The early history of Swan Lake is as steeped in myth as the story itself. The first ever performance was in Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre on 20 February 1877, and popular legend says that it was a disaster. The choreographer Julius Reisinger apparently had no sympathy for the music, butchered the score and invited dancers to add their own routines, to tunes of their choice. The press reviews from the time said that the music was baffling, the story confused and the lead dancer, Pelagia Karpakova, was hopeless. But even then Swan Lake must have worked its magic on the general audience. Fresh productions with better choreography were mounted by a new ballet master, Joseph Hansen, in 1879 and 1882, and in all there were 41 performances over a period of six years. Swan Lake was performed by the Moscow Ballet until the early 1880s, when the company’s budget was slashed and it could no longer afford to put on such an expensive show.

Swan Lake may have disappeared as a complete ballet, but excerpts continued to be performed right across Europe. Hansen staged a lakeside scene with new music in London in 1884, and Tchaikovsky conducted a performance of the second act in Prague in 1888 (in his diary he describes the experience as “a moment of absolute happiness”). After the composer died in 1893, the Maryinsky Theatre of St Petersburg held a memorial concert. The story goes that a new version of the second act, choreographed for the concert by the Maryinsky’s assistant ballet master, Lev Ivanov, was such a hit that the theatre decided to revive the entire ballet. This is just another legend - Tchaikovsky’s other ballets, The Nutcracker and The Sleeping Beauty, were massively popular in St Petersburg, and there were already plans to make a new Swan Lake long before he died.

The composer’s brother, Modeste Tchaikovsky, streamlined the story for the new production, and simplified the mime. The score was also cut and rearranged, by the conductor Riccardo Drigo. The Maryinsky’s ballet master, Marius Petipa, was 76 at the time and feeling unwell, so he shared the choreography with Ivanov. Petipa created the bright, festive first and third acts, Ivanov the lyrical, dramatic Acts II and IV, which focus on the Swan Queen, Odile.

The first Odette/Odile was Pierina Legnani, a brilliant Italian dancer who was already famous for being able to do 32 consecutive fouettés – rapid turns on one foot, while the other is whipped out to the side. Petipa gave her a chance to show off her skill in Act III, when Odile, Odette’s evil double, tricks the Prince into proposing marriage. The “32 fouettés” have since become one of the most famous technical challenges in the whole of ballet.

Video Link > The challenges of dancing Odette/Odile: see the famous 32 fouettés

The first Siegfried was less impressive - the 50-year-old Pavel Gerdt, who needed the help of another dancer even to lift the ballerina.

Princes these days are a lot more athletic, and this is often mentioned as a major difference between modern Swan Lakes and those of the past, but in fact Gerdt’s successor, Nikolai Legat, was already beefing up the role. Predictably, the critics attacked him for getting rid of the second lifter.

The first performance of the new production was scheduled for late 1894, but because of the death of Tsar Alexander III it was delayed until 15 January, 1895. Just like in its first ever performances, the critics were unhappy, but the public took the ballet to its heart.

Swan Lake returned to Moscow in 1901, staged by the Bolshoi’s director-to-be, Alexander Gorsky. Although he stayed loyal to Petipa and Ivanov this time, he made changes to the ballet when he revived it in 1920 and again in 1922. The Petipa-Ivanov Swan Lake survived at the Maryinsky until 1933, when the great ballet teacher, Agrippina Vaganova, put on a version to appeal to the Soviet authorities, with the evil Von Rothbart as a scheming Duke. The Swan Lake that the Maryinsky Ballet dances today was put together in 1950 by Konstantin Sergeyev, based on Petipa and Ivanov but including dances by Vaganova and Gorsky.

Video Link > Why is 'Swan Lake' such an important ballet?

The first time the British public saw excerpts of Swan Lake performed to the authentic music was in 1910, when a troupe of Russian dancers visited the London Hippodrome. It was another 22 years before the first home-grown staging, a performance of the second act starring Anton Dolin and Alicia Markova at Sadler’s Wells. Only two years later the first full-scale British version was premiered by the Vic-Wells Ballet at Sadler’s Wells, on 20 November 1934, with Alicia Markova as Odette/Odile and Robert Helpmann as Prince Siegfried. The British Swan Lake had a great Russian pedigree. It was supervised by Nicholas Sergeyev, who knew Petipa and, from 1903 until the Revolution, was in charge of notating the ballets at the Maryinsky Theatre. That didn’t stop the artistic directors of the Royal Ballet tinkering with it over the years - often controversially putting in their own steps. When Anthony Dowell staged the Royal Ballet’s current Swan Lake, in 1987, he went back to Sergeyev’s original notations to create a Swan Lake that, choreographically, is as pure as any in the world today.

Video Link > The lasting impact of the music and choreography