The Tambourin (or Tambourine it was it was often called in advertisements) was apparently introduced to the London stage by Marie Sallé, who performed a solo with this title at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 4 January 1731. It quickly became popular. Mlle Sallé danced it at least nine times before the end of the season, including at her own benefit on 25 March when it was titled a ‘New French Tambourin’. A solo Tambourin was also danced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields a couple of times by Miss Rogers ‘Scholar to Salle’ (Marie Sallé’s brother Francis), while at Drury Lane Miss Robinson danced a solo Tambourin several times (including at her own benefit on 14 April 1731 when she also performed ‘Les Characteres de la Dance’).

In 1730-1731, Marie Sallé was returning to dance in London after some years performing at the Paris Opéra, where she had made her official debut on 14 September 1727. She had appeared in a number of operas during her time in Paris, so it is possible that she was drawing on one of her dancing roles there. It is interesting to note that she appeared in Alcione by Marais, premièred in 1706 and cited as the first French opera to include a tambourin.  However the dance forms part of the ‘Feste Marine’ in the third act, whereas Mlle Sallé danced in acts one and four. Marais’s music was also closely associated with Matelots both in the opera and when it was appropriated for choreographies recorded in Beauchamp-Feuillet notation, so it is perhaps unlikely that it was used for Marie Sallé’s London Tambourin.

Mlle Sallé returned to dance in London in the 1733-1734 and 1734-1735 seasons, after which she never returned. She seems to have danced her Tambourin again only on 18 and 26 December 1734. By that time the dance had become a regular feature of the entr’actes. At Covent Garden it continued to be danced as a solo by Miss Rogers, as well as a duet by her and Leach Glover. At Drury Lane a solo ‘Tambourine’ was danced by Mlle Grognet, while Miss Robinson gave her solo ‘Tambourine’ at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket (where she performed with others who had taken part in the actors’ rebellion at Drury Lane at the end of the 1732-1733 season) and Miss Wherrit danced yet another solo ‘Tambourine’ at the Goodman’s Fields Theatre.  The Tambourin or Tambourine remained popular as both a solo and a duet into the 1740s.

The Tambourine was exceptionally popular during the 1739-1740 and 1740-1741 seasons, when it was performed frequently at Drury Lane by a visitor ‘lately arriv’d from Paris’ Mlle Chateauneuf. We do not know what music she used for her solo (which was sometimes advertised as by ‘Mlle Chateauneuf &c.’ as if it were a group dance). In 1740-1741, she had rivals at Covent Garden in the form of Desnoyer and Signora Barberini who danced a ‘new Tambourine’ together on 14 February 1741 which they repeated at numerous performances during the rest of the season. The music for their dance may have been related to the ‘Tambourine Sigra Barbarina’ published in the second of the set of eight volumes popularly known as Hasse’s Comic Tunes which appeared between 1741 and 1758. This particular volume was issued in four parts between September 1742 and October 1743, which includes a period when Desnoyer and Signora Barberini were still performing their duet. Here is her Tambourine (p. 67):

During the 1742-1743 season, the dancer Philip Cooke performed a Tambourine at Covent Garden and his music was also included in the same volume (p. 52). Here is the beginning (the music seems to continue onto the next page):

These two pieces (as well as a number of other tambourins in the same volume) are worth further research for the insights they might provide into music for dancing on the London stage at this period.

There is another entr’acte dance which might have links to yet another Parisian tambourin. Le Badinage de Provence was first performed at Dury Lane on 22 October 1735 by Michael Poitier and Catherine Roland with a supporting group of twelve dancers (six men and six women). It proved very popular, with at least seventeen performances before the end of the season and it would continue to be revived until 1739-1740. In its last season it was advertised, this time at Covent Garden, on 15 October 1739 as a ‘Tambourine Dance call’d La Badinage de Provence’. The title, and the later advertisement, raise the possibility that the music for the dance (which may well have been choreographed by Poitier) was one or both of the tambourins in the first Entrée ‘Le Turc Généreux’ of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Les Indes galantes. This ‘ballet héroïque’, an opéra-ballet, was first performed at the Paris Opéra on 23 August 1735 and was still in the repertoire there when Le Badinage de Provence was first given at Drury Lane. The tambourins are played in the final scene of the Entrée, which has ‘Provençaux et Provençales’ onstage (presumably the ‘Matelots’ seen earlier) and a ‘Danse de Matelots’.  As the entries in Grove Music Online and the International Encyclopedia of Dance acknowledge, the tambourin was widely thought to be of Provençal origin. Poitier seems to have moved regularly between Paris and London and would undoubtedly have encountered Rameau’s opera.

The popularity of Tambourine dances waned in the 1750s. They were performed a handful of times each season at most and not given at all in several seasons. The dance enjoyed a significant revival in the mid-1760s, with the ‘new Tambourine Dance’ by Simon Slingsby and Miss Baker at Drury Lane on 29 September 1764. This duet was apparently a response to Le Tambourine danced by Fischar and others at the King’s Theatre during the 1763-1764 season, for the latter was repeated in response to Slingsby and Miss Baker’s dance throughout 1764-1765. Other sources suggest that these were very different dances to the earlier Tambourines. I hope to write about them, and about Slingsby, at a later date.

References:

For a listing of Marie Sallé’s dancing roles see: Émile Dacier. Une Danseuse de l’Opéra sous Louis XV: Mlle Sallé (1707-1756) (Paris, 1909), pp. 323-335.

For the text of scene VI of the first Entrée of Rameau’s opera, see: Louis Fuzelier, Les Indes galantes ([Paris], 1735), pp. 24-26.

Rebecca Harris-Warrick, ‘Tambourin’, International Encyclopedia of Dance. 6 Vols, (New York, 1998), vol. 6.

Hasse’s Comic Tunes to the Opera and Theatre Dances. [Volume II]. The Celebrated Comic Tunes to the Opera Dances, as Perform’d at the King’s Theatre in the Hay Market. To which is added, Several of the Most Celebrated Dances Perform’d at Both Theatres (London, 1742-1743).

Meredith Ellis Little, ‘Tambourin (i)’, Grove Music Online (2001, accessed 7/10/2024).