Swan Lake: To the question of the plot origin

Abstract

The article discusses the ways of forming the storylines of the ballet Swan Lake, its similarities with earlier works on a related theme: the opera Le lac des Fées by D.-F.-E. Auber to the libretto by E. Scribe (1839) and two ballets The Fairy Lake to the same music, staged in London and St. Petersburg (1840).

The first redaction of P. I. Tchaikovsky’s ballet (1877) inherited to a large extent the signs, solutions, compositional lines and mise-en-scenes characteristic of the “magic” (or “fantastic”) ballets of the first half of the 19th century. This is a fairy story at the heart of the script; opposition and collision of the real and fantastic worlds, necessarily reflected in apotheoses; development of fantastic images, phenomena, objects and their duality. In the second redaction of the ballet (1895), the psychological prerequisites for the behavior of the characters are emphasized, the inevitability of a fateful turn is strengthened, and the movement towards a tragic denouement becomes much more obvious.

However, the bright components of the “magic style”, traditionally present in the choreographic concept of Swan Lake, still diverted the audience’s perception towards fantastic explanations. This led to the fact that eyewitnesses of the premieres of not only the first, but also the second editions of the ballet often could not understand the meaning of the completion of the performances, and in general, its tragic pathos raised many questions. And only in the 20th century, when interpretations of the work almost ceased to remind of the paths of its succession, did the ballet finally take its place in the theatrical repertoire commensurate with its significance.