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Updated: June 8, 2025
There were, at that time at the opera, several figurantes, singers and dancers, ugly rather than plain, without any talent, who, in spite of it all, lived in great comfort; for it is admitted that at the opera a girl must needs renounce all modesty or starve.
I am the prémier danseur in the ballet of the Royal Opera House in Berlin. Worn with the heavy work in Fantasca, which we produced elaborately and which ran long, I came down here when the season closed, for change and rest, and so fell in with you. These young Herren and Damen are the coryphés and figurantes, who in Berlin or in other cities have taken part with me in productions.
The ball had little to distinguish it from the balls of England and America, except that the ladies danced with infinitely more skill, and therefore with more grace. The fashionable French dancing is exactly that of our operas. They are all figurantes, and care not what they exhibit, so as they exhibit their skill.
The lady could not understand what he meant, until his introducer explained the mistake, observing, "Les diables des Anglais pensent toujours a leur Rosbif." In 1822 I saw this beautiful person for the first time. She was originally one of the figurantes at the opera at Vienna, and was at this time about fourteen years of age, and of delicate and graceful proportions.
But the Italians are a nation of dancers as well as the children of song, and they seem to have followed the noble example of old Cato, in this respect, with better effect than they have studied his virtue. We are also told upon good authority, that the American dancers equal any of the European figurantes.
Most of the Sets were as much of a size as Lord 's eighteen daughters, sailing down Regent Street, like a Charity School of a Sunday, led by a rum looking old beadle others again had large Roman matron looking women in the leading files, the figurantes in their tails becoming slighter and smaller, as they tapered away, until they ended in leetle picaniny, no bigger as my tumb, but always preserving the uniformity of dress, and colour of the umbrella or parasol.
One advantage, however, I had gained; I might in an evening make my appearance behind the scenes of the theatre; nay, even sit upon the farthest bench in the box of the figurantes. It seemed to me as if I had got my foot just within the theatre, although I had never yet been upon the stage itself.
They have their bals parés and their salons de danse in every street; and as long as the weather will permit, they dance on platforms out of doors, and a heavy shower of rain will scarcely cool their ardour in the recreation. Some of their stage figurantes resemble aerial beings rather than bone and blood, for flesh may almost be left out of the composition.
The first, according to Suetonius, who exhibited elephant rope dancers, was Galba at Rome. The silence of history on these points is fortunate for the figurantes of the present day; since, but for this, their fame might have been utterly eclipsed.
On the one hand, it had none of that affectation of superior taste evinced in marqueterie and gilding, or the more picturesque discomfort of high-backed chairs and mediaeval curiosities which prevails in the daintier abodes of fastidious bachelors; nor, on the other hand, had it the sporting character which individualizes the ruder juveniles qui gaudent equis, betrayed by engravings of racers and celebrated fox-hunts, relieved, perhaps, if the Nimrod condescend to a cross of the Lovelace, with portraits of figurantes, and ideals of French sentiment entitled, "Le Soir," or "La Reveillee," "L'Espoir," or "L'Abandon."
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