56 Facts About Marius Petipa

Marius Petipa is considered one of the most influential ballet masters and choreographers in ballet history.

Marius Petipa created over fifty ballets, some of which have survived in versions either faithful to, inspired by, or reconstructed from his originals.

Marius Petipa revived a substantial number of works created by other choreographers.

The most famous of Marius Petipa's revivals are Le Corsaire, Giselle, La Esmeralda, Coppelia, La Fille Mal Gardee, The Little Humpbacked Horse and Swan Lake.

Many individual numbers taken from Marius Petipa's work continued to be performed independently, in spite of the fact that the full-length ballets that spawned them had disappeared from the Imperial Ballet's repertoire.

Marius Petipa was born Victor Marius Alphonse Petipa in Marseille, France on 11 March 1818.

Marius Petipa's mother, Victorine Grasseau, was a tragic actress and teacher of drama, while his father, Jean-Antoine Petipa, was among the most renowned Ballet Masters and pedagogues in Europe.

At the time of Marius's birth, Jean Petipa was engaged as Premier danseur to the Salle Bauveau, and in 1819 he was appointed Maitre de ballet to that theatre.

Marius Petipa spent his early childhood traveling throughout Europe with his family, as his parents' professional engagements took them from city to city.

The young Marius Petipa received his general education at the Grand College in Brussels, while attending the Brussels Conservatory where he studied music and learned to play the violin.

At the age of nine Marius Petipa performed for the first time in a ballet production as a Savoyard in his father's staging of Pierre Gardel's 1800 ballet La Dansomanie in 1827.

The violent street fighting that followed caused all theatres to be shut down for a time, and consequently Jean Marius Petipa found himself without a position.

The Marius Petipa family was left in dire straits for some years.

The Petipa family relocated to Bordeaux, France, in 1834 where Marius' father had secured the position of Premier maitre de ballet to the Grand Theatre de Bordeaux.

The 21-year-old Marius Petipa accompanied his father on a tour of the United States with a group of French dancers in July 1839.

Marius Petipa took part in performances at the Paris Opera where his brother Lucien Marius Petipa was engaged as Premier danseur.

Marius Petipa was offered the position of Premier danseur to the Grand Theatre in Bordeaux in 1841.

Marius Petipa's partnering of Carlotta Grisi during a performance of La Peri was much celebrated, particularly his almost acrobatic lifts and catches of the ballerina that dazzled the audience.

In 1843, Marius Petipa was offered the position premier danseur at the Teatro del Circo in Madrid, Spain.

Rather than keep his fateful appointment, Marius Petipa quickly left Spain, never to return.

Marius Petipa then travelled to Paris where he stayed for a brief period.

In 1847 Marius Petipa seduced yet another man's wife, and the husband called for a duel, yet again.

So, Marius Petipa found himself in St Petersburg late in the same year, beginning his career ascent to become one of the most influential choreographers in history.

In 1847, Marius Petipa accepted the position of premier danseur to the Imperial Theatres of St Petersburg, at that time the capital of the Russian Empire.

In 1848 Marius Petipa's father relocated to St Petersburg, where he taught the Classe de perfection at the Imperial Ballet School until his death in 1855.

At the time Marius Petipa had arrived in St Petersburg, the Imperial Ballet had experienced a considerable decline in popularity with the public since the 1842 departure of Marie Taglioni, who had been engaged in the Imperial capital as guest ballerina.

Marius Petipa was accompanied by his chief collaborator, the prolific Italian composer Cesare Pugni, who was appointed Ballet Composer of the Imperial Theatres, a position created especially for him.

On 29 May 1861 Marius Petipa presented his 1859 ballet Le Marche des parisiens at the Theatre Imperial de l'Opera in Paris as Le Marche des Innocents.

Choreography was a logical alternative to dancing for the now 41-year-old Marius Petipa, who was to retire from the stage.

In 1860 the renowned French Ballet Master Arthur Saint-Leon was given the coveted position by the director of the Imperial Theatres Andrei Saburov, and soon a healthy and productive rivalry between him and Marius Petipa ensued, bringing the Imperial Ballet to new heights throughout the 1860s.

Rosati enlisted the assistance of Marius Petipa, who reminded Saburov that the Imperial Theatres were contractually obligated to grant the ballerina a new production for her benefit.

Marius Petipa began work by collaborating with the composer Pugni, who wrote his melodious and apt score with Marius Petipa while in rehearsals.

Each new season required that Marius Petipa create a new multi-act Grand ballet, that he choreograph the dance sections for various operas, and that he prepare galas and divertissements for court performances, royal nuptials, etc.

Marius Petipa presented his colossal grand ballet set in ancient Rome La Vestale in 1888, which was staged for the benefit performance of the visiting Italian ballerina Elena Cornalba.

Marius Petipa was diagnosed with a severe case of the skin disease pemphigus in 1892.

Some claim either that Marius Petipa was responsible for staging the entire ballet or that he merely supervised Ivanov's progress.

In 1893 Marius Petipa supervised Cecchetti and Ivanov's staging of the ballet Cinderella, set to the music of Baron Boris Fitinhof-Schell.

Marius Petipa was so enamored with the stellar ballerina that he bestowed upon her the rarely held title of Prima ballerina assoluta, and over the course of the next eight years, Marius Petipa staged many new ballets especially for her talents.

Marius Petipa returned to choreography from his long infirmity with the one-act Le Reveil de Flore, set to the music of Riccardo Drigo.

Marius Petipa staged Le Reveil de Flore in honor of the wedding of Tsar Alexander III's daughter, the Grand Duchess Xenia to the Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich.

Marius Petipa would spend a great deal of his final years reviving older ballets.

In 1896 Marius Petipa was given a benefit performance to celebrate 50 years in service to the St Petersburg Imperial Theatres.

One example of Telyakovsky's efforts in his attempt to "de-throne" Marius Petipa came in 1902 when he invited Alexander Gorsky, former premier danseur to the Imperial Ballet, to stage his own version of Marius Petipa's 1869 ballet Don Quixote.

Marius Petipa became furious when he learned this new version would be staged for the St Peterburg troupe, as he had not even been consulted on the production of a ballet that was originally his creation.

Marius Petipa was further frustrated by the fact that the Imperial Theatre's newly appointed regisseur Nicholas Sergeyev was being paid large sums to travel throughout the Russian Empire and stage many of the ageing Ballet Master's works.

In late 1902 Marius Petipa began work on a ballet adaptation of the tale Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs titled Le Miroir magique.

Marius Petipa mounted the work for his own benefit performance, which was to mark a "semi-retirement" for the Ballet Master.

Marius Petipa struggled with the production; he found designer Alexander Volonine's modernist decor and costumes to be discordant with the ballet's style and setting, but he struggled most of all with the music provided to him by the young avant-garde composer Arsenii Koreshchenko.

Marius Petipa received a roaring ovation from the audience at the end of the performance.

Marius Petipa has staged both ballets entirely differently and in a much more original manner.

Marius Petipa was invited in March 1904 to stage The Pharaoh's Daughter at the Paris Opera by relatives of Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges, who wrote the ballet's libretto, but his health prevented him from it.

In 1904 Marius Petipa coached the great Anna Pavlova for her performances in Giselle and her debut in Paquita.

Marius Petipa's diaries reflect the constant fear of his aging body, and that he had little time left to live.

In 1903 Marius Petipa presented completely new choreography for many of the pas in his 1868 ballet Le Roi Candaule.

Marius Petipa then set to work on what would prove to be his final ballet.

At the suggestion of his physicians he left with his family to Yalta in southern Russia where the air was more agreeable with his health, and soon the Marius Petipa family relocated to the resort Gurzuf in the Crimea, where the Ballet Master spent his remaining years.