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Desecrations and new figurations in early 18th century ballet pantomimes

Paola Martinuzzi
p. 168-175
Questo articolo è la versione tradotta di:
Dissacrazioni e nuove figurazioni nei ballets-pantomimes della prima metà del Settecento [it]

Riassunto

This article synthetises some historical and aesthetic reflexions allowing to begin to know a minor theatrical genre: the comic ballet pantomime, which develops around 1750 in Paris. (This topic is the matter of a book in progress by P. Martinuzzi). The production of this kind of performance places in the European process of theatrical dance evolution. Manuscript and unpublished sources, never reprinted programs, a few iconographic documents, and contemporary chronicles, with theoretical texts about ancien régime choreographic and theatrical arts, bring us some knowledge about stage features and some possible interpretation of these facts, remained quite unknown. Intrinsecally linked to the cultural and social context which engendered them, the ballet pantomimes created in the Fair theatres during the first half of the 18th century, are marked by different artistic influences; they keep old knowledges, but show as well a will of renewal that colours itself of polemic connotations in performance choices, towards the «official» theatres as well as the contemporary social behavior.

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  • 1 Partial publication was practised by Mercure de France, and is present in the volumes of Dictionnai (...)

1The research on which I am focusing concerns the production of pantomimes and ballet pantomimes in Paris from 1729 to 1745. These years limit a first season of experimental creation in mime performance genres, which fortune has a considerable development since 1750. My work consists in the critical edition, with an analysis and contextualisation of fourteen manuscript unpublished synopsis or librettos of pantomimes and ballet-pantomimes and thirteen programmes printed (even in partial form)1 at the time of the first performance, and never reedited. The frame for experimentation are Fair theatres, by their nature independent from political-cultural central control, and at the same time adversary of «official» stages. Forain artists are certainly influenced by, but demolish canonic artistic and literary models, and particularly those which are consecrated by Court spectators. In their fringe position, compared to performance centre of power (Académie Royale de Musique, Théâtre Français), they are particularly receptive to social changes, to variations of taste and of requests from the public, to cultural tensions and they are permeated by all this; they change their form and foresee a development of their genres, advancing modern shapes. This aptitude is reinforced by exchanges and friendships between French and foreign artists, – a real movement from an European country to another establishes contact between knowledges, themes, texts.

  • 2 We can find a synthetic and interesting expression of baroque Fair aesthetics, closely linked to th (...)

2Fair theatre finds its identity in exchange dimension, in innovation (although it maintains archaic elements), in mixing of forms, in parody of theatrical models. It constitutes2 itself as a whole of essentially mobile structures, always in the fringes and in opposition to the steadiness of the dramatic genres practiced at Théâtre Français and Académie Royale de Musique.

  • 3 Really, the word and the concept of taste define themselves in the middle of the century; David Hum (...)
  • 4 One of the most enterprising directors of the Opéra Comique talks about Fair theatre in the second (...)
  • 5 See the Préface by Carolet to volume IX, second part, of the collection edited by Alain-René Lesage (...)

3During the second quarter of the eighteenth century middle class taste3 takes place and it looks for a mirror of its reality and its values in artistic features.4 This phenomenon is associated with the development of a sort of first «show business» in private French Fair enterprises; the process started during the previous decades and leaded to the ups and downs of Opéra Comique, always hated by the official theatres because of the public success increased by its continually renewed repertory which was able to arouse interest5 and was repeatedly hit by orders that limited its expressive means that were considered as a real «privilege» by the stages protected and managed by the central power.

4The history of pantomime genres mingles in fact several times with the imposition of prohibitions, from 1699 to 1752. Partially, recurrent restrictions, concerning allowed artistic means, incite actors creativity and encourage systematic resort to gesture as sense vehicle, in a stage so often deprived of verbal text.

5During the 1730s and the 1740s, in their continuous renewal of forms, forain performances combine:

  1. knowledges, techniques, figures of centuries-old tradition that are read and exercised as universal and poetic elements and at the same time as metaphors which meaning can change throughout history. (Commedia dell’Arte, by its nature an European form, is assimilated by intellectuals of Enlightenment period in an ideological key; rope dancing and acrobatic art, explained in France in a treatise by the Italian Arcangelo Tuccaro at the end of the sixteenth century, play a non secondary part in the representation of archaic scenes and supernatural events and they represent living forces that clash with rational impulses during the first half of the century);

  2. performance structures, shapes, knowledges and techniques derived from «major» models that were in great favour in ancien régime theatres and that are employed at Fair theatres with a critical or parodic intention, not only regarding the proposed themes, but also the dramatic structures and the composition. (Opera ballet formed of independent entrées, pastoral genres which themes and language meet at the beginning of the century in the fètes galantes, allegorical court ballet, French burlesque ballet, Italian theatrical dance performed between the acts of operas, Molière’s comédie-ballet);

  3. music repertory and composition processes proper to opéra-comique, the main theatrical-musical genre produced at Fait theatres since 1714;

  4. forms, structures, figures and themes developed on contemporary English stage (harlequinade, dramatic ballet pantomime), in their turn new elaborations of pre-existent continental models.

  • 6 See the reflexions by Marco De Marinis in Mimo e teatro nel Novecento, La Casa Usher, Firenze 1993, (...)

6Many pages should be given up to different components that are to be considered as precedents, with all the problems of this concept6.

7If during the first decades of 18th Century hypercritical issues against the faults of society were among the most interesting elements for Fair performances, liked by aristocratic public himself also, who willingly deserted royal halls and went laughing close to people on the outskirts, – with the passing of time, dramaturgical choices by Lesage, Carolet, Pontau, Favart, from 1720s, go towards the expectations of a public mainly composed by bourgeois. Comic quality outdistances, in a way, from low bodily and carnival dimension. We must remember that Jean Monnet’s management policy imposes changes precisely in the composition of public at Opéra Comique, by prohibiting the entry to servants in the theatre. A no return point, for a long time.

  • 7 François Boucher draws subjects presents in Fair ballet pantomimes for Beauvais tapestry, for Sèvre (...)
  • 8 In particular, German printed matter, with gravings of subjects related to Commedia dell’Arte, allo (...)

8Meanwhile, ceramics and tapestry factories propose dancing characters of Fairs theatres; they come from Arcadian landscapes turned into rustic one, or directly from fairs, from stalls full of mountebanks phials, or ropes tightened in the air.7 A private and domestic landing contributes to prolong the life of little works certainly destined to oblivion, while critical operation of favourable reception cross the frontiers of France. European dimension of pantomimic comic genre emerges indeed from several factors, as the attention brought on the phenomenon by authoritative critics and dramaturgs like Lessing or his epigons (Strodtmann), or from intertextuality (concerning narrative, thematic, iconic aspects), which is evident for instance in Anglo-French exchange; rare iconographic documents also help to find common threads.8

9It must be considered that forain pantomime genre preludes the development ballet d’action, of ballo pantomimo, events that are accompanied by exchanges of opinions, polemic also, between theorizers from France (Noverre), Italy (Angiolini, Arteaga), Austria (Hilverding), in the climate of reforms, during 1770s and 1780s.

10We are talking of short plays, rarely made up of more than one act, a kind of after-piece, the last and awaited section of shows formed by three or four parts.

  • 9 The pantomime and choreographic works I am studying are composed by the playwrights Charles-Simon F (...)

11Forain production, that is the result of a team of artists, preserves for a long time a positive ethics of artistic work peculiar to artisanship (that is to say: two or three author names for one performance, but also the publication of anonimous synopsis and librettos, certainly not only because of censorship, and the silence, too frequent, on music, dance, scenes composers).9

  • 10 Paola Martinuzzi, Le pièces par écriteaux nel teatro della Foire (1710-1715). Modi di una teatralit (...)

12My study in progress (as I noted in the book that precedes it)10 is the logic continuation of that one about pièces par écriteaux, the displays of a first form of forain pantomime. A modified cultural and social-historical context, and different goals in authors and performers intentions are to be explored.

13The workshop of Saint-Germain and Saint-Laurent experiments again, after the season 1710-1715, theatrical forms where gesture has a supporting part. Differently from the pièces par écriteaux, the works that are realised in the following decades, regain possession of singing and words on stage, and at the same time try to develop gestural elements in less heterogenous directions, in each play.

14Public can see then new expressive «agglomerations» like ballet pantomime or ballet coupé de scènes, which frequently are autonomous sections, composed by dance and singed scenes, in modular shows, and the first pantomimes, which model is more structured and homogeneous.

  • 11 La pantomime à la Foire, au Théâtre Italien et aux boulevards (1700-1789), «Romanistische Zeitschri (...)
  • 12 “Le Geste éloquent: la pantomime en France au XVIIIe siècle”, in Musique et geste de Lully à la Rév (...)
  • 13 Charles-François Pannard et l’esthétique du “petit”, Voltaire Foundation, Oxford, «Studies on Volta (...)

15Specific studies are lacking about forain pantomime. Fundamental lines, for a map and a recognition of pantomime genres in 18th Century are marked in three articles by Henry Lagrave11 and Nathalie Rizzoni,12 the author of a monograph on Charles-François Pannard.13

  • 14 Pantomime has not yet been the object of a reconstruction on stage, in the Association. “Problèmes (...)

16I believe it is necessary to approach a minor and old matter as this one with a philological method, in order to give it back dignity in the first place, after the oblivion. That does not signify bringing back texts to their silent death. Their examination leads us on one hand to approach the social reality of a period and with it, the aesthetic and «ideological» incentives of a kind of performance mostly popular and critical again, subject to continuous formal changes. On the other hand, available inedit theatrical materials, with their contextualisation, might encourage artists to bring to life again old forms of gestural theatre. (I think for instance to philological research initiatives concerning 17th and 18th Centuries performance, with didactic-scenic reconstructions, realised by the Association pour un Centre de Recherche sur les Arts du Spectacle aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles).14

17I think also that semiotic tools may help historical research in the analysis of existent traces. The programmes and synopsis, the descriptions of movements they contain, the engravings and drawings, the popular airs find a readability and a sense when they are considered each one as a text, as well as in a mutual relation as layers of bigger text that is largely unknown to us (the performance); in its turn, naturally it is linked to the social and cultural reality which engendered it.

18To do this, the problem of reception is not secondary. Although they are full of gaps, our sources let us near a historical reality and grasp its tendencies, its impulses towards innovation, its oppositions and its relation to dramatic theories of past and contemporary politics.

19The thing most arouses my curiosity are those signals, although often very small, that talk to us of ways of making dance in that context, of the part it had in the performance, of the meaning it brought. What is certain, is that choreography and choreutic execution had a share in the critical intent we have underlined.

  • 15 Foire Saint-Laurent, July 10th 1737. BnF, Ms. f. fr. 9323, ff. 211r-214r.
  • 16 Claude et François Parfaict, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des spectacles de la Foire par un ac (...)

20A short foray in the ballet pantomime texts allows us to perceive some significant elements on this matter. Above all, the terms authors and critics of the time used to define the choreography of the plays. About Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse by Pannard,15 brothers Parfaict say: «C’étoit des Acteurs habillez, comme sont peints les Rois, les Dames, et les Valets des quatre couleurs d’un jeu de cartes, qui da nsoient autour de Dom Quichotte. On vouloit représenter par des danses figurées, les différentes folies de ce Chevalier Errant chez la Duchesse, pendant le séjour qu’il y fit. Ce Ballet étoit fort ingénieux, et fut très-bien exécuté».16

  • 17 In Hypnerotomachia Poliphilii (1499, tr. fr. 1546) by Francesco Colonna, dream narration, represent (...)
  • 18 Denis Diderot and D’Alembert, Encyclopédie, Briasson, David, Le Breton, Durand, Paris 1751-1765, t. (...)

21The expression «figured dance» strikes: at that time, it did not mark a geometrical abstract dance, as we could imagine in this case, if we consider the absence of referentiality in cards game. (It can remember allegorical and horizontal dances that were created during 16th and 17th Centuries)17. The «danse figurée» in 18th Century was a representative, theatrical dance, as we can read in the article Ballet written by Cahusac for the Encyclopédie; Cahusac introduces the matter by choicing these words: «danse figurée exécutée par plusieurs personnes qui représentent par leurs pas et leurs gestes une action naturelle ou merveilleuse, au son des instrumens ou de la voix»18. And the word «madness» used by Parfaict, referring essentially to novel episodes, clear up the representative and narrative character of dances, linked to the novel generated them. But in this case, it is not a «natural» action, close to real life, verisimilar, but a fantastic one.

22The centre of mimic action in Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse by Pannard may be read as a metatheatrical subject, not lacking in meaning: Don Quichotte is designated sultan of a pantomime world (the Dumb Island); the performance celebrates, through dance, pantomimic expressive mean. And Madness, with its long past in theatre history since Middle Ages, reigns in this country.

  • 19 Charles-Simon Favart, L’Ambigu de la Folie ou Le Ballet des Dindons, Foire Saint-Laurent, August 31 (...)
  • 20 Caylus, Montesquieu, Crebillon, Maurepas, Moncrif, Les Étrennes de la Saint-Jean, Seconde edition, (...)

23A few years later, Favart gives to Madness a demiurgical function; it has to be the creator of performance. With the assistance of Chance, the Ambigu de la Folie is created, which subtitle is Le Ballet des Dindons,19 a parody of Rameau-Fuzelier’s Indes Galantes. If the reference to dancing turkeys on embers in occasion of Saint Martin’s festival20 is a fierce satire against Opéra and its dancers who staged stories set in Peru, the term and the practice of ambigu-comique parody in their turn the fragmented composition of opéra-ballet. By singing on the air Du pouvoir, Folie that longs to replace the Muse Thalie, exclaims:

  • 21 Charles-Simon Favart, L’Ambigu de la Folie, cit., f. 415r.

Le Hazard conduira la scene,
Tout viendra
Comme il pourà.
De nos jeux bannissons la gène;
La Raison
Est un poison.
Je pretens hurler, barlu,
De deux opera faire un ambigu.21

  • 22 In 1721 spectators had seen in an opéra-comique by Lesage, Fuzelier and D’Orneval, the Calotins, me (...)

24And its follower Calotin22 adds:

Du bon sens plus on s’écartera,
Plus à l’Opera, l’on ressemblera.

  • 23 On character dances see ethnological studies by Yves Guillard: Les danses de caractère en Sarthe, L (...)
  • 24 Charles-François Pannard and Denis Carolet, L’Industrie, Balet mèlé de sçenes, Foire Saint-Germain, (...)
  • 25 Ibidem., f. 426v.

25Fair theatre widely mocks lack of verisimilarity characterizing music theatre repertory of Académie Royale de Musique; in the following entrées of Ambigu comique nothing of what appears ridiculous in Rameau-Fuzelier’s opera is spared, nor Occidental presumptions, until, in third entrée, the good savage Adario himself appears (as if he sprang from Lahontan’s dialogues), to mock Europeans, with no mince words. The same humorous charge, which passes from parody of contemporary official theatre to world portrait, animates allegorical ballets pantomimes performed in the 1730s. So, the most singular among these ones, L’Industrie by Pannard and Carolet (1737) stages a series of characters issued from Boissy, Marivaux, Meville, La Chaussée’s comedies, and creates for them and for more common subjects, gathered from everyday life, character dances. And these newly-coined expressive dances combine with others already practiced in French regions, as la Cabaretière, les Rats, les Sept sauts.23 Narrative choreographic thread in L’Industrie never breaks, although the performance is structured in parade form; it is always supported by the renewal of choreographic composition which mingles with pantomime to let performers «marcher en caractères»24 and it shows modern world, with its craftsmen, soldiers, workmen that are partially relieved in their work by new methods of production, thanks to machines. Marie Sallé composes a contra-dance entitled La Découpure25 on this subject, for Pannard and Carolet’s ballet pantomime. The vaudeville that accompanies the contradance takes us again to the vital and modern principle of forain theatre: «[…] On part sur le champ, faire un tableau changeant».

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Note

1 Partial publication was practised by Mercure de France, and is present in the volumes of Dictionnaire des Théâtres de Paris by the first French theatre historiographers, Claude and François Parfaict (Rozet, Paris 1757, 5 voll.).

2 We can find a synthetic and interesting expression of baroque Fair aesthetics, closely linked to the specific function of the places where performances developed, in the essay by Katrin Kröll, “Spectacles de foire à Strasbourg de 1539 à 1618”, in Théâtre et spectacles hier et aujourd’hui. Moyen Âge et Renaissance, Actes du 115e Congrès National des Sociétés Savantes (Avignon, 1990),Éditions du CTHS, Paris 1991, pp. 245-257. For Kröll fair space characterizes firstly as a meeting point of foreign people, who brings authentic and different experiences; it is a showcase of technic innovations (as aspect of material culture) that find there their first «marketplace». Fairs are consequently the stage of fusion between tradition and novelty: the various kinds of entertainment do not aim at cancel the heritage of an archaic and popular culture, which persists, but at the same time they act as a welcome space of modern and foreigner, along with the old.

3 Really, the word and the concept of taste define themselves in the middle of the century; David Hume publishes Standard of Taste in 1757. But already in 1733 Voltaire published the critical poem Le Temple du Goût, which was soon parodied at the Opéra Comique in Polichinelle dieu du goût and by Romagnesi at the Comédie Italienne with a comedy having the same title; the year before, Carolet had produced L’Allure, at the Foire Saint-Laurent, in defence of taste against ephemereal fashion.

4 One of the most enterprising directors of the Opéra Comique talks about Fair theatre in the second quarter of the eighteenth century with these words: «avec sa préoccupation ou son besoin d’entrer dans le détail des moeurs, de rechercher le pittoresque au lieu de le fuir, d’évoquer des décors et des types parisiens, de prendre comme héros non pas un consul romain, un roi d’Argos ou un guerrier de Troie, mais un bon bourgeois du Marais, un commis aux barrières, une harengère, un clerc de procureur, un raccoleur, un soldat du guet, avec sa haine de l’emphase, avec son ironie malicieuse, qui ne se laisse duper ni par les hommes ni par les choses, avec ce goût de terroir qui le parfume comme un vieux vin de France, ce théâtre de la foire, c’est notre vrai théâtre national» (Mémoires de Jean Monnet, directeur du Théâtre de la Foire, éd. par Henri D’Alméras, Louis-Michaud, Paris [1908 according to Auguste Rondel], p. 31).

5 See the Préface by Carolet to volume IX, second part, of the collection edited by Alain-René Lesage, Théâtre de la Foire, Gandouin, Paris 1737: during the years, the peculiar quality of the plays had excited the rivalry of other theatres but it had also transformed the forain production in a «théâtre des honnètes gens». This enterprise could survive thanks to the economic engagements also it undertook. Carolet’s remarks confirm the changes I referred to.

6 See the reflexions by Marco De Marinis in Mimo e teatro nel Novecento, La Casa Usher, Firenze 1993, p. 15 foll.

7 François Boucher draws subjects presents in Fair ballet pantomimes for Beauvais tapestry, for Sèvres porcelains: little shepherds like those of Les Vendanges de Tempé by Favart (1745), magic lantern showers, opérateurs and sellers of song sheets like those who animate La Foire de Bezon by Favart and Pannard (1735). But out of France also houses are decorated with forain acrobats images, and «Magito tiles» series are created reproducing Dutch rope-dancers of the family Magito, performers in Mainbray’s pantomimes at Foire Saint Germain in 1740s.

8 In particular, German printed matter, with gravings of subjects related to Commedia dell’Arte, allows to perceive some itineraries of pantomimic performances. On Commedia dell’Arte reception in European countries, see Alberto Martino, Fausto De Michele, a c. di, La ricezione della Commedia dell’Arte nell’Europa centrale 1568-1769. Storia, testi, iconografia, Fabrizio Serra Editore, Pisa-Roma 2010.

9 The pantomime and choreographic works I am studying are composed by the playwrights Charles-Simon Favart, Charles-François Pannard, Boisard de Pontau, Denis Carolet, Colin fils, Grandvoinet de Verrière. Among the choreographers, there are artists who have marked dance history, like Marie Sallé or Jean-Barthélemy Lany, but also others who have stayed in the background, like Mainbray, Roger, Boudet, Raymond-Balthasar Dourdé, Pierre-Louis Lachaussée, Mlle Violente. Traditionally, the Fair actor was also a dancer, a mime, an acrobat; the names of dancers as Mlle Prévost, Jean-Georges Noverre stand out beside the ones of brothers Sallé, in troupes in activity during those years,. Music was mostly represented by vaudevilles, partly based on known tunes, with comic texts adapted to new objects, but it included instrumental original parts also; the authors were Gilliers, Corrette, Mouret. Even less the sources tell about scene-painters: since 1743 the famous painter François Boucher is engaged in order to draw the ceiling decoration and create the scenes and costumes of Opéra Comique; programs quote a painter named Charmoton.

10 Paola Martinuzzi, Le pièces par écriteaux nel teatro della Foire (1710-1715). Modi di una teatralità, Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina, «Le Bricole», Collana del Dipartimento di Studi Europei e Postcoloniali dell’Università Ca’ Foscari, Venezia 2007.

11 La pantomime à la Foire, au Théâtre Italien et aux boulevards (1700-1789), «Romanistische Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte», 3-4, 1979, pp. 408-430.

12 “Le Geste éloquent: la pantomime en France au XVIIIe siècle”, in Musique et geste de Lully à la Révolution, Actes du Colloque international (Genève, 2003), textes réunis par Jacqueline Waeber, Peter Lang, Bern 2009, pp. 129-147; “Le Nouveau Spectacle Pantomime à Paris, une réplique transparente à la censure (1746-1749)”, in Pantomime et théâtre du corps. Transparence et opacité du hors-texte, Actes du Colloque international (Toulouse, 2006), textes réunis par Arnaud Rykner, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, Rennes 2009, pp. 33-48.

13 Charles-François Pannard et l’esthétique du “petit”, Voltaire Foundation, Oxford, «Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century», 1, 2000.

14 Pantomime has not yet been the object of a reconstruction on stage, in the Association. “Problèmes concernant la restitution des pantomimes créées aux foires Saint-Germain et Saint-Laurent, dans la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle”, in Restitution et création dans la remise en spectacle des oeuvres des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, Actes du colloque international (Versailles-Nantes, 29-31 mai 2008), éd. par Jean-Noel Laurenti, «Annales de l’Association pour un Centre de Recherche sur les Arts du Spectacle aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles», 4, June 2010, pp. 249-258.

15 Foire Saint-Laurent, July 10th 1737. BnF, Ms. f. fr. 9323, ff. 211r-214r.

16 Claude et François Parfaict, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des spectacles de la Foire par un acteur forain, Briasson, Paris 1743, t. II, p. 94.

17 In Hypnerotomachia Poliphilii (1499, tr. fr. 1546) by Francesco Colonna, dream narration, representing an imaginary reign, includes the description of a ballet, given in occasion of a court banquet, where choreographic movements form a chess game. «Ce fut un bal ou une danse à la maniere qui s’ensuit. Par la porte des courtines entrerent trente deux damoyselles vestues de drap d’or, asavoir huict d’une parure, l’une en l’habit de roy, l’autre de royne, deux capitaines de places fortes, deux chevaliers et deux folz et le reste en femmes de guerre. Puis en entra autres seize, vestues de fin drap d’argent, toutesfois acoustrées de la mesme façon des premieres. Lesquelles séparées en deux bandes, se mirent selon leurs qualitez sur les quarreaux de la court, faictz en forme d’eschiquier: les seize d’or d’une part en deux rangz, et celles d’argent à l’opposite en pareil ordre. Ce faict, trois damoyselles musiciennes commencèrent à sonner de trois instrumens d’estrange façon, accordez en doulce harmonie, aux mesures et cadences desquelz les damoyselles du bal se mouvoient ainsi que leur roy cornmandoit et en luy faisant révérence et à la royne pareillement, marchoient sur un aultre quarreau en braveté inestimable. […] Les huict pareilles vestues d’une sorte, mettoient autant à se transporter d’un quarreau à l’autre et ne leur estoit permis de reculer, si elles n’avoient passage ouvert pour saulter sur la partie où estoit leur roy, ny prendre de front, mais seulement en travers, par les lignes diagonales. […] La royne pouvoit aller sur tous les quarreaux de la coleur de celuy sur lequel premièrement elle avoit pris place; mais il estoit bon que tousjours suyvist son mary». (Hypnerotomachie, ou Discours du songe de Poliphile, déduisant comme amour le combat à l’occasion de Polia, publié par Bertrand Guégan, d’après l’édition Kerver, Payot, Paris 1926, Livre premier, pp. 68-69).

18 Denis Diderot and D’Alembert, Encyclopédie, Briasson, David, Le Breton, Durand, Paris 1751-1765, t. II, p. 43.

19 Charles-Simon Favart, L’Ambigu de la Folie ou Le Ballet des Dindons, Foire Saint-Laurent, August 31th 1743. BnF, Ms. f. fr. 9325, ff. 413r-435r.

20 Caylus, Montesquieu, Crebillon, Maurepas, Moncrif, Les Étrennes de la Saint-Jean, Seconde edition, revûë, corrigée et augmentée par les auteurs de plusieurs morceaux d’esprit, Vve Oudot, Troyes 1742, pp. 84-88.

21 Charles-Simon Favart, L’Ambigu de la Folie, cit., f. 415r.

22 In 1721 spectators had seen in an opéra-comique by Lesage, Fuzelier and D’Orneval, the Calotins, members of a crazy «Régiment métaphysique, inventé par quelques esprits badins, qui s’en font eux-mèmes les principaux Officiers. Ils y enrôlent tous les particuliers nobles et roturiers qui se distinguent par quelque folie marquée, ou quelque trait ridicule. Cet enrôlement se fait par des brevets en prose ou en vers, qu’on a soin de distribuer dans le monde». (Lesage-Fuzelier-D’Orneval, «Préface» to Le Régiment de la Calotte, reproduced by Chamfort in his Dictionnaire dramatique, Lacombe, Paris 1776, t. III, p. 21).

23 On character dances see ethnological studies by Yves Guillard: Les danses de caractère en Sarthe, La Fricassée, Le Mans 1987-1991, 3 vol.; Danse et sociabilité. Les danses de caractère, L’Harmattan, Paris 1997.

24 Charles-François Pannard and Denis Carolet, L’Industrie, Balet mèlé de sçenes, Foire Saint-Germain, April 13th 1737, BnF, Ms. f. fr. 9323, f. 426r.

25 Ibidem., f. 426v.

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Paola Martinuzzi, «Desecrations and new figurations in early 18th century ballet pantomimes»Mimesis Journal, 1, 2 | -1, 168-175.

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Paola Martinuzzi, «Desecrations and new figurations in early 18th century ballet pantomimes»Mimesis Journal [Online], 1, 2 | 2012, Messo online il 02 décembre 2012, consultato il 28 mars 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/mimesis/247; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/mimesis.247

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Autore

Paola Martinuzzi

Ha conseguito l'Abilitazione scientifica nazionale alle funzioni di professore associato nel settore concorsuale 10/H1 (Lingua, Letteratura e Cultura Francese, Bando 2012). È dottore di ricerca in Filologia Moderna (18° ciclo, Università Ca' Foscari, 2006). La sua tesi è stata pubblicata nella Collana del Dipartimento di Studi Europei e Postcoloniali dell’Università Ca’ Foscari. Cultrice della materia per Letteratura Francese, tutor, relatrice e correlatrice alle lauree in letteratura francese, assegnista di ricerca del Dipartimento di Storia delle Arti e Conservazione dei Beni artistici nel 2007, 2008 e del Dipartimento di Studi Europei e Postcoloniali nel 2010 e 2013-14, svolge un progetto di studio sul teatro francese del Settecento e partecipa al PRIN 2010-11 (Costituzione del corpus del teatro del Rinascimento), nell'Unità veneziana coordinata da Magda Campanini.  È professore a contratto per Lingua Francese dal 2007 al 2013 e per Storia del teatro e dello spettacolo, nel 2008-09 (Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia). Partecipa al Gruppo di Ricerca sul Seicento nel progetto inter-università Il piacere del male. Le rappresentazioni letterarie di un'antinomia morale (Associazione Sigismondo Malatesta), 2012-2014.  Collabora con l’Association pour un Centre de Recherche sur les Arts du Spectacle aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Villereau, France), per la quale ha contribuito alla riedizione del trattato L’arte de’ cenni di Giovanni Bonifacio (1616). È fra i collaboratori internazionali del Centre d’Études des théâtres de la Foire et de la Comédie Italienne dell’Università di Nantes.  Dal 1997 al 2009, ha attivamente collaborato al quadrimestrale di drammaturgia “Ariel” (Bulzoni, Roma); di questa rivista ha condotto la rubrica saggistica “La danza e la scena” e ha fatto parte del comitato di redazione. Pubblica saggi ed articoli in riviste italiane e all’estero.

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