Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake: The Ballet That Won’t Stop Evolving

Why can’t we stop tinkering with Swan Lake?

The traditional version of the ballet, set to Tchaikovsky’s tender, ravishing, dark and brooding score, tells the story of Odette, a beautiful princess cursed by an evil sorcerer to transform into a swan by day and only regain her true form by night (Don’t ask why. Just go with it.) The curse can only be lifted (as all curses can only be lifted) by true and eternal love. She finds such love in Prince Siegfried, who swears his devotion to her. The sorcerer cheats them out of their love, they drown themselves out of sorrow, and then they ascend into the heavens together. The end.

Who came up with that?

The short answer: we don’t know. The origins of the Swan Lake story are lost in time, and the authorship of the libretto is unknown.  For the longer answer, we look at two sources. The Stolen Veil is a German fairy tale featuring a shapeshifting maiden who is able to turn into a swan with the help of a veil. A man steals the veil in order to force her to keep her human—and marriageable—form. The Swan Maiden is a similar story; here the man steals a magical feather garment that stops the maiden from flying away.

Stories similar to this are part of almost every culture across the globe. Tales of supernatural, shapeshifting women and the men who love them can be found from Peru to India to Madagascar. And while the two sources for Tchaikovsky’s version give us a hint of the libretto, they give us nothing like the complex and tragic story we know so well.

History has pointed to several possible authors of the libretto including Julius Reisinger, the ballet’s first choreographer, Vladimir Begichev, who was director of the Moscow Imperial Theaters, and even Tchaikovsky himself. But we have no definitive author, and dozens of variations. No surprise then, that Swan Lake continues to be revised, rewritten, and reimagined.

For some, the story is not tragic enough. American Ballet Theater dialed up the misery in 2005 with a production in which Odette commits suicide first, followed by the Prince. In 2010, the National Ballet of Canada went even further. Here, Odette forgives Siegfried (are we going to get a happy ending?) which drives the sorcerer to conjure up a storm that kills Siegfried (no, we aren’t), leaving Odette to mourn alone.  We also have the 2006 New York City Ballet production, where the Prince’s betrayal of Odette consigns her to permanent swandom, leaving Siegfried to mourn alone.

For others, the heartbreak is too much to take. Take, for instance, the version produced by the Mariinsky Ballet in 2006. Here, Siegfried kills the sorcerer, the spell is broken, Odette is restored to Princesshood, and true love is victorious.

If you happened to miss 1994’s animated version, The Swan Princess (featuring vocal work from Jack Palance, John Cleese, and Sandy Duncan – as a dad with a daughter, I can recite it by memory), we get nearly the same ending: dead Rothbart, happy couple. 

We’ve had evil queens instead of sorcerers, Matthew Bourne’s celebrated all-male production, a thinly-disguised Diana/Charles/Camilla version, and a Norwegian production that featured 1,300 gallons of water on stage.

The point of all this being, we get the Swan Lake we need. Stories metamorphosize, contexts change and meanings adjust around them.

There’s a saying: When I was young, King Lear was about domineering parents, and now that I’m a parent, it’s about ungrateful children.

Whatever you need from the Swan Lake story, whatever wisdom you need about love, betrayal, and loyalty, you can find it here. And whatever morals you want to derive from it, it will still be set to the stunning, heartbreaking, soaring melodies of Tchaikovsky.

6 Facts about Swan Lake

Tchaikovsky wrote this one quickly. It was commissioned in 1875 and finished within a year.

This was Tchaikovsky’s first ballet. For a composer who, as a symphonist, had previously condescended to the ballet, he quickly became a master. In the wings were The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker. There you have three of the most produced ballets in the repertoire.

Swan Lake may have been an attempt by the composer to work in a new genre, but there were a few practical reasons to compose it as well. As he wrote to his friend Rimsky-Korsakov, “I accepted the work partly because I need the money, and because I long cherished a desire to try my hand at this type of music.”

The premiere didn’t go over well. Modest Tchaikovsky, the composer’s brother, wrote an account of the premiere that pointed to “the poverty of the production…absence of outstanding performers…the Balletmaster’s weakness of imagination.”

Tchaikovsky was pretty harsh on his own efforts. “Lately I have heard the very clever music of [French composer Léo] Delibes. Swan Lake is poor stuff compared to it.”

The composer passed away in 1893, so he didn’t see the 1895 revival which established the work as one of the great accomplishments in scoring for the dance.

Hear Guest Conductor Tianyi Lu lead Pacific Symphony in the timeless romance and enchanting story of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, Dec 4-6. Learn more.