Le Spectre de la Rose

One-act ballet to Berlioz’s orchestration of Weber’s Invitation to the Dance

Idea by Jean-Louis Vaudoyer, based on a poem by Théophile Gautier

Set design for the first production based on sketches by Léon Bakst

The ballet was first staged in 1911. This version was first performed in Perm in 2009.

Alexandre Benois, a contemporary of Michel Fokine, called Le Spectre de la Rose, based on a romantic poem by Gautier, ‘a graceful little bagatelle in the style of the romantic salon ballads of the 1830s’. However, history has accorded this ‘little bagatelle’ a place among the masterpieces of ballet heritage. Michel Fokine, the choreographer of Diaghilev’s newly-formed Ballets Russes, used Weber’s poetic suite Invitation to the Dance for this production. The parts of the Girl, intoxicated by languid fatigue after her first ball, and the Spectre of the Rose, dreamed about by the young debutante, were entrusted to the company’s principal dancers: Tamara Karsavina and Vaslav Nijinsky. Fokine’s choreography was a defining moment for Nijinsky: ballet historians later interpreted the Spectre jumping through the window as the dancer’s leap into madness and immortality.