Sylvia (ballet)
The origins of the ballet Sylvia are in the Italian poet Tasso's play Aminta (1573), which provided the basic plot for the French composer Leo Delibes to set to music.
[4] Sylvia, ou la nymphe de Diane was the first ballet to be shown at the newly built Opera Garnier.
[4] Among the important versions of Sylvia, ou la nymphe de Diane that followed the original 1876 production in Paris was one presented by the Imperial Ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia on 15 December [O.S.
In 1886 the ballerina Antonietta Dell'Era, notable for creating the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker, had performed excerpts from Sylvia at the Arcadia Theatre of St. Petersburg, and in 1892, Carlotta Brianza, who created the role of Princess Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty, performed the full-length work at the Fantasia Theatre in Moscow.
[5] The cast included the great prima ballerina Olga Preobrajenska in the title role and the danseur Sergei Legat as the shepherd Aminta.
Also included among the ballet's secondary characters was a young Agrippina Vaganova as a nymph of the Goddess Diana, and Pavel Gerdt in the rôle of Orion.
[5] Another element that contributed to the ballet's failure was the fact that the direction did not allow any new décors to be created, and instead sets were utilized from works that were no longer being performed.
[8] The ballerina Anna Pavlova occasionally included many of these extracts from the 1902 production on her world tours in a revised staging by balletmaster Ivan Clustine.
[8] In attendance for one of her London appearances was a young Frederick Ashton, whose memories of Pavlova's performance would inspire him to create his own renowned version in 1952, for the ballerina Margot Fonteyn.
At the request of Helgi Tomasson, Mark Morris choreographed it based on the original 1876 production and adhered quite closely to Mérante's methodology and style.
[13] Morris's reasoning behind this is quite simple: the nature of the music is inextricably intertwined with Louis Mérante's choreography, a consequence of the circumstances of composition.
[14][15] This production of Sylvia, the Royal Ballet's third, performed November 4 to December 3, 2004, as a part of the "Ashton 100" celebration, a season dedicated to the company's founder.
The first consisted of Darcey Bussell and Jonathan Cope, the second of Zenaida Yanowsky and David Makhateli and the third of Marianela Núñez and Rupert Pennefather.
[17] Ashton's Sylvia was also re-staged by Newton for The Metropolitan Opera House, where it was performed by the American Ballet Theatre.
He was joined by Jérôme Kaplan for sets and costumes, Lisa J. Pinkham for lighting, and Wendall K. Harrington for effects achieved with projections.
The lead roles of Sylvia and the shepherd alternated between two duos: Karina Gonzalez and Connor Walsh, and Nozomi Iijima and Ian Casady.
[20] Tchaikovsky himself remarked to fellow composer Sergei Taneyev upon the ingenuity of Sylvia, calling it "... the first ballet, where the music constitutes not only the main, but the only interest.
Indeed, echoes of Wagner's influence are quite obvious in the music such as its "symphonic" nature, as described by Ivor Forbes Guest in the 1954 edition of The Ballet Annual.
Delibes was also one of the first composers to write for the alto saxophone,[23] an instrument used extensively in the heavier wind sections such as the barcarolle in Act III.
This section is, according to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "traditionally played in a halting, hesitant style that appears to have been no part of Delibes's conception."
Louis Mérante's choreography for Sylvia was praised by contemporary critics, but it did not survive the ballet's initial run at the Paris Opera.
Sir Frederick Ashton created quite contemporary choreography for his 1952 production at the Royal Opera House, while retaining a classic feel, it has been modernized.
In the 1952 choreography, Sylvia incorporated new and interesting techniques such as the blending of mime and dance and more intricate footwork, as are typical of Ashton's works.
[10][11] As writer Arnold Haskell said, "he accepts the challenge in Sylvia of coping with period music without descending to pastiche; and never once does the movement he provides strike us as modern or as 'old world'".
[10][24] It is notable that this choreography features a few difficult pas de deux, including a spectacular one in the third act, which constitutes the climax of the ballet.
