Early Life and Career
Noverre was born in Paris on 29 April 1727 to Marie Anne de la Grange and Jean Louys, a Swiss soldier. The couple expected their son to pursue a military career but the boy chose dance, studying with M. Marcel and then with the famous Louis Dupré. Noverre's first professional experience probably occurred at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 8 June 1743 in Le Coq du village. In his middle and late teenage years, Noverre performed at Fontainebleau, and in Berline before Frederick II and his brother Prince Henry of Prussia. Appearances in Dresden and Strasbourg followed before his return to the Opéra-Comique. In 1747, Noverre became ballet master in Strasbourg and created his first great success, the exotic Les Fêtes Chinoises. In 1748 in Strasbourg he married the actress Marie-Louise Sauveur. In 1750, he became principal dancer in Lyon and created his first ballet-pantomime, Le Jugement de Paris. He moved to Strasbourg for one year in 1754, and returned to the Opéra-Comique where Les Fêtes was staged with great success on 1 July 1754.
In 1755, he went to London with his wife, his sister and brother, and his company. There, he worked with David Garrick of the Drury Lane Theatre, learning new concepts of theatre and the then developing natural style of performance. When the London production of Les Fêtes was completely destroyed by rioters on the eve of the Seven Years War, Noverre and his family were forced to go into hiding. He continued to supervise dance spectacles at Drury Lane but without billing. He left London in 1757 wanting to work at the Paris Opéra but realized he would face serious opposition to the expressive style he had developed in London, and chose Lyon instead where he was free to develop new and very different works from the prevailing court ballets. He composed Les Caprices de Galathée, for example, and garbed his dancers in tiger skins and shoes made of tree bark. His naturalist attitude towards costume placed him in the front rank of the French Enlightenment.
Read more about this topic: Jean-Georges Noverre
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or career:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“There is no religion in which everyday life is not considered a prison; there is no philosophy or ideology that does not think that we live in alienation.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)