The strange alchemy of Dr Coppelius

In 1870, Paris could feel its claim to be the dance capital of Europe slipping away. Ticket sales were declining and war seemed inevitable. During this same year, on 25 May, Coppélia premiered at the Paris Opéra. Coppélia has come to symbolise the end of Romantic ballet; the end of an era in part defined by enchanted forests, ethereal creatures, and other supernatural elements presented on stage. Ballerinas were often not playing humans at all, but sylphs, ghosts, witches, and wilis – and enslaving mortal men with their magical powers.

Created in the wake of these Romantic traditions, Coppélia illustrated a distinct shift from these enchanted worlds. Its magic isn’t the kind that belongs in a glade or a graveyard, but in a cluttered workshop. The strange alchemy that Dr Coppelius wields to animate his living dolls is an example of new anxieties, slowly boiling up over decades previous, brought on by the rush of modernity. After all, Coppélia’s comedy has a strangely grim inspiration: the gothic horror story The Sandman by E.T.A. Hoffmann. In his story, Dr Coppelius is not a bumbling inventor; he’s a repulsive monster, terrifying children with his alchemical experiments. “… the most hideous form,” says the narrator, “could not have inspired me with deeper horror than this very Coppelius.”

Not all alchemy was so disquieting. One could walk from the Paris Opéra House to the Boulevard du Temple and visit the phantasmagorical theatre of illusionist Henri Robin. Here, ‘science shows’ would exhibit new technology alongside more familiar illusions of the supernatural. Similar magical spectacles could be found on the ballet stage, too. The supernatural stories made famous in Romantic ballets needed new technological ‘special effects’ to be effectively told. As the American science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein once wrote: “One man’s magic is another man’s engineering problem”. Ballet proves him correct – not only in Dr Coppelius’ colourful pyrotechnics, but in something as seemingly simple as the kind of lighting used in the theatre.

Ballet was once performed while lit entirely by candles; now new kinds of lighting allowed for the stage to be illuminated while the audience was left in darkness. (In fact, some spectators complained about suddenly being forced to sit in the gloom as they watched.) The gas lighting used for La Sylphide at the Paris Opéra, premiering in 1832, allowed for the stage to be dimmed, and this let the designers create theatrical spaces of previously unknown depth and subtlety. It’s telling that many critics later found the illusions presented in the Paris Opéra’s Giselle – first performed in 1841 – so compelling they described it as if it were a real place on stage, rather than the sum of clever artifice.

Changing costumes, too, were far more than just decoration. Pointe shoes transformed from simple non-heeled shoes secured by ribbons to leather-soled shoes with darned toes, and the dancing done while wearing them shifted as well. An increasing use of pointe work required ballerinas have more support from their partners, as their balance could be more precarious; this created the sense of more choreographic intimacy. ‘Flying machines’ had allowed ballerinas suspended from wires, the illusion of flight throughout the 19th Century, but pointe shoes allowed dancers to seem to hover weightlessly above the stage under their own power. When wires were employed to lift Carlotta Grisi, the original Giselle, pointe work also allowed her to ‘take off’ more convincingly.

Like these illusions of flight, other magic tricks familiar to ballet audiences became associated with supernatural powers. The long white dresses used in La Sylphide became almost a kind of uniform of the supernatural, thanks to the way they glowed in the gas lighting and kept moving, mysteriously, once the dancer was still. Even trapdoors were associated with the supernatural. While in La Sylphide, a trapdoor allowed a ballerina to disappear into a chimney, they were often used to suck evil characters down to face whatever eternal punishment was awaiting them below. This was common enough that the area below the stage became known by its theological label: ‘hell’.

In the outer suburbs of Paris, years before this premiere, magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin built his own automaton. It was capable only of signing a perfect facsimile of its creator’s name when asked the following question: “Who gave you life?” Coppélia answers that question with the names of its composers, choreographers, designers, dancers, and other magicians – both onstage and off.

This is an edited excerpt from Martyn Pedler’s article for The Australian Ballet’s Coppélia souvenir programme

Coppélia plays in Melbourne from 10 – 22 June

Top: Ray Powell – Photography Darryl Smythe
Above: Leanne Stojmenov and Damien Welch – Photography – Branco Gaica