Sylvia (1876)

Delibes, Léo, 1836-1891, composer; Barbier, Jules, 1825-1901, librettist — https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14585145288/ Source book page: https://archive.org/stream/sylviaoulanymphe00deli2/sylviaoulanymphe00deli2#page/n10/mode/1up · No restrictions

Limelight · Ballet

Sylvia (1876)

Choreography by Louis Mérante, Frederick Ashton

Sylvia, ou la nymphe de Diane, is a full-length classical ballet made for the Paris Opera, with music by Léo Delibes and original choreography by Louis Mérante, premiered at the newly opened Palais Garnier on 14 June 1876. Its libretto, adapted by Jules Barbier and Baron de Reinach from Tasso's pastoral play Aminta, sets a chaste huntress-nymph, a lovestruck shepherd, a predatory hunter and the gods Eros and Diana against a mythological Arcadia; Mérante's own choreography did not survive its initial run, and the ballet was a commercial failure for its first seven productions.

Sylvia – Act III solo (Darcey Bussell, The Royal Ballet)Variation · The Royal Ballet · 4 min · on Royal Ballet and Opera

What it contains

Classical Ballet
  • Classical Ballet · the whole ballet, across all three acts — a full-length narrative work built on classical mime, corps de ballet ensembles, character divertissements and set pas de deux, staged by the Paris Opera's own maître de ballet Source: "Sylvia, originally Sylvia, ou La nymphe de Diane, is a full-length classical ballet in two or three acts"

What is danced

Louis Merante's 1876 choreography is lost. Contemporary critics praised it, no notation or film survives, and nothing we hold describes his steps, so everything below is Frederick Ashton's 1952 version for the Royal Ballet, built around Margot Fonteyn and the basis of almost every modern staging. Ashton blends mime and dance with intricate footwork over a classical base rather than lapsing into either pastiche or overt modernism. Three things to watch for: the Act III pas de deux, the choreographic climax of the ballet; the pizzicato variation in the Act III divertissement, created for Rita Sangalli and traditionally danced in a halting, hesitant rhythm that is not written into Delibes's score; and the Pas des chasseresses in Act I, the entree and slow waltz that bring on Sylvia's band of huntresses.

Context

Sylvia arrived at a pivotal moment for the Paris Opera - it was the first ballet created for the newly built Palais Garnier, which had been inaugurated seventeen months earlier, on 5 January 1875 - and for ballet music generally: Delibes's score, with its extensive leitmotifs and prominent brass, winds and (unusually for the period) alto saxophone, drew unreserved praise from Tchaikovsky, who three times in his correspondence set it above his own Swan Lake. To Nadezhda von Meck from Vienna, 23 November/5 December 1877: "The Lake of Swans is not fit even to hold a candle to Sylvia." To Sergey Taneyev from Venice, 7/19 December 1877: "If I had known this music before, I wouldn't have written The Lake of Swans." To von Meck again, 11/23 January 1878, Swan Lake "is mere rubbish in comparison with Sylvia". Despite this, the ballet's choreographic side struggled from the start and repeatedly failed commercially until Ashton's 1952 reworking gave it a lasting stage life; the intervening decades saw the ballet largely survive only as extracted numbers, notably in Anna Pavlova's touring repertoire.

Staging history

After the unsuccessful 1876 original and a failed, heavily compromised 1901-02 Mariinsky staging (choreographed first by Lev Ivanov, completed after his death by Pavel Gerdt, with a young Agrippina Vaganova among the corps), the ballet survived mainly in excerpted form until Ashton's full 1952 Royal Ballet production for Fonteyn secured its place in the repertoire; that production was revived in 1963 after a lapse requiring substantial reconstruction, and later reconstructed again by Christopher Newton for the Royal Ballet (2004) and American Ballet Theatre (2005, in a shortened two-act version). Mark Morris made a rare non-Ashton staging for San Francisco Ballet in 2004, working directly from the original 1876 score and libretto rather than from Ashton's choreography, and Stanton Welch made a further new three-act version for Houston Ballet and the Australian Ballet in 2019; Balanchine separately made a concert Sylvia Pas de Deux for New York City Ballet in 1950 and later interpolated music from the score into his Coppélia.

How to watch it

Watch the Act III pas de deux as the choreographic centre of gravity in the Ashton version, and listen for the famous pizzicato variation, traditionally danced in a halting, hesitant rhythm not actually written into Delibes's score. The clip linked on this page is not that pas de deux: it is Darcey Bussell's Act III solo variation, four minutes from the Royal Ballet's own channel, and apart from a one-minute company trailer it is the only excerpt we hold for this work. Because almost every modern staging (Royal Ballet, ABT) descends from Ashton's reconstructed 1952 choreography rather than Merante's lost original, comparing those to Mark Morris's 2004 San Francisco Ballet version - deliberately built back from the 1876 score and libretto - shows two different answers to the same missing original.

Structure

  1. Act I · Pas des chasseresses
    Sylvia arrives with her band of huntresses; the number includes an entrée and a slow waltz.
  2. Act II · Danse des Éthiopiens
    A character dance within the scene at Orion's cave.
  3. Act III · Danse barcarolle
    A barcarolle-rhythm number near the Temple of Diana, scored with heavy use of winds and brass including alto saxophone.
  4. Act III · Divertissement (Pizzicato, Pas des esclaves, Galop générale)
    A suite of set variations including the famous pizzicato variation created for Rita Sangalli, a slaves' dance, and a closing general galop.

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

Credits

  • composer: Léo Delibes
  • librettist: Jules Barbier
  • librettist: Baron de Reinach

Related works

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

Questions

Is the choreography performed today by Mérante or Ashton?
Almost all modern full-length productions (Royal Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Houston Ballet) descend from Frederick Ashton's 1952 choreography, since Mérante's original 1876 steps did not survive. The San Francisco Ballet's 2004 Mark Morris production is the notable exception, built fresh from the original 1876 score and libretto.
Why is Sylvia historically important beyond its plot?
Tchaikovsky called it the first ballet where the music was the whole interest rather than a backdrop, praising Delibes's use of leitmotif and orchestration; he said he would not have written Swan Lake the way he did had he heard Sylvia first.
What happened to the original 1876 production?
It was largely unnoticed by critics and, along with the next six productions, was a commercial failure; Mérante's choreography was praised at the time but did not survive, and the ballet only became firmly established after Ashton's 1952 version.
This entry was written from “Sylvia (ballet)” on English Wikipedia (revision 1353531520), 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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