Marie Taglioni

“ He looks and looks, sees two serious dark eyes in a gentle childlike face beneath the broad brim of a Kate-Greenaway hat, a half-wayward, half-shy smile, charming dimples appearing by turns in the cheeks and at the corners of the mouth, a delicately-chiselled nose, a very short and rather haughty upper lip, beneath which gleam rows of pearly teeth, and for the rest, the figure of a sylph, rather tall, still a little too thin, and with a foot peeping from beneath her skirt that Taglioni might covet. ”

“ Painting may preserve some phantom of her grace, but the soul of the grace is in the motion which it cannot represent. The dancer lives only in hearsay, in the memory of spectators, and when the last eye-witness is gone she is no more than a name to posterity. Taglioni’s is perhaps the greatest name in the annals of dancing, but a comparison of her art with that of her successors of the present day is well-nigh impossible. We can only judge of her genius by the echoes of the applause which have not even yet quite died away. ”

“ The world has a great many sweet spots in it, and I have found many a one which would make fitting scenery for the brightest act of life's changeful drama—but here is one, where it seems to me as difficult not to feel genial and kindly, as for Taglioni to keep from floating away like a smoke-curl when she is dancing in La Bayadere. ”

“ We were very much disappointed for Taglioni did not make her début, nor Rubini. We had only one scene of Il Barbière di Siviglia, in which Signor Tambourini, who is a 67beautiful singer and actor, appeared, and Donizelli. After waiting for half an hour Laporte (the manager) was called out, and he said that Mlle. Taglioni was very unwell in bed, and Mad. Méric was likewise ill, so that Il Pirato could not be performed, but that Rubini would be there directly. After one act of Fidelio, which was shockingly performed, Rubini came on and sang a song out of Anna Boulena quite beautifully. ”

“ I will no longer attach myself to any creature but to unreasoning animals, or plants, or superficial things. I think more of Taglioni's grace than of all human feeling. I abhor life and the world in which I live alone. ”

“ Mademoiselle Taglioni [308] is the greatest heroine in Paris—the finest dancer ever seen. “Toutes les autres danseuses tombent,” Vestris says; “Mademoiselle Taglioni redescend.” Full gowns and full sleeves are arrived at a degree of fullness Lady Lansdowne says, which makes it necessary for all the poor husbands to sit backwards in the carriages.
They say Fred Robinson’s marriage with Lady Emily Cowper is settled. ”

“ Théophile Gautier, perhaps the most discriminating critic of the ballet, said of Fanny Elssler that she was the most vital, the most precise, the most intelligent dancer who ever graced the boards of the stage. Her dancing had not the exquisite lightness, the purity of gesture and attitude, the ethereal qualities of Taglioni; but in dramatic significance, in fire, passion and imagination, her art never has been, and probably never will be, equalled. ”

“ She whirled round the dancing-room with him in triumph, the other beauties dwindling before her: she looked more and more beautiful with each rapid move of the waltz, her colour heightening and her eyes seeming to brighten. Not till the music stopped did she sink down on a seat, panting, and smiling radiant—as many many hundred years ago I remember to have seen Taglioni after a conquering pas seul. She nodded a “thank you” to Clive. It seemed that there was a perfect reconciliation. Lady Kew came in just at the end of the dance, scowling when she beheld Ethel’s partner ”

“ The latter was probably a Georgian ballroom with fine proportions and Italian ceiling. A portion of it was curtained off for the pupils to change into practice dress, and all the way round the walls was a rail for toe-dancing. At the far end was a dais with a big arm-chair and a piano, over which hung a large oil painting of some bygone ballet at the Théâtre de l'Opéra in Paris, and also an engraving of Taglioni signed affectionately by that great Prima Ballerina Assoluta. ”

“ Motion peculiar to the Opera; perhaps the ugliest, and surely one of the most difficult, ever taught a female creature in this world. Nature abhors it; but Art does at least admit it to border on the impossible. One little Cerito, or Taglioni the Second, that night when I was there, went bounding from the floor as if she had been made of Indian-rubber, or filled with hydrogen gas, and inclined by positive levity to bolt through the ceiling ”

“ Is singing a lost art? Or is that but a temporis acti question? We who heard those now silent voices fancy there are none to match them nowadays. Certainly there are no dancers like Taglioni, and Cerito, and Fanny Elsler, and Carlotta Grisi. ”

“ The general public, however,{46} was almost evenly divided between the merits of the rival schools. Open war was now declared between the two dancers. Taglioni’s reply was to revive the ballet of La Sylphide, in which she had achieved her greatest triumph and captured the heart of the Parisian public years before. The result was that the pendulum of popularity swung back violently in her favour. The admirers of the Austrian retorted by throwing ridicule upon the affected innocence of Taglioni’s style, which after Elssler’s dancing appeared altogether lacking in passion and fire. ”

“ The customs tael, equivalent in value to about 4s 9d., has been superseded by the new dollar of 1890, which is equal to that of the United States.
Taganrog (50) , a Russian seaport on the N. shore of the Sea of Azov; is the outlet for the produce of a rich agricultural district, wheat, linseed, and hempseed being the chief exports. Founded by Peter the Great in 1698.
Taglioni, Maria, a famous ballet-dancer, born at Stockholm, the daughter of an Italian ballet-master; made her début in Paris in 1827 and soon became the foremost danseuse of Europe ”

“ When I saw the sylph-like Taglioni floating through the dance, I could not refrain from sighing at the thought that grace and elegance like hers should be doomed to know the withering effect of Time; and that those agile limbs should one day become as stiff and helpless as those of others. An old danseuse is an anomaly. She is like an old rose, rendered more displeasing by the recollection of former attractions. ”

“ But it appears that the technical virtuosity of Taglioni had set a pace that was both difficult and misleading. Being a genius, perfection meant to her a means of expression. During a period in which no great genius appeared, efforts to win back the lost kingdom took the form of striving for technique as an object. The public was unjustly damned for failure to respond to marvellously executed students’ exercises. With equal lack of justice,{120} it became fashionable to include the whole school of the ballet’s art in the accusation of stiffness and artificiality. ”

“ And turn we for relief to the exquisite vocation completing the antithesis—the vocation whose execution is that of pas de zéphyrs, and the tortures of whose [pg 294] infliction are the tortures of the tender heart!
The calling of the danseuse, we repeat, is among the most lucrative of modern times, and nearly the most influential. The names of Taglioni and Elssler are as European, nay, as universal, as those of Wellington and Talleyrand-Metternich or Thiers; and modern statesmanship and modern diplomacy show pale beside the Machiavelism of the coulisses. ”

“ It is in Giselle and The Nutcracker that Markova can bring joy and pleasure to an immense public, that joy the public always receives, whether they know the intricate details of ballet or not, by seeing a great classical ballerina at her best. One of Markova’s best characterizations was that of Taglioni in Dolin’s Pas de Quatre, a delightful cameo, yet today, or, at least, the last time I saw it, it, like her Prelude in Sylphides, suffered from an accretion of manner, until it bordered on the grotesque. ”

“ Present-day “elevation,” as scope of high and low level is called, the great leaps, great turns, and, in short, most of the dazzling elements of to-day’s ballet are the accumulated contribution of individual artists from time to time. Taglioni, of the middle nineteenth century, is the last to add notably to the classic ballet’s alphabet of steps. It is not unsafe to say that the next few years will see its range increased: the Russians, avid for new things, have ransacked Egyptian carvings and Greek vases. ”

“ You men have an immense advantage in your affairs of the heart; you can always begin as freshly with each new affection, and be as youthful in sentiment with each new love, as we are with our only passion. Now I see it all; you have been getting up a ‘tendre’ here for somebody or other:—not Taglioni, I hope, for I see that is her Villa yonder,—There, don’t look indignant. This same Lake of Como has long been known to be the paradise of danseuses and opera-singers; and I thought it possible you might have dramatised a little love-story to favour the illusion. ”

“ The ballet had become a mere background, of no great significance or importance, to the dancer, and there being no one to maintain the{4} standard of virtuosity set by so skilled an executant, the result was inevitable. There have been other dancers since Taglioni, probably as fine and perhaps finer, but their distinction has been of a peculiarly personal and, of necessity, somewhat limited kind. The decay of the ballet as a vehicle of expression has bereft them of opportunities for the full display of their art ”

“ All the great dancers of the nineteenth century were grounded upon the Italian method. In Milan they mastered the technique; in Paris, where the ballet was closely connected with the best artistic life of the day, they seem to have found the inspiration of art. Now, the teaching genius of both schools appeared to have deserted them. Dancers still flooded the theatres of Europe; most of them had been through the finishing school of the French capital; they modelled their style upon the great Taglioni and Elssler traditions; but their achievement was stale and unbeautiful. ”

“ One night the manager of Her Majesty’s Theatre was compelled to come before the curtain to apologise for the fact that the ballet had not begun, because Taglioni, sitting in her dressing-room, refused to appear on the stage until a large sum of money had been paid her on account. Her temper behind the scenes intimidated even the most hardened manager. One evening, when the male dancer Perrot happened to receive a greater amount of applause than herself, she refused to continue the performance, and accused everybody right and left of having plotted to dethrone her. ”

“ And cannot each of those artistes boast of a toe which is the very essence of all poetry—a TO' KAAO'N?
No. You may make verses on Taglioni's feet, (though if she be a poetess, she can do that better than you, standing, too, on one leg, like the man that Horace speaks of;) but you cannot make them of her feet. Feet of which verses are composed are made of syllables, not of bones, muscles, and ligaments. Feet and pauses are the constituent parts of a verse.
We have heard one boy ask of another, who was singing, "How much is that a yard?" still the yard is not a poetical measure. ”

“ Whether the motion seems born of the music, or the music floats out of her dreamy motion, the enchanted gazer might be almost embarrassed to know.
In the new ballet of La Gitana, the music is based upon the Mazurka. The story is the old one of the child of a grandee of Spain, stolen by gipsies, and recovered by chance in Russia. The gradual stealing over her of music she had heard in her childhood was the finest piece of pantomimic acting I ever saw. But there is one dance, the Cachucha, introduced at the close of the ballet, in which Taglioni has enchanted the world anew. ”

“ As for the boxes of spar and specimens, I at once, being on terra firma, broke my promise, and said I would see them all —— first. It is wrong to swear, I know; but sometimes it relieves one so much!
The first act on shore was to make a sacrifice to Sanctissima Tellus; offering up to her a neat and becoming Taglioni coat, bought for a guinea in Covent Garden only three months back. I sprawled on my back on the smoothest of rocks that is, and tore the elbows to pieces: the guide picked me up; the boatmen did not stir, for they had had their will of me ”

“ At the termination of her engagement Taglioni wanted rest, and she bethought herself to recruit in the Highlands. After travelling hither and thither for a little while, she arrived at Perth, and, as a matter of course, put down her name in the visitors' book of the hotel, then went out to explore the sights of the town. Meanwhile the report of her arrival had spread like wildfire, and on her return to the hotel she found awaiting her a deputation from the principal inhabitants, with the request to honour them with a performance. ”

“ The exquisite modeling of a Benvenuto Cellini vase, wrought with patient elaboration into a thing of unsurpassable beauty, does not invoke as high a sense of pleasure as an heroic statue or noble painting by some great master, but of its kind the pleasure is just as complete. Apart from Thalberg's power as a player, however, there was something captivating in the quality of his talent, which, though not creative, was gifted with the power of seizing the very essence of the music to be interpreted. ”