The Pretensions of Fanny Bias: Managing a Career at the Paris Opera, 1807-1825

Anne-Françoise Bias was celebrated for her neat, articulate, and dainty footwork. She worked her way through the ranks of the Paris Opéra, eventually becoming a premier sujet through a combination of talent, demonstrations of zeal and good will, and sheer persistence. A substantial dossier on her at the Archives Nationales de France covers every aspect of management, from the terms of her annual appointment, the awarding of feux, of supplements, and of gratifications, the possibility of congé – even the imposition of disciplinary action. Reports from dancing-master Pierre Gardel document her skills and testify to displays of good will or ‘difficult’ behaviour. Bias herself engages in protracted and involved correspondence with management across her career; a vocal self-advocate, she often uses comparisons with her contemporaries to justify aspirations re progression, financial reward, or the assignment of roles. Bias’s dossier reveals an intensity of relationship with her employer (her ‘pretensions’ are decried at one juncture); it also shows the extent to which the Minister of Culture was involved in the day-to-day running of the Paris Opéra. Regarding Bias’s short stint at the King’s Theatre under John Ebers’s management in 1821, the administrative focal point was her benefit night. 

Sarah McCleave is a reader in musicology in the School of Arts English and Languages Queen’s University Belfast. Her research explores dance on the lyric stage in London and the careers of individual dancers active in both Paris and London, 1720-1860. She has published in Dance Research, Grove Dictionary of Music, Choreologica, and La danza italiana; she contributed to Lynn Matluck Brooks’s edited anthology, Women’s Work: Making Dance in Europe before 1800 (University of Wisconsin Press, 2007). Her current project, ‘Fame and the Female Dancer’, has received funding from the Leverhulme Foundation and the Houghton Library. Access the project blog.