The star of Granada

[evoui]

i cant find any photos of this ballet.anyone can help me? :mellow: ty

[Mel Johnson]

Never heard of it. Who produced it, where, and when? It sounds like something that was done in the Victorian era, maybe by the Alhambra or Empire - espagnolerie was hot then!

[evoui]

its the first job of Marius Petipa that made him famous. he choreographed it at 1855 at St.Petersburg.

[Mel Johnson]

That's going to be a tall order! The Imperial Theaters didn't have a photography department until the Vsevolozhsky directorate in the 1890s. Also, photography was in its infancy. The technologies available to those wishing to "have their image struck" was limited by the extremely long exposure times needed to make the picture. The collodion process was only invented in 1851 in England, and while it swept western Europe, I don't know how many photographers in Russia adopted it, or when. There were some working in the earlier Daguerreotype or Niepceotype technology, but these methods required the sitters to remain quite still for several minutes. You often see pictures from this era with the studio's neck-brace and arm-rest much in evidence.

[Solor]

Regarding the photography that was used @ the Mariinsky - were these photos tintype? For example all of the marvelous photos of the Imperial Ballet of the late 19th century.

I ask this because, as some may know, tintype's were 'mirror' images.

Though there wasnt a photography dept. @ the Mariinksy/Bolshoi Kamenny?, someone was taking photos, as there are quite a few pre-dating Vsevolozhsky's appointment.

[evoui]

That's going to be a tall order! The Imperial Theaters didn't have a photography department until the Vsevolozhsky directorate in the 1890s. Also, photography was in its infancy. The technologies available to those wishing to "have their image struck" was limited by the extremely long exposure times needed to make the picture. The collodion process was only invented in 1851 in England, and while it swept western Europe, I don't know how many photographers in Russia adopted it, or when. There were some working in the earlier Daguerreotype or Niepceotype technology, but these methods required the sitters to remain quite still for several minutes. You often see pictures from this era with the studio's neck-brace and arm-rest much in evidence.

oh! i see! thats why i cant find any pics from this ballet.ok ty mel!

[leonid17]

its the first job of Marius Petipa that made him famous. he choreographed it at 1855 at St.Petersburg.

I am not sure it made him famous, but it is the first original ballet attributed to Petipa in St. Petersburg. The music is by Cesare Pugni.

[Mel Johnson]

This is not to say "abandon ALL hope"! If you know who was in it, it's possible that a slow-exposure (two to twenty minutes) print was made, if the subject were in a stable position, as seated. Or if the faster (only 10 or 15 seconds) collodion process were used, then more daring poses could be done. The great thing about nineteenth-century photography was that you could blink, and it never showed.