{"id":76,"date":"2021-08-10T17:01:15","date_gmt":"2021-08-10T16:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dancebiographies\/?p=76"},"modified":"2023-05-01T22:00:58","modified_gmt":"2023-05-01T21:00:58","slug":"i-long-to-be-ogling-madams-feet-marie-therese-perdou-de-subligny-1666-c-1735","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dancebiographies\/2021\/08\/10\/i-long-to-be-ogling-madams-feet-marie-therese-perdou-de-subligny-1666-c-1735\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I long to be ogling Madam\u2019s feet\u2019: Marie-Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Perdou de Subligny (1666-c.1735)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

JENNIFER THORP<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marie-Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Perdou de Subligny was born in July 1666 in Paris, daughter of the author and playwright Adrien-Thomas Perdou, sieur de Subligny (1636-1696). The first reference we have to her as a member of the Paris Op\u00e9ra dance troupe dates from April 1687 when the architect Nicodemus Tessin saw her dance in a performance of Lully\u2019s Pers\u00e9e. <\/em>He thought she was one of the best female dancers there, and even described her exquisite costume: \u2018The underskirt was made of gold moir\u00e9, with a blue and silver embroidered border all round. It was the same for the overskirt, which came to the knee. Around the bottom of the under-petticoat of gold moir\u00e9, there were fairly widely spaced bands of black braid, resembling velvet and bordered with silver. Near the top, the sleeves were slashed, then tight-fitting, and open lower down\u2019 (1).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mlle Sublingy by Henri Bonnart<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Mlle Subligny by Henri Bonnart (Paris, 1699). Source: Source gallica.bnf.fr \/ BnF.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Research by Nathalie Lecomte and Rebecca Harris-Warrick has corrected several errors in the existing biographies and dictionary articles on Subligny. There is, for instance, uncertainty about exactly what and when she danced in her early years at the Op\u00e9ra because female dancers were not named in the livrets before 1699. Twentieth-century biographers all tended to follow \u00c9mile Campardon\u2019s entry for Subligny in his L\u2019Acad\u00e9mie Royale de Musique au XVIIIe<\/sup> Si\u00e8cle<\/em> (Paris, 1884, vol. 2, pp. 295-297), and thereby were misled into assuming that, because she is known to have danced in post-1699 revivals of certain operas, she therefore must also have danced in the original staging, yet this is by no means certain and both the choreographies and the performers may well have changed before 1699.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Subligny is first mentioned in the opera livrets as dancing in the 1699 revival of Jean Baptiste Lully\u2019s Proserpine,<\/em> as one of the \u2018Ombres heureuses\u2019 (happy spirits) of the underworld in Act IV. Also in 1699, Henri Bonnart published an engraving of \u2018Mademoiselle Subligny Danseuse de l\u2019Op\u00e9ra, and around the same time Jean Mariette published another, of \u2018Mademoiselle Subligny dansant \u00e0 l\u2019Op\u00e9ra\u2019 (2).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mlle Subligny by Henri Mariette (Paris, c. 1699). From the New York Public Library. http:\/\/digitalcollections.nypl.org\/items\/510d47e2-0c52-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Subligny\u2019s skills in different dance styles are borne out by the number of solos she danced subsequently in Paris (3). By the time she retired from the stage she was one of the highest paid female dancers at the Op\u00e9ra and had performed in at least six Lully operas and in revivals of such works as the Ballet des Fragments de Mr de Lully<\/em>, and Andr\u00e9 Campra\u2019s L\u2019Europe galante<\/em>, often as the dance partner of Claude Balon (1671-1744). Her last known performance before retiring was on 26 November 1705, dancing a solo as a Nymph of Diana and a duet with Balon in Le Triomph de l\u2019Amour <\/em>(4).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The surviving dances for Subligny comprise four theatrical solos and twelve duets with Claude Balon. All were created by the Op\u00e9ra\u2019s ballet-master of their day, Guillaume-Louis P\u00e9cour, and survive because they were published in notation by Raoul-Auger Feuillet (L\u2019Allemande<\/em> in 1702, inspired by a Balon-Subligny duet, followed by ten more duets and three solos in his Recueil de dances contenant […] des meilleures Entr\u00e9es de Mr<\/sup> Pecour<\/em> in 1704), and by yet another duet and one solo published by Michel Gaudrau (in his Nouveau recueil de danse […] de Ballet<\/em> in 1713). All were set to music from operas and opera-ballets by Lully, Campra, Andr\u00e9 Cardinal Destouches, and Theobaldo di Gatti (5).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two of the solos specify that Subligny danced them \u2018en Angleterre\u2019, and she is believed to be the first leading female dancer from Paris to perform on the London stage. Robert D. Hume\u2019s proposal that she was in London in December 1701 is now challenged by Lecomte\u2019s findings that Subligny could not have reached London before late-January 1702, for she had been in Paris, dancing in Destouche\u2019s Omphale<\/em>, between 10 November and 8 January, and in a new version of Gatti\u2019s Scylla<\/em> from 20 December until 10 January (but not in its Versailles Trianon performance on 27 February) (6). Nor could she have remained in London much beyond March or early April, as more Omphale<\/em> performances after Easter and rehearsals for Acis & Galatea<\/em> (due to open in June) required a return to Paris. As will be discussed presently, Subligny was mentioned in the London publication A<\/em> Comparison between the Two Stages<\/em>, a critical discourse presented as a dialogue \u2018between Ramble and Sullen, two gentlemen, and Chagrin a critick\u2019 which was published on 14 April 1702 but probably compiled in February and March (7).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a dancer who spent such a short time in London, Subligny made a remarkable impact. The charms of \u2018gallick heels\u2019 were blamed for wrecking the revival of Farquhar’s play The Inconstant<\/em> at Drury Lane in February 1702 because audiences preferred to go and see the \u2018French lady\u2019 dance at Lincoln’s Inn Fields (8). Subligny was described, in A Comparison between the Two Stages,<\/em> as \u2018a new wonder\u2019 whose footwork became a near-obsession for \u2018gentleman\u2019 Ramble (p. 67 \u2013 it is he who \u2018long[s] to be ogling Madam\u2019s feet\u2019); the critic Chagrin, however, thought her a \u2018surprising monster\u2019 (p. 67). The only two solos that we know she danced in London were the Gigue pour une femme<\/em> (to music from Gatti\u2019s Scylla<\/em>), which may or may not have been adapted from the Paris version (1701), and a Passacaille pour une femme<\/em> to music from Lully\u2019s Armide<\/em>, which perhaps was destined to be modified for inclusion in the new Paris version of that opera in 1703. Otherwise, we shall probably never know exactly what she danced in London, as no copy of Walsh\u2019s Second Book of the Gentleman\u2019s Companion<\/em> \u2026for the flute\u2026To which are added several new French Dances perform\u2019d by Mlle de Subligny<\/em> (advertised in the Post Boy<\/em> 25-28 April 1702) is known to have survived. His naming of a female dancer of renown in one of his own music publications was perhaps an early sign of his commercial acumen in trying to be the first to present new talent or newsworthy musical events to the public. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The comment in the Biographical Dictionary of Actors<\/em> that Subligny arrived in London with a letter of introduction to the philosopher John Locke does not imply that they actually met (9). Given that her father was a writer, and that Locke had spent some time in Paris in the 1670s, it would not have been unusual for Subligny to carry such a letter, but by 1702 the now very elderly Locke had long retired to High Laver in Essex, and it seems unlikely that Subligny would have had time to make a journey out of London to visit him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Subligny lived on for another thirty years after her own retirement, dying in c.1735.  It is a pity that more is not known of her career, which was halfway over by the time she started to be widely documented as a dancer. In Paris, younger female dancers such as Mademoiselle Guiot were already making a name for themselves, their own careers no doubt helped by Subligny setting a high standard by her performance skills. In London, however, responses to her varied: Thomas Betterton, the Lincoln\u2019s Inn Fields theatre manager, deplored the expensive fee that she was able to command, but the public flocked to see her perform (10), and the beauty and ingenuity of her surviving dances still continue today to bear witness to her skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
  1. Caroline Wood and Graham Sadler, French Baroque Opera: A Reader<\/em> (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000),126. <\/li>
  2. Editor\u2019s note: These are early examples of portraits depicting a performer rather than a member of the social \u00e9lite: Bonnart had previously drawn King James II<\/a>; Mariette\u2019s earlier work included a portrait of  a more typical subject in Louise de K\u00e9roualle, Duchess of Portsmouth<\/a>.<\/li>
  3. See Rebecca Harris-Warrick, Dance and Drama in French Baroque Opera<\/em> (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 384.<\/li>
  4. Nathalie Lecomte, Entre cours et jardins d\u2019illusion: le ballet en Europe 1515-1715<\/em> (Paris: Centre National de la Danse, 2014), 342-3. Also personal communications.<\/li>
  5. See catalogue descriptions in Meredith Little and Carol Marsh, La Danse Noble, an Inventory of Dances and Sources<\/em> (New York: Broude Bros, 1992); Francine Lancelot, La Belle dance, catalogue raisonn\u00e9<\/em> (Paris: Van Dieren, 1996).<\/li>
  6. Robert D. Hume, \u201cA Revival of The Way of the World<\/em> in December 1701 or January 1702\u201d, Theatre Notebook<\/em> 26 (1971), 30-36; for Lecomte, see n4 above.<\/li>
  7. Anonymous, A Comparison between the two Stages, with an Examen of The generous Conqueror; and some critical Remarks on The funeral, or Grief alamode, The false friend, Tamerlane and others. In dialogue<\/em> (London : [s.n.], 1702). Hume (as in n. 6, p. 30) notes the date of publication as 14 April 1702, without citing a source. The London Post<\/em> of 8 May 1702 described it as \u2018lately Publish\u2019d\u2019.<\/li>
  8. George Farquhar, The Inconstant <\/em>(London, 1702), preface.<\/li>
  9. Philip H. Highfill, Jr., Kalman A. Burnim, and Edward Langhans, A<\/em> Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and other stage Personnel in London 1660-1800<\/em>, vol. 14 (1991), 329.<\/li>
  10. Betterton would later blame \u2018the Depravity of the Taste of the Audience\u2019 for obliging him \u2018on Account of Self-defence\u2019 to keep on bringing in foreign and expensive stars who included Subligny, followed by Balon and L\u2019Abb\u00e9: see Charles Gildon, The Life of Mr Thomas Betterton<\/em> (London, 1710), 142-3, 155. John Downes had made a similar observation two years earlier: John Downes, Roscius Anglicanus<\/em> (London, 1708), 96-97.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Images<\/h2>\n\n\n\n