Ballet

Les Sylphides

Les Sylphides is a ballet choreographed by Michel Fokine to music by Frédéric Chopin, first performed in 1908. Les Sylphides (French: [le silfid]) is a short, non-narrative ballet blanc to piano music by Frédéric Chopin, selected…

Les Sylphides
Image: Valentin Serov · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Choreography
Michel Fokine
Music
Frédéric Chopin
Premiere
1908
First performed at
Théâtre du Châtelet

About the work

Les Sylphides (French: [le silfid]) is a short, non-narrative ballet blanc to piano music by Frédéric Chopin, selected and orchestrated by Alexander Glazunov.

The ballet, described as a "romantic reverie", is frequently cited as the first ballet to be simply about mood and dance. Les Sylphides has no plot but instead consists of several white-clad sylphs dancing in the moonlight with the "poet" or "young man" dressed in white tights and a black tunic.

Its original choreography was by Michel Fokine, with Chopin's music orchestrated by Alexander Glazunov. Glazunov had already set some of the music in 1892 as a purely orchestral suite, under the title Chopiniana, Op. 46. In that form, it was introduced to the public in December 1893, conducted by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Subsequently, the choices of Chopin pieces and the orchestrations have been revised several times by a variety of composers.

From the Wikipedia article “Les Sylphides”, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

More ballets by the composer

All ballets by Frédéric Chopin (8) →

Credits from Wikidata (Q1630831), CC0.