French Romantic Ballets: Jean-Madeleine Schneitzhoeffer, la Sylphide Adolphe-Charles Adam, Giselle and le Corsaire Paperback

This collection presents music from three of the most important scores of the Golden Age of ballet in Paris from 1830-1870. La Sylphide (1832), inspired by this situation, was the first fully fledged Romantic ballet. The Romantic ballet had been inaugurated by Meyerbeer's opera Robert le Diable (21 November 1831) with its ghostly Ballet of the Nuns, risen from their graves and dancing in the moonlight, led by their spectral Abbess; a role created by Marie Taglioni (1804-1884) to her father's choreography.

The story, devised by the great tenor Adolphe Nourrit, similarly introduces spirits and elemental beings, which dominated ballet scenarios for the following decades. Its graceful and atmospheric score was written by the first violinist at the Opera, Jean Schneitzhoeffer. Filippo Taglioni's creation provided the fullest realization of the Romantic ideal, especially in the leading