About this Piece

One of the most progressive trends of late-19th-century ballet was the desire for music that was not merely serviceable but also of high artistic quality and integral to the dramatic scheme. Enter Tchaikovsky.

Tchaikovsky’s natural affinity for music that dances is apparent in virtually everything he wrote. When he was 35, before Nadezhda von Meck came into his struggling life as bountiful benefactor, the need for ready cash, however, was the chief impulse for his accepting a commission to compose the music for the ballet Swan Lake. Wrote Tchaikovsky to composer Rimsky-Korsakov in 1875: “I accepted the work partly because I need the money, and because I long cherished a desire to try my hand at this type of music.”

When the poorly staged 1877 premiere production of Swan Lake at the Bolshoi Theater was shrugged off and dismissed, the composer was not surprised. Shortly after the ballet’s failure, he wrote in his diary: “Lately, I have heard the very clever music of [French composer Léo] Delibes. Swan Lake is poor stuff compared with it. Nothing during the last few years has charmed me so greatly as this ballet of Delibes.” Delibes notwithstanding, Tchaikovsky would later compose two more beloved ballet scores: The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker. Unfortunately, he did not live to witness the success of Swan Lake in its revival in 1895, with new choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov.

For many years now, this stage piece has stood as possibly the best loved of all the “white” ballets, so-called for the color of the ballerina’s tutus, the ultimate Romantic dance work that floats, shimmers, and whirls on Tchaikovsky’s wondrously inspired music. Any true balletomane is quite willing to suspend reality and believe in swans that are actually enchanted maidens allowed to resume human form only at night; in dashing Prince Siegfried, who loses his heart to Odette, the Queen of the Swans; in the evil magician Rothbart and his wicked daughter Odile, who trick the Prince and thereby victimize the Swan Queen (in most productions, Odette and Odile is a dual role danced by a ballerina who displays all lyricism and elegance and is also a brilliant technician). And then one must be able to shed a tear at the poignant ending, in which the reunited lovers choose to die together. (Some productions opt for a happy ending, but that’s an unnecessary bromide for a fairy tale that is the ultimate of romantic tragedy.)

—From the LA Phil’s archive