Patrick Dupond, the most famous French dancer of his time, died on Friday at the age of 61, following a dazzling illness which took him away in a few months.
Crowned at the age of 21, he succeeded the legendary Rudolf Nureyev at the age of 31 as the dance director of the institution.
“Thank you for shining so brightly,” the current star dancer Hugo Marchand paid tribute to him.
The Minister of Culture Roselyne Bachelot praised the memory of a "madly talented" artist.
In 1862, the Paris Opera was then located rue Le Peletier (IXth).
A small fishing port, a few sailing boats planted in a still sea, a rock where the frail Fenella languishes ... Here we are in Portici, in the Bay of Naples ... or rather its cardboard reconstruction on the sea. Opera stage.
The orchestra, the singers, the costumers, the managers, the little hands ... Attention was at its height, on this Saturday, November 15, 1862, for the dress rehearsal of "la Muette de Portici".
This time, it is the young Emma Livry who holds the title role, that of Fenella, a young mute - originality of this opera created by Auber and Scribe: she dances, but does not sing - by whom the revolt will soon arrive against the Spanish oppressor.
At the beginning of the second act, she finally leaves her false rock and dashes, aerial, onto the stage.
Suddenly, a sort of wisp seems to be chasing her.
The unfortunate woman approached too close to the mobile gas ramp, supposed to light up the scene (electricity will prevail twenty years later).
A fatal draft and in a flash, the silk petticoat of her tutu was set ablaze.
A second later, the flames are dancing, as high as their prey.
She survives but suffers martyrdom
When she finally understands what is devouring her, Emma's graceful footsteps rush into panic.
It is now a human torch sweeping the stage in all directions, like a searchlight gone mad.
The other actors, panicked, run away.
Only two brave people try to immobilize her to put out the flames, but she escapes again.
In a desperate gesture of modesty, so as not to find herself naked, she brings back on her chest and her penis the fabric of her bustier in flame.
This reflex further aggravates his unhappiness.
"She only uttered three cries, but those cries that the ear can no longer forget," said Dr Laborie, the doctor of the Opera, who was present at the tragedy.
A firefighter on duty finally manages to extinguish the blaze by wrapping it in a wet blanket.
The famous “wet blanket” which had imposed itself behind the scenes of the great European theaters after the tragedy of 1844 at the London Royal Ballet.
A young ballerina, Clara Webster, caught fire on stage, before dying two days later.
On November 16, the Goncourt brothers recorded the tragedy in their Diary: “Under the wet blanket that the firefighter had thrown at her, the poor dancer so horribly burned yesterday, Emma Livry, knelt down and said her prayers.
To think that in the fifth and last act of the opera, Fenella must have thrown herself in despair into the erupting Vesuvius ...
Emma Livry had put Paris at her feet by performing La Sylphide, in front of the famous Italian choreographer Marie Taglioni./Coll.
LD / adoc-photos
At 20, the young star of the Parisian ballet survives temporarily.
Luckily, his wounds did not lead to gangrene.
She suffers martyrdom in her Parisian apartment, watched over by her mother, and does not despair of going back on stage one day.
No, "La Muette de Portici" will not be her swan song, she promises herself on her bed of pain.
Appointed at the age of 16, principal dancer of the Opera (we did not speak of a “star” until the following century), she wanted to believe that a long and brilliant career still awaited her.
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Three years earlier, she had put Paris at her feet by performing La Sylphide, in front of Marie Taglioni's eyes.
The famous Italian choreographer, muse of romanticism then in vogue, was so dazzled by the performance of the young Frenchwoman that she created a ballet for her, "Le Papillon", set to music by Jacques Offenbach.
At the premiere in Paris, on November 26, 1860, it was the consecration.
"Mademoiselle Livry, so ethereal, so diaphanous, skims the ground without touching it, she flies like a feather and falls like a snowflake", enthusiastically said one critic.
Cursed ballet
Her technique was so exceptional that it made you forget her common, almost ungrateful allure, at least in the eyes of the cannons the era which preferred curves when she was so thin, confessing to live only "on water and water. vinegar ”.
She herself, without complacency, described herself as "pale and interesting, but not pretty, with too big eyes."
To his "too big eyes" precisely, dance is a grace that nothing should spoil.
After the accident, she even continues to think that the firewall tutus, recommended for years by the Opera (which had waivers sign for those who refused them) are too nasty to be worn, because the non-flammable substance turns yellow and stiffened the gauze of the petticoat.
Certainly, agreed the convalescent, “they are less dangerous, but if I come back to the scene again, I will still refuse to wear them.
They are too ugly!
"
Emma will never have the chance. In the summer of 1863, she left Paris for Neuilly on the recommendation of her doctor, who judged it to look less stale. But the transport reopened her wounds and she died on July 26 of sepsis. At the end of the ballet which had sealed its glory, the "Butterfly" burns its wings on a torch ... Judged cursed, it will not be replayed before 1976 in Paris! The day of her funeral in the Montmartre cemetery, Emma Livry did not fly away on her own. Théophile Gautier, the author of "Capitaine Fracasse", who was among his fans, will claim to have seen two white butterflies dancing around the hearse.
