About the work
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's four-act ballet was premiered in 1877 at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, with choreography by Julius Reisinger. The original production was a relative failure, hampered by weak choreography and a conductor unequal to the score. The version that became universally beloved was choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov for the 1895 revival at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, two years after the composer's death.
Plot
Prince Siegfried, pressed to choose a bride at his birthday ball, longs for something beyond courtly duty. Hunting by a moonlit lake, he encounters Odette, a princess transformed by the sorcerer Rothbart into a swan by day, human only by night, and the spell breakable only by a vow of eternal and faithful love. Siegfried swears it. At the ball, Rothbart appears with his daughter Odile, magically disguised as Odette in black; Siegfried, deceived, pledges himself to her, betraying Odette. Realising his error, he rushes back to the lake. Depending on the production, the lovers die together to break Rothbart's power, or are united in death—the ending has been famously variable throughout the ballet's history.
Cultural significance
Swan Lake is the most performed ballet in the world and the defining work of the classical tradition. The dual role of Odette-Odile is the supreme test for a classical ballerina, demanding lyrical grace as the White Swan and steely virtuosity as the Black Swan, whose Act Three coda contains the legendary thirty-two fouettés. Tchaikovsky's score, his first for ballet, raised dance music to symphonic dignity. Matthew Bourne's 1995 production, reconceiving the swans as a corps of powerful male dancers, became the longest-running full-length ballet in Broadway and West End history and demonstrated the work's continuing capacity for reinvention.