With their themes of love, loss and yearning for spiritual transcendence – not to mention their signature white tulle costumes – The sylph and Gisele came to define the ballet of the Romantic era. Almost two centuries since their first Parisians — Filippo Taglioni’s The sylph in 1832 and Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot Gisele in 1841, essentially ending the Romantic period of ballet and coinciding with the period of early Romanticism in music – they still capture our imaginations and break our hearts.
Gisele and The sylph define romantic ballet for modern audiences. Yet they represent only two of the many ballets created between 1830 and 1845, the traditional range of the time; new story ballets were choreographed and performed throughout Europe, usually telling tales of adventure, historical events, young loves, and the lifestyles of the rising bourgeoisie. However, Gisele and The sylph beautifully illustrate how the earthly materials and mechanical technologies of the time captured and embodied the romantic zeitgeist. And examining the materials and musical instruments of the time provides wonderful insight into how ballets were performed and what they could be experienced by audiences of the time.
The costumes of Act II of Gisele provide an archetypal example. Act II is set in a dark forest in Germany, where the Wilis, the spirits of maidens who have been betrayed by men and died before they can marry, rise after dark to hunt and kill. any man mad enough to venture into the forest at night. Giselle and her Wili sisters wear floaty white tulle skirts, which create an airy, hovering effect as they dance and a spectral translucency which is enhanced by dark stage lighting. Emblematic of Romantic Era aesthetics and staged in much the same way today, the scene embodies the era’s emphasis on popular beliefs, spirituality, connection to nature, desire and grief, with a touch of neo-Gothic horror.
These evocative skirts actually made their ballet debut a decade earlier, at the Royal Academy of Music (aka the Paris Opera) in Giacomo Meyerbeer’s 1831 opera. Robert the devil. In Act III, the questing knight Robert visits the ruins of a cloister at night. The spirits of deceased nuns, represented by corps de ballet dancers dressed in tulle skirts and lit by innovative gas lamps (in one of their earliest stage uses), rise from their graves to tempt and taunt him. . They caused a stir among onlookers, apparently due to their dramatic weirdness as well as the reveal of their silhouetted legs through the illuminated semi-opaque fabric.
It was a 19th-century invention of the early 19th century that tulle could be produced efficiently and affordably enough for large-scale theatrical use. Previously, tulle lace was woven by hand on spools, a laborious and time-consuming process that made the fabric precious and extremely expensive. Customers today use 25 to 30 yards of tulle to make a single romantic style tutu, so an Act II cast that includes Giselle, Myrtha the queen of the Wilis and a body of, say, 24 Wilis, would require 650 to 780 meters. — even if the costumes from the original production of Gisele were made with, say, half as many layers, they would require far more fabric than could be made by hand in a short time, far less at a reasonable cost. But in 1808, John Heathcoat invented the spool machine, which could produce a net much faster than human hands. Technical improvements over the next two decades allowed for larger-scale production in time for romantic patrons to design the signature look of the time.
The nascent pointe technique also contributed to the magical effects of both ballets. While today’s pointe shoes are made with stiff shafts and hard, locked toes that provide strong support for dancing on tiptoe, no such shoe technology existed in 1832, when The sylph created in Paris with principal dancer Marie Taglioni in the lead. Taglioni wore the typical ballet slippers of the era, crafted from soft satin with semi-rigid leather soles, and simply darned at the sides and toes to create a bit of padding for her toes. His brief poses on point emphasized the ethereal quality of the main character, a seductive, winged pixie who tempts a young Scotsman named James away from his fiancée, Effie, on the eve of their wedding.
EA Théleur 1831 letters about dance, depicts women posing on tiptoe in soft shoes, and several books describe exercises to develop instep strength to allow movement on tiptoe. Previously, on-stage toe dancing consisted essentially of virtuoso tricks intended to dazzle the audience; what made the tip of Taglioni work The sylph revolutionary was that it was used to express the essence of the Sylph’s character rather than simply to dazzle the eye. In 1841, the Italian ballerina Carlotta Grisi would employ advanced work similar to that of the very first Giselein the same way.
Ballet music was also evolving, with early Romantic composers beginning to write original scores for ballets rather than simply reusing familiar tunes from operas. The music is so evocative and colorful that today it is sometimes performed in instrumental concert settings devoid of dancers; musicians and audiences simply need to imagine how dance might enhance the experience and expression of music. Student musicians sometimes learn famous pieces from the early Romantic period without even realizing that they are based on dance forms. But it is entirely possible to get a sense of the entirely sensible and dynamic collaboration between musicians and dancers of the early 19th century by drawing on a treasure trove of historical material.
The soundscape of early Romanticism was created by differently constructed and differently sounding instruments than those commonly used in today’s ballet orchestras. Modern innovations in the design of solid arches were not yet standardized; overall, bows of the time tended to be more flexible and articulated than today’s bows. Until about World War I, strings were made of cleaned, dried, and stretched sheep gut (or metal wrapped around this material); gut strings are generally more flexible and responsive than modern metal strings. Wind instrument makers began experimenting with bore size and shape, or the number and function of keys. Design experiments for the horns, such as adding valves, were just beginning. The magnificent balance of these wind and string instruments produced a brilliant variety of tonal colors, and the versatility of a true ensemble of early Romantic instruments complements the dramatic qualities of the dance in different ways than an orchestra playing the same score on modern instruments is able to do. .
We can also draw from abundant collections of original musical manuscripts that reveal the kinesthetic relationship between dancers and musicians. Specific examples of shorthand from the period show us exactly how dance and music line up: Here, a popular opera or concert piece can be repurposed as a pivotal moment in a ballet of stories; there, a familiar (and difficult!) etude for solo violin becomes a warm-up exercise in a ballet class. By playing the original music for dancers familiar with early 19th century ballet technique, we can see how a dance class was structured, follow the sequence of the dancer’s training regimen, and imagine how professional dancers moved on the stage to the rhythm of the music. A living line between music and dance is drawn before our eyes.
Added to the rich store of manuscripts are scholarly and well-documented personal histories of famous dancers, choreographers and musicians of the time. The ballet master again provides a helpful example. From the 15th century to the 19th century, the dance master was a musician, or at least a violinist skilled enough to accompany class exercises and preside over the meeting of music and dance at court and in the theatre. Arthur Saint-Léon is an example of this type of multi-talented professional. A virtuoso violinist, famous ballet dancer and choreographer, and eventually dance master of the Imperial Russian Ballet, he was famous throughout Europe. In a scene from his 1849 ballet The Devil’s Violin (The Devil’s Violin) – a two-act Faustian tale of a violinist who sells his soul, with an original score by Cesare Pugni – Saint-Léon danced the lead role, accompanied by his then wife, the famous ballerina Fanny Cerrito, and played the violin. It is a pity that so little remains of Saint-Léon’s work — a no six from the romance in one act of 1844 La Vivandiere and the 1870 comedy libretto Coppelia – because his mastery of the performing arts of his time was so thorough.
Although we live in very different times, both culturally and technologically, with such a rich historical legacy of materials and research at our fingertips, we can invoke sight, sound, emotional qualities and beliefs under backgrounds of romantic era ballet performance. Exploring the context in which the ballets appeared provides insight into their complexity and helps us to question contemporary assumptions about surviving choreography, librettos and music. By combining imagination and historical awareness, we can rediscover the experiential aspects of dance and music and gain insight into these arts as we practice them today.
*The authors would like to thank Sandra Noll Hammond for her scientific review.
