Swan Lake

The early history of Swan Lake is as steeped in myth as the story itself.

The first ever performance was in Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre on 20 February 1877, and popular legend says that it was a disaster. The choreographer Julius Reisinger apparently had no sympathy for the music, butchered the score and invited dancers to add their own routines, to tunes of their choice. The press reviews from the time said that the music was baffling, the story confused and the lead dancer, Pelagia Karpakova, was hopeless.

But even then Swan Lake must have worked its magic on the general audience…

The Petipa/Ivanov version of Swan Lake that we consider the “standard” today was created after Tchaikovsky’s death and was greatly altered from the original concept.

There is surprisingly little that was written down during the creation of the music or choreography. All we have to go on are personal recollections and memoirs that were written a long time after the event and thus subject to some scepticism and much debate among scholars.

It is known that Tchaikovsky was commissioned by Vladimir Petrovich Begichev, the intendant of the Russian Imperial Theatres in Moscow and a friend of Tchaikovsky, to write a score for Swan Lake in May 1875 for the sum of 800 roubles.

The first published libretto of Swan Lake did not correspond exactly to the musical lay out and was probably produced by a staff writer who based it on observations of rehearsals in progress.

It is highly likely that Tchaikovsky had a good deal of influence over the story’s development. Legends of swans were presumably familiar to Tchaikovsky and his artistic friends, who no doubt discussed the idea of the swan as a symbol of womanhood at its purest.

The legend of the Swan-Maiden goes back for centuries, appearing in differing forms in both eastern and western literature. Women who turn into birds and vice versa were popular themes, and the swan was particularly favoured due to its grace when swimming in the water.

The ancient Greeks considered the swan to the bird closest to the Muses. When Apollo was born at Delos, the event was celebrated by flights of circling swans.

The Tales of the Thousand and One Nights tells the story of Hassan of Bassorah, who visits a place inhabited by bird-maidens. When they take off their feather garments, the bird-maidens are transformed into beautiful women. Hassan captures the clothes of one of the maidens in order to keep her in human form as his wife. She is able to regain her feathers and flies away from him. Hassan sets out on a quest to regain his wife and after many adventures succeeds in finding her.

Sweet Mikhail Ivanovich the Rover is a Slav tale that begins with Mikhail the Rover who is about to shoot a swan that warns him “Shoot not, else ill-fortune will doom thee for evermore!” On landing the swan turns into a beautiful maiden.

In a similar South German legend a swan speaks to a forester who is about to kill her. The beautiful maiden in this case says that she would be his if he could keep her existence a secret for one year. He fails and thus looses her.

Celtic folk-lore brings us The Legend of the Children of Lir. When King Lir’s first wife dies, he marries a wicked woman Arife. Jealous of Lir’s children from his first wife, Arife turns them all into swans.

The complete scenario of Swan Lake is not to be found in any of these legends, but many parallels do exist. Other possible sources of inspiration could have been Johann Karl August Musäus’ Der geraubte Schleier, Hans Christian Andersen’s The Wild Swans and Alexandre Pushkin’s Tzar Saltan, the story of a prince who saves the life of a wounded swan who later reappears as a woman to marry him.

Rehearsals for the first performance in Moscow began in March 1876, before Tchaikovsky had finished the score, and went on for an incredible 11 months. Tchaikovsky wrote to his brother Modeste, “If you could have seen how comical the ballet master looked, composing the dances in a most serious and concentrated manner, to the accompaniment of a little fiddle. At the same time it was a pleasure to watch the male and female dancers smiling at the future audience and looking forward to the possibility of jumping, pirouetting and turning about in the execution of their holy duty. Everybody in the theatre is delighted with my music!”

This delight in Tchaikovsky’s music was not long lived. The structure and emotional content was so in advance of what they were used to at the time that his music was soon labelled as ‘undanceable’.

Even the conductor deemed it altogether too complex and difficult.

Little is written of the choreographer Reisinger today except for the failure of his Swan Lake. A critic of the day wrote “Mr. Reisinger’s dances are weak in the extreme…. Incoherent waving of the legs that continued through the course of four hours – is this not torture? The corps de ballet stamp up and down in the same place, waving their arms like a windmill’s vanes – and the soloists jump about the stage in gymnastic steps.”

Today Swan Lake is known for its demanding technical skills all because of one extremely gifted ballerina, Pierina Legnani. She performed with such grace and discipline, the audience and everyone else who saw her claimed she set the bar.

The prestige that comes with performing Swan Lake flawlessly is invaluable. (Wikipedia, Royal Opera House London)