The plot is broadly based on Lecocq's 1872 opéra bouffe, La fille de Madame Angot.
Massine had previously created ballets to scores specially arranged from works by Scarlatti (The Good-Humoured Ladies, 1917), Rossini (La boutique fantasque, 1919), Johann Strauss (Le beau Danube, 1933) and Offenbach (Gaîté Parisienne, 1938).
[1] Massine's innovation of creating ballets to scores arranged from the music of a single composer was followed by other choreographers including George Balanchine, Frederick Ashton and John Cranko.
[3] Massine's first version of the ballet was produced by Ballet Theatre under the title Mademoiselle Angot, at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, with Nora Kaye in the title role, Massine as the barber, Rosella Hightower as the aristocrat and André Eglevsky as the caricaturist.
[4] Massine revived the work for Sadler's Wells Ballet during a visit to London in 1947 (when he also staged and danced in Le Tricorne and La Boutique Fantasque),[5] with the title Mam'zelle Angot and a new score, taken mainly from La fille de Madame Angot,[n 2] arranged by Gordon Jacob, designs by André Derain, and a cast that included Margot Fonteyn as Mam'zelle Angot, Alexander Grant as the barber, Moira Shearer as the aristocrat, and Michael Somes as the caricaturist.
[8] Other dancers to have appeared with both companies included Angot Julia Farron, Avril Navarre, Nadia Nerina, and Merle Park; Brian Shaw and Ronald Emblen as the barber; John Field, David Blair, Paul Clarke and Christopher Gable as the caricaturist; and Gerd Larsen, Julia Farron, Rosemary Lindsay and Georgia Parkinson as the aristocrat.
Vivacious Mam'zelle Angot, reluctantly engaged to be married to a barber, falls in love with a young caricaturist who introduces himself with a solo in a mazurka rhythm, and at first returns her affections.
Mam'zelle Angot, jealous, slanders the aristocrat in public realising that her action will cause her arrest, and help her avoid her obligation to marry the barber.
The scene is witnessed by the lovelorn Mam'zelle Angot; she has been sent for by the aristocrat to explain her behaviour, and the meeting reveals that they are old school friends.
The government official orders the arrest of the caricaturist, who having spent the ball hidden behind a pillar, chooses this moment to declare his love for the aristocrat.