Five Ballets from Paris and St Petersburg

Five Ballets from Paris and St. Petersburg offers fascinating new looks at five classic story ballets: Giselle (1841), Paquita (1846), Le Corsaire (1856), La Bayadère (1877), and Raymonda (1898), drawing on a treasure trove of manuscripts that offer explicit written information about how many nineteenth-century ballets were performed in their earliest incarnations. Bursting with details forgotten for more than a century, these manuscripts bring the ballets to life by disclosing steps, floor patterns, and mime conversations as well as valuable insight into how the music helped create the drama.

Generously enriched with more than 50 images and more than 350 musical examples, the book also includes, in appendices, English translations of seven French and Russian librettos. Emerging from the plenteous new findings in this book is a fresh portrait of a living, breathing art form with strong audience appeal. Simply put, Five Ballets fills huge gaps in dance history, inviting both general readers and specialists to rethink the usual narratives about nineteenth-century ballet, its music, characters, and choreographies, its depictions of Others and Elsewhere, and the careers of its major choreographers. It also offers a rich resource to practitioners seeking to learn how the makers of these five classic ballets found such great success.

Doug Fullington is a musicologist and dance historian whose research focuses on French and Russian ballet of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A fluent reader of Stepanov choreographic notation, he has contributed historically informed dances to ballet productions around the world. Since 1995, he has worked in several capacities at Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle, including as Audience Education Manager. He is the founder and director of the Tudor Choir, a professional vocal ensemble.

Marian Smith, a musicologist and dance historian, is Professor Emerita at the University of Oregon, author of Ballet and Opera in the Age of Giselle (2000), and editor of La Sylphide, Paris 1832 and Beyond (2012). She has worked alongside Doug Fullington as historical advisor for stagings of Giselle (2011) and Paquita (2014).