In the history of the music theatre the ballet "La Sylphide" takes up a special place. The premiere of the ballet, that took place on March 12, 1832 on stage of the Grand Opera in Paris, marked the beginning of the brilliant era of ballet art – the era of romanticism. Creators of "La Sylphidfe" – the librettist A. Nourrit, composer J. Schneitzhoeffer, ballet master F. Taglioni, artist P. Siseri. Their brainchild, summing up the searches of choreographers and dancers of a previous epoch, has opened new horizons in front of the ballet art. "La Sylphide" has amazed the contemporaries with artistic perfection, significance of poetic content, its conformable mood. The leading theme of romanticism – dissension of dream and validity – has received an impressing presentation on a ballet stage.

The ballet plot was cast by the Scottish legends. Its immediate source was the fantastic story "Trilby" by Charles Nodier, essentially worked over by a script writer. At first sight, this is a simple ballet fairytale: a farmer James, having left his home and fiancée for the sake of the charming forest spirit Sylphide, involuntarily kills the chosen one. But such a dear to the romantics of the previous century idea of incompatibility of poetry and tedium of life, of insuperable contradiction between ideal and terrestrial rises behind the story’s peripetias.

But not only had the plot novelty made "La Sylphide" the manifesto of ballet romanticism. The newness was the artistic form of the performance, where dance, having pressed in the rights the pantomime, became the fundamental expressive means, was filled with deep lyrical underlying message. The essence of a plot collision has found its semantic polysemanticism due to the choreography, its figurative contrasts. Dancing characteristics of personages of the real world – the Scottish peasants dressed in bright national costumes – were based on folk and ethnographic foundation. The dance of personages of a fantastic kingdom – the Sylphide and her heavenly friends- has been absolutely deprived of household signs. This dance, which afterwards has received the name "classical", "transferred the most difficult soul movements. Airiness and strict beauty of the "Sylphide" dance was underlined by a relative ballet costume: a bodice opening shoulders and hands, long ballerina's dress from the white gauze hardly illuminated with blue, transparent wings behind the back.

La Sylphide – the unrestricted dream, poetic fantasy materialized in the image of the winged virgin has brought an international recognition to the twenty year old Marie Taglioni. The contemporaries have apprehended her art as revelation. In radiance of her glory the name of the ballet founder has grown dim – Marie's father, the ballet master and pedagogue Filippo Taglioni, who was able to face the talent of the great daughter. Among the ballets composed by him for Marie, "La Sylphide" remained an unsurpassed masterpiece.

In "La Sylphide" the ballerina has risen for the first time on her fingers not for effect, but for the sake of figurative problems. Taglioni’s heroine indeed seemed supernatural, not a woman, but the spirit trampling on laws of attraction … The audience didn’t seem to notice the Refined Taglioni’s techniques, so silent and light her flights were, so ingeniously was her bewitching grace. "She dances, as nightingale sings, as butterfly flies: it is her language, her life, her happiness", – the eyewitness marked. The Russian audience got acquainted with "La Sylphide" in 1835. The ballet was held edited by the ballet master A. Titus together with L. Kruazet in a title role. The premiere remained not noticed. And in two years Mariae and Filippo Taglioni arrived to Russia. For the Petersburg debut they have chosen "La Sylphide" (on September 6, 1837). Now the ballet made a success. They started to talk about it as of sensation. Marie Taglioni was awarded the loudest epithets.

On the Petersbrg stage Ekaterina Sankovskaya performed successfully in the part of Sylphide. Tatyana Smirnova, Nadezhda Bogdanova. But in the second half of XIXth century the ballet appeared in repertoire less often. Its last renewal was undertaken in 1892 by Petipa for the ballerina Varvara Nikitina. Having presented the ballet theater with new ideas, the first-born of a romantic choreography has gradually left from the stage of both Russia and Europe.

But Taglioni’s remarkable creation wasn't lost. In 1836 it has decorated the repertoire of the Royal Danish Ballet. Production on music by H. Levenshold was carried out by the coryphaeus of the Danish choreography August Bournonville (1805-1879). He has reproduced a dramaturgic outline of the original, has kept dance stylistics. Having been saved by several generations of the Danish artists, this "La Sylphide" has lived up till now. In the post-war years "La Sylphide" has returned home. In 1946 it was presented to the Paris audience by the troupe "Ballets des Champs-Elysées" (the director V.Gzovsky, performers – N.Vyrubova and R.Petix), in 1953 – the troupe " Le Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas" (H.Lander’s production). And after a decade victorious procession of the ballet around the world has begun.

"La Sylphide" has returned to Russia in 1975. The Danish ballet master Elsa-Marianne von Rosen- a once the tremendous performer of Sylphide, connoisseur and the expert of Bournonville’s choreography – carried out the performance of A. Bournonville (H. Levenshold) on stage of the Leningrad State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet. Refined, subtle arabesque, "La Sylphide" has carried away everybody with the irrepressible dancing elements, new type of the choreography, emotional paints, the possibility to demonstrate the technique and mastery.

In 1983 this ballet has appeared on stage of the theater of Belarus in production of the outstanding Leningrad ballet master, People’s Artist of the USSR, twice the winner of the Parisian academy of dance Oleg Vinogradov who has presented the original artistic stylization – a reconstructive variant of the ballet that differed with the original choreographic drawing. In the performance the leading soloists of the Belorussian ballet were conspicuous – Ludmila Brzozowski, Natella Dadishkeliani, Inessa Dushkevich (Sylphide), Yuriy Troyan and Joseph Raukut (James), Tatyana Shemetovets (Effie), Svetlana Tsitovich (Madge), Vladimir Ivanov and Sergey Pestehin (Gurn). The performance turned out to be modern in sounding, deep range of problems of relations, having opened the scale, eternal questions that were put in a basis of the work – love and debt, life and death, good and evil.

Up to now the masterpiece of romantic time hasn't lost its former charm. Its poetry captivates our contemporaries as it did in Taglioni’s time, and the primordial beauty of the choreography gives high esthetic pleasure both to performers and spectators.

Choreography – August Bournonville in the edition of Elsa-Marianne von Rosen
Ballet master of the production – People’s Artist of the USSR, Professor Nikita Dolgushin (Russia)
The Conductor of the Production – the Honoured Artist of Ukraine Victor Ploskina
The Artist of the Production – the Honoured Artist of Russia, laureate of the State Prize of the Republic of Belarus Vyacheslav Okunev (Russia).
Ballet master’s assistant – Aleksandra Tikhomirova (Russia).