Ce travail de recherche traite d’un phénomène culturel marquant de la modernité européenne : le ballet-pantomime. A mi-chemin entre la danse et la pantomime, ce nouveau produit théâtral, qui prétend représenter un récit par le seul concours du geste, se place au centre des réflexions esthétiques sur le théâtre, la peinture, la musique et interroge la relation entre la parole et le corps. Alors qu’il est en plein essor sur les scènes européennes, une controverse éclate entre deux maîtres de ballets le Français Jean-Georges Noverre, et l’Italien Gasparo Angiolini. Se disputant le titre de « réformateur de la danse », Angiolini et Noverre soutiennent des principes esthétiques opposés et leurs divergences font l’objet d’une querelle qui intéressera vivement les villes de Milan et Vienne entre 1773 et 1776. A partir d’une analyse des dramaturgies élaborées par les deux maîtres de ballets rivaux et en prenant en compte leurs modèles culturels respectifs, cette thèse étudie les questionnements esthétiques et sémiotiques soulevées par la polémique et propose de relire la « Querelle des Pantomimes » dans sa dimension sociale en privilégiant deux directions : d’une part elle est interprétée comme un symptôme significatif des relations entre l’Italie et la France, permettant d’examiner ainsi les modalités de dialogue entre ces deux cultures ; d’autre part elle met au jour les termes d’une lutte sociale menée à Milan par les hommes de lettres et elle est envisagée comme un signe du processus de « démocratisation » de la culture que le ballet-pantomime alimente. / This research concerns the emergence of a cultural phenomenon of European modernity: the ballet-pantomime. Between dance and mime, this new theatrical product claims to represent a story done only by gestures and is at the center of the aesthetic reflections on theater, painting, music by inquiring the relationship between word and body. Along its development in the European stages, a controversy broke out between two ballet masters, the French Jean-Georges Noverre and the Italian Gasparo Angiolini. Vying for the title of "reformer of dance," Angiolini and Noverre support opposites aesthetic principles, whose differences are the subject of a literary feud that excites a large interest in Milan and Vienna between 1773 and 1776. Starting from an analysis of dramaturgy developed by the two rivals in masters-ballet and taking into account their cultural patterns, this thesis explores the aesthetics and semiotics issues raised by the controversy and offers a reading of the "Quarrel of Pantomimes" in its social dimension focusing on two directions: on the one hand it is interpreted as a significant symptom of relations between Italy and France and it allows to examine the conditions for dialogue between the two cultures; secondly it manifests the terms of a social struggle that took place in Milan among men of Letters and it is seen as a sign of the process of "democratization" of culture that ballet-pantomime feeds.

Operatic history is riddled with reform. Although at the discursive level all operatic reforms share similar motivations, their execution in practice yields extremely different results, each indicative of the time and place in which they occur. Despite their claims to pan-historical aesthetic truth and timeless ideals, operatic reforms are highly specific indicators of their generation's individual needs, desires, and fears. My dissertation explores what the mid-eighteenth-century reform, pioneered most famously by Gluck and Calzabigi, can tell us about opera and its composers, audiences and performers in Habsburg Vienna. I interpret both reformed and unreformed Italian opera seria in 1760s Vienna through four different but intersecting conceptual lenses: luxury and economics, political representation, theories of body and communication, and a performer's voice. Opera played an important role in a widespread debate over luxury that pervaded Western Europe, an issue that comprised not only changing economics but paradigmatic shifts in social behavior. In the field of medicine, new scientific observation began to transform the ways that people viewed emotion and communication, and the ways these were expressed in opera. The nature of sovereignty itself was slowly shifting from absolutist models, requiring both new modes of government and new operatic representation. Yet individual singer's voices, such as that of Gaetano Guadagni, still played a vital role in shaping composition and aesthetics. Vienna in the 1760s experienced a flowering of diverse approaches to the problem of opera by a network of performers and composers who blurred the lines between tradition and progress and make us rethink the meanings of reform.