Professional wrestling: ;ballet for the common man.
Notes for a ballet, "The Spell": ... Suddenly Sigmund hears the flutter of wings, and a group of wild swans flies across the moon ... Sigmund is astounded to see that their leader is part swan and part woman -- unfortunately, divided lengthwise. She enchants Sigmund, who is careful not to make any poultry jokes. -- Woody Allen
Professional wrestling: ballet for the common man.
"Nine years of ballet, asshole." -- Shelly Long, to the bad guy after making a jump over a gorge that he couldn't quite, in "Outrageous Fortune"
He went a little to chapel, not at all to the chase, never to the opera. Incorruptible by sacristans, by whippers-in, by ballet-dancers; this made a part of his bourgeois popularity. He had no heart. He went out with his umbrella under his arm, and this umbrella long formed a part of his aureole. He was a bit of a mason, a bit of a gardener, something of a doctor; he bled a postilion who had tumbled from his horse; Louis Philippe no more went about without his lancet, than did Henri IV. without his poniard. The Royalists jeered at this ridiculous king, the first who had ever shed blood with the object of healing.
"Yes, ask her for one of her liqueur cellarets, mine is incomplete; and tell her I shall have the honor of seeing her about three o'clock, and that I request permission to introduce some one to her." The valet left the room. Albert threw himself on the divan, tore off the cover of two or three of the papers, looked at the theatre announcements, made a face seeing they gave an opera, and not a ballet; hunted vainly amongst the advertisements for a new tooth-powder of which he had heard, and threw down, one after the other, the three leading papers of Paris, muttering, "These papers become more and more stupid every day." A moment after, a carriage stopped before the door, and the servant announced M. Lucien Debray. A tall young man, with light hair, clear gray eyes, and thin and compressed lips, dressed in a blue coat with beautifully carved gold buttons, a white neckcloth, and a tortoiseshell eye-glass suspended by a silken thread, and which, by an effort of the superciliary and zygomatic muscles, he fixed in his eye, entered, with a half-official air, without smiling or speaking. "Good-morning, Lucien, good-morning," said Albert; "your punctuality really alarms me. What do I say? punctuality! You, whom I expected last, you arrive at five minutes to ten, when the time fixed was half-past! Has the ministry resigned?"
Owing to the very judicious plan of dividing the two acts of the opera with a ballet, the pauses between the performances are very short, the singers in the opera having time to repose themselves and change their costume, when necessary, while the dancers are executing their pirouettes and exhibiting their graceful steps. The overture to the second act began; and, at the first sound of the leader's bow across his violin, Franz observed the sleeper slowly arise and approach the Greek girl, who turned around to say a few words to him, and then, leaning forward again on the railing of her box, she became as absorbed as before in what was going on. The countenance of the person who had addressed her remained so completely in the shade, that, though Franz tried his utmost, he could not distinguish a single feature. The curtain rose, and the attention of Franz was attracted by the actors; and his eyes turned from the box containing the Greek girl and her strange companion to watch the business of the stage.
Having lifted her head and let her arms droop lifelessly, as ballet dancers do, Natasha, rising energetically from her heels to her toes, stepped to the middle of the room and stood still.
Here the street-cars had stopped running, few people passed, and there were no lights; but a few blocks away we could see the trams, the crowds, the lighted shop-windows and the electric signs of the moving-picture shows--life going on as usual. We had tickets to the Ballet at the Marinsky Theatre--all theatres were open--but it was too exciting out of doors....
And Natasha rose and went out of the room on tiptoe, like a ballet dancer, but smiling as only happy girls of fifteen can smile. When Rostov met Sonya in the drawing room, he reddened. He did not know how to behave with her. The evening before, in the first happy moment of meeting, they had kissed each other, but today they felt it could not be done; he felt that everybody, including his mother and sisters, was looking inquiringly at him and watching to see how he would behave with her. He kissed her hand and addressed her not as thou but as you--Sonya. But their eyes met and said thou, and exchanged tender kisses. Her looks asked him to forgive her for having dared, by Natasha's intermediacy, to remind him of his promise, and then thanked him for his love. His looks thanked her for offering him his freedom and told her that one way or another he would never cease to love her, for that would be impossible.
In the midst of the third ecossaise there was a clatter of chairs being pushed back in the sitting room where the count and Marya Dmitrievna had been playing cards with the majority of the more distinguished and older visitors. They now, stretching themselves after sitting so long, and replacing their purses and pocketbooks, entered the ballroom. First came Marya Dmitrievna and the count, both with merry countenances. The count, with playful ceremony somewhat in ballet style, offered his bent arm to Marya Dmitrievna. He drew himself up, a smile of debonair gallantry lit up his face and as soon as the last figure of the ecossaise was ended, he clapped his hands to the musicians and shouted up to their gallery, addressing the first violin:
Little by little, the rumours spread about town became lost in a maze of uncertainty. It was said that some foolish young prince, name unknown, had suddenly come into possession of a gigantic fortune, and had married a French ballet dancer. This was contradicted, and the rumour circulated that it was a young merchant who had come into the enormous fortune and married the great ballet dancer, and that at the wedding the drunken young fool had burned seventy thousand roubles at a candle out of pure
Franz and the countess exchanged a smile, and then the latter resumed her conversation with Albert, while Franz returned to his previous survey of the house and company. The curtain rose on the ballet, which was one of those excellent specimens of the Italian school, admirably arranged and put on the stage by Henri, who has established for himself a great reputation throughout Italy for his taste and skill in the choreographic art--one of those masterly productions of grace, method, and elegance in which the whole corps de ballet, from the principal dancers to the humblest supernumerary, are all engaged on the stage at the same time; and a hundred and fifty persons may be seen exhibiting the same attitude, or elevating the same arm or leg with a simultaneous movement, that would lead you to suppose that but one mind, one act of volition, influenced the moving mass--the ballet was called "Poliska." However much the ballet might have claimed his attention, Franz was too deeply occupied with the beautiful Greek to take any note of it; while she seemed to experience an almost childlike delight in watching it, her eager, animated looks contrasting strongly with the utter indifference of her companion, who, during the whole time the piece lasted, never even moved, not even when the furious, crashing din produced by the trumpets, cymbals, and Chinese bells sounded their loudest from the orchestra. Of this he took no heed, but was, as far as appearances might be trusted, enjoying soft repose and bright celestial dreams. The ballet at length came to a close, and the curtain fell amid the loud, unanimous plaudits of an enthusiastic and delighted audience.
Of course all the theatres were going every night, including Sundays. Karsavina appeared in a new Ballet at the Marinsky, all dance-loving Russia coming to see her. Shaliapin was singing. At the Alexandrinsky they were reviving Meyerhold’s production of Tolstoy’s “Death of Ivan the Terrible”; and at that performance I remember noticing a student of the Imperial School of Pages, in his dress uniform, who stood up correctly between the acts and faced the empty Imperial box, with its eagles all erased.... The _Krivoye Zerkalo_ staged a sumptuous version of Schnitzler’s “Reigen.”
This use of the horn by Lulli in the one ballet seems to be an isolated instance; no other has yet been quoted. The introduction of the natural horn into the orchestra of the French opera did not occur until much later in 1735 in André Campra's _Achille et Deidamie_, and then only in a fanfare. In the meantime the horn had already won a place in most of the rising opera houses and ducal orchestras[59] of Germany, and had been introduced by Handel into the orchestra in London in his _Water-music_ composed in honour of George I. Entry: FIG
HALÉVY, JACQUES FRANÇOIS FROMENTAL ÉLIE (1799-1862), French composer, was born on the 27th of May 1799, at Paris, of a Jewish family. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire under Berton and Cherubini, and in 1819 gained the grand prix de Rome with his cantata _Herminie_. In accordance with the conditions of his scholarship he started for Rome, where he devoted himself to the study of Italian music, and wrote an opera and various minor works. In 1827 his opera _L'Artisan_ was performed at the Théâtre Feydeau in Paris, apparently without much success. Other works of minor importance, and now forgotten, followed, amongst which _Manon Lescaut_, a ballet, produced in 1830, deserves mention. In 1834 the Opéra-Comique produced _Ludovic_, the score of which had been begun by Hérold and had been completed by Halévy. In 1835 Halévy composed the tragic opera _La Juive_ and the comic opera _L'Éclair_, and on these works his fame is mainly founded. The famous air of Eléazar and the anathema of the cardinal in _La Juive_ soon became popular all over France. _L'Éclair_ is a curiosity of musical literature. It is written for two tenors and two soprani, without a chorus, and displays the composer's mastery over the most refined effects of instrumentation and vocalization in a favourable light. After these two works he wrote numerous operas of various genres, amongst which only _La Reine de Chypre_, a spectacular piece analyzed by Wagner in one of his Paris letters (1841), and _La Tempesta_, in three acts, written for Her Majesty's theatre, London (1850), need be mentioned. In addition to his productive work Halévy also rendered valuable services as a teacher. He was professor at the Conservatoire from 1827 till his death--some of the most successful amongst the younger composers in France, such as Gounod, Victor Massé and Georges Bizet, the author of _Carmen_, being amongst his pupils. He was _maestro al cembalo_ at the Théâtre Italien from 1827 to 1829; then director of singing at the Opera House in Paris until 1845, and in 1836 he succeeded Reicha at the Institut de France. Halévy also tried his hand at literature. In 1857 he became permanent secretary to the Académie des Beaux Arts, and there exists an agreeable volume of _Souvenirs et portraits_ from his pen. He died at Nice, on the 17th of March 1862. Entry: HALÉVY
DELONEY (or DELONE), THOMAS, English ballad-writer and pamphleteer, produced his earliest indisputable work in 1586, and died about 1600. In 1596 Thomas Nashe, in his _Have with you to Saffron Walden_, wrote: "Thomas Deloney, the ballating silk-weaver, hath rime enough for all myracles, and wit to make a Garland of Good Will more than the premisses ... and this deare yeare, together with the silencing of his looms, scarce that, he being constrained to betake himself to carded ale; whence it proceedeth that since Candlemas, or his jigge, John for the king, not one merrie dittie will come from him, but, the Thunderbolt against Swearers,--Repent, England, Repent--and, the strange Judgements of God." In 1588 the coming of the Armada inspired him for three broadsides, which were reprinted (1860) by J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps. They are entitled "The Queenes visiting of the Campe at Tilsburie with her entertainment there," "A Joyful new Ballad, declaring the happie obtaining of the great Galleazzo ...," and "A new Ballet of the straunge and Most cruell Whippes which the Spaniards had prepared." A collection of _Strange Histories_ (1607) consists of historical ballads by Deloney, with some poems from other hands. This collection, known in later and enlarged editions as _The Royal Garland of Love and Delight_ and _The Garland of Delight_, contains the ballad of Fair Rosamond. J. H. Dixon in his preface to _The Garland of Good Will_ (Percy Society, 1851) ascribes to Deloney _The Blind Beggar of Bednall Green_, and _The Pleasant and sweet History of Patient Grissel_, in prose, with the whole of the _Garland of Good Will_, including some poems such as "The Spanish Lady's Love" generally supposed to be by other hands. His other works include _The Gentle Craft_ (1597) in praise of shoemakers, _The Pleasant Historie of John Winchecombe_ (8th ed., 1619), and _Thomas of Reading or the Sixe Worthie Yeomen of the West_ (earliest extant edition, 1612). Kempe, the actor, jeers at these histories in his _Nine Daies Wonder_, but they were very popular, being reprinted as penny chap-books. Entry: DELONEY
Delibes gave up his post as second chorus master at the Grand Opéra in 1872 when he married the daughter of Mademoiselle Denain, formerly an actress at the Comédie Française. In this year he published a collection of graceful melodies including _Myrto_, _Les Filles de Cadiz_, _Bonjour_, _Suzon_ and others. His first important dramatic work was _Le Roi l'a dit_, a charming comic opera, produced on the 24th of May 1873 at the Opéra Comique. Three years later, on the 14th of June 1876, _Sylvia_, a ballet in three acts, one of the composer's most delightful works, was produced at the Grand Opéra. This was followed by _La Mort d'Orphée_, a grand scena produced at the Trocadéro concerts in 1878; by _Jean de Nivelle_, a three-act opera brought out at the Opéra Comique on the 8th of March 1880; and by _Lakmé_, an opera in three acts produced at the same theatre on the 14th of April 1883. Lakmé has remained his most popular opera. The composer died in Paris on the 16th of January 1891, leaving _Kassya_, a four-act opera, in an unfinished state. This work was completed by E. Guiraud, and produced at the Opéra Comique on the 21st of March 1893. In 1877 Delibes became a chevalier of the Legion of Honour; in 1881 he became a professor of advanced composition at the Conservatoire; in 1884 he took the place of Victor Massé at the Institut de France. Entry: DELIBES
The _ballet d'action_, to which the changed meaning of the word is to be ascribed, and therewith the introduction of modern ballet, has been generally attributed to the 15th century. Novelty of entertainment was then sought for in the splendid courts of Italy, in order to celebrate events which were thought great in their time, such as the marriages of princes, or the triumphs of their arms. Invention was on the rack for novelty, and the skill of the machinist was taxed to the utmost. It has been supposed that the art of the old Roman _pantomimi_ was then revived, to add to the attractions of court-dances. Under the Roman empire the _pantomimi_ had represented either a mythological story, or perhaps a scene from a Greek tragedy, by mute gestures, while a chorus, placed in the background, sang _cantica_ to narrate the fable, or to describe the action of the scene. The question is whether mute pantomimic action, which is the essence of modern ballet, was carried through those court entertainments, in which kings, queens, princes and princesses, took parts with the courtiers; or whether it is of later growth, and derived from professional dances upon the stage. The former is the general opinion, but the court entertainments of Italy and France were masques or masks which included declamation and song, like those of Ben Jonson with Inigo Jones for the court of James I. Entry: BALLET
LITERATURE.--One of the most complete books on the ballet is by the Jesuit, Claude François Menestrier, _Des ballets anciens et modernes_, 12mo (1682). He was the inventor of a ballet for Louis XIV. in 1658; and in his book he analyses about fifty of the early Italian and French ballets. See also Noverre, _Lettres sur la danse_ (1760; new ed. 1804); Castel-Blaze, _La Danse et les ballets_ (1832), and _Les Origines de l'opéra_ (1869). Entry: LITERATURE
While thus no high creative talent arose to revive the poetic genius of English tragedy, comedy, which had to contend against the same rivals, naturally met the demands of the conflict with greater buoyancy. The history of the most formidable of those rivals, Music, forms no part of this sketch; but the points of contact between its progress and the history of dramatic literature cannot be altogether left out of sight. H. Purcell's endeavours to unite English music to the words of English poets were now a thing of the past; analogous attempts in the direction of musical dialogue, which have been insufficiently noticed, had likewise proved transitory; and the isolated efforts of Addison[243] and others to recover the operatic stage for the native tongue had proved powerless. Italian texts, which had first made their entrance piecemeal, in the end asserted themselves in their entirety; and the marvellously assimilative genius of Handel completed the triumphs of a form of art which no longer had any connexion with the English drama, and which reached the height of its fashionable popularity about the time when Garrick began to adorn the national stage. In one form, however, the English opera was preserved as a pleasing species of the popular drama. The pastoral drama had (in 1725) produced an isolated aftergrowth in Allan Ramsay's _Gentle Shepherd_, which, with genuine freshness and humour, but without a trace of burlesque, transferred to the scenery of the Pentland Hills the lovely tale of Florizel and Perdita. The dramatic form of this poem is only an accident, but it doubtless suggested an experiment of a different kind to the most playful of London wits. Gay's "Newgate Pastoral" of _The Beggar's Opera_ (1728), in which the amusing text of a burlesque farce was interspersed with songs set to popular airs, caught the fancy of the town by this novel combination, and became the ancestor of a series of agreeable productions, none of which, however, not even its own continuation, _Polly_ (amazingly successful in book form, after its production was forbidden by the lord chamberlain), have ever rivalled it in success or celebrity. Among these may be mentioned the pieces of I. Bickerstaffe[244] and C. Dibdin.[245] The opera in England, as elsewhere, thus absorbed what vitality remained to the pastoral drama, while to the ballet and the pantomime (whose glories in England began at Covent Garden in 1733, and to whose popularity even Garrick was obliged to defer) was left (in the 18th century at all events) the inheritance of the external attractions of the mask and the pageant. Entry: P
DELIBES, CLÉMENT PHILIBERT LÉO (1836-1891), French composer, was born at Saint Germain du Val on the 21st of February 1836. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire under Adolphe Charles Adam, through whose influence he became accompanist at the Théâtre Lyrique. His first essay in dramatic composition was his _Deux sous de charbon_ (1853), and during several years he produced a number of operettas. His cantata _Alger_ was heard at the Paris opera in 1865. Having become second chorus master at the Grand Opéra, he wrote the music of a ballet entitled _La Source_ for this theatre, in collaboration with Minkous, a Polish composer. La Source was produced with great success in 1866. The composer returned to the operetta style with _Malbrouk s'en va-t-en guerre_,--written in collaboration with Georges Bizet, Émile Jonas and Legouix, and given at the Théâtre de l'Athénée in 1867. Two years later came _L'Écossais de Chatou_, a one-act piece, and _La Cour du roi Pétaud_, a three-act opera-bouffe. The ballet _Coppélia_ was produced at the Grand Opéra on the 25th of May 1870 with enormous success. Entry: DELIBES
During the latter part of the 18th and the early years of the 19th century comedy continued to follow the course marked out by its acknowledged master Goldoni, under the influence of the sentimental drama of France and other countries. Abati Andrea Villi, the marquis Albergati Capacelli, Antonio Simone Sografi (1760-1825), Federici, and Pietro Napoli Signorelli (1731-1815), the historian of the drama, are mentioned among the writers of this school; to the 19th century belong Count Giraud, Marchisio (who took his subjects especially from commercial life), and Nota, a fertile writer, among whose plays are three treating the lives of poets. Of still more recent date are L. B. Bon and A. Brofferio. At the same time, the comedy of dialect to which the example of Goldoni had given sanction in Venice, flourished there as well as in the mutually remote spheres of Piedmont and Naples. Quite modern developments must remain unnoticed here; but the fact cannot be ignored that they signally illustrate the perennial vitality of the modern drama in the home of its beginnings. A new realistic style set fully in about the middle of the 18th century with P. Ferrari and A. Torelli; and though an historical reaction towards classical and medieval themes is associated with the names of P. Cossa and G. Giacosa, modernism reasserted itself through P. Bracco and other dramatists. It should be noted that the influence of great actors, more especially Ermete Novelli and Eleanora Duse, must be credited with a large share of the success with which the Italian stage has held its own even against the foreign influences to which it gave room. And it would seem as if even the paradoxical endeavour of the poet Gabrielle d' Annunzio to lyricize the drama by ignoring action as its essence were a problem for the solution of which the stage can furnish unexpected conditions of its own. In any event, both Italian tragedy and Italian comedy have survived periods of a seemingly hopeless decline; and the fear has vanished that either the opera or the ballet might succeed in ousting from the national stage the legitimate forms of the national drama. Entry: 11
_Ballet, &c._--The modern ballet (q.v.) seems to have been first produced on a considerable scale in 1489 at Tortona, before Duke Galeazzo of Milan. It soon became a common amusement on great occasions at the European courts. The ordinary length was five acts, each containing several _entrées_, and each _entrée_ containing several quadrilles. The accessories of painting, sculpture and movable scenery were employed, and the representation often took place at night. The allegorical, moral and ludicrous ballets were introduced to France by Baïf in the time of Catherine de' Medici. The complex nature of these exhibitions may be gathered from the title of one played at Turin in 1634--_La verità nemica della apparenza, sollevata dal tempo._ Of the ludicrous, one of the best known was the Venetian ballet of _I a veritá raminga_. Now and then, however, a high political aim may be discovered, as in the "Prosperity of the Arms of France," danced before Richelieu in 1641, or "Religion uniting Great Britain to the rest of the World," danced at London on the marriage of Princess Elizabeth to the elector Frederick. Outside the theatre, the Portuguese revived an ambulatory ballet which was played on the canonization of Carlo Borromeo, and to which they gave the name of the Tyrrhenic Pomp. During this time also the ceremonial ball (with all its elaborate detail of _courante_, minuet and saraband) was cultivated. The fathers of the church assembled at Trent gave a ball in which they took a part. Masked balls, too, resembling in some respects the Roman Saturnalia, became common towards the end of the 17th century. In France a ball was sometimes diversified by a masquerade, carried on by a limited number of persons in character-costume. Two of the most famous were named "au Sauvage" and "des Sorciers." In 1715 the regent of France started a system of public balls in the opera-house, which did not succeed. Dancing, also, formed a leading element in the Opéra Français introduced by Quinault. His subjects were chiefly marvellous, drawn from the classical mythologies; and the choral dancing was not merely _divertissement_, but was intended to assist and enrich the dramatic action of the whole piece. Entry: M