A public square in a small town on the borders of Galicia. Among the houses painted bright colors, one house - with bars on the windows and a tightly locked door. This is Coppelius's home.
Swanilda approaches Coppelius's house and looks at the windows, behind which a girl sitting motionless is visible; she is holding a book in her hand and appears to be deep in reading. This is Coppelia, daughter of old Coppelius. Every morning you can see her in the same place - then she disappears. She never left the mysterious dwelling. She is very beautiful, and many young people in the city spent long hours under her window, begging her for one look.
Swanilda suspects that her fiancé Franz is also partial to Coppelia's beauty. She tries to attract her attention, but nothing helps: Coppelia does not take her eyes off the book, in which she does not even turn the pages.
Swanilda begins to get angry. She is about to decide to knock on the door when Franz suddenly appears, and Swanilda remains hidden to watch what happens.
Franz heads towards Swanilda's house, but stops indecisively. Coppelia sits by the window. He bows to her. At that moment she turns her head, stands up and returns Franz’s bow. Franz barely had time to send a kiss to Coppelia when old Coppelius opened the window and mockingly watched him.
Swanilda burns with anger against both Coppelius and Franz, but pretends that she did not notice anything. She runs after a butterfly. Franz runs with her. He catches the insect and solemnly pins it to the collar of his dress. Swanilda reproaches him: “What has this poor butterfly done to you?” From reproach to reproach, the girl tells him that she knows everything. He deceives her; he loves Coppelia. Franz tries in vain to justify himself.
The burgomaster announces that a big holiday is planned for tomorrow: the ruler presented the city with a bell. Everyone crowds around the burgomaster. A noise is heard in Coppelius's house. Reddish light shines through the glass. Several girls move away from this damned house with fear. But this is nothing: the noise comes from the blows of the hammer, the light is the reflection of the fire burning in the forge. Coppelius is an old madman who is constantly working. For what? No one knows; and who cares? Let him work if he likes it!..
The Burgomaster approaches Swanilda. He tells her that tomorrow their owner must award a dowry and unite several couples in marriage. She is Franz's fiancée, doesn't she want her wedding to take place tomorrow? “Oh, it’s not decided yet!” - and the young girl, looking slyly at Franz, tells the burgomaster that she will tell him a story. This is a story about a straw that gives away all the secrets.
Ballad of the Ear
Swanilda takes an ear from the sheaf, puts it to her ear and pretends to listen. Then he hands it to Franz - isn’t the spikelet telling him that he no longer loves Swanilda, but has fallen in love with another? Franz replies that he doesn't hear anything. Swanilda then resumes her tests with one of Franz’s friends; he, smiling, says that he clearly hears the words of the ear of corn. Franz wants to object, but Swanilda, breaking the straw before his eyes, says that everything is over between them. Franz leaves in annoyance, Swanilda dances among her friends. The tables have already been prepared, and everyone drinks to the health of the ruler and burgomaster.
Czardas
Coppelius leaves his house and locks the door with a double turn of the key. He is surrounded by young people: some want to take him with them, others force him to dance. The angry old man finally breaks away from them and leaves with curses. Swanilda says goodbye to her friends; one of them notices the key on the ground that Coppelius dropped. The girls invite Swanilda to visit his mysterious house. Swanilda hesitates, but meanwhile she would like to see her rival. "Well then? Let's go in!" - she says. The girls enter Coppelius's house.
Franz appears, carrying a ladder. Rejected by Swanilda, he wants to try his luck with Coppelia. The opportunity is favorable... Coppelius is far away...
But no, because at that moment when Franz leans the ladder against the balcony, Coppelius appears. He noticed the key was missing and immediately returned to find it. He notices Franz, who has already climbed the first steps, and he runs away.
Act II
A vast room filled with all kinds of tools. Many machines are placed on stands - an old man in a Persian costume, a black man in a threatening pose, a small Moor playing a cymbal, a Chinese man holding a harp in front of him.
The girls emerge from the depths with caution. Who are these motionless figures sitting in the shadows?.. They look at the strange figures that first frightened them so much. Swanilda lifts the curtains by the window and notices Coppelia sitting with a book in her hands. She bows to the stranger, who remains motionless. She talks to her - she does not answer. She takes her hand and steps back in fear. Is this really a living creature? She puts her hand on her heart - it doesn't beat. This girl is nothing more than an automaton. This is the work of Coppelius! “Ah, Franz!” Swanilda laughs, “This is the beauty to whom he sends kisses!” She has been avenged in abundance!.. The girls run carefree around the workshop.
One of them, passing near the player on the harp, accidentally touches the spring - the machine plays a bizarre melody. The girls, embarrassed at first, calm down and begin to dance. They find the spring that moves the little Moor; he plays the cymbals.
Suddenly an enraged Coppelius appears. He lowers the curtains hiding Coppelia and rushes to pursue the girls. They slip between his hands and disappear down the stairs. Swanilda hid behind the curtains. That's how I got it! But no, when Coppelius raises the curtain, he only considers Coppelia - everything is fine. He sighs with relief.
Meanwhile, some noise can still be heard... A ladder can be seen in the window, and Franz appears on it. Coppelius does not show himself to him. Franz heads towards where Coppelia is sitting when suddenly two strong hands grab him. Frightened Franz asks Coppelius to apologize and wants to run away, but the old man blocks his way.
"Why did you sneak in to me?" - Franz admits that he is in love - “I’m not as angry as they say about me. Sit down, let’s have a drink and talk!” Coppelius brings an old bottle and two goblets. He clinks glasses with Franz, then stealthily pours out his wine. Franz finds the wine to have a strange taste, but continues to drink, while Coppelius talks to him with feigned good nature.
Franz wants to go to the window where he saw Coppelia. But his legs give way, he falls into a chair and falls asleep.
Coppelius takes the magic book and studies the spells. Then the pedestal with Coppelia rolls up to the sleeping Franz, puts his hands to the young man’s forehead and chest and, it seems, wants to steal his soul in order to revive the girl. Coppelia rises, makes the same movements, then steps off the first step of the pedestal, then from the second. She walks, she lives!.. Coppelius went mad with happiness. His creation surpasses anything ever created human hand! So she begins to dance, first slowly, then so quickly that Coppelius can barely follow her. She smiles at life, she blossoms...
Waltz of the machine gun
She notices the goblet and brings it to her lips. Coppelius barely manages to snatch it from her hands. She notices a magic book and asks what it says. “It’s an impenetrable mystery,” he replies and slams the book shut. She looks at the machines. “I made them,” says Coppelius. She stops in front of Franz. "And this one?" - “This is also an automatic machine.” She sees the sword and tries the tip at the end of her finger, then amuses herself by piercing the little Moor. Coppelius laughs loudly... but she approaches Franz and wants to pierce him. The old man stops her. Then she turns on him and starts stalking him. Finally, he disarms her. He wants to arouse her coquetry and puts a mantilla on her. This seemed to awaken a whole new world of thoughts in the young girl. She is dancing spanish dance.
Magnola
Then she finds a Scottish scarf, grabs it and dances a jig.
Jig
She jumps, runs anywhere, throws to the ground and breaks everything that comes to her hand. Decidedly, she is too animated! What to do?..
Franz woke up amid all this noise and tries to collect his thoughts. Coppelius finally grabs the girl and hides her behind the curtains. Then he goes to Franz and drives him: “Go, go,” he tells him, “You are no longer fit for anything!”
Suddenly he hears a melody that usually accompanies the movement of his machine gun. He looks at Coppelia, repeating her sharp movements, and Swanilda disappears behind the curtain. It drives two other machines. “How?” thinks Coppelius, “Did they also come to life on their own?” At that same moment he notices Swanilda in the depths, who runs away with Franz. He realizes that he has become the victim of a joke, and falls exhausted in the midst of his automata, which continue their movements, as if to laugh at the misfortune of their master.
Act III
Meadow in front of the ruler's castle. In the depths hangs a bell, a gift from the owner. An allegorical chariot stops in front of the bell, on which stands a group of people participating in the festival.
The priests blessed the bell. The first couples to be endowed with a dowry and united on this festive day come to greet the ruler.
Franz and Swanilda complete their reconciliation. Franz, having come to his senses, no longer thinks about Coppelia; he knows what kind of deception he was a victim of. Swanilda forgives him and, offering her hand, approaches the ruler with him.
There is a movement in the crowd: old Coppelius has come to complain and asks for justice. They laughed at him: they smashed everything in his home; works of art created with such difficulty are destroyed... Who will cover the loss? Swanilda, who has just received her dowry, voluntarily offers it to Coppelius. But the ruler stops Swanilda: let her keep her dowry. He throws Coppelius a wallet, and while he leaves with his money, he gives a sign for the beginning of the holiday.
Bell Festival
The bell ringer is the first to get off the chariot. He calls for the hours of the morning.
Waltz of the Hours
Morning hours are; Aurora appears after them.
A bell rings. This is the hour of prayer. Aurora disappears, driven away by the hours of the day. These are the hours of work: the spinners and reapers begin their work. The bell rings again. He announces the wedding.
Final divertissement
"Coppelia", full title "Coppelia, or the Beauty with Blue Eyes" - comic ballet French composer Leo Delibes. The libretto was written based on E. Hoffmann’s short story “The Sandman” by S. Nuiter and the choreographer of the performance A. Saint-Leon. The ballet premiered at the Paris Opera (Grand Opera) on May 25, 1870, in the presence of Napoleon III and his wife, Empress Eugenie. The ballet is very popular and is constantly staged by many theaters around the world.
Contents of the ballet.
Main story line ballet provides sufficient scope for creating alternative scenarios, which is what most directors have used. Here is brief retelling script based on the version staged by Petipa and Cecchetti and restored by Sergei Vikharev in Novosibirsk and the Bolshoi Theater.
First act.
The action of Hoffmann's German fairy tale is transferred to Galicia, which makes it possible to include Hungarian and Polish dances in the ballet. The scene depicts the square of a small town. In the window of one of the houses owned by Professor Coppelius, you can see his daughter Coppelia, beautiful and mysterious simply because she is never on the street and does not communicate with anyone in the city. Some youths in the city tried to make signs to her, but she did not respond to them. Appears on stage main character ballet, local girl Swanilda, who is engaged to Franz, but suspects that her fiancé, like many young people in the town, is not indifferent to Coppelia.
After some time, Franz appears on the square, at first he goes to Swanilda’s house, but then, thinking that they cannot see him, he bows to Coppelia, who returns his bow. Coppelius and Swanilda are watching this from their window from their hiding place. She runs out and chases the butterfly. Franz catches a butterfly and pins it to his hat. Swanilda is outraged by his cruelty and breaks up with him.
A crowd of people and the burgomaster appear in the square. He announces an upcoming celebration to celebrate the receipt of a new bell. He asks Swanilda if he shouldn’t arrange a wedding with Franz at the same time. By dancing with a straw, she shows that everything is over between her and Franz.
At night the town square is empty. Coppelius leaves the house to a nearby tavern. A crowd of young people surrounds him, inviting him to join them. He breaks free and leaves, but in the process loses the key to the house. A crowd of girls finds the key. They persuade Swanilda to enter Coppelius's house.
Franz appears, not knowing that the girls are in the house, he sets up a ladder and tries to climb through the window. At this time, Coppelius returns and sees Franz trying to get into the house.
Second act.
The action of the second act takes place in Coppelius's night workshop, full of books, tools, and automata dolls. The girls looking around the workshop notice Coppelia and realize that it is a doll. The girls, having played out, press the springs, and the dolls begin to move. Swanilda changes into Coppelia's dress. Coppelius appears and drives the girls away. He examines the doll, which appears to be intact. At this time, Franz climbs in through the window. He heads towards Coppelia, but is grabbed by an old man. Franz tells him of his love for Coppelia. Then Coppelius has an idea to revive the doll. He drugs Franz with wine and sleeping pills.
With the help of magic he wants to convey vitality Franz. It seems that this is successful - the doll gradually comes to life, dances a Spanish dance and a jig. She moves faster and faster, begins to drop her tools, and wants to pierce Franz with her sword. With great difficulty, Coppelius sat the doll in place. The old man wants to rest. Franz wakes up and leaves the house with Swanilda, who has appeared from behind the curtain. Coppelius understands that he was deceived and the role of the doll was played by Swanilda.
Third act.
City celebration of the consecration of the bell. Franz and Swanilda made peace. Coppelius appears and demands compensation for the destruction caused in the workshop. Swanilda wanted to give him her dowry, but the burgomaster gives him the money. The holiday begins with allegorical dances
We present to your attention the libretto of the ballet "Coppelia". Ballet "Coppelia" in three acts. Composer L. Delibes. Libretto by C. Newterra, A. Saint-Leon based on the fairy tale by E. Hoffmann. Staged by A. Saint-Leon.
Characters: Coppelius. Coppelia. Swanilda. Franz. Burgomaster. Swanilda's friends. Girls and boys, townspeople.
Square small town in Galicia. In one of the houses located in the depths of the square, a dormer window opens. It shows the head of a young girl. Looking around, she leaves the house and carefully heads towards the dwelling of old Coppelius. The girl looks at the large window, behind which a motionless figure is visible with a book in her hands. This is probably the daughter of Coppelius. Every morning you can see her in the same place, then she disappears. The mysterious girl never appears on the street, no one has heard her voice. However, her beauty attracts many young men, and they often spend time under her window. Some even tried to break into the house, but the doors were tightly locked.
Swanilda (that’s the name of the girl who approached Coppelius’s house) suspects that her fiance Franz is not indifferent to the mysterious Coppelia. Maybe he even loves her? Swanilda looks at her rival with annoyance and pain, but the girl outside the window does not pay attention to her.
Franz enters the square. He first approaches Swanilda's house, then stops indecisively and, apparently changing his mind, goes to Coppelius's house. Swanilda, hiding, watches him. Franz bows to the girl in the window, she returns the bow. But just when Franz is ready to blow a kiss to the girl, Coppelius opens the window, watching what is happening on the street.
Trying to overcome her excitement, Swanilda carefreely jumps out of her ambush and runs after a flying butterfly. Seeing his bride, Franz joins her. Having caught the butterfly, he attaches it with a pin to the lapel of his jacket.
Swanilda is outraged by Franz's cruelty. She says she doesn't love him anymore. Franz tries in vain to justify himself, but Swanilda does not want to listen to him.
Soon a crowd of young girls and boys appears on the square. The burgomaster announces that tomorrow is a big holiday - the consecration of the bell. Everyone crowds around the Burgomaster. He approaches Swanilda and reminds her of her wedding to Franz. Doesn't she want the wedding to take place tomorrow? The young girl looks slyly at her groom and tells the Burgomaster that she will now tell a story about a straw that reveals people’s secrets. Swanilda takes an ear from the sheaf and breaks it as a sign that everything is over between them. Franz leaves the holiday in disappointment.
The night is coming. The square is emptying. Silence. Coppelius comes out of his house. He locks the door and heads to a nearby tavern to drink a glass of good wine. A gang of young people surrounds him and asks him to go with them. The old man breaks free and leaves, cursing everything in the world. Swanilda says goodbye to her friends.
One of the girls notices something shiny on the ground. It turns out that this is the key. Coppelius must have lost it. The girls decide to break into the old man's mysterious house.
They persuade Swanilda to go with them. Swanilda hesitates, but curiosity and jealousy force her to agree. And now the key is in the lock, the door is open. There is no one on the square. The lonely figure of Franz appears. Rejected by Swanilda, he wants to try his luck with Coppelia. Maybe she’s waiting for him, maybe she’ll agree to run away from the old man who guards her so vigilantly? At the moment when Franz places his ladder on the balcony, Coppelius returns. Having discovered that he had lost the key, he decided to return home. What is this? Is someone breaking into his house? Franz manages to quickly escape.
Night. Coppelius's workshop. Mysterious light. There are many machine guns around: an old man with a long gray beard, a black man, a little Moor, a Chinese. Books, tools, weapons are everywhere. Swanilda and her friends carefully walk around the room. They lift the thick curtains and notice Coppelia sitting in the same place with a book in her hand. The girls bow to the stranger, who remains motionless and mute. Has she fallen asleep? But her eyes are open. Swanilda carefully takes Coppelia's hand and steps back - she touched the doll. The girls laugh loudly. So that's who Franz sent kisses to!
The naughty girls feel free, they have nothing to fear. They press the springs and the Coppelius automata begin to operate.
Swanilda has a plan to change into the doll's dress and hides behind the curtain.
Coppelius enters. Having expelled the uninvited guests, he goes to Coppelia and anxiously examines the doll. Luckily, she is safe! The old man sighs with relief. The noise is heard again. Another uninvited guest appears in the depths of the window. This is Franz, who nevertheless decided to enter Coppelius’s home. Franz heads to where Coppelia is sitting. Two tenacious hands grab him. Franz wants to run away, but Coppelius does not let him go. Franz confesses to the old man that he wanted to see the girl he is in love with. At these words, Coppelius changes his anger to mercy and invites Franz to drink with him. Franz tastes the wine and notices that it has a strange taste. Coppelius, meanwhile, hardly drinks. Franz wants to see Coppelia, but his legs give way, he falls and falls asleep.
Coppelius triumphs: he can finally fulfill what he planned. He opens a magic book and begins to look for cabalistic spells. Then the pedestal on which Coppelia sits rolls up closer to the sleeping Franz. Coppelius wants to transfer the strength and life of Franz to the doll, which he created at the cost of so much effort, experience and sleepless nights. Coppelia gets up and walks. One step, then another. She walks down the steps of the pedestal. Coppelius is beside himself with delight.
Finally, his creation will surpass everything that man can create. While he is completely absorbed in his joy, Coppelia gradually comes to life. Stealthily, she even makes a threatening gesture to him, then returns to her previous position. Her eyes turn to Coppelius. Yes! She looks at him. Coppelius wants to steal another spark of life from Franz to give to Coppelia.
The doll's gait is now much lighter and more lively than before. She begins to dance, first slowly, then so quickly that Coppelius can barely keep up with her. She even wants to drink wine from the Franz Cup.
Noticing a book thrown on the floor, she asks Coppelius about its contents. Stopping in front of the sleeping Franz, she examines him and, grabbing a sword, wants to pierce Franz. Coppelius does not know how to calm the unruly Coppelia. He puts a Spanish lace mantilla on her, and Coppelia dances a Spanish dance. Wearing a Scottish scarf, she dances a jig. Coppelius wants to grab the doll, but it deftly eludes him, jumping and throwing everything that comes to hand onto the floor. Finally, Coppelius manages to stop and seat the doll in its original place.
The old man is tired and wants to rest. He wakes up Franz and tries to send him away as quickly as possible. Franz wakes up, not quite understanding what happened to him. Swanilda comes out from behind the curtain, and they, as if by agreement, hastily run down the stairs.
Coppelius runs behind the curtain. The poor old man begins to realize that he has become the victim of a cruel joke. His doll is undressed and lying on the floor. So that's who Coppelia was! He falls, sobbing, among his automata, which move and seem to laugh at the grief of their owner.
Holiday. There is fun everywhere. Franz and Swanilda made peace. Franz no longer thinks about the mysterious girl he saw in Coppelius's window.
There is a movement in the crowd: old Coppelius heads to the square, despite the fact that they do not want to let him into the celebration. He came to seek justice - his home was destroyed, his machine guns were broken. Who will cover the losses? Swanilda, who has just received her dowry, offers it to Coppelius. But the Burgomaster rejects Swanilda's proposal. He himself will cover the expenses of old Coppelius. The burgomaster throws Coppelius a wallet with money and gives a sign for the beginning of the holiday.
The bell ringer announces the onset of morning. Aurora emerges, surrounded by wildflowers. The bell rings again. This is the hour of prayer. Aurora disappears. It is replaced by the hours of the day. The spinners and reapers begin their work. The bell rings again: wedding. Hymen appears, accompanied by little Cupid.
Dark, ominous sounds are heard. This is war. The weapon is raised, the flames of the fire illuminate the darkened sky. Finally everything calms down. The bell that just called to arms sounds joyfully in honor of peace. Peace is restored, and along with the hours of morning, afternoon, evening and night, people start dancing and playing.
Final divertissement.
"Coppelia" is one of the few ballets remaining from Western European choreography XIX century. More than a hundred years separate its premiere from today.
On May 25, 1870, the posters of the Grand Paris Opera announced that the pantomime ballet “Coppelia or the Beauty with Blue Eyes” in two acts and three scenes would be shown on its stage. The then fashionable choreographer Arthur Saint-Leon was the author of the performance's libretto. The musical score for the ballet was created by composer Leo Delibes.
These two names marked two opposing trends in the history of musical theater in France. The activities of Saint-Leon are associated with the decline of the former meaningfulness of choreographic culture. Delibes' work brought innovative trends to ballet music.
The rise of bourgeoisism during the Second Empire left its mark on artistic life Paris. Frankly entertaining, spectacular performances of light genres came into fashion. The names of father and daughter Taglioni, Jules Perrault, and Fani Elsler still lived in the memory of the older generation of Parisians. In previous decades, they were the creators and performers of such masterpieces of romantic ballet as La Sylphide, Giselle, and Esmeralda. Romantic era raised ballet to a rank equal to other arts, proved that dance is capable of revealing such areas of a person’s mental life that are beyond the reach of any other type of theater. The art of Saint-Leon was born from the ruins of the romantic style. Often he took what his great predecessors found, striving for the greatest effect, varied it in his own way, composed brilliant dance compositions, complicating, modifying them dance technique. Saint-Leon masterfully mastered the traditional forms of the classics and masterfully applied them in practice. Grinding, honing shapes and language classical dance, choreographer prepared ballet theater to his magnificent rise late XIX century associated with Russian choreography, with the birth of such performances as “Swan Lake”, “The Nutcracker”, “Sleeping Beauty” by P. Tchaikovsky. Their authors - composer P. Tchaikovsky, choreographers L. Ivanov and M. Petipa brought new content to the ballet and used and developed much of what Saint-Leon found in the field expressive means academic ballet.
Coppelia was Saint-Leon's last performance. He staged it in the year of his death, arriving in Paris after ten years of work in Russia (1859-1869).
The libretto of "Coppelia" is based on Hoffmann's short story "The Sandman". It also uses plot motifs from this writer’s story “Automata”. However, the authors of “Coppelia” took from the German romantic only the external outline of events and individual situations. They composed a scenario that was completely opposite to literary aesthetics German romanticism and lyrical-romantic ballet, which is close to her. Hoffmann wrote a science fiction novel about people whose identities are stolen. Its main character was a young man who met a mysterious doll maker. The scriptwriters of "Coppelia" created a household lyrical comedy, in the center of which is the image of a real, mischievous girl who wants to teach her unfaithful lover a lesson.
The story of a young man who fell in love with the ideal he created was a traditional plot of lyrical-romantic ballets. The story of how live girl replaces the unreal and makes the groom believe in the truth of living human feelings, which is fundamentally the opposite of lyrical romanticism. But he was also known to the ballet theater earlier from Jules Perrot’s play “The Artist’s Dream”. The authors of "Coppelia" mixed the plot of "An Artist's Dream" with the "puppet" motifs of Hoffmann's stories and composed a clear, joyful performance.
The puppet master Coppelius, for example, in the first version of the ballet libretto recalled his literary prototype only in the scene where he drugs Franz with a mysterious potion to breathe his soul into the doll Coppelia, and in the notes of the tragic collapse of his illusions, when the old man finds out that Swanilda was playing a joke on him. Over time, this too disappeared from the libretto of Coppélia. New stage versions of Coppelia began to be created soon after its birth. For my long stage life she was getting closer and closer to the lyrical genre domestic comedy.
Probably, on different stages of the world, the emphasis within the script was so often rearranged, new editions of the stage action of “Coppelia” were created because Saint-Leon’s choreography itself was not sufficiently integral.
Today, the original choreography of the ballet is almost forgotten, but the ballet continues to live, acquiring new colors, new interpretations. The reason for this is the wonderful music of Leo Delibes.
Having composed the score of “Coppelia” according to the plan given to him by the choreographer, Delibes announced a new quality of ballet music, acting as a continuator of the reform begun by his senior colleague and teacher, the author of “Giselle” A. Adam. “He can be proud of the fact that he was the first to develop a dramatic principle in dance and at the same time surpassed all his rivals,” contemporaries wrote about Delibes. “Three or four composers of France of the last century combined with a particularly poetic feeling and exquisite skill in their leisure time devoted to ballet musical theater... a keen understanding of the laws of combinations of plasticity and weight of sound with the laws of human dance. They managed to create undeniably convincing examples of musical and choreographic works of various genres, but mainly in the field of romantic legend and poeticized everyday comedy. I mean... Leo Delibes, composer the finest taste and the poetic feeling of man as a plastic phenomenon, the author of the unsurpassed ballets “Coppelia” (1870) and “Sylvia” (1876),” wrote academician B.V. Asafiev.
Having an excellent command of dance forms, the composer symphonized the ballet score and cemented its traditional dance forms into a single whole.
Delibes' music brought ballet theater to new way. She ceased to be a “handmaiden of choreography”, turning into an equal component of the performance. P. Tchaikovsky admired the author’s art. “What charm, what grace, what melodic, rhythmic, harmonic richness,” the great Russian composer wrote to Taneyev, studying Delibes’ scores while working on “ Swan Lake" As Asafiev notes, Delibes “was not characterized by the scope and power of imagination for broad concepts.” These qualities distinguish Tchaikovsky's scores. But we, like Coppelia’s contemporaries, are attracted by the theatricality of its music, the Slavic motifs of its genre scenes, the grace of classical dance forms, the kind smile of the composer. Coppelia first appeared on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater in 1882 - two years earlier than in St. Petersburg. The performance was based on the choreography of Saint-Leon, and I. Hansen transferred the ballet to Moscow. The role of Swanilda at the premiere was performed by the famous Moscow ballerina L. Gaten. The part of Franz, as in the Paris performance, was danced by a woman - a “travesty”, a student of theater school. Since then, at various intervals, “Coppelia” has constantly appeared on the Russian stage, maintaining its choreographic basis in different editions.
In 1901, the remarkable reformer of the Moscow ballet A. Gorsky approached her. They re-staged the dances and scenes of the play, and for the first time the role of the main character of the ballet, Franz, was assigned to a man. Performed this part famous dancer V. Tikhomirov.
Many famous Moscow ballerinas performed the role of Svanilda in Coppelia - E. Geltser, O. Lepeshinskaya, S. Golovkina, I. Tikhomirnova. The most interesting Franz there was a wonderful Soviet dancer A. Messerer. Wonderful mimic actors from V. Geltser to A. Radunsky created the image of Master Coppelius in the performance.
The source of the plot is E. T. Hoffman’s short story “The Sandman”
Choreographer: Valentin Bartes (Romania)
Stage conductor: Valery Volchenetsky
Production designer: Alexey Ambaev
Costume designer: Gianluca Saitto (Italy)
Lighting designer: Konstantin Nikitin (Moscow)
Tutors – Tatyana Murueva, Bayarto Dambaev, Larisa Bashinova, Elena Dambaeva, Olga Ivata
Duration - 2 hours 15 minutes
HISTORY OF CREATION
The composer began working on the ballet “Coppelia,” which became a milestone in Delibes’ work, in 1869, after he showed his talent and ingenuity by writing divertissement music for Adam’s ballet “Corsair” and creating “Sylvia,” which P.I later admired. . Chaikovsky. The ballet was written based on a libretto by Charles Louis Etienne Nuiter ( real name Treuinet, 1828-1899), famous French librettist and writer, long-time archivist of the Grand Opera, author of the texts of many operas and operettas, in particular the Offenbach operettas. The initiator of the creation of the ballet, choreographer Arthur Saint-Leon (real name Charles Victor Arthur Michel, 1821-1870), also took part in the work on the libretto of Coppelia.
Saint-Leon was a multi-talented person. He made his debut almost simultaneously as a violinist (in 1834 in Stuttgart) and as a dancer (in 1835 in Munich), and then for more than ten years he performed as a leading dancer on the stages of many European cities. In 1847, Saint-Leon began working as a choreographer at the Paris Academy of Music (later the Grand Opera), and in 1848 he performed his first ballet performance, and from 1849 he began working in St. Petersburg, where over 11 years he staged 16 ballets. It is noteworthy that he began to involve newcomers to this genre in writing ballet music, in particular Minkus and Delibes. An excellent musician with an amazing memory, Saint-Leon also staged ballets based on his own music (“The Devil’s Violin,” “Saltarello”), in which he himself performed violin solos, alternating violin playing with dancing. By the time Saint-Leon, together with Delibes and Nuiter, began to create Coppelia, he was already a prominent maestro who enjoyed well-deserved authority.
The plot of “Coppelia” is based on the short story “The Sandman” (1817) by the famous romantic writer and musician E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822), which tells the story of a young man who fell in love with a mechanical doll made by the skilled craftsman Coppelius. Unlike Hoffmann's novella with its inherent mystic features, this side was practically discarded in the ballet. The librettists created an entertaining comedy based on a fleeting quarrel and reconciliation between lovers. "Coppelia" became Saint-Leon's swan song - he died two months after the premiere.
The premiere of Coppelia, choreographed by A. Saint-Leon, took place on May 25, 1870 on the stage of the Grand Opera Theater in Paris. The great success that befell Coppelia at the premiere accompanies this ballet to this day - it is performed on many stages around the world, being a classic of the genre. In Russia it was first staged on January 24, 1882 at the Moscow Bolshoi Theater by J. Hansen, who followed the choreography of Saint-Leon. Almost three years later, on November 25, 1884, the premiere of “Coppelia” took place at the capital’s Mariinsky Theater, choreographed by the famous M. Petipa (1818-1910). There is also a version by A. Gorsky (1871-1924), performed at the Bolshoi Theater in 1905.