The actor Jean-Paul Belmondo and the ballerina Fanny Cerrito: are they related?
With thanks to Peter Calambre
Are they related? If so, how? Various obituaries and posts about the nouvelle vague French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo (1933-2021), who died yesterday, mention that he was a descendant of the Romantic ballerina Fanny Cerrito (1817-1909). (See the French Wikipedia entry https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Cerrito ; see the Belmondo story at https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.journaldesfemmes.fr/people/magazine/2502628-jean-paul-belmondo-a-87-ans-ses-secrets-ses-blessures-sa-famille-photos-1586529813.amphtml/%3foutput=amp ; see the genealogical sites https://gw.geneanet.org/wikifrat?lang=en&n=cerrito&oc=0&p=fanny ; and others.) It may be worth a little investigation.
Jean-Paul Belmondo was the son of the Pied-Noir sculptor Paul Belmondo (1898-1982), who was born in poverty in Algeria. Paul Belmondo’s mother was a Cerrito: her first name is variously given as Rose, Rosine, or Anne (Anne Rose). She has been identified as a Rose Cerrito, born in 1874 in my favourite place on earth, Cefalù, on the north coast of Sicily. But was she a descendant of the illustrious ballerina Fanny Cerrito? Some Belmondo posts have claimed that the sculptor Paul Belmondo was the grandson of Fanny Cerrito, but this seems impossible. Another makes the more possible assertion that Rose Cerrito was the child of Antoine Cerrito, who was supposedly born in 1840; but that same genealogical website also claims that Antoine was Fanny Cerrito’s son by her later husband Arthur Saint-Léon - which is implausible in the extreme, since Fanny Cerrito and Arthur Saint-Léon had not met or danced together in 1840. A connected website claims that Arthur Cerrito was Fanny Cerrito’s brother, which is possible - Fanny Cerrito’s family came from Naples, which had been part of the same Kingdom of the Two Sicilian as Cefalù - but has no substantiation.
It’s very possible that all these claims are unfounded conjecture. There have been many Cerritos in Cefalù: isn’t it possible that the Belmondo family, on achieving some eminence and remembering that Paul’s mother was a Cerrito, began to invent a direct lineage from the ballerina Fanny?
Fanny Cerrito had little to do with the Mediterranean once she achieved fame. From the San Carlo Theatre in Naples, she moved to Milan, to London, to Paris, and to St Petersburg. Since she was a choreographer as well as dancer, she’s a figure of whom I wish we knew more. The ballet master Jules Perrot (1810-1892) worked with her on some of his most prestigious productions, notably Alma, ou la fille du feu (London, 1842), Ondine, ou la Naïade (London, 1843), the legendary Pas de Quatre (London, 1845), Lalla Rookh (London 1846), Le Jugement de Pâris (London, 1846), Les Éléments (London, 1847), Les Quatre Saisons (London, 1848), and Armida (St Petersburg, 1855): she contributed dances to Alma. She began to present ballets of her own composition from 1845 onward, starting with Rosida. Arthur Saint-Léon became her partner in 1843; they married in 1845. In 1847, he created La Fille de marbre for her debut at the Paris Opéra. They separated for various reasons; she had a daughter, Mathilde, by a Spanish marquis. When Cerrito retired from the stage, she chose to live with Mathilde, who lived as Mathilde Acuña until she became the happy wife of the nobleman Manuel Le Motheux-Bourbaki. As Cerrito grew old and blind in Paris, she was forgotten by the ballet world and by the cult of celebrity, but she delighted in Mathilde’s children and grandchildren. They in turn had descendants, though it is unclear whether Fanny lived to see any of her five great-grandchildren. At no point does any other Cerrito or any Belmondo enter her biographies. Can anyone rectify this with confidence?
Tuesday 7 September
1: Fanny Cerrito in the renowned pas de l’ombre (Shadow Dance) in Jules Perrot’s Ondine (1843)
2: Jean-Paul Belmondo (1933-2021). Was he descended from Fanny Cerrito?
