Caroline Lassiat in Marco Spada (Les Danseuses de l'Opéra, No. 11). Lithograph coloured by hand by Alophe, ca.1860

A dancer stands on her right leg, her left half-pointed in front, her body in profile to the viewer with her head turned to look over her left shoulder; her arms are folded. Her hair is dressed in two long plaits and she wears a green 'halo' headdress decorated in geometric patterns with pearls, finished at the neck in loops of green ribbon. Her dark orange brown bodice is trimmed with white and, around the upper arm, pale green. Her bell-shaped, knee-length skirt is pale ochre with a large round decoration on the left hip, formed of concentric circles in dark orange brown on a pale green base and hung with white discs; around the mid-skirt and hem are white bands edged with dark orange brown bands. On her feet are close fitting pale green ankle boots with tiny yellow heels.

Given by Dame Marie Rambert

Caroline Lassiat was a soloist at the Paris Opera in the 1850s and 1860s, before becoming one of the leading dance teachers under the name of Mme Dominique. Marco Spada was performed at the Paris Opera in 1857. The print is No. 11 in the series, Les Danseuses de l'Opera, published ca. 1860. There were 14 in total, all the work of Alophe.
The print is part of the collection of dance prints amassed by Marie Rambert and her husband, Ashley Dukes in the first half of the 20th century. Eventually numbering 145 items, some of which had belonged to the ballerina Anna Pavlova, it was one of the first and most important specialist collections in private hands.
Rambert bought the first print as a wedding present but could not bear to give it away. As the collection grew, it was displayed in the bar of the Mercury Theatre, the headquarters of Ballet Rambert, but in 1968, Rambert gave the collection to the Victoria and Albert Museum; seven duplicates were returned to Rambert, but these are catalogued in Ivor Guest's A Gallery of Romantic Ballet, which was published before the collection came to the V&A. Although often referred to as a collection of Romantic Ballet prints, there are also important engravings of 17th and 18th century performers, as well as lithographs from the later 19th century, by which time the great days of the ballet in London and Paris were over.

By 1860, photography had become a viable commercial medium, and several of the prints in the series Les Danseuses de l'Opera seem to be copies of photographs. Maybe this was because most photographs were quite small and, of course, sepia toned; translated into lithographs, they could be larger and then hand coloured, making them more suitable for display.

Marco Spada was performed at the Paris Opera in 1857, a splendid piece of French Second Empire nonsense, featuring bandits, kidnapped heroines, lovers' misunderstandings, a rejected suitor who in a fit of pique agrees to marry someone he doesn't love and a bandit chief's daughter, freed to marry her lover when it transpires she was adopted. The subject was chosen because it provided two strong female roles for the Paris Opera Ballet's current stars, Carolina Rosati and Amalia Ferraris.
Such a complex story was almost impossible to convey in dance. Most memorable was the scene where the whole stage with thirty people, was raised, revealing an underground cavern beneath. After a series of accidents the dancers began carrying charms to ward off evil influences.
Today, Marco Spada is remembered from prints of minor soloists, including Caroline Lassiat, who were depicted in costumes from the ballet. Her dress follows the outlines of what has become a conventional ballet dress, given details and colouring characteristic of a particular country.

E.5027-1968