Ballet

La Boutique fantasque

La Boutique fantasque is a ballet choreographed by Léonide Massine to music by Gioachino Rossini. La Boutique fantasque, also known as The Magic Toyshop or The Fantastic Toyshop, is a ballet in one act conceived by…

La Boutique fantasque
Image: Silvano De Forheger · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Choreography
Léonide Massine
Music
Gioachino Rossini
Premiere
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First performed at
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About the work

La Boutique fantasque, also known as The Magic Toyshop or The Fantastic Toyshop, is a ballet in one act conceived by Léonide Massine, who devised the choreography for a libretto written with the artist André Derain, a pioneer of Fauvism. Derain also designed the décor and costumes for the ballet. Ottorino Respighi wrote the music based on piano pieces by Gioachino Rossini. Its world premiere was at the Alhambra Theatre in London on 5 June 1919, performed by Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.

Massine described how, in Rome for a ballet season, Respighi brought the score of Rossini's Péchés de vieillesse to Diaghilev. The impresario played them to Massine and Respighi. Toulouse-Lautrec was an influence on the period setting and style of La Boutique fantasque, and Massine envisaged the principal character "quite Lautrec-like". Diaghilev arranged for Massine to meet Derain in Paris, and they worked out the scenario with the artist's marionette theatre at his home on the rue Bonaparte. The date of the action was moved from 1832 to the 1860s.

The story of the ballet has similarities to Die Puppenfee ("The Fairy Doll") of Josef Bayer, an old German ballet that had been performed by Jose Mendez in Moscow in 1897 and by Serge and Nicholas Legat in Saint Petersburg in 1903. Others note the similarities to Hans Christian Andersen's The Steadfast Tin Soldier.

Massine's scenario centers on the love story between two can-can dancer dolls in a toyshop, incorporating elements of comedy, national folk dance and mime, as well as classical choreography.

From the Wikipedia article “La Boutique fantasque”, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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Credits from Wikidata (Q2420510), CC0.