It is hard to believe that Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s first ballet, Swan Lake, created in 1877 for the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, was so successful, as its music is striking for its melodic power. It is only twenty years later – but Tchaikovsky is already dead – that ballet imposes itself on stage in the choreography of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. Almost a hundred years later, Rudolf Nureyev reshuffles the cards by giving his own choreographic reading to this impossible story between Prince Siegfried and Odette, a woman transformed into a swan by the sorcerer Rothbart. By creating his version for the Paris Opera Ballet in 1984, Rudolf Nureyev gave more prominence to the psychology of the prince, torn between his duty and his dreams, and illuminated Tchaikovsky’s poetic dream with desperate depth.
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