Swan Lake at Teatro di San Carlo

First of three ballets set to music by Pyotr iLych Tchaikovsky, composed between 1875 and 1876, "Swan Lake" tells the love story between Prince Siegfried and Odette, the Swan maiden, the victim of a spell that only a promise of marriage is dying can dissolve. The first performance took place at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in 1877, with choreography by Julius Wenzel Reisinger. The libretto by Vladimir Petrovich Begichev, Director of the Imperial theatres of Moscow, is based on an old German tale, "The stolen veil", taken from the short story by Jophann Karl August Musäus. Although there are different versions of the ballet, most ballet companies based on the signed version by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov for the Imperial Ballet, represented the first time in 1895, Imperial Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg.