Music: The Great Tradition

Louis Quatorze grew bored with minuets; so he started a school of ballet, in 1661. Voltaire himself had sighed over the first ballerinas (“Ah, Camargo! How brilliant you are! But, great gods, how ravishing is also Sallé!”). Ever since, Parisians have gone ga-ga over their Paris Opera Ballet.

This month, for the first time, Paris’ famed ballet company—the great grandmother of them all—hitched up its tutus and crossed the Atlantic to give the U.S. a chance to see what all the ga-ga-ing was about.

Scouts had picked Chicago’s big Civic Opera House as “the place to open in America.” While they waited for the company to arrive from Montreal, Chicago’s socialites and Franco-American clubs prepared a Bourbonic welcome. There would be a huge party backstage in the famous Gold Key room on opening night. And the French Embassy was sending a diplomat to make it official.

Brilliant & Bold. What would Chicagoans see when the great dusty-rose curtain goes up this week? There would be few breath-taking solos, although dark-eyed Prima Ballerina Yvette Chauviré would certainly draw a few gasps with her cameolike dancing. Few of the 16 ballets would be familiar—and none would be as broad and nappy as U.S. ballets like Billy the Kid. Chicago’s big stage was just right for the Paris ballet’s specialty: brilliant spectacle in the great tradition, plus the bold and polished choreography of a greying little man known to balletomanes the world over, Serge Lifar, a onetime Diaghilev star. (Americans were not likely to see Lifar dance, however. He has been cleared of Nazi collaboration, but the ballet’s directors were not sure of his reception in the U.S.)

Little Rats. The world’s oldest ballet company had come a long way from the days of Voltaire’s Camargo, who was the first dancer to shorten her skirts, and Marie Sallé, who, in 1734, shocked a London correspondent into reporting that “she has dared to appear . . . without pannier, skirt or bodice . . . Apart from her corset and petticoat, she wore only a simple dress of muslin draped about her in the manner of a Greek statue.”

French ballet glowed dimly under Napoleon, who wasn’t much interested (although he took a troupe with him to Egypt). But when Czar Paul asked for a ballet master to teach his gawky but willing subjects, Paris taught St. Petersburg to shine. Now, in its “old age,” Paris’ Opera Ballet is supported by the French state. Youngsters—ules petits rats de I’Opéra Ballet”—are wards of the government, get their elementary schooling with their pirouettes. Before the company goes back to start its packed performances at home next month, New York, Philadelphia, Richmond and Washington will also get a chance to see what some of les petits rats have learned.