Born at Paris in April, 1727, he was the son of a distinguished Swiss soldier, who had served as an adjutant in the army of Charles XII, and intended his son for a military career. Jean, however, early developed a passion for the stage, and especially for dancing, so was apprenticed by his father to the famous Parisian dancer and _maître de ballet_, Dupré. In August, 1743, young Noverre made his _début_ at the Court of Louis-Quinze in a fête at Fontainebleau, but with only moderate success. Not discouraged, however, he went a little later to the Court of Berlin, where he became a favourite with Frederick the Great and his brother, Prince Henry of Prussia. He returned to France in 1747, and two years later obtained the post of _maître de ballet_ at the Opéra Comique, where the success of his “Ballet Chinois” aroused considerable jealousy among his colleagues and brought him some distinction in the art world. But the success was not great enough for his ambitious spirit, and he again travelled, and did not return to Paris for nearly twenty years. Noverre and such are seldom recognised as prophets in their own country, until their genius has received recognition abroad. As Castil-Blaze, the historian of opera in France, has neatly expressed it: “Noverre and the two Gardels effected in the dance the same revolution that Gluck and Sacchini achieved some years later in French music.” But Noverre was unable to do this as a young man in Paris fighting against the sheer dead weight of convention and hide-bound authority. He was unable to do it until he had won his laurels abroad. Sallé, one of the most exquisite and “intellectual” of _danseuses_, had left Paris for a more appreciative audience in London because the Paris Opera disliked her attempts to discard the ridiculous conventions of stage costumes then ruling and to “reform it altogether” in favour of something more congruous. Noverre visioned to himself a theatre devoted to a kind of ballet as different from that he saw in Paris, as the Russian ballet we have seen to-day differs from that which London had seen in the ’thirties of last century; a ballet that should be informed by a technique so perfect as to be unobtrusive, and combining the arts of dance, pantomime, music and poesy into a new, subtle, resourceful and comprehensive means of artistic expression.