Born: 23 April 1804, Sweden
Died: 24 April 1884
Country most active: International
Also known as: Maria Taglioni, Comtesse de Voisins
From Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company:
Maria Taglioni, an Italian dancer, born at Stockholm, Sweden, daughter of the ballet master, Filippo Taglioni who trained her, and who is said to have been pitilessly severe.
Sher made her début in Vienna in 1822 and, five years later, at her appearance in Paris at the Opera, she aroused a furore of enthusiasm by her marvellous grace. Her style was termed “ideal,” and was chaste and refined in distinction to the realistic dancing of her predecessors.
After a brilliantly successful career in Europe and England, she retired in 1847 with a fortune.
In later years, having lost her savings in speculation, she supported herself in London as a teacher of deportment, especially in connection with the ceremony of presentation at court.
Taglioni is frequently mentioned in the novels of Balzac; and Thackeray, in The Newcomes, says that the young men of that epoch “will never see anything so graceful as Taglioni in La Sylphide.”