Historedia
Episode 1 of 1

Premiere of Swan Lake

When
4 March 1877
Where
Bolshoi Theatre
Part of
Premiere of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake at the Bolshoi Theatre

The ballet debuted at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow on 4 March 1877 as a benefit performance for ballerina Pelageya Karpakova.

Tchaikovsky's score, commissioned in 1875, was premiered by the Bolshoi Ballet. Pelageya Karpakova performed the role of Odette, while Victor Gillert portrayed Prince Siegfried. The event marked the initial public presentation of the work in its original form.

Sources

  1. Swan Lake Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-07
  2. Bolshoi Theatre Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-16

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.