Paris Opera Ballet

The Paris Opéra Ballet is the official ballet company of the Opéra national de Paris, otherwise known as the Palais Garnier, though known more popularly simply as the Paris Opéra. Its origins can be traced back to 1661 with the foundation of the Académie Royale de Danse and the Le Ballet de l'Opéra (1713) by King Louis XIV of France. The official name of the company is Le Ballet de l'Opéra national de Paris.

The aim of the Académie Royale de Danse was to reestablish the perfection of dance. Using 13 professional dancers to drive the academy, it would be one of many entities under the umbrella of the Paris Opera, established for the purposes of national cultural enrichment.

Louis XIV, who ruled France from 1643 to 1715, popularized the Paris Opera Ballet, transforming ballet from court entertainment to professional performance art for the masses.

History

When the Ballet Comique de la Reine - considered the world's first ballet - established Paris as the capital of the ballet world, it sparked the onset of the development of one of the world's most acclaimed institutions. King Louis XIV, who ruled France from 1643 to 1715, made the decision to strengthen this leadership by implementing ballet as a state institution. He would later be the driving force for the transformation of ballet from court entertainment to professional performance art for the masses.

Louis greatly enjoyed dancing, and for this reason took part in all the ballets given at his court. Court dancers were generally not professionals. They were noblemen and noblewomen who danced to please their ruler or to stir the admiration and envy of his rivals. For the purpose of training professional dancers to perform exquisitely for he and his court, Louis founded the Académie Royale de Danse in 1661. With serious training, the French professionals developed skills that had been impossible for the amateurs.

In 1672, the king gave the court's official music composer, Jean-Baptiste Lully, directorship of the Académie Royale de Musique which had been founded as Académie d'Opéra in 1669. At this time, French ballet and opera were virtually inseparable; therefore, The Academie d'Opera became the great institution of opera, baroque ballet (the art-form that would one day evolve into classical ballet), and music in Paris. From 1671 until Lully's death in 1687, the ballet was directed by the dancing master Pierre Beauchamp, most noted for the codification of the five positions of the feet. All of these institutions were maintained lavishly at the expense of the crown.

In 1681, Mademoiselle La Fontaine (1665-1736) was the first woman to dance on the stage of the Academy of Music when she premiered in Beauchamps' Le Triomphe de l'Amour. Before La Fontaine's debut at the Paris Opéra as première danseuse, girls' roles on the public stage had been taken by young men.

In 1713, the Academy's dancers had become so skilled that the king published a Règlement concernant l'Opéra which legitimized the Opera as a state institution with a permanent resident company of 20 professional dancers (10 men and 10 women)to be led by Nicolas de Francine and Gaureaut et Dumont. The Paris Opéra Ballet became an official performance troupe, perfoming in French theatres for the general public. From that time until the 1810s, the state upheld 12 theatres as their principal venues, most of which were destroyed by fires. All of these theatres, regardless of the "official" names they were given, were all commonly known as the Paris Opéra or Opéra de Paris.

Critics

In 1760, the French choreographer Jean Georges Noverre criticized the professional dancers in his book, Lettres sur la danse, et sur les ballets (Letters on Dancing and Ballet). Noverre complained that the Opera dancers were far too content with performing steps merely for the sake of physical movement and the demonstration of technical skills, while neglecting the true purpose of ballet. This purpose, he said, was to represent characters and express their feelings. Noverre declared the art of ballet was to be imitative of life, just as it was for acting.

Noverre urged that ballet dancers stop using masks, bulky costumes, and large wigs to illustrate or explain plot and character. He claimed that the dancers could very well express these things using only their bodies and faces. So long as the dancers did not look strained or uncomfortable doing difficult steps, they could show such emotions as anger, joy, fear, and love. Out of this criticism of ballet at the time, Noverre developed the ballet d'action, a form of dramatic ballet that told the story completely through movement.

Noverre became the ballet master of the Opera Ballet in 1776, thanks to the Austrian empress Marie-Therese who had admired his works in Vienna and had spoken about him to her daughter - the queen Marie-Antoinette. However, the dancers didn't accept Noverre's new ideas, and later rejected him. He staged a few ballets, such as Apelles et Campaspe (1776), Les caprices de Galathée (17776), Les Horaces (1777), and Les petits riens(1778), but had to leave the company in 1781.

La Sylphide - The First Romantic Ballet

Noverre's new dramatic ballet pieces sparked the romantic period. Spectators became more interested in stories of escape from the real world to dream-like worlds or foreign lands. Romantic ballet presented women as ideal and, for the first time, gave them greater importance than men. Male dancers became chiefly porters, whose purpose was to lift the ballerinas (leading female dancers) and show how light they were.

On July 23, 1827, an Italian dancer, Marie Taglioni, made her debut at the Paris Opera Ballet in the Ballet de Sicilien and aroused great enthusiasm from her audience. This moved her father, Italian Choreographer, Filippo Taglioni to create La Sylphide - credited as the first romantic ballet - for Marie in 1832. Designed as a showcase for Marie's talent, La Sylphide was the first ballet where the ballerina danced en pointe for the work's entirety.

Marie danced the title role of the sylphide, a fairy-like being, in a costume that set a new fashion for women dancers. It included a light, white skirt that ended halfway between her knees and ankles. Her arms, neck, and shoulders were bare. Marie Taglioni, with her dreamlike style, became the greatest star of the Paris stage.

Recent Years

Rudolf Nureyev became the director of dance in 1983. His strong personality caused major conflicts with some of the principal dancers of the company; nevertheless, he boosted the careers of a myriad of young dancers such as étoiles Sylvie Guillem in 1984, Isabelle Guerin and Laurent Hilaire in 1985, Manuel Legris in 1986, Elisabeth Maurin in 1988 and Kader Belarbi in 1989.

Among the new ballets of the repertory were some ballets of Antony Tudor (Lilac Garden, Dark Elegies, Leaves are Fading, Continuo), the premiere of Bejart's Arepo (1986), Somewhat Elevated (1987), Neumeier's Magnificat (1987) and Wilson's new version of Le Martyre de Saint-Sebastien (1989). Nureyev also staged his own new versions of Raymonda (1983), Swan Lake (1985), The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker.

Patrick Dupond, who had been a principal dancer of the company since 1980, became the director of dance in 1990. Dupond organized a striking "defile" of the company, including all the former principals still alive.

Since 1995, the new director of dance has been Brigitte Lefevre, a former dancer of the company and co-founder of the Theatre du Silence with choreographer Jacques Garnier.

Ranking

There are five ranks of a dancer in the Paris Opéra Ballet, from highest to lowest they are:

• étoiles (principal dancers)
• premières sujets (first soloists)
• sujets (soloists)
• coryphées (corps de ballet)
• quadrilles (corps de ballet)

see also: Ballerina

choreographers

• Jean Dauberval: La fille mal gardée (1789).
• Pierre Gardel: Télémaque (1790), Psyché (1793), Le jugement de Pâris (1793), La dansomanie (1800)
• Philippe Taglioni: La Sylphide (1832)
• Jules Perrot: Giselle (1842)
• Jean Coralli: Giselle (1842)
• Carlo Blasis
• Arthur Saint-Léon: Coppélia (1870)
• Louis Meranté: Sylvia (1875)
• Serge Lifar: Les Créatures de Prométhée (1929), Icare (1935), Istar (1941), Suite en blanc (1943)
• Rudolf Nureyev: Raymonda (1983), Swan Lake (1985)
• Maurice Béjart: Arepo (1986)
• William Forsythe: In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated (1987)

note: works given were created for the Paris opera Ballet

Dancers

• Yvette Chauviré
• Sylvie Guillem
• Emma Livry
• Marie Taglioni

See also

• Audric Bezard

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Guest, Ivor. Le Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris : Trois siècles d'histoire et de tradition. Opera national de Paris, 2001. ISBN 2080128302.
• Reyna, Ferdinando. A concise history of ballet. Thames and Hudson, 1965. Grosset & Dunlap Publ., 1965. ASIN B000OLE6ZK
• Uferas, Gerard. In the company of stars : the Paris Opera Ballet. Thames & Hudson, 2007. ISBN 9782080300003.

External Links

• Paris Opera Ballet: A Brief History. www.cmi.univ-mrs.fr. Retrieved August 13, 2007.
• Ballet History. www.dance4it.com. Retrieved August 14, 2007.
• Official Site of Paris Opera Ballet. www.operadeparis.fr. Retrieved August 10. 2007.

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