The Swan Lake

The origins of Swan Lake (1876), the most popular of all ballets, date from the summer of 1871, when Tchaikovsky composed a series of enchanting miniatures for his sister’s children to dance to. Four years later he was commissioned, quite by coincidence, by the Bolshoi Theater to compose a full-length ballet based on the same story. The premiere took place on 20 February 1877, by which time a third of Tchaikovsky’s score had been jettisoned on the grounds of it being too demanding for the dancers. Contemporary ballet audiences were simply not ready for music of such all-engulfing emotional power, and remarkably it took nearly a century for Tchaikovsky’s matchless score to be performed regularly in the form he’d originally intended. The story of Swan Lake concerns Prince Siegfried, who encounters a flock of swans, one of whom transforms into a beautiful maiden, Odette. She explains she has been bewitched by an evil sorcerer, von Rothbart. At a ball the following evening, the prince is to select a bride, and upon seeing a young woman whom he believes to be Odette, makes his choice—but she turns out to be Rothbart’s scheming daughter, Odile, in disguise. Grief-stricken, Siegfried returns to the lake, where Rothbart is ultimately destroyed by the intensity of the prince’s love for Odette.