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This page is partially completed, with information about the Stars of Petipa's first production.  There will be future pages added for the Stars of subsequent productions.  Check back!

THE STARS OF THE SHOW

Pierina Legnani (1863-1930)
Odette/Odile

    La Legnani was a student of Caterina Beretta in Milan, Italy where she had been born on September 30, 1863 and where she was to die on November 15, 1930. In 1890, she was appearing to great acclaim in ballets at the Alhambra Theatre in London, which specialized in a sort of vaudeville/spectacular/pantomime ballet, then returned to Italy where she was appointed prima ballerina of the Teatro alla Scala in her beloved Milan. She was a part of the Italian "invasion" of the Russian ballet in the 1890s, which introduced great technical brilliance and virtuosity to the elegant, but rather staid tradition of the Imperial Theaters up to that time.

She was hired by the Maryinsky Theater in 1893 to assume the previously unheard-of rank of prima ballerina assoluta. While no stunning beauty, and somewhat faulted for her "lack of sensuality", her technique in both legato and allegro parts was phenomenal, and her technical tricks, enabled by her unsuspected strength, often drove audiences to a frenzy.     In the coda of the Black Swan pas de deux in Act III of Swan Lake, she not only performed thirty-
two whipping turns called fouettes while remaining in one single spot (legend had it that one could chalk a circle on the floor around a ruble coin, and she could perform her turns with the point of her toe never moving outside of that circle), but after only sixteen bars, resume, at a galloping tempo, with thirty-two echappes releves traveling the center line of the stage. She was also possessed of a pleasant offstage personality, and was very popular in St. Petersburg society.

Her last performance was in the Minkus/Petipa ballet La Camargo on January 28, 1901. She retired to Italy, where she lived in a villa at Lake Como, but served as an examiner for La Scala Ballet School until shortly before her death.

PAVEL ANDREEVICH GERDT aka Paul Friedrich Gerdt (1844 - 1917)
Prince Siegfried

    Gerdt had been born in Volynkino, Russia on November 22 (Julian calendar)/December 4 (Gregorian calendar) 1844. He died in Vamaljoki, Finland on July 30 (Julian)/August 12 (Gregorian). He had been a student of both Jean Petipa and his son Marius at the St. Petersburg Theater School, where he also studied with Christian Johannson.

Gerdt was the premier danseur of the Maryinsky Theater when Swan Lake was scheduled for production. He had an established record of success in the Tchaikovsky ballets, having created Prince Desire' in Sleeping Beauty, and Prince Coqueluche (the Sugar Plum Fairy's cavalier) in The Nutcracker, and so he became a natural choice for the romantic lead in the new work, although he was over twice the age of the character he was portraying.

Gerdt was particularly noted for the expressive quality of his acting, and he remained very good-looking, by the then-standards of masculine pulchritude, right up until his retirement from leading men's roles in 1901. He was a distinguished teacher at the St. Petersburg school where he had studied, and taught Anna Pavlova, Agrippina Vaganova and Michel Fokine, among many others. He also assisted Lev Ivanov in staging Delibes' Sylvia and finished it when Ivanov died.

Gerdt continued to perform in character parts until shortly before his death. His daughter Elizaveta carried on the "family business", teaching and coaching until her death in 1975.