Enigma Variations (ballet)

Enigma Variations
Choreographer	Frederick Ashton
Music	Edward Elgar
Premiere	25 October 1968 Royal Opera House, London
Original ballet company	The Royal Ballet
Design	Julia Trevelyan Oman
Setting	Worcestershire, England, 1899

Enigma Variations (My Friends Pictured Within) is a one-act ballet by Frederick Ashton, to the music of the Variations on an Original Theme for orchestra ("Enigma"), Op. 36 by Edward Elgar. The work was first given by the Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London on 25 October 1968. It has been revived in every subsequent decade.

Elgar's variations portray, in his words, "My friends pictured within", celebrating, and in some cases caricaturing, members of his circle. He commented to one of them, Troyte Griffith, years after the premiere that if the variations had been written by a Russian rather than an Englishman they would long ago have been turned into a ballet. It was not until six years after the composer's death that an attempt was made to do so, by the choreographer Frank Staff for Ballet Rambert in 1940. Staff's ballet focused on the mood of the variations rather than on the personalities who inspired it.

The idea for Ashton's ballet originated in the early 1950s, when the designer Julia Trevelyan Oman, then still a student, submitted designs for a ballet to be based on Elgar's music. At the time the idea was not taken up, but in the 1960s Ashton had come round to it, and invited Trevelyan Oman, by then a rising star of theatre design, to collaborate.

Ashton used the whole of Elgar's published score, with the exception of the finale, for which he went back to the composer's original ending. When completing the score in 1898, Elgar had been persuaded by his publisher (portrayed as "Nimrod" of the variations) to add a further 96 bars to the ending. With the permission of the Elgar estate, Ashton used the shorter version, previously unheard by even the most dedicated Elgarians. The playing time of the ballet is about half an hour.

The piece shows an imaginary gathering of Elgar and his friends at the Elgars' house in Worcestershire. The composer, at this point in his career struggling and little known, is awaiting a message from London. While they are waiting, the Elgars and their friends are portrayed in dances representing their personalities. After the last of these, Ashton contributes his own "enigma"; a telegram arrives: the characters know, but the audience does not, that it is from the celebrated conductor Hans Richter agreeing to conduct Elgar's new work. There is an exuberant finale.

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