Le Poisson doré

Chief ballet-master of the St. Petersburg Imperial troupe Arthur Saint-Léon created in 1864 ballet The Little Humpbacked Horse, which was a huge success.

The ballet was first presented (only Act I) by the Hermitage Theatre in Saint Petersburg on November 20/December 2 (Julian/Gregorian calendar dates), 1866.

In other roles: Clavdya Kantzyreva as the Golden Fish, Lev Ivanov as Petro, Nikolay Troitskiy as Jester, Pavel Gerdt as Fisherman.

Representatives of the aristocracy occupied all the main important posts, but already a new class of Raznochintsy had arisen and were clamoring for the arts.

New governments are created; new people appear in the picture; new facts are being born; the whole structure of life is changing; science and arts are watching these events with anxious attention, as they supplement and sometimes alter their very content - only ballet hears nothing and knows nothing <...> But never before was the one-dimensional thinking of ballet and its conservative beginnings so brightly expressed, as in the ballet "Le Poisson Doré", staged last year at the Bolshoi theater of St Petersburg".

[5] After Guglielmina Salvioni the Russian dancers played the role of Galia: Alexandra Kemmerer, Ekaterina Vazem, Vera Liadova (the first wife of Lev Ivanov), but success with the audience not used them and ballet Le Poisson doré was dropped from the repertoire several months later.

Performers: Nikolay Domashov as Old Man, Sofia Fedorova as Old Woman, Enrichetta Grimaldi as the Golden Fish.