La Sylphide

La Sylphide
Marie Taglioni in La Sylphide
Choreographer	Filippo Taglioni
Music	Jean-Madeleine Schneitzhoeffer
Libretto	Adolphe Nourrit
Based on	Charles Nodier's "Trilby, ou Le lutin d'Argail"
Premiere	March 12, 1832 Salle Le Peletier, Paris Opera, Paris, France
Original ballet company	Paris Opera Ballet
Characters	James Ruben The Sylph Gurn Effie Old Madge Effie's mother
Setting	Scotland
Created for	Marie Taglioni and Joseph Mazilier
Genre	Romantic ballet

La Sylphide (English: The Sylph; Danish: Sylfiden) is a romantic ballet in two acts. There were two versions of the ballet; the original one choreographed by Filippo Taglioni in 1832, and a version choreographed by August Bournonville in 1836. Bournonville's is the only version known to have survived and thus is one of the world's oldest surviving ballets.

On March 12, 1832, the first version of La Sylphide premiered at the Salle Le Peletier of the Paris Opéra with choreography by the groundbreaking Italian choreographer Filippo Taglioni and music by Jean-Madeleine Schneitzhoeffer.

Taglioni designed the work as a showcase for his daughter Marie. La Sylphide was the first ballet where dancing en pointe had an aesthetic rationale and was not merely an acrobatic stunt, often involving ungraceful arm movements and exertions, as had been the approach of dancers in the late 1820s. Marie was known for shortening her skirts in the performance of La Sylphide (to show off her excellent pointe work), which was considered highly scandalous at the time.

The ballet's libretto was written by tenor Adolphe Nourrit, the first "Robert" in Meyerbeer's Robert Le Diable, an opera which featured Marie Taglioni in its dances section, "The Ballet of Nuns." Nourrit's scenario was loosely based on a story by Charles Nodier, "Trilby, ou Le lutin d'Argail," but swapped the genders of the protagonists — a goblin and a fisherman's wife of Nodier; a sylph and a farmer in the ballet.