140 Years on Stage

This year, the legendary ballet "Swan Lake" is 140 years on stage - the first performance took place on March 4, 1877 on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater, with Wenzel Reisinger as a choreographer.
It’s hard to believe, but in the late 19th century, when the Bolshoi Theatre premiered "Swan Lake", the ballet was a failure after a failure. Wenzel Reisinger created then  the first choreography for the ballet and the title of it was "Lake of Swans". The performance was rejected with such fury that Tchaikovsky himself was sure that the ballet might be a success  only after his death. So it happened later. The ballet was removed from the repertoire very quickly and they started to supplement and to overwrite it.

Classical performance version, familiar to our contemporaries,was formed completely in 1895, eighteen years after the premiere at the Bolshoi. Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov breathed  new life into it . The black swan appeared in the story for the first time, and the ballet got the title "Swan Lake".

But more and more versions of the ballet appeared only recently - many of them surprised by the unusual interpretation

Interesting Facts:

-During The Great Patriotic War,  “Swan Lake" was performed at the Bolshoi Theater more often than for 70 years since its premiere. The theatre was shelled and bombed, but the ballet went on to be performed week after week. The bombs exploded sometimes right near the entrance, but the spectators went on to come.

-The best workers and participants  of the Party congresses got tickets for the ballet as an award, every foreign delegation was brought to the Bolshoi Theater performances. The legendary ballerina Maya Plisetskaya recalled in her memoirs that she danced her part in "Swan Lake" more than 800 times.

-Two special varieties of tulips under the title "The Bolshoi Theatre" and "Galina Ulanova" have been planted for decades next to the Bolshoi Theater on the Theater Square. Theodore Lefebvre, the famous Dutch florist selected them when, impressed by the performance, he returned home from Moscow.

The ballet "Swan Lake" was premiered at the Astrakhan State Opera and Ballet Theater  in December 2012. In addition it was the first ballet in the repertoire. The Artistic Director of the ballet, Laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Government, Honoured Artist of Russia Konstantin Uralsky acted as a choreographer of the version then. His colleagues from the Bolshoi Theatre were preparing the premiere with him. They were: Production Designer Alain Pikalova, Costume Designer Elena Zaitseva. All sets for "Swan Lake" were painted by hand. They were created without any printing technology, that is exactly the way it was done a century ago.

March 5 the ballet "Swan Lake" is staged at the Astrakhan State Opera and Ballet Theatre again.