Swan Lake

The authorship of the original libretto remains uncertain, and the precise origins of the narrative are likewise obscure. Russian and German folk traditions have been suggested as possible sources, among them Johann Karl August Musäus’s 1784 tale The Stolen Veil, from the collection Volksmärchen der Deutschen and based on the Swan maiden myth. These accounts, however, bear only limited resemblance to the storyline of the ballet. As reported by other sources, the story does not have a specific author, as it was shaped through ballet conventions. Several critics have noted that many ideas in the libretto appear in legends from various countries, and that a German setting was also frequent in nineteenth-century ballets. Siegfried's character resembles Albrecht from Giselle, as both are deceived into betraying their beloved, and the ball to choose a bride appears in La fille du Danube. The swan maidens may be variations of the wilis and sylphs common in Romantic ballets. The story also has connections with Daniel Auber’s opera Le lac des fées. One hypothesis proposes that the original choreographer, Julius Reisinger, a Bohemian and thus plausibly acquainted with The Stolen Veil, was responsible for devising the story. An alternative view attributes the authorship to Vladimir Petrovich Begichev, then Director of the Moscow Imperial Theatres, possibly in collaboration with Vasily Geltser, a danseur of the Bolshoi Theatre. A surviving libretto copy indeed bears Begichev’s name. Howe…

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