There was one scene of the 'Source,' a ballet popular at the Opera in
Paris during the exhibition of 1867, which must linger in the memory of
all who had the good fortune to behold it--a scene so beautiful that it
was borrowed for the 'White Fawn,' which was the successor of the 'Black
Crook' here in the United States. It represented a silvery glade in the
lone forest, with a mysterious lake, on the surface of which the spirits
of the springtime came forth to disport themselves. It was a vision of
airy grace and of haunting legend; and it is only one example of the
poetic possibilities of the contribution of dance and pantomime in a
coherent story. It may be well to recall the fact that the plots of
these _ballets d'action_ are often strong enough to enable them to serve
as the basis of a libretto for an opera. It was a ballet of Scribe's,
for example, which was taken for the book of the 'Somnambula'; and the
book of the favorite opera 'Martha' began its existence as a libretto
for a ballet.
While the _ballet d'action_ affords the fullest opportunity for the
perfect art of dancers like Rosita Mauri and Adeline Genee and Anna
Pavlova, there are other forms not to be despised. Twenty-five years ago
the Italian Marenco brought out his stupendous 'Excelsior,' which was
taken from Italy to Paris, then to New York, and finally to London.
'Excelsior' was an allegorical ballet; it represented the conflict of
light and darkness, of progress and superstition, of invention and
reaction. It filled a whole evening with spectacle and glitter and
movement. It lacked the poetic simplicity of the 'Source' and of the
'Korrigane'; but it had other qualities of its own. What set it apart
from all the ballets that had gone before was the subordination of the
individual terpsichorean artist to the main body. Marenco employed the
best dancers to be found in Italy, no doubt, but he did not rely on them
so much as on the intricate and ingenious handling of the crowds of
lesser dancers, by whom they were surrounded.
The novelty of 'Excelsior' and of the two or three gigantic Italian
spectacles which were patterned upon it--'Messalina' and 'Sieba'--lay in
the maneuvering of the masses, in the extraordinary skill with which
squadrons of figures were made to charge across the stage and combine
and melt into one another most unexpectedly and most delightfully. The
whole stage was a blaze of artfully contrasted colors, and it was filled
with a riot of motion and of glitter. And Marenco made use of male
dancers far more abundantly than any of his predecessors, utilizing them
to wear the more somber colors, to suggest a sterner vigor, and to
emphasize a bolder contrast. He was responsible also for another
novelty, often employed by others since; he increased the height of his
swerving lines of dancers, now and again, by mounting some of the
figures on stands, and by putting revolving globes and iridescent
banners into the hands of the men in the background.
It is the method of Marenco in 'Excelsior' which has been followed in
the often pleasing ballets of the Hippodrome in New York. Really good
soloists are now very scarce, even in Milan and in Vienna, long the
nurseries of the ballet; and there seem to be none too many even in
Petrograd, which has preserved and improved upon the traditions of Paris
and Milan. And in the absence of accomplished soloists, the deviser of
the ballets at the Hippodrome has been compelled to get along without
them as best he could. He has been forced to rely on the maneuvering of
masses of girls, possessed of only a rudimentary instruction in the
elements of the terpsichorean art. In other words, he has had to make up
in quantity for the absence of quality. But he has at his disposition an
immense stage, across which he could set his squadrons marching and
gliding and glittering. He could not count on the skill of his
principals who were not expert enough to demand the attention of the
spectators; but he could seek striking effects of light and color in the
costumes, as he moved his masses to and fro and as he swung them
together. If only there had been a little better training for the more
prominent performers, the 'Four Seasons' would have been a most artistic
entertainment, in spite of the absence of any single dancer of real
distinction.