Ballet fantastique in one act premiered on 4th October 1888 at the Wiener Hofoper, Vienna

Choreography: Joseph Hassreiter

Music: Josef Bayer

Premiers Rôles

The Fairy Doll: Camilla Pagliero

Plot

Summary

The curtain rises on a toy shop, where the proprietor is working on a doll’s head, while assistants dust the other dolls. They are interrupted by the arrival of a postman with a package. Other visitors then follow, including a salesman with merchandise, and a girl bringing a broken doll for repair. Then potential customers begin to arrive, headed by a peasant with his wife and daughter. Clumsily the peasant disturbs a toy, which falls to the floor.

Then comes a well-to-do English family, anxious to buy a doll. They are first shown one that fails to work, and they start to leave, but the proprietor urges them to stay. He shows them a doll dressed in Upper-Austrian national costume, which proceeds to dance a Tyrolean Ländler. Then they are shown a baby doll that crawls around, the music clearly evoking its cries of “Papa” and “Mama”. Next the visitors are shown a Chinese doll, which dances a polka, after which a Spanish doll does a fiery Spanish dance complete with castanet accompaniment. Then a Japanese doll dances a slow mazurka, and a Harlequin performs a rousing tarantella. Other toys join in as the music rises to a climax, stirring all the dolls into motion.

Then comes the pièce de résistance in a fairy doll, which dances a graceful waltz. The English family is enraptured. They give an order to buy her and arrange for her to be sent to them. Then they and the peasants leave, and the shop closes for the night. Later, as midnight strikes, the shop magically comes alive. At the centre of the activity is the fairy doll. The other dolls join her in a divertissement, which also features Punchinellos with tiny cymbals. In turn, all the dolls seen earlier take part in a grand waltz, laughing and dancing.

After a brief pause, the toys embark on a triumphal march, followed by a lively galop. Then they all return to their boxes, gathered around their fairy queen. Disturbed by the noise, the shopkeeper now rushes in, but finds everything in order. As he stands puzzled by the disturbance, the ballet ends with a tableau of dolls around their fairy queen.

History

Original Production

At the beginning of 1888, the Viennese ballet master Joseph Hassreiter and his friend, the painter Franz Gaul, toyed with the idea of creating a ballet that would take place in a doll shop. The idea, however, was not a new one; in 1870 Arthur Saint-Léon had choreographed Coppelia to the music of Léo Delibes, an adaptation of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story The Sandman. Hassreiter and Gaul wrote the libretto together, calling their work Im Puppeladen. For the music, they turned to Josef Bayer, the ballet conductor at the Viennese Imperial and Royal Court Opera Theatre, who enthusiastically accepted the commission. The ballet was a tremendous success with Bayer’s score being praised.

In 1912, Richard Hague decided to revive the ballet under the title of The Fairy Doll. The ballet was not a great success and was considered to be ludicrously childish by the Upper Class London audience. However, Hague managed to partially turn this around by staging the work the following year for the graduating class of the Royal Ballet School, where its childishness became a feature and part of its charm.

Selected Revivals

7 February 1903

Location: Imperial Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg

Staged by Sergey and Nikolay Legat for Mathilde Kschessinskaya with musical revisions by Riccardo Drigo. It was for this revival that Drigo composed the well known Pas de Trois for the fairy doll and two pierrots.

London Revivals

1912 Revival

In 1912, Richard Hague revived the ballet with minor musical revisions by the conductor of the ballet at Covent Garden, Charles Sawyer. Sawyer expressed that he did not feel particularly up to the task of composition, but Hague assured him that only a few minor revisions to the score would be made and no new additions would need to be composed. Indeed, the only changes that were made were the addition of the Pas Robert and a slight modification of the end of the Grand Ballabile to accommodate the addition.

The ballet, though appreciated for its music, was thought of as childish, immature and lacking in any semblance of a good plot. The Upper Class audience found the production ludicrous, and it was not at all well attended. Despite this initial bad reception, Hague saw merit in the piece. He revived the ballet in 1913 for the graduating class of the Royal Ballet School, intending to lean into the childish and frivolous nature of the ballet by staging it with a younger cast. Hague’s gamble turned out to be moderately successful, as the audience were much more receptive to the work when it was danced by younger dancers of the Royal Ballet School than the dancers of the Royal Ballet proper.

Rôles

The Fairy Doll: Helen Davenport

Musical Revisions

A Pas de Deux was interpolated for the Fairy Doll and her cavalier, dubbed the Tin Soldier. This pas was not new, but was none other than the Pas Robert, a Pas de Deux written for Marta Draeger in the 1890 revival of The Wayward Daughter. The pas was well received at its 1890 premiere, but there were concerns about its suitability for the characters of Lise and Colin and the rest of Hertel’s score. Thus, it was removed from The Wayward Daughter after 1890 in favour of the original Pas de Deux (composed by Bardet for the 1886 London revival of the ballet).

Résumé des Scènes et Danses

1) Prélude

2) Scène Première

3) Danse de la Poupée Cassée

4) Scène 2e

5) Danse Tyrolienne

6) Scène 3e

7) Danse de la Bébé

8) Scène 4e

9) Danses des Poupées

a) Danse Chinoise

b) Danse Espagnole

c) Danse Japonaise

e) Danse d’Arlequin

10) Scène 5e – Apparition de la Fée des Poupées

11) Valse de La Fée des Poupées

12) Scène 6e

13) Scène 7e – Métamorphose de la Boutique

14) Grand Ballabile des Poupées – Valse

15) Pas de Deux (also called the Pas Robert, a supplemental Pas de Deux written for the 1890 revival of The Wayward Daughter)

a) Adage

b) Variation I – Le Soldat de Plomb

c) Variation II – La Fée des Poupées

d) Coda

16) Marche

17) Galop

18) Scène Finale