Taglioni's costume for Bayadere

[Ariodante]

A few weeks ago I asked a question about portraits of Marie Taglioni by the young princess Alexandrina Victoria, later known as Queen Victoria. I got a few kind answers (thanks again, Mel Johnson and Alymer), including an intriguing mention of Victoria's 3 dolls modelled on Taglioni and dressed in three different ballet costumes. Here is a link to the page where you can see those dolls (the second watercolour from the bottom):

http://www.poupendol.com/queenvictorgb.html

Or the picture only: http://img360.imageshack.us/my.php?image=z...riodante5gz.jpg

The article says (a little further up, next to the previous watercolour): "as for the dancer Taglioni, so famous at the time, she appears three times in different suits : that of Guillaume Tell, the Sylphide and the Bayadère."

La Sylphide is obvious, but then we are left with two folk-style costumes that are somewhat a mystery to me. The author of the article doesn't really know her ballet and puts Taglioni in the role of William Tell which is absurd, but of course she did dance the Tyrolean Pas IN "Guillaume Tell", the famous opera by Rossini. I found a colour print where Taglioni is shown as "La Tyrolienne" and the costume looks very much like the costume of the doll to the right. http://img381.imageshack.us/my.php?image=taglionit2zy9ff.jpg

I thought the mystery was solved and La Bayadere must have been the costume to the left, even if it doesn't look particularly "bayaderish". But something was not right. A colleague pointed out to me that the golden "honeycomb" bodice on the chest looks like an element of a traditional Tyrolean costume and that it is likely that it is the doll to the left that represents "La Tyrolienne". I decided to confront the original book from which the watercolours were taken and check if there is any description or identification of those costumes. Happily, my library did have the book in some special collection!

Here is what the book says:

"The Princess must have been expert with her knitting-needles, for the graceful ballerina, as a Tyrolean peasant in "William Tell", wears neat little pink ad blue stockings and nicely fitting shoes. She is dressed in a short crimson silk skirt edged with bands of green and gold braid, a bodice of crimson and gold brocade with short sleeves of white muslin, and the most coquettish of muslin and lace aprons." - no doubt this refers to the doll to the left.

[... - I'm skipping the description of La Sylphide]

"She again appears dressed by the Baroness (Lehzen) as a peasant in "La Bayadere"*** and is a romantic and picturesque figure in her scarlet stomacher, wee scarlet tippet and blue velvet capote with bunches of pink roses." (*** at the word "La Bayadere" there is a footnote by the queen herself /she authorized the book/: "Dancing girl").

This is the description of the doll to the right in the costume that, as I mentioned, is known from a print as "La Tyrolienne".

We know a portrait of Taglioni as "La Bayadere" and her costume is fabulous, nothing like the folk dress seen here. http://img381.imageshack.us/my.php?image=t...bayadere8kq.jpg

We know that Taglioni played Zoloe, a bayadere, in opera-ballet "Le Dieu et la Bayadere" to the music of Auber and to her father's choreography. Yet the picture of Taglioni in that splendid costume is from "La Bayadere" choreographed by Deshayes. I am really confused: were there more than one "Bayadere" before Petipa's? Beaumont has a chapter on "Le Dieu et la Bayadere" but nothing on "La Bayadere", yet he mentions at page 287 (edition from 1938) that Taglioni "appeared with success in "Les Bayaderes", "La Belle au Bois Dormant", and "Guillaume Tell", so much that she received and accepted an invitation to become the ballerina at the Opera (Paris). [...] Since, however, the public clamoured to see her in new ballets, Scribe and Auber were commissioned to provide a work which resulted in "Le Dieu et la Bayadere" (1830)..."

So we can say, that there were at least 3 Bayaderes before Petipa's: "La Bayadere", "Les Bayaderes" and "Le Dieu et la Bayadere"!

How to solve the problem of those costumes? What important character (Taglioni wouldn't dance anything less than that, I think) and in which "Bayadere" would be wearing a peasant dress? And which peasant dress: the one to the right, as suggested by the Queen's description, but contradicted by a contemporary print identifying this costume as "La Tyrolienne" or the one to the left, which the Queen describes as Tyrolean?

Thanks for reading this longish post and for any input!

Best,

Iza

[Alymer]

The article says (a little further up, next to the previous watercolour): "as for the dancer Taglioni, so famous at the time, she appears three times in different suits : that of Guillaume Tell, the Sylphide and the Bayadère."

La Sylphide is obvious, but then we are left with two folk-style costumes that are somewhat a mystery to me. The author of the article doesn't really know her ballet and puts Taglioni in the role of William Tell which is absurd, but of course she did dance the Tyrolean Pas IN "Guillaume Tell", the famous opera by Rossini. I found a colour print where Taglioni is shown as "La Tyrolienne" and the costume looks very much like the costume of the doll to the right.

If you go by the sketches done by the young princess those are indeed costumes from the pas de trois from William Tell. She painted a watercolour of the pas de trois - including Paul Taglioni ("the most splendid man-dancer I ever saw"), plus the two women who are recognisably dressed in costumes which closely resembly those of the two dolls.

She also did a sketch of Pauline Duvernay in the shawl dance from Le Dieu and La Bayadere and I think that is the costume that the Duvernay doll is wearing. It certainly looks remarkably similar from what one can see.

[Mel Johnson]

And bear in mind that the average theater-goer of the 1820's would have had as good an idea of what Indian costume was as we have of what is worn by the natives on Mars!