dirac Posted September 20, 2020 Share Posted September 20, 2020 A review of Nadine Meisner's "Marius Petipa - The Emperor's Ballet Master" by George Jackson for danceviewtimes. Quote The German tome remains a valuable resource but the Meisner biography is welcome and needed. Its focus is not just Petipa the person but contexts – particularly those of family and profession. What she has written is almost a history of ballet from the start of the 19th Century to the outbreak of World War 1 at the beginning of the 20th Century. Throughout the book, Meisner is very concerned with the reliability of sources and documentation. Yet the individual who was Petipa emerges clearly, believably and not entirely unsympathetically from her text. Meisner does vacillate about the type of reader for whom the book is intended. Sometimes she addresses the generally educated audience, sometimes the balletomanes and then the specialist dance historians. Out of 497 pages, the last 202 are for the historians and consist of appendices, notes, bibliography and an index. Link to comment
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