Gypsy Music in European Culture: From the Late Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries

7 | Gypsy Motifs in Ballet

chapter seven ••••• Gypsy Motifs in Ballet Gypsy Motifs in European Ballets As it did in other artistic forms, the exotic discourse on Gypsy culture predominated in European ballet, especially in its visual elements. In Russian ballets particularly, Gypsies would appear at markets and fairs as onlookers, reflecting their age-old national presence. The Gypsy type emerged in European ballet in the eighteenth century. One instancewasChristophWillibaldGluck’sthree-actballet-pantomimeDonJuan ou Le festin de Pierre (Don Juan; or, The Stone Guest’s Banquet) of 1761, with a libretto by Gaspar Angiolini and Ranieri de Calzabigi, in which Gypsy women inActIIperformashowydanceforassembledguests,accompaniedbytambourine . In this and other instances, it was Gypsies’ exotic appearance and dress, alongwiththeirperceivedmusicality,thatencouragedartiststoincludethemin stage works. Such a perspective held up in ballets of the nineteenth century—a period of fascination with mysticism and exoticism. In turn, librettos often incorporated the Gypsy “pentalogue” of love, freedom, magic, nature, and evil. The most popular ballets combining these motifs include La Gipsy of 1839, by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges, which employed the music of three composers: Francois Benoist for Act I, Ambroise Thomas for Act II, and MarcAurelel é Marliani for Act III. This work’s libretto has no lack of Gyspy stereotypes , including the kidnapped child, fortune-telling and dance, and allusions to Gypsies’ impetuous and impulsive nature. (In the final scene, Sarah, who is found among the Gypsies, lays bare her Gypsy nature when she murders her husband’s killer.) Similar in story line is the ballet La Gitana (1838), conceived by choreographer Filippo Taglioni (1778–1871) and first performed in St. Petersburg (Beaumont 1951, 129). 158 19th- & Early 20th-Century Composers Other themes pertaining in ballets included the Gypsy as magician or sorcerer and the Gypsy woman as a creature of phenomenal Oriental beauty and mystery who arrives on a scene as if from nowhere. In the twentieth century, suchaportrayalwouldappear,forinstance,inIgorStravinsky’sballetTheFairy’s Kiss (1928), for which he himself created the libretto based on Hans Christian Andersen’s“TheIce-Maiden.”TheGypsywomanepitomizesmystery,riches(her clothingsparkleswithvaluablejewels),anderoticallure,withherEasternbeauty clearly setting her apart from the country folk. At the wedding celebration, she is distinct from the revelers; her origins are unknown and she disappears unnoticed, perhaps pointing to Gypsies’ nomadic lifestyle. ThepopularityofHugo’sTheHunchbackofNotreDameresultedinmanyballet creators including a heroine named Esmeralda. And in later nineteenth-century France, and particularly Paris, the Gypsy woman’s traits as a fortune-teller worthy of regal love would be combined with the world of the bohemian artist. Looseness in the term “Bohemian/bohemian” also played a part here, with one connotationreferringtoanethnicgroupandtheothertoartisticcircles.Félicien Champsaurpublishedamodestbutinterestingpamphletonthissubjectin1887, “LesBohemiens,”envisaginghisballet,inwhichthefigureDjinaappears—“reine d’une tribe errante” (Champsaur 1887). The Gypsies depicted in the ballet are stereotypically presented women living on the margins of society. The connection of Gypsy heroes with devilish powers—a concept present in European culture since the fifteenth century—also influenced their inclusion within many a ballet. In 1845, Adolphe Adam, who previously composed the music to the popular ballet Giselle, composed the incidental music to the ballet-pantomime Le diable à quatre (The Devil to Pay), which tells of the life swap between a rich countess and the poor wife of a weaver, all brought about byaspelloftenattributedtoaGypsy.Thetwowomen’sentertainingadventures are also ended through Gypsy magic. The ascription of shady dealings to the Gypsies, with their associations with devilsandimpureforces,founditsreflectioninballetsacrossEurope.Magicand Gypsy love intertwined in the 1902 choreographic fantasy Święto ognia czyli noc świętojańska (The Festival of Fire; or, St. John’s Night), with music by Zygmunt Noskowski (1846–1909). The main heroine of this three-act work, with choreography by Marian Prażmowski, is the Gypsy queen Tyra, who is infatuated with the Hungarian prince Stefan, on whose infidelity the plot turns. Rejecting Tyra, he takes the young country girl Halina as his wife, but the spurned Tyra swears she will win Stefan back. The entrance of Gypsy elements into the ballet both ensures a component of the extraordinary (as in the Gypsy dance from Motifs in Ballet 159 Act I) and suggests national motifs, with the czardas showing Stefan and Tyra’s Hungarian origins. Even though she is referred to as the Gypsy queen, Tyra is modeled on a romantic, lone heroine, unaccompanied by any fellow Gypsies. The romantic element of this portrayal is accentuated by the images of Satan and fire illuminating the murky night. And Tyra, in making a pact with Satan, embodies the evilassociatedwithmagic,sealingheragreementbyperformingasymbol-filled dancerepletewithsnakes.Tyrathuswillinglyenlistsdarkforcestowinbackher beloved, but...