The Fountain of Bakhchisarai (ballet)
ballet
The Fountain of Bakhchisarai (Russian: Бахчисарайский фонтан) is a full-length ballet in four acts, choreographed by Rostislav Zakharov to music by Boris Asafyev. The libretto by Nikolai Volkov is based on the 1823 poem of the same title by Alexander Pushkin. The ballet premiered on 28 September 1934 at the Kirov Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet, with Galina Ulanova as Maria, Olga Iordan as Zarema, Mikhail Dudko as Khan Girey, and Konstantin Sergeyev as Vaslav.
Bakhchysarai is in the Crimea, near Yalta. The Bakhchisaray Palace was originally built in the sixteenth century and has been repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt since. The fountain, which still stands in a courtyard, is called the Fountain of Tears.
Synopsis
The ballet opens at Bakhchisarai Palace, where Khan Girey is seated surrounded by his court. Dancers try to entertain him but he is oblivious to his surroundings, staring at water trickling from a fountain.
The scene shifts back in time to the palace of a Polish nobleman, where a ball is being held for the engagement of Maria, the daughter of the house, to the young noble Vaslav. Suddenly lurking Tartars led by Khan Girey scale the walls and attack the guests.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 25, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q3209102. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1823 and 1934.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Fountain of Bakhchisarai (ballet)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.