Le Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris: Trois siècles d'histoire et de tradition by Ivor Guest. 1976. Paris: Theatre National de l'Opera/Flammarion. 349 pp., photographs, tables. $7.98

Abstract

Ivor Guest has written this book to trace the history and development of the ballet at the Paris Opera. Though not yet published in English, Paul Alexandre's translation into French of Guest's work is now available through Flammarion. According to the New York Public Library's Dance Collection Catalog, it is the first work since Laloy's 1927 volume to deal with the history of ballet at the Opera right up to the present. Guest is well-known scholar who has built his international reputation as dance historian over 30 years with books on the romantic period, the Second Empire and the biographies of Elssler, Cerrito, Zucchi and Zambelli. In field where bias abounds, Guest manages to gather, order, and present his material in logical, clear and straightforward manner. It is only toward the end of the book looking at the Opera ballet's most recent history, that we sense the author's desire to convince us that the Opera remains strong force as it searches for a new identity. For the most part, Guest lets us look at the development of the Paris Opera ballet without trying to cram its importance down our throats. Guest deals with his material chronologically in chapters which develop period themes as he perceives them. Chapter headings indicate the uneven flow of ballet history through the doors of the Paris Opera: Cradle of Classical Dance, Virtuosos of the Rococco Period, Reign of the Gardels, Apog6e of Romanticism, Decline of Romanticism, Decadence, A Period of Transition, Lifar Period, and Quest for New Identity. Guest weaves an enormous amount of material into these chapters in narrative style that makes this book hard to put down even if your French is rusty. What were the audiences like? At various times they were hostile, hard to please, fickle, rude and easily provoked and aroused. Who were the administrators? How did they relate to their dancers? What were the personal qualities of Noverre, Gardel, Staats or Rouche that marked their tenure at the Opera and their ability to bring out greatness in performer or performance? Did the Paris Opera continue to operate or did it fold during times of political crisis (there were quite few between the days of the Ancien Regime and the Reign of Terror, through the Communes and including the First and Second World Wars). What of Guimard's union against de Visme's directorship at the Opera and the strike of 1912? The fact that Guest has written the history of the Opera ballet into cultural and political context makes Le Ballet