Sylvia (ballet)

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Poster for the premiere of 1876

Sylvia, actually Sylvia ou La Nymphe de Diane , was composed in 1876 by Léo Delibes . It is a full length classical ballet piece in three acts .

The plot is based on Torquato Tasso's poem Aminta from 1573 .

The first choreography was by Louis Alexandre Mérante and was way ahead of its time. The choreography was considered to be quite rebellious, with the ballerinas acting as masculine hunters - unusual at the time.

Tchaikovsky wrote in a letter to the composer Sergei Taneyev in 1877 : “I listened to Délibes' Sylvia. (...) If I had known this music before, I would not have written Swan Lake . "

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Rita Sangalli as Sylvia in the 1876 production

Leading roles

  • Sylvia - A virtuous huntress and nymph , loyal to Diana, object of Aminta's desire.
  • Aminta - A simple shepherd boy who is in love with Sylvia.
  • Eros - The Greek god of love.
  • Diana - The Greek goddess of the hunt.
  • Orion - An evil hunter who pursues and abducts Sylvia.
Olga Preobrazhenskaya as Sylvia in a production of the Mariinsky Ballet (1901)

Supporting roles

  • Hunting companion - Sylvia's line-up of female hunters.
  • Goats - Two goats to be sacrificed as a tribute to Bacchus.
  • Bathing mermaids
  • Dryads
  • Fauns
  • farmers

Musical scenes

1st act

  1. Prelude
  2. Faunes et Dryades
  3. Le Berger
  4. Les Chasseresses
  5. intermezzo
  6. Valse Lente
  7. Cortège Rustique
  8. Scene
  9. Entrée Du Sorcier Et Final
  10. Entr'Acte

2nd act

  1. La Grotte D'Orion
  2. Danse Of Ethiopia
  3. Chant Bacchique
  4. Scène Et Danse De La Bacchante
  5. Rentrée De Sylvia
  6. Scene final
Philippe Chaperon : Palais de Diane , stage design for the second image in the third act, 1877

3rd act

  1. Marche
  2. Cortège De Bacchus
  3. Scène et Barcarolle
  4. Divertissement: pizzicati
  5. Divertissement: Andante
  6. Divertissement: Pas Des Esclaves
  7. Divertissement: Variation-Valse
  8. Divertissement: Strette-Galop
  9. Le Temple De Diane (Final)
  10. Apparition D'Endymion (apotheosis)

Edits

Angel Corella as Aminta in the version by Frederick Ashton (2005)

Frederick Ashton showed a reworking of the work for the Royal Ballet in 1952 . Most of the versions shown today are based on this processing.

John Neumeier's choreography Sylvia - Three choreographic poems on a mythological theme makes almost no use of the original libretto. The work was premiered in 1997 by the Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris with Aurélie Dupont as Sylvia and Manuel Legris as Aminta .

The concise melody from the second movement of the third act "Cortège de Bacchus" was used from 1982 to 1986 as the theme melody of the US TV series Knight Rider .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Swan Lake. Ballet in the Letters of Tchaikovsky , accessed August 13, 2012

Web links

Commons : Sylvia  - collection of images, videos and audio files