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Leda, the Swiss Milkmaid (1821)

The article documents this as a Demi-Caractère ballet in two acts, first staged in Vienna in 1821 with choreography by Filippo Taglioni and music by Adalbert Gyrowetz, under the German title Das schweizer Milchmädche. It belongs to the wave of pastoral/rustic-themed ballets popular in the early nineteenth century, and its afterlife runs through some of the most contested authorship disputes in ballet historiography, touching Filippo Taglioni, Marie Taglioni, Jules Perrot, Marius Petipa and Jean Petipa across Vienna, Paris and St. Petersburg.

What it contains

Romantic Ballet

Romantic Ballet · 1832 Paris revival, Nathalie, ou la Laitière suisse — Staged by Filippo Taglioni with Marie Taglioni as principal dancer at the Paris Opera in 1832, the same milieu and year in which Romantic ballet's ballerina-centred, lyrical style was being established. Source: "Revival by Filippo Taglioni for the Ballet du Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique under the title Nathalie, ou la Laitière suisse, with Michele Carafa revising Gyrowetz's score. First presented in Paris, France, on November 7, 1832. Principal dancers: Marie Taglioni."

What is danced

The source article gives no synopsis, scene breakdown, or description of steps, holds, or vocabulary for any staging of the work. The only formal descriptor supplied is the genre label 'Demi-Caractère ballet in 2 acts' for the original, which places the work in a category that blended classical technique with national/character dance idioms typical of the period, but the article does not specify which dances or passages carried which idiom. The 1849 St. Petersburg revival is noted to contain a 'Scène dansante' and a 'Pas de trois', named numbers attributed to Jules Perrot by one historian, but no description of their content survives in this article. Because of this, no specific movement vocabulary can be responsibly assigned to sections of the work from the text given.

Context

The 1821 premiere predates the codification of Romantic ballet by roughly a decade, sitting in the demi-caractère tradition that mixed academic dance with rustic, folkloric-flavoured characterisation (here, a Swiss milkmaid subject typical of the era's taste for alpine and pastoral settings). The 1832 Paris revival, restaged by Filippo Taglioni with Marie Taglioni in the lead only months around the debut of La Sylphide, places the ballet directly inside the emergence of Romantic ballet and its new emphasis on ballerina-centred lyricism. The 1849 Imperial Ballet revival, credited variously to Perrot, Petipa and Jean Petipa with a rescored Cesare Pugni version, shows the work migrating into the Russian imperial repertory during the period when Petipa was beginning to consolidate authority there.

Staging history

The ballet was first given as Das schweizer Milchmädche in Vienna in 1821. It was revived in Paris in 1832 as Nathalie, ou la Laitière suisse with a rescored version by Michele Carafa and Marie Taglioni dancing the lead, and again in St. Petersburg in 1849 as Lydia, ou la Laitière Suisse with a further rescoring by Cesare Pugni and Fanny Elssler in the principal role. Authorship of the 1849 version is explicitly disputed in the article: Petipa's own memoirs claim sole credit, a contemporary review credited Perrot, and later historians (Pleshcheyev, Ivor Guest) split credit between Jean Petipa and Perrot for specific numbers. Separately, a balletmaster named Antoine Titus created an unrelated ballet of the same title for Paris in 1823, later restaging it in Berlin (1832, with Fanny Elssler) and St. Petersburg (1833, poorly received) — a parallel work sharing only the title.

How to watch it

Because no performance description survives in this record, a viewer or reconstructor would need to attend to the demi-caractère convention itself: passages of academic (pointe/turnout-based) dancing set against passages of stylised 'peasant' or national character dance, a contrast typical of ballets built around rustic heroines in this period. The presence of a named 'Scène dansante' and 'Pas de trois' in the 1849 version suggests the ballet retained at least one formal danced ensemble number and one soloist showcase, though their content is not described here.

Credits

composer: Adalbert Gyrowetz

More from Filippo Taglioni

Other staged works in the register connected to this one by author or lineage.

Questions

Is this the same ballet as the one our catalogue lists as 'Leda, the Swiss Milkmaid'?

The source article consistently calls the work 'Lydia, the Swiss Milkmaid' (and its variants Nathalie/Lydia in French, Das schweizer Milchmädche in German). This is a discrepancy with our record's title 'Leda' that should be checked rather than assumed to be a simple retitling.

Who actually choreographed the famous 1849 St. Petersburg version?

It is disputed. Petipa claimed sole authorship in his memoirs, a contemporary 1849–1850 review credited Jules Perrot, and later historians split the credit between Jean Petipa (most of the choreography) and Perrot (a Scène dansante and a Pas de trois).

Is this related to the other 'Swiss Milkmaid' ballet from the 1820s–30s?

There is a separate, unrelated ballet of the same title made by balletmaster Antoine Titus for Paris in 1823, later restaged in Berlin and St. Petersburg; the article treats it as a distinct work sharing only the title.

This entry was written from “Lydia, the Swiss Milkmaid” on English Wikipedia (revision 1352281859), used under CC BY-SA 4.0. The link points at the exact revision this text was written from, so it shows the words we actually used rather than whatever the article says today. Credits and premiere data come from Wikidata (CC0), cited per field.

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