Flavia Pappacena_Noverre's Lettres sur la Danse - Acting Archives

AAR Acting Archives Essays Supplement 9 – April 2011
compositional criteria – rapidity and surprise – enabled him on one hand to keep the
spectator in a constant state of agitation, a prey to emotions, and on the other to
create set pieces which were homogeneous and well balanced in terms of visual
impact, gesture and sound. Rapidity involved brief scenes and a swift evolution in the
situations (as Noverre put it in Letter XIV, 1760: each scene was to be as quick as a
flash of lightning). To ensure surprise Noverre often had recourse to coups de théâtre
and both visual and aural special effects (such as miraculous apparitions).
Among the elements of surprise, silence and vocal interjections are among the
most original and evocative solutions. In Letter XIV Noverre asserts that he
introduced silences as early as 1757 in La Toilette de Vénus, explaining that it was an
ingenious expedient to make the audience concentrate on what was happening on
stage and appreciate the perfect composition of the tableau vivant with its air of
solemn calm. Whereas when it comes to the tragic ballets he composed in Stuttgart
and Vienna, silence has a dramatic function which can be compared to its role in
theatrical idiom, serving to underscore key moments in the drama and to emphasise
the moral message. 73 In Les Horaces et les Curiaces (II, 1), for example, the silence
bestows solemnity on the oath of loyalty taken by the King of Rome, Tullus, and the
King of Alba, Metius, in front of their armies drawn up prior to battle. In the second
scene of the first part of Hypermnestre the appearance of the menacing spectre of
Gelanor to Danaus is made all the more terrifying by silence, amidst which the
lugubrious words ‘Frémis Tyran, la mort t’attend’, pronounced by a singer hidden
among the group of sculptures from which the spectre emerges, announces the
tyrant’s pending downfall. 74 Later on, two passages described by Noverre illustrate a
vocal interjection realised in the same ballet by means of a chorus off stage.
if on his [Danaus’s] departure daylight returns, and with the dawn a fearful hubbub is
heard expressing regret, remorse and grief (cries uttered by a women’s chorus); if at this
very moment the curtain parts again and the Danaïdes, hair flying, arms steeped in
blood and grasping daggers, are seen fleeing the scene of their misdeeds, pursued by the
ghosts of their husbands, the furies, and personifications of crime, remorse and
vengeance […] the spectator will not be able to stand the sight of so many excruciating
tableaux without being cut to the quick. 75
Another vocal interjection, this time used to evoke Greek tragedy, occurs in La
Mort d’Agamemnon. When Clytemnestra is accidentally stabbed by Orestes, the chorus
says: ‘quel horreur! quel crime affreux! ah dieux’, 76 going on to address Orestes with
the words: ‘Monstre, c’est ta mère! Tremble, frémis, oh épuvantable! fuyons,
73 It is very likely that Noverre took his cue from the importance that was attributed to silence in the
stage play tradition. See Jean-François Marmontel, ‘Déclamation théâtrale’ and Denis Diderot, Réponse
à la lettre de Mme Riccoboni.
74 1804, t. IV, part I, scene II, p. 186.
75 ‘si à son départ [de Danaus] le jour paroît, et qu’au lever de l’aurore on entend des cris confus et
effrayants poussés par les remords, le repentir et la doleur; (cris prononcés par un chœur de femmes)
que dans cette instant, on voye les rideaux s’ouvrir encore et les Danaïdes les cheveux épars, les bras
sanglants et armés de poignards fuir le lieu de leurs forfaits, si on les voit poursuivies par les spectres
de leurs époux, par les furies, les crimes, les remords, et la vengeance personnifiés […] il n’est plus
possible que le spectateur puisse soutenir la vue de tant tableaux déchirants, sans être vivement ému’.
1803, t. II, Letter XVI, p. 162.
76 Ibid., p. 167.
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