Marius Petipa
11 March 1818: Marius Petipa is born in Marseilles, part of the middle of a three-generation dynasty of dancers, of which he and his brother Lucien, long of the Paris Opera, are most important.
24 May 1847: after an itinerant career based in France, as well as Spain and America, Petipa arrives in Russia as the replacement for a retiring dancer. In several months he stages two recent Parisian productions in St Petersburg.
1847-1861: Petipa pursues a dancing career in Russia and engages in an informal apprenticeship with choreographer Jules Perrot (first balletmaster of the Russian Imperial Theatres from 1849 to 1860).
--1854: Petipa marries Maria Surovshchikova.
Last half of the 1850s: Petipa produces his first attributable ballets -- 'The Star of Grenada' (1855), a divertissement, 'A Regency Marriage' (1858), 'The Parisian Market' (1859), and 'The Blue Dahlia' (1860) -- all as vehicles for Maria.
--1861: Petipa and Maria perform in Paris.
1862: Petipa produces 'The Pharaoh's Daughter' on short notice, initiating a rivalry with Perrot's replacement, Artur St-Leon, and defining his signature genre, the ballet as grand spectacle. Shortly after the premiere, he is promoted to the rank of balletmaster.
1862-1870: the contentious Petipa-St-Leon rivalry, of which the artistic highlights were St-Leon's 'The Little Humpbacked Horse' (1864), Petipa's 'Le Roi Candaules' (1868), the elaborate interpolated tableau in Mazilier's Le Corsaire called 'Le jardin anime' (1868, to music of Delibes), and the first production of 'Don Quixote' (1869, Moscow).
--1867: Petipa and Maria separate.
1870: Petipa becomes first balletmaster of the Imperial Theatres on the death of St-Leon.
1870-1885: Petipa's so-called 'Russian' period, marked by continuing collaborations with Russian ballerinas (and the ascendancy of his daughter, Marie Mariusovna Petipa), his assistant Lev Ivanov, and composer Ludwig Minkus.
--1871: 'Don Quixote' revised for St Petersburg
--1876: 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' to Mendelssohn
--1877: 'La Bayadere'
--1881: Alexandre II is assassinated; in the new administration, Ivan Alexandrovich Vsevolozhsky, a lover of ballet, is appointed Director of Imperial Theatres; Vsevolozhsky undertakes an administrative reform of the Russian theatres.
--1882: Maria Petipa dies; upon learning this Petipa marries Lyubov' Savitskaya.
1885: the first reports of serious illness in Petipa's service record; he is 67; Lev Ivanov is appointed second balletmaster; Virginia Zucchi makes her debut in the Imperial Theatres as Lise in a revival of 'La fille mal gardee'.
1885-1901: Petipa's so-called 'Italian' period, marked by the ascendancy of Italian ballerinas, mostly virtuosas, between the arrival of Zucchi and the retirement of Pierina Legnani. Petipa's work comes under the influence of the Franco-Italian feerie.
--1886: Ludwig Minkus retires as official composer of ballet music; Tchaikovsky is approached to collaborate with Petipa.
--1889: 'The Sleeping Beauty' (to Tchaikovsky, and Vsevolozhsky as librettist and costume designer).
--1890-1900: Petipa's 'late period', marked by the last decade of Vsevolozhsky's directorship of the Imperial Theatres; sensing pressure from the emergent balletic avant-garde, he stresses the vieux-genre and first principles of his art: brilliant spectacle and expressive choreography, even at the expense of coherent drama.
--1892: 'The Nutcracker' (with Tchaikovsky and Vsevolozhsky); after planning the ballet, Petipa, due to illness, yields the choreography to Lev Ivanov.
--1893: Petipa is diagnosed with 'a most serious form of pemphigus', a disease of the skin and mucous membranes, which is usually fatal.
--1894: Petipa takes Russian citizenship.
--1895: 'Swan Lake' (with Lev Ivanov)
--1896: In December Petipa celebrates 50 years of service on the imperial stage; he becomes the first artist of the ballet to be awarded the title of Soloist to the Court of His Imperial Majesty.
--1898: 'Raymonda'
--1899: Ivan Vsevolzhsky retires, is replaced by Vladimir Telyakovsky, an avant-gardist unsympathetic to Petipa.
1900-1910: the last decade of Petipa's life.
--1901: Petipa revives 'Paquita', his first production on the imperial stage (1847).
--1902: Alexander Gorsky (considered by Russians to be an innovator on a par with Mikhail Fokine), plagiarizes Petipa's 'Don Quixote' in a modernized production mounted in Moscow.
--1903: Petipa stages his last ballet, 'The Magic Mirror' (to modernist music of Alexey Koreshchenko and designs by Alexandre Golovin); it is ridiculed; Telyakovsky requests that Petipa be re-engaged for the rest of his life for official service without contract, a polite form of retirement.
--1904: Petipa's ''The Story of the Rosebud and the Butterfly', composed, cast and rehearsed, is scheduled for private performance in the Imperial Hermitage Theatre but cancelled due to the outset of the Russo-Japanese War.
--1905: In the wake of the ballet strike in October, the company calls for Petipa's return to the theatre; he is 87; this proposal was lost in the general strike in November.
--1906: Petipa's memoirs are published in Russian.
--1907: Petipa moves to Yalta, a better climate for his health, and then to Gurzuf, a town near Yalta on the Black Sea. Except for diaries he kept late in life and a photograph dated 1910, in these years, history loses track of Petipa the man.
--1910: Marius Petipa dies on 1 July at the age of 92; his remains are returned to St Petersburg and interred in the Alexandre Nevsky Cemetery. According to one account, not one member of the theatre administration attended this occasion.
--Roland John Wiley
According [to his assistant Alexander] Shiryaev, Petipa
...prepared the entire production of a new ballet at home, where he usually summoned a pianist and violinist. Ordering them to play fragments of the music repeatedly, he [then] planned the production at his table [while they played], making use of little papier-mâché figurines, especially for the ensemble dances and groups. He moved them about in the most varied combinations, which he noted down in detail on paper, making zeros for the women, crosses for the men, and various changes [of the dancers'] location with arrows, dots, lines, the significance of which he alone knew... At rehearsal Petipa appeared with a whole pile of outlines and drawings made by him at home, and immediately began to rehearse on the basis of them. – from Tchaikovsky's Ballets: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker, by Roland John Wiley (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1985)
The ballerina's dances were Petipa's special concern, as ... Shiryaev explained:
Petipa worked with the ballerina separately. He carefully studied the particulars of her gifts, sought out interesting features, assiduously strove to develop them as far as possible, and constructed the dance accordingly. If it happened that he showed the ballerina a new movement, [and] she struggled and struggled with it to no avail, then he rearranged the pas. – from Tchaikovsky's Ballets: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker, by Roland John Wiley (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1985)
In his first major composition, Petipa called upon the grandeur and pageantry which were to serve him well for the remainder of his career. These would vary in accordance with the circumstances, as earthly celebrations or utopian visions from a fantastic world, but they were part of a formulaic conception of danced drama which The Pharaoh's Daughter first begins to reveal. (by Sergei Nikolaevich Khudekov) – from A Century of Russian Ballet: Documents and Accounts, 1810-1910, Selected and Translated by Roland John Wiley (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1990)
The story of Swan Lake, with its striking contrast of setting and mood from scene to scene, made it eminently suitable for the collaboration of lvanov and Petipa. Respectively they choreographed the parts of Odette and Odile, tasks especially fitted to their creative temperaments. The documents do not permit irrefutable generalizations about the choreographic styles of these two men, but do suggest tendencies in their thinking: where Petipa excelled in projecting public, formal situations, favoured abstract dance patterns, and generally sought brilliance of effect, lvanov tended to be most effective in contexts of intimacy, preferred suggestion to declaration, and strove for impressions of profundity....
Petipa's formal, detached, artificial treatment of public, ostensibly real situations forms a wonderful foil to Ivanov's talent for making credible and moving the ostensibly unreal. – from Tchaikovsky's Ballets: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker, by Roland John Wiley (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1985)
'They tell me that during the production of a new ballet, balletmasters treat the music very unceremoniously and demand many changes and alterations. To write under such conditions is impossible.' These remarks of Tchaikovsky, conveyed to us by a specialist ballet composer in a series of reminiscences, summarize the difficulties of the nonspecialist who approaches ballet. In Tchaikovsky's time the first law of ballet was the balletmaster's precedence: other collaborators worked to his order, and he enjoyed complete power of veto over them. He was able to do this because he made the dances and the dances were the most unpredictable element in ballet, unwritten, largely irretrievable if forgotten, and in most cases thoroughly understood only by him. 'Both the composer and the librettist in ballet should be subordinate to the balletmaster', explains Alexander Pleshcheyev, 'pride should submit to experience'. – from Tchaikovsky's Ballets: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker, by Roland John Wiley (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1985)
In the imperial theatres the balletmaster's authority over the composer was sanctioned by law. Cesare Pugni and Ludwig Minkus were recognized specialists whose job required them to compose ballet music on demand. But when the Director of Theatres issued a contract to Alexander Serov, a newcomer to the routine, it was thought necessary to specify his relationship to Petipa: 'This music must be written in conformity with the programme of the ballet ... and by its melodies and motifs conform to the character, locale and action of the ballet.' From the beginning of rehearsals Serov was obliged 'without fail to be present and, if necessary, in keeping with the demands of the choreographic stage and the declaration of the balletmaster who is mounting the ballet, to make cuts ... or changes in the motifs and additions to this music, and to make them without protest.' He was required 'to be present at the first orchestral rehearsals of the designated music for the sake of prompt changes that might be required in the orchestration.' Finally, the agreement specified that the composer could not object if the directorate 'deems it necessary to commission the composition of music for any particular pas from some other composer, as for example, Mr. Minkus.' Tchaikovsky no doubt faced similar requirements (and was threatened once with an unwanted pas by Mr. Minkus), though his surviving contracts, which are concerned with remuneration and performance rights, take no account of artistic matters. – from Tchaikovsky's Ballets: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker, by Roland John Wiley (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1985)
On ....Sunday, 6 November 1888, Petipa handed to Tchaikovsky instructions for the prologue [of Sleeping Beauty]. At another meeting on the following December 18, Tchaikovsky received instructions for Acts I and II, and on 22 January 1889, those for Act III (Petipa wrote these dates on the instructions).
...Petipa very frequently offered guidance concerning the expressive qualities he desired in the music, but often one may fairly assume that his remarks were no more than Tchaikovsky would have imagined on his own: 'When a loud noise is heard [in the entranceway as Carabosse arrives], very animated music'; when Carabosse actually appears, 'music of a fantastic character'. Less frequent and more helpful are specifications of metre and approximate tempo. But the information which would appear to be the most valuable to a composer in Tchaikovsky's situation is that with which Petipa is most miserly: designations of the length of numbers.
[Tchaikovsky] responded with great inventiveness to the balletmaster 's call for particular expressive effects, and almost invariably complied with requests for a particular metre, tempo or scoring. As regards the length of numbers, however, he often ignored Petipa's requests. Only in a handful of instances does the music correspond exactly to Petipa's specifications, though many of the shorter dances approximate to them, especially if introductory measures are discounted.
Although Petipa's instructions give the impression of firm requirements before they are compared with what Tchaikovsky wrote in response to them, the disparity between music requested and music received suggests that Tchaikovsky did not take the instructions seriously. Petipa was accustomed to having his composers close at hand; his instructions to Tchaikovsky were doubtless suggestions, subject to modifications that a specialist composer would have made in rehearsal.... It is certain that the two men conferred on changes in the music, which explains the disparities between Petipa's written instructions and the score.
Additional meetings to work out details of the score must have been quite frequent, as is confirmed by Petipa's daughter, Vera (1885-1961), who recalled:
"In the beginning father worked out the subject and created as a whole the composition of the dances, after which he entered into discussions with the composer. Peter Ilyich arrived at our house customarily in the evenings and played through his work in parts, and father listened and planned his dance fantasies in harmony with the music. Tchaikovsky's arrivals always brought us much joy, especially when the inspired sounds of his music were heard in our home. Meetings of Peter Ilyich and father took place in the drawing room at a round table, and then at the piano. The family was seated nearby in the dining room: mother required attention to the music and to her explanations, which were given in a whisper. – from Tchaikovsky's Ballets: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker, by Roland John Wiley (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1985)
Petipa's Instructions to Tschaikovsky for Sleeping Beauty
From Act I Scene 2
No. 8. The four princes have still not seen Princess Aurora. Their ardent wish is to cause her to love them. Each to himself admires a medallion with a likeness of the young Princess. Music which expresses a tender agitation, 24 b[ars], making a transition into
No. 9. Aurora's entrances. 2/4, coquettish, pointed—32 b[ars]. End with 6/8, forte, 16 b[ars].
No. 10. Pas d'action. Grand adagio of a very animated character (mosso). Rivalry of the princes. The music expresses their jealousy, then Aurora's coquetry. For the conclusion of the adagio, broad grandiose music.
No. 11. Allegro for the maids of honour. 48 b[ars], concluding with a polka temps for the pages.
No. 12. Aurora's variation. 3/4 pizzicato for violins, cellos, and harp. (Excuse me for expressing myself so oddly.) And then lute and violin.
No. 13. Coda. 2/4, vivace—96 b[ars].
No. 14. Suddenly Aurora notices the old woman. With a spindle she beats time in 2/4, then a transition to
No. 15. 3/4, a gay and very songful motif. When counting in 3/4; begins, Aurora seizes the spindle, which she waves like a sceptre—32 b[ars]. Suddenly (a pause) pain! Blood! 8 bars of 4/4, largo.
No. 16. Horror—2/4, vivace–she no longer dances–it is some kind of midless turning, as if she had been bitten by a tarantula. At the end she falls as if dead. (For the circling no more than 24 b[ars].)
No. 17. When she falls as if dead, tremolo for several bars. Sobbing and cries of despair of all present.
No. 18. At this moment the old woman throws off her cloak. For this hurried movement a chromatic scale* in the entire orchestra.
No. 19. All recognize the Fairy Carabosse, who laughs at the despair of Florestan and the Queen. The princes draw their swords and rush at her. (Short, powerful, and expressive music, ending with a diabolical passage when Carabosse with a hellish laugh disappears in smoke and fire.) The four princes and their retinues disperse in terror.
No. 20. At this moment a fountain at the back of the stage lights up. A tender, fantastic, and magic melody. This number must be long, in order to last to the end of the act.
From Act III Scene 5
No. 8. Pas de deux.
Aurora and Désiré
For their entrance 32 b[ars] of brilliant music in 6/8. A rather large adagio with fortes and with pauses.
Variation for the cavalier in 6/8, 48 b[ars] (forte).
Variation for the danseuse. (For the present don't compose it. I must speak with the danseuse.)
Coda in 2/4 of a very effective character. From 80 to 96 bars.
By Marius Petipa from Tchaikovsky's Ballets: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker, by Roland John Wiley (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1985.
* In the margin: 'diatonic'