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court; thankfully, some of his compositions from other
productions have survived. It is from these surviving works
that we have chosen the music for the ballets at the end of
Act I (Ballo de Cacciatori), Act II (Ballo de’ Pastori), and
for the Adoration dances in Act II, Scene IV. The final
chaconne in Act III, added for the Ballo di Soldati
Festeggianti, was composed by Steffani himself for Enrico
Leone (1689). Again, in the style of the French, ballets were
called for at the end of each act, and d’Ardespin’s music
was written in the French style. There are also arias within
the opera that lend themselves beautifully to
“divertissement” moments; whenever appropriate, we have
included dance in those scenes.
In terms of our choreographic aims, we first investigated
the apparent French influence at Max Emanuel’s court; we
particularly looked to the French theorists and dancing
masters of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
Along these lines, we are indebted to the wonderful
research by Carol Marsh and Rebecca Harris-Warrick on
Jean Favier’s choreography for Le Mariage de la Grosse
Cathos (1688). It is unusual to have so much information
about the original choreography from a particular
spectacle, and especially fortuitous that this comic
masquerade was created in the same year as Niobe, albeit
in France. Through their detailed study we gained insight
into what steps and step patterns were in practice that year
as well as ideas for spatial patterns for the group
choreographies.
We have also turned to Raoul Auger Feuillet’s
Chorégraphie, ou l’art de décrire la danse (Paris, 1700), an
indispensable guide for today’s early dance specialists as
well to the dancing masters of eighteenth-century Europe.
Feuillet’s book not only instructed the reader how to
decipher the system of dance notation most widely used
and published in the eighteenth century, but included
choreographies from Guillaume-Louis Pécour, whom
f e s t i va l o p e ra
François Rodier may have met or studied with on his trip
to Paris. Noting its importance to the art of dance, the
German dancing master, Gottfried Taubert, included a
German translation of Feuillet’s treatise in his own tome,
Rechtschaffener Tantzmeister (The Worthy Dancing
Master, Leipzig, 1717).
Interestingly, in the first quarter of the eighteenth century,
many dance treatises were published in German by
German, Italian, and French dancing masters, perhaps
signaling a rise in the popularity of dancing at the German
courts. Amongst the surviving treatises are an interesting
array of authors and perspectives on theatrical and
ballroom dancing, including Louis Bonin’s Die neueste Art
zur galanten und theatralischen Tantz-Kunst (The newest
way of going about the galant and theatrical Art of Dance,
Frankfurt, 1711), Gregorio Lambranzi’s Die neue und
curieuse theatralische tantz-Schul (The New and Curious
School of Theatrical Dancing, Nuremberg, 1716), and
Taubert’s treatise, already mentioned above.
We were specifically interested in what these dancing
masters had to say on the differences between la belle
danse, or ballroom dancing, and le ballet sérieux, the
serious and theatrical style of dancing. Both Bonin and
Taubert wrote about what steps were more appropriate for
le ballet sérieux and their suggestions included complex
enchâinements (linked steps) and higher jumps, as well as
the usage of higher movement of the arms. We have
incorporated these ideas while also placing emphasis on
our desire that each of the dancers’ steps and gestures be
representative of the characters and passions they will
portray on the stage—our poetic ode to the ideals and
wishes of the early dancing masters who prized invention,
proportion, and spectacle in their own works. ■
—Caroline Copeland
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