Frederic Chopin. Chopiniana (Ballet in one act). From the History of the Ballet

Chopiniana is the first of Mikhail Fokine`s masterpieces. The twenty-six-year old choreographer composed it for one of the usual charity performances, which were organized in Petersburg in their hundreds, in order to add novelty to a classical repertoire that set the teeth on edge. But if today we were to see the Chopiniana that was presented on February 10, 1907, we would not recognize it: it consisted of four little genre scenes to the music of a polonaise, nocturne, mazurka and tarantella, orchestrated by Alexander Glazunov.

In the Polonaise, Poles danced with great verve in a ballroom. In the Nocturne, Chopin himself wrestled with his nightmares and met his muse amidst the ruins of a monastery. In the Mazurka, a girl, who was being forced to marry an old man, eloped with her sweetheart. The Tarantella was danced in Italian costume against the background of Vesuvius. At Fokine`s request, Glazunov orchestrated, specially for the occasion, one more piano piece by Chopin, the 7th Waltz.

Anna Pavlova, whose exquisite appearance brought to mind the age of romantic ballet, danced in this waltz the role of the Sylphide, a sublime dream, eluding The Youth`s grasp. The choreographer-revolutionary who had spent his entire life fighting against absurdity in ballet, found in the romantic age a model of spirituality and poetry. Inspired by the images of the great romantic ballerinas of the XIX century and by Anna Pavlova`s dancing, a year later he created a new version of Chopiniana.

The première took place at the Mariinsky Theatre on March 8, 1908. In it the brilliant Polonaise served but as an overture, forming a counterpoint to the elegiac mood of the overall ballet which consisted of: the Nocturne, 11th Waltz, a Prelude, two Mazurkas, 7th Waltz and 1st Waltz, forming the coda. The work had no plot. It just conveyed the mood of reverie and light melancholy, condition, veering between dream and reality, of The Youth-poet, who had found himself in the world of the Sylphides. The choreographer found an ideal cast for the première: the main roles were danced by Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, Vaslav Nijinsky. And in 1909 they conquered Paris in this ballet during the first of Diaghilev`s Russian Seasons.