French Ballet Research Articles

Classical ballet technique

In more than 2600 photographs, professional dancers (from such companies as the American Ballet Theatre and the Jaffrey Ballet) demonstrate in sequence every movement in the classical repertoire, from the most basic to the most advanced. Each photograph is accompanied by a text that details appropriate teaching techniques and describes the proper execution of each step. Warren combines the best instructional aspects of several international schools, including Soviet, Danish and English. A glossary defines common dance terms, and a pronunciation guide provides phonetic transcriptions of French ballet terms. A chapter specially for teachers delineates a variety of methods classroom-tested by Warren, a teacher-training expert and former professional dancer with extensive credentials.

What killed Giselle?

century French ballet, we know great deal about the original production of Giselle in June 1841. Cyril Beaumont, in The Ballet Called Giselle, describes the sets and costumes, down to the peacock feather in Albrecht's black velvet barret and the two hundred bullrushes in the Wilis' glade.' Serge Lifar, in his Giselle-Apotheose du Ballet Romantique, furnishes interesting details about the choreography, including the fact that the first Myrtha, Adele Dumilatre, crossed the stage first on her toes, and then, relying on the machinist, engaged in series of flights, darting from a tuft of flowers to branch of the willow tree.2 Ivor Guest, in The Romantic Ballet in Paris, provides wealth of information about the last-minute preparations and the first few performances, including the facts that the orders of the chief machinist could be heard in the house at the premiere and that during the second performance the machinery for Giselle's flight across the stage stuck.3 But we still do not know how the original Giselle died. Did she thrust Albrecht's sword into her body, as she did in the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo production of 1938?4 Or did she simply give up the ghost after swooning, brokenhearted, in her mother's arms, as she has done in the American Ballet Theatre

The Art of Being Human: The Humanities as a Technique for Living

The Art of Being Human: The Humanities as a Technique for Living

Spoken Drama and Music Drama

Research Article| June 01 1947 Spoken Drama and Music Drama Paul Henry Lang Paul Henry Lang Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Bulletin of the American Musicological Society (1947) 9-10: 5. https://doi.org/10.2307/829219 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Paul Henry Lang; Spoken Drama and Music Drama. Bulletin of the American Musicological Society 1 June 1947; 9-10 5. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/829219 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentJournal of the American Musicological Society Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1947 The American Musicological Society, Inc. Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN GERMAN AND ITALIAN OPERA AT THE TIME OF WEBER

point. as an art-form and a cultural phenomenon is fundamentally and inextricably associated with Italy. In Germany, until well into the I th century, opera was hardly more than a Romanic product, strictly determined by its own peculiarities and formal rules, which had been adopted by the princely courtsa courtly, baroque institution. Everything points to this origin: the disposition of the loges in the theater, the choice of pseudoRenaissance text-material which was taken for granted, the forms of the aria, the purely Italian singing-ensemble with its curious leading figure, the castrato. It was a bodily importation of a national art-form. Though opera became popular very early in Italy, its native land, it could not do so in Germany, save in a few exceptional cases, if only for linguistic reasons. The Italian language, thanks to opera, became and remained the music-language of high society, as Latin in the Middle Ages was the language of scholars. in the Italian language and style continued to maintain itself against notable opposition for two centuries. The first problem that confronted opera was a simple question of manner of presentation. The prerequisite for the rise of a operatic stage, an ensemble singing in German, was that the courts, the state and city authorities themselves, should make the effort to change over from Italian to German. They had to learn to discard the Italian language, the castrato, and much else. Only later did the concept German Opera come to apply also to a style of composition, a new and independent national style which could hold its own against the Italian and the French. (At the court of Louis XIV a French style of opera had meanwhile been built upon quite different cultural foundations; the French ballet tradition was too strong to be ignored by the imported Italian opera.) The creation of opera in this sense was primarily a