Romantic Ballet: Evolution and Efflorescence

This book aims to present an appreciation of the historical evolution of ballet in the 17th and 18th centuries, and how this gave birth to the flourishing of a very distinctive art form in the 19th century. The narrative illustrates the efflorescence of ballet during the Romantic period in the great centres of Italy, France, England, Denmark and Russia. Tracing the movement from the work of the great Italian choreographers Salvatore Vigano and Gaetano Gioia in Milan and Vienna in the early nineteenth century (with works like Ludwig van Beethoven’s The Creatures of Prometheus), attention then moves to Paris and the extraordinary flowering of the ballet under Jean-Pierre Aumer (Ferdinand Héold, La Fille mal gardée), Fillipo Taglioni (Jean-Madeleine Schneitzhoeffer, La Sylphide) and Jean Coralli (Adolphe Adam, Giselle, Le Corsaire). This was the period of the five great stars of the era: Marie Taglioni, Fanny Elssler, Fanny Cerrito, Carlotta Grisi and Lucile Grahn. The heyday of the Romantic ballet extended to London with the work of Jules Perrot (Cesare Pugni, Esmeralda) and Copenhagen, where a vigorous native tradition received fresh impulse from the dynamic work of Auguste Bournonville (Hermann Lovenskjold, La Sylphide, Eduard Helsted and Holger Simon Paulli, Napoli). The second half of the century saw the focus of Romantic creativity shift to Russia, where in both Moscow and St Petersburg an age of legendary achievement was initiated by the work of Marius Petipa, working with Ludwig Minkus (Don Quixote, La Bayadere), Peter Illych Tchaikovsky (Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker) and later Alexander Glazunov (Raymonda, The Seasons). This saw the end of an era but the paradoxical sunset glory of a vibrant art at its zenith.