THE FIRST BALLET.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 193, 17 August 1939, Page 23

THE FIRST BALLET.

Ballet means literally a dance, but the word was first applied iri modern Europe to the magnificent spectacles at the courts Of Turin, Ferrara, France, etc., in the sixteenth century and in the end of the fifteenth. Symbolical scenes deal' ing with various subject-matters were represented by actors in dumb show, assisted by music and occasional dancing. In France the ballet seems to have become a favourite dance by the time of Charles IX. lialtagerini, musician to Catharine de Medicis, developed the ballet comique. There were also the ballet historique and the ballet heroique. Henry 111. strongly encouraged such performances, in which thei*e was often no very definite dramatic meaning, the actors sometimes speaking, sometimes singing, but pantomime prevailing, and appropriate music being played for the occasional dances. TII6 triie modern ballet, as a systematic expression of the drama, was revised by Noverre in the middle of the eighteenth Certtury. He was called by OdiYick "the Shakespeare of dttflce," afifl has left fft his "tettres strf le« Arts Imitateufg" aii account of his system. He treated such lofty subjects as Hamlet and Med«a, and succeeded iri some cases irl producing a coherent and intelligible effect, °