Princeton studies in opera. Bibliographic references pp. [241]-300, and index. The title of Marian Smith's book rings Hegelian as it invokes 'the age of Giselle', a period spanning roughly from the revolution of 1830 to that of 1848, with brief forays back into the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Letting Giselle stand for this era subtly undermines the music-historical paradigm that the title invokes, in which great composers and their works are elevated above cultural context. While Giselle is central to the canon and history of dance, it remains marginal to the history of music, which has until recently given short shrift to music closely allied with dance. 1 Although ballet-pantomimes were arguably at least as important to the Paris Opéra as grand operas, choreographic works remain largely unknown today. Smith's study of Giselle and the milieu that produced it unveils a work and a repertory that may surprise scholars of dance and music alike, for not only is the repertory unknown, but this choreographic tradition is quite distinct from twentieth-century balletic practices. The book will serve as a primer for anyone interested in research on ballet in Paris. In addition to the focus on Giselle, Smith refers to a host of forgotten works in this carefully documented study, employing evidence from a broad array of archival sources, including rehearsal and performance scores, libretti, production books, lists of costumes, sketches of costumes and sets, and accounts related to the reception of the works. Detailed footnotes provide a thorough interdisciplinary bibliography of the subject. Throughout the book, musical examples from a host of nearly forgotten balletpantomimes such as La somnambule (1827), La révolte au sérail (1833), and Le diable boiteux (1836) illustrate the variegated musical styles employed. The introduction describes the functions of dramatic music and dance music in this genre, in which mime and dance combined with a prose scenario and musical score to tell a story. Dramatic music enhanced the meaning of the pantomime through the use of well-known popular themes or recurring melodies, while dance music accompanied divertissements and established an appropriate (and frequently national) character for the dance. Subsequent chapters describe the many levels on which ballet-pantomimes and operas resemble one another; the general lightness of the subject matter (tragedies like Giselle and La Sylphide were rare); ballet-pantomimes' parodying of comic operas, and the mixture of ballet with opera in works like La Muette de Portici (1828), Le Dieu et la bayadère (1830), and La Tentation (1832), which included leading roles for mimes in the midst of singers. The book concludes with a chapter dedicated completely to Giselle as it was known during the 1840s, followed by an appendix containing its scenario in Gautier's original French and Smith's English translation. Perhaps the most intriguing chapter is the one on silent language, in which Smith explains how words related to balletic expressio...
