Swan Lake
今日は私のお気に入りの「白鳥の湖」の物語を楽しんでいきましょう。(English) Today we will enjoy my favorite Swan Lake story.
A beginner's guide to the ballet Swan Lake, its synopsis, and its features!
1)
Swan Lake is a ballet composed by Tchaikovsky.
Together with Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, it is considered one of the three great ballets.
The last and the synopsis itself often differ.
2)
Swan Lake is based on the fairy tale 'The Stolen veil' by the German writer Musäus.
It was first performed in 1877 by the Moscow Bolshoi Theatre Ballet.
3)
Synopsis of Swan Lake
[Introduction]
Odette is picking flowers in a flower garden.
The demon Rodewald appears and turns Odette into a swan.
4)
[Act 1]
The Prince's friends gather at the castle.
They are celebrating Prince Siegfried's 21st birthday.
The Prince's mother appears and tells him to choose a bride at the ball tomorrow.
At this time, the Prince still does not want to get married.
He then goes hunting with his friends at the lake.
5)
[Act 2]
Swans are swimming in the lake.
The moonlight shines on them, and the swans instantly transform into daughters.
The Prince is attracted to Odette, the most beautiful of them all.
6)
Odette has been cursed to revert to human form only at night.
The only way to break the curse is to have her pledge her love to a man who has never loved anyone before.
So the Prince tells Odette to come to the ball.
7)
[Act 3]
At the ball, Odile, the Devil's daughter, appears, using magic to disguise herself as Odette.
The Prince chooses Odile as his bride.
8)
Odette's companion, the Swan, finds out and goes to the lake to tell Odette that the Prince has been tricked.
The Prince finally realizes that the Devil is behind it and rushes to Odette.
9)
[Act IV]
Odette laments that her vow of love has been broken.
The Prince leaps upon the Devil, who appears, and a fierce battle ensues.
10)
As a result, the Prince defeated the demon.
However, the curse of the swans was not lifted.
In despair, the Prince and Odette threw themselves into the lake and were united in the afterlife.
*In some cases, the last part of the story has a happy ending.
11)
Features of Swan Lake
Swan Lake is characterized by the fact that one person plays two roles.
Different primas performed the White Swan and the Black Swan at the first performance.
It was only when the Mariinsky Ballet's Prima Pierina Lignani completed both roles that the two parts became firmly established.
12)
Playing the contrasting White and Black Swans was extremely difficult.
The film Black Swan was released in 2010.
The ballerina was under tremendous pressure to play both the innocent White Swan and the sensual Black Swan.
It was even depicted as a gradual mental breakdown due to this.
13)
Swan Lake is also a highlight for its superbly matched" The chore de ballet (group dance)."
The beauty of" The chore de ballet(group dance)" makes it a spectacular sight, even on the second or third floor.
This is why some visitors sit on the second or third floor instead of the ground floor.
Ref)
1)
Wikipedia states it was "conceived based on the fairy tale 'The Stolen veil' by the German writer Musäus."
What is interesting about the first edition of the script is that it tells the story of how Odette became a swan.
2)
Odette's mother was a good fairy.
However, instead of following her father's (Odette's grandfather's) advice, she fell in love with a knight, married him, and had Odette.
However, this knight (Odette's father) was a domestic violence offender, and her mother died after being tortured so much.
3)
The father remarries.
But the new mother was a wicked witch.
She hates Odette and tries to kill her.
However, her grandfather took Odette into hiding.
The grandfather kept crying for his daughter (Odette's birth mother).
The tears created Swan Lake.
The grandfather hid Odette at the back of the lake.
She could only change into a swan during the daytime so she could fly and play.
4)
In the revival version, Odette is cursed by the Devil to be transformed into a swan during the day, and only at night can she return to human form.
The character Rottwald was the stepmother witch in the first edition, but she is the Devil in the revival.
5)
In the ball scene in the first edition, Siegfried is enchanted by Odile's beauty and pledges his love to her.
However, in the revival version, Odette and Odile are said to think they are the same person and pledge their love.
6)
The final scene is the same in the first and the revival versions, with the Prince and Odette sinking to their deaths in the lake.
However, in the first version, they both die due to the Prince's betrayal, whereas in the revival, the Devil is defeated by the power of love.
7)
It is assumed that the composer himself may have conceived the story of Swan Lake, but the source of the material is unknown.
On the other hand, legends of the virgin swan, like the legend of the robe of feathers in Japan, are found in countries around the world.
8)
It is said to be one of the sources of Tchaikovsky's material. Moreover, the German writer Musäus's fairy tale "The Stolen Veil" is also based on such a legend.
However, it is unlikely that Swan Lake is based on the legend of the Swan Virgin.
9)
Musäus (Johann Karl August Musäus, 1735-1787) was a writer and literary critic in the German Enlightenment.
His Folk Tales of the Germans (1782-1786) made his name.
10)
Among them was The Stolen Veil.
The Brothers Grimm tried to collect and preserve the folktales in their original form.
In contrast, Musäus' method was to use folk tales as material and add his creations.
11)
Incidentally, Musäus was born in Jena.
However, it soon became the domain of the Dukes of Saxe-Weimar.
12)
In 1763 he became an education officer at the Weimar court.
In 1769 he was appointed professor at the Weimar Higher School of Classical Languages (Gymnasium).
Goethe visited the Weimar court at this time from 1775 to 1786.
[References]
J.K.A. Musäus, The Stolen Veil.
Legenden von Rübezahl: A Folktale of the Germans.
Translated by M. Suzuki, 2003.
[Reading the original ballet] "Swan Lake" ← Musäus"The Stolen Veil."
https://ponta.moe-nifty.com/blog/2009/02/4-0daf.html
St Petersburg Ballet Theatre - Swan Lake ft Irina Kolesnikova
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOHzp-mo9l4
Swan Lake
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%99%BD%E9%B3%A5%E3%81%AE%E6%B9%96
A beginner's guide to the ballet Swan Lake, its synopsis, and its features!
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