When Historical Ballet Meets Fictional Murder

by Nupur Tustin

For a writer of historical mysteries, there’s no moment more delightful than when historical reality happily dovetails with the details of one’s plot. It’s something I’ve experienced with every Joseph Haydn Mystery I’ve written, and I’m on the sixth now. 

The Queen’s Favorite, coming out tomorrow, November 5, is set in Marie Antoinette’s France. Haydn, of course, had never visited the country, although from my early research I remembered that his music was popular there. So much so, in fact, that pirated copies could be found in Paris. 

Additionally, Marie Antoinette, unlike her oldest brother, Habsburg Emperor Joseph, enjoyed Haydn’s music. 

If there were a murder of some significance in Paris, it made sense that the Queen might send for one of her favorite composers. Gluck, a contemporary of Haydn’s, was in Paris, composing for the Paris Opéra. 

The question, of course, was about the murder victim. Who might it be? 

Unable to think of a reason to take Haydn to Paris, I shelved the idea—until the winter of 2024. My daughter had started ballet lessons and was going to be performing in Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. It was odd, we both thought, that ballet should be so closely associated with a Russian composer and yet have French names for all its steps!

(Odd, too, that there was so much acting involved. Ballet is as much pantomime as dance.)

It didn’t take a sleuth to figure out that ballet had its origins in France. My curiosity aroused, and remembering my longtime desire to set a Haydn Mystery in France, I eagerly searched for a comprehensive history of ballet and discovered Jennifer Homan’s Apollo’s Angels.

Although ballet had come to France via a queen of Italian origin—Catherine de Medici—its form developed in France, in particular under Louis XIII and his son Louis XIV, better known as the Sun King. 

Here was the musical connection I’d been searching for. Queen Marie Antoinette loved ballet. She and her siblings had been taught it and had performed in ballets in Vienna. Prevented by her husband from playing much of a role in political matters, the Queen turned to the arts—in particular to Opera, where ballet, too, flourished.

Ballet was so popular in France that even operas included them. Composers like Gluck hated that and tried to cut out ballet as much as possible. But of course audiences just loved ballet. You couldn’t simply edit them out of an opera. 

I was getting a little closer to my goal. What if the prima ballerina at the prestigious Paris Opéra were to be murdered? What if this dancer enjoyed the Queen’s patronage? Surely, the Queen would take a personal interest in solving the murder. 

But why send for Haydn—all the way from Austria? Wasn’t that a bit extreme? And, really, how well would the French—who disrespectfully referred to their Queen as L’Autrichienne—take that?

That’s when I discovered Jean-Georges Noverre, a ballet master whose influence extended well beyond France and far beyond the eighteenth-century. In fact, he was better known outside France. He’s largely remembered because of his treatise on ballet, Lettres sur la danse et sur les ballets. 

And, remember all the pantomime I’d wondered at? That was Noverre’s doing—a way of making dance relevant to a skeptical Enlightenment audience that needed art to mirror reality. “All . . . ballet which is just dancing,” Rousseau declared, “should be banished from lyric theater.” The other philosophes agreed.

More to the point, he’d worked in Vienna and had likely come into contact with Haydn. When Noverre had arrived in Vienna in 1768 to work at the Burgtheater, Haydn was at the height of his fame. (My first Haydn novel, Minor Deceptionis set in that year.)

This was also a couple of years before the 14-year-old Archduchess Maria Antonia left Vienna to become Dauphine of France. 

Six years later in an astonishing move that ruffled more than a few feathers, Queen Marie Antoinette appointed Noverre ballet master of the Paris Opéra. Tradition demanded that the post go to someone within the ballet. So the dancers didn’t take kindly to either the new ballet master or the Queen who’d promoted him.

Now we were getting somewhere. What if Noverre were to lose his star ballerina, a woman whom he’d promoted with the encouragement of the Queen? What if the incident caused the Paris press to turn upon both the Queen and her ballet master, making Noverre fear for his position?

That would give him reason to send an urgent summons to his old friend, Haydn. 

Of course, the Queen having been threatened herself has reason to seek her brother Emperor Joseph’s help. He in turn seeks Haydn’s sleuthing skills. The Emperor had actually visited France—to assure himself the Habsburg-Bourbon alliance could and would bear fruit. That the Queen remained childless after five years of marriage remained a source of concern for Vienna.  

The Emperor typically traveled incognito. With a murder to solve, it made sense for Haydn to do so as well. Et voila! Just like that, I had the makings of a richly fantastic plot. 

 

Bio: A former journalist, Nupur Tustin misuses a Ph.D. in Communication and an M.A. in English to orchestrate murder in Haydn’s Austria and paint intrigue in the Celine Skye Psychic Mysteries, based on the unsolved Gardner Museum theft. 

 

For more information about Nupur Tustin and her books, visit nupurtustin.substack.com