Ondine, ou La naïade

Ondine, ou La naïade is a ballet in three acts and six scenes with choreography by Jules Perrot, music by Cesare Pugni and a libretto inspired by the novel Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué. Pugni dedicated his score to the Duchess of Cambridge, Princess Augusta, a long-time balletomane and patron of the arts in London. Whilst the original London production used the title Ondine, ou La naïade, Perrot staged a revival of the ballet under the title, ''La naïade et le pêcheur'', a title which was used for all subsequent productions of the ballet.

The ballet was first presented by the ballet of Her Majesty's Theatre, London on 22 June 1843. Fanny Cerrito danced the title rôle, while Perrot himself played her mortal beloved, the fisherman Mattéo.

The original scenery was designed by William Grieve. A contemporary review described it as " ... one of the most beautiful productions that any stage ever boasted of." and praised Cerrito as a " ... step-revealing goddess."

Cesare Pugni's score was hailed as a masterwork of ballet music. The Times, a London newspaper, described Pugni's score as

The ballet bore little resemblance to de la Motte Fouqué's Undine:

"The plot is no more like the romantic baron's story than it is like that of Robinson Crusoe, excepting so far as a water-nymph is the heroine. Therefore, the readers of Undine have to unlearn all they know, if they would avoid mystification while witnessing the marvels of the new ballet."

Their only point in common appears to be the ill-fated love of a water sprite, Ondine, with for a mortal man who already has a mortal sweetheart. However, the ballet's divergence from the original novel "derive from intermediary works linking the book and the ballet, which Perrot used to enrich and enhance his theatrical conception". The greatest changes that Perrot made to the basic plot were the change of location from the darkly evocative Danube to the sunnier shores of Sicily, and the transformation of the aristocratic Sir Huldbrand into the humble fisherman Matteo, while Undine's rival Bertalda became the orphan Giannina. In many ways, Perrot's ballet is more similar to René-Charles Guilbert de Pixerécourt's play of the story, Ondine, ou la Nymphe des Eaux, which was first presented in Paris in 1830 while Perrot was also performing there.

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Wikipedia