Event

Coppelia

IBT WILL PERFORM, COPPELIA, "The girl with enamel eyes," a mime-ballet in two acts and three scenes. This humorous story takes place in the storybook village of Olympia in Southern Poland. It's about a clever young girl (Swanilda), her silly boyfriend (Franz), a beautiful mechanical doll (Coppelia), and a funny old toymaker (Dr. Coppelius), who dreams of making a doll who would come to life and keep him company. The Paris Opera Ballet (POB) performed the first performance of Coppelia on May 25, 1870. The original choreography was by Arthur Saint-Leon with music by Leo Delibes. The plot for Coppelia was taken from an E. T. A. Hoffman story, "Der Sandmann," which introduced into ballet the world of automatons, dolls, and marionettes. Coppelia was, in fact, the last ballet produced at the Paris Opera before the Franco-Prussian War forced that theater to close its doors, which marked the end of an epoch for ballet as for much else. The choreographer Saint-Leon died three months after the first performance. Coppelia is listed as the most frequently performed ballet in the history of the POB (over 850 performances).