Swan Lake may be the world’s favourite ballet, but it had a difficult birth. Its premiere in Moscow in 1877 (choreographed by Reisinger, one of history’s also-rans) was deemed a failure and Tchaikovsky didn’t live long enough to see his ballet given the reverence it was due. That only came in 1895 with the definitive St Petersburg staging by Petipa and Ivanov. By the end of the 20th century there was scarcely a ballet company in the world that didn’t have a Swan Lake in its repertoire.
And then there were the rebels who put their own spin on the classic. Mats Ek gave the prince an Oedipal complex; John Neumeier recast him as the mad king Ludwig of Bavaria; Christopher Gable turned Von Rothbart