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Updated: June 18, 2025
A few weeks after the birth of Madame Elisabeth the Court returned to Paris, where, in honour of the little Princess, several ballets were danced and a grand banquet was given to the sovereigns by the nobility; but the heart of the Queen was too full of chagrin to enable her to assist with even a semblance of gratification at the festivities in which those around her were absorbed.
She has been rejected at the minor theatres where they want danseuses; she has not succeeded in the three towns where ballets are given; she has not had the money, or perhaps the desire to go to foreign countries for perhaps you don't know that the great school of dancing in Paris supplies the whole world with male and female dancers.
'Elle a duc flic-flac, was old Marcel's highest word of praise, and old Marcel was the dancing master that deserved the epithet of 'the Great. People used to say 'the Great Marcel, as they said 'Frederick the Great, and in Frederick's time." "Did Marcel compose any ballets?" inquired Finot. "Yes, something in the style of Les Quatre Elements and L'Europe galante."
The vivacity and grace of the ballets in his operas save more than one act which otherwise would be insufferably heavy and tedious. It is not too much to say that the most spontaneous side of his creative fancy is found in these affluent, vigorous, and stirring measures. Meyerbeer appears always to have been uncertain of himself and his work.
I was eminently satisfied with the orchestra which I managed to gather around me in the large and handsome hall of the Society of Nobles. It contained one hundred and twenty picked players from the Imperial orchestras, who were for the most part excellent musicians, usually employed in accompanying Italian opera and ballets.
In dressing their parts propriety in costume, and in adhering to the habits of the Indian Drama, seems to have been observed with some show of consistency. The Chinese Drama also arose from the Hindoo developing itself as time rolled on from Pantomimes and ballets. A very ancient Pantomime is said to have been symbolical of the conquest of China by Wou Wang.
It was with these that we began, but little by little the word of the charade disappeared. We acted wild saynètes, afterwards comedies of plot and intrigue, finally dramas of event and emotion. All began with pantomime; and this was Chopin's invention. He sat at the piano and extemporized, whilst the young people acted scenes in dumb show and danced comic ballets.
But even in the farces, with or without ballets, and intermezzos, in which the overcharged, and frequently the self-conscious and arbitrary comic of buffoonery prevails, Moliere has exhibited an inexhaustible store of excellent humour, scattered capital jokes with a lavish hand, and drawn the most amusing caricatures with a bold and vigorous pencil.
It is certain that the mysteries of Greece were survivals of savage ceremonies, because we know that they included specific savage rites, such as the use of the rhombos to make a whirring noise, and the custom of ritual daubing with dirt; and the sacred ballets d'action, in which, as Lucian and Qing say, mystic facts are 'danced out. But, while Greece retained these relics of savagery, there was something taught at Eleusis which filled minds like Plato's and Pindar's with a happy religious awe.
She was thinking about nothing in particular merely revelling in the pleasant warmth and comfort of the room and in the prospect of a lazy evening spent at home, since to-night she was not due to appear in any of the ballets to be given at the Imperial Theatre.
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