'Some Talk of Alexander' 4 I James Harvey D'Egville^Hdthe'Eiiglislf Ballet 1770-1836/ '^^4 Keith Cavers Dip. Stg.Man.(R.A.D.A.) B.A. (Hons) F.R.S.A. Thesis submitted in fulfilment o f the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy. UNIVERSITY OF SURREY DEPARTMENT OF DANCE STUDIES September 1994. ProQuest Number: 27557438 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 27557438 Published by ProQuest LLC (2019). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 Copyright Keith Cavers 1994 Abstract James Harvey D'Egville, dancer, choreographer and man of the theatre, was the only British choreographer of note on the international ballet scene between John Weaver in the early years of the 18 th century, and Anton Dolin and Ninette de Valois in the early 20th. During his sixty- year career in the theatre he worked with many of the most illustrious dancers and choreographers of his day, he was a pupil of both Dauberval and Noverre; he danced with Vestris, Didelot, Vigano, and Aumer; and brought both Deshayes and Blasis to London. This thesis examines D'Egville's contribution to the English ballet through a study of his theatrical family background, training, career, and his works for the theatre, and attempts to explain his comparative invisibility in the 20th century. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My particular thanks are due to Professor M. McGowan, and Professor J. Lansdale. I would also like to acknowledge the assistance of the staff of the British, London, and Westminster City Libraries, and John Gill, Rosslyn Glassman, and the late Edwin Binney III, for their help and encouragement. CONTENTS Illustrations CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION p.l 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Two twentieth century views of James Harvey D'Egville. George Chaffee and Ivor Guest. 1.3 Methodology 1.4 The Thesis CHAPTER 2 THE BACKGROUND TO THE FAMILY BUSINESS pl7 2.1 The staging of theatrical dance 2.2 The Opera and the King's Theatre 2.3 The performance 2.4 The performers 2.5 The audience 2.6 Dance on the London Stage 2.7 The minor theatres CHAPTER 3 DAUBERVAL'S INGENIOUS ELEVE p38 3.1 Background of the family D'Egville Peter D'Egville at the Theatres Royal 3.2 James Harvey D'Egville - Early years in the Theatre 3.3 Vestrismania in the 1781-2 season 3.4 James Harvey D'Egville dancing in London 1786-91 3.5 "The Prospect Before Us" - Rival theatres and rival companies CHAPTER 4 CHIRON AND ALEXANDER - D'EGVILLE INCHARGE pJO 4.1 Alexander at Drury Lane 4.2 D'Egville at The London Opera 1799-1809 4.3 D'Egville in exile 4.4 D'Egville's return to the Opera 1826-7 4.5 Swansong - D'Egville's Haymarket season of 1836 CHAPTER 5 D'EGVILLE'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE ENGLISH BALLET p. 120 5.1 D'Egville's choreographic works 5.2 The subject matter of D'Egville's ballets 5.3 The form of D'Egville's ballets 5.4 D'Egville's dancers and the act of performance 5.5 The wider context: works for the theatre and social dances CONCLUSION p. 155 Bibliography p. 162 Choreochronicle p. 165 Appendix A Times Letter 10th July 1809. Appendix B Scenario of Alexander the Great Appendix C Scenario of Achille et Diedamie Appendix D Scenario of Justine Appendix E Contemporary printed biographies List of Illustrations Plate 1 James Harvey D'Egville (Frontispiece) Plate 2 Janet Hilligsberg in Le Jaloux Puni Plate 3 D'Egville and Deshayes in Achille et Diedamie Plate 4 Engraving by Choffard (la fille mal gardée) Plate 5 A Swiss School print by Sigmund Freudenberger Plate 6 Vestris, Simonet, & Baccelli in Jason et Medee Plate 7 Auguste Vestris in Ninette de la Cour Plate 8 Miss De Camp and the Young D'Egvilles in Jemmy's Return Plate 9 Marie Taglioni in La Bayadere Plate 10 Fanny Elsler in La Voliere Plate 11 Characters in Garrick's The Jubilee Plate 12 Bill from Webster Senior's School Plate 13 Auguste Vestris in Les Amans Supris Plate 14 Giovanna Baccelli in Les Amans Supris Plate 15 The Royal Circus Plate 16 Miss De Camp as Rosa in The Caravan Plate 17 Michael Kelly Plate 18 Miss Gayton Plate 19 Brocard & Duval in La Naissance de Venus Plate 20 Mile Parisot Plate 21 Fanny Bias Plate 22 Jules Perrot in Flore et Zeohvr by Thackaray Plate 23 Auguste Vestris - "Any Goose Can" Plate 24 The Celebrated Pas de Quatre Plate 25 Marie Taglioni by A. E. Chalon Plate 26 Auguste Vestris & Mile Narcisse in Minuet de la Cour Plate 27 Drawing by Huet Viliers for Achille et Diedamie aquatint Plate 28 "A Peep at the Parisot" Plate 29 Marie Taglioni - pointe A. E. Chalon watercolour (detail) Plate 30 Mile Mees en pointe Plate 31 Mlle Luppino en pointe MATERIAL REDACTED AT REQUEST OF UNIVERSITY Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Two Twentieth Century Views of James Harvey D'Egville George Chaffee and Ivor Guest. 1.3 Methodology 1.4 Thesis Structure 1.1 Introduction On the evening of Thursday 12 February 1795, after an unprecedented 54 rehearsals, the new stage at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane at last received a production designed to make the most of its vast dimensions, Alexander the Great; or. The Conquest of Persia, a pantomime ballet on a vast scale and which used actors, singers, dancers, a menagerie of animals, and two hundred soldiers. Its British-born choreographer, James Harvey D'Egville, then aged only twenty-five, performed the title role. D'Egville, a dancer, choreographer, teacher, and theatre manager, had an active career lasting over sixty years. He was the most prolific British-born choreographer since John Weaver and the most important native talent in ballet between Weaver and the twentieth century dancer/choreographers Dame Ninette de Valois and Anton Dolin. It is curious, then, that he is not better known. The question that prompts this research is whether he merited more than the relative obscurity which the twentieth century has afforded him. D'Egville's celebrity as a dancer might be inferred simply from the existence of an outstanding aquatint engraving [plate 3] made in the early years of the nineteenth century, which depicts A. J. J. Deshayes and D'Egville in a scene from a ballet first produced in 1804, D'Egville's Achille et Deidamie. The print shows two male dancers in a pas de deux performing a 'lift' - D'Egville is holding his partner, Deshayes, above his head. Modern audiences are accustomed both to 'lifts' and to men dancing together but both the setting and the story of this ballet is strictly classical. The ballet in D'Egville's day was clearly very different from that which is seen today - though one ballet which D'Egville knew well, Dauberval's La Fille mal gardée, is still performed. D'Egville studied under Dauberval and produced La Fille mal gardée for the London Opera, and many of his own ballets were made in a similar genre, but the narrative classical ballets d'action of Vestris and Noverre are gone forever. D'Egville produced his last ballets in London in 1836. But it is worth asking how a veteran like D'Egville, who had danced on the London stage as a child in the season of 1780-81 when the Vestris' had conquered London society, was still creating ballets in the age of Taglioni and the 'Romantic Ballet.' views of the ballet of the past are dominated by those few works of the period which have survived (in whatever form) and, in this era, particularly by Jules Perrot's masterpiece Giselle. The popularity of ballet as a theatre art in the era when Giselle was created is well documented and the name generally given to ballet at this period is 'The Romantic Ballet'. This term is used by different authors to mean different things and covers a wide period within the nineteenth century from around 1820 to 1860 and often beyond. The period prior to this is often referred to CVS 'The Pre-Romantic Ballet'.^ These divisions of ballet into different 'eras' are problematic. The lines are drawn at a later date, and generally by authors who are trying to create categories which reinforce their own assessments by including or excluding problematic, unclear, or transitional works. To label, as Marian Hannah Winter^ does, all ballet between the court ballets of Louis XIV and Taglioni's debut at the Paris opera as 'Pre-Romantic' is unhelpful in the extreme. The result of this over-generalised classification is that more than one hundred years of dance history is defined by the thirty or so years that immediately followed it. One major problem in dealing with issues of dance history, especially in this period, is that ballet developed unevenly, at different rates in different places, and a new fashionable genre could have been exhausted in London and Paris before it reached the court theatres of central Europe. Even within the same city, different theatres had distinctive audiences and house style.