Marian Smith recaptures a rich period in French musical theater when
ballet and opera were intimately connected. Focusing on the age of
Giselle at the Paris Opéra (from the 1830s through the 1840s), Smith
offers an unprecedented look at the structural and thematic relationship
between the two genres. She argues that a deeper understanding of both
ballet and opera--and of nineteenth-century theater-going culture in
general--may be gained by examining them within the same framework
instead of following the usual practice of telling their histories
separately. This handsomely illustrated book ultimately provides a new
portrait of the Opéra during a period long celebrated for its box-office
successes in both genres.
Smith begins by showing how gestures were encoded in the musical
language that composers used in ballet and in opera. She moves on to a
wide range of topics, including the relationship between the gestures of
the singers and the movements of the dancers, and the distinction
between dance that represents dancing (entertainment staged within the
story of the opera) and dance that represents action. Smith maintains
that ballet-pantomime and opera continued to rely on each other well
into the nineteenth century, even as they thrived independently. The
"divorce" between the two arts occurred little by little, and may be
traced through unlikely sources: controversies in the press about the
changing nature of ballet-pantomime music, shifting ideas about
originality, complaints about the ridiculousness of pantomime, and a
little-known rehearsal score for Giselle.
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