range and flexibility, of a silvery and pleasant timbre. She was able to
please French ears. With this gift she combined that of playing comedy
with great nobility.”
Mademoiselle Collet made her début on the 21st January 1721, in _La Fille
Mal Gardée_.
“Her infantile performances obtained her the applause of
the public, which was redoubled when she was seen in the
rôle of Betzi in _Le Roi et le Fermier_. These are about the
only characters in which she achieved distinction. Her voice
was poor, and she replaced by mannerisms what she lacked in
expression.”
In 1762, Signorina Colomba, a Venetian, successfully made her début at
the Comédie-Italienne in Paris. An Englishman fell in love with her and
attempted to carry her off. She left the theatre to escape from him, and
did not return to it until 1772.
“Her début was of the most brilliant,” says Grimm in his
correspondence. “She is no longer in her first youth; at least
she has the air of being about thirty years of age. Her only
fault is that she is invested with too much nobility and too
much beauty for the rôles of comic opera; her carriage, her
walk, her air, are those of a queen. Her glance is august,
noble and tender; her great eyes, the most beautiful in the
world, seem to suggest that the proper place for her is
tragedy. Her play is not without mannerisms, but they are
mannerisms that are pleasing.... She has a charming voice, and
an excellent way of singing, full of that grace, sweetness
and facility which French singers can never achieve. Speaking
for myself, this is the first, and perhaps the last time that
I have heard anyone sing in a Parisian theatre with such
ravishing charm and grace.”
The Italian comedians, to repair the loss which they suffered in the
retirement of Mademoiselle Piccinelli, and the death of Madame Savi—who
had made her début in 1760 in the parts of leading lady—charged Colalto,
who played Pantaloon parts, to go to Italy to find two actresses. He
left in April of 1766 and returned in August with the Signore Zanarini
and Bacelli, mother and daughter. They made their début as first and
second ladies in _Gli Amori d’Arlequino_ of Goldoni. Those who understood
Italian applauded them heartily, especially the mother; the others
withdrew but indifferently satisfied. Madame Zanarini was engaged to
play leading rôles, and her daughter, Mademoiselle Bacelli, for those of
soubrettes.
In 1770 Paris received Mademoiselle Mesnard, a young and pretty
Cantatrice, who had begun life as a shopkeeper and then entered
the theatre under the protection of the Duke of Chaulnes, who had
her portrait painted by Greuze. It was she who was the mistress of
Beaumarchais, and the cause of that scandalous rough-and-tumble between
the “duc et pair crocheteur” and the author of _Figaro_. We know that,
as a consequence of this affair, Beaumarchais, although acquitted by the
tribunal of the Marshals of France, which had sent M. de Chaulnes to the
prison of Vincennes under a _lettre de cachet_, was sent to Fort-l’Evêque
by M. de la Vrillière for the sole reason that it was impossible for the
son of a clockmaker to be in the right in a quarrel with a duke and peer.
Of Madame Ruette, Grimm writes on the occasion of her retirement in 1777:
“This charming actress united to the most engaging of voices
and the finest of countenances, a tact that is infinitely rare,
and a most naïve and delicate sensibility. It is hopeless to
expect to see again the rôles of Isabella and Columbine played
as they were played by her. The delightful scene of the Rose
in _Le Magnifique_ was entirely her own work; she diffused
into it a mixture of propriety and interest whose magic is
inexplicable. A singular saying, perhaps, but one full of
truth, was that of Madame d’Houdetot when she declared that,
‘_in that moment Madame La Ruette expressed modesty even in her
back_.’”
The theatres of the fair of Saint-Laurent took possession of the types,
the pieces and the music of the Italians. They played and sang French
recitatives with Italian music, French dance music and French romances.
Down to 1721 we can find only couplets upon ancient airs, or those which
already had been sung elsewhere.
In 1737, Monsigny wrote the music of _On Ne S’Avise Jamais de Tout_,
and of several other comic operas. In 1759, Duni composed _La Veuve
Indécise_, and Laruette wrote _Le Boulevard_ in 1753. Other composers of
music for the Opéra-Comique were MM. Lacoste, Gillier, Aubert, Delacroix,
etc.
Since the Opéra-Comique manifested too great a development, and the
Italian troupe fell short of what was necessary, the two companies united
their forces in 1761. The troupe of the Opéra-Comique was then composed
of Mesdemoiselles Deschamps, Rosaline, Nessel, Luzi, Arnoult, Dezzi,
Florigny. The men were Laruette, Bourette, Delisle, Audinot, Parau,
Saint-Aubert, Clairval and Guignes.
In the forain theatres the principal actresses singing in comic opera or
in parodies were:
Mademoiselle Maillard, the daughter of a cook and a lace-mender. She
began in 1696 with Bertrand, who perceived her talent and gave her an
engagement in his company, in which she remained for eight years. She
married a young man named Cavé, at Besançon. He took the name of Maillard
and became an actor (see Scaramouche). She retired when Mademoiselle de
Lisle entered the theatre in 1716. On the point of being confined, she
was accidentally wounded, and died in September, 1721.
Mademoiselle de Lisle, born in 1684, was barely eleven years of age when
she made her first appearance as a soubrette at the Opéra-Comique. She
reappeared in 1716, played until 1740, and died in 1758.
Mademoiselle Bastolet, born in Paris, joined the _Jeu de Bertrand_ in
1698, on a salary at the rate of tenpence a day. Afterwards she played
with Dolet, with the Sieur Saint-Edme, with Lalauze in 1721, and with
Honoré in 1724, and she married an Italian doctor in 1735. Later, in the
company of the Sieur Pontau, she scored considerable success in the rôles
of mothers.
Mademoiselle Lambert played leading parts and sang in vaudevilles; she
married Dolet, who, before being a manager of the theatres at the fairs
of Saint-Laurent and Saint-Germain, had filled an engagement in the
Italian company of Constantini, and afterwards in that of Tortoretti.
She left the theatre in 1709, became a _modiste_ at the fairs of
Saint-Germain and Saint-Laurent, but, failing to make a success of this
business, she induced her husband to give up the theatre, and jointly
with him opened a lemonade shop.
In 1700, Mademoiselle Babron, the daughter of a box opener at the
Comédie-Italienne, sister of Babron (the forain Harlequin), appeared in
rôles of Columbine and of women disguised as men, in Bertrand’s company.
In 1707 she married the actor Prevost, and went with him into the country.
In 1710, Mademoiselle d’Aigremont, known under the name of _Camuson_,
left her modiste shop to join the Opéra-Comique. She remained there until
1723.
X
THE BALLERINA
The art of dancing is inseparable from the art theatrical, and especially
from pantomime. Xenophon relates that on the occasion of the return of
the ten thousand Greeks sent to assist Cyrus in his campaign against
Artaxerxes, after they had performed their celebrated retreat, dilated
upon by all historians, the Greeks instituted the public games and
festivals.
“Thracians were the first to appear, full-armed, and leaping to
the sound of flutes. They sprang so high and dropped again with
so much force, that the spectators seem to have been frightened.
“Next came a Mysian who held a shield in either hand. He span
rapidly round and performed dangerous leaps whilst retaining
these shields. He ended by striking them one against the other,
after the fashion of the Persians, and by executing to the
sound of this novel instrument a delightful dance-step.
“After him came a company of Arcadians. They were in brilliant
armour and advanced rhythmically, hand in hand, whilst a
warlike march was being played by flutes. Some detached
themselves from the company, others joined it, and they
concluded by dancing in a ring, but with so much rapidity and
unanimity that the movement of a wheel is neither swifter nor
more equal.
“Finally came two women arrayed in the most elegant garments.
One of these performed the Pyrrhic dance, a shield in her
hand; the other went through the dance of Ariane, waving a
kerchief, and she moved with so much lightness and grace that
she delighted the spectators and was greeted at the conclusion
of her ballet by the applause of all.”
Pindar refers to a dance executed by a troupe of Lacedemonian virgins.
The greater part of the Laconian dances were common to boys and to girls.
In _Hormus_ young men and maidens formed by their interlacings the figure
of a collar. The young corypheus advanced with the vigour of his sex,
striking male and bellicose attitudes, whilst the girl who led the choir
advanced on her side with graceful and modest steps.
“At the beginning,” says Lucian, “the same person danced and
sang at the same time; but as it was perceived that the effort
of the dance was troubling to the breathing, it was considered
well to appoint some to sing and others to dance.”
Among the dancers of antiquity there were those who imitated the form and
the movements of beasts.
“From the imitation of animals the dancers passed on to the
imitation of men, selecting those whose professions or vices
rendered their movements more nearly akin to those of animals.
As the _Emmelie_ was the imitation of the most graceful and
healthy bodies, the _Cordace_, or comic dance, was the
imitation of bodies ill-made or deformed as a consequence of
sensuality and low passions” (Magnin, _Origines du Théâtre
Moderne_).
Pliny speaks of the famous Lucceia, who to a talent for dancing added
that of declamation, and who reappeared on the stage in her hundredth
year, to recite some verses. He speaks also of an actress, Galeria
Copiola, mime and dancer, who had made her début in Rome in 671, and who
reappeared in the time of Augustus. She had then reached the age of a
hundred and four. Phœbe Vocontia and the famous Dionysia, who received
two hundred thousand sesterces (about two thousand pounds sterling per
annum) were also _saltatriculæ_ (dancing mimes).
These two types are to be found in the Renaissance. The animal, the
imitative and the burlesque is to be seen as much in the classical
masques of the Italian comedy as in the grotesque ones of Leonardo da
Vinci; whilst we find the graceful, the noble and the beautiful in the
person of the ballerina.
Pietro Maria Cecchini (Fritellino) says, in his discourses on comedy
published in 1614 but written at the end of the sixteenth century: “It
is more than fifty years since the custom arose of introducing women
into the theatre.” He means by that, without doubt, that the women
were entrusted with rôles holding an important place in the plot,
and supplanting the boys to whom such parts had been entrusted until
then. From the fifteenth century (1494), in Italy, we find women in
the theatre, performing concurrently with young men, and very often
licentious in word and deed, the rôles of goddesses, nymphs or of
allegorical and mythological characters. These early actresses in the
comedy of the sixteenth century, notwithstanding the great liberty of
customs and of language, contrived to maintain some of the reserve proper
to their sex.
In his _Supplica_, N. Barbieri (Beltrame) says:
“I shall never bow to the custom of having the rôles of women
or of young girls performed by boys, especially after having
seen the disadvantages which result from this in certain
troupes. To begin with these young people do not know how to
dress themselves in the garments which do not belong to their
sex, and they get themselves dressed at home by their women
or their brainless servants, who sometimes amuse themselves
by trifling with them, so that he whose senses have not been
calmed by age or by serious care may easily become vain and
fatuous; being thus disguised as women, these youngsters
show themselves about the town, talking and fooling one with
another; they come dishevelled to the theatre, and it is then
necessary that their friends or preceptors should dress their
heads again, renew their paint and rearrange their garments.
We are to be thankful if they but come in time, and then it
is necessary to flatter them and to cajole them so to give
them courage; there is more than enough in all this to weary
the patience of those entrusted with such matters. It is more
natural that women should fill the rôles that are proper to
them; they know how to dress themselves and, as they lead
decent lives, far from being a source of scandal, they set none
but good examples. But, one will exclaim, I have successfully
paid my court to an actress. That is possible; but all women
are not so accommodating, nor all men so fortunate. Here is a
man who for years has pursued an actress and fruitlessly spent
treasures upon her. It must be remembered that actresses are
women with the same nature as their sister women. They may not
fall but all the world knows it; and, apart from the fear of
God, they are compelled to live with more care and virtue than
those who are in a position to cover their faults with the
mantle of hypocrisy.”
“For the rest,” says M. H. A. Soleirol, in an interesting work
on Molière and his troupe, “the appearance of women on the
boards seems to go back to very remote ages, as may be seen
in ancient drawings. According to these pictures, which give
the names of actors and indicate the rôles which they filled,
we see that in the fifteenth century many women performed in
the mystery plays rôles either of females or of angels. Many
other old portraits show us that in the sixteenth century women
performed on the trestles in the public places; and lastly we
know the costumes of the women who took part in the comedies of
Marguerite of Navarre in 1540.”
If in the fifteenth century in France women were permitted to appear and
to take part in the mystery plays, there is every reason to suppose that
they were performing long before then in the theatres of Italy, a nation
which always led the way in artists of all kinds.
It is very certain that throughout the Middle Ages there was no lack of
Bohemiennes and _joculatores_ on the trestles. They came to enliven the
sumptuous repasts of the great lords by performing comedy-scenes like
those of _Le Berger et la Bergère_, _Courtois_, _Mariage_ and _Pèlerin_.
The performances of these plays were intermingled with dances and songs.
The earliest actresses derived a great deal from these _ballerine_.
The rôles which they performed, however, were very short ones in
scenarii that were very simple, and one woman in a troupe would often be
sufficient to discharge all the female parts. We know that down to the
end of the seventeenth century the broader female rôles (such as those of
gossips) were invariably performed by men, by Scaramouche, Harlequin and
Pierrot.
Later on it became necessary that all Italian actresses should be able
to dance; that was part of their primary education. For many celebrated
actresses, indeed, it was the essential factor in their admission into
the theatre; and even in the eighteenth century it was necessary for the
immortal tragic actress Hippolyte Clairon to be able to dance and sing
so as to be accepted into the Théâtre-Italien. Coraline and Camille,
the famous daughters of the actor Veronese, owed their chief success to
their dancing. This applies also to Madame Favart, whose village dance in
sabots took Paris by storm.
In the plays of Angelo Beolco (Ruzzante, 1530), the young woman does not
take up more than two or three scenes, somewhere about the middle of the
piece, leaving it to other characters to continue and work out the story.
We find her still the object of the plot; but, contrary to our modern
theatrical rules, she disappears sometimes in the very moment when the
interest of which she is the pivot reaches its climax. The reason for the
slight development of these rôles was without doubt the insufficiency and
inexperience of the actresses entrusted with them, and perhaps also their
obligation to go and change their dress for the final ballet. In _La
Mandragora_, of Macchiavelli, Lucretia appears for the first time in the
third act, and does not reappear thereafter until the end of the fifth.
With the Italians, the dance was in such high repute that in the
sixteenth century young Frenchwomen “would go beyond the Alps to learn
it.” No spectacles were given in Italy that did not include dances and
music, and to this day there are interludes in _Norma_ and _Semiramide_
of ballets imitating village dances.
In the seventeenth century the court of Savoy set the fashion to all
other courts of Europe by its ballets and fairy scenes, under the
direction of the famous Comte d’Aglié, a fertile genius in the matter of
theatrical invention.
The scenario of one of his ballets, given on the occasion of the birth
of the Cardinal of Savoy in 1634, is extremely curious by virtue of the
singular allegorical personages introduced into it. The title of this
ballet is: _La Verità nemica della Apparenza sollevata dal Tempo_.
“At rise of curtain a choir of False-Reports and of Suspicions
is discovered, preceding Appearance and Falsehood. The back
of the stage is opened. Upon a great cloud borne by the Winds
Appearance is seen dressed in a garment of changing colours
sewn with mirrors, and equipped with the wings and tail of
a peacock; she is in a sort of nest whence issue a crowd of
Pernicious Falsehoods, Frauds and Cheats; Pleasant Falsehoods,
Flatteries and Intrigues; Comical Falsehoods, Pleasantries and
Pretty little Stories.
“These characters had their various entrances until the advent
of Time. He drove out Appearance, and caused the cloud upon
which she had been enthroned to be opened. Within it was then
discovered a huge hour-glass from which came Truth and the
Hours. These last characters, after various speeches analogous
to the subject, formed the great ballet.”
It was then the custom for great personages, even sovereigns themselves,
to take part in fêtes of this brilliant kind. Thus, Louis XIV., desiring
in his pleasures as in other things to be the first of his century,
danced in the ballets of his court, and received the applause of the
comedians for his performance as actor, singer and dancer.
“The King has twice rehearsed the ballet which he intends to
dance before the Queen of England” (Guy Patin, 1661). It was
in this same year that the great monarch created a dancing
academy, “because,” he says in his letters patent, “the art of
dancing has always been recognised as one of the most virtuous
and necessary to adapt the body to exercise, and consequently
one of the most useful to our nobility, not only in time of war
in our armies, but also in time of peace in our ballets.”
Louis XIV. loved the rôle of the Sun in these splendid ballets, for the
production of one of which no less than nine hundred new costumes were
prepared. Sometimes, however, he did not disdain to be seen in a comic
part. In the ballet of the _Seasons_ he represented the golden-headed
Ceres surrounded by the reapers, which were played by Messeigneurs de
Saint-Aignan and de Vertpré, MM. Lulli and Bruneau, the Sieurs Beauchamp,
Raynal, Lecomte and Lapierre. In the _Triumph of Bacchus_, he performed
the part of a sort of good-for-nothing cutpurse and bully, and even
sang a couplet in favour of the fair sex. In _Les Amants Magnifiques_,
a comedy-ballet by Molière (1670), he not only co-operated in the
preparation of the scenery and in the production, but mimed, danced, sang
and played the flute and the guitar.
Let us cite amongst the most famous dancers Gertrude Boon, called _la
belle Tourneuse_; a surname derived from the style of dance which she
performed. She appeared and obtained the greatest possible success in the
theatre of Dame Baron, at the fair of Saint-Germain. Gertrude Boon was
young, beautiful and extremely gracious in the performance of her bizarre
evolutions. She was no less virtuous than gifted and turned a deaf ear
upon the sighs of her numerous suitors. Amongst these was a Sieur Gervais
who had amassed a considerable fortune at play and who, to prove to
this austere maiden how sincerely he loved her, offered her his fortune
and his name. Gertrude accepted him for her husband, not on account of
his fortune, but believing in the genuineness of his affection. The
marriage however was not a happy one, and Gertrude was driven to seek a
dissolution of it. But she failed in this, the validity of the marriage
being confirmed by a judgment of the 4th March 1715.
Violente, a famous rope dancer, was an Italian. She made her first
appearance at the fair of Saint-Laurent in 1717, and she was there seen
dancing at the _Folies d’Espagne_ upon a balanced plank, eight inches
wide, with as much grace as security.
Mademoiselle Hamoche, the wife of Hamoche, the Pierrot of the fairs,
united, in 1721, the capacities of tragic actress and première danseuse
in the forain theatres.
In 1724, Mademoiselle Grognet was dancing at the Opéra-Comique; she
passed into the service of the Duke of Modena in 1736, and married the
Marquis d’Argens, at Berlin.
Mademoiselle Cuppi de Camargo, born in Brussels in 1710, made her first
appearance at the Opéra in 1726 at the age of sixteen, and did not leave
it until 1751. Voltaire compares her to Mademoiselle Sallé, another
dancer quite as famous:
“Ah! Camargo, que vous êtes brillante!
Mais que Sallé, grands dieux! est ravissante!
Que vos pas sont légers, et que les siens sont doux!
Elle est inimitable, et vous êtes nouvelle:
Les Nymphes sautent comme vous,
Et les Grâces dansent comme elle.”
She was received with enthusiasm, her name became so popular that
fashions assumed it. There were Camargo bonnets, Camargo corsets, Camargo
head-dresses, Camargo cakes, etc., etc.; never had such a vogue been
known. Compelled, notwithstanding her brilliant début, to remain among
the supernumeraries in consequence of the jealousy of Mademoiselle
Prévot, Camargo contrived to issue in a brilliant manner from those ranks.
“A dance of Demons was being done. The principal actor misses
his entrance and whilst the orchestra, nevertheless, plays
the air of the solo, murmurs rise from the groundlings; they
become noisy and the actor is embarrassed, when the young
débutante, seized with a happy inspiration, leaps to the middle
of the stage, and improvises with spirit a Spanish step which
delights the dissatisfied spectators, and transports them with
admiration.”
Camargo was chiefly distinguished for her extraordinary lightness and her
wild gaiety.
In a letter written from Italy in 1739 by the Président de Brosses, the
following passage occurs:—
“There is nothing better to do when one arrives than to go to
the comedy to seek amusement; this is what we did at Verona.
I cannot get accustomed to the cheapness of the prices; the
first places do not cost ten sous; but the Italian nation is
imbued with the taste for spectacles so that the quantity of
people who attend fully compensates for this. Thanks be to God
there is no trouble to find room at the comedy in Verona. It
is performed right in the middle of the ancient amphitheatre
of the Romans, and there are no other places provided for the
spectators but those on the steps of the amphitheatre, where
all sit together and where some thirty thousand persons can be
accommodated. The companies of the country itself are, in my
view, better than those which are transplanted to Paris and to
our provinces, but the object of my ever-increasing surprise,
although I have seen her every day, is a young dancer who leaps
at least as high as Javilliers who can make twenty successive
capers without once repeating herself, and perform every one of
the steps that are so admired in our dancing masters; so that
on the score of lightness Camargo, by comparison with her, is
a dancer of stone. In general the dancers of this country are
very much stronger and cleverer than our own.”