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The Daughter of the Snows

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(Redirected from La Fille des Neiges)

The Daughter of the Snows (also known as Snegurochka or La Fille des neiges) is a ballet in three acts and five scenes, with choreography by Marius Petipa and music by Ludwig Minkus.[1] The libretto by Marius Petipa is based on the 1873 play The Snow Maiden by Alexander Ostrovsky, inspired by a Russian folk fairy tale about Snegurochka from the folklore collection by Alexander Afanasyev.

The ballet premiered on 7 January 1879 at the St. Petersburg Imperial Bolshoi Kammeny Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia by the Imperial Ballet. Prima ballerina Yekaterina Vazem considered it "among Petipa's less successful ballets" and "not popular with the public." According to Vazem, the ballet was taken out of the repertoire after only a few performances.[2]

Principal dancers: Yekaterina Vazem (as the Snow Maiden).

References

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  1. ^ "Ludwig Minkus: Composer". Opéra national de Paris. Retrieved 12 February 2024.
  2. ^ Yekaterina, Vazem; Dimitrievitch, Nina (1988). "Memoirs of a Ballerina of the St Petersburg Bolshoi Theatre: Part 4". Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research. 6 (2): 36. Retrieved 12 February 2024. The next new ballet created for me by Petipa was first produced for my benefit performance at the beginning of 1879. It was called Daughter of the Snows and, as I already mentioned, is among Petipa's less successful ballets; at any rate, it was not popular with the public. I appeared on the stage only in the second and third acts, devoted to classical dancing; the first act was completely taken up by character dances of various northern nations. I cannot remember clearly the ballerina's dances - they were probably not in any way remarkable. At the end of the ballet, I and Gerdt (as the Captain of the ship, which became icebound) and other dancers, performed a scene of 'Love and Resurrection'; but again I cannot recall anything about it. Daughter of the Snows was given only a few times and then taken out of the repertoire