Diana and Actaeon

The myth of Diana and Actaeon can be found within Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The tale recounts the unfortunate fate of a young hunter named Actaeon, who was a grandson of Cadmus, and his encounter with chaste Artemis, known to the Romans as Diana, goddess of the hunt. The latter is nude and enjoying a bath in a spring with help from her escort of nymphs when the mortal man unwittingly stumbles upon the scene. The nymphs scream in surprise and attempt to cover Diana, who, in a fit of embarrassed fury, splashes water upon Actaeon. He is transformed into a deer with a dappled hide and long antlers, robbed of his ability to speak, and thereafter promptly flees in fear. It is not long, however, before his own hounds track him down and kill him, failing to recognize their master.

The story became very popular in the Renaissance. The most common scene shown was Actaeon surprising Diana, but his transformation and his death were also sometimes shown. Titian painted the first two scenes in two of his greatest late poesies for Philip II of Spain, in Diana and Actaeon and The Death of Actaeon. The latter actually shows the transformation still in progress; like many depictions the head is shown transformed, but most of the body remains human. Less often Actaeon is fully transformed when caught by his dogs. The story was popular on Italian Renaissance maiolica.

The origins of the Diana and Actaeon Pas de Deux, a divertissement created for a 1935 version of La Esmeralda, lie in two earlier ballet productions. The first of these was Tsar Kandavl (aka Le Roi Candaule), premiered in 1868 by the Imperial Russian Ballet in Saint Petersburg. Based on a story told by Herodotus in his Histories, this four-act ballet, choreographed by Marius Petipa to music by Cesare Pugni, included a pas de trois for dancers portraying Diana, the Roman goddess of the moon, the hunt, and chastity; Endymion, a beautiful shepherd, and a Satyr. This divertissement told of a poetic encounter in which Diana (or Selene, another name for the moon goddess) looked down upon the sleeping youth, descended to earth, kissed him, and fell in love. In a production mounted in the early twentieth century, Anna Pavlova was among those who danced Diana, and Vaslav Nijinsky appeared as the Satyr. In 1917, George Balanchine, then Balanchivadze, also danced the role of the Satyr, with Lydia Ivanova as Diana and Nicholas Efimov as Endymion.

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