Waltz (Swan Lake)

The Moscow Imperial Theatres commissioned the score in 1875 for a fee of 800 rubles, and Tchaikovsky — the first composer of his standing to take ballet seriously as a form — delivered it the following spring. Julius Reisinger's production opened at the Bolshoi on 4 March 1877 and was judged a failure; the choreography and the dancing were blamed more than the music, but numbers were cut and replaced over the following seasons. Two years after Tchaikovsky's death, Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov staged the version at the Mariinsky, in Riccardo Drigo's revision, from which nearly all later productions descend.