The Complete Ballet Libretti

<p>During his lifetime the great Danish choreographer August Bournonville (1805 - 1879) created more than fifty ballets. As the rehearsal period for each ballet ended and the ballet reached its final form Bournonville published a short pamphlet giving the plot of the ballet in detail.</p><p> All those which survice are gathered here translated into English by Patricia N. McAndrew. The libretti help us to piece together a comprehensive picture of the Danish ballet master as an artist of national and international calibre and enable us to assess more fully his place in the world of nineteenth-century European ballet. As his characters and ideas unfold before us we can begin to compare them with those of other choreographers of his day and finally discover in part something sorely missed by many critics today: the setting in which August Bournonville's choreographic gems were once displayed.</p><p> Today more than a century after his death Bournonville's name is more widely known than it was during his lifetime: eight ballets and a number of assorted dances still grace the stage of Copenhagen's Royal Theatre and those skeletal libretti-what Bournonville called his ballet poems-still exist to impress upon us what a treasure we possess in the Bournonville ballets to remind us of what has been lost over the years and-perhaps most important of all- -to reveal to us the workings of an ingenious practical choreographer's mind.</p>