Marius Petipa

Abstract Born two hundred years ago in Marseilles, Marius Petipa spent more than sixty years in Imperial Russia as a ballet master, serving directly under the eye of the Emperor. He became the greatest choreographer of the nineteenth century, creating a quantity of work, some of which—such as Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty—has survived to attract audiences all round the world. In Russia, he was revered, even if by the end of his life he had become outmoded and new ideas were circulating, culminating in the experiments of Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. Yet even the rebels recognized his genius and their indebtedness to him. He had a lasting and profound effect, both in the Soviet Union, where ballet became an emblem of cultural prestige, and in the West, where his spiritual descendants, Diaghilev included, promulgated and extended his work. Marius Petipa: The Emperor’s Ballet Master is a survey of his life and work, before and after his arrival in St Petersburg. It is a cultural biography placing Petipa in his context. It describes the people and events around him; it traces the evolution of the aesthetics of ballet; it analyses the influences that made Petipa unique; and it examines the ways that he, in turn, influenced the course of modern ballet.