Composers › Léo Delibes › Programme note
2 excerpts from Coppélia
Gerald Larner wrote 2 versions of differing length — choose one below.
March
Mazurka
Coppélia was such a success on its first performance at the Paris Opéra in 1870 that - in spite of the terrible choas caused by the Siege of Paris and by the death of the seventeen-year old prima ballerina Giuseppini Bozzacchi - it made Delibes the most celebrated ballet composer of his day. Based on a story by E.T.A Hoffmann, the one about the life-size but not quite life-like doll also featured in Offenbach’s opera The Tales of Hoffmann, it is set in a village in Galicia where an event everyone is looking forward to is the inauguration of a bell presented by the lord of the manor. The dignitaries make their entry to the ceremony to the accompaniment of the March at the beginning of Act III. Although Delibes seems to have been not very certain where Galicia is - or so you would assume from the presence of Hungarian and Spanish dances in his spledidly uninhibited score - he gets his local colour right at least with the vigorously tuneful Mazurka in Act I.
From Gerald Larner’s files: “Coppélia - march, mazurka”
Waltz
Mazurka
Coppélia was such a success on its first performance at the Paris Opéra in 1870 that - in spite of the terrible choas caused by the Siege of Paris and by the death of the seventeen-year old prima ballerina Giuseppini Bozzacchi - it made Delibes the most celebrated ballet composer of his day. Based on a story by E.T.A Hoffmann, the one about the life-size but not quite life-like doll also featured in Offenbach’s opera The Tales of Hoffmann, it is set in a village in Galicia where, it seems, everyone’s favourite dance is the waltz. Certainly, attractive examples of the waltz occur at regular intervals through the three acts. The most tuneful and most stylish of them is the Valse lente, which is first heard near the beginning of Act I and is later recalled in an entr’acte. Although Delibes seems to have been not very certain where Galicia is - or so you would assume from the presence of Hungarian and Spanish dances in his spledidly uninhibited score - he gets his local colour right at least with the vigorously tuneful Mazurka which follows soon after the Valse lente in Act I.
From Gerald Larner’s files: “Coppélia - waltz, mazurka”