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Secondary sourceArtifact1875–1876

Swan Lake

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky · 1875–1876

Tchaikovsky's first ballet, composed 1875–76, now one of the most popular ballets ever performed despite a poor premiere.

Swan Lake was composed entirely by Tchaikovsky, marking his first major ballet score.

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Stage performance of Swan Lake: a ballerina in a white tutu kneels center stage in blue light, surrounded by a V-shaped formation of dancers in white tutus, with several more ballerinas in white tutus posed in the background.
Performance of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, Vienna State Opera, 2004.

About this source

What it is

Swan Lake is a ballet score composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky between 1875 and 1876. It tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by a sorcerer's curse. It premiered at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in 1877, choreographed by Julius Reisinger. The version most companies perform today is a later revival staged in 1895 at the Mariinsky Theatre, with choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov and some revisions to Tchaikovsky's score.

Why it matters

Swan Lake was Tchaikovsky's first attempt at ballet music, and it raised the genre to a new level of symphonic seriousness compared to the lighter, decorative scores typical of the time. Its initial failure shows how audiences and performers were not yet ready for this ambitious approach, even though the ballet later became one of the most beloved in the world.

Look closer

  • Why might a story about a cursed swan princess have appealed to audiences of the time?
  • What does the ballet's rocky start tell us about how new art is received?
  • How might a ballet performed today differ from the original 1877 version?

This artifact is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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Julius Block · 1890

Cover of an late 19th-century edition of the opera Eugene Onegin. Turquoise decorated binding with Cyrillic title 'Евгений Онегин' and author name 'П. Чайковский' at top, with a gold-colored ornamental emblem at the bottom center.Artifact

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Eugene Onegin

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Oil portrait of an older man with white hair and a white mustache and beard, wearing a dark suit, dark tie, and white collar. He gazes to the side against a dark background, with one hand resting on an open sheet of music at lower left.Painting

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Pyotr Tchaikovsky

Nikolai Dmitriyevich Kuznetsov · 1893

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