The two ballets in this volume, Paquita and Nuit et Jour, represent Ludwig Minkus (1826–1917) towards the end of his career in Russia, working at the peak of his creative powers. They are respectively the thirteenth and fourteenth collaborations between the Viennese composer and the famous choreographer of the Russian classical ballet, Marius Petipa (1819–1910).

The Grand Pas, written for Petipa's revival of Deldevez’s Paquita in St Petersburg in 1881, is well-known and loved, a jewel of the classical ballet repertoire in its own right. As an independent, abstract divertissement,...

Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), once one of the most well-known and well-loved names in French 19th-century opera, came later in life than many famous composers to his art, yet had one of the longest and most successful careers. He studied with Cherubini after abandoning an initial attempt to establish a career in commerce, and experienced his first real triumph at the age of 38 with La Bergère Châteleine (1820). His subsequent association with the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), a collaboration that lasted until Scribe’s death, became one of the most famous and...

Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782-1871), the composer of La Muette de Portici (1828) and Fra Diavolo (1830), was once regarded as one of the great figures of music, a staple of the operatic repertoire in France, and indeed around the world. It is now almost impossible to understand the extent of his once universal fame, his influence on contemporary composers. His operas were in the theatre repertories of the world until the 1920s, and innumerable arrangements of them were published and sold everywhere. The ubiquity of his overtures—Masaniello, Fra Diavolo, The Bronze Horse, The Black...

Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), the most amiable French composer of the 19th century, came to his abilities late in life. After a stalled commercial career, he studied with Cherubini. His first works were not a success, but La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. He then met the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a working partnership, one of the most successful in musical history, that lasted until Scribe’s death. After Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828), Auber’s life was...

Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (Caen 29 January 1782- Paris 12/13 May 1871) is primarily remembered as one of the great masters of opéra-comique, but also played a very important role in the development of Romantic ballet through the long danced interludes and divertissements in his grand operas La Muette de Portici, Le Dieu et la Bayadère, Gustave III, ou Le Bal masque, Le Lac des fées, L’Enfant prodigue, Zerline, and the opéra-ballet version of Le Cheval de bronze. Auber also adapted music of various of his operas to create the score of the full-length ballet Marco Spada; it is quite...

Meyerbeer's first opera, Jephtas Gelübde, has a libretto by the German academic Alois Schreiber, based on a Biblical theme taken from chapters 11-12 of the Book of Judges. The conflict between paternal love and love of country intrinsic to this story was is also the basic theme of the opera scenario, and is reflected in the overture, a symphonic anticipation of the essential features of the action. The opera, whose final rehearsals were conducted by the composer in person, was admirably produced by the Munich Court Opera on 23 December 1812, but on account of its novelty met with...

The ballet Don Quixote, with music by Ludwig Minkus and scenario and original choreography by Marius Petipa, is one of the most enduring creations to have emerged from the flowering of the ballet in late 19th-century Russia. Still popular, it has become a standard repertory piece in ballet companies all over the world. The work was first performed in Moscow at the Bolshoi Theater on 14/26 December 1869. The plot, in four acts and eight scenes, was based on an episode which Petipa had developed from the second part of Cervantes’s novel, relating the love story of Quiteria (known as Kitri in...

This volume reproduces the piano score of the ballet La Source, a joint composition by Ludwig Minkus and Léo Delibes.

After the success of Néméa (1864), the Paris Opéra ordered a new grand ballet from the famous choreographer Arthur Saint-Léon to a libretto based on a Persian legend by Charles Nuitter. Saint-Léon involved his musical collaborator in St Petersburg, Ludwig Minkus, in the project, securing for him a hand in the composition of the first and fourth scenes of the of this new work, La Source, a fantastic ballet in three acts. The composition of the other two scenes (the...

Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871) was long considered one of the most typically French as well as one of the most successful of the opera composers of the 19th century. Although musically gifted, he initially chose commerce as a career, but soon realized that his future lay in music. He studied under Cherubini, and it was not long before his opéra-comique La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. Perhaps the greatest turning point in Auber’s life was his meeting with the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he...

Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), the most amiable French composer of the 19th century, came to his abilities late in life. After a stalled commercial career, he studied with Cherubini. His first works were not a success, but La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. He then met the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a working partnership, one of the most successful in musical history, that lasted until Scribe’s death. After Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828), Auber’s life was...