Geneviève Gosselin

Mlle Gosselin (c. 1815)

Geneviève-Adélaïde Gosselin (1791 – 17 June 1818, Paris) was a French ballet dancer.

Life

Daughter of a ballet master, she was the eldest sister of many renowned dancers of the Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris in the 1810s, 1820s and 1830s – Constance Gosselin, wife of the dancer Anatole ; Louis Gosselin, premier danseur at Paris and London ; Henriette Gosselin, dancer at the Opéra from 1821 to 1830.

A student of Jean-François Coulon, Geneviève Gosselin was taken on at the Opéra de Paris in 1806. In 1815, she was the heroine of Flore et Zéphire, one of the first romantic ballets, composed by Didelot. Excellent in technique, she was the first dancer to develop the art of rising on pointes, from 1813, but she died at only 27 – a critic of the era later saw Marie Taglioni as a reincarnation of Mlle Gosselin.