Free The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough

altogether with his initial misgivings about Paris. The very air now seemed charged with excitement. “More than twenty theaters are blazing with light and echoing with fine music … not to mention concerts … shows innumerable,” he wrote. “The theater is the passion of the French and the taste and splendor of their dramatic exhibitions can hardly be exceeded.”
    There were two opera houses, both exuberantly ornate and spacious: the Théâtre Italien, on the Place des Italiens, where Italian opera was performed, and the Salle Le Peletier, home to the company now known as the Paris Opera, at that time sometimes called the Grand Opéra and known, too, for its corps de ballet.
    Faultlessly attired and wearing a turban, Emma Willard went escorted by her son to the Italian Opera for a performance of
Otello.
She was pleased especially with the vantage point of their box seats, not so much for the view of the stage as the show of “genteel society,” as she was frank to say. She later described the richly carved and gilded embellishments of the theater, the crimson curtain, the gorgeously lighted chandeliers. And the music, when it began, was much to her liking. But the audience interested her far more, and having had the foresight to bring “an excellent eyeglass,” she studied every detail, every gesture.
I never saw so many well dressed ladies together before; but it was not so much new forms of things which I saw as it was a greater perfection of material, of making and putting on. In manners also, one remarks a difference between these people and those we see at home under similar circumstances. All seem to live not for themselves, but for others. Nobody looks dreamy—but all are animated—gentlemen are on alert if aglove or fan is dropped, and ladies never forget the appropriate nod, or smile of thanks.
     
    Mrs. Willard approved entirely the French regard for fashion as an art unto itself. “We may make many valuable improvements from the instruction of French women in regard to dress, which after all is no unimportant affair to a woman.”
It is incredible what a nice eye a French woman has for dress and personal appearance. It is like a musician whose ear has become so acute that he discovers discords where to ordinary persons there seems perfect harmony.
     
    Charles Sumner made a point of going to a performance of Mozart’s
Don Giovanni
, notwithstanding that he could claim no more knowledge of music than of painting. The part of Don Ottavio was sung by Giovanni Battista Rubini, the leading Italian tenor of the day, but Sumner was surprised to find himself carried away by the “singular power” of all the performers. He had never heard anything like it, never known such feelings as swept over him.
    While the Paris Opera was second to none in all of Europe in its elaborate scenery and costuming, and the glitter of the audience was no less than at the Italian Opera, it was the dazzling Marie Taglioni, considered the greatest dancer in the world, that “
tout Paris
” turned out for, filling all 1,300 seats of the Salle Le Peletier performance after performance. “Have you seen Taglioni?” was often the first question a foreign visitor was asked on arriving in Paris.
    Her Italian father, Philippe Taglioni, a famous
maître de ballet
, had started her dancing as a child, and by age twenty-three she had made her debut at the Paris Opera. She had dark hair and large, luminous dark eyes. Her skin was uncommonly pale, her arms and legs uncommonly long and thin. By the time someone like Nathaniel Willis saw her perform, she was in her late twenties but looked younger. She had been one of the first to dance on the tips of her toes, and was known for her floating leaps and for her costume, with its tight bodice and short gauzy skirt, the prototype ofthe tutu. So lavish was the praise for her beauty and artistry that many went to see her for the first time wondering whether they might be disappointed.
    “No