From the Paris Opera to the Fenice: The Reception of “French” Romantic Ballets in Venice

Shortly after the premier of masterpieces of the Romantic Ballet such as “La Sylphide” (1832) and “Giselle” (1841), several Italian ballet masters and famous ballerinas staged their own adaptations of these ballets in Italy. However, they were not as well received as they had been at the Paris Opera. The innovative style and artistry of ballerinas such as Marie Taglioni, Fanny Elssler and Nathalie Fitzjames were generally appreciated by the majority of the audience and the critics; however, some were not enthusiastic about the supernatural subjects and lengthy passages of “pure dance” in French Romantic ballets. Venetian audiences, by contrast, were more open to the aesthetics of these ballets. As a result, numerous French Romantic ballets were staged at La Fenice, often in only lightly adapted versions. This paper outlines the reception in Italy of some major Parisian Romantic Ballets from the 1830s onwards, highlighting the particular role Venice played in it. Moreover, it explores reasons for the rejection of “fantastic” ballets in Italy during this period, and for Venice’s special position in the Italian theatrical landscape. 

I. Julia Bührle studied Comparative Literature, History of Art, and International Relations in Stuttgart, Paris, and Oxford. In 2014, she completed her Franco-German PhD entitled Literature and Dance: the Choreographic Adaptation of Works of Literature in Germany and France from the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day (published in 2014). She also authored a biography of the dancer Robert Tewsley (Robert Tewsley: Dancing beyond Borders, bilingual English-German, 2011). Besides, she has worked for UNESCO, the Munich Ballet and the Paris Opera, and she took part in the BBC documentary The King Who Invented Ballet: Louis XIV and the Noble Art of Dance (2015). Following a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at New College, Oxford, she published the first global history of ballet adaptations of Shakespeare’s works, entitled Dancing Shakespeare, in 2024. Julia currently works as a dramaturge for the Semperoper Ballett in Dresden, Germany.