Jean-Georges Noverre à Londres : Drury Lane et le King’s Theater de Haymarket

2011

Jean-Georges Noverre (1727-1810), un artiste européen au siècle des Lumières

Jennifer Thorp

Oxford, New College

This essay examines the visits to London made by Jean-Georges Noverre between 1755 and 1794, and the ballets produced in his name during that time. The earliest visit was marred by the infamous riots which greeted his ballet Les Fêtes Chinoises at Drury Lane theatre in 1755, but nevertheless marks an important phase in his career as it introduced him to the actor-manager David Garrick whose very expressive acting abilities deeply influenced Noverre’s thinking on dramatic ballet. The later visits, in the 1780s and early 1790s, were all made to London’s prestigious opera house, the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket, where Noverre staged over thirty ballets and divertissements and commissioned new music for some of them from composers attached to that theatre.