Fanny Elssler

Austrian ballerina

• Born: June 23, 1810
• Birthplace: Vienna, Austria
• Died: November 27, 1884
• Place of death: Vienna, Austria

Elssler’s name has become synonymous with the Romantic Age. Elssler was one of the central figures responsible for inspiring the renaissance in ballet that occurred during the early nineteenth century. She was known for her remarkably individual style, which she often showcased in her various signature pieces.

Early Life

Fanny Elssler (EHLS-lehr) was the youngest of five children, all of whom except her older brother, Johann, were to pursue careers in the arts. Her other brother, Joseph, became a professional tenor; her sisters, Therese and Anna, were instructed in ballet from a young age. Fanny’s mother was a seamstress, but both her grandfather and father worked for the Austrian composer Josef Haydn as copyists and attendants. With such a background in the arts, Fanny was well placed to commence her ballet training with the Theater an der Wien.

In 1818, at the age of eight, Fanny joined the Vienna Court Opera and made her first billed appearance in the Kärntnertortheater production of Jean Aumer’s Die Hochzeit der Thetis und des Peleus on April 20 of that year. During this first phase of her dancing career, the three dancing masters most influential in her ballet training were Filippo Taglioni, Louis Henry, and Armand Vestris. Fanny’s sister Therese appeared with her and even collaborated with her almost exclusively throughout her own career, but it is Fanny’s technical and dramatic brilliance that history most often recalls.

Life’s Work

Considering Fanny’s potential as a gifted ballerina, the decision to have her study in Italy was a natural one. The experience would prove to be influential because Fanny acquired the dramatic skills needed for many of the new ballets being written in Naples during the period. Presentations such as Gaetano Gioja’s Cesare in Egitto (July, 1825) and Taglioni’s Alcibiade (July, 1826) demanded more from choreography and dance than ever before. Similarly, Fanny also received many opportunities to develop her technical mastery, particularly her pointe work—on the tips of her toes—for which she later became famous.

Although Fanny made the most of her two years in Italy, her career was put on hold briefly when she returned to Vienna in 1827 to give birth to her illegitimate son, Franz Robert, on June 4. The boy’s father, Prince Leopold of Salerno, had reportedly “purchased” Fanny from her mother. In fact, Fanny’s career was put on hold again five years later when she gave birth to another illegitimate child, this time a daughter, Theresa Anne (born on October 26, 1833), whose father was the dancer Anton Stuhlmüller.

Fanny distinguished herself as technically skilled early in her career. From the occasion of her first appearance in a lead role as Mathilde in Luigi Astolfi’s Mathilde, Herzogin von Spoleto in January, 1826, to that of Amalie in Amalia Brugnoli’s Ottavio Pinelli, it was clear that Fanny was special. Such ballets were entirely new, and Fanny’s execution was made all the more thrilling because she successfully emulated the pointe work that so distinguished Brugnoli’s own style.

Fanny’s successes soon took her across continental Europe. In Berlin, she debuted in La Somnambule in October, 1830; in London she debuted in Faust in March, 1833; and in Paris she debuted in La Tempête in September, 1834. She then undertook a two-year tour of the United States. In May, 1840, she debuted in La Tarentule in were chosen. She also appeared in Havana, Cuba, in January, 1841, in La Sylphide; in Milan, Italy, in January, 1844, in Armida; and in Moscow, Russia’s Bolshoi Theater in October, 1848, in Giselle.

Fanny’s sensational performances not only attracted celebrity status and popularity but also inspired the opinions of many of the era’s most noted contemporary critics. The German political theorist Friedrich von Gentz attended a number of her performances at the Vienna Opera in 1830 and became her lover shortly afterward. Later, Dr. Louis Véron, director of the Paris Opera, helped fuel a rumor that Fanny’s lover was the duke of Reichstadt—a son of Napoleon I—ostensibly to publicize her Parisian debut in 1834. Similarly, the French critic Théophile Gautier’s reviews of Fanny’s performances in 1837 were so profound that they influenced the very genre of criticism itself.

Other artists were also influenced by Fanny’s work. In 1836, Jean-Baptiste Barre’s sculpture of Fanny, which he called Cachucha after her Spanish dance, was rivaled only by the lithographs produced by Achille Deveria and Franz Seitz and the miniatures of Ferdinand Waldmüller and Madame de Mirbel. In fact, the Cachucha so inspired the senior Johann Strauss that he composed his Cachucha Galop in Vienna in 1837.

Many composers wrote premier pieces specifically for Fanny. These included Paulo Samengo’s Theodosia, which debuted in Vienna in June, 1831, and the Marquis de Saint-Georges’s La Gipsy, which premiered in Paris in January, 1839. La Gipsy was spectacularly successful as a vehicle showcasing Fanny’s technical and dramatic merits. Later, Jean Coralli’s ballet La Tarentule debuted in Paris in June, 1839, and became one of Fanny’s most recognized signature performances.

Fanny Elssler retired from the stage on June 21, 1851, at the age of forty, shortly after she returned to Vienna from Russia. She outlived her two children and all her siblings. By the early 1880’s her steadfast companion was her friend of sixty years, Katti Prinster. Prinster was by Fanny’s side when she died in Vienna on November 27, 1884.

Significance

Dualism has dominated the scholarship of Elssler’s significance. Her technical merit is usually examined as the antithesis of Filippo Taglioni, and her cultural significance has been discussed in the light of the aesthetic imperatives of the Romantic movement. The so-called “pagan” quality of Elssler as a ballerina noted by Théophile Gautier contrasted with the so-called “Christian” dancer that was Taglioni. Similarly, while Taglioni embodied the “weightlessness” of a danse ballonnée, Elssler’s performances as a danse tacquetée revitalized ballet with an “earthy” gritty flare.

The task of contrasting prima ballerinas such as Elssler and Taglioni and Grisi has been made simpler by the fact that these dancers exhibited different preferences in their repertoires. Taglioni’s signature role of Sylphide—which demanded an ethereal quality of movement emphasized by a costume of white muslin—unavoidably contrasted greatly with Elssler’s colorful costume and fleshy performances of the cachucha.

Similarly, when Elssler’s other rival, Carlotta Grisi, created and performed the role of Giselle, her performances emphasized the melancholy of the narrative, thereby accentuating the romance of the piece. Elssler’s presentation, however, focused much more on the sorrowful aspects of the material work, therefore creating a more compelling and dramatic spectacle. Hence, not only was Elssler’s artistic skill distinctive, of equal significance was her interpretation of roles. That too was revolutionary.

Both Fanny and her sister Therese staged ballets themselves, such as Die Maskerade (Berlin, 1834), or wrote them, such as Therese’s ballet Armide (London, May, 1834). In fact, Therese’s arrangement of Fanny’s pas de deux in the Paris debut of Cachucha (in 1836) was a focal point of the performance. Therese’s other piece, La Volière (1838), although not entirely successful, was nonetheless important as a counterpoint to those written and staged by predominantly male choreographers.

As the first principal prima ballerina to visit the United States, Fanny Elssler was also significant in contributing to the popularization of ballet beyond continental Europe. In this she was spectacularly successful. In fact, her American tour inspired “Elsslermania.” Her costumes set trends in contemporary fashion and, as in Europe, a whole industry of mass-marketed trinkets was based on her popularity.

During the early 1840’s, there was a well-publicized division among American theater critics, some of whom questioned Fanny’s technical skills as a dancer, while others were troubled by the sheer level of her public popularity. She also inspired shifts in performance review writing in continental Europe, and her name everywhere became synonymous with radically polarized public opinion. However, such narratives were not possible without the freshness of Elssler’s technical skill and the unique contributions to dramatic recitation that she made throughout her career as a performance artist.

Bibliography

Aloff, Mindy. Dance Anecdotes: Stories from the Worlds of Ballet, Broadway, the Ballroom, and Modern Dance. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. A collection of interesting stories about dancers, including Elssler.

Delarue, Allison. Fanny Elssler in America: Comprising Seven Facsimiles of Rare Americana—Never Before Offered the Public—Depicting her Astounding Conquest of America in 1840-42. Brooklyn: Dance Horizons, 1976. Historical account of Fanny’s American tour.

“Fanny Elssler.” The Modern Language Journal 22, no. 7 (April, 1938): 556. Review of the film Fanny Elssler, in which Lilian Harvey played Elssler. Provides insights into how how Elssler’s life translated to the screen.

Guest, Ivor. Fanny Elssler. London: Black, 1970. Noted and meticulously researched biography of Elssler’s life by a leading ballet historian.

Hutchinson, Ann. Fanny Elssler’s Cachucha. London: Dance Books, 1981. Study of the cachucha by the wife of Ivor Guest, complete with references to Elssler’s interpretation of the dance.