Esmeralda Pas de Deux

Music: Riccardo Drigo (from La Esmeralda, 1899), Luigi Manzotti (from Sieba, 1876), and Cesare Pugni (from La Esmeralda, 1844, and La Fille du Pharaon, 1862)
Choreography: after Marius Petipa
Staging: Kaori Nakamura and Olivier Wevers
Costume Design: Victoria McFall
Lighting Design: Randall G. Chiarelli
Duration: 13 minutes
Original Production Premiere: March 9, 1844, Ballet of Her Majesty’s Theatre, London, choreography by Jules Perrot
Petipa Production Premiere: December 17, 1886, Imperial Ballet, St. Petersburg, choreography revised by Marius Petipa
Vaganova Production Premiere: April 3, 1935, Kiov Ballet, Leningrad, choreography revised by Agrippina Vaganova
Pacific Northwest Ballet Premiere: January 30, 2003

Kaori Nakamura in Esmeralda Pas de Deux.
Photo © Hidemi Seto

La Esmeralda, a three-act dramatic ballet choreographed by Jules Perrot for his wife Carlotta Grisi, is based on Victor Hugo’s novel, Notre-Dame de Paris. It had its premiere on March 9, 1844, at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London. The Austrian dancer Fanny Elssler triumphed in the role of the gypsy girl protected by the hunchback Quasimodo when she performed in St. Petersburg in 1849. It was afforded a new staging by Marius Petipa in 1869, with numerous alterations and additional music by Riccardo Drigo. In 1935, Agrippina Vaganova introduced her production of the ballet for the Kirov Ballet, which became the basis for all versions surviving in the Soviet Union over the years.

The Esmeralda Pas de Deux presented today is a pastiche, set to music by a number of composers and features a variation for Esmeralda devised for an episode in Act II, in which the gypsy is invited to perform at a wedding celebration. Like other showcase duets offered at ballet galas and competitions today, it is a contemporary creation drawn from original sources and containing the formula entrée, adagio, male and female solos, and coda that audiences expect in a classical pas de deux.

Notes by Leland Windreich; edited by Doug Fullington, 2009.