Ballet pantomime in three acts and five scenes premiered on 22nd June 1843 at Her Majesty’s Theatre, London

Choreography: Jules Perrot

Music: Cesare Pugni

Premiers Rôles

Ondine: Fanny Cerrito

Mattéo: Jules Perrot

Giannina: Marie Guy-Stephan

Hydrola: Mme Copère

Theresa, mother of Mattéo: Mme Camille

Plot

Summary

Act 1

Scène 1

A portion of the seashore on the coast of Sicily, with a huge arched rock in the background.

At the rise of the curtain the peasants and fisher-folk are seen making preparations for the Festival of the Madonna. Matteo, a young fisherman, is present with Giannina, his betrothed, and he invites his friends to the wedding, to be held on the morrow. Giannina is overwhelmed with congratulations which end in a general dance. Then all depart, save Matteo, who wishes to catch a fish for his supper.

He casts his net and draws it to the shore. As he does so a shell rises from the water. It contains a lovely being who has often haunted his dreams. The naiad, who is called Ondine, has fallen in love with Matteo, and has chosen this means of making her presence known to him.

Matteo, however, loves Giannina, and resists the tempting naiad. But she fascinates him in a dance so that he follows her along the shore and up the rock until, arriving at the highest point, she drops gently downwards into the waters, her arms outstretched towards him, inviting the infatuated Matteo to follow.

Regardless of danger, he is about to do so, when some peasants enter and save him. Their intervention breaks the spell and he kneels and offers a prayer of thanksgiving for his escape.

Scène 2

Matteo’s hut.

Theresa, Matteo’s mother, and Giannina anxiously await the return of Matteo, who presently enters, musing on his recent adventure. Giannina soothes away his melancholy and both she and his mother try to fathom its cause. He tells them of the naiad, but his mother dismisses the matter as a daydream. Then she sits down to her spinning wheel, and Giannina, taking up a skein of silk, gives it to Matteo to hold, while she winds it.

A sudden gust of wind blows the window open and Ondine bounds into the room. Jealous of Matteo’s attention to his future bride, she snaps the thread which Giannina is winding and strikes the distaff from his mother’s hand. Then the naiad makes herself visible to Matteo. Dazzled by her rare beauty he vainly pursues her. She is next discovered by Giannina, who also tries to secure the naiad, but she darts to the window, and leaps through it into the water beneath, inviting Matteo to follow.

He is withheld by Giannina, who reproaches him for his inconstancy on the eve of their wedding. But his mother restores the situation and retires with Giannina, while Matteo flings himself down on his simple couch.

The naiad, determined to possess Matteo, resolves to reveal to him in a dream something of the lovely world beneath the sea.

Act 2

A submarine cavern peopled with nymphs in pale blue, their hair adorned with branches of coral.

Matteo finds himself in the abode of the naiads. Before his bewildered gaze, the nymphs perform various dances. Ondine rises in their midst and dances with her sister naiads. Matteo pursues her, but she continues to evade and fascinate him.

Ondine, believing that she has secured Matteo’s affection, throws herself at his feet. At this moment Hydrola, Queen of the Waters, appears. She warns her of the danger of losing her immortality should she choose to marry a mortal. But Ondine’s love is too intense for this warning to be heeded, and she replies by plucking a rose and declaring that she would willingly perish with it and as it, if Matteo were hers alone. In vain the Queen chides her daughter, but the wilful naiad is resolute and is most reluctantly led away from the sleeping fisherman.

Act 3

Scène 1

The eve of the Festival of the Madonna, whose statue is in a shrine, and at whose feet the assembled peasants place their gifts and offer their prayers.

After prayers, the company joins in a tarantella in which ‘‘all is wild, animated, and in picturesque disorder, and the colours of the various dresses, rapidly intermingled, flash upon the eyes most brilliantly.” Suddenly the dance is interrupted by the bells for vespers, when the dancers kneel and join in the evening prayer.

While the fisher-folk are at their devotions, Ondine rises from a fountain near the shrine and attracts the attention of Matteo who, springing to his feet, vainly pursues her in and out of the maze formed by the kneeling throng. But Giannina perceives her lover’s agitation and brings him back to his devotions. He gazes on the face of the Madonna which suddenly changes to the features of the naiad. An instant later Ondine disappears.

Once the prayer is ended, the dance is resumed until sunset, then the peasants retire, leaving Matteo and Giannina to themselves. They, too, make preparations for departure and Matteo goes to unmoor his boat to row her home.

Meanwhile, the wicked Ondine contrives to lure Giannina into the water. She bends down and before she realises what is happening, is pulled beneath the waves by the naiads. As she vanishes from sight, the naiad, having stolen the form of Giannina, leaps exultingly to the shore.

The moon rises. The light is strong enough for the Naiad to see her shadow, which fills her with wonder “She first thinks it to be her rival, who pursues her; but soon she finds it is one token of her mortality, and then returns, in her assumed form, all the caprice, vivacity, and joyousness of her naiad temperament.”

When Matteo arrives with his boat, the naiad has assumed Giannina’s cloak and hat. She takes her place and is rowed across the stream, while the real Giannina is seen beneath the water, borne by naiads to the palace of Queen Hydrola.

Scène 2

Giannina’s bed-chamber.

The naiad is asleep in Giannina’s bed and the alarmed Hydrola watches her sadly. Presently Ondine opens her eyes and the Queen vanishes.

Already the naiad feels weak and exhausted. She seeks strength in prayer. Hydrola reappears and urges her daughter to relinquish her mortality before it is too late, but she obstinately refuses. The Queen vanishes.

Matteo and his mother enter and now the lovers dance the Pas de la Rose Flétrie, a tarantella in which Ondine, wearied by dancing, continually strives to overcome that exhaustion. The fisherman, believing Ondine to be Giannina, is sorrowful at the thought that he must wed an ailing bride, for whose sake he has renounced an immortal.

The fisher-folk enter and the wedding-procession forms. The naiad, hardly able to support herself, advances with difficulty, assisted by Matteo.

Hydrola and her attendant naiads make one last effort to rescue Ondine. She is in no state to resist, and the Queen restores Giannina, full of health and joy, to Matteo, who can hardly believe the miraculous recovery which, to him, Giannina seems to have made. Matteo recovers his true love and is happy once more, while the wayward naiad resumes her immortal state and is borne in triumph by the Queen and her subjects to her home beneath the sea.

History

Original Production

Ondine ou La Naïade was one of the many creations by Jules Perrot and Cesare Pugni during their tenure at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London and was created as a vehicle for one of the five greatest Romantic ballerinas, the Italian Prima Ballerina Fanny Cerrito. The London season of 1843 was one of the most successful and highlights of Cerrito’s career because it saw not only the creation of Ondine, but a famous Pas de Deux she danced with Fanny Elssler. Cerrito was a favourite of the London audiences; she had previously enjoyed two successful appearances in the English capital in 1840 and 1841 and returned in May 1843 after a series of successful performances in her native Italy. For her return, Perrot and Pugni would create a new ballet for her that would become one of her most famous signature pieces. Diving once again into the world of the supernatural, the new ballet would be Ondine in six scenes, based on the story of a naiad, a maiden of the sea, who falls in love with a mortal man, who is already betrothed to a mortal woman.

The ballet was premièred at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London on the 22nd June 1843 and was a huge success, with Cerrito dazzling the audience. The critic of The Morning Post noted:

“We have beheld ballets for thirty years at Her Majesty’s Theatre – we have seen some of the most successful of such performances in some of the most celebrated theatres in the greatest capitals of Europe – and we must in justice place Ondine far above them all. Music and dancing, painting and poetry – in this ballet all four comprised. We could never have believed that such a mise en scene could be effected; such scenic illusion produced in the few yards square that form the scanty stage at Her Majesty’s Theatre. We should feel greatly at a loss to apportion to the ballet-master, Perrot, the scene painter Grieve, etc., the share of praise each may justly claim. Good as the music is – sprightly, characteristic and descriptive – it is the least extraordinary portion of the ballet. Perrot’s maestria is perceptible in the minutest detail of the action of the ballet. The scenes are as varied as they are fascinating; at one moment representing nature with surpassing truth; at another embodying the poet’s imaginings in fairyland.”

Perrot’s tenure as Ballet Master in London would come to an end in 1848 after nearly a decade of staging many acclaimed and successful works and from 1849 he would serve as Premier Maître de Ballet to the Saint Petersburg Imperial Theatres until his retirement in 1858. Pugni followed Perrot to Russia, where the composer was given the post of Official Composer of the Ballet Music to the Saint Petersburg Imperial Theatres.

Selected Revivals

1843

Location: Nationaltheater, Munich

Staged by Herr. Lepitre for Mme. Pecci-Ambrogio in two acts as Undine.

27 July [O.S. 15 July] 1850

Location: Peterhof Palace, St Petersburg

Staged by Perrot on a stage was erected above the water of the lake of the Ozerky Pavilion at the Peterhof Palace.

A ballet divertissement was to be given as part of an Imperial fête for the name day of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna, daughter of Tsar Nicholas I. Perrot based the divertissement on scenes from Ondine (and possibly from La naïade et le pêcheur, the revised version that would première the following year) likely inspired by the aquatic setting of the fête.

A quoted synopsis of the divertissement, titled L’Ile des Naiades, is as follows:

“The divertissement opened with the arrival of a young fisherman – called, as in “Ondine” Matteo, and played by the choreographer himself – rowing his boat to the stage and disturbing the naiads who are sporting themselves there.

They hide at his approach. As he steps ashore, the song of a nightingale reminds him of his fiancée Giannina, whom he is to marry in the morning.

After casting his net, he leaves to gather flowers for a bouquet to take back to her. The naiads then appear from the bushes at the sides. One of them, Azurina [the new name Ondine was given] – played by Anna Prikhunova, one of the most promising of the younger Russian dancers – has fallen in love with Matteo. Determined to practice her charms on him, she persuades her companions to fill his net with silver and golden fishes. On his return, Matteo is astonished by such a catch.

He casts his net again, but when he draws it in, it contains, not more fish, but Azurina herself. This was the introduction that led to a scene, probably adapted from the Scène dansante in Lida [ou la Laitière suisse, the 1849 St Petersburg version of the 1832 ballet Nathalie ou La Laitière suisse], in which the naiad demands his bouquet in return for her gift of fishes, and becomes angry when Matteo refuses. He then begins to tease her, extending the bouquet towards her in exchange for a kiss. Azurina manages to seize it, and Matteo demands and receives his reward before she slips from his grasp and disappears.

The mood of the music then changed, and a jaunty melody announced the approach of a noisy crowd of villagers. Among them is Giannina, played by Zina Richard [who would later marry the danseur-choreographer Louis Mérante], another up-and-coming young ballerina who was half French, her father being the French dancer, Joseph Richard. The naiad is forgotten, and Matteo joins in the boisterous tarantella. The dancing is interrupted by the sound of a distant bell. Along with the villagers, the young couple kneel and pray for their happiness. As the villagers leave, the naiads re-emerge, but Azurina, realising the hopelessness of her passion, is filled with melancholy.

The divertissement ended with Matteo continuing on his way, and Azurina disconsolately letting the bouquet fall from her hands.”