CHAPTER XX

JEAN GEORGES NOVERRE

Supreme above all other writers on the dance and ballet is Jean Georges Noverre, whose genius has been praised by Diderot, Voltaire, by D’Alembert, Dorat, and by David Garrick, the last of whom described him as “the Shakespeare” of the dance.

Born at Paris in April, 1727, he was the son of a distinguished Swiss soldier, who had served as an adjutant in the army of Charles XII, and intended his son for a military career.

Jean, however, early developed a passion for the stage, and especially for dancing, so was apprenticed by his father to the famous Parisian dancer and _maître de ballet_, Dupré.

In August, 1743, young Noverre made his _début_ at the Court of Louis-Quinze in a fête at Fontainebleau, but with only moderate success. Not discouraged, however, he went a little later to the Court of Berlin, where he became a favourite with Frederick the Great and his brother, Prince Henry of Prussia.

He returned to France in 1747, and two years later obtained the post of _maître de ballet_ at the Opéra Comique, where the success of his “Ballet Chinois” aroused considerable jealousy among his colleagues and brought him some distinction in the art world. But the success was not great enough for his ambitious spirit, and he again travelled, and did not return to Paris for nearly twenty years. Noverre and such are seldom recognised as prophets in their own country, until their genius has received recognition abroad. As Castil-Blaze, the historian of opera in France, has neatly expressed it: “Noverre and the two Gardels effected in the dance the same revolution that Gluck and Sacchini achieved some years later in French music.” But Noverre was unable to do this as a young man in Paris fighting against the sheer dead weight of convention and hide-bound authority. He was unable to do it until he had won his laurels abroad.

Sallé, one of the most exquisite and “intellectual” of _danseuses_, had left Paris for a more appreciative audience in London because the Paris Opera disliked her attempts to discard the ridiculous conventions of stage costumes then ruling and to “reform it altogether” in favour of something more congruous.

Noverre visioned to himself a theatre devoted to a kind of ballet as different from that he saw in Paris, as the Russian ballet we have seen to-day differs from that which London had seen in the ’thirties of last century; a ballet that should be informed by a technique so perfect as to be unobtrusive, and combining the arts of dance, pantomime, music and poesy into a new, subtle, resourceful and comprehensive means of artistic expression.

He wanted to see swept away all the mechanical rules of ballet composition, the stereotyped and unimaginative story, the conventional arrangement of stage groups, the stilted “heroic” style of the dancers, the formal sequence of their _entrées_, and above all, the _bizarrerie_ of their masks, their panniers and helmets with waving, funereal plumes. He wanted to infuse a new spirit of art and efficiency into what he found about him and--he had to go elsewhere! An invitation from the Duke of Würtemberg to become _maître de ballet_ at the luxurious Court of Stuttgart gave him his chance, and he founded here the school which was to influence European Ballet in that and the successive generation, as the school of Petrograd seemed like to do to-day.

The publication of his _Lettres sur la Danse et sur les Ballets_, in 1760, dedicated by permission to this same Duke of Würtemberg and Teck, caused a sensation among dancers in Paris and other capitals, and having produced ballets in Berlin, London (1755), Lyons (1758), and Stuttgart, he was reintroduced to Paris by Vestris (who had been in the habit of visiting Stuttgart every year to dance during his vacations) in 1765, when he achieved a success with his tragic ballet of “Medea.”

Later he was to visit Vienna, to superintend the fêtes on the occasion of the marriage of the Archduchess Caroline (Queen of Naples), produce there a dozen ballets, and become appointed Director of Court fêtes and _Maître de Danse_ to the Empress Maria Theresa and Imperial Family, the Empress heaping favours upon him and granting a lieutenancy to his son.

From Vienna he went to the Court of Milan, where he was created Chevalier of the Order of the Cross; then to the Courts of Naples and Lisbon; then to London, and finally again to Paris, in 1775, on the invitation of his old pupil, Marie Antoinette, who made him _Maître des Ballets en Chef_ at the Imperial Academy of Music, and Director of the fêtes at the Petit Trianon; finally retiring at the outbreak of the French Revolution, to London, where it is possible--or, at any rate, in England--some of his descendants may yet be living.

A translation of these wonderful _Lettres sur la Danse et sur les Ballets_ was published in London in 1780, and was dedicated to the then Prince of Wales, later George IV. In the preface the anonymous translator says: “The works of Monsieur Noverre, especially the following letters, have been translated into most of the European languages and thought worthy of a distinguished place in the libraries of the literati.” To which, let me add, they should be so thought to-day, at least in their original French form, for they are of uncommon interest and literary charm.

In the somewhat stiff manner of the English of the late Georgian period, his translator remarks of Noverre’s work in the original: “His manner of writing is chaste, correct and elegant; perfectly master of his subjects, he treats of them with the utmost perspicuity; and by the connection which he proves to exist between the other arts, and that of dancing, the author lays down rules and precepts for them all; so that the poet, the painter and the musician may be greatly benefited by the perusal of his works.”

The translator follows with a short history of dancing, and three extremely interesting epistles to Noverre from the great Voltaire, in the first of which, apropos the publication of Noverre’s _Lettres_, he says: “I have read, sir, your work of genius: my gratitude equals my esteem. You promise only to treat of dancing, and you shed a light on all the arts. Your style is as eloquent as your ballet is imaginative.” In another he remarks: “I have for admiring you, a reason personal to myself; it is that your works abound with poetical images. Poets and painters shall vie with each other to have you ranked with them.” Again he says: “I am surprised that you have not been offered such advantages as might have kept you in France; but that time is no more when France sets the example to all Europe”; but elsewhere remarks, curiously enough: “I believe that your merit will be fully recognised in England, for there they love Nature.”

It was just this love of Nature and “natural” acting which brought Noverre and Garrick together in mutual admiration and friendship, to the latter of whom, by the way, the French _maître_ pays the highest tribute in his tenth letter. To turn, however, to the first: “Poetry, painting and dancing are, or ought to be, the faithful copy of Nature ... a ballet is a piece of painting, the scene is the canvas; in the mechanical motions of the figures we find the colours ... the composer himself is the painter.

“Ballets have hitherto been the faint sketch only of what they might one day be. An art entirely subservient, as this is, to taste and genius, may receive daily variations and improvements. History, painting, mythology, poetry, all join to raise it from that obscurity in which it lies buried; and it is truly surprising that composers have hitherto disdained so many valuable resources.... If ballets are for the most part uninteresting and uniformly dull, if they fail in their characteristic _expression_ which constitutes their very essence, the defect does not originate from the art itself, but should be ascribed to the artists. Are then the latter to be told that dancing is an imitative art? I am indeed inclined to think that they know it not, since we daily see the generality of composers sacrifice the beauties of the dance and forego the graceful _naïveté_ of sentiment, to become servile copyists of a certain number of figures known and hackneyed for a century or more.... It is uncommon and next to impossible now to find invention in ballets, elegance in the forms, neatness in the groups, or the requisite precision in the means of introducing the various figures.”

“Ballet masters should consult the productions of the most eminent painters. This would bring them nearer to Nature and induce them to avoid as often as possible that symmetry of figures which, by repeating the object, presents two separate pictures on one and the same canvas. A ballet, perfect in all its parts, is a picture drawn from life, of the manners, dresses, ceremonies and customs of the various nations. It must be a complete _panto-mime_ and through the eyes speak, as it were, to the very soul of the spectator. If it wants expression, if it be deficient in point of situation and scenery, it degenerates into a mere _spectacle_, flat and monotonous.

“This kind of composition will not admit of mediocrity; like the art of painting it requires a degree of perfection the more difficult to attain in that it is subordinate to a true imitation of Nature, and that it is next to an impossibility to achieve that all-subduing truth which conceals the illusion from the spectator, carries him, as it were, to the very spot where the scene lies; and inspires him with the same sentiments as he must experience, were he present at the events which the artist only represents.

“Ballets, being regular representations, ought to unite the various parts of the drama. Most of the subjects, adapted to the dancer, are devoid of sense, and exhibit only a confused jumble of scenes, equally unmeaning and unconnected; yet it is in general absolutely necessary to confine oneself within certain rules. The historical part of a ballet must have its exposition, its incidents, its _dénouement_. The success of this kind of entertainment chiefly depends on choosing good subjects, and dealing with them in a proper manner.”

The above brief quotations are all of interest as bearing on particular points in dancing and ballet-composition, but I cannot refrain from giving one more and a lengthier excerpt, the sound common sense of which applies to-day and will appeal to all modern dancers who realise that the finest opportunities of displaying their skill are, and can only be, found in ballets worthy of their art.

“Every ballet,” he says, “complicated and extensive in its subject, which does not point out, with clearness and perspicuity, the action it is intended to represent, the intrigue of which is unintelligible, without a program or printed explanation: a ballet, in fine, whose plan is not felt, and appears deficient in point of exposition, incident and _dénouement_; such a ballet, I say, will never rise, in my opinion, above a mere _divertissement_ of dancing, more or less commendable from the manner in which it is performed. But it cannot affect me much, since it bears no particular character, and is devoid of expression.

“It may be objected that dancing is now in so improved a state that it may please, nay, enchant without the accessory ornaments of expression and sentiment.... I readily acknowledge that, as to mechanical execution, the art has attained the highest degree of perfection: I shall even confess that it sometimes is graceful: but gracefulness is but a small portion of the qualities it requires.

“What I call the mechanical parts of dancing are the steps linked to each other with ease and brilliancy, the aplomb, steadiness, activity, liveliness, and a well-directed opposition between the arms and legs. When all these parts are managed without genius, when the latter does not direct these different motions, and animate them by the fire of sentiment and expression; I feel neither emotion nor concern. The dexterity of the dancer obtains my applause; I admire the automaton, but I experience no further sensation. It has upon me the same effect as the most beautiful line, whose words are uncouthly set asunder, producing sound, not sense. As for instance, what would a reader feel at hearing the following detached words: _Fame-lives-in-dies-he-cause-who-in-virtue’s?_ Yet these very words aptly joined by the man of genius, by Shakespeare, express the noblest sentiment:

‘He lives in Fame who dies in Virtue’s cause.’

“From the above comparison we may fairly conclude that the art of Dancing has in itself all that is necessary to speak the best language, but that it is not enough to be acquainted only with its alphabet. Let the man of genius put the letters together, form the words, and from these produce regular sentences; the art shall no longer be mute, but speak with true energy, and the ballets will share with the best dramatic pieces the peculiar advantage of exciting the tenderest feelings; nay, of receiving the tribute of a tear; while, in a less serious style, this art will please, entertain and charm the spectators. Dancing thus ennobled by the expression of sentiment, and under the direction of a man of true genius, will, in time, obtain the praises which the enlightened world bestows on poetry and painting, and become entitled to the rewards with which the latter are daily honoured.”

The closing lines of the above are so curiously prophetic one questions whether we have not already reached the period when an “enlightened world” bestows on dancing--at any rate on dancers--the “rewards” with which poetry and painting have been (or ought to have been) hitherto honoured.