A Plurality of Romanticisms: Italian Ballet and the Repertory of Antonio Cortesi and Giovanni Casati

Abstract

In Romanticism and Post-Modernism, Edward Larrissy states, “It has long been recognized that Romanticism is a dubious essence” (1999, 2). Observing that the current tendency is to acknowledge a plurality of “Romanticisms,” he cites Arthur O. Lovejoy's article, “On the discrimination of Romanticisms,” originally published in 1924, in which Lovejoy argued that the term had taken on such a multiplicity of meanings that “we should learn to use the word ‘Romanticism’ in the plural” (1948, 235). Acknowledging multiple schools of Romanticism constitutes more than a “post-modern piece of de-essentialising,” according to Larrissy; it recognizes that the literary and artistic creations of the Romantic era were too varied to submit to “a unified Romantic discourse” (1999, 2). Lovejoy's thesis, so widely accepted in literary circles, holds promise for dance scholars working with repertory from the Romantic era that lies outside the mainstream of “dance history” as traditionally viewed from the perspective of the Paris Opéra. Embracing the possibility of multiple forms of “Romanticism” in the nineteenth-century ballet allows us to attach meaning to the balletic repertory of that era as it varied according to national setting and individual choreographer.