Institutionalization and the Triumph of the Stage

In the Baroque period, ballet definitively ceased to be an appendage of festivity and became an institutional system.

From Court Ballet to Institution

In the seventeenth century, ballet entered a new phase. It was no longer merely an occasional celebratory spectacle, but a stable instrument of monarchical representation. Although the political center of this transformation is often identified with the French court of Louis XIV, the inspiration, direction, and personnel of this cultural machine were profoundly Italian. It was the Abruzzese cardinal Giulio Mazzarino who imported to France scenographers, musicians, and dancers from the peninsula. Dance — still marked by Italian models — became the visual language of absolutism. In Italy, the model reached absolute heights at the Savoy court of Turin, where Count Filippo San Martino d’Agliè created extraordinary court ballets (such as Il Grifone), fusing political rhetoric with spectacular invention.

Ballet within Opera

At the same time, ballet became integrated into the new dominant genre: opera, born in Florence and rapidly expanding in Venice and Rome. With the Italian Giovanni Battista Lulli (born in Florence, later Frenchified as Jean-Baptiste Lully), ballet became a structural component of the tragédie lyrique. The danced sections were no longer decorative intermezzi, but contributed to the architecture of the spectacle. Lulli’s model included choreographic openings, divertissements, and total integration between singing, orchestra, and dance, which had now become an organic component of musical dramaturgy. Even in Italian public theatres, composers such as the Venetian Francesco Cavalli regularly inserted grand “balli” into their operatic scores, confirming the inseparability of music and movement.

Spectacle, Symmetry, Geometry

The Baroque loved order and grandeur. In Italy, choreographies favored geometric figures, spatial symmetry, and coordinated collective movement, in which the body formed part of a larger design — much like the magnificent gardens of courtly residences. This collective body was controlled, regulated, visible from above, and framed by unprecedented scenotechnical inventions. It was the age of great Italian theatrical engineers such as the Marchigian Giacomo Torelli (nicknamed the “Great Sorcerer” for his visible scene changes) and the Vigarani family, who built the theatres and illusionistic machinery upon which all of Europe would dance. Dance thus became true architecture in motion.

Italy Leads Development: Between Academy and Stage

Italy guided the development of ballet, continuing to provide the structural backbone of musical spectacle (opera, scenography, vocal virtuosity). The technical vocabulary still in use today — plié, arabesque, relevé — was born in this Italo-French context, the result of codification promoted by Italian masters working abroad. Yet in Italy the art retained its own distinctive character, less affected than its transalpine counterpart and deeply influenced by the gestural and acrobatic traditions of the Commedia dell’Arte, which infused theatrical dance with leaps, lazzi, and expressive pantomime.

Toward Professionalism

By the end of the seventeenth century, dancers had become specialists trained in academies. The stage demanded increasing virtuosity, completing the most radical transformation: from aristocratic practice to autonomous artistic discipline. Italian dancing masters began to create a distinctly theatrical repertoire, as would be attested at the dawn of the following century by the Venetian Gregorio Lambranzi in his fundamental Nuova e curiosa scuola de’ balli teatrali, anticipating the eighteenth-century reform that would transform this perfect machine into an equally perfect expressive instrument.