Bruno Ligore (ed.),
Filippo Taglioni, padre del ballo romantico, Preface by José Sasportes, with contributions from Matilda Ann Butkas Ertz, Ornella Di Tondo, Olga Fedorchencko, Bénédicte Jarrasse, Gunhild Oberzaucher-Schüller, Johanna Sibilska, Madison U. Sowell, and Hanna Walsdorf, Rome: Aracne, 2023, 543 pp. 38.00 Euros. ISBN 979-12-218-1046-2
This book, the fourth in the series
Danza da leggere (Dance To Be Read), directed by José Sasportes for the Roman publishing house Aracne, finally sheds new and penetrating light on Filippo Taglioni – who, relegated traditionally to the role of father of the more famous Marie, has never been investigated with due attention. Various European, Russian and American authors have contributed to the challenging task of historiographically constructing the human and artistic figure of Filippo.
Contrary to what the Italian title of the volume suggests, some texts are in French or English, making the authors’ research accessible to an even wider community of scholars of 19th-century dance. In addition, this multilingualism might be understood as a tribute to the versatile career spent by Filippo in different European countries and his posture towards varying working and social realities. The fact that the authors’ contributions dialogue with each other as instruments in an orchestra, thanks to strategic cross-references of notes, gives...
