Ludwig Minkus and Léo Delibes: La Source; Fantastic Ballet in Three Acts and Four Scenes, by Charles Nuitter and Arthur Saint-Léon: Piano Score
Editor: Robert Letellier
Date Of Publication: May 2010
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-1986-2
Isbn: 1-4438-1986-7
This volume reproduces the piano score of the ballet La Source, a joint composition by Ludwig Minkus and Léo Delibes.

After the success of Néméa (1864), the Paris Opéra ordered a new grand ballet from the famous choreographer Arthur Saint-Léon to a libretto based on a Persian legend by Charles Nuitter. Saint-Léon involved his musical collaborator in St Petersburg, Ludwig Minkus, in the project, securing for him a hand in the composition of the first and fourth scenes of the of this new work, La Source, a fantastic ballet in three acts. The composition of the other two scenes (the second and third) were entrusted to the young, unknown Léo Delibes, thirty at the time, who had drawn favourable attention to himself in the preparation of the ballet music for the première of Meyerbeer’s posthumous L’Africaine in 1865. The first performance of La Source was on 12 November 1866 at the Théatre Impérial de l’Opéra, with the principal dancers Guglielmina Salvioni (Naila), Eugénie Fiocre (Nouredda) and Louis Mérante (Djemil). The ballet as a whole was very successful, with 73 performances until 1876. Saint-Léon immediately began planning another work with Nuitter and Delibes—Coppélia—one which would crown the young French’s composer’s success with triumph. This was premiered on 25 May 1870, the last of Saint-Léon’s work, and the last great success of the French Romantic ballet at the Salle Le Peletier before the crisis of the Franco-Prussian War, and the end of the Second Empire.

As regards the music of La Source, Delibes’s contribution to the score, his first essay at ballet music, was noted for its vigour and many delightful melodies. In Jouvin’s opinion, his music was “vivacious and especially lively,” and contrasted effectively with the plaintive melodies of Minkus. “The style of the two composers,” observed the critic of La France Musicale (18 November 1866), “is essentially different and easily recognizable at a first hearing. M. Minkus's music has a vague, indolent, and melancholic character, full of grace and languor. That of M. Delibes, fresher and more rhythmic, is much more complicated in orchestration, and sometimes a little more ordinary. I should add that this difference in style is perfectly justified by the: contrasting character of the two parts of the ballet.”

Ludwig Minkus (23 March 1826–7 December 1917) grew up in Vienna where he hoped to establish a reputation as a violinist and composer. In 1853 he emigrated to St Petersburg where he became the conductor and solo violinist of the private orchestra of Prince Nikolai Yusupov. In 1861 he became violin soloist and, a year later, conductor of the Moscow Bolshoi Orchestra, and began fruitful working friendship with the choreographer Arthur Saint-Léon. In 1869 the choreographer Marius Petipa invited Minkus to compose the music for his Don Quixote for the Bolshoi Theatre. The ballet was an enormous success and led to Minkus being appointed Official Composer to the Imperial Russian Ballet—a position he held until it was discontinued in 1886. Minkus left Russia and returned to Vienna in the summer of 1891, where he lived in semi retirement until his death in 1917. He wrote music for more than twenty ballets, with Don Quixote (1869), La Bayadère (1877) and his interpolations for Paquita (1881) the most famous.

Léo Delibes (21 February 1836–16 January 1891) studied composition at the Paris Conservatoire under Adolphe Adam, and entered the Opéra as second chorus master in 1865. Although an organist, he excelled initially as a composer of lighter works, writing sparkling operettas in the style of his teacher. The first of them, Deux sous de charbon, was written for the Folies Nouvelles in 1856, when he was just 19. Delibes’s contribution to the score of La Source (1866), his first essay at ballet music, brought him immediate attention. His career culminated in equally successful music for ballet and opera—especially the famous Lakmé (1883), the story of the love of a British officer and the daughter of a Brahmin priest in mid 19th-century India. His ballet music was much admired by other composers—with Coppélia (1870), based on a story by E. T. A. Hoffmann, and Sylvia (1876), a Classical subject, the most famous works of his maturity.

Robert Ignatius Letellier has specialized in the music and literature of the Romantic Period. He has studied the work of Giacomo Meyerbeer (a four-volume English edition of his diaries, a collection of critical and biographical studies, a guide to research, two readings of the operas, as well as compiling and introducing editions of the complete libretti and non-operatic texts, and a selection of manuscripts facsimiles). He has also written on the ballets of Ludwig Minkus and compiled a series of scores on the Romantic Ballet.

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