Coppélia (1870)

What it contains

• Balanchine Method — Grand Pas de deux · Act III, in Balanchine's 1974 New York City Ballet production — Balanchine replaced the Act III finale with new choreography and added a corps of 24 young girls dancing the Waltz of the Hours, Dawn, Prayer and Work variations in his own idiom Source: "Balanchine created new choreography for Act III and for the mazurka, czardas and Franz's variation in Act I."
• Classical Ballet · the work as generally staged, following the Petipa revivals — the classical vocabulary of pointe work, formal mime scenes, and a structured grand pas de deux established by Petipa's late-19th-century Imperial Ballet revivals underlies virtually all modern productions Source: "Modern-day productions are traditionally derived from the revivals staged by Marius Petipa for the Imperial Ballet of St. Petersburg in the late 19th century."
• Classical Ballet · Act II, in Balanchine's 1974 New York City Ballet production — the automata workshop scene, the drinking-scene mime, and Swanhilda's impersonation of the doll were staged by Danilova using Petipa's original classical choreography rather than newly made Source: "She staged the Petipa choreography for Act II."
• Mazurka · Act I, the village-festival mazurka — a mazurka number for the festival scene, part of the original Delibes score and reworked with new steps by Balanchine in the 1974 production while keeping the mazurka form Source: "Balanchine created new choreography for Act III and for the mazurka, czardas and Franz's variation in Act I."

What is danced

The choreography that survives in performance today is not Saint-Léon's original but the version Marius Petipa staged for the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg, recorded in Stepanov notation and passed on from there to companies including the Vic-Wells/Royal Ballet. The Imperial Ballet programme reproduced in the article lays out the dance structure: Act I is built around a Mazurka and Csárdás as village festival numbers plus a slow, expressive solo (the Ballade de l'Épi) tied to the wheat-ear divination scene central to the plot. Act II turns on pantomime as much as dance — Swanhilda and her friends winding up rows of mechanical automata to make them move, a drinking scene between Franz and Dr. Coppélius, and Swanhilda's impersonation of the doll coming stiffly to life — interspersed with a Boléro (Spanish dance) and a Gigue styled as a Scottish dance. Act III is the most conventionally 'balletic' section, built around a suite of divertissement variations (Dawn, Prayer, Work) and a formal Grand Pas de deux with its own grand adage and solo variations, followed by a closing galop.

Context

Coppélia arrived at the end of the Romantic ballet era in Paris, just before Franco-Prussian defeat and the collapse of the Second Empire disrupted French ballet production for a generation; its success shifted decisively to St. Petersburg, where Petipa's late-19th-century restaging became the template for virtually all later productions. The ballet also carries a piece of period stagecraft that later fell away almost everywhere except Paris: the male role of Franz was created and long danced en travesti by a woman, Eugénie Fiocre, a convention the article says was kept in Paris until after the Second World War.

Staging history

The line of transmission the article traces runs from Saint-Léon's 1870 original, through Petipa's Imperial Ballet revivals (notated in the Stepanov system and used to stage the work for the Vic-Wells Ballet), to George Balanchine's 1974 New York City Ballet production. Balanchine, working with Alexandra Danilova — who restaged Petipa's Act II from memory — kept the received choreography for Act II but wrote new choreography for Act III and for the mazurka, czárdás and Franz's variation in Act I, and added a children's corps of 24 girls to the Act III divertissement. The article also records a chain of later reinventions that move away from the Petipa/Balanchine line entirely: Willam Christensen's 1939 San Francisco Ballet staging (the first complete American production), Robert Curran's 2015 Louisville Ballet version reset in 1917 wartime Germantown, Jean-Christophe Maillot's 2019 Coppél-i-A for Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo (Coppélia reimagined as an AI android, with rewritten music), and Ted Brandsen's 2008 Dutch National Ballet production recasting Coppélius as a cosmetic surgeon, later adapted into a 2021 animated/live-action feature film.

How to watch it

Watch for the shift in register between acts: Act I and III are festival dance built around named national numbers (mazurka, czárdás, boléro), while Act II depends on sustained pantomime — the winding of automata, the drinking scene, Swanhilda's stiff-jointed impersonation of a doll — rather than steps in the usual sense. If you know the production's lineage, you can also watch for where Balanchine's own choreography (Act III, the Act I mazurka/czárdás/Franz variation) has replaced or sits alongside the Petipa-descended Act II.

Structure

1. Act I
   A village festival during which Swanhilda's engagement to Franz is threatened by his infatuation with Coppélia, the motionless girl on Dr. Coppélius's balcony; Swanhilda finds the doctor's dropped keys.
2. Act II
   Swanhilda and her friends enter Coppélius's workshop, discover Coppélia is a mechanical doll, and Swanhilda impersonates the doll coming to life to rescue Franz from Coppélius's spell.
3. Act III · Grand Pas de deux
   The village wedding festival, including the Waltz of the Hours and character variations (Dawn, Prayer, Work), Coppélius's compensation, and the closing Grand Pas de deux and galop for Swanhilda and Franz's marriage.

Structure read from an encyclopaedia article, not from a libretto or score we hold. Confirm against a programme before treating the numbering as authoritative.

Credits

• composer: Léo Delibes

Questions