Angiolini, Gasparo

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Gasparo Angiolini

1731–1803

Dancer
Choreographer

Beginnings.

Gasparo Angiolini was born at Florence and began his career as a dancer at Lucca in 1747. Like most of the prominent dancers of his time, he made his debut when he was just a teenager, and his early success brought him soon to Venice, the home of Italy's oldest opera house. He performed there during several seasons, but in his early career he was also associated with the ballets at Spoleto, Turin, and again at Lucca. By his early twenties he had risen through the ranks of these companies and was recognized as a choreographer. After a brief stint in Rome, he made his way to Vienna, where he danced with Maria Teresa Fogliazzi. At the time the notorious eighteenth-century lover Casanova was pursuing Fogliazzi, but Angiolini successfully won her hand in marriage. Following successes in Vienna the two returned to Italy, where they were the lead dancers at Turin. When Franz Hilverding, ballet master of the French theater in Vienna, left to direct the Tsar's ballet in Russia, Angiolini replaced him. Despite several early setbacks, the most productive and creative part of his career soon began in the Austrian capital.

Ballet d 'action.

Angiolini's rise to fame in Vienna coincided with the development of the new genre of dance known as the ballet d'action, danced dramas in which performers used gestures and pantomime to convey a story. The first productions that he staged for the Viennese opera were largely traditional diversionary pieces common to the time. In 1761, though, the French theater in Vienna hired an assistant who took over these tasks, and Angiolini was now free to devote himself to the creation of major dance dramas. In two of these, Don Juan and Sémiramis, the ballet master tried to apply ancient ideas about dance and pantomime. At this early stage in his development as a producer of dance dramas, Angiolini collaborated with Willibald Christoph von Gluck, the Viennese court composer whose music and operas set new standards for dramatic and expressive powers. Later Angiolini was to write much of the music for his ballets himself, but his early production of Don Juan—a theme already highly familiar to the Viennese audience—was noteworthy for its dramatic conclusion. Audiences found the final scene in which Don Juan was carried off to Hell to be a revelation. It showed how dance's power might be combined with music to create a heightened sense of urgency and drama, a sense more profound than in a mere spoken drama. The collaboration with Gluck was a happy one, although Angiolini always preferred his latter ballets in which he had complete control over music, dance, and story line.

Move to St. Petersburg.

In 1765 the Habsburg emperor died, and a long period of mourning began throughout Austria. Typically during these periods all theaters were closed, and so Angiolini faced a protracted period of unemployment. Around this time his predecessor in Vienna, Hilverding left his position in St. Petersburg, and Angiolini replaced him. His time in Russia saw the creation of new ballets as well as the staging of ones that he had already pioneered in Vienna. After leaving Russia a few years later, he worked in Venice, Padua, and Milan. It was in this last city that Angiolini wrote his Gasparo Angiolini's Letter to Mr. Noverre Concerning the Ballet Pantomime, actually a pamphlet that attacked Noverre for his claims of originality in staging ballets d'action. Angiolini demonstrated that the artistic genre had been first developed by his own predecessor, Franz Hilverding, at Vienna. Angiolini also criticized Noverre for an insufficient attention to technique as well as a relative ignorance of music. The rivalry proved long lasting, although the two were by this time among the most prominent ballet masters in Europe. In 1774, they swapped posts. Angiolini took Noverre's position at Vienna, and Noverre assumed the Italian's at Milan. Other trips to St. Petersburg followed, where Angiolini staged productions and became involved with the city's developing ballet school. By 1780, though, Angiolini had returned to Milan, and his base of operation remained in the city for the rest of his life.

High Point and Retirement.

Between 1780 and 1782, Angiolini's career achieved its high point while he was at work staging ballets for La Scala, the opera in Milan. By this time the choreographer was composing all of his own music. While he was widely hailed at the time for his compositional powers, the few scattered scores that survive show that Angiolini was a composer with considerable deficits. His lively staging, with elaborate machinery and sumptuous costumes, was notable among the many grand productions of the later eighteenth century. The master's importance, though, continues to be recognized in his revival of pantomime techniques and his advocacy of danced dramas. While Angiolini sometimes wrote dance theory, he was not as lively an author as Jean-Georges Noverre, and thus his relative modern obscurity can be credited to his less certain rhetorical powers.