Swan Lake (1895)

[1] In the 1880s Tchaikovsky was commissioned by Ivan Vsevolozhsky, director of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres, to score what would become two of his greatest works: the operas The Enchantress (1886) and The Queen of Spades (1890).

Prior to commissioning The Sleeping Beauty, Vsevolozhsky had considered reviving one act of Swan Lake for the 1886–1887 season and had even written a letter requesting the music from Tchaikovsky's publisher Jurgenson, who recommended that the fourth scene be staged.

According to the composer/conductor Riccardo Drigo, "While (Tchaikovsky) was still alive I knew of his dissatisfaction with the instrumentation of (Swan Lake), and that he intended to take up the matter, but he never managed to do this."

The concert was given twice, on 17 and 22 February 1894, with the Swan Lake excerpt being presented in a staging by Lev Ivanov, Second Balletmaster to the Imperial Ballet.

She had made her début with the Imperial Ballet in Cinderella (choreographed by Petipa, Ivanov, and Enrico Cecchetti to the music of Baron Boris Fitinhof-Schell) in December 1893, and when she took to the stage she immediately swept all before her.

In the Grand Pas d'action of the ballet's second act she demonstrated her phenomenal technique - next to her flawless placement and perfection of port de bras she performed pique turns with quadruple and quintuple pirouettes en pointe, accented with double turns no less than four times in a row - a feat even modern-day ballerinas have difficulty achieving.

The dazzled public roared with demands for an encore, and the ballerina repeated her variation, this time performing twenty-eight fouettés en tournant.

Soon after Legnani was named Prima Ballerina Assoluta of the Imperial Ballet, and it was because of her great talent that the prospected revival of Swan Lake was planned for her benefit performance in the 1894–1895 season.

However, the death of Tsar Alexander III on 1 November 1894 and the period of official mourning which followed it brought all ballet performances and rehearsals to a close for some time, and as a result, all efforts were able to be concentrated on the pre-production of the revival of Swan Lake.

Tchaikovsky's brother Modest was called upon to make the required changes to the ballet's libretto, the most prominent being his revision of the ballet's finale: instead of the lovers simply drowning at the hand of the wicked Rothbart as in the original 1877 scenario, Odette commits suicide by drowning herself, with Prince Siegfried choosing to die as well, rather than live without her, and soon the lovers' spirits are reunited in an apotheosis.

Pierina Legnani danced Odette/Odile, with Pavel Gerdt as Prince Siegfried, Alexei Bulgakov as Von Rothbart, and Alexander Oblakov as Benno.

The first dancers to perform the pas de trois in the 1895 revival were Olga Preobrajenskaya, Georgy Kyaksht (famous for creating the role of Harlequin in Petipa's original 1900 Harlequinade), and Varvara Rykhlyakova.

The notation documents Petipa's original choreography - one of his signature lavish dances for a massive corps de ballet.

Perhaps only the Royal Ballet's 1987 revival of Swan Lake (staged by Anthony Dowell and Roland John Wiley) retains Ivanov's original scheme for the second scene, while most other productions present a version which has been handed down primarily by way of Soviet-era revisions.

These students also participate in the Waltz of the Swans, which was far more elaborate in Ivanov's original than the traditional version danced today by most companies.

The Grand Adagio of the second scene (the Pas de Deux of Odette and Prince Siegfried sometimes referred to as the Love Duet) was choreographed by Ivanov as a Pas de deux à Trois - Pierina Legnani was partnered by both Pavel Gerdt (who danced Prince Siegfried) and Alexander Oblakov (who danced Benno).

The character of Odile was not a "Black Swan" at all in either the original production of 1877 nor in the revival of 1895, and she was not performed as such for many years - she was simply Rothbart's evil daughter until sometime in the late 1930s or early 1940s.

What became known in modern times as The Black Swan Pas de Deux, which ends with glittering virtuosity from the ballerina as well as the danseur, was originally staged by Petipa as a Grand Pas de Deux à Quatre demi d'action - Prince Siegfried (Pavel Gerdt) and an additional suitor (danced by Alexander Gorsky) partnered Odile (Pierina Legnani), while Rothbart (danced by Alexei Bulgakov) did most of the acting/mime.

Today the Kirov/Mariinsky Ballet's score for Swan Lake has this variation titled with a rubric that says Variation of Chabukiani, and this same solo is used by nearly every company when they perform The Black Swan Pas de Deux, though there are often differences in the music regarding orchestration from production to production (for example, the Kirov/Mariinsky Ballet's version of this music is orchestrated for solo clarinet at the start, whereas in the west it is usually the full violin section that plays throughout).

Pierina Legnani's variation as Odile was crafted by Petipa for her virtuoso technique and is for the most part still performed as originally choreographed by him, still challenging ballerinas to the present day.

The Coda which followed Odile's variation was, as is well known, one the sensations of the 1895 premiere, with Legnani performing her famous thirty-two fouettés en tournant.

At the beginning of the fourth scene, after a brief interlude, the second of the additions to the ballet was danced - another Waltz of the Swans to Drigo's orchestration of a piece from Tchaikovsky's Op.

The premiere of the Petipa/Ivanov/Drigo was quite a success, with Legnani enchanting the audience with her versatile portrayal of the Swan Queen Odette and the evil enchantress Odile, but the 1895 version was still not the colossal triumph that has been accepted as fact in modern times.

The Tableau of Swan Lake in the second scene was planned with great talent and permeated with true poetry, gloomy and expressive.

The Adagio is the Ballerina's masterpiece, in the performance of which Miss Legnani revealed brilliant technique, lightness of movement, and plasticity of the pose.Unlike the premiere of The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake did not dominate the repertory of the Mariinsky Theatre in its first season.

Although he is rarely credited for his work, it is Riccardo Drigo's revision of Tchaikovsky's score as done for Petipa and Ivanov's 1895 revival that almost every ballet company utilizes to one degree or another when performing Swan Lake.

Below is a list of the most striking changes made by Drigo to the score of Swan Lake, many of which have remained the standard of ballet companies today.

Tableau I - A park in front of a castle Scene 1 Benno and his comrades are waiting for Prince Siegfried in order to celebrate his coming of age.

The young men are about to shoot; the Prince arrives and also takes aim, but the ruins are illuminated by a magic light and Odette appears, pleading for mercy.

Rothbart triumphantly takes Odile, his daughter's hand and gives it to the young man, who vows his eternal love.