Eugénie Fiocre
(1845-1908)

The dancer Eugénie Fiocre is seen here in Borri’s L’étoile de Messine. Disdéri produced a carte showing twenty-five different portraits of dancers in various costumes and poses from this ballet, with the ballet identified within the print; this image is clearly identifiable as one of the portraits on that carte.

A dancer of elegance and vitality, Pasquale Borri was equally successful as a choreographer. His L’étoile de Messine [The Star of Messina], premièred in Vienna in 1856 as Die Gauklerin [The Juggler]; it was revived as La giocoliera in Milan, Trieste, Rome and Venice, and was lavishly recreated (with a new score by Count Nicolò Gabrielli and a new libretto by Paul Foucher) at the Paris Opéra in 1860, its new title emphasizing its Sicilian setting. It became one of his best-known works.

A high point of the Paris version was the rousing Tarantella led by Amalia Ferraris, in the tragic role of Gazella, and Louis Mérante.