Marius Petipa - The Emperor's Ballet Master
"Marius Petipa - The Emperor's Ballet Master"
by Nadine Meisner
Oxford University Press, 2019
Our concept of classical ballet stems mostly from the work of Marius Petipa (1818 - 1910), a French choreographer resident principally in Russia at the end of the Czarist era. Until the publication of Meisner's biography, personal information in English about Petipa was somewhat scarce. As a reader of German, I relied on Eberhard Rebling's "Marius Petipa, Master of Classical Ballet", printed 1975 in what was East Berlin. Rebling's 430 page collection contains texts by Petipa (his formal memoirs, spontaneous diary, diverse letters etc.) and opinions about him by contemporaries and by important successors (Nijinska, Balanchine, Ashton, Grigorovitch et alia). It is an expansion of a Russian volume, “Marius Petipa, Materiali Wospominanija Stati” printed 1971 by the Leningrad branch of Iskusstwo Publishers.
The German tome remains a valuable resource but the Meisner biography is welcome and needed. Its focus is not just Petipa the person but contexts – particularly those of family and profession. What she has written is almost a history of ballet from the start of the 19th Century to the outbreak of World War 1 at the beginning of the 20th Century. Throughout the book, Meisner is very concerned with the reliability of sources and documentation. Yet the individual who was Petipa emerges clearly, believably and not entirely unsympathetically from her text. Meisner does vacillate about the type of reader for whom the book is intended. Sometimes she addresses the generally educated audience, sometimes the balletomanes and then the specialist dance historians. Out of 497 pages, the last 202 are for the historians and consist of appendices, notes, bibliography and an index.
Marius Petipa was hired by the court ballet company (now known as the Maryinsky) in St. Petersburg, Russia principally as a dancer. He was 29 years old at the time (1847) and had performed in Western Europe (Belgium, France, Spain) . Although he belonged to a family of dancers and was a student of dance and music, Marius had shown little interest in any artform until his late teens. It may have been his mother’s prodding that turned him into a pupil who applied himself earnestly. Marius became a reputable dancer although his father, the ballet master Jean P, and his brother, the danseur Lucien P, were more prominent. Still, Marius seems to have known what was due him. Even though the location of St. Petersburg was remote from the centers of culture such as Paris, Vienna, Berlin and Milan, the czar paid his artists well. Marius had incentive to stay.
Also, gradually he took on tasks in addition to performing, such as teaching students and setting small dances. He worked not just in St. Petersburg but also with the czar’s “neglected” ballet company in Moscow where the audience had a somewhat different taste. He managed to get on with whoever was the 1st ballet master, whether this was a major choreographer like Perrot or Saint-Leon or a minor talent such as (according to Meisner) the likes of Titus. Marius had to maneuver the changing tides of ballerinas – imported from Western Europe or domestic Russian. The great change was that from romantic dramatic ballets to classic ceremonial ballets. Marius's first full ballet in Russia had likely been “Star of Granada”, a divertissement of Spanish dances for a benefit in 1855 at St. Petersburg's Mikhailovsky Theater. He kept on dancing and miming until 1869, but by then had established himself as a ballet master who could choreograph.
During the more than six decades Marius spent in Russia, he staged or restaged about 65 ballets and 36 dances for operas. Most of these works have been lost despite Stepanov notations for about a fourth of the ballets. Meisner’s book relates as much detail as possible about the ballet productions. In addition to the generosity of successive czars, dance performances had to compete with opera and drama at the box office. Meisner and others credit Marius Petipa with the establishment of the classical ceremonial ballet and making it what audiences expected. According to some historians this style evolved into the 20th Century’s plotless abstractions. However, according to another of Balanchine’s quips, there is no such thing as an abstract ballet as long as it is humans who are doing the dancing.
The price on the Internet for Meisner's book is $34.95.
