Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Swan Lake | How does the most danced love story in history end?

When you are little, you hear a lot of classical music melodies in cartoons, movies, commercials, but you don’t know what work they belong to or who their author is, you just know if you like them or not.

In my case, I was always excited to hear this:

At that time, I didn’t know that this music was part of Swan Lake, and that it was played both in the final scene (the one in the video at the beginning), and in the second act, under the name ‘No 10 Scene: Moderato‘ (the one in the video I just showed you).

Gradually I discovered that the author was the most famous Russian composer in history, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and that it was a ballet that those in charge of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow had commissioned Tchaikovsky in 1875. Do you know how much they paid him? 800 rubles, less than $10 😲

It was the first ballet he composed, so he was inspired by another great of the time, Léo Delibes, author of Sylvia and Coppélia.

It premiered in 1877 with a not very worked choreography by Julius Reisinger, and a libretto that is speculated to have been based on a German tale called ‘The Stolen Veil‘, by Johann Karl August Musäus. Although other experts relate the story to that of King Ludwig II of Bavaria, known as King Swan, who died drowned in a lake.

The fact is that the premiere was a failure, and it would not be until almost 20 years later, in 1895, that it would be revived at the Mariinski Theater in St. Petersburg with a new choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. This time it triumphed.

Since then, it would continue to be performed with certain variations, so that in the 1940s it was already recognized as an essential ballet work. Today it is perhaps the most famous title in the world and the most prestigious dancers, such as Anna Pavlova and Rudolf Nureyev have performed it.

In my case, its music still makes my hair stand on end.