Les Fêtes Chinoises
Encyclopedia
Les Fêtes Chinoises is an 18th century ballet by Jean-Georges Noverre
(1727–1810). The exact date of the ballet's composition is unknown but it was probably created in 1751 for Marseilles where Noverre was ballet master. Revivals followed in Lyon
and Strasburg
, and the ballet was staged in Paris on Monday, 1 July 1754, at the Opéra-Comique
, with decors by François Boucher
. Les Fêtes Chinoises had little in the way of plot or theme but instead was a series of danced pictures inspired by the Chinoiserie
designs of the Rococo
that embroidered upon descriptions of China by travellers and explorers. The ballet was Noverre's first great success. The 1755 London, UK|London]] production was completely destroyed by anti-French rioters on the eve of the Seven Years War.
Jean-Georges Noverre was born in Paris 29 April 1727, and studied dance under Louis Dupré
. He began his professional career in 1743 with appearances at the Opéra-Comique
in Paris. There, he learned to direct gesture and movement, and observed the Italian comedians with their emphasis on improvisational and physical theatre. At the age of twenty, Noverre became ballet master in Marseilles and choreographed Les Fêtes Chinoises to music probably by Jean-Philippe Rameau
, though Noverre did not specify a composer in his libretto
. The ballet was first performed in 1751 or earlier, possibly at Marseilles or Strasburg. After brief artistic sojourns in Lyon (where the ballet was revived during the 1751 season) and Strasburg, Noverre returned to Paris in 1754. Les Fêtes Chinoises was staged in a production by the impresario Jean Monnet at the Opéra-Comique on 1 July 1754 to great acclaim.
The ballet designs were the fruit of Boucher's friendship with Jean Monnet, which had resulted in designs for Monnet at the Théâtre de la Foire de Saint Laurent "as early as 1743." Le Nouveau Calendrier des spectacles de Paris described the scene of Les Fêtes Chinoises as "an avenue ending in terraces and a flight of steps leading to a palace" then changing to a public square decorated for a festival and continuing with subsequent scene shifts of which the Calendrier remarked "M. Monnet has spared nothing that could possibly assist M. Noverre's rich imagination".
Les Fêtes Chinoises was semi-realistic in style and consisted of danced pictures with little plot. Elements of the real and the ideal were incorporated into the work, which evoked the exotic China of travellers and explorers, and the fantastic Cathay
of the chinoiserie
designers of the Rococo
.Following Marco Polo
's travels to China, Europe developed a growing fascination with Chinese arts and decoration. Lacquers, porcelains, tapestries, and ceramics were highly prized. By 1601, a ballet of Chinese princes dressed in feathers, mirrors, and black and white was produced, and in 1700, Saint-Simon
noted that a ball at Versailles was supplemented with "booths for the merchants of various countries—China, Japan, etc.—offering vast quantities of objects of beauty and vertu [...]". In 1723, the stage work Arlequin Pagode et Médicin displayed a backdrop depicting the Imperial Palace in Peking; in 1751, the French Academy in Rome
gave a procession in Chinese style to honor Madame de Pompadour
's brother; and in 1755, Voltaire
's L'Orphelin de la Chine dramatized Confucian morals. The painter François Boucher may have actually depicted Noverre's theatrical China in a series of tapestry cartoons. Instead of presenting miscellaneous divertissements or a suite de danses, Noverre went beyond traditional court ballets in Les Fêtes Chinoises to create a cohesive, integrated work consistent in locale and atmosphere, and one which focused on a single rich style with little dramatic action. Such a presentation was, for his audience, something new and striking. In the early years of his career, Noverre felt all types, nationalities, and conditions of men were fit for depiction in dance, but, at the close of his career, he recanted and wrote that only nobly born heroes and heroines (mostly of antiquity) were appropriate for the dignity of stage dancing. Late in life, he took a dislike to Les Fêtes and omitted it from his published librettos.
s, and its large and superbly schooled corps de ballet
astonished and delighted audiences which had yet to behold anything quite so marvelous. While there was likely nothing profound in the ballet's theme, for the first time there was an integrated conception of costume, décor, properties, and movement subordinated to the development of a stage picture, and theatre-goers attended to see the ballet as such, not the virtuoso in vogue. Musical instruments such as the triangle and cymbal ("Turkish music") were first introduced in the ballet though it is not certain whether they were played in the orchestra or only used as stage properties. The costumes were designed by Louis-René Boquet who forsook the traditional ballet uniform of Roman armor with applied bits of Chinese decoration for full-scale and realistic Chinese costumes. The décor was created by Guillet and Moulin and possibly Leuse, after designs by François Boucher
.Boucher had improvised on chinoiserie themes for a Beauvais tapestry
suite La Tenture chinois. Boucher showed eight designs for the hanging at the Salon of 1742
; they were described in the livret as "Huit esquisses de differents sujets chinois, pour être exécutées en Tapisseries à la Manufacture de Beauvais" (reprinted in Colin B. Bailey, Philip Conisbee, Thomas W. Gaehtgens, The age of Watteau, Chardin, and Fragonard: masterpieces of French genre painting [exhibition catalogue, 2003] under date 1742, p. 394). They were worked up into full-scale cartoons by Jean-Joseph Dumons, and woven nine times, first in 1743 and last in 1775, when their rococo pastorale galante would have begun to seem a bit stale. The Chinese Fair from the series, at Cleveland, is illustrated by Landau 1983, fig. 20.
remarked in July 1754: "This month, all Paris has flocked to a Chinese ballet, given at the Opéra Comique. I do not like ballets, and my aversion to dancing has greatly increased since all the theatres have become infected with ballets; but I must admit that this Chinese ballet is unusual and at least by its novelty and its picturesqueness it has earned a share of the applause it is given." On 1 July 1754, the Mercure de France
observed that the ballet was mounted with extraordinary luxury and in August reported that "the multitude flocked to see it with unprecedented furore".
, proprietor of Drury Lane Theatre
(who appreciated ballet, had married a ballerina, and was looking for a theatrical novelty), and Jean Monnet, the licence holder at the Opéra-Comique. One commentator remarked:
Threats of war between Britain and France however,The Seven Years' War
opened with Frederick the Great of Prussia's invasion of Saxony and was followed by Britain and France declaring war 18 May 1756. and English antagonism to French dancers led to riots in which Boquet's costly décors and machines were destroyed, and the theatre and its accessories extensively damaged. Garrick sustained a loss in the thousands of pounds. Noverre and his family were forced to go into hiding after the ballet master's brother Augustin wounded a man in the mêlée. Noverre remained in England for a period time after the riots supervising dance spectacles at Drury Lane but without billing. He left London for Lyon in March 1757.
Jean-Georges Noverre
Jean-Georges Noverre was a French dancer and balletmaster, and is generally considered the creator of ballet d'action, a precursor of the narrative ballets of the 19th century...
(1727–1810). The exact date of the ballet's composition is unknown but it was probably created in 1751 for Marseilles where Noverre was ballet master. Revivals followed in Lyon
Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
and Strasburg
Strasbourg
Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...
, and the ballet was staged in Paris on Monday, 1 July 1754, at the Opéra-Comique
Opéra-Comique
The Opéra-Comique is a Parisian opera company, which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with, and for a time took the name of its chief rival the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and was also called the...
, with decors by François Boucher
François Boucher
François Boucher was a French painter, a proponent of Rococo taste, known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories representing the arts or pastoral occupations, intended as a sort of two-dimensional furniture...
. Les Fêtes Chinoises had little in the way of plot or theme but instead was a series of danced pictures inspired by the Chinoiserie
Chinoiserie
Chinoiserie, a French term, signifying "Chinese-esque", and pronounced ) refers to a recurring theme in European artistic styles since the seventeenth century, which reflect Chinese artistic influences...
designs of the Rococo
Rococo
Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...
that embroidered upon descriptions of China by travellers and explorers. The ballet was Noverre's first great success. The 1755 London, UK|London]] production was completely destroyed by anti-French rioters on the eve of the Seven Years War.
Background
Louis Dupré
Louis Dupré was a French ballet dancer, ballet master and ballet teacher.-Life:Probably first dancing in child rôles under the name "petit Dupré", he made his official débuts at the Académie royale de musique in 1714 and became its ballet master in 1739. From 1725 to 1730, he regularly put on...
. He began his professional career in 1743 with appearances at the Opéra-Comique
Opéra-Comique
The Opéra-Comique is a Parisian opera company, which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with, and for a time took the name of its chief rival the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and was also called the...
in Paris. There, he learned to direct gesture and movement, and observed the Italian comedians with their emphasis on improvisational and physical theatre. At the age of twenty, Noverre became ballet master in Marseilles and choreographed Les Fêtes Chinoises to music probably by Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer for the harpsichord of his time, alongside François...
, though Noverre did not specify a composer in his libretto
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
. The ballet was first performed in 1751 or earlier, possibly at Marseilles or Strasburg. After brief artistic sojourns in Lyon (where the ballet was revived during the 1751 season) and Strasburg, Noverre returned to Paris in 1754. Les Fêtes Chinoises was staged in a production by the impresario Jean Monnet at the Opéra-Comique on 1 July 1754 to great acclaim.
The ballet designs were the fruit of Boucher's friendship with Jean Monnet, which had resulted in designs for Monnet at the Théâtre de la Foire de Saint Laurent "as early as 1743." Le Nouveau Calendrier des spectacles de Paris described the scene of Les Fêtes Chinoises as "an avenue ending in terraces and a flight of steps leading to a palace" then changing to a public square decorated for a festival and continuing with subsequent scene shifts of which the Calendrier remarked "M. Monnet has spared nothing that could possibly assist M. Noverre's rich imagination".
Les Fêtes Chinoises was semi-realistic in style and consisted of danced pictures with little plot. Elements of the real and the ideal were incorporated into the work, which evoked the exotic China of travellers and explorers, and the fantastic Cathay
Cathay
Cathay is the Anglicized version of "Catai" and an alternative name for China in English. It originates from the word Khitan, the name of a nomadic people who founded the Liao Dynasty which ruled much of Northern China from 907 to 1125, and who had a state of their own centered around today's...
of the chinoiserie
Chinoiserie
Chinoiserie, a French term, signifying "Chinese-esque", and pronounced ) refers to a recurring theme in European artistic styles since the seventeenth century, which reflect Chinese artistic influences...
designers of the Rococo
Rococo
Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...
.Following Marco Polo
Marco Polo
Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant traveler from the Venetian Republic whose travels are recorded in Il Milione, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia and apparently...
's travels to China, Europe developed a growing fascination with Chinese arts and decoration. Lacquers, porcelains, tapestries, and ceramics were highly prized. By 1601, a ballet of Chinese princes dressed in feathers, mirrors, and black and white was produced, and in 1700, Saint-Simon
Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon
Louis de Rouvroy commonly known as Saint-Simon was a French soldier, diplomatist and writer of memoirs, was born in Paris...
noted that a ball at Versailles was supplemented with "booths for the merchants of various countries—China, Japan, etc.—offering vast quantities of objects of beauty and vertu [...]". In 1723, the stage work Arlequin Pagode et Médicin displayed a backdrop depicting the Imperial Palace in Peking; in 1751, the French Academy in Rome
French Academy in Rome
The French Academy in Rome is an Academy located in the Villa Medici, within the Villa Borghese, on the Pincio in Rome, Italy.-History:...
gave a procession in Chinese style to honor Madame de Pompadour
Madame de Pompadour
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, also known as Madame de Pompadour was a member of the French court, and was the official chief mistress of Louis XV from 1745 to her death.-Biography:...
's brother; and in 1755, Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
's L'Orphelin de la Chine dramatized Confucian morals. The painter François Boucher may have actually depicted Noverre's theatrical China in a series of tapestry cartoons. Instead of presenting miscellaneous divertissements or a suite de danses, Noverre went beyond traditional court ballets in Les Fêtes Chinoises to create a cohesive, integrated work consistent in locale and atmosphere, and one which focused on a single rich style with little dramatic action. Such a presentation was, for his audience, something new and striking. In the early years of his career, Noverre felt all types, nationalities, and conditions of men were fit for depiction in dance, but, at the close of his career, he recanted and wrote that only nobly born heroes and heroines (mostly of antiquity) were appropriate for the dignity of stage dancing. Late in life, he took a dislike to Les Fêtes and omitted it from his published librettos.
Plot summary
J. des Boulmiers, an eyewitness to a performance of Les Fêtes Chinoises wrote:[...] a public square decorated for a festival with, in the background, an amphitheater on which are seated sixteen Chinese [and] thirty-two are seen on the gradins (stepped tiers) going through a pantomimePantomimePantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...
. As the first group descends, sixteen further Chinese, both mandarins and slaves, come out of their habitations [...] All these form eight rows of dancers who, rising and dipping in succession, imitate fairly well the billows of a stormy sea. All the Chinese, having descended, begin a character march. There are a mandarin, borne in a rich palanquin by six white slaves, whilst two negroes draw a chariot on which a young Chinese woman is seated. They are preceded and followed by a host of Chinese playing various musical instruments [...] This march concluded, the ballet begins and leaves nothing to be desired either in the diversity or in the neatness of the figures. It ends in a contredanse of thirty-two persons whose movements trace a prodigious number of new and perfectly designed attitudes, which form and dissolve with the greatest of ease. At the end [...] the Chinese return to their place on the amphitheater, which is transformed into a china cabinet. Thirty-two vases, which rise up, conceal [...] the thirty-two Chinese one saw before.
Paris production, 1754
The Paris production's splendid décor, ingenious round danceRound dance
There are two distinct dance categories called round dance. The specific dances belonging to the first of these categories are often considered to be ethnic, folk or country dances...
s, and its large and superbly schooled corps de ballet
Corps de ballet
In ballet, the corps de ballet is the group of dancers who are not soloists. They are a permanent part of the ballet company and often work as a backdrop for the principal dancers. A corps de ballet works as one, with synchronized movements and corresponding positioning on the stage...
astonished and delighted audiences which had yet to behold anything quite so marvelous. While there was likely nothing profound in the ballet's theme, for the first time there was an integrated conception of costume, décor, properties, and movement subordinated to the development of a stage picture, and theatre-goers attended to see the ballet as such, not the virtuoso in vogue. Musical instruments such as the triangle and cymbal ("Turkish music") were first introduced in the ballet though it is not certain whether they were played in the orchestra or only used as stage properties. The costumes were designed by Louis-René Boquet who forsook the traditional ballet uniform of Roman armor with applied bits of Chinese decoration for full-scale and realistic Chinese costumes. The décor was created by Guillet and Moulin and possibly Leuse, after designs by François Boucher
François Boucher
François Boucher was a French painter, a proponent of Rococo taste, known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories representing the arts or pastoral occupations, intended as a sort of two-dimensional furniture...
.Boucher had improvised on chinoiserie themes for a Beauvais tapestry
Beauvais tapestry
The Beauvais tapestry manufacture was the second in importance, after the Gobelins tapestry, of French tapestry workshops that were established under the general direction of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the finance minister of Louis XIV...
suite La Tenture chinois. Boucher showed eight designs for the hanging at the Salon of 1742
Paris Salon
The Salon , or rarely Paris Salon , beginning in 1725 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. Between 1748–1890 it was the greatest annual or biannual art event in the Western world...
; they were described in the livret as "Huit esquisses de differents sujets chinois, pour être exécutées en Tapisseries à la Manufacture de Beauvais" (reprinted in Colin B. Bailey, Philip Conisbee, Thomas W. Gaehtgens, The age of Watteau, Chardin, and Fragonard: masterpieces of French genre painting [exhibition catalogue, 2003] under date 1742, p. 394). They were worked up into full-scale cartoons by Jean-Joseph Dumons, and woven nine times, first in 1743 and last in 1775, when their rococo pastorale galante would have begun to seem a bit stale. The Chinese Fair from the series, at Cleveland, is illustrated by Landau 1983, fig. 20.
Reception
Les Fêtes Chinoises was Noverre's first great success. In a grudging journal entry the dramatist Charles ColléCharles Collé
Charles Collé was a French dramatist and songwriter.The son of a notary, he was born in Paris. He became interested in the rhymes of Jean Heguanier, the most famous writer of couplets in Paris. From a notary's office, Collé was transferred to that of the receiver-general of finance, where he...
remarked in July 1754: "This month, all Paris has flocked to a Chinese ballet, given at the Opéra Comique. I do not like ballets, and my aversion to dancing has greatly increased since all the theatres have become infected with ballets; but I must admit that this Chinese ballet is unusual and at least by its novelty and its picturesqueness it has earned a share of the applause it is given." On 1 July 1754, the Mercure de France
Mercure de France
The Mercure de France was originally a French gazette and literary magazine first published in the 17th century, but after several incarnations has evolved as a publisher, and is now part of the Éditions Gallimard publishing group....
observed that the ballet was mounted with extraordinary luxury and in August reported that "the multitude flocked to see it with unprecedented furore".
London production, 1755
Les Fêtes Chinoises was presented in London, UK|London]] with new machinery and décor by Boquet under the title Les Métamorphoses Chinoises on 8 November 1755 following negotiations between David GarrickDavid Garrick
David Garrick was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of theatrical practice throughout the 18th century and was a pupil and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson...
, proprietor of Drury Lane Theatre
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a West End theatre in Covent Garden, in the City of Westminster, a borough of London. The building faces Catherine Street and backs onto Drury Lane. The building standing today is the most recent in a line of four theatres at the same location dating back to 1663,...
(who appreciated ballet, had married a ballerina, and was looking for a theatrical novelty), and Jean Monnet, the licence holder at the Opéra-Comique. One commentator remarked:
The sets were superb and the costumes magnificent. Ninety persons appeared in the march. The palanquin and the cars were richly decorated. All the wings were embellished with balconies filled with Chinese men and women spectators of the fete. The corps de ballet were well composed and well grouped, the individual pas agreeably varied, and the contredanse was executed with a precision and neatness unusual in grands ballets [...]
Threats of war between Britain and France however,The Seven Years' War
Seven Years' War
The Seven Years' War was a global military war between 1756 and 1763, involving most of the great powers of the time and affecting Europe, North America, Central America, the West African coast, India, and the Philippines...
opened with Frederick the Great of Prussia's invasion of Saxony and was followed by Britain and France declaring war 18 May 1756. and English antagonism to French dancers led to riots in which Boquet's costly décors and machines were destroyed, and the theatre and its accessories extensively damaged. Garrick sustained a loss in the thousands of pounds. Noverre and his family were forced to go into hiding after the ballet master's brother Augustin wounded a man in the mêlée. Noverre remained in England for a period time after the riots supervising dance spectacles at Drury Lane but without billing. He left London for Lyon in March 1757.