Estelle

Thanks for the explanation, cygneblanc! That sounds really frightening. Do you think it's a general problem with gymnastics, or only in some countries/ schools? Well, of course from that point of view life is much easier for the dance students... but it doesn't mean that it's easy and that "tout va bien pour le meilleur des mondes"...

Marianna, yes indeed, Frederick Ashton's "The Dream" is after Shakespeare's "A midsummer night's dream". George Balanchine also made a ballet after the same play, and last summer there even was a discussion on this site about both ballets: http://www.balletalert.com/forum/showthrea...shton+AND+dream I haven't seen any of them, so didn't participate... There are some photos from "The Dream" (including one with Bottom on pointe) on the following page: http://www.mirella-dance.com/Issue1.htmlht...com/Issue1.html About your last question (which would perhaps deserve a thread of its own): aren't there some dancers in the Almaty Ballet who are aspiring choreographers and would like to create some new works to add to the repertory?

Here's a link to Sylvie Guillem's interview: http://www.lemonde.fr/article/0,5987,3246-...306155-,00.html and a link to Dominique Frétard's article: http://www.lemonde.fr/article/0,5987,3246-...306154-,00.html Frankly, I find some of Sylvie Guillem's replies not very clear (especially the quote at the end about the young Royal Ballet dancer with a broken metatarsal signing a release of liability (I'm not sure it's the right term because she wanted to continue dancing. It is followed by "qu'on arrête de me faire rire!" , i.e. "please stop making me laugh", but it's really hard to know what makes her laugh, and if she's criticizing the attitude of that dancer -probably not-, or the Royal Ballet's attitude, or something else...) and her attitude a bit cynical. But perhaps the interview was too short to really say something interesting... I wonder what someone like Aurélie Dupont- who has been absent from the stage for monthes because of a serious injury, and might not come back before the next season- would have repllied to such questions! Dominique Frétard's article is a bit weird. And some of the things she say seem unexact- for example do people really still put some raw meat in their point shoes? :confused: And it somewhat seems that that topic is merely a way for her to criticize the "artificiality" of ballet in general (she seldom writes about ballet, and is far more interested in contemporary dance). I think that the short interview of Philippe Sereni, the physical therapist of the company, at the end of the interview is interesting. And he insists on the fact that some of the health problems come from bad teaching methods and an incorrect knowledge of anatomy, and could be avoided. I think that a distinction should be made (and it isn't really made in the article) between "minor" physical problems which go away quickly, and serious ones which need to be treated and might endanger the dancer's health and career. Many dancers seem a bit too likely to ignore their injuries and to keep on dancing at any cost, and it can sadly lead to very bad results...

This is just an addendum to this thread to say that I have seen the Ballet du Capitole de Toulouse again, at the Opera of Massy (a southern suburb of Paris) this time, with the same Balanchine mixed bill. I decided to go there at the last minute, wasn't even sure that there still were some tickets, spent more than one hour in the metro and RER and bus to go there, got a bit lost when trying to find the opera, arrived a bit late and breathless, finally managed to get a cheap ticket for the highest seats (the rest was full)... and as soon as I was seated, I forgot all that, and just tremendously enjoyed that program! The cast was almost exactly the same as what I had seen in Saint-Germain en Laye; I realize that I had forgotten to mention Paola Pagano, who danced brilliantly both the soloist role in "Rubies", and the Siren in "The Prodigal Son". The audience reaction was positive, though a few people seemed to complain at the intermission about the scores of "Capriccio" and "The prodigal son", and there were some too young children in the audience who were quite noisy (and had badly-behaved parents). The most successful work of the evening was "Who Cares?"- a pure delight indeed, and I really wonder why Brigitte Lefèvre hasn't decided to add it to the POB's repertory (a few years ago they did a homage to Gershwin- and frankly it would have been much better than the very dull and quickly forgotten new work by Odile Duboc on "Rhapsody in blue" they commissioned...) The home season of the Ballet du Capitole de Toulouse doesn't seem terribly exciting (Michel Rahn's production of "The Nutcracker" and "The Sleeping beauty", a new production of "A midsummer night's dream" by the modern choreographer Jean-Christophe Blavier, and a Scholz-Jacquin mixed bill, but at least touring enables them to perform a more diverse repertory, and the dancers all seemed in top shape. Now I just wish they would tour with a program including some other works of their Balanchine repertory, including some like "Liebeslieder Walzer" or "Raymonda variations" which are in the repertory of no other French company. Nanette Glushak really has done an excellent job with the company, transforming them from a second-rate company performing mostly in operas and operettes and needing to invite guest soloists for their ballet programs to a very good company with a solid repertory. Unlike many other directors, she was not chosen because she was a famous dancer or because she was well-known to the French audience (I think almost nobody in France had heard about her before, and even now she is very discrete, seldom giving interviews), and indeed it was a wise choice. I hope that she will stay there for many more years, and that the company will continue to grow.

This is just to say that now I have a copy of it: a belated (amazon.fr isn't that quick...) Christmas gift from my husband! I received it just today, and already spent much time admiring the photographs. Now I just regret they don't exist as posters, as I'd be glad to put many of them on the walls of my apartment!

Hi Kathy, and welcome on Ballet Alert! Don't worry about your English, it's really fine (and now there are quite a lot of non-native speakers on this board, including me). Thanks for telling us about what's happening in Berlin!

Another place where male dancers seem to be quite popular is Cuba.

He's a soccer player, not a rugby player. I agree that it's positive that celebrities set a good example. But I also think, like Farrell Fan, that some of his comments about the audience were quite nasty or despising (and who is Penelope Wilton, by the way?), and also his joke about Jiri Kylian's name was plainly stupid (there are plenty of vowels in his name...) But well, if it makes more people go to the ballet...

Thanks a lot for the information, cygneblanc! So Zambelli couldn't have danced the pre-Petipa version of "Giselle" at the Paris Opera, as she came there in 1893. However, perhaps there were still there some people who had danced in the 1868 version and taught her some parts of it? And I sympathize about the "corrections" (I don't know the right English word), it will be the same for me next week :rolleyes:

I've always thought that a good marketing tip for the Ballet de Marseille would be to send free tickets to Mrs Zidane: her husband, the soccer player Zinedine Zidane, who was born in Marseille, is extremely popular in France, and especially in Marseille, and I remember reading an interview in which he said that he first met her when, as a teen-ager, he went to his soccer training and crosser her when she went to her ballet classes (and, as he was shy, it took him several months to dare talk to her). Probably she doesn't take ballet classes any longer (and now they live in Spain, as he plays in the Real Madrid team), but when they come to Marseille visit their families, who knows?

Thanks for your replies, Alymer and Alexandra. Now of course I'm curious of whom that dancer was! And actually I remember reading about some choreographers complaining (even recently) about the rehearsal conditions, probably the "ten minutes break" doesn't exist any longer (at least I've never heard about it), but the administrative rules are quite complicated and sometimes it's not easy to deal with it. The regulations with rank still exist to some extent, but it's far less rigid than what it used to be. From what I've read, Nureyev's policy of giving some big roles to young dancers who were only "sujets" wasn't very well accepted at first- the principals complained because they thought it was their roles, and also sometimes it was a bit hard for the sujets to get back in the corps de ballet and dance lower roles while having been a soloist a few days ago, it sometimes caused some bitterness... There are some rules saying, for example, that in the first cast of a ballet, each role must be danced by the dancers with the highest rank of the hierarchy cast in the role (for example, if an etoile and two premieres danseuses dance a role, the etoile must be in the first cast), which might cause quite a lot of problems in case of injury, but in the last few years that rule often has been broken (for exemple, if I remember correctly, last month Eleonora Abbagnato, who is a premiere danseuse, danced the first cast of "Sylvia" while Laetitia Pujol danced only in the second cast). Keeping the dancers busy to prevent them from playing politics is a good idea indeed! The POB doesn't dance at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees any longer, but that's probably because now there is Bastille. It'd be interesting to know the number of performances each season in the last decades, I've read that it increased quite a lot but have no precise figures. Also (and that's not specific to the POB), it seems to me that a difficult balance to reach for an artistic director is that to remain motivated, most dancers need to have prospects of "progress", or at least some interesting roles. Of course you can't give a role to a dancer just to please a dancer, but if the dancers get the feeling that they will just be the tenth shade from the left and the fifth swan from the right for several years, it might be discouraring and might lead them to leave the company (I think that might be one of the reasons why several dancers left the POB in recent years to join smaller companies).

Oh yes, aubri, I had forgotten Yvette Chauviré, she retired in 1972 after her last performance in "Giselle". Alymer, thanks a lot for sharing your memories about that period (I wonder if it would be a good idea to create a thread about "The POB in the 1970s"?) I always wondered why "Chaconne" never entered the repertory of the company (as a ballet), it would have been logical for it to be danced by the POB as its first version was created there... Does anyone know if there's a reason for it? I wish I had seen the program you depict with Thesmar and Denard, all the more as I've quite a lot of books about Denard but only saw him recently in acting roles... When you say that "the house had a such a bad reputation", was it because of the level of the dancers, or was it because of the very rigid administration, or both?

Thanks for your memories, aubri! Another article about Franchetti (very similar to the one on yahoo.fr), in "Libération": http://fr.news.yahoo.com/030115/202/2xtbx.html and another one in "Le Monde": http://www.lemonde.fr/article/0,5987,3382-...305863-,00.html I wonder if there are people here (Alymer?) who could talk about Franchetti's action as the POB's director? And also his teaching at the Royal Ballet school? He came after a troubled period with many changes in the direction, the Opera being closed for renovation for a while, many conflicts, etc. From what is written in Ivor Guest's book, it seems that the annual competition had been suppressed before his arrival (at some moment in the 1960s, I think) and he put that again, but on a voluntary basis. I wonder when it was transformed to the way it works now (from what a former dancer of the 1950s wrote on criticaldance, in the Lifar period the competition was quite different from today: it was compulsory for all dancers, even when there were no available positions, there was a complete ranking of every category, and for each category they also had to dance an ensemble part). Also, before that the dance performances used to happen weekly on wednesdays. Here are the works which entered the POB's repertory between 1971 and 1977 (of course, perhaps some had been planned before by the previous direction, and I don't know exactly when Franchetti's direction ended), the bold letters means it's still more or less "active" in the repertory: -"Formes" (Roland Petit, December 1971) -"La Sylphide" (Lacotte after Taglioni, June 1972) -"Cantadagio" (Joseph Lazzini, November 1972) -a new production of "Giselle" by Alicia Alonso (1972) -"Jeux" (Flemming Flindt, April 1973) -"L'apprenti sorcier" (Norbert Schmucki, April 1973) -a Varèse program in May 1973 with +"Octandre", "Poème électronique", "Arcana" (Félix Blaska) +"Intégrales, Amériques" (John Butler) +"Hyperprismes", "Offrandes" (Janine Charrat) +"Densité 21,5" (Carolyn Carlson) -"Pas de quatre" (Alicia Alonso's version, September 1973) -"Un jour ou deux" (Merce Cunningham, November 1973) -"The prodigal son" (George Balanchine, November 1973) -"Schéhérazade" (Roland Petit, November 1973) --"Agon" *, "Orpheus", "Capriccio" (Rubies) (George Balanchine, March 1974) -"Scherzo fantastique", "Circus Polka" (Jerome Robbins, March 1974) -"Variations on a simple theme" (McDonald, April 1974) -"Il y a juste un instant" (Carolyn Carlson, April 1974) -"Afternoon of a faun" (Jerome Robbins, October 1974) -the shades act of "La Bayadère" (Rudolf Nureyev after Petipa, October 1974 -"Tristan" (Glen Tetley, November 1974) -"The Sleeping Beauty" (Alicia Alonso after Petipa, December 1974- it wasn't in the repertory before) -"Le Loup" *, "La Symphonie fantastique" (Roland Petit, March 1975) -"Sonatine" , "Le Tombeau de Couperin", "Tzigane" , "La Valse" (George Balanchine, December 1975) -"Concerto in G" (Jerome Robbins, 1975) -"Les Noces" (Bronislava Nijinska, March 1976) --"Afternoon of a faun" (Vaslav Nijinski- I wonder whose reconstruction? March 1976) -"Nana," "Mouvances", "La nuit transfigurée" (Roland Petit, May 1976) -"Ivan the terrible" (Youri Grigorovitch, October 1976) -pas de deux from "Le Papillon" (Pierre Lacotte, December 1976) -"Adagietto", "Mahler's lieder" (Oscar Araïz, February 1977) And the new principals of that period were: -Jean-Pierre Franchetti (1971- it might be before his father's arrival) -Michael Denard (1971) -Ghislaine Thesmar (1972) -Patrice Bart (1972) -Jean Guizerix (1973) -Dominique Khalfouni (1976) -Charles Jude (1977) Some other "active" principals during that period were Jacqueline Rayet (she retired in 1974), Claude Bessy (she retired in 1972), Claire Motte, Christiane Vlassi, Nanon Thibon, Wilfride Piollet, Noëlla Pontois, Claudette Scouarnec, Attilio Labis, Cyril Atanassoff, and Georges Piletta.

Alexandra, I was writing my post while you posted yours... Yes, the company turnover probably is a big problem- if you have to teach 40 ballets to half of the dancers, that's a problem... One thing that looked good to me when I saw the Ballet de Bordeaux is that many of their dancers had been there for a long time, one of the dancers in "Aureole" had been there for about 25 years indeed! I think it's a good sign. Chronical instability is one of the main problems of many French companies: the directors change very often, and with them the repertory changes, and the dancers change, so everything has to be build again from scratch. It rarely gives good results... It seems to me that the mixed-bills vs full-length is a slightly different issue from the rotating vs long series issue, isn't it? I wish there were more mixed bills too, and the demicaractere repertory wasn't ignored so much. This season, the POB has only 3 mixed bills, and two are contemporary works only (Lock-Kylian and Teshigawara-Ek)- plus one of one counts the Béjart mixed-bill... That's even less than in the previous seasons. I don't know why such a programming. It might be a question of money, if full-length works sell more (but when seeing how Sylvia was empty last tuesday, that's not sure!) - but that's not even sure, for example every time there's a Balanchine mixed-bill, it's sold out very quickly. And I do regret some mixed bills of the Dupond period, for example it's a pity they don't perform "Le Tricorne" more often...

I hope that someone who knows all that works can answer... Actually, at the Paris Opera, sometimes, even when there are long series, they have to change the sets because it's alternating with operas in the same theater (for example there were a few evenings of "La Cenerentola" in the middle of the december series of "Paquita"). Also I wonder if the rotating repertory policy hasn't been made more difficult when the ballet company has to perform in the same theater as an opera, as usually opera has some kind of priority (as what Sylvia wrote about Monica Masons's speech about the Royal Ballet and having to plan five seasons in advance) and perhaps it is easier to plan long series five seasons in advance than a rotating repertory? That's how it still works at the Comédie-Française, and they do have an alternaning repertory (and they perform in three theaters). But as far as I know, it's the only French theater company which still works like that: there are some other "permanent", state-funded companies in France, but they have some series of performances. I wonder if it's just a question of money (the Comédie-Française is the most subsidized theater in France). That does sound quite exciting indeed. It seems that the New York City Ballet is one of the only companies still doing that? What do the Danes do now? I wonder if such a programming might be easier to do with a relatively homogeneous repertory (a lot of Balanchine and Robbins at the NYCB, a lot of Bournonville - in the past - at the RDB...)? There are quite a lot of complaints in Paris about the dancers being obliged to dance works of very different styles (say, "Giselle" and Forsythe) in a short delay, especially when there are performances in both theaters, and the fact that it might lead to an increased number of injuries. So I wonder what it would give if they had to alternate daily between such works?

What do you mean exactly by "the policy of rotating repertoire"? Is it like what they do at the Comédie Française, alternating between several plays (or ballets) in the same week? It used to exist at the Paris Opera, but it was long ago, I don't know exactly when they changed (in the 1970s or before), nor why. But most companies in France seem to work like that now; perhaps, as Mel wrote, it is because of the stagehands' unions. Also, perhaps of some publicity reasons: it's easier to advertise for a long series of ballets than for ballets which change every day... Sometimes, the people from Oulan-Bator (or somewhere else) can see more performances, for example when there's one production in Garnier and another one in Bastille , which happens quite often (but doesn't seem to be that much appreciated by the dancers, and especially the soloists, as they often have to dance in both productions and it causes an increased number of injuries). Also sometimes two programs are intertwined (for example "Jewels" and the Ek-Teshigawara program at the beginning of March, both at Garnier), but it's rarer. Having an alternaning repertory would be more convenient for the visitors, but I wonder if it would be feasible with today's conditions, and especially with decent rehearsal conditions. It already seems to be quite a big problem, with the second, third, etc. casts getting far less rehearsal time and far less coaching than the first cast (from what a dancer told me), and it might be worse with an alternating repertory. Well, at least a visitor to Paris has more opportunities to see some ballet than two decades ago, as there are far more performances now than before. On the other hand, that increased number of performances might be one of the reasons for the lack of rehearsal time for each work...

I saw the last performance of "Sylvia" of the season, on Jan 14th. Actually that production doesn't seem to have been very successful: the Opera Bastille was very far from being full, it had the advantage for me that one could buy cheap seats (8 euros, the lowest price) and move to a better seat, but it's a bit worrying about the POB's policy. I had already seen in 1997 when it was premiered, and hadn't found the choreography especially memorable, I mostly had enjoyed its wonderful cast (Loudières, Legris, Platel, Le Riche...) This time again, I decided to attend a performance mostly because it was an opportunity to see Manuel Legris. Well, Legris manages to be fascinating in almost any role, and so was he, but I wasn't very convinced with Neumeier's choreography, nor by his adaptation of the plot (which is sometimes quite hard to follow without program notes). There are a few moving scenes, and especially the end, with Sylvia coming back, meeting an older Aminta and then leaving with another man who seems to be her husband while Aminta is desperate, but some parts are very lengthy (especially the ball scene) and the choreography isn't very interesting; the POB male corps de ballet looks good in black suits, but after a while it becomes a bit boring. On the whole, I found the solos more interesting, choreographically speaking, than the corps de ballet parts, but perhaps it was also because of the dancers. As Sylvia, Eleonora Abbagnato was good, but not very moving (and didn't compare to by memory of Loudières in the same role); Delphine Moussin managed to be quite powerful in the role of Diane, even though the role probably would have been better suited to a taller dancer (it was created by Platel). Yann Saiz, on the other hand, was a bit absent as Endymion- but perhaps it's a characteristic of someone who is known mostly because of his sleep? (Endymion, not Saiz of course) In the corps de ballet, I especially noticed Nathalie Aubin, with a very clean dancing and a strong presence as usual (here is a dancer who could have become a premiere danseuse a few years ago, if there had been more available positions). The strongest point of the ballet was Delibes' score, which I found lovely from the beginning to the end (even if a little bit pompous sometimes in the "ball" scene). At least, one can always close one's eyes and enjoy it- and I'm grateful that the POB's direction has chosen to keep Delibes' score, rather to commission yet another boring new score like for example that of Lionel Hoche's "Yamm" (totally unsuited to dance).

cygnebland, it seems that we were posting at the same time! I'm looking forward to reading your post about the performance history of "Giselle" (unfortunately, many of my books still are at my parents'home, including a "L'avant-scène ballet-danse" about "Giselle" which could be useful). I don't know when it was last performed at the Paris Opera in the "original" version. I know that Mouravieva danced it in 1863 and Grantzow in 1866, but I don't know if it was performed again until the Ballets Russes period. Also, Lucien Petipa died in 1898, five years after Zambelli's arrival in Paris, so who knows...

I had forgotten to add "La Péri" to the list of Staats' ballets, he had staged a version of it in 1921 or 1931 (the sources differ about it... Also, some say it was danced by Spessivtseva and Peretti, other by Bourgat. Perhaps he staged it twice?) The "Dictionnaire du ballet moderne" (1957) has a rather long article about him, and says that "La Péri" was revived in 1951. It says he started studying with Francis Mérante (either it's a typo and they meant Louis, or it's a relative of Louis...) at the POB school, first appeared on stage when he was 16 in "La Maladetta", and choreographed his first ballet at the same age. He was born in 1877 and died in 1952 (and taught in his school of the rue Saulnier until his death). Besides his activites at the Opera, he also worked for some time at the Théâtre des Arts. In the same book, there is a short article about "Cydalise et le chèvre-pied" (the plot is about a young faun falling in love with the dancer Cydalise), and there's a nice drawing of the sets of "Soir de fête" by Jean-Denis Malclès in the "Opéra de Paris" entry (p. 254). Zambelli surely is a very interesting character too! She was a central figure of the POB for decades- people called her "La Grande Mademoiselle" (I don't know if it is coincidence, but it also was the nickname of a historical character of the 17th century, the duchess of Montpensier, a niece of Louis the 13th with a strong personality). She was the last of the Italian ballerinas hired by the POB, and also the last foreign ballerina dancing on the stage of the Maryinski in 1901. She retired from the stage in 1930, when she was 55 (!) and was the director of the POB school between 1935 and 1955. She died in 1968. The anecdote about the early version of "Giselle" is quite sad... And at the same it's fascinating to see how far away in the fast one can get in only two generations: there still are some people who studied with Zambelli (for example probably Claude Bessy). By the way, another (earlier) figure of the Paris Opera who seems quite fascinating is Saint-Léon. It's a pity so few of his works remain (I've no idea which parts of the modern versions of "Coppélia" are similar to the original version), for he seems to have been a real genius.

Yes, the corsutmes on the few photos that I saw looked a little bit old-fashioned, like Michaël Denard in a costume of shepherd... But it was only a few ones, not enough to really have an impression of what it looked like.

Well, the only ballet of him that I saw is "Soir de Fête", and it probably was the same program as what you saw on video (in a mixed bill with Massine's "La Symphonie Fantastique" and Petit's "L'Arlésienne", in 1997). I don't have the program notes here, but it seems to me that "Soir de Fête", which used to be one of the most often danced works of the POB's repertory (There are some inconsistencies about it in Ivor Guest's two editions of "Le Ballet de l'Opera de Paris": both include a list of the most often performed works in all the history of the company, the first one ending on June 30, 1976 and the second one ending on Dec 31, 1999, and "Soir de Fête" ranks 7th in the *first* list with 303 performances between 1924 and 1975, and 8th with 269 performances between 1925 and 1997 in the *second* list. So, as it seems unlikely that 34 "negative performances" were done between 1975 and 1997, one of the figures is false! Anyway, it used to be performed very often), hasn't been danced much in the last two decades. The POB school had danced it in 1985, but I don't know when the company had last danced it before 1997. No other ballet of him has been revived, as far as I know (the school danced "Le festin de l'araignée" in 1984 and 1986, but it was after Albert Aveline's production of 1939, not his original production of 1913). But well, the present direction of the POB doesn't seem very interested in the company's traditional repertory, to put it mildly, for example no Lifar work has been danced since 1996... Here are the works by Staats in the POB's repertory, according to Guest's book: -"Namouna" (1908, Lalo- the first production had been in 1882 by Lucien Petipa, but the music, which later was used for "Suite en blanc", was not very popular then with the ballet audience) -"Javotte" (1909, Saint-Saëns- there's a nice photograph of him in the main male role, with Zambelli) -"Les abeilles" (1917, Stravinsky) -a new production of "Sylvia" around 1920 (it hadn't been danced since 1894), with Zambelli in the main role -"Taglioni chez Musette" (1920, Auber, Boieldieu, Meyerbeer, Weckerlin) -"Frivolant" (1922, Poueigh) -"Cydalise et le chèvre-pied" (1923, Pierné) -"La nuit ensorcelée" (1923, Chopin) -"Siang-Sin" (1923, Huë) -"Istar" (1924, D'Indy) -"Soir de fête" (1925, Delibes- the main role was created by Spessivtseva, I didn't remember that!) -"Orphée" (1926, Ducasse) -"La prêtresse de Koridwen" (1926, Ladmirault) -"Impressions de music-hall" (1926, Pierné) -"L'écran des jeunes filles" (1929, Roland-Manuel) -"Le rustre imprudent" (1931, Fouret) -"Roselinde" (1933, Hirschmann) -"Le rouet d'Armor" (1936, Piriou) -"Iléana" (1936, Bertrand) Staats left the POB when Lifar became its director. He died in 1952, and Jacques Baril's "Dictionnaire du ballet" says that he also made some choreographies for the music-hall, and that he was very involved in teaching.

Thanks Francoise, you said it all! I've never seen it, I just remember seeing some cute photographs of Noella Pontois and Michael Denard in it. By the way, it is frustrating to know that until the mid-1980s, the French public TV (well, back then all channels were public) regularly showed some ballet, and moreover at a decent hour (not at 2 AM), while now there's nearly nothing, and such videos are impossible to see...

Here's a link to the article: http://www.lemonde.fr/article/0,5987,3246-...305586-,00.html

The following article on yahoo announces the death of Raymond Franchetti: http://fr.news.yahoo.com/030115/202/2xtbx.html He was born in Aubervilliers (a suburb of Paris) in April 1921, had studied with Gustave Ricaux, Olga Preobrajenska and Lioubov Egorova, and had started dancing in 1937 with the Ballets de la Jeunesse, and then with the Ballets de Monte-Carlo (1938, 1943-45) and with the Ballets du Marquis de Cuevas (1946-47). In 1947, he joined the Paris Opera Ballet, being later promoted to premier danseur. Koegler's dictionary says he was "especially admired for character roles". He started teaching at the POB school in 1963, while continuing to dance until 1966. Between 1971 and 1977, he was the director of dance of the Paris Opera Ballet. Since 1990, he also was one of the teachers of the school of the Ballet National de Marseille. His son, Jean-Pierre Franchetti, was an étoile of the Paris Opera Ballet between 1971 and 1989.

About the audience: you wrote "it's aimed at a very small audience", but surely there are "high art" works which were seen by a very large audience (for example there are thousands of people who see "La Joconde" every day, and several hundred thousand people saw "Swan Lake"- though in the case of "Swan Lake" there's the problem of which production, as you mentioned before...- and I can think of a few examples of films that I consider "high art" which had quite a lot of viewers), so is the important point the audience at which the work is aimed and not the one that really sees it? And when it's "successful" it's somehow a misunderstanding, or some of the audience doesn't really appreciate it in fact?