It is hard to believe that Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s first ballet, Swan Lakecreated in 1877 for the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, was a failure, so striking is its music’s melodic power. It was not until twenty years later – but Tchaikovsky was already dead – that the ballet was brought to the stage in the choreography of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov.
Almost one hundred years later, Rudolf Nureyev reshuffles the deck by giving his own choreographic interpretation to this impossible story between Prince Siegfried and Odette, a woman transformed into a swan by the sorcerer Rothbart.
In creating his version for the Paris Opera Ballet in 1984, Rudolf Nureyev gave greater depth to the psychology of the prince, torn between his duty and his dreams, and illuminated Tchaikovsky’s poetic dream with a desperate depth.