Paris Revisited: Two Ballets from the Wurttemberg Court and the Image of the Prince

The Duchy of Wurttemberg was left in ruins for years after the Peace of Westphalia at the end of the Thirty Years War in 1648. It took more than ten years for the ducal family to resume celebrating weddings and birthdays in their former marvellous splendour, reintroducing once more banquets, balls, theatre and ballet performances.

Two ballets on the Paris myth – Das verbesserte Paris-Urtheil, and Paridis-Urtheil – were performed in 1674 for the birthday of the duke’s heir Wilhelm Ludwig, and on the occasion of the visit of Elisabeth Dorothea of Hesse-Darmstadt, his sister-in-law, in 1686. Although Wilhelm Ludwig had died in 1677, his presence at the 1686 performance was still felt. My paper aims to highlight similarities and differences between the two ballets that share the same subject, but show a large scale of different realizations. Both performances shall be described and analysed by focussing on the mythological character of Paris as a mirror for personal and political circumstances.