Petipa's "Cinderella"

[cubanmiamiboy]

I read that in 1893, Marius Petipa, Enrico Cecchetti and Lev Ivanov pooled their extraordinary choreographic talents along with the music of Baron Fittingov-Schell for a "Cinderella" production in St. Petersburg. The production was noted for its demonstration of dancers' technical virtuosity, and made Pierina Legnani famous for being the first time that 32 fouetees were being performed in Russia by a ballerina. I've seen beautiful pictures of Legnani in the title role, Maria Anderson as the Fairy Godmother, and the beautiful designs of Matvey Shishkov. I also read that Ivanov did a restaging of the ballet for the Bolshoi in 1898. What happened to this ballet? Was it as famous as "Beauty"? Was it ever performed afterwards somewhere? Was it notated? Is the music recorded?

Mr. Fullington, Mr. R.G, Mr. Johnson..?

[Paul Parish]

Excellent QUESTION!!!

[rg]

i haven't researched any of this but my sense is that this production didn't live much beyond the theatrical runs given above.

the only bit of the music that has been identified so far as i can tell is the solo for medora in the now-popular CORSAIRE PAS DE DEUX - the one more often used in full-scale productions of CORSAIRE and not the one - supposedly by minkus lifted by the soviets from DON QUIXOTE's dream scene - that was made famous in the version of the duet set by nureyev initially for the royal ballet.

[Hans]

That is interesting, rg. I wonder how much the choreography for that variation has changed over the years.

[rg]

the use of this cendrillon variation in the 'pas d'action' of LE CORSAIRE came into being for karsavina in 1915 in an interpolation put together by samuil andrianov (balanchine's teacher and elizaveta gerdt's first husband) - whether or not his staging of the variation for the pas de deux a trois was his own or a version of the petipa/ivanov/cecchetti CENDRILLON i don't think anyone has said - and how much of what was presented in '15 was kept for further russian/soviet stagings of CORSAIRE and not reworked or rechoreographed by future choreographers i can't say.