Balanchine's Coppélia at 50

George Balanchine wrote that he regarded Peter Ilyitch Tschaikovsky, Igor Stravinsky, and Léo Delibes as the three greatest ballet composers. One of these is obviously not like the others: Delibes is, generally speaking, much less known or appreciated than Tschaikovsky or Stravinsky, even within Balanchine’s own oeuvre. And yet, we cannot deny what Delibes accomplished: making ballet music itself an art form. Prior to Delibes’s work, there were well-written moments within ballets, but never a score that was through-composed and used musical elements to tie everything seen and heard together. After hearing Delibes’s Sylvia (1876), for one, Tschaikovsky described it as “the first ballet in which music constitutes not just the main, but the sole interest. What charm, what grace, what melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic richness.” Tschaikovsky went so far as to claim that if he had known music like that of Sylvia could be written for the ballet, he wouldn't have attempted Swan Lake. This begins to indicate just how important Delibes was with his small but significant contribution to the history of music.

Coppélia premiered in 1870 at the Paris Opéra and was Delibes’s first full-length ballet. A success from its first performance, the work has become an established favorite within repertories worldwide. Among Coppélia’s innovations, Delibes uses a system of leitmotifs, or musical devices, connected to the ballet’s characters; though Richard Wagner had established the use of leitmotifs in his operas and the practice had become widespread in that genre, the same had not been done for ballet prior to Delibes. Each character in Coppélia has their own unique musical signature corresponding with their onstage appearances. Most famously, Dr. Coppélius and the doll Coppélia are represented by the same dry, mechanical music; essentially chromatic counterpoint, their shared theme sounds as though it were written much earlier. Franz has two leitmotifs. And when we first meet Swanilda, her entrance is accompanied by a gorgeous waltz. At the time of the ballet’s premiere, audiences were pleasantly surprised—here was a ballet written much as operas had been for nearly half a century. In a sense, with this unique approach, Delibes opened the door to the rest of ballet music as we’ve known it for the 150 years that followed.

The score for Coppélia also introduced the incorporation of national dance vernaculars into ballets, like that of the mazurka and the csárdás—folk dances of Poland and Hungary, respectively. Coppélia includes a Spanish-style bolero when Swanilda dances for Dr. Coppélius, and even a French gigue which, while not from a different nation, is a dance form from the Renaissance or Baroque period. Whether non-French or older forms, Delibes uses his deft touch and amazing gift of melody to bring them into this remarkable score. In a way, Delibes internationalized the base of his music, and in doing so, influenced other composers to include wonderful moments from places and times other than those in which their narratives are set.

The mazurka in Coppélia is one of the best-known pieces of music from the ballet. Not only does the orchestra play it during the overture, but it’s repeated shortly after in Act I; and when the audience returns for Act II after the intermission, the orchestra plays Swanilda’s entrance waltz again. These melodies, already memorable upon their first appearances in the score, repeat just often enough that audiences are inevitably humming them as they leave the theater. Back when Broadway shows were written by Gershwin, Rodgers, and Porter, this same trick was used to plant showtunes firmly in the listener’s mind long after the curtain closed, and for days and weeks to come. It’s an idea that Broadway inherited in part from Delibes.

Act III of Coppélia, which is cut from many productions but not that of New York City Ballet, essentially provides the Company an extended opportunity to show off. The section is called the “Waltz of the Golden Hours,” and includes a number of solos, with movements titled “Dawn,” “Prayer,” and so on. The music for “Discord and War” is a great tour de force, and the pas de deux for Swanilda and Franz is similarly magnificent. Within the Company’s repertory, there are many Tschaikovsky pas de deux accompanied by a solo instrument in the orchestra, and it’s always the violin; even in Act I of Coppélia, the pas de deux is performed to a violin solo. But in Act III, Delibes sets the pas to the viola. This is very unusual—almost unheard of; the only other ballet with such a significant viola solo is Giselle, composed in 1841 by Adolphe Adam. Violin solos had become de rigueur. In composing the Act III pas de deux on a lower voice, Delibes gives the solo a certain gravitas and warmth, making for a particularly magical moment as the ballet approaches its end. With Act III, Delibes presents very contrasting music—different tempi, different feelings between the various sections—that concludes the score in a multifaceted, multicolored way.

When Balanchine staged Coppélia in 1974 with Alexandra Danilova, Danilova restaged much of the first and second acts based on Marius Petipa’s choreography, with Balanchine creating new choreography for much of the third act. Balanchine also incorporated music from two other works by Delibes into the course of the evening. The first male variation in NYCB’s production is actually set to music from La Source, a full-length ballet that premiered in 1866 with a score composed half by Delibes, with the other half written by Ludwig Minkus. Then, the male variation at the very end of the ballet, during the final pas de deux, is set to music from Sylvia, the work which so moved Tschaikovsky. Balanchine had a great tradition of building these sort of hybrid works; the famous scene change music in Act I of our Nutcracker, for example, comes from Sleeping Beauty. That he also did this with Coppélia demonstrates something of Balanchine’s fondness for Delibes’ music as a whole.

My own fondness for this score goes all the way back to 2013, when I was asked, “Would you come and conduct Coppélia at New York City Ballet?” I had certainly heard of the ballet and was familiar with the mazurka and the famous waltz from the radio, but I didn't know it otherwise. So, I started studying the score quite seriously. I was very lucky because the two lead dancers for my first performances with NYCB in 2014 were Principal Dancers Tiler Peck and Megan Fairchild, who are both so lovely to work with and knew this ballet well. I'd been conducting for 35 years when I took on those initial performances, but after having spent decades following sound, I was suddenly following sight, and it's a wildly different experience. In some ways, Coppélia is also a more complicated ballet to conduct than many of the others in our repertory, in terms of interaction with the stage—not only taking cues from the dancers, but also making sure to cue the dancers when needed. I loved the challenge. When the phone rang a few months later, and I was told, “We want to offer you the job,” it was a very, very happy decision for me to make.

My last performances of Coppélia in New York were in 2018 and so much has happened since then. I'm looking forward to approaching the score on the Balanchine ballet’s 50th Anniversary, with fresh eyes, as I do every time, but hopefully far more knowledge about what's happening onstage—certainly than I had in 2014. And, I love the piece. Conducting Coppélia is a joy, in part because the music is quite memorable. It inevitably stays in my head for the rest of the year.

_{Performance photos © Erin Baiano.}