Jean Dauberval
Jean Dauberval, born Jean Bercher on August 19, 1742, in Montpellier, France, was a prominent dancer and choreographer known for his significant contributions to the evolution of ballet in the 18th century. Initially trained under the esteemed ballet master Jean-Georges Noverre, Dauberval gained recognition as a leading male dancer and later as a choreographer, performing at esteemed venues such as the Paris Opera and the King's Theatre in London. His performances often showcased his mastery of pantomime, allowing him to convey complex emotions and narratives without spoken dialogue.
Throughout his career, Dauberval played a key role in the shift towards ballet d'action, a form of narrative ballet that emphasized realistic expression and character-driven storytelling. He collaborated with notable figures of his time and influenced the next generation of dancers and choreographers. Despite the eventual loss of much of his original choreography, Dauberval’s legacy endures, particularly through his renowned ballet, La Fille mal gardée, which remains a staple in contemporary ballet repertoires. He passed away on February 14, 1806, leaving behind a lasting impact on the art of dance.
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Subject Terms
Jean Dauberval
French dancer, ballet master, and choreographer
- Born: August 19, 1742
- Birthplace: Montpellier, France
- Died: February 14, 1806
- Place of death: Tours, France
Dauberval choreographed and performed highly acclaimed ballets in France and England. His La Fille mal gardée, a masterpiece of ballet d’action and one of the oldest ballets in the modern repertoire, premiered at the Grand-Théâtre in Bordeaux on July 1, 1789.
Early Life
Jean Bercher, later known by his stage name Jean Dauberval (zhahn doh-bur-vahl), was born out of wedlock in Montpellier, France, on August 19, 1742. His parents were both quite young at the time and did not marry until about eleven years later. His father, Étienne-Dominique Bercher, an aspiring actor, probably introduced him to the world of theater at an early age. Jean received professional training as a dancer and choreographer under renowned ballet master Jean-Georges Noverre and performed in Lyons as a leading male dancer in Noverre’s choreography of La Toilette de Vénus (1757; Venus at her toilet) in November of 1757.
While still in his teens, Jean found temporary employment at the Royal Theater of Turin as director of ballets and principal male dancer in 1759, then returned to train under the guidance of Jean-Barthélemy Lany and Gaetano Vestris at the Royal Academy of Music in Paris. He made his debut at the Paris Opera as a dancer in the heroic ballet Zaïs (1761) and subsequently appeared in a variety of productions, including Armide (1761), Les Indes galantes (1762; the courtly Indies), Acis et Galatée (1762), and Iphigénie en Tauride (1762; Iphigenia among the Taurians).
After dancing under Noverre in Stuttgart in 1762 and 1763, Dauberval migrated to England and served as a leading dancer and choreographer for the King’s Theatre at the Haymarket in London from 1763 to 1764. By the following season, he was back in Paris performing in opera-ballets and lyric tragedies set to the fashionable music of André Campra, Jean-Philippe Rameau, and Jean-Baptiste Lully. Over a period of ten years, he advanced from the rank of first dancer in character roles (1763) to that of premier danseur noble and assistant ballet master (1773).
Life’s Work
From 1765 to 1782, Jean Dauberval performed in numerous pieces at the Paris Opera, ranging from comic interludes and pastoral scenes to heroic ballet and lyric tragedies. A master of pantomime, he was particularly admired for his skill in the portrayal of character, emotion, and dramatic action. One measure of his importance, both as a choreographer and as a dancer, can be found in the theatrical success of a pas de deux he performed together with Marie Allard in the popular opera-ballet Sylvie, first at the court of King Louis XV in 1765 then at the Paris Opera in 1766. A contemporary gouache painting by Louis Carrogis de Carmontelle captured the couple’s memorable performance, transforming it into an iconographic legend that was soon reproduced in popular engravings.
Influential critics of theater and dance, such as the Englishman John Weaver, the Italian Carlo Goldoni, and the Frenchman Jean-Georges Noverre, had condemned the use of painted masks, cumbersome wigs, unwieldy hoopskirts, and extravagant costumes common in eighteenth century theater, calling for more attention to plot, greater realism, the artistic expression of emotions, and a general ban on gratuitous technical virtuosity and pageantry. If one judges by Carmontelle’s vision of Dauberval and Allard on stage, demi-caractère dancers (character dancers) had succeeded in discarding their masks and adopting somewhat more natural attire by the mid-1760’s. This newfound freedom of facial expression combined with a greater attention to plot contributed to the triumph of ballet d’action (narrative ballet) later in the century.
In his Lettres sur les arts imitatives (1807; letters on the imitative arts), Noverre looked back on Dauberval’s performance in Sylvie as a milestone in the transition to ballet d’action in Parisian theater, adding appreciatively:
It was thus Dauberval who first had the courage to oppose preconceived notions, to vanquish long-standing prejudice, to triumph over opera’s outdated rules, destroy masks, adopt a more authentic costume, and so reveal his inner self in accordance with Nature.
Noverre considered himself the leading theorist of ballet d’action and considered Dauberval its first practitioner. In response to these claims, however, historians point out that the transition from theatrical divertissement to ballet d’action was a gradual one and that many of Dauberval’s contemporaries also played important roles as catalysts of innovation. Thus Marie Sallé, Marie Carmago, Maximilien Gardel, and Gasparo Angiolini, among others, deserve credit alongside Dauberval for the transformation in ballet that took place in the eighteenth century.
Serving under Vestris and Noverre, Dauberval found only limited opportunities for work as a choreographer at the Paris Opera. He created minor interludes in 1771 and 1772, mythological and pastoral ballets for the Royal Theater of Turin in 1771 and 1775, and a ballet-pantomime, Alcimadure, in 1778. Sensing that he could achieve nothing more by remaining, he took leave of the Paris Opera in the summer of 1783, married his former pupil, Madeleine-Louise Crespé (known to the public as Mademoiselle Théodore), and accepted a new appointment as ballet master at the King’s Theatre in London. Between December, 1783, and July, 1784, he produced eight ballets for the English public, including Le Déserteur (the deserter) and Le Coq du village (the village beau).
Upon the expiration of his contract in London, Dauberval and his wife returned to France, where Dauberval was hired as ballet master of the newly erected Grand-Théâtre in Bordeaux. During his tenure there, from 1785 to 1790, he staged some of his greatest artistic achievements: Le Bonheur est d’aimer (1786; happiness is being in love), Le Page inconstant (1786; the unfaithful servant), Le Ballet de la paille (1789; ballet of straw), and revivals of Le Déserteur. A major success, his Ballet de la paille was renamed La Fille mal gardée (the ill-guarded girl) two years later and has retained that name ever since. When his contract expired in 1790, Dauberval signed on as ballet master at London’s Pantheon Opera House and staged more new ballets, including Telemachus in the Island of Calypso (1791) and Le Siège de Cythère (1791; the siege at Cythera).
In 1796, Dauberval returned from semiretirement to serve one last term as ballet master at the Grand-Théâtre in Bordeaux, but he created no new ballets during that time. After his wife’s death two years later, he maintained an active interest in promoting ballet, traveling on occasion between Bordeaux and Paris to keep abreast of new developments. He succumbed to sudden illness during a return trip from Paris and died at the Boule d’Or inn in Tours, France, on February 14, 1806.
Significance
Jean Dauberval was a leading practitioner of the ground-breaking aesthetics of performance developed by Jean-Georges Noverre. He thus played an important role in the gradual triumph of ballet d’action in France and England during the second half of the eighteenth century, which marked a new era in the history of professional dance: As choreographers and dancers discovered new ways to express ideas and emotions without recourse to the spoken word, ballet began to assert its independence from opera.
As a ballet master and teacher, Dauberval contributed to the formation of outstanding dancers—Charles-Louis Didelot, Salvatore Viganò, Jean Aumer, Eugène Hus, and James Harvey d’Egville—who in turn helped disseminate ballet d’action throughout Europe. At the height of his creative activity in Bordeaux and London, he demonstrated a singular talent for transforming dance and pantomime into instruments of coherent narration. Several of his ballets remained popular well into the next century, and La Fille mal gardée has maintained its place as one of the oldest ballets d’action in twenty-first century repertoires. Because Dauberval and his contemporaries possessed no adequate system of notation, however, all of the original choreography for his ballets is now lost. Modern versions of La Fille mal gardée rely mainly on the printed scenario.
Bibliography
Bremser, Martha, Larraine Nicholas, and Leanda Shrimpton, eds. International Dictionary of Ballet. 2 vols. Detroit, Mich.: St. James Press, 1993. Contains detailed biographies and iconographic resources on major figures in eighteenth century ballet, including Dauberval.
Chazin-Bennahum, Judith. “Wine, Women, and Song: Anacreon’s Triple Threat to French Eighteenth-Century Ballet.” Dance Research 5 (1987): 55-64. Compares Dauberval’s anacreontic ballet Le Bonheur est d’aimer with works by Eugène Hus and Charles Didelot.
Costonis, Maureen Needham. “Dauberval’s Le Siège de Cythère, 1791: A Commentary and Translation.” Dance Chronicle 14 (1991): 175-202. Discusses a rare scenario of Le Siège de Cythère bearing annotations in Théodore Dauberval’s handwriting.
Guest, Ivor. The Ballet of the Enlightenment: The Establishment of the Ballet d’Action in France, 1770-1793. London: Dance Books, 1996. Essential reading, with chapters focusing on Dauberval’s career and his contributions to classical ballet.
‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. La Fille mal gardée. London: Dancing Times, 1960. Chapters by nine dance historians on Dauberval’s most successful piece, preceded by an English translation of the 1803 scenario.
Milhous, Judith. “Dancers’ Contracts at the Pantheon Opera House, 1790-1792.” Dance Research 9 (1991): 51-75. Examines Dauberval’s contracts for two seasons with the Pantheon Opera House, based on papers preserved at the Bedford Estates Office in London.
Milhous, Judith, Gabriella Dideriksen, and Robert D. Hume. The Pantheon Opera and Its Aftermath, 1789-1795. Vol. 2 in Italian Opera in Late Eighteenth-Century London. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 2000. Includes substantial discussion of Dauberval’s activities as ballet master at the Pantheon.
Price, Curtis, Judith Milhous, and Robert D. Hume. The King’s Theatre, Haymarket, 1778-1791. Vol. 1 in Italian Opera in Late Eighteenth-Century London. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1995. Focuses on the operation and management of the King’s Theatre, but includes discussion of Dauberval’s engagement there.