Louis Mérante
Encyclopedia
Paris Opera Ballet
The Paris Opera Ballet is the oldest national ballet company in the world, and many European and international ballet companies can trace their origins to it...
at the Salle Le Peletier until its destruction by fire in 1873, and subsequently the first Ballet Master at the company's new Palais Garnier
Palais Garnier
The Palais Garnier, , is an elegant 1,979-seat opera house, which was built from 1861 to 1875 for the Paris Opera. It was originally called the Salle des Capucines because of its location on the Boulevard des Capucines in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, but soon became known as the Palais Garnier...
, which opened in 1875. He is best remembered as the choreographer of Léo Delibes
Léo Delibes
Clément Philibert Léo Delibes was a French composer of ballets, operas, and other works for the stage...
' Sylvia, ou la nymphe de Diane
Sylvia (ballet)
Sylvia, originally Sylvia, ou La nymphe de Diane, is a full-length ballet in two or three acts, first choreographed by Louis Mérante to music by Léo Delibes in 1876. Sylvia is a typical classical ballet in many respects, yet it has many interesting features which make it unique...
(1876). With Arthur Saint-Léon
Arthur Saint-Leon
Arthur Saint-Léon was the Maître de Ballet of St. Petersburg Imperial Ballet from 1859 until 1869 and is famous for creating the choreography of the ballet Coppélia.-Biography:...
and Jules Perrot
Jules Perrot
Jules-Joseph Perrot was a dancer and choreographer who later became Balletmaster of the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia...
, he is one of the three choreographers who defined the French ballet tradition during the Second French Empire
Second French Empire
The Second French Empire or French Empire was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.-Rule of Napoleon III:...
and the Third Republic
French Third Republic
The French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...
according to Pierre Lacotte, a choreographer trained in the same tradition http://www.ballet.co.uk/magazines/yr_00/aug00/interview_pierre_lacotte.htm.
Biography
Born at ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Mérante was a pupil of Lucien Petipa
Lucien Petipa
Lucien Petipa was a French ballet dancer in the early 19th century and was the brother of the famous balletmaster of the Russian Imperial Ballet , Marius Petipa...
, with whom he figured on the six-member select jury of the first annual competition for the Corps de ballet
Corps de ballet
In ballet, the corps de ballet is the group of dancers who are not soloists. They are a permanent part of the ballet company and often work as a backdrop for the principal dancers. A corps de ballet works as one, with synchronized movements and corresponding positioning on the stage...
, held on 13 April 1860. The jury included the director of the new Conservatoire de danse, as well as the former ballerina Marie Taglioni
Marie Taglioni
Marie Taglioni was a famous Italian/Swedish ballerina of the Romantic ballet era, a central figure in the history of European dance.-Biography:...
, its guiding spirit.
Following Sylvia Mérante choreographed Le Fandango, a ballet-pantomime that premiered November 26, 1877 and had as librettists for the mimed action the team of Henri Meilhac
Henri Meilhac
Henri Meilhac , was a French dramatist and opera librettist.-Biography:Meilhac was born in Paris in 1831. As a young man, he began writing fanciful articles for Parisian newspapers and vaudevilles, in a vivacious boulevardier spirit which brought him to the forefront...
and Ludovic Halévy
Ludovic Halévy
Ludovic Halévy was a French author and playwright. He was half Jewish : his Jewish father had converted to Christianity prior to his birth, to marry his mother, née Alexandrine Lebas.-Biography:Ludovic Halévy was born in Paris...
, who provided librettos to Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
and had recently delivered a libretto on a similarly Spanish theme to Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...
—Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
.
His ballet, Les Deux Pigeons, after the fable by La Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine was the most famous French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his Fables, which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Europe and numerous alternative versions in France, and in French regional...
, to music by André Messager
André Messager
André Charles Prosper Messager , was a French composer, organist, pianist, conductor and administrator. His stage compositions included ballets and 30 opéra comiques and operettas, among which Véronique, had lasting success, with Les p'tites Michu and Monsieur Beaucaire also enjoying international...
has been revived with new choreography, as a showpliece for the youngest dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet
Paris Opera Ballet
The Paris Opera Ballet is the oldest national ballet company in the world, and many European and international ballet companies can trace their origins to it...
. But other ballets, with a mime libretto whose authors normally shared credit with Mérante, are perhaps an irretrievably lost part of ballet history: La Korrigane, "ballet fantastique" by François Coppée
François Coppée
François Edouard Joachim Coppée was a French poet and novelist.-Biography:He was born in Paris to a civil servant. After attending the Lycée Saint-Louis he became a clerk in the ministry of war, and won public favour as a poet of the Parnassian school. His first printed verses date from 1864...
, choreographed by Mérante; Les Jumeaux de Bergame, "ballet-arlequinade" by Charles Nuitter and Mérante, to music by Th. de Lajarte, and others, produced season after season for the Opéra Garnier.
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...
included the figure of Mérante, in an immaculate white suit, with the traditional baton for beating time on the floorboards, in his 1872 painting Le foyer de danse. The painting marked the beginning of Dégas' long infatuation with the ballet, but though he had sketched the individual dancers, and the practice room in the company's old premises in the Salle Le Peletier, with its great arched mirror, he was not permitted to attend a rehearsal in person.
External links
- Le Fandango
- Concours Annuel du Corps de ballet de l'Opéra (pdf file; in French)
- Interview with Pierre Lacotte from Ballet Magazine August 2000