APPROXIMATE SONATA | BALLET IMPERIAL | LA BAYADERE | CHOPINIANA | DIANA AND ACTEON | DON QUIXOTE | ETUDES | JEWELS | IN THE MIDDLE, SOMEWHAT ELEVATED | LE SPECTRE DE LA ROSE | PAQUITA | PIANO CONCERTO NO. 2 | RAYMONDA | SCHEHEREZADE | SERENADE | STEPTEXT | LE CORSAIRE-LE JARDIN ANIMEE
THE DYING SWAN | THE VERTIGINOUS THRILL OF EXACTITUDE

LA SPECTRE DE LA ROSE

Le Spectre de la rose
Choreographic tableau

Music by Carl Maria von Weber
(Invitation to the Dance orchestrated by Hector Berlioz)
Concept by Jean-Louis Vaudoyer
Based on the poem by Theophile Gautier
Scenario by Michel Fokine
Choreography by Michel Fokine
Reconstruction by Isabelle Fokine
Set design by Viacheslav Okunev
Costume design after original designs by Leon Bakst

Premiere: 19 April 1911, Les Ballets Russes de Serge de Diaghilev, Monte Carlo
In the repertoire of the Mariinsky Theatre since 1997

Fokine worked with great speed – if his muse were absent, or if he spent a long time thinking through the idea, the result would almost certainly be a failure. The ballet duet Le Spectre de la rose was one of his fortunate impromptu works. It was born from one single line of a poem by the Romantic Theophile Gautier: “I am the ghost of the rose you wore last night at the ball”. Tamara Karsavina slept, her eyes open but unmoving, like a sleepwalker. Vaslav Nijinsky had to sew silk petals onto his pale lilac leotard before each performance – after the previous one, each and every petal would be given away as souvenirs to his adoring fans. In the finale, the sleeping Girl sat down in the chair, and the Ghost of the Rose disappeared threw the open window in one gigantic leap. This leap became Nijinsky’s emblem – as if foretelling his future, it was regarded as a leap into madness and immortality.

 

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