorporation of eccentric dances was, in terms of drama and narrative, at least somewhat incongruous and was likely done only to appeal to the more prurient segment of the audience. In Une

Répétition aux Folies-Bergère, for example, the ballet master tries but fails to teach a company member how to perform an eccentric dance. The scene reads like an aside to the main plot, but it was probably a popular number since it would no doubt have been funny to see a ballet master perform the movements of an eccentric dance and to see a dancer flail about in a grotesque version of an already frenzied dance.

Performances of the cahut or of eccentric dances in Bouton d’or, Vénus à

Paris, or Le Voyage de Madame la Présidente would likewise have appealed to audiences because of their incongruity. In Vénus à Paris, such dances were performed by gods, in Bouton d’or, by a classical ballerina, and in Le Voyage de

Madame la Présidente, by the lady president herself (see Figure 6.2). Other examples of eccentric dances in ballets were more straightforward reflections of

291 contemporary diversions. In Sans-Puits-House, students exuberantly perform

“dances representing the joys of modern music halls” simply for the fun of it, as members of the audience would in a Parisian dance hall.475

Music halls and dance halls could also be used as a self-reflexive backdrop for a single scene or for an entire ballet. The behind-the-scenes ballet Une

Répétition aux Folies-Bergère ended with a ballet divertissement performed on a music-hall stage that mirrored the music-hall stage on which the work was presented—i.e., the ballet included a divertissement danced on a set that was a replica of the Folies-Bergère stage. Brighton ended with an evening ball at the local Casino, and Olympia ended with a fairyland tableau that represented the new fairytale-like Parisian music hall in which it was performed, the Olympia.

Popular balls were likewise a source of inspiration for music-hall librettists. For example, although ballets about eighteenth- and nineteenth-century balls remained a staple of music-hall ballet into the early twentieth century, the halls also staged ballets that reflected Parisians’ love of contemporary popular balls. An Opéra ball was featured in the Die Fledermaus-like Paris-cascade, where it served as the backdrop to flirtations and revelries that were likely accurate representations of what went on at these events.476 Similarly, the Parisian students’ Bal des Quat’z’Arts of 1893 was the model for the Folies-Bergère ballet

Emilienne aux Quat’z’Arts, which centred on preparations for a popular ball and then the ball itself.

Emilienne aux Quat’z’Arts is particularly striking for its being a direct reflection of contemporary events. In 1893, the highly publicized second annual

475 Jacques Lemaire, “Sans-Puits-House,” Casino programme in F-Pn 8-RO-10954. 476 Reports in newspapers and notices about complaints of rowdiness in various Parisian balls in the early 1890s confirm that the Opéra balls were far from being restrained, elegant affairs. 292 ball for students of painting, sculpture, architecture, and engraving—the Bal des

Quat’z’Arts—became infamous when the chosen beauty queen of the ball, an artist’s model called Sarah Brown (Marie Rayer), displayed her nude body before everyone present.477 Brown, dressed as Cleopatra, was first brought into the ballroom lounging on a platform carried by four men as part of the cortège.478

Later that evening, she performed an antecedent to the striptease: standing on her pedestal, she slowly divested herself until she stood virtually nude.479 Following the event, the state filed a legal suit against the students at the behest of the recently formed Société générale de protestation contre la licence des rues, a self- appointed committee of moralists led by the “Père de la Pudeur,” senator René

Béranger.”480 The moralists took the students to task for lack of prudery, but since the women on display at the ball were professional artists’ models, and since the supposedly “nude” models were actually wearing light coverings, the students were fined a nominal fee.481

The trial, which resulted in several protests over the need for artistic freedom, was sensational and quickly became a cause célèbre. In an attempt to attract large audiences, many impresarios capitalized on the notoriety of the Bal des Quat’z’arts by staging events and productions that included nude models and references to the ball. The editor of the salacious journal Le Fin de siècle,

François Mainguy, for instance, organised a mock Bal fin de siècle a few months later in which the model hired to represent Beauty and the nymph who danced

477 This second ball was organised by Jules Rocques, the editor of Le Courrier français, and held at the Moulin-Rouge. See Lela Felter-Kerley, “The Art of Posing Nude: Models, Moralists, and the Bal des Quat’z-Arts,” French Historical Studies 33, no. 1 (Winter 2010): 69-97. 478 For a discussion of Brown’s of bourgeois femininity as a working-class Jewish model portraying the notorious femme fatale, see Ibid., 80-81. 479 See articles about the Bal des Quat’z’arts in Le Courrier français, 5 February 1893 and 12 February 1893. See also Weber, France, Fin de Siècle, 10. 480 Lela Felter-Kerley, “The Art of Posing Nude,” 82. 481 Ibid., 81, 86-87. 293 around her did so wearing next to nothing (Figure 6.8).482 According to Eugen

Weber, both of the women were arrested for indecency and sentenced to several days in jail.483 The Folies-Bergère, not to be outdone, staged the ballet Émilienne aux Quat’z’arts in December of 1893. The ballet’s first tableau features the crowning of the famous actress and courtesan Emilienne d’Alençon who is chosen to be the beauty queen of a ball. In the second tableau, she is carried into the ballroom as part of the ball’s cortège and is then displayed nude (with translucent draperies) on a pedestal. After being reprimanded by a city official named Mr.

Prudery, she is decorated with strategically-placed flowers by fairy-ballerinas who dance around her.484

Émilienne aux Quat’z’arts was unusually explicit, but it was not radically different in concept from other music-hall ballets of the period. Rather, it was an extreme example of a trend common throughout the 1890s. Ballets that featured contemporary music-hall or dance-hall scenes offered a feeling of intimacy or insider knowledge through their direct reflection of familiar revelries and debaucheries. Similarly, authors of music-hall ballets often resorted to making reference to contemporary events or to casting famous courtesans in lead roles in an attempt to enhance the provocative aspects of their shows.485 Deflating the

482 “Le Bal du ‘Fin de Siecle’,” Le Fin de siècle, 15 February 1893; “Notre redoute,” Le Fin de siècle, 25 February 1893; “Notre redoute,” Le Fin de siècle, 4 March 1893; “Notre bal,” Le Fin de siècle, 1 February 1894; “Après le bal,” Le Fin de siècle, 8 February 1894. 483 Weber, France, Fin de Siècle, 10. 484 According to one review, after Mr. Prudery left the ballroom, Emilienne let the leaves fall once more. The same review claimed that the striptease was more revealing for the dress rehearsal but was censored. This is one of the two ballets never performed during matinées. It was likely considered too racy for families. Frimousse, “La Soirée parisienne—Emilienne aux Quat’z’Arts,” Le Gaulois, 10 December 1893. 485 See Appendix B for titles of ballets performed by professional beauties. From the mid-1890s on, professional beauties, including Liane de Pougy, Emilienne d’Alençon, and Caroline Otéro frequently held starring roles in music-hall ballets, as did actresses noted for their voluptuous charms such as Louise Willy, Jane Margyl, and Jane Thylda, and dancers prized for their looks and coquettish performances such as Angèle Héraud. 294 division between theatre and reality lent the voyeuristic aspects of these ballets a sense of immediacy that doubtless heightened the titillating quality of the show.

Figure 6.8. carried in the Bal Fin de siècle cortège, illustration by Lagarte in Maurice Delsol, Paris-Cythère (Paris, 1893), 51.

295

Sex Sells

At the end of the nineteenth century, French ballet was firmly ensconced in the public imagination as having close ties to licentiousness and the female body. The subject matter of most Opéra ballets was far less openly sensuous than contemporary ballets staged in music halls, but the ballerinas themselves— particularly corps dancers—were closely associated with sexual impropriety.

Ballerinas at the Opéra had long been objects of desire, whether as fantasies to be ogled at from a distance by the voyeuristic members of the infamous Jockey Club or as courtesans exploited by the theatre’s wealthy abonnés in the Foyer de la danse.486 Memoirs and biographies of the time detail liaisons between ballerinas and French high society, and popular newspapers such as Le Courrier français and Le Journal amusant document their readers’ dreams and desires in countless caricatures of encounters between gentlemen and young ballerinas.487

Interestingly, music halls did not provide special meeting areas for ballerinas and potential clients, and imagery in the press of coquettish dancers and dissolute gentlemen overwhelmingly depict Opéra ballerinas. I have also not come across any documentary evidence that music-hall dancers doubled as prostitutes; the halls, after all, were already teeming with professional prostitutes.

Yet ballets staged in music halls were even more overtly geared towards showing off the female body than were state-theatre ballets, and the music-hall ballerina was, at least from a distance, openly admired for her alluring physique.488

486 Dawson, “Danseuses as Working Women,” 187-88, 212-16. See also Lynn Garafola, “The Travesty Dancer in Nineteenth-Century Ballet,” Dance Research Journal 17, no.2 (1985): 36. The working-class origins of most dancers contributed to the stigma of sexual impropriety, as did the very real need for low-ranked dancers to earn extra money. The Opéra did not pay a living wage, and many dancers were forced into a life of sexual exploitation, though not necessarily prostitution. See below. 487 See Garafola, “The Travesty Dancer in Nineteenth-Century Ballet,” 40, note 6. 488 Despite the popular belief that all dancers of the era engaged at least to some extent with prostitution, this was not necessarily the case. Although it is impossible to trace the lives of the 296

There is no question that music-hall ballets were enjoyed for their sexually explicit content and presentation. Not only were these aspects always listed in advertisements and reviews, they were often played up. A notice in Le Courrier français promoting Le Miroir, for example, promised “the loveliest legs in a graceful ballet,”489 another for Le Rêve d’or went into ecstasies over the girl’s suggestive curvaceous thighs and described the young women as “lightly undressed” [petites femmes légèrement décostumées],490 and yet another for

Brighton noted that the costumes were splendid and their contents eminently suggestive.491 Of Sardanapale, Jules Roques wrote that the ballet was like the Bal des Quat’z’arts procession, exhibiting all that morals held at bay. The bourgeoisie, he declared, “alight after a good dinner, hurried in each night to devour—by sight—this orgy-aphrodisiac of bared midriffs, extended legs, round bottoms, and firm tits.”492

many women who danced in the hall’s ballet corps, recent studies, along with a few contemporary journalistic sources, suggest that few dancers were, in fact, prostitutes. As Jill Harsin has shown, the number of working-class women thought to be prostitutes was greatly exaggerated in late nineteenth-century Paris as fears over decaying public health and morality tended to cloud the truth. Also, only 1.5% of theatre personnel were registered prostitutes. Jill Harsin, Policing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). Paul Devaux likewise defends the reputations of dancers and attests to the moral integrity of all levels from young corps members to star ballerinas in an 1885 pamphlet titled Eden-théâtre: les coulisses de l’Eden, monographie du corps de ballet (Paris: Librairie théâtrale, 1885). Nevertheless, while star ballerinas were unlikely ever to have needed to supplement their income through the kind of male patronage that the Opéra abonnés were famous for, lower-ranked corps dancers, and certainly figurants and extras, did very likely look to devoted gentlemen spectators as possible benefactors, clients, or marriage partners. This is described in fictitious representations of English music-hall dancers by Compton Mackenzie. See (1912) and Figure of Eight (1936). 489 “Concerts,” Le Courrier français, 10 June 1892. “Les plus jolies jambes dans un gracieux ballet.” 490 Jules Bois, “Folies-Bergère,” Le Courrier français, 10 January 1892. 491 J. R. [Jules Roques], “Olympia,” Le Courrier français, 15 October 1893. 492 J.R., “Olympia,” Le Courrier français, 3 October 1897. “Aussi tous les bourgeois allumés par un bon dîner, se presseront-ils chaque soir pour dévorer...des yeux cette orgie aphrodisiaque de ventres offerts, de jambes écartées, de fesses rebondies, de nichons de bois, etc.” 297

Advertisement posters and etchings of ballets reproduced in the caricature or popular press were even more explicit, routinely depicting women bearing their breasts and legs or wearing virtually nothing. Chéret’s poster for Fleur de Lotus, for instance, showed a woman probably meant to represent Fleur de Lotus with the stolen flower in her hair running or dancing in nothing but the slightest transparent veil. Women behind her—perhaps the péris—are similarly divested

(Figure 6.9). A drawing by F. Lunel of a scene from Les Perles that was perhaps intended to represent a divertissement for pearls is even more explicit but also implausible: there was no mention in the scenario or reviews of any such dance and no mention of nudity (Figure 6.10). In most cases, these images say more about the fantasies of those who produced and consumed them than about the ballets they were supposedly representing. None of the available photographs of music-hall ballets or dancers were quite as revealing as drawings imply, though as

I will show, costumes for a handful of 1890s ballets including Fleur de Lotus,

Émilienne aux Quat’z’arts, and Phryné do seem to have come close.

Travesty

Although contemporary fashions for evening attire allowed women to expose their neck and upper chest, legs remained off limits. Legs were consequently erotically charged, and considerable delight was derived from looking at images of women cycling in chemises and pantaloons or from watching actresses and dancers perform in travesty.493 All music-hall ballets therefore included travesty roles. As

Huysmans intimated in his description of the 1879 divertissement quoted in

Chapter 4, seeing women don provocative male costumes was the highlight of

493 Weber, France, Fin de Siècle, 36-37. There were many posters, drawings in the press, and caricatures in Le Journal amusant that depicted curvaceous women wearing cycling outfits. 298

Figure 6.9. Jules Chéret’s poster for the Folies-Bergère’s Fleur de Lotus, 1893

299

Figure 6.10. Drawing by F. Lunel of “Le Ballet des Perles aux Folies-Bergère” reproduced in Le Courrier français, 1891, F-Pn 4-ICO-THE-4884

300 many ballets, and at least a segment of the music-hall audience came only to see these women: “out of all these great lumps of women rhythmically shaking themselves silly, the connoisseur,” he wrote, “is interested only in one, the one dressed as a spahi officer....”

This love of travesty dancers remained constant throughout the history of the genre regardless of changes to the types of themes in vogue or to shifts in audience make-up. Ballets about young lovers always cast a travesty performer in the lead male role of poor young man, officer, prince, or Pierrot.494 Ballets with fantastical themes and divertissements tended to have few males roles, and those few were normally performed by women. When an historical ballet or mythological parody featured male mimes in principal and/or secondary roles, some pretext was devised to allow for scenes involving women in masculine garb.495 In any ballet, mixed gender groups of peasants, students, villagers, or

Parisians were performed by a ballet corps of women: half performed in traditional feminine costumes and the other half in travesty.

The most common travesty roles were officers. As seen above, officers of varying ranks held starring roles as lovers; gladiators and warriors routinely met in battle; and armies and naval regiments performed evolutions and military exercises. The love of seeing women in military costume was so pronounced that regardless of a ballet’s theme, every music-hall ballet included at least one walk- on role for an officer, even if that officer had no connection to the central

494 As noted above, in the 1910s music halls began to reflect the influence of the Ballets Russes, casting male dancers in lead roles. The Folies-Bergère invited the Opéra-Comique’s Robert Quinault to dance lead male roles in Mariquita’s ballets in the 1910s. 495 As already mentioned, the era’s great male mimes—Thalès, Séverin, Cressonier, Mourès, de Gaspary, and Eugénio—were acclaimed in a rare lead male role, and some may on occasion have been asked to perform social or even character dances, but they did not dance ballet. A few secondary roles were likewise assigned to male mimes, but even these were comparatively rare. The vast majority of principal male roles were performed by women, whether female mimes or dancers, and the male contigent of the ballet corps was entirely performed by women. 301 narrative. Officers turn up without dramatic pretext in crowd scenes, in taverns and dance halls, in parades, and in ballroom scenes. Their ubiquitous presence on the music-hall stage may on occasion have been a means to stir up patriotic fervour in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian war—military evolutions in

Marine, France-Russie, and Cadet-Roussel involved a considerable amount of flag waving and there is anecdotal evidence of a few ballet scores incorporating the Marseillaise—but officers were primarily decorative: they were a convenient means for showing off legs without arousing the wrath of censors.496

The vast majority of male roles in music-hall ballets were performed in travesty, but the practice was by no means novel or unique to music-hall ballet.

Assigning women to trouser roles in popular ballets was an extension of a well- established tradition that had been in vogue at the Paris Opéra since the mid- nineteenth century.497 The romantic era was a golden age for ballet in France, and it was a golden age for the ballerina. Ballerinas, glorified by critics and beloved by audiences, rose to unprecedented fame and prestige, overshadowing the men who continued to dance alongside her. Women also began to don masculine costumes to perform roles previously held by male dancers and mimes.498 In her article “The Travesty Dancer in Nineteenth-Century Ballet,” Lynn Garafola notes that around mid-century, “the danseuse en usurped the position of the male danseur in the corps de ballet and as a partner to the ballerina. Stepping into

496 Depicting military displays or individual officers was a popular means for getting battalions of young women on stage wearing tights. Even though many ballets included one or several officers without a direct connection to the plot, these military figures would not have seemed incongruous to the music-hall public. Officers were a reality of daily life in Paris: they were constantly in the public eye much as they are in the streets of Paris to this day. 497 For an introduction to the history of cross-dressing in French theatre, see Lenard Berlanstein, “Breeches and Breaches: Cross-Dress Theater and the Culture of Gender Ambiguity in Modern France,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 39, no. 2 (April 1996): 338-369. 498 See Garafola, “The Travesty Dancer in Nineteenth-Century Ballet,” 35-40; and Marian Smith, “The Disappearing Danseur,” Cambridge Opera Journal 19, no. 1 (2007): 33-57 for contrasting discussions of the use of transvestism in French romantic ballet. 302 roles previously filled by men, women now impersonated the sailor boys, hussars, and toreadors who made up the ‘masculine’ contingents of the corps de ballet, even as they displaced real men as romantic leads.”499 According to Garafola, men at the Opéra were relegated to lesser mimed roles, and ballet was gradually feminized.500

The danseur did not, however, disappear from the Opéra stage. Smith has shown that despite the invective of detractors and despite declining prestige, the danseur continued to perform lead and secondary mimed and danced roles, and he danced in the ballet corps in many romantic ballets.501 The danseur maintained a prominent place in Opéra ballets into the late nineteenth century. Although travesty was by then widely accepted, several ballets from the 1880s and 1890s assigned male dancers to a variety of danced and mimed roles. Les Deux Pigeons

(1886) featured the star ballerina Rosita Mauri and star travesty dancer Mlle

Sanlaville as the two lovers, and L’Étoile (1897) had a predominantly female cast, but La Korrigane (1882) included a huge cast evenly split between men and women, and men not only mimed but also danced lead, secondary, and corps roles. Breton dances in La Korrigane were, for example, danced by twenty women and twenty men, a “Ronde des Korrigans—ballabile” was danced by ten different women and ten different men, and eighteen men performed a battle scene and contest as part of a divertissement. Louis Mérante, M. Ajas, and M. Vasquez

499 Garafola, “The Travesty Dancer in Nineteenth-Century Ballet,” 35. Garafola argues that this shift reflects a move away from “a courtly, aristocratic art to an entertainment geared to the marketplace and the tastes of a new bourgeois public.” Its rampant use in music-hall ballet supports this view, though male mimes were highly valued by popular audiences. 500 Garafola, Ibid., 35. 501 Marian Smith, “The Disappearing Danseur,” 48-51. Smith notes that the perception of the disappearance of the male danseur is largely a problem of historiography. Willa Collins similarly demonstrates that the danseur was very much present in late romantic ballet. She notes the presence of several male dancers—nearly as many as women—in the 1856 Paris Opéra production of Le Corsaire. Willa Collins, “A Fresh Look at Le Corsaire,” Proceedings of the Society of Dance History Scholars (Paris: Centre national de la danse, 2007), 290-99. 303 all danced opposite Rosita Mauri, leading waltzes and other dances accompanied by a female ballet corps.

The difference between transvestism in Opéra and music-hall ballets was in quantity: music-hall ballets entirely did away with the male dancer, male mimes in lead roles were very rare, and no man was ever included in the ballet corps.

Opéra ballets may have been designed in part to please the voyeuristic contingent of the theatre’s abonnés, but they were expected to remain within the bounds of upper-class decorum and artistic restraint as befitted an elite national institution.

Music halls had no such constraints. They attracted many of the same people, but their artistic ambitions were primarily governed by commercial principles, and their directors very quickly discovered that sexual provocation was profitable.

Music-hall ballets, designed to lure audiences into repeated visits, placed temptation and teasing at the forefront of their aesthetic goals. The result was a conspicuous flaunting of the female body.

Travesty dancers were meant to be enjoyed as women, and their femininity tended to be exaggerated rather than concealed. As Garafola writes in relation to the travesty dancer at the Opéra, the travesty dancer was hired to display “the shapely legs, slim corseted waists, and rounded hips, thighs, and buttocks of the era’s ideal figure” (Figures 6.11 to 6.13).502 The use of travesty dancers did not offer commentary on contemporary gender politics or provide a critique of the manner in which gender was represented on the Parisian stage.503 These women were, again, ornamental.504

502 Garafola, “The Travesty Dancer in Nineteenth-Century Ballet,” 37. 503 See also Ibid., 39. 504 For discussions of French romantic ballet’s role as “erotic daydreaming,” see Louise Robin- Challan, “Social Conditions of Ballet Dancers at the Paris Opera in the Nineteenth Century,” Choreography and Dance 2, part 1 (1992): 25; Dawson, “Danseuses as Working Women,” 216-17; and Smith, Ballet and Opera in the Age of Giselle, 68-70. 304

Figure 6.11. Poster by F. Appel for Marine, 1890

305

Figure 6.12. Drawing by Rosary of the duel scene in Les Réservistes à venir

The performance of principal roles in travesty may also have appealed to the male contingent of music-hall audiences for its homoerotic potential. The vast majority of ballets featured the union of lovers, and most of these unions brought

306

Figure 6.13. Drawing of officers in an unspecified production staged by the Olympia, printed in Le Journal amusant, 3 April 1897.

together two women. As Garafola writes, whether or not this was perceived on a conscious level, “in the formalized mating game of the travesty pas de deux, two women touching and moving in harmony conveyed an eroticism perhaps even more compelling than their individual physical charms.”505 Critics never directly

505 Ibid., 39. 307 alluded to the mating or union of two women, nor did they comment on the allure that seeing two women touching each other might have, but as least one advertisement poster suggests that this did play into music-hall ballet’s appeal.

The poster, created by Orazi for the Olympia’s production of Jean Lorrain’s

Christmas flirtation, Rêve de Noël, shows Liane de Pougy and Rose Demay in close embrace, with Demay resting her head against Pougy’s bare shoulder and

Pougy leaning in to give Demay a kiss. They are both unmistakably feminine and their names are printed in bold letters beside them.506

Box-office earnings likewise attest to an enduring predilection for watching a beautiful woman caress another beautiful and scantily-clad woman, but there was a limit to how far music halls would go in their quest for sexual provocation. Ballets that featured seductresses rarely cast women in the role of the seduced. In Les Septs pêchés capitaux and Les Milles et une nuits, seductresses practiced their wiles on the mime Thalès. When Liane de Pougy enticed and ensnared her prey in L’Araignée d’or, her victims were again played by male mimes. The one exception was Don Juan aux enfers, in which a parade of women tease the coquettish Casino star Angèle Héraud, who played Don Juan in travesty.

Nudity

Every music-hall ballet included at least a few travesty roles for the sake of displaying legs, but authors also devised other means for flaunting women in revealing costumes. The bathing-suit divertissements discussed in Chapter 4 are quintessential examples of productions created with the intent of parading women

506 I was unfortunately not permitted by the BnF to make a copy of the poster. 308 about in skin-tight outfits, as were the pantomime-ballets that included bathing scenes described earlier in this chapter. Several productions from the 1890s included , or, like Émilienne aux Quat’z’arts, placed the heroine on a pedestal wearing a light veil over a bodysuit. No music-hall ballet ever presented a full nude, but a few came as close as was permissible for the time and milieu.507

Bathing-suit divertissements had no artistic pretensions and their aesthetic objectives were utterly straightforward. Similarly, bathing scenes in pantomime- ballets rarely had any bearing on the plot, and were instead short, purely visual interruptions to an on-going narrative. Like the many drawings of bathers with exaggerated curves published in the popular and caricature press (Figure 6.14), dancers were put on stage in bathing suits to invite the male gaze and incite fantasy.508 Richard O’Monroy, writing for Gil Blas, declared the most successful number in Brighton to be a dance for a dozen “little women” who emerge by the sea wearing bathrobes over bathing outfits. With each step, O’Monroy writes, the viewer envisions her wearing an ultra-fitted bathing costume in purple, pink, saffron, and pearl grey, until the moment when the robes fall before the audience’s enchanted eyes.509 O’Monroy described the bathing scene in Un Déjeuner sur l’herbe in similar terms, writing: “thus M. de Lagoanère’s pensioners get undressed—something we would never complain about—and after performing a

507 There are conflicting reports of when nudity was first seen at the Folies-Bergère. According to Muriand, Maurice Verne stated that the first was in an operetta by Hugues Delorme in 1910, and Paul Derval recalled that the first was a blond who personified Love sitting immobile on a flowered chariot in 1912. Muriand, Les Folies-Bergère, 43. 508 Women and children were also present in the audience, and they may well have enjoyed displays of the female body, but since men usually paid the entrance fee (with the possible exception of matinée performances), they were the primary market for music-hall ballets. 509 Richard O’Monroy, “La Soirée parisienne,” Gil Blas, 14 October 1893. “Deux cabines roulantes arrivent sur la plage, et de ces cabines descendent une douzaines de petites femmes qui, au lieu de se baigner, exécutent un pas, drapées dans les peignoirs flottants—exercices éminemment hygiénique. Et à chaque pas, on devine un costume de bain extra-collant mauve, rose, safran, gris perle, jusqu’au moment ou le peignoir tombe devant nos yeux émerveillés.” 309 few strokes in the river, [...] they emerged in skin-tight bathing costumes for our applause, which we warmly bestowed upon them.”510 There was little in terms of subject matter in any of the bathing-suit ballets to arouse the indignation of the public or cause offence, but prose descriptions, as well as drawings in programmes and illustrations in the caricature press, suggest that bathing costumes concealed the bare minimum (Figure 6.15 and 6.16).

Two ballets that included bathing scenes combined them with stripteases, thereby amplifying their suggestive content. One was fairly restrained. When in

L’Impératrice a danced divertissement fails to arouse the interest of the bored ruler, she decides to bathe in her indoor pool. All assembled courtiers turn away from her and face the wall and a Eunuch helps to remove her gown. The audience is then privy to what her courtiers are forbidden to see: the beautiful Caroline

Otéro in a flesh-coloured bodysuit.

Fleur de Lotus was more explicitly titillating, with a striptease and bathing scene that functioned as an extended risqué interlude to an otherwise conventional light romantic comedy. In the second tableau, an exhausted Fleur de Lotus stumbles upon a lake of lotus flowers guarded by a royal servant and populated by water nymphs (Péris). Unable to continue her search for her sister, she stops to rest and is encircled by the Péris whose dance she unwittingly interrupted. The

Péris take pity on her and slowly help her to undress so that she may bathe with them in the lake. The striptease is followed by a posed tableau for Fleur de Lotus who sits by the lake nude, admiring her own reflection in the water and combing

510 Richard O’Monroy, “La Soirée parisienne,” Gil Blas, 3 July 1897. “Donc les pensionnaires de M. Lagoanère se déshabillent—ce dont nous ne saurions nous plaindre—et après avoir exécuté quelques brasses dans la rivière, enveloppées dans des gazes de tulle vert, elles viennent en costume de bain très collant nous demander nos bravos que nous leur accordons très chaleureusement.” 310

Figure 6. 14. Drawing by Mars of women bathing, reproduced in Le Journal amusant, 14 September 1895.

311

Figure 6.15. Drawings of costumes for Pierrot au hammam, Le Théâtre illustré 6, no. 20

312

Figure 6.16. Drawing by Mars of Brighton, Le Journal amusant no. 1942

her long hair. Just as she selects a lotus flower and places it in her hair, the royal servant awakens and frightens the Péris away, and Fleur de Lotus is forced to hide in some nearby reeds. Later, after the unexpected appearance of the royal party and a danced divertissement in her sister’s honour, Fleur de Lotus emerges from her hiding place wrapped in a giant leaf wearing nothing but a flesh-coloured . Still virtually nude, she is happily reunited with her sister.

Inventing narrative justifications for the inclusion of statues was yet another means for exhibiting the female body in music-hall ballets. Likely drawing on the nineteenth-century tradition of the tableau vivant, a handful of music-hall ballets, including Phryné, Lorenza, and the aforementioned Émilienne

313 aux Quat’z’arts, ended with a scene in which the heroine dropped her outer garments then posed nude.511 Émilienne aux Quat’z’arts aside, such ballets usually resorted to historical topics to maintain at least a shroud of modesty. In an

1896 balletic recasting of the story of the ancient Greek courtesan Phryné, for example, August Germain had the sculptor Praxitèle’s muse and model summoned before the courts for impropriety. In order to prove her innocence, Phryné let her draperies fall to the ground so that all assembled, and by extension the audience, could see her perfect beauty. Exonerated on the grounds that such beauty was not of this world, Phryné stood nude for the audience to admire.

The theatrical display of women’s bodies was not unique to music-hall ballet. Striptease pantomimes were all the rage in the 1890s—plays with titles such as Le Coucher de la mariée, Le Reveil de la mariée and La Puce were produced by the dozen in popular theatres—and cartes de visite of famous beauties, predecessors of the pin-up girls, were bought in the thousands.512

Tableaux vivants likewise remained a common means for exhibiting women in revealing attire in popular venues. Rather, music-hall directors, quick to pick up on any profitable trend, incorporated scenes in their ballets that mimicked these already popular cultural forms.

“Nudity” was also relative. The dancer who danced the role of Phryné for the Casino de Royan in 1896 and the Olympia in 1904, the Opéra’s première danseuse and icon of beauty Cléo de Mérode, was not naked. According to

Mérode, her costume for the scene consisted of a pale pink bodysuit beneath a translucent pink tunic (Figure 6.17).

511 Mary Chapman, “‘Living Pictures:’ Women and Tableaux Vivants in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction and Culture,” Wide Angle 18, no.3 (July 1996): 22-52. 512 For descriptions of a few early striptease pantomimes, see Montorgueil, Année feminine, 37-39, 58-77; and for a discussion of the predecessors of pin-up imagery, see Maria Elena Buszek, Pin- Up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006). 314

Figure 6.17. Cléo de Mérode in Phryné, Le Journal amusant, 20 March 1897

In order to give an impression of nudity after she removed her heavy grey and blue outer draperies, the draperies were held up behind her so that the audience could see the outline of her body against the dark backdrop.513 As Mérode wrote, it needed a

513 A similar trick was used to represent a nude Thaïs in Massenet’s opera of that name premiered at the Opéra in 1894. The role of Thaïs was sung by Sybil Sanderson, a top-earning star with great sex appeal, but the brief scene of her unveiling was performed by a supernumerary, and even then the audience saw her only from the back. Steven Huebner notes that Sanderson also insisted that the supernumerary wear enough to appear decent. Like Mérode’s Phryné, the exhibition was more titillating for the imagination than the eye, but nonetheless a favourite scene for many. Steven 315 certain amount of good will on the part of the audience to accept that she was naked.514 Writing more generally about turn-of-the-twentieth- century stripteases and early forms of theatrical nudity, Georges Montorgueil similarly remarked that it required a flexible imagination to accept that the women on display on the music- hall stage were “naked” when their bodies were in fact carefully concealed.515 The audience, he writes, was responsible for any real impropriety by imagining indecency and perversion where there was none.

The Folies-Bergère’s 1901 ballet Lorenza relied on the same narrative device to include a female nude as did Phryné, but it went one step further. Like Émilienne aux Quat’z’arts, Lorenza included allusions to a recent scandal over indecency, subsuming hints of the scandal into an historical fantasy to create a show that was provocative, yet palatable for its more delicate spectators and censors. Lorenza also featured Cléo de Mérode, already famous in music-hall circles for her performances of Phryné described above. The result was a run-away box-office hit: Edouard

Marchand’s crowning achievement for the Folies-Bergère.516

Lorenza was ostensibly a tale about the sculptor

Benvenuto Cellini’s search for his ideal muse and model, whom he finds in Lorenza de Médicis. In the ballet’s final scene, Médicis, played by Mérode, disrobes and reveals her extraordinarily beautiful body. Although similar to Phryné, the final scene of Lorenza was likely a dramatisation of a scandal involving Mérode herself.

In 1896, shortly before creating Phryné for the Casino de Royan, Mérode became the butt of gossip after sitting for a sculpture by the French artist Alexandre Falguière.

Huebner, French Opera at the Fin de Siècle : Wagnerism, Nationalism, and Style (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 111. 514 Mérode, Le Ballet de ma vie, 144-45. 515 Montorgueil, Année feminine, 76-77. 516 The ballet was such a notable success that it made the front page of the Gil Blas on 5 November 1901 and 7 November 1901. 316

Figure 6.18. Drawing by A. Poulain of Falguière’s statue of Mérode displayed at the 1896 salon, Gil Blas, 26 June 1896.

317

Although Mérode claimed only to have been the model for the head, the sculpture was a full nude (Figures 6.18). The head was recognisably Mérode’s and all assumed that she had posed naked.517 Mérode, posing in Lorenza as the beautiful model for a statue of a nude, provided the ballet with an ironic twist surely not lost on her audience.518

With the exception of ballets that included contemporary characters or that made reference to contemporary places and events, few of the facets of music-hall ballets that I have described in this chapter and characterised as “popular” were unique to music-hall ballets. Topics, for instance, were either the same as or similar to those seen at the Opéra. Romantic dramas and comedies were a staple of the genre throughout the century in state theatres and private venues alike, and fairytales and light fantasies were nearly as common. Staging and performance practices were likewise comparable. Spectacle was an important element of virtually all nineteenth-century ballets, stars were always a draw, and most productions at some point featured women in costumes that revealed more of their bodies than was permissible outside the theatre. What distinguished music-hall ballets from traditional pantomime-ballets produced by the Opéra was therefore a question of degree, not kind. Music-hall ballets were consistently more sexually provocative than Opéra ballets, placed greater emphasis on glamorous stars, and heightened the level of spectacle until it overshadowed all other components of the ballet.

517 See Mérode, Le Ballet de ma vie, 125, for a photograph of the Falguière statue. 518 This is not, however, commented upon in the press. Mérode’s antics were too well known and her life too frequently discussed in society journals for these connections to have gone unnoticed by at least a segment of her audience. 318

Chapter 7. THE MUSIC OF POPULAR BALLET

The first thing one notices when flipping through a music-hall ballet score is its simplicity. Textures are light with catchy melodic lines over repetitive chordal accompaniments, thematic material is rhythmically and melodically simple and repetitive, and harmony is usually straightforward and predictable. As the operetta composer Gaston Serpette intimates in his review of José’s Le Tzigane

(Casino, 1899), the best and most successful scores were those that required little focused attention or concentration, and that did not detract from either the visual show presented on stage or the social spectacle unfolding in the hall itself:

M. Henri José has perfectly understood that in a music hall, one needs above all to capture the attention of a public that comes far more for its own amusement than in search of great art. Also, all of his pieces are always melodically and rhythmically clear. One effortlessly follows this music that accurately underlines all of the libretto’s situations.519 Composers were routinely commended for their ability to write music that was colourful and evocative, that followed the dramatic contours of the plot, and that was light-hearted, up-beat, danceable, and melodically appealing.520 Although creativity and the ability to write arresting dramatic scenes were valued, even scores that were devoid of interesting musical ideas were praised if they were light, entertaining, and functional. The excerpts of reviews included below represent only a small sample, but their similarity is revealing.

519 Gaston Serpette, “Premières représentations: Casino de Paris,” Gil Blas, 21 September 1899. “M. Henri José a parfaitement compris que dans un music-hall il faut surtout savoir s’imposer à l’attention d’un public qui vient là, bien plus pour son amusement que pour la recherche du grand art. Aussi tous ses morceaux sont-ils toujours clairs de mélodies et de rythme. On suit sans effort cette musique qui souligne juste, toutes les situations du livret.” It was also doubtless important for the music to be easy enough to play with minimal rehearsals. Notices in the press confirm a standard rehearsal period of two weeks before the premiere of a given ballet. 520 For a discussion of music’s role in nineteenth-century Russian ballet, see Roland John Wiley, Tchaikovsky’s Ballets: Swan Lake, sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 5-8. 319

M. G. Pfeiffer’s music, which is clear, dance-like, rhythmic, and melodious, offers the ear a plethora of delicious motives.521

Hirschmann’s score is colourful, melodious, and pleasant to listen to with an orchestration that is curious without being eccentric. The ballet airs have a good rhythm and charmingly underline the talented entrechats of Mlles Moccino and Lina Campana, much applauded dancers.522

M. Ganne’s score is full of colour, with a delicate orchestration, with demonic and fantastic sonorities, and in which the Dies Irae is integrated in a most curious fashion. But the composer has not forgotten the dance tunes and punctuates the ballerina’s light steps with the liveliest of melodies.523

M. Diet’s music is elegant and dance-like. Lovely waltz tunes are particularly pleasant. Charming and voluptuous motives underline the expressive miming of M. Thalès, Hélène Chauvin (la belle aux cheveux d’or), Louise Willy.524

M. Ed. Diet’s score is elegant and carefully crafted. The dance tunes are properly dance-like, which is occasionally lacking in ballets. They place choreographic virtuosity at the forefront.525

Popular ballet music was “light music.” It was written for commercial venues as ephemeral entertainment that would appeal to as broad and diverse an

521 “Premières représentations: Folies-Bergère,” clipping in F-Pn 8-RO-10956. “La musique de M. G. Pfeiffer, claire, dansante, bien rythmée, mélodique, fournit maints motif délicieux à l’oreille.” 522 “Premières représentations: Olympia—Néron,” press clipping in F-Pn 8-RO-11008. 523 “Premières représentations: Folies-Bergère,” 26 January 1899 (added in ink), press clipping in F-Pn 8-RO-10980. “La partition de M. Ganne est pleine de couleur, d’une orchestration très soignée, avec des sonorities démonaiques et fantastiques, ou le Dies Irae intervient de la façon la plus curieuse. Mais le compositeur n’oublie pas les airs de danse et ponctue des plus jolies melodies, les pas des légères ballerines.” 524 “La Belle aux cheveux d’or,” press clipping in F-Pn 8-RO-10981. “La musique de M. Diet est élégante et dansante. De jolis airs de valse y sont particulièrement agréables. Des motifs charmants et voluptueux soulignent la mimique expressive de M. Thalès, Hélène Chauvin (la belle aux cheveux d’or), Louise Willy.” 525 “Olympia: Premières représentations—La Belle aux cheveux d’or,” 4 May 1900 (added in ink), press clipping in F-Pn 8-RO-10981. “La partition de M. Ed. Diet est élégante et soignée. Les airs de danse sont bien dansants, ce qui est parfois chose rare dans les ballets. Ils font valoir la virtuosité chorégraphique.” 320 audience as possible.526 Music-hall ballet scores were not intended for independent concert hall performance or intellectual contemplation, but rather as supports for mime and dance, and as pleasant background music. Ballet music fit in with other types of music on offer at the halls: polkas, waltzes, and marches played by the orchestra between circus or theatrical performances, music that accompanied song-and-dance numbers and popular exotic dances, or other musical acts presented during intermissions. Music-hall ballet music was therefore closely tied to its function: its form and style were dictated by generic requirements, and its tone by performance context and audience expectations.

This does not mean that popular ballet scores can be summarily dismissed as inconsequential background music. Several composers showed a remarkable degree of imagination and ingenuity in balancing the demands of the genre, tastes of their audiences, and their own creative inclinations with scores that were at once colourful, evocative, and appealing. In addition, a handful of music-hall ballets staged at the turn of the century—particularly those by renowned comic- opera composers Ganne, Vidal, and Hirschmann—display a relatively intricate and varied musical language, and an interest in formal and thematic unity that went beyond the requirements of the genre.

In the following analyses of popular ballet music, I will examine the textures, accompaniment figures, thematic material, orchestration, harmonic language, use of recurring thematic material, and large-scale tonal structure of a range of ballets in order to establish the parameters of a “popular” ballet music style. I have focused on sixteen pantomime-ballet scores that I have divided into

526 For a discussion of light music vs. serious music in Austro-German music criticism, see Derek Scott, Sounds of the Metropolis: The Nineteenth-Century Popular Music Revolution in London, New York, Paris, and Vienna (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 87-92. 321 overlapping categories according to complexity of musical material so that I might later refer to several scores as a group. The lightest are Desormes’s Rêve d’or, Le

Miroir, and Fleur de Lotus, Cieutat’s Le Château de Mac-Arrott, Bouval’s Le

Scandal du Louvre, Banès’s Olympia, Varney’s La Princesse Idaea, and

Lagoanère’s Bains de dames. The most complex are Ganne’s Phryné and La

Princesse au sabbat, Hirschmann’s Néron, and Vidal’s L’Impératrice. Ganne’s

Merveilleuses et gigolettes, Diet’s Rêve de Noël, Thomé’s Le Prince désir, and

Lecocq’s Barbe-Bleue fall somewhere in between. These divisions should not be read as an indication of relative artistic value. As noted above, some of the most memorable or most carefully crafted works were among the lightest. Although similarities between all surviving music-hall scores suggest a relatively constant style, one should keep in mind that I have only found one in five scores for pantomime-ballets produced by music halls between 1886 and 1904.

Texture and Accompaniment Figures

With extraordinarily few exceptions, popular ballet music was made up of catchy melodies over functional harmonies. Textures tend to be fairly thin, and in the very simplest scores, which include most written in the 1880s and early 1890s and all written by Desormes, accompaniment patterns are very repetitive, changing only from number to number. In pantomime scenes, bass lines often take the form of chords or triadic patterns that are repeated either for several measures or throughout an entire segment of a pantomime sequence (Example 7.1). Dance music, particularly for the lightest scores, likewise has extremely repetitive chordal bass lines in standard duple and triple patterns that are sometimes syncopated (Example 7.2).

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Example 7.1. Louis Desormes, Fleur de Lotus, scene 5, pantomime

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Example 7.2. Henri Cieutat, Le Château de Mac-Arrott, no. 19, divertissement des fées, pas de deux, mm. 7-24

Dramatic music varied somewhat more than the above passage from

Desormes’s Fleur de Lotus suggests. Although ballets of moderate complexity by

Ganne, Diet, Missa, and Lecocq have atmospheric dramatic music and pantomime scenes that are almost entirely made up of simple tunes with chordal accompaniments, their textures are considerably less static than equivalent passages in scores by composers such as Desormes or Cieutat. Pantomime scenes in scores of moderate complexity are unfailingly homophonic and still sometimes include passages of repeated chords, but patterns are constantly modified. In

Merveilleuses et gigolettes, for instance, rather than draw harmonies out over entire phrases, Ganne repeats the same harmonic patterns for only two to four measures (Example 7.3).

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Example 7.3. Louis Ganne, Merveilleuses et gigolettes, scene 17, mm. 33-53

Textures for dramatic music in the most intricate ballets from the turn of the century by Ganne, Hirschmann, and Vidal are similarly homophonic throughout but with constantly varied accompaniment patterns.

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Even in ballets that had constantly varied music in pantomime scenes, accompaniment patterns and textures for dance music tend to be of the chordal

“boom-chick” or “oom-pah-pah” variety (with occasional walking bass lines).

This is particularly true of the popular dance numbers such as waltzes, polkas, mazurkas, and gallops that were frequently excerpted from ballets and sold as separate numbers in piano reduction for the amateur market. Of these, the waltz was the most consistently formulaic and conventional. As can be seen in the three examples below, waltzes were always composed of generic triadic and stepwise melodic lines and simple rhythmic patterns over repetitive chordal bass lines, regardless of the intricacy of other musical parameters or overall complexity of the rest of the ballet.

The first example is from Lagoanère’s divertissement-like Bains des dames, one of the most conventional and functional of all published ballet scores

(Example 7.4). The second is from Lecocq’s Barbe-Bleue, a large-scale work that is musically—at least in terms of its harmonic language—largely unremarkable

(Example 7.5). The third is one of two waltzes from Ganne’s La Princesse au sabbat, another large-scale score, that is elsewhere notable for its unusually colourful harmonic language. This last waltz is a variation, the third number in a divertissement-like “ballet of witches,” and not an ensemble dance. Although light and tuneful, the waltz’s atypical phrasing creates a sense of metrical ambiguity at odds with the expectations of the style. Phrases are sixteen measures long, but there is an extra first measure pick-up, and thematic material changes after six measures, not eight (Example 7.6).

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Example 7.4. Oscar de Lagoanère, Bains de dames, Valse, danse des suppliantes

Example 7.5. Charles Lecocq, Barbe-Bleue, Valse

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Example 7.6. Louis Ganne, La Princesse au sabbat, Variation—valse

Thematic material

As seen in the examples of pantomime and dance music included above, thematic material in all popular ballets was written to be rhythmically and melodically as catchy as possible: melodies were, as a general rule, either stepwise or triadic, and rhythmic patterns rarely included anything beyond eights and sixteenths in duple and triplet combinations. Exceptions occurred only in pantomime sequences in which composers were called upon to evoke a particular dramatic atmosphere

(such as the sun rises or storms seen in Chapter 5), and in the occasional written to set divertissements apart from a ballet’s central narrative.

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Harmony

Differences between the simplest of the one-act ballets and the most complex large-scale works become far more apparent when analysing their harmonic languages. The simplest works—those by Cieutat, Desormes, Banès, Lagoanère, and Varney—could only be described, again without pejorative overtones, as light music. These ballets are almost entirely structured around fifth relations or around modulations to the relative major or minor, and move between keys with no more than four flats or sharps. Cieutat’s Le Château de Mac-Arrott, for example, begins with an opening Gigue in G and C, a short scene in c-/Eb, and a dance in rondo form that moves through Eb-Ab-Eb-Bb-Eb. A royal procession in C is followed by a pantomime for a fairy and peasant in Ab-f-F-Bb-F, a return of royalty in A-D-A, another rondo dance for the princess in Bb-F-Bb-Eb-Bb, and so on. Nearly all dances and pantomime scenes are written in straightforward ABA or rondo forms, all sections of which predictably outline I-IV-I, I-V-I, or I-IV-I-V-

I (the long final waltz is the exception but still moves by fifth relations through C-

G-C-F-Bb-F-C). There are no large-scale connections between these key centres: the ballet does not begin and end in the same key, nor is there evidence of a logical sequence of keys. Harmony at a local level is equally simple, with standard functional progressions centred on tonic and dominant (see Example

7.2). Only occasionally was Cieutat’s (or Desormes’s or Lagoanère’s) harmonic language coloured by diminished seventh chords, modal mixture, or chromatic inflections, and then always for brief moments of heightened dramatic interest

(Example 7.7).

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Example 7.7. Henri Cieutat, Le Château de Mac-Arrott, scene 5, tristesse d’Eric

Extreme harmonic simplicity does not imply overall simplicity, nor does it signal a second rate ballet score. Cieutat’s score for Le Château de Mac-Arrott, though unquestionably one of the lightest and on occasion harmonically awkward, was nevertheless carefully crafted: it remains upbeat and engaging throughout, while perfectly encapsulating the conventions of nineteenth-century pantomime- ballet music. Narrative and musical dramatisation are closely connected, the ballet’s principal components—mime, ballet, and character dances—are accompanied by music written to fit their stylistic and formal functions, and the score has an attention to dramatic detail that includes, as I will show in greater detail below, a web of recurring melodies and styles. Cieutat’s simple harmonic language, coupled with his catchy tunes, repetitive rhythmic cells, and bouncy accompaniment figures, lent the ballet its popular tone, which likely helped to sell

330 this otherwise traditional production to a music-hall public that in 1886 was not yet accustomed to large-scale pantomime-ballet.527

“Light” ballets can also not be lumped together into one homogeneous collection of scores entirely structured around tonic and dominant harmonies.

Lagoanère’s miniature ballet Bains de dames is, if anything, harmonically even lighter than Cieutat’s Le Château de Mac-Arrott, with continuous streams of tonic and dominant chords. The final waltz, which runs to six of the ballet’s twenty- four pages, is almost comically simple in its outlining of I and V chords (see

Example 7.4). All sections of this five-part rondo, along with the subsequent variation, are in the tonic key of Eb, with the exception of the extended “C” segment, which is in the dominant Bb. Yet several scenes in the ballet are related by third, not fifth, with frequent modulations between E, C, and Eb (see scenes 1,

3, and 4).

On the flip side, music-hall ballet scores that employ a more varied harmonic language often contain passages of extreme harmonic simplicity alongside imaginative ones. In Barbe-Bleue, for example, Charles Lecocq combines a functional but somewhat broader harmonic palette than can be found in Cieutat’s or Lagoanère’s scores with writing that was as simple as nineteenth- century harmony can get. Scenes built on a rapid succession of chord progressions that include secondary dominants, third substitutions, and the occasional diminished or augmented-sixth chord, alternate with others that move between tonic and dominant harmonies in closely-related keys. In virtually all cases, divisions between simplistic and more imaginative writing fell along

527 Box-office receipts for Le Château de Mac-Arrott totaled 105 544 francs over forty-one performances. Nightly receipts in May were high, peaking at 4917 francs on 15 May. It was rare for receipts to reach the 4000 mark in the late 1880s. F-Psc “Registres-recensement, Folies- Bergère, 1886-1917.” 331 functional lines: dance music, as mentioned, was necessarily a light support for choreography, whereas dramatic music could briefly take centre stage.

Although music-hall ballets were undeniably light, they were not all as straightforward as those described above. Scores from the late 1890s, with the exception of Lecocq’s Barbe-Bleue, have a relatively intricate harmonic structure, both on a large-scale and local level. These ballets—the major large-scale productions from the height of music-hall ballet production—seem surprising given the context in which they were performed: despite the shift in the mid-1890s towards a clientele likely accustomed to comic opera, ballet, and music drama staged in Paris’s pre-eminent established theatres, and despite the hall’s practice of relying increasingly on comic-opera composers well known from these same theatres, music-hall patrons still came to the halls to socialize and to enjoy an evening of light entertainment. The halls were not traditionally the realm of the ballet connoisseur, yet a few of the ballets from the turn of the century were, musically, masterpieces of the genre. Ganne’s ballets from the second half of the

1890s—Merveilleuses et gigolettes, Phryné, and La Princesse au sabbat—and

Vidal’s L’Impératrice stand out as works of art with their intricately structured and creatively wrought scores that nevertheless maintained the conventions of popular ballet.

Ganne’s Merveilleuses et gigolettes lies somewhere between the lightest and most complex music-hall ballets and provides apt illustrations of how a popular music-hall ballet composer could navigate the delicate boundary between originality and accessibility. On a broad structural level, pantomime scenes and dances are harmonically related alternately by fifth or by third (modulations between each occur in roughly equal number), and scenes alternate between major

332 and minor keys; gone are the chains of major keys moving up and down the circle of fifths. Sections of scenes, or segments of closed dance forms, are similarly organised. In the Act 1 Menuet-Variation-Menuet, for instance, sections of the

ABACDCA’ form are alternately related by fifth or by third: A is , B in e minor (vi), A in G major, C in C major (IV), D in e minor, C in C major, and A back to the tonic G major.

Ganne’s Menuet is characterized by a play with conventions. The formal layout of the dance recalls that of the eighteenth-century minuet, but with slight distortions. Rather than write a standard Menuet-Trio-Menuet, Ganne has substituted a variation for the solo ballerina as the central contrasting section in place of the Trio. Uncharacteristically for both a ballet variation and a minuet, the melodic contour of the Variation is a musical variation of material from the B section of the Menuet proper (Example 7.8).

The surface characteristics of the Menuet similarly make reference to the distinctive traits of a traditional minuet, but with idiosyncratic variants. The

Menuet’s narrow melodic range, simple rhythmic gestures in triple time, and sparse textures mimic those of a standard minuet, as does the regularity of phrasing: the dance remains in 3/4 throughout with phrases grouped in pairs ideal for the six-count minuet step. However, the Menuet’s antecedent phrase is accompanied by a musette bass, which would have been more characteristic of the trio than of the minuet proper. This musette bass suggests a fictitious pastoral arcadia and adds to the movement’s archaic feel, but it is subtly undermined by the chromatically descending diminished seventh chords of the Menuet’s consequent and by the busy surface rhythms in the melodic line that include lilting quintuplets and appoggiaturas on weak beats (Example 7.9).

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Example 7.8. Louis Ganne, Merveilleuses et gigolettes, Menuet “B” section and interpolated Variation

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Example 7.9. Louis Ganne, Merveilleuses et gigolettes, Minuet “A” section

The Minuet in Merveilleuses et gigolettes also offers several illustrations of Ganne’s use of a relatively sophisticated harmonic language within a seemingly light dance. The mid-section “Variation” is a case in point. As mentioned previously, variations were normally the simplest number of a ballet in order not to distract from the ballerina’s virtuosic dancing. However, this Menuet variation is unusually colourful even though it is not especially complex. Rather than present a light tune over a series of alternating tonic and dominant chords as would Desormes, Cieutat, or Lagoanère, Ganne’s Menuet Variation is built on unidiomatic uses of common-practice chord progressions, chords coloured by added notes, and third substitutions, all of which lend a subtle contemporary bent to the minuet’s traditional harmonic underpinnings (see Example 7.8, Variation de la Guimard). Ganne’s use of the musical conventions of the minuet help to

335 establish the ballet’s Napoleonic-era setting, evoking the world of early nineteenth-century ballroom culture; yet he simultaneously appealed to an audience steeped in the harmonic language of late nineteenth-century ballroom dances.

The main waltz in Merveilleuses et gigolettes provides another interesting example of Ganne’s melding of music-hall ballet’s conventions with an imaginative harmonic palette. All of the rhythmic, melodic, and textural features typical of waltzes are present, as are the quintessential oom-pah-pah accompaniment figures: the sweeping stepwise and triadic tune is simple and predictable and the oom-pah-pah bass line propels forward and inspires dance. If one were to look only at the waltz’s surface characteristics, one might easily mistake it for the work of Desormes or Cieutat. However, its harmonic language moves far beyond a formulaic alternation of I and V chords.

In the “A” sections of the rondo-form Waltz, the gentle descending melody of the section’s single period is unusually chromatic. The melodic line of the opening antecedent begins with a descending movement by half step and is supported by chords that likewise move chromatically: of the accompaniment’s three parts, two move chromatically while the third holds a common tone. The remainder of the phrase is built using standard harmonies, but where one expects an arrival at a half cadence in m. 16, one instead finds an unidiomatic slide to V from a common-tone diminished seventh chord in m. 15 and a move to V4/2 at the end of the phrase (Example 7.10).

The waltz’s “B” section is equally colourful. The first phrase begins with a melodic line that hints at the whole-tone scale. Three measures into the second phrase, a chord that functions as a neighbouring II is built on quartal harmonies,

336 while the I6 that follows brings the phrase to a tonal arrival and close without a cadence (Example 7.11). At no point does Ganne’s waltz sound out of place or jarring to the ear, but the scope of his harmonic palette is exceptional for the genre.

Example 7.10. Louis Ganne, Merveilleuses et gigolettes, Waltz (A section)

Example 7.11. Louis Ganne, Merveilleuses et gigolettes, Waltz (B section)

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Ganne’s La Princesse au sabbat, written only four years later, was, at least for a work destined for a popular market, harmonically adventurous, with unexpected harmonic progressions and unusual modulations. As shown in

Chapter 5, functional harmony in the introduction and opening scene of La

Princesse au sabbat is undermined by augmented triads and whole-tone scales; the central waltz, illustrated in example 7.7 above, makes use of a broader and more colourful harmonic palette than most. Yet like Ganne’s earlier works, La

Princesse au sabbat maintains the conventions of nineteenth-century pantomime- ballet. Its harmonic complexity is never without dramatic motivation: his most peculiar writing always occurrs in conjunction with the appearance of sinister characters or unsavoury creatures and he reverts to simpler functional harmonies when the ballet calls for standardized dances such as variations.

Orchestration

Orchestration was one of the most frequently remarked upon aspects of a music- hall ballet score. Composers were commended for imaginative, colourful writing, and unusual instrumental combinations or sounds were always remarked upon, particularly if these enhanced the work’s dramatic impact. Ganne’s score for La

Princesse au sabbat was, for example, repeatedly praised for its colourful, refined orchestration, and demonic and fantastic sonorities.528 Instrumental colour had been a favourite device throughout the nineteenth century for underlining a mimed narrative or creating the appropriate atmosphere, and this was as important for a music-hall ballet as it was for any work performed by state or imperial theatres.

528 See, for example, clippings in F-Pn 8-RO-10980 for reviews such as the one included at the beginning of the chapter. 338

Orchestration in music-hall ballets had, however, a second, more functional goal: it had to be loud and it had to be obvious. Anything too delicate would have been lost in the vast and chaotic halls. Vaslin, writing under the pseudonym Pédrille for Le Petit journal, twice implicitly criticized this feature of popular ballet music in oddly backhanded compliments to two composers.529 In a review of Pierné’s Bouton d’or, he wrote:

The score, delicate as it is, has perhaps one flaw: it is too fine, too distinguished for the spectacle, the bright costumes and decors, the laughter. The eyes are too occupied to taste Gabriel Pierné’s delicate music, his fine entrances, his dance melodies as they deserve; but there remains nevertheless enough to charm the ear of the non- expert.530 Later the same year, Vaslin commented that “M. Maraval wrote a very modern and distinguished score on this little subject [Manoeuvres de Printemps]. The only reproach one could make—but this reproach is almost a compliment—is that it was too delicate for the vast hall in which it was executed.”531 Further evidence of a tendency for music-hall ballet composers to emphasise loud, even brash orchestrations may be found in reviews that denigrate Opéra ballets for apparently sounding too much like those of the popular theatres. In a review of L’Étoile, for example, Jules Huret of Le Figaro criticises André Wormser for his lack of imagination, dynamism, and vigour, and reports that audience members were heard in the hallways of the Opéra making disparaging remarks about the score’s orchestration, which they likened to the brassy din heard at the Folies-Bergère.532

529 See list of theatre critics in Noël and Stoullig, Les Annales du théâtre et de la musique [1894], 620. 530 Pédrille, “Paris au théâtre—Bouton d’or,” Le Petit journal, 4 January 1893. 531 Pédrille, “Paris au théâtre—Les Manœuvres du printemps,” Le Petit journal, 12 April 1893. 532 J.H. [Jules Huret], “Les Théâtres: L’Opéra,” Le Figaro, 1 June 1897. “Quoi, le tapage cuivré des Folies-Bergère à l’Académie nationale de musique! proférait-on dans les couloirs. […]” 339

Although piano reductions of music-hall ballets frequently include indications for the use of trumpets, horns, and trombones and hint at standard block writing, instrumentation tends only to be printed above the staff at points when it might add to the work’s dramatic effect. In general, these instrumental indications help to reinforce musical-dramatic stereotypes. In the piano score for

Desormes’s Fleur de Lotus, for example, pastoral writing featured melodies for oboe or clarinet over strings, fairies were accompanied by a single violin or wind instrument over tremolo strings, and brass fanfares announced the entrance of royalty (see Chapter 5).

I have turned up only one full orchestral score of a Parisian music-hall ballet: the complete draft in manuscript of Thomé’s Le Prince Désir.533 Thomé’s orchestra calls for what seems from piano reductions and published orchestral excerpts of dances to have been the standard combination: 2 flutes (doubling piccolo), 2 oboes (doubling cor anglais), 2 clarinets, bassoon (unclear whether one or two), 2 horns in F, 3 trumpets in A, 3 trombones, strings, harp, timpani, bass drum, and voices (which sing a textless “Ah”). For the most part, his orchestration is unadventurous: a given group—winds, brass, or strings—or solo instrument played the melody, and one or both of the remaining groups played accompaniment figures (i.e. winds doubling first violins might play a melody punctuated by brass and low strings). The harp introduced the ballerina’s variation, and strings playing pizzicato accompanied her dancing; the tutti orchestra was used for climaxes, and brass added colour or reinforced the bass line of repeated accompaniment patterns.

533 Francis Thomé, Le Prince Désir, F-Po Fonds Thomé, 2. Thomé’s handwriting is often almost completely illegible. Several English music-hall ballets and Eden-Theatre ballets survive in full score in London (GB-Lv) and Paris (F-Po). 340

An emphasis on brass instruments and block writing aside, a few scores do seem to have had imaginative orchestrations. The most obviously dramatic and colourful is Ganne’s La Princesse au sabbat. Even without confirmation from reviews of its extraordinary orchestration, Ganne’s attention to orchestral colour and effect can be inferred from the ballet’s piano score: there are far more indications of orchestration than one normally sees in piano reductions, and nearly all of these call for unusual combinations of instruments. The orchestra itself appears to have been the standard music-hall ensemble of strings, doubled winds and horns, three trumpets and three trombones, harp, and basic percussion, though with the addition of tam-tams and bells.

Orchestral in La Princesse au sabbat was always closely linked to the storyline, which was structured around a contrast between the world of the princess and her human friends, and the world of witches and their entourage of fantastical creatures and insects. The latter inspired Ganne’s most evocative and unusual orchestrations. As witches stir their brew, flutes, violins, and violas play repeated descending arpeggios beneath which oboes, horns, bassoons, and cellos play a slow, low-pitched, triply-dotted ponderous melodic line marked “brutal et sonore.” This is interrupted by an evil incantation accompanied by a brass choir.

A little later, the witches dance around the cauldron, and although their music looks like a traditional dance with a bouncy duple tune over repeated chords, it is written in minor. At the return of the A section of a standard ABA form, the melodic line is so high-pitched that it must have been played by a piccolo or Eb clarinet. The latter would have been an appropriate invocation of the nineteenth- century witch topos as seen, for instance, in the Finale of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. In this same section, Ganne has superimposed a second melody, a

341 languorous descending line played by violins, viola, cello, and trombone that add to the melancholic affect of the underlying dance (Example 7.12).

Example 7.12. Louis Ganne, La Princesse au sabbat, Danse évocatrice de Plango et des sorcières

The “valse mélancolique” performed in the third tableau by a reluctant princess forced to dance with a grasshopper and giant maybug is particularly colourful: rather than write a light melody over an oom-pah-pah bass line as was

342 the custom for a waltz, Ganne places the accompaniment—in this case only the

“pah-pah” so missing the that gives the waltz its forward-moving impulse—in the top voice to be played by two clarinets and violins. Bassoons, violas, cellos, and harp play the melody below, a slurred, descending line of dotted half notes with tenuto markings. The combined effect of the sluggish melodic line, with its tenuto emphasis and low instrumentation, and the chirping “pah-pah” of the accompaniment, perfectly evokes the princess’ reluctance to dance with her distasteful but nimble-footed partners (Example 7.13).

Example 7.13. Louis Ganne, La Princesse au sabbat, valse mélancolique

Form

Musical form in popular ballets was as closely tied to plot as were ballet’s surface characteristics. Since form was dramatically motivated, most music-hall ballet scores are episodic, with series of musically contrasting scenes that follow the contours of a given libretto. Music recurs only at a local level in dances or in the occasional formally-closed pantomime scene. Unity—whether formal or

343 thematic—was not of primary importance: too frequent repetitions of musical material for purely formal reasons would have confused rather than supported a mimed and danced narrative.

Several ballets, including some of the very lightest, are nevertheless musically unified. Recurring melodies are a common feature, as are recurring musical styles associated with a particular person, place, or action. Key structures and schematic uses of contrasting harmonic languages (usually chromatic vs. diatonic) also occasionally attest to a composer’s interest in large-scale formal planning and musical cohesion. All of these unifying devices are again virtually always used for dramatic purposes: they provide musical cues to dramatic events and convey the ballet’s story over the long term.

Recurring melodies are relatively common in large-scale music-hall ballets and even occasionally turn up in divertissements or simple one-act ballets. As I have shown, Ganne’s earliest ballet, Les Sources du Nil, was composed of an intricate web of recurring melodies, and Cieutat’s deftly crafted but very light ballet described above, Le Château de Mac-Arrott, had recurring melodies incorporated into its dramatic music despite its thematic and harmonic simplicity

(see Chapter 5).534 Ganne’s and Cieutat’s ballets are nevertheless exceptions.

Short music-hall ballets—those with only one act or those that are divertissement- like in structure and feel—are normally either entirely episodic, or they rely for narrative cohesion and clarity on recurring musical styles and musical stereotypes to carry the story within an episodic framework.

534 The widely-spaced triadic 6/8 melody heard in Le Château de Mac-Arrott when the old hag reveals herself to be a fairy, for example, returns with each of her subsequent appearances. Eric, the poor peasant, is assigned a stepwise melody with a somewhat pedestrian accompaniment (and with a slightly awkward functional harmony inflected by ct◦7), and his beloved, the wealthy Diana, is characterised by a more lyrical line with lighter textures (her music never recurs exactly). 344

More significant structural uses of musical repetition are, not surprisingly, found in the longest and most complex ballets from the turn of the twentieth century. These include Hirschmann’s Néron, Ganne’s La Princesse au sabbat and

Phryné, and Vidal’s L’Impératrice. Not all large-scale ballets display evidence of large-scale formal planning: Lecocq’s Barbe-Bleue, though of a comparable scale, was episodic. Interestingly, theatre critics never failed to mention the presence of such motivic recurrences, which in the post-Wagnerian 1880s and 1890s were systematically referred to as leitmotifs. Popular ballet scores appear to have risen in artistic worth in the eyes of critics if they made extensive use of “leitmotifs,” regardless of how frequent or obvious these recurring melodies were. In most cases, recurring melodies were just that: calling-card style prompts that were intended to signal the return of someone or something in as clear a manner as possible. Only occasionally did a music-hall ballet composer display an interest in musically- rather than dramatically-motivated thematic repetition and concern with internal formal musical cohesion.

Hirschmann’s Néron provides examples of both conventional recurring melodies and non-dramatically-motivated recurrences of thematic material. His recurring melodies are used both literally and symbolically, and are always somewhat modified at each occurrence. The most frequently repeated melody is the one first heard during the love duet that marks the first appearance of Claudius and his beloved, Marcella. The original version of the “Love” melody is a sixteen-measure theme that makes up the entire third scene but for a four-measure closing section. It is slow, , and marked “very soft and very expressive.”

The melody is never again heard in its entirety, but appears modified several times throughout the remainder of the ballet (Example 7.14). Its first recurrence is in

345 the very next scene. As Poppea tries to woo Claudius, his response—that his heart is already given to Marcella—is accompanied by a fragment of the “Love” melody played triple forte and “with passion” over triplets and lush chords. When

Claudius later begs Nero to spare Marcella, who as a Christian is sentenced to death, the melody’s opening fragment is heard twice more in close succession, again triple forte but this time with accents on each note and woven into a different texture.

The ballet divertissement, gladiator fights, and Claudius’s attempt to win

Marcella as a battle prize then interrupt the dramatic flow of the ballet. When the

Love melody returns, it is to accompany Claudius’s victory and brief reunion with his beloved. The melody, now closer to its original affect with its slow tempo, slurred legato lines, and accompaniment of tremolos and broken chords, is used once more as a literal musical representation of their union. A few measures later,

Nero separates the two lovers and issues renewed orders for Marcella’s death.

Claudius is to be her murderer. The melody is heard one final time, unaltered, soaring over the same held chords but with a return to a rapid tempo. She is killed—by Nero’s men, not Claudius—and the love melody is lost beneath a frenzy of chromatic triplets and sextuplets as Nero sets fire to Rome.

Musical cohesion in Néron is not limited to dramatically-motivated recurrences of melodies. On occasion, Hirschmann repeated large sections of music without narrative rationale. The ballet’s opening is a case in point. Néron begins with a self-contained divertissement for chorus and dancers who celebrate

346

Example 7.14. Henri Hirschmann, Néron, scene 3, Love melody

the glories of Nero’s Rome in a series of seven numbers that include a cortège for

Silène and her retinue, sung choruses and dances for courtesans, posed tableaux for bacchantes and fauns, and a waltz for the première danseuse. Since the divertissement precedes the introduction of the ballet’s central dramatic characters, and since a divertissement normally requires contrasting music for a series of individual numbers, recurring melodies would be out of place (though

347 not impossible since several characters return periodically within the divertissement). Instead, and perhaps to give the divertissement a sense of formal closure, the divertissement’s Finale is almost entirely made up of fragments of music from preceding numbers. It begins with a recurrence of music from the choral A section of the opening number, a fragment of music from its danced B section, and another return of material from the A section of the same first number. This is followed by choral material originally heard in the third number—Silène’s entrance—which is rounded off with a new coda as fauns, bacchantes, courtesans, and all other dancers leave the stage. The return of earlier material creates a recapitulatory effect, or a loose ABA’ form across a divertissement that contains a series of internal ABA forms.

Popular Ballet Music at its Height

As I have by now mentioned several times in relation to subject matter, choreography, and visual spectacle, both the Folies-Bergère and the Olympia created several large-scale productions around the year 1900 that were comparable to ballets staged in highbrow venues such as the Paris Opéra (or alternately after

1898 at the Opéra-Comique).535 This brief inclination towards grandiose music- hall ballet was most noticeable in the increased scale of productions and emphasis on extravagant display, but their artistic prestige or artistic value arguably lay in

535 The few works created at the Opéra in the very last years of the century were nearly indistinguishable from those staged in popular venues. Between 1893, the year Vidal’s La Maladetta was created, and 1902, when Alphonse Duvernoy’s Bacchus was premiered, the Opéra staged only one pantomime-ballet, L’Étoile (1897) by Wormser, and two independent ballet- divertissements: Fête Russe (1893) with music arranged by Vidal, and Danses de Jadis et de Naguère (1900), also with a patchwork score. The two divertissements were light works barely remarked upon by the press and quickly forgotten. Wormser’s L’Étoile, the Opéra’s last new pantomime-ballet of the century, was musically and dramatically far more interesting, but it was startlingly similar to the more grandiose of the music-hall ballets from these years and serves as an ideal example of an Opéra ballet that with few alterations could have been staged in any one of the main Parisian music halls. 348 the quality of their music. Two surviving scores offer particularly good examples of music that would have been equally appropriate for ballets presented by mainstream theatres. One is Vidal’s L’Impératrice written for the Olympia in

1901, and the other is Ganne’s Phryné created in 1896 for the Casino de Royan and restaged at the Folies-Bergère in 1897 and at the Olympia in 1904. I will focus on large-scale structure in L’Impératrice and on surface musical chracteristics in Phryné.

L’Impératrice

Vidal’s L’Impératrice was an unusual ballet for a popular venue. It is harmonically and thematically as complex as any production staged at the Opéra and Opéra-Comique around the same time, and it would not have seemed amiss at either of these theatres.536 The score of L’Impératrice is largely lacking the streams of tonic and dominant harmonies, repetitive chordal accompaniment figures, and light stepwise or triadic melodies that characterise the vast majority of popular ballet scores. This can to some extent be accounted for by the work’s unusual organisation: structured as a two-act ballet with an extended prologue, there are more pantomime scenes in L’Impératrice than one would find in most ballets, there are virtually no dances outside of the formal divertissements, and one of the divertissements consists of an autonomous pantomime rather than a series of dances. Also, not only was the show’s starring role held by the actress and popular Spanish dancer Caroline Otéro, but the two young lovers, who were played by mime artists, portrayed characters who were themselves professional

536 If anything, L’Impératrice is musically more interesting than Vidal’s ballet La Maladetta presented by the Opéra eight years earlier. Vidal wrote two ballets for the Opéra-comique: Maître Corbeau (1901) and Le Ballet des Nations (1914). Both were choreographed by Mme Mariquita. 349 mimes. Such a preponderance of pantomime may have allowed for more intricate musical writing: as already noted, dramatic music was always harmonically, rhythmically, melodically, and texturally more complex than that found in dance numbers. The few dances in L’Impératrice are, fittingly, relatively light with repetitive accompaniment figures and simple thematic material (a waltz in the second divertissement has the ubiquitous repetitive chordal accompaniments and triadic melodic line).

What is most remarkable about Vidal’s score is its large-scale musical cohesion and surface thematic unity. Vidal employed a range of melodic and rhythmic leitmotifs associated with a given person or situation that, while not systematically heard each time a given character or situation returns, are more intricately integrated into the musical-dramatic web than most leitmotifs or similar devices that occasionally turn up in earlier music-hall ballets. Musical-dramatic connections were such an important feature of Vidal’s score that a synopsis of

Richepin’s libretto published in L’Art du théâtre included a table of musical themes with their associated person or event (See Figure 7.1). This was the only music-hall ballet represented in the press in this manner.537

The most important in L’Impératrice is the one associated with the magic herb: octave and chord tremolos (or trills depending on instrumentation) that are combined with a rising melodic line. This motive not only returns several times throughout the ballet, it is also altered to fit the dramatic situation. It first appears when a witch presents Psellias with a magic herb in return for his

537 There is one short article about Ganne’s La Princesse au sabbat that included reproductions of hand-written fragments of his music. Jean Lorrain and Louis Ganne, “Folies-Bergere: La Princesse au sabbat,” Les Feux de la rampe, 15 February 1899. 350

Figure 7.1. Paul Vidal, L’Impératrice, L’Art du theatre, Thematic table, p.92

generosity (Psellias had given her his last coin thinking she was a hungry old woman; she returned the favour by giving him the key to the imperial ruler’s happiness so that he could win the advertised monetary prize). It is heard again when Psellias brings the herb to the imperial palace, and again each time it is tested by the ruler’s guards and eunuch, who in turn become manic with happiness. For each of these recurrences, the theme’s tremolo pattern and basic contour are maintained but its intervals and harmonies are altered. Unlike most examples of recurring musical material found in earlier music-hall ballets, the magic herb motive retains its effect without sounding repetitive. The motive returns in the Finale where, combined with the thick-textured chords in triplets

351 earlier associated with the imperial ruler, it musically supports her manic, melodramatic death scene.

Vidal also used recurring musical material to provide musical connections between scenes without specific dramatic ties. The material heard towards the beginning of the prologue when Psellias (the young man) twice sells his belongings to a peddler, for example, returns when Psellias tells Myrrha (the young man’s lover) that winning the offered reward for cheering up the imperial ruler will allow him to buy and finery for his beloved. A variation of this music returns without dramatic motivation towards the end of the prologue as the couple argues over whether he should go to the palace (rhythms in both the melody and accompaniment remain unchanged but the melodic line is somewhat altered, as are harmonies and textures). Other recurring musical fragments help maintain characterisation over long stretches of time. Musical sighs, for example—a recurring pattern of descending thirds and fourths with a dotted- quarter to eighth rhythm— are frequently heard in conjunction with appearances of the despondent Myrrha. They accompany Myrrha’s complaints of hunger in the prologue’s pantomime, and the same pattern, intervallically altered, returns in the second act when Myrrha complains of her long wait and voices her fears that her lover will not return from the imperial palace.

In addition to using thematic links that are easily heard by any reasonably attentive member of the audience, Vidal created a web of more obscure tonal connections, some of which have extra-musical functions. The work begins and ends in the key of E-flat major, a key with clear dramatic ties to the Imperial Ruler and her world. It is the key used in the prologue for the entrance of the soldiers who arrive to announce the Imperial Ruler’s contest (the mimed proclamation

352 itself is written in A flat) and for the scene in which Psellias decides to enter the contest. It is then used in Act 1 for the first appearance of the ruler as she ascends her throne. The key does not return until the last scene of the second act, when the

Imperial Ruler dies.

The opening scene of the second act also has an interesting tonal relationship to the overall musical and dramatic structure of the work: the tableau of fishermen going about their work while Myrrha awaits Psellias is written in A major, a tritone away from the E-flat world of the imperial ruler. On a more general level, scenes depicting the imperial ruler in an unhappy state are set in minor keys—particularly turbulent scenes are highly chromatic—while dances by the docks and in the palace divertissement are in major keys; the actual keys do not appear to be in any way related and change frequently, especially during detailed pantomime scenes. A few tonal connections also provide musical links without clear links to the narrative: the prelude, for instance, ends in C as does the first act, and the prologue ends in E-flat major, foreshadowing the ballet’s final key.

Phryné

Phryné was a spectacular production, as grand as any ballet staged at the Paris

Opéra in the same period. It called for a large cast of principal dancers and mimes, secondary characters, corps dancers, and figurantes; the standard forty- piece orchestra was augmented by an off-stage instrumental ensemble, a choir, and vocal soloists; the sets were lavish and the costumes opulent. Phryné also bore a structural and stylistic resemblance to state-theatre ballet. Germain’s deftly crafted libretto maintained the conventions of traditional nineteenth-century

353 pantomime-ballet, with dramatic mimed scenes, crowd scenes, and sumptuous cortèges, virtuosic danced divertissements, and a dazzling apotheosis tableau

(though it also provided excuses for lascivious dances and the nudity scene discussed earlier). The choreography, newly created in turn by Mme Stichel for the Casino de Royan, Mme Mariquita for the Folies-Bergère, and Alfredo Curti for the Olympia, reflected contemporary choreographic trends, drawing on

Ancient Greek imagery while retaining an element of sexual provocation.

Ganne’s score, which adhered to the musical-dramatic conventions of both state- theatre and music-hall ballet, went beyond the stylistic expectations of the latter with an unusual attention to formal invention, thematic variety, and harmonic color.

Of all of the constituents of the ballet, Ganne’s music arguably stands out as the most imaginative and creative; his score is a masterpiece of the genre. It remains engaging and appealing to the untrained ear throughout, yet has a broader harmonic palette and a more complex web of recurring thematic material than any other music-hall ballet. What is particularly remarkable about this score is that

Ganne’s most inventive writing is not for dramatic music, but for dances. Despite a higher proportion of dance music in Phryné than in any of his former ballet scores or most contemporary music-hall scores, the musical language and surface musical characteristics remain varied and relatively complex throughout the entire work. Although this score would warrant close analysis on multiple levels, my current discussion does not permit such a digression. I will therefore present four dances from the Act 1 divertissement as examples of the artistic underpinnings of what was intended to be light entertainment: “Les Joueuses de flûte, de lyre et de

354 cythare,” “Les Assyriennes,” “Les Phéniciennes,” and “Variation—La Courtisane sacrée.”

Since all four dances are from a divertissement, one would expect them to be simple numbers in small binary or ternary forms made up of balanced phrases in a single meter, tempo, and key. Their harmonic palette would likewise normally be predictable, with a preponderance of alternations between tonic and dominant chords. With only slight variations, Ganne does maintain the standard dance forms and balanced phrases necessary for his dancers to perform in synchrony: “Les Joueuses de flûte” has an unusually long B section in an ABA’ form, “Les Phéniciennes” has a slightly lopsided ABACA’ form with a C that is twice the length of all other sections, and the Variation has an unusually long improvisatory introduction, but these formal deviations are not in themselves especially remarkable. Where Ganne breaks with conventions is in the dances’ surface musical characteristics—features such as meter, rhythm, and harmony.

“Les Joueuses de flûte, de lyre et de cythare,” the first dance of the extended Act 1 divertissement, begins with a straightforward up-beat melody in

6/8 over an accompaniment of dotted-quarter chords. The melody is at first wholy unremarkable and remains so throughout the single period of the A section. In the

B section, however, the melody, now slurred and syncopated, is written in 2/4; the accompaniment remains in 6/8. To add to the surface rhythmic complexity, the meter changes periodically, but at irregular intervals: Ganne has set his syncopated melody in uneven segments of three measures in 2/4 with one measure in 6/8, always above a running sixteenth-note triadic accompaniment in 6/8

(Example 7.15).538 There is no way to know if this section of the dance was

538 The last phrase of the B section is made up of four bars of 2/4 and eight bars of 6/8 that function as a transition back to A’. 355 performed by only one of the characters or by the entire ensemble, nor how complex their choreography might have been.539

⁄⁄

Example 7.15. Louis Ganne, Phryné, Les Joueuses de flûte, de lyre et de cythare

539 There is no record of dancers complaining about difficult music as they sometimes did for musically dense state-theatre productions. (However, no music-hall ballet came close to matching Edouard Lalo’s Namouna, the most famously difficult of the Opéra’s late nineteenth-century ballets.) 356

The Courtisane’s Variation that brings the divertissement to a close would have posed an even greater challenge to dancers accustomed to fixed meters. The variation begins with a ten-measure-long introduction—a -like flourish similar to those written to delineate fantastical divertissements from the workaday world of a ballet’s central narrative (it is used here to call attention to the star ballerina whose performance might otherwise have been overlooked by an audience lacking concentration after the divertissement’s unusually long series of character dances). The entire variation—three sixteen-measure periods in an ABA form—is composed of a strict alternation of one measure of 2/4 and one measure of 3/4 (Example 7.16). Beats do not add up to square patterns of eight or sixteen but of ten and twenty, counts that no nineteenth-century ballerina would have been accustomed to, particularly in so strictly conventional a dance as a variation. The time signature remains in a constant 2/4 only in the final phrase and four-measure codetta that increases in tempo for the ballerina’s bravura conclusion.

The Assyrian’s Adagio maintains a steady meter, but it is rhythmically far more intricate than most dances in the repertoire. Perhaps intending to suggest the exotic provenance of the Assyrian dancers, Ganne combines duple and triple figures, accentuates weak beats, and blurs strong-weak beat divisions with syncopations. In the first measure, for instance, the melodic line highlights strong beats whereas the accompaniment accentuates weak beats: a strong quarter on the first beat of the melody is tied to a double-dotted duple rhythm on the following weak beat (followed by a repetition of the same pattern), but chords in the accompaniment are played only on beats two and four. In the second measure, both the melody and accompaniment accentuate weak beats: the dotted rhythmic

357

Example 7.16. Louis Ganne, Phryné, Variation de la Courtisane

pattern on the melodic strong beat acts as a pickup to the second-beat quarter note, which is accented by the articulation, appoggiatura, and sforzando. The accompaniment, now an arpeggiated sextuplet, again falls on the second beat

(Example 7.17). Elsewhere in the same dance, duple rhythms with tenuto markings alternate with triplets, and weak-beat accompanying chords alternate with chords on strong beats. Although counts are steady and square, fluctuating patterns of accentuation and combinations of duple and triple rhythms in close succession would have posed a challenge to a ballet corps, and would have sounded appropriately exotic to an audience accustomed to unvarying simple rhythms over repetitive chordal accompaniment patterns.

358

Example 7.17. Louis Ganne, Phryné, “Les Assyriennes”

“Les Phéniciennes,” another ensemble dance with exotic overtones, is striking for its harmonic language. Rhythm and meter are utterly conventional and predictable, and phrases are balanced. Instrumentation may have leant the dance a unique colour—there are markings for the use of crotales on the strong beats of most measures—but its most distinctive attributes are its atypical harmonic progressions and modal sound. In the eight-measure refrain of the small rondo, rather than conclude the antecedent with a standard cadence to the dominant, Ganne has substituted a doubly plagal cadence: not only does he end the antecedent with a subdominant chord, it is also preceded by its own II6/5 chord expressing subdominant function. The consequent ends with a transposition of the same pattern, with the result that the entire phrase ends with another plagal

359 cadence in the tonic (Example 7.18). Third substitutions for the dominant (III#5 for V) in both segments of the phrase add to the dance’s slightly foreign sound.

The first episode of “Les Phéniciennes” is entirely written in the Phrygian mode. The melodic line is characterised by a flattened second degree within the natural minor mode, and the supporting harmony moves frequently between I and bII (Example 7.18). Modal writing, here as in several other dances and mimed scenes in Phryné, was doubtless used for dramatic purposes: along with its vaguely exotic flavour, modal inflections within Ganne’s otherwise diatonic framework helps to create an appropriately archaic sound as the musical backdrop for a ballet about an Ancient Greek subject.

Example 7.18. Louis Ganne, Phryné, “Les Phéniciennes,” A section

360

Ganne’s, Vidal’s and Hirschmann’s ballets were remarkably inventive works comparable to ballets written for the Opéra and Opéra-Comique during the same period. Composed on an unusually grand scale, their scores demonstrate as much concern for imaginative musical writing for its own sake as for creating an accessible scaffold for mimed and danced entertainment. Yet even these few intriguing, colourful scores remain relatively straightforward in terms of both harmony and structure, and include an abundance of catchy dances and memorable tunes. They also carefully maintain the formal and dramatic conventions of the genre as outlined earlier. They were deftly crafted works that offered creative variants to established conventions. They were also exceptions.

As surviving excerpted dances and scores of complete ballets by Banès,

Bouval, Cieutat, Desormes, Diet, José, Lagoanère, Lecocq, Thomé, and Varney reveal, music-hall ballet music was almost invariably light and up-beat, with lively rhythms, appealing melodies, a simple (or relatively simple) harmonic language, and ample use of repetition of thematic material, accompaniment patterns, and underlying harmonic structures.540 In terms of style, function, and performance context, music-hall ballet was “popular” music.541 Composers strove to engage audiences in light-hearted escapism, to encourage revelry, and to amuse; ballets were unpretentious, entertaining, and intended as the backdrop for socialising.

Music-hall ballets scores also had a pronounced commercial basis. They were written for ephemeral productions with the goal of turning a profit, and once a ballet’s stage life was over, excerpted dances were sold in piano reduction and

540 There are only slight differences between the thematic material found in popular and contemporary state-theatre ballet scores, which though simple, were not conceived as “light” music. Music-hall ballet scores were more explicitly geared towards a popular audience only because of a slightly greater frequency of musical-dramatic clichés, of syncopations and off-beats, and of musical repetition than is found in Opéra ballet scores. 541 For a discussion of the definition of “popular” nineteenth-century music and its relationship to function, venue, and reception, see Scott, Sounds of the Metropolis, 87-88. 361 arranged for performance by dance bands or amateur ensembles. Commercial success, functionality, simplicity, and intent to entertain do not, however, imply a lack of intrinsic artistic worth.542 While many composers doubtless dashed off functional, cliché-riddled scores, just as many wrote with care and with great skill, balancing the dramatic requirements of the genre, the expectations and tastes of their fashionable audiences, and their own creative inclinations.

542 See Richard Traubner, Operetta: A Theatrical History (New York: Routledge, 2003) for a similar take on operetta. 362

CONCLUSION. POPULAR ART AND HIGHBROW ENTERTAINMENT

Once thought a bleak period in the history of French ballet, the turn of the twentieth century may now be recognised as one of the most prolific and creative.

Between 1872 and 1918, ballet could be enjoyed at numerous venues in and alongside a wide range of other genres, and new works were produced by the hundreds. The Folies-Bergère, the Olympia, and the Casino de Paris were central to this vibrant ballet culture, and were responsible for some of the most important choreographic developments of the era. The three halls commissioned more than

150 artists to create dozens of new productions that were performed by the great dance and mime stars of the day, and they drew unprecedented numbers of people from a broader cross-section of society than had ever before attended ballet performances. Although ballet has long been associated with elitist institutions and select audiences, my research shows that at the fin de siècle, Paris’s most active ballet centres were popular music halls.

My dissertation brings to light an undervalued popular ballet culture and repertoire to challenge the musicological and dance canon and correct a major lacuna in the history of French dance. Not only were there many more ballets staged in turn-of-the-twentieth-century France than previously thought, these ballets were creative productions that played a significant role in the renewal of the genre. Music-hall ballet also provides a missing link between French romantic ballet and early twentieth-century manifestations of ballet at the Opéra and Opéra-

Comique: it both preserved the nineteenth-century French tradition of pantomime- ballet and extended it, infusing new vitality into academic conventions and prompting novel approaches to classical choreography by integrating various

363 elements of popular culture. The phenomenon of presenting ballets in variety theatres, the resulting repertoire, and the artists who created and performed these works have been overshadowed by their successors, the Ballets Russes. My research demonstrates that music-hall ballet was instrumental in shaping dance culture in Paris at a pivotal moment in dance history.

* * *

The term music-hall ballet is a misnomer that neither accurately encapsulates all works collected under that designation nor reflects a given set of generic characteristics. At different points in the genre’s forty-year history, music-hall ballet ranged from having few demonstrable ties to traditional nineteenth-century academic dance to being nearly indistinguishable from the pantomime-ballets staged by the Opéra. Some ballets reflected the latest trends in popular culture, while others were a throwback to the great romantic ballets of an earlier era. Still others had novel scenarios, imaginative music, and inventive choreography. A small handful were innovative works of art, but a significant number more closely resembled made-to-order mass-market commodities.

“Music-hall ballet” as a genre and its place on a highbrow/lowbrow scale therefore warrants greater nuance. Although today’s reader might be tempted to place all music-hall ballets in the category of lowbrow entertainment, the genre is more accurately characterised by a fluidity of categories than by a dichotomy.543

543 The music-halls’ position on a highbrow/lowbrow continuum was also fluid and complex. Anachronistic application of Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of audience education, social status, and provenance on attending cultural tastes and values have some use for the stratification of late nineteenth-century French theatre culture (see Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, translated by Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), and The Field of Cultural Production, pp. 29-73), but since the music-halls specialized in appealing to a broad audience with an extremely diverse range of entertainments, they defy any single label and cross over multiple categories. 364

Music-hall ballets derived their distinctive qualities from a melding of conventional forms and a popular surface, and from a combination of high art elements with others geared towards mass appeal. As I discussed in Chapters 4 and 6, music-hall librettists, for instance, alternately replicated subjects seen in mainstream theatres, devised new types of scenarios that reflected the latest cultural trends, and wrote variations on conventional themes. Some incorporated pretexts for the display of the female body, others did not. Music-hall ballet scenarios were never intellectually demanding, but they were highly varied— arguably more so than at any other time in the genre’s history. They also manifested a remarkable degree of ingenuity within a relatively narrow set of narrative conventions.

The music written to accompany these ballets was likewise marked by a combination of creativity for its own sake and a need to be easily accessible and appealing. Although catchy rhythms and pretty melodic lines were valued above any other musical parameter, many were imaginatively wrought and highly evocative. As I discussed in Chapter 7, several music-hall ballets from around

1900 had scores that matched the quality of works performed in mainstream theatres. Also, while the box-office success of a ballet did not depend on the quality of its music, colourful writing did play into critics’ estimation of a given production and must have been appreciated by audiences. Music-hall directors, after all, commissioned ever more illustrious and established comic-opera composers because they thought this would be profitable, and publishers surely printed scores by Ganne, Hirschmann, and Vidal because they thought these would sell better than ballets by José or Lagoanère. Interestingly, despite music only having a secondary impact on the success of a ballet, it was the aspect of

365 music-hall ballet that grew noticeably more artistic throughout the history of the genre. By 1900, there was no longer a firm line between “high-art” ballet music and “popular” ballet music.

At first glance, the visual components of music-hall ballets seem the most obviously popular in origin. Great emphasis was placed on spectacle, pageantry, and glamour, and several ballets revolved around seeing the female body in revealing costumes. Openly sensuous dances, seductive mime, and “nudity” scenes or stripteases were crowd favourites that were incorporated into music-hall ballets with increasing frequency in the last years of the century. Nevertheless, academic ballet retained an important place in popular productions—a seeming incongruity to our current understanding. Indeed, it was this very juxtaposition of abstract classical choreography and titillating spectacle that fascinated music-hall audiences and won the devotion of thousands.

While ballet at the Opéra was traditionally considered voyeuristic entertainment that provided relief from the heavier operas with which they were often paired, ballet played a more complex—one might even say ironic—role in the music halls. Although ballets were often even lighter than those presented at the Opéra, with an even greater emphasis on spectacle and the female body, they were partly responsible for raising the status of the three halls and for drawing audiences away from their unlikely competitors, the state theatres.

Paradoxically, music-hall ballet is best defined as both popular art and highbrow entertainment. “Popular” need not imply a lack of artistry or originality; and in the case of music-hall ballet, “popular” does not necessarily mean mass market. Music-hall ballets were created for an audience seeking novelty, amusement, and provocative spectacle, but this audience was predominantly

366 middle and upper-middle class—a relatively select group accustomed to a combination of classics and new works staged at the city’s established art theatres.

Also, while the overriding aesthetic objective of music-hall ballets was to amuse rather than inspire reflection, tabulations of box-office receipts for different productions indicate that audiences appreciated both the lightest and most innovative ballets. Ballets with nudity, striptease, and seduction scenes drew large crowds, but so did historical spectacles and traditional romantic comedies.

* * *

Music-hall ballet remains a vast territory with many prospects for further research. The culture in which the genre emerged and evolved was more complex than a pioneering study can encompass, and there are more individual ballets worthy of close scrutiny than can be analyzed in an overview dedicated to establishing the history, structure, and style of the genre as a whole. My analyses of Phryné and L’Impératrice, for instance, only touched briefly on a few salient features and could not do justice to the ballets or their authors. Ganne’s ballets in particular merit in-depth investigation; a comprehensive analysis of his ballets would provide greater insights into both music-hall ballet in particular and nineteenth-century ballet in general.

Examining different subdivisions of the music-hall repertoire alongside comparable theatrical manifestations of the time could provide additional insights into music-hall ballet and contribute to a broader cultural project. Parodies, for example, were common to a variety of genres and theatres; a closer investigation of the music halls’ popular ballet parodies would bring a new perspective to studies of theatrical parodies, and would provide an entry point for gaining a deeper understanding of the era’s interests and beliefs. Arguably even more

367 central to music-hall ballet and to cultural developments of the era are questions of the role and representation of women and sexuality on stage. In what ways, for instance, did travesty, lascivious dances, and stripteases affect the perception of women dancers and ballet as a genre; how did the representation of women in music-hall ballets compare to other popular cultural portrayals of femininity

(whether on stage or in printed media); did music-hall ballets reflect current ideals or did they help push the boundaries of contemporary mores? Research into music-hall ballet dancers’ training, origins, and working conditions, combined with a study of how these women were viewed by the public, would also enrich our understanding of music-hall ballet.

The reception of music-hall ballet is rich with possibilities for more nuanced research. More work needs to be done on the differences in reception between state-theatre and music-hall ballet, on differences between English and

French music-hall ballet, and on comparisons between music-hall ballet and other popular forms of dance. A narrower study would advance our understanding of music-hall ballet’s role in French culture and society. For example, the approach used to describe and contextualise ballets for the Parisian public varied greatly depending on the critic’s perspective and on the paper that published the review.

Our own perception of music-hall ballet can therefore become skewed depending on the source of reviews. The staid, upper-class Le Gaulois, for instance, portrayed music-hall ballets as relatively sedate choreographed artworks. The racier weekly Le Courrier français, devoted to pleasure and aimed primarily at a male readership, depicted music-hall ballets as inconsequential amusements choreographed to please a male audience. Le Figaro and Gil Blas, which mainly catered to socialites and the bourgeoisie, provided tame synopses of the scenarios,

368 described audiences, costumes, and decor, and commented on favourite stars.

Examining the different reporting biases would offer a fascinating multi-layered view of music-hall ballets while providing a window onto the interests and values of the different papers’ readers.

I demonstrated several times throughout the dissertation that music-hall ballet was by no means the only form of ballet in France at the end of the nineteenth century. It was neither created in a vacuum, nor did it cease without leaving its mark on other types of ballet. One could therefore examine the impact that music-hall ballet had on Opéra and Opéra-Comique ballets in the last years of the nineteenth century and first decade of the twentieth, or trace the spread of music-hall ballet throughout France and other parts of Western Europe. One might also study the connections between music-hall ballet and the Ballets Russes: although I frequently compared Opéra and music-hall ballet, the Ballets Russes left their mark on the last music-hall productions, and a study of the relationship of the two would offer fascinating insights into both.

Music-hall ballet had close ties with many other forms of contemporary popular culture and was inextricably tied to Paris’s burgeoning fin-de-siècle leisure industry. Future research into music-hall ballet’s relation to the socio- cultural developments of the time would therefore yield a more profound understanding of the role of popular ballet in Parisian life and theatre than can be gained from studying different manifestations of ballet in isolation from other genres and cultural trends. Research into popular ballet’s resonance with contemporary culture could take any number of directions, including the study of music-hall ballet’s ties to the rise of urban popular entertainment or to the democratisation of entertainment and art in the last years of the nineteenth

369 century. Music-hall ballet was a quintessential Belle époque phenomenon that both embodied innovations to the theatrical and social world in which it evolved, and that reflected and reinforced the views, ideas, and attitudes of the time.

370

APPENDIX A

Ballets Premiered by the Folies-Bergère, 1886-1913

Date of Premiere544 Work Genre/Acts545 Librettist Composer Choreographer546

25.09.1886 Volapük B. 1a, 2t H. de Cuers & G. de Louis Ganne Émile Grédelue [prog. B.-div] Bompar 25.09.1886 Pierrot volage B. 1a Joseph Gayda Louis C. Desormes E. Grédelue [prog: Div.-pant.] 13.01.1887-11.03.1887 Fleurs et plumes B. 1a Edmond Beaumont Louis Ganne E. Grédelue [MS: Div.] 12.03.1887-02.05.1887 Les Gitanos B.1a G. Adrien Carman E. Grédelue [Ballet-div] 03.05.1887-12.06.1887 Le Château de Mac’Arrott B. 1a R. Mythe Henri Cieutat E. Grédelue [Figaro: Légende- ballet écossais] 22.11.1887-08.04.1888 Les Réservistes à venir B. 1a Henri Justamant L.C. Desormes Henri Justamant

544 Premiere and reprise dates are from the box-office registers for each hall, F-Pse “registres-recensement Folies-Bergère, 1886-1917,” “Registres-recensement, Olympia, 1893-1913,” “Registres-recensement, Casino de Paris, 1890-1914.” Information about genres and artists is compiled from the Catalogue général des oeuvres dramatiques et lyriques faisant partie du répertoire de la Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques; Laplace-Claverie, Écrire pour la danse; Wicks, The Parisian Stage: Alphabetical Indexes of Plays and Authors (1800-1900); manuscript librettos in F-Pan; programmes and artists’ dossiers in F-Pn and F-Po; and theatre listings and reviews in Entr’acte, Le Figaro, Le Courrier francais, and Le Gaulois. 545 The main entry is that listed in the SACD catalogues; all other genre subtitles in square brackets are from scores, programmes, or press reviews. B: Ballet; Pant: Pantomime; Div: Divertissement; Fée: Féerie or féerique; 1a: 1 act; 1t: 1 tableau. 546 Choreographers were sometimes also the librettists, or were involved with the writing of the scenario in collaboration with another author. There is therefore occasionally overlap or lack of clarity regarding the authorship of ballets.

371

09.04.1888-03.06.1888 Presse-Ballet B. 1a G. de la Neuville Charles Hubans H. Justamant (SACD Jacques Lemaire) 15.09.1888 Dans l’inconnu B. 1a Henri Justamant L.C. Desormes Charles Justamant Div. japonais 18.12.1888 Les Almées B. 1a Madame Mariquita Olivier Métra H. Justamant (new production of Mariquita’s [Figaro: Div.] Les Fausses almées, 1874) 09.03.1889 Joujoux-Ballet B. 1a Henri Justamant L.C. Desormes H. Justamant

28.05.1889 Flagrant délit B. 1a Jules Margat L.C. Desormes H. Justamant

09.10.1889 Les Baigneuses B. 1a Adolphe Jaime Charles Hubans H. Justamant

25.01.1890 Marine Ballet militaire Mme Mariquita L.C. Desormes Madame Mariquita still running April 25 29.04.1890 Paris-Turf B. 1a Auguste Germain Eugène d’Harcourt Mme Mariquita

06.11.1890 Une Répétition aux Folies- B. 1a Mme Mariquita L.C. Desormes Mme Mariquita Reprise 01.11.1892- Bergère 07.02.1893 13.09.1890 Le Roi s’ennuie B. 1a Charles Aubert L.C. Desormes Mme Mariquita

03.03.1891 Un Atelier fin de siècle B. 1a, 2t Alfred Delilia L.C. Desormes Mme Mariquita Restaged late spring 1892 17.03.1891 Les Chansons B. 1a Paul Meyan L.C. Desormes Mme Mariquita (arrangements of old and new songs) 12.09.1891 Les Perles B. 1a Paul Meyan L.C. Desormes Mme Mariquita [prog: B.2t]

372

06.01.1892 Rêve d’or B. 1a, 2t Jacques Lemaire L.C. Desormes Mme Mariquita (overlaps with Les Perles)

07.02.1892 Miroir B.-pant. René Maizeroy L.C. Desormes Mme Mariquita [MS: Pant] 10.09.1892 Orsowa B. 1a George de Bompar Gaston Paulin Mme Mariquita

15.11.1892-24.04.1893 Les Folies parisiennes Ballet-revue Paul Meyan L.C. Desormes Mme Mariquita Reprise 10.02.10894 (with Émilienne aux Quat’z’arts) 25.03.1893-7.05.1893 Fleur de Lotus B. 1a, 2t Armand Silvestre L.C. Desormes Mme Mariquita Restaged 24.02.1894- [prog: B. 2t] 31.05.1894 14.09.1893-10.12.1893 L’Arc-en-ciel B.-pant. 1 Amédée Moreau Alfred Dubruck Mme Mariquita Restaged: occasionally December 1893 Restaged: January 1894 (with Émilienne) 17.10.1893 France-Russie B. 1a Mme Mariquita L.C. Desormes Mme Mariquita (overlaps with L’Arc-en [press: Ballet- ciel) patriotique] 09.12.1893-25.02.1894 Émilienne aux Quat’z’arts B.-pant. 1a Georges Courteline L.C. Desormes Mme Mariquita (overlaps with France- & Louis Marsolleau Russie; then plays with L’Arc-en ciel, then Les Folies parisiennes) 15.09.1894-07.12.1894 Les Demoiselles du XXe siècle B. 1a Abel Mercklein L.C. Desormes Mme Mariquita Reprise: 11.12.1895- [prog: B.-div] (SACD register also 21.12.1895 (with La Belle lists Amédée et la bête) Moreau) 21.12.1894-26.03.1895 Merveilleuses et gigolettes B. 2a Jules Jouy & Louis Ganne Mme Mariquita (final performances: 2nd [prog: B.-pant. 3t] Jacques Lemaire tableau only)

373

27.03.1895-21.06.1895 La Princesse Idaea B. 1a Amédée Moreau Louis Varney Mme Mariquita (plays with Merveilleuses et [prog: Ballet indien] Gigolettes tabl. 1 only) 17.09.1895-08.10.1896 La Belle et la bête B. 2t Richard O’Monroy Edmond Diet Mme Mariquita [prog: B.-pant. 2t] 24.12.1895-23.02.1896 Les Mimes d’or B. 1a Paul Meyan & Pierre L.C. Desormes Mme Mariquita Laffitte 07.01.1896-22.05.1896 Les Cygnes B. 2a Joseph Hansen George Jacobi Mme Mariquita Reprise: 03.10.1896- 31.10.1896 Premiered Alhambra 1884 07.05.1896-28.06.1896 L’Araignée d’or B.-pant. 1a Jean Lorrain Edmond Diet Mme Mariquita [prog: Conte fée.] 10.02.1897-23.06.1897 Phryné B. 3a Auguste Germain Louis Ganne Mme Mariquita [score: 2a, 3t] 03.06.1897-22.12.1897 Sports B.-pant. 2a P.L.Flers 1er tabl: Gustave Mme Mariquita Reprise: June 1897 [prog: B.-pant. 2t] Goublier Reprise: 04.09.1897- 2e tableau: M. 22.12.1897, then 2nd tabl Holzer only until 21.01.1898 04.02.1898-19.06.1898 Diamant B.-pant. 2a Edmond Mize & André Colomb Mme Mariquita [prog: B.-pant. 4t] Eugène Vivier 29.03.1898-19.06.1898 Le Rêve d’Elias B.-pant. 2t Armand Silvestre Paul Lacôme Mme Mariquita (with Diamant) [Fig: ballet aérien] 15.09.1898-08.01.1899 L’Elevement des sabines B. 1a Adrien Vély & Paul Marcelles Mme Mariquita Charles Dutreil 25.01.1899-11.06.1899 La Princesse au sabbat B.-pant. (prog) Jean Lorrain Louis Ganne Mme Mariquita [score: B. 3t] 13.05.1899-11.12.1899 Les Grandes courtisanes Div. (press) Hubert Desvignes Edmond Missa Mme Mariquita (overlaps with La Princesse au Sabbat) 11.11.1899-13.04.1900 Le Prince Désir Ballet 3t (prog) Pierre Guérande Francis Thomé Mme Mariquita

374

26.04.1900-08.10.1900 Cythère B.-pant. (prog) Auguste Germain Louis Ganne Mme Mariquita

09.10.1900-25.01.1900 Madame Bonaparte B.-pant. (prog) Thierry Lemoine Georges Pfeiffer Mme Mariquita

26.01.1901-09.06.1901 B.-pant. 4a Paul Milliet Franco Alfano Mme Mariquita

13.09.1901-03.11.1901 Noce auvergnate Mme Mariquita Alfred Patusset Mme Mariquita

11.10.1901-03.11.1901 Paris s’éveille Surtac (pseudo Rodolphe Berger Mme Mariquita Gabriel Astruc) 04.11.1901-03.03.1902 Lorenza B.-pant. Rudolphe Darzens Franco Alfano Mme Mariquita

13.09.1902-08.11.1902 Faust Grand ballet féerie 4t MM. H. Crémieux Hervé (from Petit Alfredo Curti Premiered Olympia 1900 and Jaime Faust) 12.09.1903-19.01.1904 Les Septs pêchés capitaux B.-pant. 3t Marsan & René Henri Hirschmann A. Curti choreography Premiered Olympia 1899 Louis Severin mise en scène 14.09.1904-04.12.1904 La Fée des poupées Joseph Hassereiter Joseph Bayer A. Curti Premiered Vienna 01.09.1905-18.12.1905 Antinoa B. fée à gr. spectacle Bonis-Charancle Emile Bonnamy A. Curti

31.08.1906-12.12.1906 Le Timbre d’or Fantaisie-ballet Henri de Gorsse, Justin Clérice M. Sicard Georges Nanteuil Danses anglaises de J. Pomé 04.09.1908-30.11.1908 Sports Ballet P.L.Flers G. Goublier & M. Mme Mariquita Reprise from 1897 Holzer 04.09.1909-28.11.1909 Romi-Tchavé B. 1a Jean Richepin Tiarko Richepin Mme Mariquita Ballet bohemian 01.09.1910-28.11.1909 Les Ailes B. fée 4t Chekri-Ganem Louis Ganne Mme Mariquita 01.09.1911-26.11.1911 Stella B.1a, 3t René Louis & Mme Claude Terrasse Mme Mariquita Mariquita 01.09.1913-27.10.1913 Montmartre B. 4t Adrien Willette Auguste Bosc Mme Mariquita Fantaisie dansée

375

Folies-Bergère Divertissements, 1872-1900

Available information for divertissements is too inconsistent to create a systematic table. When possible, the following list includes sub genre, authors, and performance dates.547

La Mer et les cocottes, ballet-nautique by Charlin & Mlle Mariquita, music arr. by Gandon, 30 November 1871. L’Emprunt, divertissement, 8 January 1872. Les Folies amoureuses, ballet-pantomime by Gerny & Mlle Mariquita, music by A. Coedès, 1 February 1872. Le Baitaillon des amours, operette-ballet by H. Bedeau, dances by Mlle Mariquita, music by P. Henrion, 13 June 1872. , ballet-divertissement, music by Métra, 1873. Les Femmes du feu, music by Métra, 1874. Les Fausses almées, ballet by Mlle Mariquita, music by Métra, 8 March 1874. La Jonquina, divertissement, music by Métra, 15 September 1875. La Catarina, ballet, music by Métra, 20 October 1875. La Leçon de danse, divertissement, music by Métra, 10 December 1875. La Posada, divertissement, music by Métra, 1876. Les Joujoux, divertissement by Mlle Mariquita, music by Métra, 20 March 1876. Noce Bohème, divertissement arranged by M. Fuchs, music by Métra, November 1876. Les Fiancés du Béarn, divertissement by Armandi brothers, choreography arranged by Bertotto, music by Métra, November 1876. Les Faunes divertissement arranged by M. Bertotto, music by Métra, November 1876. Une Nuit vénitienne, divertissement arranged by M. Bertotto, music by Métra, November 1876. Aux Porcherons, music by Métra, 1877. Échec et mat, music by Métra, 1877. Fouchtra, music by Métra, 1877. Les Femmes chevaux, divertissement arranged by Justamant, 1878.

547 The additional divertissement titles for which I have not found performance dates are: Le Capricorne and La Crevette by Meyan, and Champagne, Cigarette, and Les Papillons noirs by Métra. I use the term “arranged by” rather than choreographed by since this was the terminology used on programmes and in the press.

376

Le Bazar d’esclaves, divertissement, 15 March 1878. La Fête de Guy, divertissement, music by Hubans, 10 June 1878. Les noces de Polichinelles, divertissement-ballet, music by Hubans, 29 October 1878. Fleur d’oranger, divertissement-ballet by L. Defoursy & Mlle Mariquita, music by Messager, 1 December 1878. Les Vins de France, divertissement, music by Messager, 1879. Mignons et vilains, divertissement, music by Messager, 1879. Les Sphinx, divertissement, music by Hervé, 26 April 1879. Le Sabbat, divertissement by L. Grillet, music by Hervé, 1880. Divertissement-revue, no authors, 19 October 1880. Fleur d’oranger, reprise, music by Messager, 1881. Les Deux jocrisses, divertissement-pantomimique (minimal dancing), 10 April 1881. Pierrot et Méphisto, divertissement-pantomimique (ends with dances), 4 July 1881. Amarilla, divertissement espagnole (has several pas and ensemble dances), 12 October 1881. Une Dragonade, divertissement, 16 December 1881. Les Bonbons, ou Le Fidèle berger, 31 December 1881. Les Marionettes javanaises, divertissement by Eugène Louvigny, music by Georges Auvray, 24 March 1882. Une Bonne aventure, ballet, 1 (?) May 1882. Le Grand prix de Paris, divertissement by Marc Le Prevost, music by Desormes, 3 June 1882. Une Noce alsacienne, divertissement-ballet by Olivier Lincourt, music by Louis Mayeur, sent to censors 26 June 1882, marked No. La Pile du Calife, 2 August 1882. Les Ondines du Nil, divertissement by Armand Lafrique, music by Louis Ganne, 30 November 1882. Au Bois, divertissement by Mengal, music by Mayeur, 3 February 1883. Une Kermesse hollandaise, divertissement by Mengal, music by St-Mary, 5 May 1883. Tohu-Bohu, divertissement (inner page titled ballet) by A. Debelly, music by Antoine Banès, 3 July 1883. Sur la plage, divertissement scenario and music by Desormes, 16 August 1883. Les Gandins, divertissement by St. Mary, music by Desormes, 3 October 1883. Les Mouches de la St. Jean (originally Les Cigales), divertissement by Fernand Bessier, music by Desormes, 24 November 1883. Cocorico, divertissement chorégraphique by Chauvin, music by Messager, 26 January 1884.

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Les Lapins, divertissement (orig. titled La Chasse), scenario by G. Noyer or Moyer (?), music by Lemaire, 28 May 1884. Ouverture de Guillaume Tell, divertissement by August Mengal, music by Rossini (arrangements), 9 July 1884. Une Scène au camp, divertissement, choreography arranged by Grédelue, scenario and music by Edmond Laurens, 20 August 1884. Garden Party, divertissement by Eugène Louvigny, choreography arranged by Grédelue, music by Georges Auvray, 16 August 1884. Deux Cogs, divertissement by Auguste Galnem, music by Desormes, 10 November 1884. Ivresses! ballet 3 tableaux by Auguste Galnem, music by St. Mary, 24 January 1885. Pensionnat de Mme Laïk, divertissement by Auguste Galnem, music by Lippacher, 9 April 1885. Ophelia, divertissement by Grédelue or Justamant (?), music by Desormes, 24 September 1885. Mousses et Loup-de-Mer, divertissement by H. Marius, music by G.A. Schneklüd, 15 November 1885. La Fête de Ménilmontant, divertissement-pantomime (includes dancing) by G. Adrien, music by Desormes, 31 December 1885. La Folie parisienne, pantomime-divertissement 6t (dancers and corps de ballet listed) by Agoust, 17 February 1886. Djemi, ballet 2 actes by Detroyat and Pluque, music by Francis Thomé, 17 February 1886. Bergerie, ballet, lyrics and music by Laurent Derille, 2 March 1886. Vulcain, divertissement chorégraphique by Gras and Grédelue, music by P. Tagliaferro, 29 May 1886. La Rosière de Montretout, divertissement-pantomime (little dancing) by G. Adrien, music by Desormes, 12 June 1886. Ophelia, divertissement, reprise, Justamant, music by Louis Ganne, June 1887. Les Sauterelles, ballet 1 tableau by Justamant, music by Hubans, 10 September 1887. Clowns et clownesses, divertissement by Justamant, music by Desormes, 16 September 1887. Divertissement espagnol, divertissement by Justamant, music by Desormes, 20 December 1887. La Seguedilla, divertissement by Justamant, music by Desormes, 21 December 1887. Divertissement espagnol, divertissement by Justamant, music by Desormes, (reprise?) February 1888. Divertissement écossais (or Les Ecossais), divertissement by Henri Justamant, music by Desormes, 1 May 1888. Divertissement écossais, ballet 1a, (reprise?) Justamant, 1889. Le Roi blanc, ballet 1 acte by Charles Aubert, 10 September 1890. Divertissement militaire by Mme Mariquita, music by Desormes, February (?) 1891. Le Ballet des lumière, divertissement (no listed authors), playing in May 1894. Divertissement hongrois, playing in 1895. Divertissement, ballet 1a by Goulier, 15 September 1898.

378

Ballets Premiered by the Olympia, 1893-1918

Date of Premiere Work Genre/Acts Librettist Composer Choreographer

11.04.1893- Olympia B. 1a Alfred Delilia Antoine Banès Pastorini 14.06.1893 15.06.1893-31.07.1893 Ballet blanc B. 1a (Jules Walter also Jules Walter Pastorini Reprise 01.09.1893- librettist?) 10.10.1893 Reprise 01.05.1894- 14.06.1894 Reprise Feb-March 1895 Reprise 24.06.1895- 19.07.1895 11.10.1893-27.01.1894 Brighton (Les plaisirs de la B. 1a Léopold Wenzel Katti Lanner Premiered London Empire plage) [prog: Grand ballet ] 11.02.1894 Le Fiancé de cire B.-pant. Félix Cohen Adolphe David Pastorini

16.10.1894 La Fée des poupées B. 1a Joseph Hassreiter et Joseph Bayer Alfred Rathner Premiered Vienna [Grand ballet] P. Gaul (trans. by G. Hartmann) 07.02.1895 Les Turlutaines de l’année Revue-ballet à gr. Hermil or Milher Oscar de Lagoanère Pastorini spectacle 1a (new and arranged) 20.07.1895-07.10.1895 Les Baigneuses de Trianon (ou B. 1a Octave Pradels Oscar de Lagoanère Pastorini Reprise 14.07.1896- Bains de dames) [score: Div-ballet] 13.09.1896 08.10.1895-22.12.1895 Le Scandale du Louvre B. 1a L. Roger-Milès & Jules Bouval Rita Papurello [prog: Ballet mimé] Charles Akar 18.09.1896 Noussima Div. Japonais Edmond Missa Papurello

379

17.03.1896-21.04.1896 Arlette Pant-ballet Fernand Beissier Louis Gregh Papurello (?) Premiered Nice Théâtre du Palais de la jeté, 1891 04.12.1896-26.01.1897 Rêve de noël Pant. 1a Jean Lorrain Edmond Diet Papurello (?) [score: B.-pant.] 01.05.1897-24.06.1897 Pierrot au hammam B.-pant. 1a Bertol-Graivil Fr. Toulmouche Papurello (not every night: alternates with Le Coucher de mariée) 02.07.1897-10.08.1897 Un Déjeuner sur l’herbe B.-opte 1a Raoul Bénédite & G. Edmond Missa Papurello (singing and Trompette dancing) 30.09.1897-21.12.1897 Sardanapale B.-pant. 1a Max Maurey & Edmond Diet Balbiani Lucien Puech 05.03.1898-10.05.1898 Vision! B.-pant. 1a, 2t L. Roger-Milès Ed. Missa Balbiani

12.05.1898-02.10.1898 Barbe-Bleue B.-pant. 1a, 3t Richard O’Monroy Charles Lecocq Berthe Bernay (long run through summer) Vanara 29.10.1898 Néron B.-pant. 1a Max Maurey & Henri Hirschmann B. Bernay Augustin Thierry 28.01.1899 Les Sept péchés capitaux B.-pant. à gr. Maurice de Marsan H. Hirschmann B. Bernay (16.05.1899 reprise of Fée spectacle & René Louis des poupées) [B.-pant. avec chœur] 07.10.1899 Les Mille et une nuits Gil Blas: B-féerie à Max Maurey & H. Hirschmann Egidio Rossi gr sp. Augustin Thierry 02.05.1900 La Belle aux cheveux d’or ballet-légende Jean Lorrain Ed. Diet Alfredo Curti

08.10.1900 Watteau Grand ballet 3t Jean Lorrain Ed. Diet A. Curti

30.12.1900 Faust Grand B.-pant. taken from Petit Hervé (arranged by A. Curti Faust by A. Jaine & Gardel-Hervé) H. Crémieux

380

06.04.1901 L’Impératrice B.-féer. 2a, prologue Jean Richepin Paul Vidal A. Curti

03.09.1901 Paris-Cascade Auguste Germain Louis Varney A. Curti

11.01.1902 Cendrillon Féerie-ballet Gardel-Hervé & A. Victor Roger A. Curti Lemonnier 31.12.1902 Pousse-Caillou Fantaisie-militaire C. Séverin Colo-Bonnet C. Séverin (Antoine Bonnet) 26.09.1903 Au Japon Gr. ballet Félicien Champsaur Louis Ganne Carlo Coppi Premiered Alhambra 1902 (after S.L. Bensusan) 01.09.1904 Phryné B.-pant. Auguste Germain Louis Ganne A. Curti Premiered Royan Reprise FB 1897 21.01.1905 L’Impératrice à Suburre B.-pant. Paul Franck Edouard Mathé ?

04.02.1905 Les Saisons de la parisienne B. A. Curti Louis Varney A. Curti

04.05.1906 Cléopâtre B.1 Charles Quénel Olivier Cambon Henry Moreau

01.11.1906 Vers les étoiles B.-féerie Paul Ferrier & H. Hirschmann Sicard 3rd? Fig Bertol-Graivil; 03.02.1906 Paris-Fêtard Fantaisie-ballet E. Grenet-Dancourt Justin Clérice A. Curti & Georges Nanteuil 06.11.1908 Deux sous d’amour B. 1a John Tiller

24.12.1908 Noël à Séville B. 1a René Maizeroy Valverde?

31.12.1908 Trianon Ballet B. 1a M. Dufort M. Leroy

21.08.1909 ou Les Filles de Bohême B 1a A. Curti Georges W. Byng Mme Daynes [ballet romantique] Papurello March 1909 Les Aventures de Mlle Clo-Clo Fantaisie-ballet M. Dufort ? M. Leroy

381

05.01.1910 L’Aéroplane ?

19.08.1910 Papillon d’or B. 3t A. Curti L. Wenzel A. Curti

04.01.1910 L’Enlèvement de Psyché B. 1a, 3t A. Curti Alfred Moul A. Curti [Légende] 15.02.1911 Nitokris (Egyptian legend) B. 1a, 4t Jean-François-Louis Georges Jouanneau Mme Cernusco [Légende] Merlet (choral parts by Eugène Poncin) 12.02.1913 Les Fanfreluches de l’amour B. 1a Vova Berky Jane Vieu Léo Staats [Fantaisie-ballet] 06.04.1917 Les Charmeuses B. Jean Richepin & P. Paul Vidal ? Premiered Algiers 1913 de Choudens 30.08.1918 Idylle dans les blés B.-pant. Louis Lemarchand ? ?

Divertissements Premiered at the Olympia, 1893-1918

Amourettes d’atelier, divertissement-pantomime by M. Repossy, choreography by Pastorini, music by Joseph Bongnard, April 1893. Noussima, divertissement japonais, music by Edmond Missa, 1896. Les Deux baisers, choreography arranged by Rita Papurello, music by Edmond Missa, 1897. Flower-ballet, divertissement, music by Casadessus, 19 June 1897. La Manille, divertissement by Eugène Héros, arranged by Balbiani, music by Edmond Missa, December 1897-1898. Fête Champêtre, divertissement, Oscar de Lagoanère, 1898. La Folie de l’or, divertissement by M. Chauvin, arranged by Rita Papurello, music by Lagoanère, 1898. Folles Amours, “Carnival Scenes” by M. Hirschmann, dances arranged by Bernay, January 1899 (premiered 1898?). Vénus Cantinière, divertissement by M. Trebla & Paul Perrin, mise en scene Thalès, choreography Rossi, music Marius Lambert, 1899. Les Trois couleurs, divertissement by G. Arnould & H. de Vrecourt, music by Toulmouche, April 1899. Conte de Mai, divertissement by Jean Bernac & Gaston Paulin, mise en scène Thalès, dances by Bernay, 1898. Iris, Ballet électrique, fall 1906. Les Muses, divertissement by Louis Lemarchand and Fernand Rouvray, 3 September 1915.

382

Ballets Premiered by the Casino de Paris, 1890-1909

Date of Premiere Work Genre/Acts Librettist Composer Choreographer

18.10.1890-12.12.1890 Le Capitaine Charlotte B. 2a, 4t Romualdo Marenco Romualdo Marenco Carlo Coppi

25.01.1891 Les Grandes manœuvres B.-pant. militaire ? ? C. Coppi

17.10.1891 Scaramouche B. 2a Maurice Lefèvre & André Messager & C. Coppi Nouveau-Théâtre Henri Vaugneux Georges Street 14.09.1892 L’Heureuse rencontre Div. 2a L. Roger-Milès et Louis Ganne Egidio Rossi [score: Div.-pant] Charles Akar 03.01.1893-20.06.1893 Bouton d’or Fantaisie ballet Michel Carré fils Gabriel Pierné E. Rossi Nouveau-Théâtre 06.04.1893 Les Manouevres du printemps Ballet-pant 1a A. Mercklein Maraval E. Rossi [Div.-pant] 16.11.1893 Tentations B.-pant L. Roger-Milès Henri José E. Rossi

17.03.1894 Les Joujoux B.-pant Fernand Beissier Henri Cieutat E. Rossi

14.09.1894-03.01.1895 L’Étoile de mer B.-pant. 2a Egidio Rossi and George Elwall E. Rossi Henri José (?) 04.01.1895-25.02.1895 Sans-Puits-House B. 2a Jacques Lemaire Henri José E. Rossi (closed for fire) 16.03.1895- 10.06.1895 Reprise 16.09.1897-28.11.1897 13.09.1895 Vassilissa B.-pant. 1a, 3t L. Roger-Milès Henri José E. Rossi (Nouveau-Théâtre?)

383

19.11.1895-20.03.1896 Les Deux tentations B. 1a Octave Pradels and Frédéric E. Rossi Reprise [Pant-comique] José Frappa Toulmouche 18.03.1896-20.06-1896 19.11.1895 Fiammina Gr. div E. Rossi Henri Cieutat E. Rossi [score: B.-pant] 09.09.1896 Vénus à Paris B. 1a Abel Mercklein & Henri Cieutat E. Rossi 150 consecutive perfs. Fernand Beissier 23.12.1896-11.04.1897 Les Amoureux de Venise B. 1a Ernest Grenet- Henri José E. Rossi [prog Gr. B.-pant. 4t] Dancourt 29.11.1897-17.04.1898 Don Juan aux Enfers B. 1a Mme. Léopold Henri José E. Rossi? Lacour 24.10.1898-07.02.1899 Mme Malbrouck B.-pant. 1a, 4t Octave Pradels Frédéric Belloni Toulmouche 10.02.1899-26.04.1899 La Montagne d’aimant Clarine Lux & Henri José Belloni Maurice Guillemot 20.09.1899-28.02.1900 Le Tzigane B.-pant. 5t Richard O’Monroy Henri José Belloni

02.03.1900-30.09.1900 Cléopâtre B.-pant 2 Abel Mercklein & Georges Pfeiffer M. Merlai Ran through summer (expo) Jean Bernac (SACD: Henri Leba, Jean Bernac, Georges Pfeiffer) 02.10.1900-01.03.1901 Cadet-Roussel Grand B.-pant Adrien Vély & Henri Cieutat Pratesi Alévy 07.03.1901-06.02.1902 Paris qui danse Ballet-revue Ernest Grenet- Arr. par Henri José Michellucci Dancourt 28.09.1901-24.02.1902 La Camargo B.-pant Fernand Beissier Victor Roger M. L’Adam de l’Opéra 24.01.1905-13.04.1905 Le Voyage de Madame la B.-pant. Fernand Beissier Léo Pouget Rizzo Présidente [prog: B.-fantaisie] 22.10.1906 Éternel Triomphe B.1a Maurice Depret

384

18.10.1907 La Tulipe noire B.fée Géo Sims & C. Fletcher (?) or Victor de Cottens 25.02.1908 (?) Fumées d’opium B.-pant. gr. sp. August Germain & Léo Pouget Trébor 24.12.1908 Soledad B.-pant espagnol 3t Léon Gautier Henri Dérouville Rizzo & Thalès

01.04.1909 Fruit défendu B. 1a Maurice Chassang Gabriel Tallet (?)

14.05.1909 La Rose d’amour B. 1a R. Flamm Rizzo

11.02.1909 Paska B.-pant ?

385

386

APPENDIX B

Synopses of ballets staged at the Folies-Bergère, Olympia, and Casino de Paris, 1886-1901

Work’s Title (hall, year of première) Setting and Era Rationales for Dances548 Spectacle

Volapük (FB, 1886) 19th century -Dances of groups of girls from -Tableau of women is the costumes Attempts are made to teach Volapük (an invented different nations of various nations “international” language then in vogue) to all of the nations of -Dances for young woman (on -Apotheosis featuring triumph of the world. A young woman discovers the true universal pointe) Love language: Love. All celebrate. Pierrot volage (FB, 1886) Italian village -Dances of fantasy characters (Moon -Duel between Pierrot and Léandre Complicated commedia dell’arte love triangle merged with square and her cortègeof stars) -Beauty competition/display fantasy (Pierrot’s spiritual wife is the Moon, his children little -Beauty competition (corps dancers -Lovers spats pierrots) and a beauty competition in which Colombine is and Colombine perform as -Crowd scenes chosen to be beauty queen and is paraded before the village. competitors) Léandre is eventually united with Colombine, and Pierrot returns to his Moon and little pierrots. Fleurs et plumes (FB, 1887) Autumn: Lake -Dances, likely in an academic idiom, -Patterned tableaux of shifting A kingfisher is in love with a baby bird—the queen of the surrounded by for watery creatures and flowers colours wagtails. A pink lotus flower is in love with him, to the trees, mossy including pas de deux, pas chagrin of the water lily who is in love with the lotus. boulders, reeds d’ensemble, solo dances, a mazurka, Dragonflies resting in the reeds emerge, awaken the water waltz, and several fancifully titled lilies, and dance. The divertissement illustrates their pas flirtations, jealousies, and unions in dance. Les Réservistes à venir (FB, 1887) ? -Military processions (travesty)

548 Question marks denote dances or scenes referred to in synopses or in the press but not clearly described.

387

Le Château de Mac-Arrott (FB, 1887) -Scotland: -Scottish dances -Village festivities Poor young man is in love with young noblewoman. They are highland lake -Villagers waltz around noblewoman -Royal procession eventually united despite father’s objections with the help of a with palace in -Pas de deux for lovers -Storm fairy (an old beggar woman to whom the poor boy had earlier distance -Divertissement of forest fairies with -Archery competition offered aid). -Gothic palace variations and ensemble dances -Princess plays an organ to distract -enchanted (includes a variation for united father—organ later comes to life forest lovers) and plays on its own Presse-Ballet (FB, 1888) Contemporary -Journals dance, march, create -Final triumphant march of Le Petit Personifications of local journals including Le Gaulois, Gil Fantasy tableaux journal carrying a notice Blas, Le Figaro, Le Temps, L’Événement, La Gazette des announcing its current distribution tribunaux, La Vie parisienne, L’Officiel, Le Soleil, Le of 950 000 copies National, Charivari, L’Autorité, Le Courrier français, Le Radical, L’Intransigeant, La Lanterne, Le Sport, Le Matin, Le Soir, La Liberté, La Justice, Le Petit Journal. Dans l’inconnu (FB, 1888) Japan: gardens -Dances performed by village girls in -Japanese sets and costumes A young Japanese man is in love with a young Japanese front of girl’s house woman who is to be married off by her father to a wealthy old -Dances at wedding reception man. The young couple is eventually united with the help of the Fairy of Love (they trick the old man, who breaks his vows and demands the return of his money). Les Almées (FB, 1888) -New dances with more complex Reprise of Métra’s Les Fausses almées originally poses by Justamant (Le Gaulois) choreographed by Mariquita in 1874 Les Baigneuses (FB, 1889) -Semi-nudity (bathers undress to go Women removed their clothes and head to the water to bathe; swimming) they are watched by an admiring group of shepherds. Flagrant délit (FB, 1889) Bretagne: -Village dances -Villagers costumed in groups of A young man dances with a young woman. She leaves; a Church, house -Pas de deux for lovers different colours to create shifting second enters; he dances with her and they wander into the with rural -Dances for coupled up villagers patterns “Lovers’ Woods” (a sign reads “Bois d’amour”). The first landscape woman returns and is angered by the man’s inconsistency. She summons the villagers, who join the trio in the woods. An old man tries to sort the situation out, but by then all of the villagers have coupled up and are dancing. All ends well.

388

Joujoux-Ballet (FB, 1889) Toyshop -Toys come to life and dance Toys brought to life by toy maker in his workshop (reminiscent -Dance for doll fairy of Coppélia and Mariquita’s Les Joujoux) Marine (FB, 1890) Toulon: Port -Two divertissements -Military display (travesty) Marines perform exercises under orders from their captain. with ships in -Apotheosis display of flags They take a break. A couple dance and invite their friends to background join: divertissement. They are ordered back to their exercises. A fanfare is heard and a French admiral and his officers enter. After polite exchanges and mutual felicitations, all dance together: divertissement Paris-Turf (FB, 1890) Paris: -Women dance around the successful -Tableaux of parading Parisians A young college man seeks to gamble his modest savings. He Longchamps gambler (waltz) wearing the latest fashions is surrounded by elegant society and jockeys. All flirt and hippodrome -jockeys (in travesty)… parade about. The student bets on an unlikely horse who wins; -Horse race he is suddenly wealthy. He (or the winning jockey?) becomes betrothed to a pretty young woman. Une Répétition aux Folies-Bergère (FB, 1890) Contemporary: -Eccentric dancing (cancan) -Costumed in groups of different Behind-the-scenes during the rehearsal of a ballet: the ballet Music-hall -Dancers do their warm-up exercises colours (for shifting patterns) master teaches a dancer a new pas excentrique; the répétiteur and rehearse a ballet -Dancers in rehearsal outfits flirts with the ballet girls; the ballet master asks the répétiteur -Aerial ballet by Enrichetta Comolli -Featured ballerina Mlle Comolli to play a new score and they bicker; the corps rehearses but from the Eden-Theatre performs terribly; all enter the stage: the divertissement begins. Le Roi s’ennuie (FB, 1890) Château -National dances -National costumes A young monarch who can’t be cheered up is offered a parade -Ballet as royal entertainments -Royal decor and costumes of entertainments including dances by princesses, Scots, Hungarians, Poles, etc. Unmoved, he turns and watches a young man in his garden steal oranges for his beloved. The monarch is moved by the scenes of love and joins in the dancing and gaiety. Le Capitaine Charlotte (Cas, 1890) Lisbon, Portugal -National dances by villagers -Parade of officers (travesty) Adventures of a young Parisian woman in Lisbon. Adventures -Battle include dressing up as an officer, running a hostel, hunting, and fighting a duel. At the end of the ballet she is united with her lover.

389

Un Atelier fin de siècle (FB, 1891) Artist’s studio -Dances of seamstresses and painting A painter is looking for inspiration. A neighbour enters to students (?) light her cigarette. She sits for him, but he can’t paint her -Divertissement of paintings that features in the right place; instead, he kisses her. Students come alive enter and are delighted to find a woman amongst them; she calls for her friends. Revelries. A wealthy amateur enters: delighted, he buys the paintings, which come to life and dance. Chansons (FB, 1891) Fantasy -Divertissement during wedding -Dancers dressed up as famous The queen of song announces the union of two famous songs. festivities singers past and present (Paulus, All famous songs are invited to attend: Au clair de la lune, Yvette Gilbert, Thérésa) Cadet-Roussel, Malbrouck, etc. As they prepare to sign the -Singing? marriage certificate, they notice the absence of witnesses and ladies of honour: Paulus, Yvette Guilbert, Thérésa, Duparc… They enter, sing, drink, and dance. The lovers (la Mère Michel and le Juif Errant) are sent off to end the night together. Les Perles (FB, 1891) -Seaside -Dances of fishermen and The tide recedes and exposes the bottom of the sea. Fishermen -Jeweller’s fisherwomen and women come to collect seafood. They find pearls in workshop -Divertissement of pearls in shells. A young fisherman forgets his fiancé and falls in love jeweller’s workshop with a pearl. The others, less enamoured, call for a (specifically Jewish) jeweller, who sets them. The young man, forced to sell his pearl, is distraught. Back at the jeweller’s workshop, he tries to win the pearl’s heart but she chooses life with a lord. The fisherman returns to his ill-used fiancé. Scaramouche (NT, 1891) Stately home -Cortège for nuptials of Colombine -Battle between Scaramouche and Scaramouche given magical mask and sword by so and Gilles Arlequin that he can conquer Colombine’s love; she is betrothed to -Festivities for nuptials of Colombine -Magic tricks with disappearing and Gilles. Midnight strikes in the midst of magic tricks and he and Gilles cloning characters loses his powers. Gilles and Colombine are united. -Futuristic visions: ballet of children Les Folies parisiennes (FB, 1892) Palace of the -Dances from famous operettas -Opening tableau of personified Mephisto and Gaîté try to create a hit operetta by mixing the Folies- -Dances for la Goulue favourite operettas in front of right ingredients. They invite old hits to deposit their greatest parisiennes medallions representing Offenbach, attributes in a large pot. Famous operettas parade, sing, and Hervé, Lecocq, Audran, Vasseur dance before them.

390

Orsowa (FB, 1892) Idyllic forest -Hungarian party with national -Tableau of hundreds of flowers of Mephisto takes over the last remaining bit of earthly paradise clearing by dances different colours open at once. not yet under his control. Sub-plot of young Hungarian lovers waterfall -Dances by goddess of dance and her -Mephisto offers rejected lover united; a young man is first spurned by the woman he loves fairies consolation of seductions (riches, and is tested by Mephisto’s temptations but all ends well. -Dance of flowers beauty, drink…impersonated) -Final dance after couple is united -Seduction scene, love scene -Festive gathering of young locals Rêve d’or (FB, 1892) France, era of -Dream sequence: dances of money -Personifications of coins and bills Poor young man in love with wealthy young woman. Young Charles X -Apotheosis: dance of money with -Personifications of Love and man finds a banker’s wallet full of money. As he sleeps, he (1820s) reappearance of Fortune Fortune sees a beautiful ballet of coins and bills. When he awakens, he returns the wallet and is rewarded for his honesty: the banker gives him a dowry and convinces the girl’s father to consent. Miroir (FB, 1892) French seaside, -Village wedding (no connection to -Soldiers in travesty Pierrot, a travelling musician, gives a poor shepherdess a era of Louis XV plot) -Personifications of Commedia mirror to show her how beautiful she is; they are betrothed. -Dance lesson at court (18th-century dell’arte figures (musician Pierrot The Shepherdess is discovered to be the daughter of royalty dances) and captain Scaramouche) (her father recognises her by the road; he has a locket with her -March after engagement is combined with royalty in period picture). She is taken to his palace and Pierrot follows. They announced costumes marry despite her change of fortunes. L’Heureuse rencontre (Cas, 1892) Village -Village dances around young man; Village youth dance around a morose young man. An old man more village dances when he joins in wanders in, is reprimanded for stealing fruit, then defended by -Pas de deux of lovers the young man. The elder tells their fortunes. A young woman -Dances in celebration of union enters, tells of her lost love then dances with the young man. She is his former lover, whom he spurned then grieved. He begs forgiveness, she accepts, and they swear eternal fidelity. Fleur de Lotus (FB, 1893) -forest clearing -Royal divertissements with ballet -Love scenes A prince discovers a beautiful peasant girl while out hunting on Indian performed by the Bayadère and corps -Striptease and posed nudity scene and becomes engaged. They return to the palace. Her sister mountainside -Exotic dance in divertissement -Posed fairy tableau comes looking for her, bathes with fairies and unwittingly -Lake in palace -Dance for fairies -Storm steals a precious lotus flower, and is eventually discovered grounds -Contrast of rustic and royal hiding in the reeds. The sisters are united (the stolen flower is costumes/decor forgotten) and the prince’s friend falls in love and proposes.

391

L’Arc-en ciel (FB, 1893) Entrance to cave -Dances of young women in forest -Fight between Pierrot and rival Artist Pierrot in love with Colombine but has rivals. with stream glen -Tableau of corps dancers in Colombine enters, dances with friends, and spurns Pierrot’s running nearby -Fairy dances and Scarf dance in rainbow formation love in favour of a musician. After seeing a rainbow and being rainbow colours -Featured Jane Avril mesmerized by its colours, Colombine is taken to enchanted fairyland in which the colours dance together. She is eventually returned to her musician lover who is revealed to be Harlequin wearing the colours of the rainbow. France-Russie (FB, 1893) French port, -Village dances for Russian officers; -Parade of officers of different Topical divertissement to celebrate the arrival of Russian 1893 -Exchange of display of Russian and ranks in travesty marines in France that week. French and meet, exchange French national dances -Tableau of flags niceties, dance, and parade together before admiring crowds of French villagers. Émilienne aux Quat’z’arts (FB, 1893) Painter’s Studio; -Models displaying their talents for -Undressing scene and nudity Émilienne offers services as model to famous painter, who is Ballroom the painter -Parade of officials in charge of choosing a beauty queen for the evening’s ball. -Ball -Final nudity scene during ball She undresses to reveal her “treasures” and is crowned. At the -Ballet of women covering the nude -Featured Emilienne d’Alençon ball, she is displayed nude (but veiled), which scandalises the beauty queen with flowers. officer of public morals. The painter invokes a fairy who has dancers detach a flower from their toilette to cover Emilienne. When M. Prudery leaves, she throws off her veils and stands on a platform for all to see and adulate. Olympia (O, 1893) Contemporary -Ballet in 2nd tableau fairyland -Parody of Parisians at the recently A young blasé Parisian is amazed by nothing, including the Paris dismantled Montagnes Russes wondrous Montagnes Russes. Olympia arrives and with a -Self-reflexive depiction of wave of her magic wand transports him into a fairyland (i.e the Parisians in the fairyland that was fairyland was a stand-in for the Olympia music hall on opening the new hall night) Ballet blanc (O, 1893) ?

Brighton (Les plaisirs de la plage) (O, 1893) English sea-side -Bathers emerge onto the beach to -Chaotic crowd scenes Various intrigues and entertainments by the sea in England: a dance together (in bathing suits) -Sports and fishing young couple try to escape their parents to be alone together -Ball at the Casino in the evening -Storm -Swimsuit fantasy during winter

392

Bouton d’or (NT, 1893) Spain and Paris -Competition between Parisian and -Lovers spats and wooing French Ballerina dances in Spain. Wealthy man falls in love Spanish dancers (cahut against -Dance rehearsal (in rehearsal with her and follows her back to Paris, leaving his Spanish popular Spanish dance) costumes) dancer-lover behind. After love trysts and entanglements, the -Backstage rehearsal scenes at Opéra -Ballet of final tableau used light Spaniards return together to Spain. (Embedded ballet: King of -Ballet “The Triumph of Aurora” is machine purchased for Loïe Fuller: Darkness falls in love with Aurora and has her removed by the staged within the ballet as a whole. ballet featured dancers disappearing Genie of darkness during the night. He declares his love; she in whirl of coloured lights tricks him into removing his wings; he cannot fly off at the moment of their union and is vanquished by Light and Clarity then dies; Aurora is triumphant.) Les Manœuvres du printemps (Cas, 1893) Jardin des -Divertissements of hussars and -Parisians in period costume Husband sees wife flirting with hussar officer. Officer tries to plantes, 1809 nursemaids. -Officers in travesty pretend otherwise and diverts attention by hiding in an empty -Flirtations bear cave -Encounter between officer and bear in cave Tentations (Cas, 1893) Cave -Dances by enchantresses -Saint-Anthony is shaved, coiffed, Saint-Antoine hallucinates from hunger: he is escorted into the -Land of voluptuousness: pas de and dressed as a Parisian dandy by land of voluptuousness where a multitude of slightly dressed deux, , ballabiles, and a his temptresses blond women emerge from all sides to dance and seduce him. lascivious dance -Scenes of seduction and temptation He nearly succumbs to human frailties but awakens just as he thinks he is lost forever. Les Demoiselles du XXe siècle (FB, 1894) -Modern young ladies perform the latest exercises including dance Merveilleuses et gigolettes (FB, 1894) -Luxemburg -Invited ballerina performs for the -Party scenes in period costume Ball scenes/partying of Napoleon and his circle Palace during officers and ladies -Parading of Napoleon and his men Directoire with -Ballroom dances (included 18th- -Flirtations between men and view of gardens century dances and waltz) ballerina, Officers in travesty -Ballroom -Divertissement for Napoleon -Singing Le Fiancé de cire (O, 1894) Holland -Automatons come to life -Comic scenes for wax dolls Poor boy in love with rich young lady. Complicitous director -Love scene of wax museum devises ruse to bring the two together. Father -Trial with crowd of neighbours throws wax statue into river thinking it is the lover and is tried. -Dutch costumes He is acquitted when the truth is revealed on the condition that his daughter marry the young man.

393

La Fée des poupées (O, 1894) Toy store that -Mechanical dolls dance when -Series of scenes for mechanical Merchant displays his mechanical toys and dolls for customers. turns into a fairy displayed for customers toys Wealthy Englishman buys the fairy doll. After the shop closes kingdom -Toys and dolls come to life after and midnight strikes, all of the toys come to life in a fairy midnight strikes kingdom under the wand of the fairy doll. Merchant awakens and all is in place: a dream or hallucination? L’Étoile de mer (Cas, 1894) ?

Les Joujoux (Cas, 1894) Toy boxes; Dolls and toys come to life and dance -Parade of dolls While children sleep, dolls come to life under enchantment of Rustic outdoor -Battle scene the fairy Elfa. Harlequin and Pierrot dolls fight over a setting -Officer dolls in travesty beautiful doll wearing a gauze gown. When fight gets out of hand, Elfa waves her wand and they are immobilized once more. La Belle et la bête (FB, 1895) Medieval? -Village dances before father’s -Cortèges of friends and neighbours The standard story of beauty and the beast. Ending: the beast Renaissance? journey as the father departs takes poison and passes out. Beauty (named Hilda) is (conflicting -Ballet of roses (60 dancers) -Combination of sumptuous royal frightened and kisses the beast; he turns into a prince. reports in the -Gnomes perform diabolic dance costumes and grotesque characters press) (surround father when he picks rose) -Featured Emilienne d’Alençon in -Grotesque dances for otherworldly travesty as the Prince creatures when Beauty is brought to the palace -Beauty dances around palace La Princesse Idaea (FB, 1895) India -Divertissement in honour of Princess -Exotic majestic decor/costumes A listless Indian princess is offered rich cloths, jewels, and (included dances of bayadères) -Claps of thunder as Buddha danced entertainments, but she remains sad. A Fakir plays his appears from the ether lute for her and sings. She is drawn in and joins the song. He -Exotic songs rips off his robes and reveals a beautiful adolescent body. The princess throws herself into his arms. The father, fearing his magic, locks him in a tower. The Princess follows his song and finds him; her father discovers them together. He is about to strike the boy but Buddha appears and orders his pardon. The father prostrates himself before the god and submits to his daughter’s marriage.

394

Les Mimes d’or (FB, 1895) Paris Stock -Dream sequence: personified money -Parade of beautiful women Poor young stock clerk in love finds way to raise money so Exchange and term deposit tickets dance -Love scenes that he can marry his love: matches beautiful women (mimes -Chaotic scene of stock-market brought to Paris to perform at the Folies-Bergère) up with crash (term deposit tickets fill the paying men who work at the stock exchange. All celebrate air) while he sits alone; there is a stock crash and chaos, he awakens and realises this was a dream. Happily united with his love. Les Baigneuses de Trianon, ou Bains de dames (O, 1895) Versailles, Louis -Officers and ladies dance a minuet -Bathing scene A captain and his officers are in love with the ladies of the XV -The ladies (in bathing suits) dance -Scene of ladies and officers in court. The ladies refuse their advances. While they are for the men for the safe return of their travesty kissing and hinting at bathing, the men steal their clothes then bribe the women for clothes. further flirtations in the woods their return: the women are to dance with them and give them a -High society in period costume kiss in exchange for their clothes. They do and the ladies and officers wander off into the woods in pairs as night falls. Le Scandale du Louvre (O, 1895) Musée du -Reconstructions of Greek dances -Battle scene Night time at the Louvre: figures on vases come to life. They Louvre from decorations on pottery/vases -Personifications of mythical return to inert form as a guard wanders by. figures Sans-Puits-House (Cas, 1895) Student pension -Dances representing the joys of -Students playing games Comedy of students who play tricks on each other and on the modern music halls -Flirtation scene; love scene director—dress up and frighten each other. -Gymnastics exercises (ordered by -Students play tricks on the director director as a punishment) and on each other Vassilissa (Cas/NT?, 1895) -St. Petersburg -Festivities as students celebrate the -Journey of woman lover through Student suspected of hostilities against the Russian -Siberia election of their president harsh winter landscape government is sent to Siberia. Friends and the woman who -Russian dances in a hostel on route -Tableau of children playing and loves him journey there to save him. While in Siberia, the to Siberia people skating in Siberia student saves a child from a bear, is pardoned by the -Celebrations when the student is -Battle with bear government, and is united with his lover. freed -Decor of ice blocks lit up with coloured lights Les Deux tentations (Cas, 1895) Desert -Amusements to entice Saint-Antoine -Seduction scene with drinking and Saint-Antoine retired in his desert cave; sends -Dance for pigs (“comic love duo”) amusements various temptations and is himself chased away by Saint- -Personifications of hermit, of Antoine; Mephistopheles then sends a sow to seduce Saint- Mephistopheles Antoine’s pig.

395

Les Cygnes (FB, 1896) Lake in forest -Dances of sirens and swans -Love scene A hunter sees queen of swans and is struck by her beauty. He clearing (ensembles and solos) -Finale of swan queen and hunter in watches the swans dance then approaches queen. He first boat pulled by swans threatens her with his arrow then expresses his love. They are interrupted by sirens who intend to drag him to the bottom of the lake. The swan queen orders her swans to dance around him to protect him. She faints, he is dragged away by sirens then saved by swan queen and they are united. L’Araignée d’or (FB, 1896) Fantastical cave -Seductive dances of enchantress -Journey through snowy landscape Enchantress Oriana lures men into her cave. Seduced men lie -Giant golden web and spider passively at her feet. Amadis travels across snowy mountains -Featured Liane de Pougy as to cave to rescue her victims. Oriana dances to seduce him but seductress he resists. He awakens men and all head for cave entrance; it is blocked by giant web and symbolic golden spider. Amadis tries to pierce spider’s heart but fails. He falls asleep at the seductress’s feet with the other men. Chez le couturier (FB, 1896) Tailor’s -Waltz of the mannequins -Parading of elegant Parisians in the First act: Parisians come to see an haute-couture tailor (Paul workshop -Grand divertissement of future tailor’s workshop Poiret)—he is treated as a contemporary god. Second act: fashions -Fashion show: some women less fashion show displaying latest and future fashions -Variations for “Fashion” personified dressed than others); men (travesty) wear fantastical futuristic clothes -Parodies of famous personalities with thinly-veiled names: Emilienne de Raçon, Manette Guilbert Arlette (O, 1896) Enchanted rural -Dances for fairies Love triangle: villain tries to remove rival who is engaged to setting woman he fancies. Fiancé makes pact with the villain (who has magic powers) but is saved by fairies who guard over him and by bride who drags him into the church, thus saving him against infernal powers. Rêve de Noël (O, 1896) -Chateau -Snow-flake ballet -Love scene A page and his noble mistress sitting and reading together are -Snow-covered -Battle with bear discovered in an embrace by the girl’s father. Father throws landscape -Cortège of the three kings bringing the page out into a snowy landscape to face an assortment of gifts the Christ child (during fantasy

396 terrors (fantasy scene). The princess is introduced by her winter scene) father to her noble fiancé, a duke. She happily accepts the -Featured Liane de Pougy in offer but maintains secret bond with her page. travesty as the page Vénus à Paris (Cas, 1896) -Olympia -Dance-hall revelries and dances -Personifications of mythical Mars and Venus want to know the wonders that Jupiter sees -Parisian Hall figures drinking champagne and during trips to earth: they escape from Olympia and go (bal Mabille) dancing quadrilles dancing in Paris. Junon and Jupiter come in search of them. -Bolts of lightning unleashed by Junon gets caught up in the revelries and is caught by Jupiter Jupiter’s fury flirting with a young cavalier. Jupiter in a fury condemns Venus to her planet but forgives Junon. Les Amoureux de Venise (Cas, 1896) Renaissance -Villagers gather and dance to the -Love scene with serenade Doge’s son dressed up as poor musician is in love with rich Venice: sound of the young lover’s serenades -Fight between father and another bourgeoisie. He serenades her; she promises marriage against -Balcony scene -Pas de voiles by young lady at home man (tricked by young lover) father’s wishes. He sneaks into her house and is found by -Inside wealthy -Marriage celebrations -Ends with a ride in a magnificently father. His identity is revealed and the union blessed. palazzo decorated gondola that drifts -Greenhouse towards the palace where the couple will live Phryné (FB, 1897) Ancient Greece: -Divertissement of exotic dances -Cortège of Venus, Greek boys (in Sculptor Praxitèle is trying to create statue of Venus. Venus -Painting studio (Assyrians, Phoenicians, Persians, travesty), courtesans, musicians send him the perfect model: Phryné. After various -Outdoors Egyptians, Greeks), Bacchanale -Nudity scene divertissements, Phryné is accused of impropriety by the Old -Court -Dances for Chrysis and Bacchis, the -Trial Héliaste and is brought before a tribunal. She is acquitted after sacred courtesan, musicians -Celebrations after trial she drops her veils and reveals her perfect beauty: no mortal -Phryné’s seductive dances -Choir could be blessed with such bodily perfection. -Phryné dances before the court to prove her purity and innocence -Dance after acquittal (final waltz) Sports (FB, 1897) -Bridal bedroom -Ballet variations -Bedroom scene with husband Bride rejects advances of her husband on their wedding night. -Kingdom of -Dances in kingdom of sports trying to lure wife into bed He invokes the help of Love and Cupid, but they are powerless Sports (60-80 ballerinas) -Personifications of gods to help him regain her favour: the bride has already given her -Demonstrations of sports heart to Sport. We are then transported to the kingdom of performed by women in tight-fitting Sport. Sport sits on his throne and watches benevolently over costumes his devoted ladies who take part in various activities: polo, boxing, football, cycling, dance, and swimming.

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Un Déjeuner sur l’herbe (O, 1897) -Paris, in the Widower falls asleep and dreams of -Contemporary Parisian petite Widowed businessman who owns a lingerie store takes his Marais scantily-clad dancing nymphs bourgeoisie staff to lunch in the countryside each Sunday. Setting for love -Idyllic pastoral -Bathing scene intrigue: he is in love with young woman who is in love with a setting -Sets: shop bedecked with lingerie young man. Widow arrested for immorality and the young couple is united. Pierrot au hammam (O, 1897) -Dances in harem -Bathing scene Pierrot’s experiences in a harem of women bathing and exposing themselves. Sardanapale (O, 1897) Babylon: temple Divertissement of courtesans and -Crowd scene in church Sardanapalus fancies a beautiful young woman during a of gods slaves for Sardanale (with danses -Abduction of woman religious ceremony and takes her to his palace. He orders his -Palace lascives) -Orgy slaves to dance. Peasants revolt against him, he is tricked by -Battle scene (soldiers in travesty) one who had sworn vengeance for the capturing of his newest -Death of courtesans and beauty and the palace is stormed by warriors. Sardanapalus Sardanapalus on burning pyre decides to take his own life in the midst of this orgy and does so, surrounded by his courtesans, as the people swarm into his palace. Don Juan aux Enfers (Cas, 1897) Satan’s cave -Little devils dance a divertissement -Series of seduction scenes Don Juan tries to seduce Mrs. Satan and is punished by Satan -Seductresses dance quadrilles before -Aida Boni danced role of Satan’s and his wife: Don Juan is given a heart and is until eternity Don Juan wife so roles not split as usual. seduced by women who then spurn him. Diamant (FB, 1898) Brussels, 15th -Jeweller’s dream: ballet of precious -Seduction scene: stones seduce Poor young jeweller is in love with wealthy daughter of head century stones (including ballet variations) young man knowing that if he finds jeweller. Her father objects. The young jeweller discovers the out how to cut a diamond, her secret to cutting diamonds and wins the girl’s hand. beauty will overwhelm theirs -Period sets and costumes Le Rêve d’Elias (FB, 1898) India: enchanted -Wife dances for husband to distract -Fairy scene Elias is overcome by curiosity about a cave of precious stones; cave him -Storm fights with wife. He enters cave and is seduced by stars dressed -Dances of stars/precious stones -Seduction scene as precious stones. Estranged couple is later reunited with help -Dances when couple is reunited -Dances in magical sparkling cave of fairy. L’Elevement des Sabines (FB, 1898) ? -Battle scene (warriors in travesty)

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Barbe-Bleue (O, 1898) -Parc of Chateau -Wedding festivities -Nobility in fantastical costumes Standard tale of husband who hides his dead former wives only -Dungeon -Ballet of keys -Featured mimes Thalès and Thylda to have them discovered by his curious young wife. -Chateau interior -Ballet of bats -Choir and soloists Vision! (O, 1898) Fantasy -Waltz of flowers -Picturesque tableaux: -Perfumes made visible kaleidoscopic colour patterns Néron (O, 1898) Rome, under -Dances (including ballet variations) -Love scenes Claudius is in love with the Christian Marcella; Poppea is in Nero during circus entertainments -Sacrifice of Christians love with Claudius. Poppea has Marcella condemned to death. -Gladiator fight Claudius fights for Marcella’s life. He wins but Nero threatens -Duel to have her strangled so that Claudius will get only her body. -Burning of Rome The people rise up against the tyrant who sets Rome on fire. -Featured Emilienne d’Alençon Claudius is reunited with Marcella amidst the inferno. Mme Malbrouck (Cas, 1898) 18th Century -Party during war -Series of parties Mme Malbrouck flirts with a knight when her husband is off at -Ball the night of the wedding with -High society in period costumes war. Husband fakes death to trick her. She prepares to marry country dances, minuet and gavotte -Military men in travesty the knight. Her husband appears at her wedding, but when -Wedding festivities (divertissement) -comic pseudo-funeral cortège Mme Malbrouck doesn’t recognise him, he leaves the new (cortège of bedraggled army couple and returns to war. officers) -Integrated tune of “Malbrouck s’en va-t-en guerre” as leitmotif) La Princesse au Sabbat (FB, 1899) Egypt: Witches’ -Princess under spell performs -Exotic Egyptian decor/costumes A princess in search of eternal youth and beauty is ensnared by den lascivious dances evil witches. She is eventually rescued by her lover. -Egyptian palace -Princess and her court ladies dance -Dances for fantastical creatures (witches, giant frog, beatle...) Les Grandes courtisanes (FB, 1899) -Olympia -Courtesans dance seductively -Courtesans through the ages in Diana allowed by Jupiter to travel down to earth to know -Parisian dance (including 1830s cancan) period costumes mortal love. She is incarnated as various famous courtesans. hall -Goddess performs dance-hall -Dance-hall revelries Disgusted with the inanities of human love, she returns to quadrilles Olympia. Le Prince Désir (FB, 1899) -Mysterious -Courtesans and virgins summoned -Courtesans seduce Prince and Prince with ideals of purity resists the seductive temptations of Grotto by “Life” dance seductively seduce Prince’s Virgins “Life” personified. She, Life, then mends her ways, becomes -By the sea -Dance of personified pearls that docile and passive, and the Prince falls in love with her. emerge out of shells

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Les Sept péchés capitaux (O, 1899) -Inside poverty- -Dance of infernal spirits -Impersonated sins seduce Pierrot Pierrot resists series of temptations (personified seven deadly stricken home -Dances of deadly sins -Battle between good Genii and sins sent by Satan) and remains true to his love, Pierette. -Satan’s palace Satan -Choir Les Mille et une nuits (O, 1899) -Exotic dances -Featured Julia Seales, a London music-hall star, and Emilienne d’Alençon in travesty La Montagne d’aimant (Cas, 1899) -Island of eternal -Dances of beautiful island maidens; -Soldiers try to seduce women Soldiers land on a secluded island populated by beautiful spring on which -Dances to distract themselves from -Women try to seduce soldiers women. The knight and his men offer their hearts, no man has ever visions of men that haunt them; (soldiers in travesty) jewels…Queen chases them off but her maidens are obsessed. spent the night -Dances to celebrate unions of They leave their island to find the soldiers. The mollified -Officers’ island soldiers and women queen offers her “beauty” to the knight; all are united. Le Tzigane (Cas, 1899) -Bohemian -Villagers dance as boy plays violin -Village workers gather for dances Young man disobeys father and leaves family business to seek village -Cousin dances seductively (violin -Argument with father a career as a violinist. His cousin joins him to keep him -Inn by the accompaniment) to raise money -Inn full of soldiers (travesty) company. They perform in Inns as they travel (she dances). Danube -Dream divertissement: music notes -Dream sequence He is poor so he composes. All ends well and he returns and rhythms written by the young -Scene of forgiveness and home, forgiven, and married to his cousin (?) man come to life and dance apotheosis Cythère (FB, 1900) Cypress: mythic -Venus treats students to show of -Seduction scene and love scenes Eros, driving a car, arrives to help students sort out their love location and seductive dances (to waltzes). Had -Historical exoticism/anachronisms lives. He brings them to Cypress where Venus presents them characters but corps and star ballerina -Use of car onstage with a series of lascivious dances performed by well-known 1830s costumes, couples: Romeo and Juliet, Elsa and Lohengrin…Eros pierces sets and 1900s the heart of a reluctant young lady with his lovers’ arrow and automobile she and her suitor are united Madame Bonaparte (FB, 1900) Directoire Paris, -Dances at party: period dances; -Flirtations amongst nobility Mme Napoleon has party while husband off at war. Gives rise Bonaparte’s Vestri and his best student are invited -Spectacular tableau of soldiers in to series of flirtations (hers and friends). Napoleon returns home to dance (full ballet divertissements French and Austrian uniforms unexpectedly and is angry by partying while he was at war. including a parody of a current -Nobility partying in period He is appeased by wife. At a later ball, Napoleon flirts openly success at the Opéra, La Vestale). costume with the ballerina. Wife consults with fortune teller who shows her future: Napoleon with a different wife leaning over a cradle. Wife returns to throne with heavy heart.

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La Belle aux cheveux d’or (O, 1900) Forest clearing -Dances of dragonflies and tadpoles, -Drinking song mimed by Thalès Young man wanders away from hunting party. He falls asleep forest fairies and nymphs and is surrounded by dancing forest creatures. He awakens and picks magic flower that binds him to beautiful princess. He is subjected to temptations sent by evil giant but resists, conquers giant, and is united with the princess. Watteau (O, 1900) French court of -Festivities at court -Flirtations of well-known figures Comic scenes of flirtation and love: Watteau tricked into Marly -Backdrops that reproduced revealing his love for a young woman. Watteau’s paintings -Featured Thylda as Watteau and Liane de Pougy as his love interest Faust (O, 1900) -Ballet of flowers (marguerites) when -Parade of soldiers Ballet arrangement of Hervé’s operetta Le Petit Faust, a Faust travels around the world parody of Gounod’s Faust. looking for Marguerite -Dance of devils Cléopâtre (Cas, 1900) Cleopatra’s -Festivities in Cleopatra’s chambers -Orgy Cleopatra seduces Marc-Anthony (her slaves are also palace -Cleopatra’s courtesans dance to -War seductresses) but they are caught off-guard and die in a siege. seduce soldiers -Death in siege -Cleopatra dances to seduce Marc- Anthony -Divertissement during orgy? Cadet-Roussel (Cas, 1900) -Paris Louis XVI -Dances of three women in love with -Parade of soldiers (travesty) Young soldier goes off to war despite the devotion of three -Tyrolean Inn Cadet-Roussel during festivities -Tableau displaying colourful flags young women: he resists their temptations to serve his country. -Party in Paris before Cadet-Roussel’s departure of Austria and France He returns victorious and is united with one of the young drawing room -Festivities after war -perfect Louis XVI reconstitutions women. -dance of officers, hussars, Tyrolean -featured Angèle Héraud as Cadet Napoli (FB, 1901) Seaside Naples -Neapolitan dancers and singers -Sets: sea and blue sky, white and Parisian escapes frenetic Paris to visit the city of Naples. She perform tarantella, zingara pink houses, bright costumes, etc meets a handsome Neapolitan singer. napolitaine... during Parisian winter -Featured Christine Kerf (from 1900 Expo Palais de la danse) and 60 corps dancers Noce auvergnate (FB, 1901) ?

401

Lorenza (FB, 1901) Renaissance ? -Nudity scene (model poses as Benvenuto Cellini searches for the perfect model for his statue Florence Venus statue) of Venus. Finds it in the beautiful duchess Lorenza de Médicis -Featured Cléo de Mérode from who offers him her unveiled body in the name of art. Opéra as nude model L’Impératrice (O, 1901) Bosphrus: Greek -Divertissements to entertain ruler; -Love scene and love spats Bored imperial ruler made happy by smoking magic herb Antiquity mime performs character dance -Comic scenes with eunuch servants brought by poor young mime who seeks monetary prize for his -Quay-side in -Nudity scene (bathing ruler) beloved. Ends with jealousies between the two women: ruler fishing village -Pantomime within a pantomime is fatally wounded and dies glorious, life-fulfilling, orgasmic -Imperial palace -Featured Caroline Otéro as death. -Return to docks imperial ruler Paris-Cascade (O, 1901) -Parisian dress -Ball held at the Opéra: included a -Storm scene Husband flirts with shop girl and invites her to a ball. During and millinery ballet divertissement titled “Les -Flirtations the ball, the wife, masked, tricks her husband into falling in shop Éléments” for personified Earth, Air, -Parisians in fancy dress love with her in retaliation for his flirtations, then reveals her -Opéra Fire, and Water. -Self-reflexive identity. She dances in triumph to taunt him. La Camargo (Cas, 1901) 18th century Behind the scenes at the Opéra: -Behind-the-scenes Dancers rehearse for the ballet Ulysses and Calypso. Intrigues: -Opéra rehearsals -Fight scene new star discovered in La Camargo. Old star is jealous and -Inn on route to -Village dances at the Inn -Palace festivities tries to have La Camargo kidnapped when on route to Versailles -Camargo dances for Versailles. Camargo dances for bandits and one of them -Versailles -Versailles festivities: dances in the recognise her: he escorts her to Versailles. Palace festivities gardens, dances by La Camargo and reconciliation of the ballerinas.

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_____. Les Sources du Nil. Paris: Lissarrague, 1882.

Hervé. Sphinx. Paris: Choudens père et fils, c.1879.

_____. Faust à l’Olympia, MS full orchestral score. F-Po Fonds Hervé 130.

_____. Faust à l’Olympia. Paris: Heugel, 1901.

Hirschmann, Henri. Néron. Paris: Choudens, 1898.

_____. Les Baigneuses de Trianon, ou, Bains de dames. Paris: S. Humblot, 1896

Lecocq, Charles. Barbe-Bleue. Paris: Choudens, 1898

Messager, André. Mignons et vilains. Paris: s.n. 1879.

_____. Les Vins de France. Paris: E. Menier, 1879.

_____. Fleur d’oranger. Paris: Henry Lemoine, 1878.

Messager, André, and George Street. Scaramouche. Paris: Choudens fils, 1892.

Pfeiffer, George. Cléopâtre, orchestral score of excerpts. Paris: Paul Dupont, 1900.

Pierné, Gabriel. Bouton d’or. Paris: Choudens fils, 1893.

Thomé, Francis. Le Prince Désir, MS full score. F-Po Fonds Thomé (1-4).

_____. La Fée du rocher. Paris: Chaix, 1894.

Varney, Louis. La Princesse Idaea. Paris: Léon Grus, 1895

Vidal, Paul. L’Impératrice. Paris: Choudens, 1903.

Wenzel, Léopold. Brighton (Les Plaisirs de la Plage). F-Pn Vm12g.14679 and F- Po Res. 1064 (1-8).

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Institutional History and Administrative Information F-Psc “Registres-recensement, Folies-Bergère, 1886-1917” “Registres-recensement, Olympia, 1893-1913” “Registres-recensement, Casino de Paris, 1890-1914” F-Pn Folies-Bergère 8-RO-15722 (1-14) Casino de Paris 8-RO-15700 (1-10) Olympia 8-RO-15747 (1-28) F-Pan F21 4684 (45) Folies-Bergère affaires générales, administration GB-Lv letters and clippings dossiers (uncat.)

Music-Hall Programmes F-Pn Fifty programmes for all three halls in the Collection Rondel (Arts du spectacle) filed by ballet title: 8-RO-10740 to 8-RO-11650 Twenty Folies-Bergère programmes from the 1880s to 1920s collected by year in WNA-214. Programmes in clippings dossiers filed by artist’s name F-Po Dossier Programmes Folies-Bergère, PRO.B.169 (1876-1877) Dossier Programmes Folies-Bergère, PRO.B.169 (1890-1949) Dossier Programmes Olympia PRO.B.275 Dossier Programmes Casino de Paris, PRO.B.62 F-Po Five Folies-Bergère programmes in Fonds Hervé. Div. 1 Programmes

Ballet Librettos/Synopses Librettos and synopses filed by ballet title in F-Pa, F-Pn (Arts du spectacle and Tolbiac), and F-Po Piano scores with text printed above staff in F-Pn (Musique and Arts du spectacle), F-Po, US-NYp, GB-Lv Manuscript librettos (Folies-Bergère) sent to the Ministère des Beaux-Arts in F-Pan F18 1045 Censures. Folies-Bergère. Synopses in press reviews (see list of journal titles below)

Iconography Photographs of the halls’ interiors and exteriors: F-Pn (Photo-estampes and Arts du spectacle filed by city district and theatre), F-Po in theatrical dossiers, and the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris listed by theatre Studio photographs of dancers and choreographers: F-Pn (Photo-estampes and Arts du spectacle) and F-Po filed individually by artist’s name (Lina Campana, Emilienne d’Alençon, Mlle Litini, Mme Mariquita, Cléo de Mérode, Caroline Otéro, Liane de Pougy). Advertisement posters: F-Pn (Photo-estampes), F-Po, Musée d’art décoratif de Paris, and the Musée de Montmartre, Paris Press clippings with drawings: F-Pn (Arts du spectacle 4-ICO-THE 4376-4399) and F-Po (Scènes: Estampes) in dossiers by title of theatre or work. Images in the theatrical press and illustrated journals (Le Courrier français, Les Feux de la rampe, Le Journal amusant illustré, Les Premières illustrées, Le Théâtre, Le Théâtre illustré)

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Biographical Information (Authors and Performers) F-Pn Artists’ dossiers in the Collection Rondel (8-RO-2400 to 8-RO-4500 and 8-RO-11655 to 8-RO-12414) F-Po Individual dossiers by artist’s name Composers: Antoine Banès, Edmond Diet, Louis Ganne, Henri José, Oscar de Lagoanère, Charles Lecocq, André Messager, Olivier Métra, Edmond Missa, Gabriel Pierné, Léo Pouget, Francis Thomé, Frédéric Toulmouche, Louis Varney, Paul Vidal, Leopold Wenzel; Dancers/Choreographers: Aïda Boni, Lina Campana, Jeanne Chasles, Alfred Curti, Suzanne Derval, Jeanne Ducastel, Julia Duval, Henri Justamant, Jane Margyl, Madame Mariquita, Cléo de Mérode, Egidio Rossi, Thalès, Jane Thylda, Odette Valéry, Louise Willy. F-Pse Artists’ dossiers (Composers: Louis Desormes, Louis Ganne, Edmond Missa, Francis Thomé; Choreographer: Madame Mariquita) F-Pan Aj13 454 and Aj13 1137: Henri Justamant, Mlle Mariquita US-NYp Artist’s dossiers: Louis Desormes, Mme Mariquita Certificate of death (Madame Mariquita) at the municipal archives of the Mairie de Paris du 9e arrondissement (city hall). Obituaries in the daily press (see below)

Clippings Files (reviews, drawings, photographs, biographical information) F-Pn Press clippings in the Collection Rondel (Arts du spectacle): “Recueils factice d’articles de presse” filed by title of work, name of theatre, or name of artist F-Po clippings dossiers filed by title of work, name of theatre, or name of artist

Newspapers: Theatrical and Musical Journals: Le Courrier français Les Annales du théatre et de la musique L’Écho de Paris L’Art musicale Le Figaro Le Courrier musicale et théâtrale Le Gaulois Comoedia Gil Blas L’Écho musicale Le Journal L’Entr’acte Le Journal amusant illustré Les Feux de la rampe Le Journal des débats politiques et littéraires Le Ménestrel Le de France Le Monde artistique Le Petit journal Le Monde musicale La Presse Musica La Revue illustrée Les Premières illustrées Le Temps La Revue et gazette musicale de Paris La Vie parisienne Les Soirées parisiennes Le Théâtre Le Théâtre illustré

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