Ballet comique in one act
Music by Cesare Pugni
Libretto by Marius Petipa

World Première
5th May [O.S. 23rd April] 1859
Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre, Saint Petersburg

Original 1859 Cast
Lizetta
Maria Surovshchikova-Petipa

Simon
Marius Petipa

The Marquis Megrèle
Timofei Stukolkin

Paris Première
29th May 1861
Théâtre Impérial de l’Opèra

Original 1861 Cast
Gloriette
Maria Surovshchikova-Petipa

Simon
Louis Mérante

Première of Petipa’s final revival
20th January [O.S. 8th January] 1895
Imperial Mariinsky Theatre

Original 1895 Cast
Lizetta
Maria Anderson

Simon
Sergei Litavkin

The Marquis Megrèle
Enrico Cecchetti

Plot
Every day, Lizetta, the most beautiful girl in the Parisian market, receives letters and gifts from her admirers, but her heart belongs only to Simon, the young market trader. The Marquis Megrèle happens to visit the market and also falls in love with her. When Georgetta, the Marquis’s mistress, accuses Lizetta of trying to seduce him, Lizetta tries to convince her of her love for Simon. Poverty is the only thing that prevents them from marrying. Feeling pity for the lovers, Georgetta decides to help them. She uses subterfuge to obtain the Marquis’s purse full of coins and gives it to a delighted Lizetta, who finally starts to plan her marriage to Simon.

History

The Parisian Market (Le Marché de parisien) was the first ballet that Petipa created for his wife Maria Surovshchikova-Petipa. The libretto for the new ballet was an adaptation of a French comédie-vaudeville by Emmanuel Théaulon entitled The Countess of the Wine Barrel, or The Two Cousins, which was staged at the Mikhailovsky Theatre. This new ballet came at a pivotal time for the Petipa couple; both husband’s and wife’s careers were rising and a new ballet that showcased their respective talents would further put them on the map. The Parisian Market premièred on the 5th May [O.S. 23rd April] 1859 at the Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre. Although the ballet received much criticism for its weaknesses, Maria’s performance was unanimously hailed, with the Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti singling out her character dances, and Petipa’s choreography was also hailed. Despite its failings, The Parisian Market would play a significant role in Petipa’s career as this would be the one of his works that gained his choreography attraction from outside Russia and also gained his wife international fame.

Première in Paris

In 1861, the Petipas were granted permission by Andrei Saburov, the Director of the Imperial Theatre, to take three months of leave from Saint Petersburg to travel to Paris, where Petipa would stage The Parisian Market. After their arrival in the French capital, the Petipas sought permission from the Court Minister for Maria to dance in The Parisian Market at the Théâtre Impérial de l’Opèra. Their request was successful and Maria was commissioned to dance in six performances. The Petipas were anxious to make a big impression in the French capital and Petipa was worried that The Parisian Market might fall short of the sophisticated Parisian audience’s expectations. Therefore, he sought out the librettist René Lordereau, who was recommended by his brother Lucien, who was first ballet master at the Paris Opéra at the time. Lordereau advised Petipa on how to best cultivate the French public and critics, wrote draft letters for him to influential figures and devised a few adaptations to Petipa’s original libretto. The ballet was staged under a different title, Le Marché des innocents, the setting was changed from the reign of King Louis XV to the Directory, Lizetta was renamed Gloriette and the Marquia de Maigrelet became an incroyable called Lindor. Lucien also worked on the ballet, but is unclear what he choreographed; nonetheless, his contributions were important enough for him to be named as co-author and to receive royalty payments, equal to those of his brother. Le Marché des innocents made its Parisian première on the 29th May 1861 in a mixed performance bill with Verdi’s opera Il Trovatore, with Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie in attendance. The première was a huge success, with Maria Petipa captivating the Parisian audience, receiving enthusiastic ovations and numerous curtain calls from the public and the Emperor and Empress.

Premières in Riga and Berlin

In his memoirs, Petipa writes that he and Maria first performed in Riga and then in Berlin on the way to Paris in 1861. While he is correct that they did make a tour to Riga and Berlin, he dates the wrong year; the tour to Riga and Berlin actually took place in 1863. At that time, it was difficult for many dancers to perform in Berlin since the Ballet Master of the Royal Theatre at the time was Paul Taglioni, son of Filippo Taglioni and brother of Marie Taglioni. Taglioni was notorious for letting no one, but his daughter Marie (not the famous Marie Taglioni, but her niece, also called Marie) dance on his theatre’s stage. For Petipa and his wife, however, the matter proved to not be so difficult when Petipa visited the Court Minister to ask for permission for his wife to dance at the Royal Theatre.

Petipa gives the following account of these events in his memoirs:

I knew by hearsay that it was difficult for any ballerina to appear on the Berlin stage, where the ballet master was the father of the famous dancer [Marie] Taglioni. He would not admit any young artist within a cannon shot of the Royal Theatre, where his no longer young daughter had long ruled, dancing the principal roles in all ballets created and staged by old [Filippo] Taglioni. Such an attitude is not peculiar to any one theatre, and on the Saint Petersburg stage, too, such things happen quite often.

Nevertheless, we decided to try our luck, and my wife and I went to see the Court Minister, who received us more than amiably. I asked him to permit my wife to give a few performances on the stage of the Royal Theatre.

‘I would be delighted, M. Petipa; we would all like to grant your request, but our ballet master, M. Taglioni, does not let anyone dance except his daughter.’

Then I took a letter out of my pocket, and handed it to the Minister. It was a letter which had been given to me by His Highness Prince Oldenburg, who had ordered it to be presented, through the Court Minister, to King Wilhelm.

‘Well, this is a different matter,’ the Minister told us, skimming the letter, ‘Under these circumstances, your wife will be able to dance on our stage.’

We left our address with the Court Minister, and on the following morning we were honoured by a visit by from the Director of the Royal Theatre, Hultzen, who had received orders to inform us that my wife would be permitted to give six performances of The Parisian Market. From the first performance to the fifth, the enthusiasm of the public increased, and, after the last, the whole audience shouted: ‘Stay! Stay longer!’

In light of their success in Berlin, the Petipas were commissioned by Kaiser Wilhelm I to give six more performances at the Royal Theatre. After the sixth performance of the second series, the Kaiser sent valuable gifts to the Petipas – a diamond bracelet for Maria and a gold snuff-box with diamonds for Petipa.

Subsequent stagings

The Parisian Market was first staged in Moscow on the 15th January [O.S. 3rd January] 1868 and Lucien Petipa would later stage the ballet in Brussels in 1872. Thirty years after its successful débuts in Europe, the ballet was revived twice in Saint Petersburg. The first revival was by Lev Ivanov that was staged for the summer season at Krasnoe Selo on the 18th July [O.S. 6th July] 1892. Two years later, Petipa revived the ballet for the farewell benefit performance of Maria Anderson, who had been forced into retirement after the horrific accident in which she had been badly burned. Although her career had come to an abrupt end, she clearly recovered enough from her injuries to give one last performance in the role of Lizetta. Petipa’s final revival of The Parisian Market premièred at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre on the 20th January [O.S. 8th January] 1895. For this occasion, the role of Lizetta may have been staged as a purely mimed role or was split into two parts, with Anderson performing all the mime and an additional ballerina performing the dances. The Parisian Market remained in the Imperial Ballet repertoire until 1913.

Sources

• Nadine Meisner (2019) Marius Petipa: The Emperor’s Ballet Master. New York City: Oxford University Press
• Marius Petipa, Russian Ballet Master: The Memoirs of Marius Petipa. Translated ed. by Helen Whittaker, introduction and edited by Lillian Moore. London, UK: Dance Books Ltd (1958)
• Ivor Guest (1953) The Ballet of the Second Empire. Middletown, Connectivut, US: Pitman & Wesleyan

Photos and images: © Dansmuseet, Stockholm © Большой театр России © Victoria and Albert Museum, London © Государственный академический Мариинский театр © CNCS/Pascal François © Bibliothèque nationale de France © Musée l’Opéra © Colette Masson/Roger-Viollet © АРБ имени А. Я. Вагановой © Михаил Логвинов © Михайловский театр, фотограф Стас Левшин. Партнёры проекта: СПбГБУК «Санкт-Петербургская государственная Театральная библиотека». ФГБОУВО «Академия русского балета имени А. Я. Вагановой» СПбГБУК «Михайловский театр». Михаил Логвинов, фотограф. Martine Kahane.