proper training for
debutants, under MM. Perrin and Cambert, whilst Beauchamp, the master
of the Court ballets, had charge of the dancing. The first
opera-ballet, the "Pomona" of Perrin and Cambert, was produced in
1671. To this succeeded many works of Lulli, to whom is attributed the
increased speed in dance music and dancing, that of the Court ballets
having been slow and stately.

[Illustration: Fig. 63.--Mlle. Fanny Ellsler. From a lithograph by A.
Lacaucbie.]

The great production of the period appears to have been the "Triumph
of Love" in 1681, with twenty scenes and seven hundred performers;
amongst these were many of the nobility, and some excellent
_ballerine_, such as Pesaut, Carre, Leclerc, and Lafontaine.

A detailed history of the ballet is, however, impossible here, and we
must proceed to touch only on salient points. It passed from the
Court to the theatre about 1680 and had two characteristics, one with
feminine dancers, the other without.

[Illustration: Fig. 63a.--Dancing satyr playing castanets, by Myron,
in the Vatican Museum. The action is entirely suggestive of that of
Fanny Ellsler, and might be evidence of the antiquity of the Spanish
tradition.]

It is not a little curious that wearing the mask, a revival of the
antique, was practised in some of these ballets. The history of the
opera-ballet of those days gives to us many celebrated names of
musicians, such as Destouches, who gave new "verve" to ballet music,
and Rameau. Jean Georges Noverre abolished the singing and established
the five-act ballet on its own footing in 1776. In this it appears he
had partly the advice of Garrick, whom he met in London. The names of
the celebrated dancers are numerous, such as Pecourt, Blaudy (who
taught Mlle. Camargo), Laval, Vestris, Germain, Prevost, Lafontaine,
and Camargo (fig. 61), of the 18th century; Taglioni, Grisi, Duvernay,
Cerito, Ellsler, etc., of the 19th century, to those of our own day. A
fair notice of all of these would be a work in itself.

[Illustration: Fig. 64.--Mlle. Taglioni. From a lithograph of the
period.]

The introduction of the ballet into England was as late as 1734, when
the French dancers, Mlle. Salle, the rival of Mlle. Camargo, and Mlle.
de Subligny made a great success at Covent Garden in "Ariadne and
Galatea," and Mlle. Salle danced in her own choregraphic invention of
"Pygmalion," since which time it has been popular in England, when
those of the first class can b