Jules Perrot and Giselle

In his choreography, and most especially in his ballet Giselle, Jules Perrot (1810-1892) epitomised the Romantic ideals of his generation. He trained with Auguste Vestris (1760-1842) and Salvatore Vigano (1769-1821), who were great teachers of the age, and he became an excellent dancer. His first professional engagement was at the Théâtre de la Gaîté in Paris in 1823. By 1830 he was dancing in the Paris Opéra and regularly partnering the ballerina Marie Taglioni (1804-1884). He then began travelling and working in the great opera houses of Europe. While in Naples he began a very successful relationship, both professional and private, with Carlotta Grisi (1819-1899), another famous ballerina.

In 1840 both Perrot and Grisi were dancing in Paris, where Grisi had accepted a contract at the Opéra in 1841. In the same year and in conjunction with the composer Adolphe Adam (1803-1856) and the poet and dramatist Théophile Gautier (1811-1872), Perrot choreographed all the scenes for Grisi herself in the ballet Giselle. He completed the work in a matter of weeks.

Giselle has since become regarded as the quintessential Romantic ballet, and one of the touchstones by which ballerinas of successive generations are judged. It makes great demands on the dramatic powers of the dancers, and, in the case of the heroine and the dancers of the corps de ballet, on their ability to dance the spirits of the dead betrayed women with an ethereal, otherworldly lightness and grace. The ballet’s success depends on maintaining a delicate balance between the dance and the drama and, more specifically, by the contrast between the simple human tragedy of Act I, of an innocent girl maddened by betrayal, and the supernatural world of the spectral beings and enchanted wood of Act II.

Giselle is also notable for its use of another characteristic device of Romanticism, the association of a particular melodic theme or phrase with a certain character or incident or leitmotif. Thus, for example, in Act I Adam introduces the theme music for the ghostly Wilis, the spirits of betrayed women, who dominate in Act II, both when Giselle’s mother warns Giselle of the dangers of dancing to excess, and at the end of the act in the ‘mad’ scene, when Giselle loses her senses. The same music is heard at the start of Act II with the entrance of the Wilis.

Perrot created many successful ballets after Giselle, and worked for six years in London and 12 at the Imperial Theatre at St Petersburg, until 1858, having been overshadowed and eventually replaced by a new creative force, Marius Petipa. Petipa was obviously inspired by Perrot and later re-worked Perrot’s material to ensure Giselle stayed in the canon. Jules Perrot himself returned for a while to the Paris Opéra, where Edgar Degas depicted him teaching. He died in retirement in 1892.