In spite of his great reputation and influence, Noverre found it difficult to reform the stage fundamentally. He failed to perform his own ballets in the way he wished. Thus in the ‘Horatii’ Camilla appeared in hooped petticoat, her hair piled up and decorated with fantastic ribbons and flowers. However, his reforms gained ground little by little. Much as he tried, he failed in reforming the stage celebrities of his time. This actuated the great reformer to say, ‘what we lack is not talent, but emulation. It almost seems, in fact, as if this were deliberately repressed. How I should rejoice to see a great dancer performing some noble part without plumes or wig or masks! I should then be able to applaud his sublime talent with satisfaction to myself; and I could then justly apply the term “great” to him, whereas now the most I say is: “_Ah la bella gamba!_” It is evident, therefore, that theatrical dancing demands many reforms. They cannot, of course, all be carried out at once; but we might at least begin. Let us do away with those gold painted masks, which deprive us of what would be one of the most interesting features of a _pas-de-deux_, the expressions of the performers’ faces. The disappearance of the periwig would follow of itself, and a shepherd would no longer dance in a plumed helmet.’ It is said that the Noverre’s ballets reached the number of fifty. But most known of them are ‘The Death of Ajax,’ ‘The Clemency of Titus,’ ‘The Caprices of Galatea,’ ‘Orpheus’ Descent Into Hell,’ ‘Rinaldo and Armida,’ ‘The Roses of Love,’ ‘The Judgment of Paris,’ etc. Several of these he produced at the courts of Stuttgart, Vienna, St. Petersburg and Florence. It was through his influence upon the Empress Anna of Russia that the great Russian Imperial Ballet School was founded, whose graduates have been electrifying the European audiences during the present and past decades. Noverre’s reform ideas were much perfected by the French composers and dancers of the following generation, men whom we have previously mentioned--Gardel, Dauberval, the Vestris brothers, and, in addition, Duport, Blasis and Milon. Auguste Vestris was twelve years old when he made his début in Paris, in 1772, in the ballet _La Cinquantaine_, and aroused the wildest enthusiasm in the audience. His high leaps were so popular that his father used to boast, ‘If Auguste does not stay up in the air, it is because he is unwilling to humiliate his comrades.’ For thirty-six years he was _premier danseur_ of the Opéra of Paris, and preserved his popularity till the age of sixty-six, when he retired to give lessons in dancing at the Academy. Of an eighteenth-century performance Weber writes graphically: