The Awakening of Flora
Back in the day, you hardly saw The Awakening of Flora, and in fact, until the Mariinsky revived Awakening back in 2007, it did not gain today’s popularity, especially in the competitive world of dance. Like many classical forms, this ballet is rooted in Greco-Roman Mythology, drawing on the story of the nymph Chloris who later becomes the Goddess Flora.
The Libretto
“Watched over by Selene, the nymph Chloris, the new bride of Zephyrus, is sleeping with her fellow nymphs. At the approach of Boreas, however, she awakens from the cold. Chloris begs Eos for help. Eos comforts Chloris and announces that Helios will appear and put an end to her sufferings. With the appearance of the sun god, everything comes alive. Enchanted by the beauty of the nymph, Helios kisses Chloris. At the summons of the sun god, Zephyrus, Chloris’s new husband, flies into the arms of his beloved. Hermes announces the arrival of Ganymede and Hebe, who bring Chloris and Zephyrus a cup of nectar and declare that Zeus is granting them eternal youth and Chloris immortality. The wife of Zephyrus is no longer the nymph Chloris – she is now Flora, the Goddess of the Flowers. Olympus is revealed, and the gods appear – Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hephaestus, Athena, Demeter, Ares, Hades, Persephone and Aphrodite.”
If you aren’t familiar with your Greco-Roman mythology— Selene is the goddess of the moon, Boreas is the god of the cold north wind, Eos is the goddess of the dawn, Helios is the god of the Sun. Zephyrus is the god of the east wind, Gaynymede is Zeus’s cupbearer, and Hebe is the goddess of youth. (It is also hard to decipher when even Petipa swapped and mixed the Greek and Roman names.)
The Awakening of Flora was created and staged as a part of the wedding celebrations of the Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna, daughter of Tsar Alexander III and the Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich. It is speculated that the original ballet was to be Le Bal Campêtre for the summer season, but it was later reworked for the royal wedding gala.
The Imperial Theatre première of The Awakening of Flora was part of a farewell benefit performance for the ballerina Maria Anderson, who had sadly been forced into early retirement after sustaining burn injuries in a horrific accident that occurred during a rehearsal for Cinderella, in which her costume caught alight on an ironing device.
In the original theatre program, the choreography for The Awakening of Flora was erroneously credited to a joint effort by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. When a review in the Saint Petersburg Gazette also credited the choreography to both Petipa and Ivanov, Petipa responded to this matter with the following letter to correct the newspaper:
In no. 201 of your much respected newspaper, a not fully accurate communication was reported about the production of the ballet Le Réveil de Flore. The programme of the ballet was created by L. I. Ivanov and me together, (but) the production of the dances and the mise-en-scène belong exclusively to me; Mr. L. I. Ivanov had no part in them.
At some point after the 1894 première, Drigo composed and added two new variations to the ballet – a Viennese-waltz variation for Eos/Aurora, the Goddess of the Dawn, and a pizzicato variation for Hebe, the Goddess of Youth. After the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, The Awakening of Flora was performed for the final time by the Imperial Ballet in 1919.
Following the development of the Stepanov notation system, The Awakening of Flora became one of the first ballets to be notated in this new method. It was notated shortly after its 1894 première and is part of the Sergeyev Collection.
The ballet was introduced to the West by Anna Pavlova when, in 1914, she used Drigo’s score to create a 30-minute abridgment of the full-length ballet for her company, choreographed by Ivan Clustine. Pavlova’s staging of The Awakening of Flora enjoyed a very successful première in London on the 12th October 1914.
After a fifty-year absence, The Awakening of Flora returned to the stage in 1981 when Cuban Ballet Master Pierre Contal choreographed and staged a new version for the Marseilles Opera House.
In 2004, Yuri Burlaka utilized five pieces taken from Drigo’s score for The Awakening of Flora to create an abstract pas de quatre inspired by the full-length ballet. He also utilized two supplemental pieces that Drigo composed for Le Roi Candaule and The Vestal. The piece was entitled the Rose Pas de quatre and features the goddesses Flora, Aurora, Diana and Hebe. The pas de quatre was originally created for a workshop at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy and later added to the Bolshoi Ballet repertoire. In 2008, Burlaka included his Rose Pas de quatre in a Russian ballet gala The Golden Age of Russian Ballet, which was arranged for the school of the State Ballet of Chelyabinsk. It has since been performed by students of the Vaganova Academy for their annual graduation performances.
However, it was not until 2007, when Sergei Vikharev mounted his production for the Mariinsky Ballet, that the ballet regained recognition. Vikharev’s production premièred on the 12th April 2007 at the Mariinsky Theatre as part of the VII International Ballet Festival, with Evgenia Obraztsova as Flora, Vladimir Shklyarov as Zephyrus, Svetlana Ivanova as Selene, Xenia Ostreikovskaya as Eos, Maxim Chaschegorov as Helios, Valeria Martynyuk as Eros, Alexei Timofeyev as Hermes and Daria Sukhorukova as Hebe. Unlike Vikharev’s productions of The Sleeping Beauty and La Bayadère, his production of The Awakening of Flora was a success in Saint Petersburg and even won the 2007 Golden Mask Award.
It was later popularized by the Prix de Lausanne in 2020 when Ava Arbuckle won the second prize with it. Since then, Awakening has been added to many ballet competition lists due to its four unique variations for women.
Ballet anacréontique in one act
Music by Riccardo Drigo
Libretto by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov
Décor by Mikhail Bocharov
Costumes by Evgenii Ponomarev
World Première
6th August [O.S. 25th July] 1894
Peterhof Palace, Saint Petersburg
Imperial Mariinsky Theatre Première
14th January [O.S. 2nd January] 1895
Original 1894 Cast
Chloris/Flora, the Goddess of the Flowers
Matilda Kschessinskaya
Zephyrus, the God of the West Wind
Nikolai Legat
Selene, the Goddess of the Moon
Olga Leonova
Boreas, the God of the North Wind
Alexander Gorsky
Eos, the Goddess of the Dawn
Anna Johansson
Helios, the God of the Sun
Pavel Gerdt
Eros, the God of Love
Vera Trefilova
Hermes, the Messenger of the Gods
Sergei Legat
Hebe, the Goddess of Youth
Claudia Kulichevskaya
Sources
The Petipa Society
Petipa, Marius, The Diaries of Marius Petipa. Translated ed. and introduction by Lynn Garafola. Published in Studies in Dance History 3.1. (Spring 1992)
Kschessinskaya, Matilda, H.S.H. The Princess Romanovsky-Krassinsky (1960) Dancing in Petersburg: The Memoirs of Mathilde Kschessinskaya. Alton, Hampshire: Dance Books Ltd
Naughtin, Matthew (2014) Ballet Music: A Handbook. Lanham, Maryland, US: Rowman & Littefield
Wiley, Roland John (1997) The Life and Ballets of Lev Ivanov. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press
Celebration at Peterhof, Ezhegodnik Imperatorskikh Teatrov. St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres, 426-9. 1894
Manchester, P. W. Liner note for the LP record “Homage to Pavlova” (CSA 2232). Decca Records, 1974
Mariinsky Ballet: Souvenir program for the reconstruction of The Awakening of Flora. Mariinsky Theatre, 2007
