Dine and Dance: Staging a Birthday Party for Cristina di Francia

During the regency of Duchess Cristina di Francia (1606-1664, Regent between 1637 and 1648), the court of Savoy came alive with sumptuous artistic events and entertainments. Alongside daytime outdoor spectacles such as carousels, nautical ballets, festive entries, and processions, evening indoor events including ballets and banquets offered perhaps a more intimate, yet no less spectacular, experience. While outdoor events were oriented toward the public, representing the power and wealth of the sovereign, indoor court events were directed inward, toward members of the court and honored guests, embodying a more subtle political message while providing extravagant entertainment. Among the many festive occasions captured for posterity in printed sources and beautifully illustrated manuscripts, a ‘birthday party’ organized for Duchess Cristina on the night of 10 February 1645 stands out. Her ‘party planner’, politician, choreographer, and composer Filippo d'Agliè (1604-1667) devised a peculiar combination of banquet and ballet entitled Il Dono del Re del Alpi, in which not only people danced, but tables as well. This paper investigates the organic correlation of various arts—dance, music, costumes, ephemeral scenography, and cuisine—in crafting both a political message and a sensorial experience. It focuses particularly on the material conditions and composition, timeline, and participants of the event. 

Petra Zeller Dotlačilová is a theatre and dance scholar, specializing in European dance history and theatrical costumes. She participated in the research projects ‘Performing Premodernity’ at Stockholm University and ‘Ritual Design on the Ballet Stage’ at the University of Leipzig. Between 2021 and 2024, she led the project ‘The Fabrication of Performance: Processes and Politics of Costume-Making in the 18th Century’, funded by the Swedish Research Council and conducted in collaboration with the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles. She is currently a postdoc within the SNSF project ‘The Night Side of Music,’ led by prof. Hanna Walsdorf at the University of Basel.