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Ballets By Jesuits


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Dear Listmembers,

on the homepage of the French Jesuits I read that in former centuries there were ballets created by Jesuits. For me as a young Jesuits and fanatic balletfan and -goer, this is very intersting. So I look to get more information about that. Does anyone of you have some hints or informations for me?

Greetings from Munich,

Volkmar

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During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it seemed as though members of the Society of Jesus were doing a little bit of everything. Some well, some not so well, but they were DOING things. One that I know of was a fellow named Menestrier who organized at least one ballet for Louis XIV, whether simply as producer or librettist or ballet master, I don't know.

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Pere Menestrier did indeed stage ballets -- lots of them, mostly horse ballets. (He also wrote a huge history of ballet, in something like the 1680s, cataloguing, I've read, over 400 ballets. Don't know how many of them were by Jesuits, though.)

Try to find Marian Hanna Winter's "Pre-Romantic Ballet" in a library (it's very scarce, and long out of print). You might find some more in there.

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I believe somebody within the last ten years has published a doctoral dissertation on the ballet activities of the Jesuits.

The reason that I know anything at all about Menestrier is that he ranked as a Colonel in the Household Brigade of Guards and was made so during the 1680s in a reorganization of that body of soldiers which resulted in the resignation of my 7x-great grandfather, as he had been passed over for promotion. He went back to Scotland (he had been in the Scots' Guards), found things not to his liking there, and emigrated to America.

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Dear Alexandra, dear Mel,

thank you for your informations. I will try to read somewhee M.H. Winters "Pro-Romantic Ballet". Of course I am alos very interested in the dissertation Mel mentioned. Where could I find it?

During my stay in Vienna in January and Febrary I read a boook on the Jesuits' theatre in Vienna. And I was very astonished to read, that the Jesuits there also staged balletts - and not only single dances within theatres or at their end (to link the theatre performance with the following opera), they also created whole acts of theatres as ballets. Unfortunately the information I got there was only very general and not specific enough to get more informations.

But I will look for more information. There was a series of arcitles "les ballets des jesuites" in France 1936. I hope to receive them soon from the archives in France...

With a lot of greetings fomr Munich,

Volkmar

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