Ballet de Monseigneur le duc de Vandosme, dance lui douzieme en la ville de Paris dans la Grande Salle de la Maison Royalle du Louvre, puis en celle de l'Arsenac, le 17 et 18e iour de ianvier 1610 (Anon, Paris 1610)

Dance manual/reference by Paris 1610 (imprint: Jean de Heuqueville, rue Saint-Jacques a l'enseigne de la Paix); Avec Privilege du Roy. Anonymous court-ballet livret (BNF Gallica scan). Printed in Paris 1610 chez Jean de Heuqueville, rue Saint-Jacques a l'enseigne de la Paix, Avec Privilege du Roy. Source: DATA/LIBRARY_OF_DANCE/ABBYY TXT/1610-Ballet_(BNF).txt (191 lines OCR). CONTENT: livret of the *Ballet de Monseigneur le duc de Vandosme* danced by Cesar de Bourbon-Vendome (1594-1665, Henri IV's eldest legitimised natural son with Gabrielle d'Estrees) and eleven other noble-youth cavaliers, at the Grande Salle du Louvre on 17 January 1610 and at the Salle de l'Arsenal on 18 January 1610. ARGUMENT: the sorceress Alcine (from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Cantos VI-VIII), unable to bring twelve errant knights under her amorous enchantment, traps them in a palace hidden within a dense forest and makes them invisible; learning from her arts that they must be delivered by the mere sight of the greatest King of the earth (Henri IV), furious-and-fulminating, she threatens her Demons and despises their feeble power. STRUCTURE: (I) Gobbemague grand-conseiller of the Isle of Monkeys, three Turkish slaves, fifteen enchanted-violinist slaves transformed by a young Moor into Ten Green Magots (porte-flambeaux) who dance the Magots-verts ballet in ten figures; (II) Entree d'Alcine with ten nymph-attendants bearing lutes; (III) Entree de Quatre Grotesques -- two ambulatory towers of clisse with mock-men heads and four great damoiselles en crotesque with ample verdugades, from which issue four Naiad-nymphs with fans and crystal mirrors; (IV) Entree de Deux Pots de Fleurs et Deux Hiboux, from which issue four clochette-armed Nymphs bearing darts; (V) Entree de Deux Grandes Violes et Deux Moulins-a-vent (mouvantes-et-marchantes), from which issue four Nymphes Driades bearing bows and arrows; (VI) Ballet des Douze Nimphes Transformees -- the twelve nymphs dance geometric figures spelling the name ALCINE (A-L-C-I-N-E) in six successive forms, marked by a chaine that returns them to the forest; (VII) Ballet des Huict Nains d'Alcine -- eight dwarfs armed with masses and shields perform a mock-battle chamaillerie ballet, striking one another a-pied / a-deux / a-trois / a-quatre / tous-ensemble in turn, marked with capriolles-en-entrichats, retiring in chamailling-capriolling pairs; (VIII) Retour d'Alcine avec ses Nymphes (sung-and-danced Pandore recitative); (IX) Grand Ballet/Delivrance des Chevaliers implied by the argument. ENSEMBLE: 15 enchanted-violinist slaves (3 on dessus, 3 on haute-contre, 3 on taille, 3 on quinte-paille, 3 on basse-contre); 10 Green Magots porte-flambeaux; 12 transformed nymphs; 8 dwarfs; plus Alcine, the Moor, Gobbemague, and his 3 Turkish slaves. HISTORIC SIGNIFICANCE: (1) PRE-ASSASSINATION HENRI IV carnival-ballet -- 117 days before Henri IV's assassination by Ravaillac on 14 May 1610, this ballet features the King as the off-stage greatest-monarch delivering the enchanted knights (a role he would not live to formalise in subsequent Bourbon-court-ballet iconography, which passes to his son Louis XIII); (2) YOUTH-NOBILITY DEBUT of Cesar de Bourbon-Vendome (age 15) alongside eleven other noble cavaliers -- serves as precedent for the Louis XIII noble-youth-cavalier debut pattern continued in LOC-1617-DURAND (F0271..F0283 Delivrance-de-Renaud), LOC-1619-GRAMONT (F0244..F0253 Tancrede-en-la-Forest), and LOC-1625-BORDIER-FEES (F0284..F0291 Fees-des-Forests); (3) ALCINE-AS-ENCHANTRESS source-tradition -- Ariostan sorceress invoking twelve-knight framework, later re-echoed in the 1625 Fees-des-Forests Five-Fairy allegorical framework and the Estoile 1626 Douairiere-de-Billebahaut satirical-entree framework (H-REN-BRA-F0254..F0270); (4) TWELVE-NYMPH-SPELL attestation -- the twelve nymphs geometrically form the letters A-L-C-I-N-E in six successive figures, the earliest detailed French-source attestation of letter-forming choreographic figures in the ballet de cour, 41 years pre-Beauchamp-Feuillet choregraphie character-notation (Feuillet 1700). Has_Step_Detail = No: livret-only narrative + costume-inventory; no Beauchamp-Feuillet notation (would not emerge for 90 years). Registered for corpus completeness: extends the Louis XIII ballet de cour inventory back 7 years to Henri IV's final regal-carnival and completes the 1610-1625 court-ballet livret quartet (1610-Vendome / 1617-Durand / 1619-Gramont / 1625-Bordier-Fees). (1610). Imported from local collection.