Leda, the Swiss Milkmaid
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Leda, the Swiss Milkmaid is a Demi-Caractère ballet in 2 Acts-2 Scenes, with choreography by Marius Petipa, and music by Adalbert Gyrowetz.
First presented by the Imperial Ballet on December 4/16 (Julian/Gregorian calendar dates), 1849 at the Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia. Principal Dancers - Fanny Elssler
[edit] NOTE
- It is not known for certain if this ballet was completely Petipa's own original work. The Balletmaster Antoine Titus created a ballet with the same title for the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin, in Paris in 1823. Philippe Taglioni utilized the libretto from Titus' work for his own production titled Nathalie, la Laitière Suisse for the Ballet of the Académie Royale de Musique (today the Paris Opera Ballet) in 1832. That same year Titus restaged his 1823 production of The Swiss Milkmaid for the Court Opera Ballet in Berlin with Fanny Elssler in the lead role, and in 1833 staged the work for the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg where it was not well-received. Petipa's claim to the sole authorship of the work was disputed throughout the 19th century. A published review by A. Wolf of the Imperial Ballet's 1849-1850 season credits the work as "Jules Perrot's new production", while in the ballet historian Alexander Pleshcheyev's study of the ballet of Tsarist St. Petersburg, titledOur Ballet, the work is attributed to Petipa's father Jean Petipa, with Perrot having contributed one of the ballet's dances. In the biography Jules Perrot: Master of the Romantic Ballet by the ballet historian Ivor Guest, the ballet's choreography is credited to Jean Petipa, except for the Scène Dansante and a Pas de Trois which are credited to Perrot. In his memoirs, Petipa refers to the work as "a new ballet of my own."
