2-799-140 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Mademoiselle Cerito, in the ballet of "Alma", 1844. Italian ballerina Fanny Cerito performing at Her Majesty's Theatre in London: '...Cerito...not only turns her own head a merveille, but those also of all her beholders. Never was such a feat so marvellously performed. It is quite Circean - a vortex - a maelstroom of beauty, and whirls everybody into its enchantment as surely as ever did any syren's stragem of old. And yet Fanny Cerito means but to delight, not to ensnare or injure'. From "Illustrated London News", 1844, Vol V.