'Well Assorted to Character and Circumstances': Giovanni Gallini’s Notion of Mise en scène

The Florence-born dancer Giovanni Gallini (1728-1805) is mainly remembered for his two treatises, the 1762 A Treatise on the Art of Dancing. Published on 2 March 1762 by Robert Dodsley and others, new editions appeared in 1765 and 1772, printed for the author, and with imprints also involving Dodsley. The 1772 text is the final one to appear in Gallini's lifetime. As I have written elsewhere, the Art of Dancing is a largely derivative document, appealing through a series of generalities to the ancients for authority, and to the theorist and dance historian, Louis de Cahusac (1706-1759) and to the dancer and choreographer, John Weaver (1673-1760). Gallini does, however, include considerable commentary on his ideas of the mise en scène, not just on the costumes and the sets, but on the look of the overall picture, citing artists and artworks as models to follow, and suggesting a result which, this paper will argue, is confined to the staging of dance. 

Michael Burden is Professor in Opera Studies at Oxford University; he is also Fellow in Music at New College. His published research is on aspects of London dance and theatre in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. His publications include volumes edited with Jennifer Thorp - Le Ballet de la Nuit: Rothschild B1/16/6 (2010), The Works of Monsieur Noverre Translated from the French (2014), and With a Grace not to be Captured; Representing the Georgian Theatrical Dancer, (1760-1830 (2020), which was Joint winner of the 2021 Claire Brook Award for an outstanding volume on music iconography published in 2020. He is Co-Investigator with Jonathan Hicks on the electronic calendar, 'The London Stage 1800-1844', and is currently Chair of the Society for Theatre Research.