Stretch Your Wings with Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake
The Backstory
Swan Lake, Op. 20, ballet in four acts (1877)
Hello, I'm Tchaikovsky, and what follows is the backstory of my ballet Swan Lake. You'll find out how a Bolshoi Theatre commission in 1875 became a ballet that Moscow greeted coolly in 1877, which makes the lasting fame of those swans all the more surprising. On this site my fellow composers and I teach you to recognize our pieces the moment they begin, so test yourself in the Trainer whenever you like.
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A Job Offer With a Price Tag
In May 1875 Vladimir Begichev of the Bolshoi Theatre asked me to write a ballet, and he offered 800 roubles for it. I said yes partly for the money, which I needed, and partly because I had long wanted to try my hand at this kind of music. Those are two perfectly honest reasons, though only one of them could pay the rent. Neither of us had any idea that the piece would still be performed all over the world long after we were both gone.The Slow Road From Sketch to Score
I started composing in August 1875 and kept at it until April 1876. In between came the orchestration, which took me from October to December 1875. That is a lot of ink for one evening at the theater, but I have never trusted music that is written in a hurry. Even after all that, I came back to the score for revisions in February and April 1877.Too Many Cooks at the Story Table
Even now nobody can say for certain who wrote the libretto. It is credited to Begichev, and according to Modest Tchaikovsky the dancer Vasily Geltser helped, while newer material suggests the ballerina Lidiya Geyten took part in the early rehearsals. What we do know is that the tale comes from a German fairy tale and is set in medieval Germany, and the story goes that it may owe something to Musäus's "The Stolen Veil". That's a lot of people with a hand in one story about a lake.A Prince, a Lake and a Secret
I won't give away the story, but I will tell you where it starts: with a prince who has a big decision looming over him. Then there is a lake, and a flock of swans that turn out to be much more than they seem. The original ballet has four acts, and a lot happens between the first curtain and the last. How it all ends I'm keeping to myself for now, because the ending has been changed more than once.Opening Night in Moscow
The first performance took place on 4 March 1877 at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, which was still 20 February by the Russian calendar of the day. It was a benefit performance for the dancer Pelageya Karpakova, who danced Odette and Odile herself. Julius Reisinger created the choreography, and Stepan Ryabov stood on the podium with the baton. I would love to tell you the evening was a triumph, but that part of the story is a bit more complicated.The Critics Sharpen Their Pencils
The reviews were cool, to put it kindly. People called the score too noisy, too Wagnerian and too symphonic, and the choreography was called unimaginative. Still, the production stayed in the repertoire until 1882 or 1883, so audiences clearly didn't think it was a disaster. Whether it deserves the word fiasco is something people still argue about, and I like to think the truth sits somewhere in the middle.The Composer Is His Own Toughest Critic
After I saw Delibes' Sylvia in Vienna, I wrote that Swan Lake was "poorer by far". That was a harsh thing to say about my own work, and I'm happy to say history has not agreed with me. I learned a great deal from watching how another composer made a ballet score sparkle. It's a bit like tasting someone else's soup and deciding that yours needs more salt.Dances Made to Order
A ballet in those days was a very practical affair, and the dancers and the choreographer had their own wishes. Reisinger specifically asked me for the Russian Dance, so I wrote it. On 8 May 1877 I also wrote a replacement pas de deux for the debut of Anna Sobeshchanskaya, and I fitted it bar for bar to the music by Minkus that it replaced. That was a bit of musical tailoring: the new dance had to fit exactly where the old one had been.The Revival I Never Saw
I died in 1893, and the ballet was brought back two years after that, so I never got to see it again. On 15 January 1895 (27 January by our Russian calendar) it opened at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, with Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov sharing the choreography. Riccardo Drigo conducted, and he revised the score with the approval of Modest Tchaikovsky. It was this version that really made the ballet famous, which is a gratifying thing to learn, even if I only hear about it second-hand.Thirty-Two Turns and a Borrowed Name
In that 1895 production Pierina Legnani danced Odette and Odile, and she introduced the famous 32 fouettés, a long run of spinning turns on one leg. Pavel Gerdt danced the prince beside her. You may know Odile as the Black Swan, but she wasn't called that in 1895, and Legnani wore royal blue with glitter. The name only appeared with a Bolshoi revival in 1920, and I'm still curious what the prince makes of her in any color.---
So that's the story of how Swan Lake came to be, from a job offer in 1875 to a ballet that the world wouldn't let go of. Did you enjoy learning about the backstory of Swan Lake? I hope it gave you a little more to listen for the next time the oboe begins the Swan Theme. Looking back, I find it a gentle kind of irony that the first production was received so coolly. Critics called the score too noisy and too symphonic, and yet those are the very qualities people love in it now. I never saw the 1895 revival with my own eyes, but I'm glad the music found people who believed in it. Pieces have a way of waiting patiently until the right listeners arrive. There is still a lot more of Swan Lake to explore. You could follow the story through its different endings, or get to know the dances and the orchestra a little better. Each time you come back to it, I think you'll notice something you missed before. If you'd like to keep going, please click on the links below and wander further into the world of Swan Lake. I'd be delighted to have you along.