Swan Lake Comparative Essay

The timeless Swan Lake is today prized as one of the world’s greatest and most renowned classical ballets to ever exist. For over one hundred years Swan Lake has been performed, adapted and rewritten innumerable times to enthrall a wide range of audiences all across the world. Whilst the foundation of how Swan Lake began and came to be is still, to some extent, unknown, it is widely believed that the production was originally choreographed by Julius Reisinger with the accompaniment of celebrated Russian composer Russian Tchaikovsky for the musical score. It was first presented as The Lake of the Swans by the Ballet of the Moscow Imperial Bolshoi Theatre in 1877 in Moscow, Russia. Brash judgment and calamitous reviews were passed upon this production and in turn, most ballet companies today now establish their staging both choreographically and musically on the revival created by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, which opened in 1895.
Seen through the eyes of millions, countless variations of Swan Lake have been created since its original formation in 1877. One of the most recognized recreations is the Swan Lake modernized by the choreographic genius Graeme Murphy and presented by the illustrious Australian Ballet Company in 2002. A spiralling love triangle between the changeable Prince Siegfried, a delicate Odette and an alluring Baroness von Rothbart, Graeme Murphy’s adaptation of Swan Lake is one to rival most others around the world.
Although rewritten countless times, the original plot of Swan Lake follows the tale of the young Princess Odette, who, under the spell of an evil sorcerer interchanges between a swan and a beautiful young woman. Prince Siegfried, a young man of 21 and soon to be married, stumbles across a lake of beautiful swans whilst on a hunting trip. He discovers through the Swan Queen, Odette that the evil sorcerer had cast an enchantment on many beautiful girls to turn them into swans, and the tears of their grieving parents had formed the