Overture
1. Prologue
2. The Travelling Dancer
3. Russian Debut
4. Looking Back, Moving Forward
5. Ballet Wars, Real and Imagined
6. Questions of Style and Structure
7. At Home and at Work
8. The Vsevolozhsky Reforms
9. Big Music, Big Dance
10. Enter Vladimir Teliakovsky
Apotheosis
Appendices
The Chain of Command
The Petipa Family
List of Works
Libraries and Archives
Bibliography
Index
Nadine Meisner has been a dance critic for The Independent, The Sunday Times, and The Times.
"No other scholar investigating Petipa has managed to uncover and
access so many sources, from letters to photographs, from newspaper
cuttings to sketches, from political analyses to ballet reviews.
The result is a most impressive collage of a vast array of various
kinds of documents. [...] This is a ground-breaking study with a
new perspective on Marius Petipa and ballet in Russia." -- Marion
Kant, Journal of European Studies
"Nadine Meisner's new book [...] comes as a landmark in Petipa
scholarship and dance history in general. Painstakingly researched,
with equal attention paid to Russian and Western sources (a rare
occurrence), it calmly and heroically unearths Petipa in life and
work. [...] Nadine Meisner's biography of Petipa makes his life and
work brighter, richer, and messier than we have ever known it." --
Daria Khitrova, Ballet Review
"This is however an important addition to the library for anyone
with a serious interest in classical ballet" -- Dance International
Magazine
"A valuable new book ... Ms. Meisner's book, the first full-length
Petipa biography in English, is by far the most detailed and
complete survey of his life and work to date." -- Alistair
Macauley, New York Times
"... engaging, well-researched, and strong on context ... Ms
Meisner's biography is impressively detailed ... weaves a rich
portrait of Petipa, his circumstances, his times." -- John Check,
Wall Street Journal
"A rich addition to scholarship on Russian ballet. Meisner fills in
long-standing gaps in the literature by focusing on the life and
works of one of the most significant, yet understudied, names in
ballet history, and she does so in a style that is enjoyable as
well as informative." -- Megan Race, LA Review of Books
"... a magisterially epic study of the man who gave the world La
Bayadäre, The Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake ... Meisner weaves
this biographical material into a much broader picture of ballet
under the tsars; she is excellent on the contrasting skills and
styles of the ballerinas with whom Petipa worked, and who forged
his style just as much as any ethereal notions of dance did." --
Sarah Crampton, The Sunday Times
"A wonderful, comprehensive biography ... Meisner has meticulously
researched the facts of Petipa's life and presents a full portrait
of the man born in Marseilles in 1818, investigating his talent and
his temperament. It's immensely readable, with tantalising archive
photographs and an exhaustive â and invaluable â chronology of all
Petipa's Russian works." -- Debra Craine, The Times
"Nadine Meisner's meticulously researched and exhaustively detailed
study will surely establish itself as the standard authority on the
subject in English. The absence of any scorching drama or scandal
in Petipa's life means that it doesn't make electrifying reading,
but its poise and scholarship impress, particularly in its command
of the broader cultural context." -- Rupert Christiansen, The
Spectator
"Through her exhaustive work, which includes a comprehensive list
of the works he created in Russia and a Petipa genealogy, Meisner
presents the story of a key figure in the development of Western
ballet... an important addition to any performing arts collection.
Students of Russian culture and history, and devotees of dance,
alike will appreciate its scope and scholarship." -- Carolyn Mulac,
BookList
"... at last someone has collected the factsâthe successes, the
flops, everybody's patronymicâand put them down in graceful English
prose ... the book is admirable." -- Joan Acocella, New York Review
of Books
"There is finally a proper biography of Marius Petipa..." --
Carolina Miranda, LA Times
"Fabulous for balletomanes... This is a fascinating examination of
one of the major figures in dance history and an invaluable
resource showing how ballet today continues a link from the
Imperial Russian past to now." -- Lynne Lancaster, Sydney Arts
Guide
"... it's a great thing that finally a full-scale biography of
Petipa has arrived, the first to appear in English, published by
Oxford University Press in solid, beautifully written text by the
British journalist-scholar Nadine Meisner ... She has written an
affectionate, thoughtful life ... This is a book I will return to
again and again." -- Paul Parish, Bay Area Reporter
"As a research tool Meisner's biography is invaluable as it
includes detailed information concerning Petipa's ballets with
notations and the artists who performed in them... This is a
valuable biography of one of the most important artists in the
ballet world and also how Petipaâs influence is very much alive on
the ballet stages of the world today." -- Mark Kappel, Newsnotes
Dance Blog
"Nadine Meisner's meticulously researched biography is the first
coherent, full length, account of his life... This is an important
book on many levels: drawing on an impressive array of primary and
secondary research materials, it fills a narrative gap in ballet
history..." -- Maggie Watson, Oxford Dance Writers
"The depth of research is impressive ... a valuable pulling
together of research into one volume ... it is a good read." --
Charlotte Kanser, SeeingDance.com
Meisner's writing is elegant, never obtusely theoretical ... The
book is rigorous, deep, and full of detail. I'm ready to re-read
it. -- Lynn Brooks, thinkingdance.net
"In Marius Petipa: The Emperor's Ballet Master, the first biography
in English of the preeminent architect of Russian ballet
classicism, Nadine Meisner offers a vivid portrait of the
French-born itinerant dancer who choreographed dozens of ballets
during sixty years of service to Russia's tsars. In this deeply
researched book we meet the workaholic who labored over the grand
ensembles and cascades of solo dances that became defining features
of
ballets such as The Sleeping Beauty and raymonda; the lover and man
of passion who was also a devoted father, and the company director
who learned to navigate a world of courtiers, bureaucrats, and
'protectors' to
create with his dancers a world of beauty in movement. --Lynn
Garafola, author of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and Professor
Emerita of Dance, Barnard College
"Marius Petipa, the architect of classical ballet as we know it
today, finds a splendid biographer in Nadine Meisner's The
Emperor's Ballet Master. This compulsively readable book gives us
not only Petipa's melodramatic life, from his youthful wanderings
through his artistic flowering in Russia, but the very flavor of
the worlds he passed through and settled in - all narrated in
supremely graceful and lively prose. Absolutely essential reading
for
cultural history devotees." --Elizabeth Kendall, author of
Balanchine and the Lost Muse
"Nadine Meisner tells the gripping story of Marius Petipa's
remarkable career at the Imperial Theatres with great flair. Her
scrupulous research reveals the French choreographer's seminal role
in laying a foundation without which the dance revolution wrought
by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in the twentieth century would
scarcely have been possible." --Rosamund Bartlett, author of Wagner
and Russia
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