Armand Vestris

Auguste-Armand Vestris (1788[1] or 1786,[2] 1787,[3] or 1795[4] Paris – 17 May 1825, Vienna) was an early 19th-century French dancer and choreographer.

For other uses, see Vestris.
Armand Vestris in Macbeth, ballet of his composition on a music by Wenzel Robert von Gallenberg, at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples circa 1819.

The son of Auguste Vestris and (if the year of birth is 1795[5]) dancer Anne-Catherine Augier, called Aimée (1777–1809), he studied dance with his grandfather Gaétan and made his first appearance on the stage of the Opéra de Paris at age four, alongside his father and his grandfather.

He danced in Italy and in Portugal, then settled in London in 1809. A ballet master at King's Theatre from 1813 to 1816, he later moved to Vienna where he died. In his 1823 ballet La Fée et le Chevalier, ballerina Amalia Brugnoli performed for the first time on full pointe (amazing, among others, a very young Marie Taglioni).[6]

In 1813, he married Lucia Elizabeth Bartolozzi (1797-1856), who would become a famous singer, actress and theatre manager known under the stage name "Madame Vestris", from whom he separated in 1817.

References
  1. Philip H. Highfill e.a., A biographical dictionary of actors, actresses, musicians, dancers, managers & other stage personnel in London, 1660-1800, Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 1993, vol. XV, pp. 149-154 (ISBN 0-8093-1802-4).
  2. Horst Koegler (éd.), Concise Oxford Dictionary of Ballet, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1977, ad nomen.
  3. Vienna death register 1825
  4. (in Italian) Domenico Rigotti, Ann Veronica Turnbull, Danza e balletto, Milan, Jaca Book, 1998, p. 402, article « Vestris Auguste Jean Marie Augustin detto Auguste » (ISBN 88-16-43804-5.
  5. For questions related to the birth of Auguste-Armand, cf. Highfill, op. cit.. Surely, the year 1795 seems very implausible: Vestris should have settled in London aged fourteen (after several years of career already, far from his father and at the same time of the death of his mother) and become ballet master at the King's Theatre aged eighteen.
  6. "On Stage and in the Ballroom: Styles of Preromantic Ballet". New York Public Library. Retrieved 9 May 2021.


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