Reimagining the Ballet des Porcelaines. A Tale of Magic, Desire, and Exotic Entanglement

, Brepols - Harvey Miller, 2022 Hardback, 168 pages, Size:220 x 280 mm, Illustrations:84 col., Language: English. ISBN 9781912554812.

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Summary In September 1739 at the ch teau de Morville near Paris, a group of elite amateur artists staged a ballet pantomime known as the ?Ballet des Porcelaines,? and sometimes also as ?The Teapot Prince.? Written by the comte de Caylus, with music by Grandval, it tells the story of a prince who searches for his beloved on a faraway island ruled by an evil magician. The magician has turned the island's inhabitants into porcelain, an event the audience witnesses in the form of a male and female singer who spin around on stage until they transform into vases. Aside from the libretto and the score, nothing survives of the Ballet des Porcelaines. The costumes and choreography are unknown. Although it inspired later famous ballets featuring sleeping beauties and porcelain princesses, it seems to have been staged only twice: first in 1739 and again two years later on the grounds of the estate, next to a lake encircled by vases and an illuminated arch suggesting a nighttime performance. The ch teau's owner served as France's foreign minister and promoted trade with Asia. We can assume some kind of chinoiserie imagery and context for the ballet, which can be interpreted both as a standard fairy tale love story and as an allegory for the intense European desire to know and steal the secrets of porcelain manufacture. The ballet is an example of the deep intertwining of visual and performing arts in eighteenth-century France, and to an enchantment with Asia embodied on stage and in life by porcelain goods. The plot's animation of porcelain also relates to a period understanding of the permeable boundary between persons and things manifested in a variety of cultural forms. The ballet exemplifies the profound sense of magic, mystery, and desire that porcelain instilled in European viewers (who referred to it as ?white gold?), an effect that is lost on many museumgoers today. TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface and Acknowledgments Meredith Martin Contributors I HISTORICAL REIMAGININGS Once Upon a Time at the Ch teau de Morville: Commerce, Colonialism, and Chinoiserie in the Ballet des Porcelaines Meredith Martin My Porcelain Sickness Phil Chan Conjuring 1740: A Tale of Europe's Obsession with Porcelain Charlotte Vignon II ARTISTIC INTERVENTIONS Costume Design: Q&A with Harriet Jung Meredith Martin Choreography: Q&A with Xin Ying Meredith Martin Entering the Ivory Tower of Baroque Ballet Patricia Beaman Musically Steeping a Pot of Tea Leah Nelson Finding the Sound in Between Sugar Vendil III THE LOST BALLET The Manuscript: Libretto and Score Le Prince Pot- -Th : Ballet Pantomime French Transcription Dominique Qu ro The Teapot Prince: A Pantomime Ballet Annotated English Translation Christine Jones IV CONTEMPORARY RESTAGINGS Photographs of the MET Peformance, December 6, 2021 Making the Porcelain Dance Wolf Burchard, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Chinese Fantasies of Porcelain on the Cusp Between Life and Death Judith T. Zeitlin, The University of Chicago Living Things or the Collector as Audience:Animate Porcelain Dancers Elizabeth Rouget, Princeton University A Smash Hit in the Making Mia Jackson and Kate Tunstall, Waddesdon Manor and University of Oxford A Teapot Prince and His Enchanted Palace: The Royal Pavilion, Brighton Alexandra Loske, The Royal Pavilion and Museums Trust Brighton & Hove A Porcelain Room and a Teapot Prince:Maria Amalia's Salottino di porcellana and Le Prince Pot- -Th in Naples Sarah K. Kozlowski and Sylvain Bellenger, The Museum and Royal Park of Capodimonte, Naples Palazzo Grassi or the Past Revisited Bruno Racine, Palazzo Grassi, Venice The S vres Manufactory: Three Centuries of a Ballet of Porcelain Romane Sarfati and Charlotte Vignon, S vres-Manufacture et mus e nationaux Works Cited