Excerpts from Swan Lake, Grand Ballet in 4 Acts, Opus 20 (July 10, 2026)
Composition and premiere: Tchaikovsky began composing Swan Lake in the summer of 1875 in Kamenka, Ukraine, and completed the score on April 22, 1876, in Glebovo, near Moscow. The first staged (incomplete) production took place at the Bolshoi Theatre on March 4, 1877. On February 8, 1895, a much more successful complete production was staged at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, with choreography by Lev Ivanov and Marius Petipa. Music from Swan Lake was the purview of the Boston Pops for many years, entering the BSO repertoire only in July 1969, when Erich Leinsdorf included the Introduction on an all-Tchaikovsky concert at Tanglewood.
Why has Swan Lake become the most popular ballet ever written? The answer lies first in the magnificence, emotional intensity, and variety of music Tchaikovsky wrote for what was, amazingly enough, his very first ballet. But the seductive character of its bewitched half-human, half-magical heroine—Swan Queen by day and beautiful young woman Odette by night—also sets Swan Lake apart from more earthbound romantic ballets. A tragic and doomed vision of poetic vulnerability from her very first appearance in Act II, she is, in the words of choreographer George Balanchine, “a creature of the imagination who has no control over her destiny.”
Swan Lake has entered the realm of popular culture like no other classical ballet, having inspired many different adaptations in different media. In Hollywood, directors used pieces of the score (especially Odette’s dark and brooding theme) in early gothic features including The Mummy and Dracula. Even ubiquitous Barbie got into the act with Barbie of Swan Lake (2003). Black Swan, Darren Aranofsky’s psychological backstage thriller about the to-the-death competition between two ballerinas for the leading role, won Natalie Portman the Oscar for Best Actress in 2010.
But Swan Lake traveled a long and bumpy path to popularity. When the director of the Bolshoi Theatre, Vladimir Begichev, approached the 35-year-old Tchaikovsky to write a ballet in the spring of 1875, he was a complete novice in the field of dance. By this time Tchaikovsky had composed only a single bona fide opera, one symphony, and his First Piano Concerto.
Tchaikovsky accepted the commission for practical reasons. “I undertook this labor partly for the money, which I need, partly because I have long wanted to try my hand at this kind of music.” Whether Tchaikovsky himself or Begichev (or someone else) suggested and wrote the libretto, based in part on a German medieval legend about bewitched swans but drawing on numerous other sources, remains unclear. Tchaikovsky added material to the libretto as he composed what became known as Le Lac des Cygnes, creating a grand ballet in four acts with 29 scenes, some with multiple parts.
Julius Reisinger choreographed the first stage production which opened at the Bolshoi on March 4, 1877, with Paulina Karpakova in the leading role. But at Karpakova’s request, this version replaced nearly two-thirds of the music Tchaikovsky had written with “numbers” from other ballets, so she could better exhibit her technique. More complex and difficult than the formulaic music of the conventional ballets in the Bolshoi’s repertoire, Tchaikovsky’s score proved too challenging for the company and orchestra. Critic Herman Laroche wrote that “I had never seen a poorer presentation on the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre.”
Only in 1895, a year after Tchaikovsky’s death, did Swan Lake finally receive a deserving production, at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. Two of the leading choreographers of the era, Marius Petipa and his assistant Lev Ivanov, used most of Tchaikovsky’s original score. Legendary Italian ballerina Piera Legnani danced the double role of the virtuous Odette and the conniving Odile, daughter of the sorcerer Von Rothbart, who assumes Odette’s identity and seduces Prince Siegfried away from Odette in Act III, dooming her to a continued existence as half-swan, half-woman.
In the original Moscow production, the ballet ended with the repentant and heartbroken Siegried and Odette being swept away in waves of water from the lake. For the St. Petersburg 1895 production, an apotheosis scene with a “happier” ending was added: Odette jumps into the lake, and Siegfried follows after stabbing himself. They are then seen rising above into the realm of “eternal happiness.”
The 1895 production achieved enormous critical and popular success, and has remained on the stage ever since. The double role of Odette-Odile became the apex of a ballerina’s career both in Russia and abroad, where many other choreographers created new versions for the world’s most prestigious companies.
For these BSO performances (July 10, 2026), conductor Andris Nelsons has chosen five scenes from Swan Lake that display different dramatic and musical aspects of Tchaikovsky’s rich orchestral score. The numbers of the scenes are those from Tchaikovsky’s original score.
Introduction. A brief overture opens with a plaintive oboe solo in B minor, descending slowly down one octave, followed by an answering rising phrase in the clarinet, setting an atmosphere of quiet melancholy. The strings then take up the theme, divided into smaller fragments, raising the tension. In the second half, the brass enter with an ominous fanfare and the tempo quickens, leading to a dramatic entry of the main theme, now in more sinister D minor, strengthened by the cymbals, drum, and timpani. Gradually the texture thins to a quiet final cadence that seems to promise a sad story.
No. 1. Scène. The first scene of Act I, set in the grand park around the castle where Prince Siegfried and his royal family live, opens with a rousing allegro giusto for the entire orchestra that establishes the festive mood suiting the celebration of the Prince’s 21st birthday. Surrounded by his friends, the Prince joins the group in drinks, anticipating the grand ball the following day, where he will choose his bride. Peasants enter and perform dances, accompanied by two oboes and clarinet in a quiet interlude before the celebratory music returns.
No. 2. Waltz. The first of the ballet’s many inventive waltzes brings the corps de ballet into the action. Constructed from repetitions of a sixteen-bar phrase, the dance flows to a melody that starts on the second beat of the measure rather than the first, adding an element of surprise and swing. Scholar David Brown has called it “the most successful instrumental movement Tchaikovsky had composed to date.”
No. 13. Pas d’action: Odette and the Prince (White Swan pas de deux). Siegfried has encountered Odette, who told him her story of being bewitched by the evil magician Von Rothbart, doomed to be a swan during the day and a beautiful woman at night. Her beauty overwhelms Siegfried and he vows to marry her. For the last part of Act II, the swans perform six different dances in various combinations and styles. The most famous (and most often parodied) is the fourth, the Dance of the Little Swans, usually danced by four swans. Set to a bouncy staccato rhythm in a bright sharp key, it expresses their natural grace and agile exuberance.
No. 29. Finale. Siegfried enters and is reunited with Odette. She forgives him but does not want to live under Von Rothbart’s spell, and bidding farewell throws herself into the lake. Siegfried (like Romeo) cannot live without her and either follows her or stabs himself (depending on the staging), ending Von Rothbart’s curse. They rise up together into the “temple of eternal happiness.” The tragic theme of Odette and the Swans dominates, which after extensive development and rising emotional intensity concludes with a “heavenly” harp passage and a strong B-major cadence.
Harlow Robinson
Harlow Robinson is an author, lecturer, and Matthews Distinguished University Professor of History, Emeritus, at Northeastern University. His books include Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography and Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood’s Russians. His essays and reviews have appeared in the Boston Globe, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Cineaste, and Opera News, and he has written program notes for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, and Metropolitan Opera.