Word: balletmistress
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When paunchy, bearded Giulio Gatti-Casazza was General Manager of Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House, the Metropolitan's corps de ballet was run by his wife Rosina Galli. Balletmistress Galli, a girl with old-fashioned ideas, filled the proscenium with rose-garlanded damsels whose inexpertness became proverbial. Critics in those days were agreed that the Metropolitan had many shortcomings, but that the shortest of all was Balletmistress Galli's ballet...
...critics who had hidden a smile at Balletmistress Galli's efforts soon began to think that Balanchine was not much better. Although he staged successful ballets in many a Broadway show (On Your Toes, Babes in Arms), Choreographer Balanchine never quite got the spirit of upholstered elegance appropriate to Aïda, or the abandon appropriate to the Bacchanale scene in Tannhäuser. And as pirouetting Bacchanalians, the youthful American Ballet was discouragingly apt to resemble a flock of plucked sparrows. Kindest commentators agreed it was nice, but not quite right...
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