Swan Lake Premieres: Tchaikovsky's Ballet Becomes Classic
Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake premiered at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow on February 20, 1877, and was a critical and commercial failure. The conductor cut sections of the score and substituted music from other composers. The choreography was muddled. The lead ballerina was criticized as inadequate. Tchaikovsky, deeply hurt by the reception, came to believe the ballet itself was flawed. He died in 1893 without seeing the work achieve the greatness he had written into it. Two years after his death, choreographers Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov created an entirely new production for the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg that revealed what the music had always contained. Their 1895 staging, with its iconic 'Dance of the Little Swans' and the dual role of Odette-Odile, established the version performed worldwide today. Swan Lake is now the most performed ballet in the world, yet the work that defines classical dance was considered a failure during its composer's lifetime.
February 20, 1877
149 years ago
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