Jean-Baptiste Blache

Who was Jean-Baptiste Blache?

Jean-Baptiste Blache de Beaufort was a German ballet dancer and ballet master active in France.

A student of Deshayes, he learned the violon and cello and had what was in essence a provincial career, mainly at Bordeaux, where he succeeded Jean Dauberval. He worked briefly at the Opéra de Paris, putting on The Barber of Seville and Les Fêtes de Vulcain there. Among his best known and most popular ballets are Les Meuniers, L'Amour et la Folie, La Chaste Suzanne, La Fille soldat and Almaviva et Rosine.

He retired to Toulouse and declined an offer from that theatre that he become its ballet master. His eldest son, Frédéric-Auguste Blache revived his father's work at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin from 1816 to 1823, then at the Ambigu-Comique, where he revived the La Fille soldat. Frédéric-Auguste also wrote Polichinelle vampire, interpreted by Charles-François Mazurier and Jocko ou le Singe du Brésil. Jean-Baptiste's younger son, Alexis-Scipion, was a ballet master at Lyon, Paris, Marseille, Bordeaux and Saint-Petersburg.