Coppelia

David Zinman's performance of Coppelia is beautifully played and most naturally recorded. The warm acoustic of the Rotterdam concert hall certainly suites Delibes colourful scoring, and the gracefully delicate string-playing is nicely flattered. 'Les Sylphides' is a compilation of works by Frédéric Chopin. It was conceived as a ballet by Mikhail Fokin in 1909, and orchestrated by Roy Douglas in 1936. 3. Faust: Ballet Music by Charles Gounod.

Léo Delibes was 30 years old when he achieved his critical breakthrough in France’s musical metropolis and created his classic Coppélia. The scenery for this fairy-tale piece was designed by Charles Nuitter, and the story was taken from E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann (The Sandman). In 1994 the Opéra National de Lyon performed Léo Delibes’s ballet Coppélia under the choreography of Maguy Marin. This special video production by legend Thomas Grimm was fi lmed on location in Lyon and in the studio. Star conductor Kent Nagano directs the orchestra of the Lyon National Opera.

Léo Delibess Coppélia is not only a collection of fine dances. It is primarily an abrasive and sardonic comedy, which is somewhat unusual in the world of classical ballet. But most importantly, it is a comedy for which excellent music was composed. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovskys assessment of Delibess ballet scores, allegedly capable of overshadowing the choreography itself, is well known: What beauty, what elegance, what richness of melody, rhythm and harmony! It is not fortuitous that music from this ballet should be performed, for its own merits, during concerts. Funnily enough, the main theme of this light-hearted ballet is taken from E.T.A. Hoffmanns anything but joyful novellas mainly from The Sandman.

Premiered by the Opera De Paris in 1870, and inspired by the fantastical writings of E.T.A. Hoffmann, Coppélia tells the story of a young man who becomes besotted with an exquisite automaton and is finally brought to his senses by his fiancée. In their production from the magnificent Palais Garnier, choreographer Patrice Bart in his final production and designer Ezio Toffolutti explore the story's darker side while doing full justice to the exuberance and elegance of Delibes’ glorious score.

Decca's Ultimate Ballet: The Essential Masterpieces is a budget box set of five discs covering the major dance works in the classical repertoire; newcomers to the genre can quickly pick up the basics from this generous collection. One can argue that Tchaikovsky should have been allotted greater space and that at least one of his ballets should have been presented in its entirety, rather than all three represented as suites and squeezed together on disc 1 to make room for Delibes' complete Coppélia. The Nutcracker, for example, could have fit nicely on a single CD, or an extra disc could have been provided to accommodate either a complete Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty.