Meyerbeer and ballet music of the nineteenth century

Classical ballet, as we all know, came to birth in the womb of opera. In early works such as Giulio Caccini's Euridice (1600), the operatic business of each act culminated in a concluding balletto, and in the succeeding centuries, opera-ballets sustained the connection with an intricate weave of sung and danced action. Moreover, even as the two forms diverged on their different evolutionary paths, the tradition of the operatic divertissement connected them until the New Music of Wagner, with its phatic conception of melody and its short, cellular motifs, finally severed the tie. There are dances in Wagner, of course-the Apprentices in Die Meistersinger von Niimberg (1868) and the Flower Maidens in Parsifal (1882)-but his vocal line seldom dances as it dances in the work of his chief antagonist and bete noir, Meyerbeer. It is significant in this regard that the Paris premiere of Tannhduser (1861) should have foundered largely on the issue of ballet, while some of Meyerbeer's greatest successes-Robert le Diable (1831) and Le prophete (1849)owed at least part of their success to the frisson and piquancy of their dance divertissements

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• Tchaikovsky's Ballets

  Harlow Robinson, Roland John Wiley•The Slavic and East European…•1987

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