Tutus and Jackboots: Ballet music at the Paris opera under the German occupation of France 1940-44

Abstract

Though we know that ballet flourished during the German occupation of France (1940-1944), and that the Paris Opéra Ballet entertained both French and German audiences, this is the first in-depth study to discuss the company’s new ballets as a body of work and analyse the changing ballet repertoire at the Paris Opéra in its cultural and political context. This thesis shows how the Paris Opéra Ballet thrived during the German occupation both in spite and because of the restrictions placed on it, bringing together three historiographical fields: the history of Nazism and World War II, the interconnected histories of twentieth-century ballet and music, and the history of culture and everyday life during the German occupation of Paris. The new ballets discussed in this thesis were all choreographed by former Ballets Russes dancer Serge Lifar: composer Gabriel Grovlez’s La Princesse au jardin (1941), Philippe Gaubert’s Le Chevalier et la Damoiselle (1941), Francis Poulenc’s Les Animaux modèles (1942), Werner Egk’s Joan de Zarissa (1942), and André Jolivet’s Guignol et Pandore (1944). By delving deeper into the audience experience at the Paris Opéra during the occupation, this thesis argues that the Palais Garnier became a social space shared by both French and German audiences. I conclude that the Germans’ policy of ‘cultural seduction’ in Paris created space for the increased presentation of new French ballets. Maintaining the balance between the stipulations from the German authorities, the wishes of the French government in Vichy, and the needs of the audience was a significant challenge for the administration and directors of the Paris Opéra, one that was negotiated through repertoire. vi The productions that performers and administrative staff presented channelled a cultural ‘Frenchness’ that was sufficiently open to sustain quite radically different interpretations on the part of their diverse audiences. To some, the ‘occupation ballets’ offered a subversive critique of foreign armies on French soil; others may have perceived them as in alignment with the Vichy government’s cultural and aesthetic ideological ideals. Though ballet has been associated with French culture since the seventeenth century, ballet music is largely missing from debates concerning twentieth-century music, cultural life in Paris and the National Socialists’ attitude towards French culture. This thesis takes research on twentieth-century dance and music in new directions by considering the ballet repertoire presented at the Paris Opéra during the German occupation from interdisciplinary perspectives in order to gain a deeper understanding of how culture was affected by the occupation, and how French composers, artists, choreographers and cultural institutions reacted in the political circumstances. Whereas existing literature tends to address cultural life in Paris more generally, or treats ballet as secondary to the discussion of French opera and the visiting German companies, this thesis combines analytical musical commentary, quantitative analysis and the discussion of a single institution to place the Paris Opéra Ballet at the centre of its description and analysis of occupation cultural life, deepening understanding of cultural life in German-occupied Paris, and offering new, interdisciplinary perspectives on Nazism, the Second World War, and twentieth-century dance and music.

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