This account of the triumphs of Italian women upon the continental stage would be wholly incomplete without some reference to the incomparable _danseuse_ La Taglioni, who will always occupy an important place in the annals of Terpsichore. Without great personal charm, her success was due to her wonderful skill, which was the result of the mercilessly severe training that she had received from her father, Filippo Taglioni, who was a ballet master of some repute. Born at Stockholm, where her father was employed at the Royal Opera, she made her debut at Vienna, where she created an immediate sensation. Hitherto ballet dancing had been somewhat realistic and voluptuous, as illustrated by the performances of the celebrated Madame Vestris, but La Taglioni put poetry and imagination into her work, which was more ideal in character, and her supremacy was soon unquestioned. Among her most remarkable performances was the dancing of the _Tyrolienne_ in _Guillaume Tell_, and of the _pas de fascination_ in _Robert le Diable_. In this mid-century period dancing occupied a far more important place in opera than it has since, but with the retirement of La Taglioni, in 1845, the era of grand ballets came practically to an end. About her work there seems to have been a subtle charm which no other modern _danseuse_ has ever possessed, and her admirers were to be found in all ranks of society. Balzac often mentions her, and Thackeray says in _The Newcomes_ that the young men of the epoch "will never see anything so graceful as Taglioni in _La Sylphide_."