Baroque Art in Versailles
The Ballet Royal de la Nuit (Royal Ballet of the Night)
The court ballet, a political entertainment
The great tradition of court ballets in France was inaugurated by the Ballet comique de la Reine (1581), created by the Italian Baldassarre da Belgioioso (Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx) at the court of Catherine de Médicis. Between 1581 and 1670, the court ballets helped to form the ideal courtier; the essayist Jean-Marie Apostolidès observes that "by preparing these shows, the privileged of the three orders become aware of forming a group with a common taste.
The monarch often performed there, in the sense that an actor is said to perform on stage, but also in the sense that the prince produced his own solar image in the performance. Dance was indeed a real political instrument in the hands of Louis XIV (1638-1715). Following the example of his father Louis XIII, who liked to regulate the ballets himself, the young sovereign trained regularly and, from the age of thirteen, performed in court shows.
In February 1653, Queen Mother Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin witnessed Louis XIV's triumph in the Royal Night Ballet at the Petit Bourbon. The ballet was commissioned by Sieur Clément, intendant to the Duke of Nemours, to a libretto by Benserade, with music by Cambefort, Boesset and Lambert, choreography by Raynal, Vertpré and Dolivet, scenery by Giacomo Torelli and sumptuous costumes, in perfect keeping with the taste for splendour that already characterised Louis XIV. The young king played six roles, surrounded by the most important figures of the court, such as Monsieur, the Duke of York and the Duke of Buckingham, and by professional dancers, including Beauchamps, Des-Airs, Mollier and Lully.
The ballet was a great success and was performed again on 25 and 27 February, and again on 2, 4, 6 and 16 March, before an audience that included many foreign diplomats. Three decades later, Father Ménestrier, who was responsible for ballets and tragedies in several Jesuit colleges, wondered, in his treatise Des ballets anciens et modernes selon les règles du théâtre (1682), "if our theatre will ever represent anything as accomplished".
The Royal Ballet of the Night consisted of forty-five entries, divided into four vigils, in which allegorical, mythological, exotic and chivalrous episodes alternated with picturesque and comic scenes in the city and the country. At the end of the fourth vigil, the Daybreak Star (Monsieur) appeared on the stage, followed by Aurora in her chariot carrying the dew and the twelve hours of the day; then all retired when the rising Sun (the King) appeared, announced by Aurora's recital: The Sun that follows me is the young LOUIS. The king then danced the final "grand ballet", accompanied by the geniuses of Honour, Grace, Love, Valour, Victory, Fame, Justice and Glory.
There is nothing to identify the author of the stage costumes, and the same applies to the author of the gouache depicting Louis XIV as Apollo. The drawing announces the style of Henri Gissey (1621-1673), but this attribution has been denied. In the preparation phase of the shows, it was common practice to draw costumes and scenery before making them.
Louis XIV and the Two Faces of Apollo
This gouache is of particular interest, however, because although it is not an official portrait and is executed in the typical style of stage costume drawings, it is a true portrait of Louis XIV, with the young king's face clearly recognisable.
The sovereign, without mask or wig, advances on the stage with elegance and dignity: his open arms and gracefully raised hands, palms downwards, underline the balance of which he is the absolute emblem. The position of the legs and feet was repeated half a century later by Hyacinthe Rigaud in the official portrait of the king. From the feathered tiara to the shoes, the stage costume obsessively repeats the motif of the radiant sun, highlighted by the golden colour. Beyond its luxury, this outfit refers to the double allegorical meaning of the character embodied, more than interpreted, by Louis XIV: Apollo, the god of the sun and the arts.
A physical as well as an intellectual light emanates from the young king, a miraculous child by his unexpected birth, called to a great destiny which is also that of France according to the theory of the double body (physical and symbolic) of the king, as Louis XIV himself affirmed: The nation does not form a body in France, it resides entirely in the person of the king.
Ideology on stage
After the performance of the Royal Ballet of the Night, Louis XIV made the sun his favourite emblem. Dancing remained one of his greatest passions, as evidenced by the founding of the Royal Academy of Dance in 1661, which preceded the establishment of the Royal Academy of Music by eight years; However, the professionalisation of dance on the one hand, and the affairs of state on the other, led the king to bid farewell to the stage in 1670, in Molière and Lully's comedy-ballet Les Amants magnifiques, where he danced - only for the first performance - the roles of Neptune and Apollo.
The court ballet had now accomplished its mission: to make the spectacle a "concrete ideology", as Apostolidès put it, and to affirm in the collective imagination the figure of Louis XIV as absolute monarch through the allegory of the triumphant Sun.
More info about the Royal Ballet of the Night.