La source (Saint-Léon)
ballet
La source (The Spring) is a ballet in three acts/four scenes with a score composed by Léo Delibes and Ludwig Minkus (Minkus: Act I & Act III-Scene 2/Delibes: Act II & Act III-Scene 1) which was premiered in Paris in 1866 with choreography by Arthur Saint-Léon. In 1878 in Vienna it was called Naïla, die Quellenfee (Naïla, the Waternymph).
History
The choreography was by Arthur Saint-Léon, who collaborated with Charles Nuitter in the libretto. The original designs were by Édouard Desplechin, Jean-Baptiste Lavastre, Auguste Rubé, Chaperon (sets) and Paul Lormier (costumes). The first production opened at the Théâtre Impérial de l´Opéra in Paris on 12 November 1866, with Guglielmina Salvioni (Naïla), Eugenie Fiocre (Nouredda) and Louis Mérante (Djémil) in the principal roles. The production was not particularly successful, Salvioni being considered unsuited to the rôle of Naïla. It triumphed in the following year, however, with Adèle Grantzow as Naïla, and remained a mainstay of the repertory for the next few years. A successful revival in 1872 showcased Rita Sangalli in the principal rôle, and it was for this production that the new variations for Naïla were introduced, the music most likely by Delibes himself (Nos. 12b and 23a in the list of musical numbers in the piano score, see below).
Delibes was second chorus master at the Paris Opera and had until then written operettas, songs and sacred music.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “La source (Saint-Léon)” as ballet. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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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 Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2289839. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1866, 1878 and 1872.
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This entry incorporates text from “La source (Saint-Léon)” 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.