Tea at Trianon: The First Ballet in Britain

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, March 13, 2016

The First Ballet in Britain

From Madame Gilflurt:

Today we leave the salon behind to take a trip to the theatre and a very notable date in the calendar of British dance where, on 2nd March 1717, the curtain went up at Drury Lane on The Loves of Mars and Venus, a piece by an English choreographer named John Weaver.

In itself a theatrical premier may not seem like a particularly noteworthy event but The Loves of Mars and Venus holds an important place in the history of dance in Britain as it was the first ballet to be performed in the country. The kernel of the ballet's story is from Greek mythology though Weaver's main source for adaptation was a 1695 play of the same name written by PA Motteux. (Read more.)