The Humanistic Tradition, Book 5 Romanticism, Realism, and the Nineteenth-Century World

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Romantic Opera

66 CHAPTER 29 The Romantic Style in Art and Music

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points(“on the toes”) in ballet shoes that were no more than

flimsy slippers made from woven strips of silk ribbon and

padded with cotton wool (Figure 29.21). Taglioni’s land-

mark performance in the ballet La sylphide(choreographed

by her father) was hailed as nothing less than virtuoso.

Clothed in a diaphanous dress with a fitted bodice and

a bell-shaped skirt (the prototype of the tutu), Taglioni

performed perfect arabesques—a ballet position in which

the dancer stands on one leg with the other extended

behind her, and one or both arms held to create the longest

line possible from one extremity to the other. She also

astonished audiences by crossing the stage in three magnif-

icent, floating leaps. While faithful to the exact steps of

classical ballet, she brought to formal dance the new, more

sensuous spirit of nineteenth-century Romanticism.

Figure 29.20 JEAN-BAPTISTE CARPEAUX, The Dance, 1868. Stone,

height 13^7 ⁄ 10  length 9^7 ⁄ 10  depth 4^7 ⁄ 10 ft. Created for the façade of the

Opéra, Paris, now in Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Between 1854 and 1861,

Carpeaux worked in Rome where he studied the sculptures of the

Renaissance masters. He broke with Classical and Renaissance traditions,

however, in creating sculptures that incorporate spontaneous movement.

Popular legends and fairy tales inspired many of the

ballets of the Romantic era, includingLa sylphide,Giselle,

and Tchaikovsky’s more widely knownSwan Lakeand

Sleeping Beauty. The central figure of each ballet is usually

some version of the angelic female—a fictional creature

drawn from fable, fairy tale, and fantasy. InLa sylphide,a

sylph (a mythical nature deity) enchants the hero and

lures him away from his bride-to-be. Pursued by the hero,

she nevertheless eludes his grasp and dies—the victim of

a malevolent witch—before their love is consummated.

The heroine of this and other Romantic ballets symbol-

ized the elusive ideals of love and beauty that were a

favorite subject of the Romantic poets. She conformed

as well to the stereotype of the pure and virtuous female

found in the pages of many Romantic novels. The tradi-

tional equation of beauty and innocence in the person

of the idealized female is well illustrated in the com-

ments of one French critic, who, describing “the aerial

and virginal grace of Taglioni,” exulted, “She flies like a

spirit in the midst of transparent clouds of white muslin—

she resembles a happy angel.” Clearly, the nineteenth-

century ballerina was the Romantic realization of the

Eternal Female, a figure that fitted the stereotype of the

angelic woman.

Verdi and Italian Grand Opera

Romantic opera, designed to appeal to a growing middle-

class audience, came into existence after 1820. The culmi-

nation of Baroque theatricality, Romantic opera was grand

both in size and in spirit. It was a flamboyant spectacle that

united all aspects of theatrical production: music, dance,

stage sets, and costumes. While Paris was the operatic cap-

ital of Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century,

Italy ultimately took the lead in seducing the public with

hundreds of wonderfully tuneful and melodramatic

Romantic operas.

The art of singing, as it flourished in Italy through the

first decades of the nineteenth century, established the bel

cantotradition. Literally, “beautiful singing” (“or “beauti-

ful song,”) bel canto-style opera emphasizes the melodic

line, and the vocalist’s ability to execute such florid

embellishments as rapid-fire runs and trills. Two of the

early nineteenth century’s most famous bel cantooperas are

Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor(1835), which is

based on a novel by Sir Walter Scott, and Gioachino

Rossini’s Il barbiere de Siviglia(The Barber of Seville, 1816).

In these works, showpiece arias with long, winding melod-

ic lines (usually sung in the upper register) demand stun-

ning vocal agility.

The shift to operatic drama, marked by more intense

and powerful singing, is evident in the music of the Italian

composer Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901). In his twenty-six

operas, the long Italian operatic tradition that had begun

with Monteverdi (see chapter 20) came to its peak.

Reflecting on his gift for capturing high drama in music,

Verdi exclaimed, “Success is impossible for me if I cannot