Le Conservatoire

A divertissement within the larger work called "The Dancing School" (Pas d'école) permitted Bournonville to display the basics of his style and raise them to the level of enduring art.

In the second act, Monsieur Dufour, an inspecteur at the Conservatoire, writes a matrimonial advertisement in the newspaper but ends up marrying his housekeeper, Mademoiselle Bonjour.

The vaudeville genre relied on a particular musical practice that made conscious use of well-known melodies that were suitable to establish period and local color and to facilitate the audience's understanding of the extensive mime.

Later in the score Paulli utilised Chopin's Grande valse brillante in E-flat major and Paisiello's aria Nel cor più non mi sento from the opera La Molinara.

In 1942, Harald Lander, the Royal Ballet director at the time, extracted "The Dancing School" (Pas d'école) from the larger work and staged it as a one-act divertissement.