Dancers of the Paris-Opéra

Housed at the Théâtre Impérial de Musique, the Opera company of Paris, a state institution since 1713, included a resident company of professional dancers known as Le Ballet de l’Opéra. During the Second Empire, the distinction between the two arts had become blurred, with opera and ballet regularly appearing on the same bill. Indeed, they often appeared in the same production, since many operas had a short, entirely superfluous ballet shoe-horned into the second act, for the simple reason that the gentlemen in the audience wanted a bit of leg to admire during the course of their evening. In fact, members of the Jockey Club never arrived at the theatre until the start of the second act. When Wagner inserted the requisite ballet into the first act of Tannhäuser and the sporting gentleman arrived at the première to discover they had missed it, they hissed the second act off stage.

Although the Paris-Opéra included most of the great prima ballerinas of the romantic period, many of the dancers were the mistresses of rich patrons in the audience and the Corps de ballet was regarded by young men about town as a stable of potential lovers.

Nearly forty portraits of female dancers appear on this carte, all of them identified at the lower edge of their medallion. At the apex of the composition appears the great Marie Taglioni, the most celebrated ballerina of the romantic period. By this date long retired from performing, she featured on the six-member select jury of the first annual competition for the Corps de ballet, held on 13 April 1860. Her pupil, Emma Livry, appears to her immediately left; she is remember for dying in 1863 when her costume was set alight by a gas lamp used for stage lighting. Other dancers seen here include Zina Mérante, wife of the choreographer Louis Mérante; Marie Petipa, the Russian wife of the choreographer Marius Petipa; and the sisters Eugénie and Louise Fiocre.