Enamel Eyes, a Fantasia on Paris, 1870

In lyric poetry with the dramatic sweep of a historical novel, Jay Rogoff’s Enamel Eyes, a Fantasia on Paris, 1870 reimagines “the terrible year” when the Franco-Prussian War shook the City of Lights. The great comic ballet Coppélia had dazzled Paris and Emperor Napoleon III mere weeks before war erupted; in retrospect, the ballet’s obsession with a mechanical woman anticipated the conflict’s mechanized violence.

 

Using multiple voices and poetic forms, Rogoff skillfully recreates the wonder and horror of these months of siege through the eyes of both ordinary and famous Parisians. From political figures like Empress Eugénie and artists including Edgar Degas and Édouard Manet to sixteen-year-old Giuseppina Bozzacchi and other dancers in the premiere of Coppélia, the characters of Enamel Eyes bear witness to a surreal year that changed Paris and the lives of its citizens forever.