Marius Petipa

Marius Petipa (1818-1910) was born in Marseille and spent almost his entire working life in St Petersburg, where he joined the Imperial Theatres in 1847 and served as chief ballet master from 1871. Over more than half a century he created or reworked upwards of fifty full-length ballets, among them The Sleeping Beauty, Raymonda and the surviving text of Swan Lake, and his collaboration with Tchaikovsky fixed the shape of the classical Russian ballet. The choreography of The Nutcracker was drafted to his scenario and detailed musical instructions, though illness passed the staging itself to Lev Ivanov. Trained by his father and a dancer in western Europe before Russia, he established himself as a choreographer with the success of The Pharaoh's Daughter, and Don Quixote and La Bayadere stand beside the later ballets. Accounts of his appointment to the head of the ballet differ: 1871 in one, as chief ballet master, and 1869 in the other, as first ballet master. His productions set demanding solo technique and mime against large-scale formations for the corps de ballet, and the 1895 Swan Lake was shared with Lev Ivanov.