At the age of 33, Delibes was commissioned by the Paris Opera to write his two large‑scale ballets, Coppélia and Sylvia. Coppélia is based on a story by E. T. A. Hoffmann – the same tale that sparked Offenbach’s brilliant “Doll Act” in his opera, The Tales of Hoffmann.

[ koh-peyl-yuh ] SHOW IPA. / koʊˈpeɪl yə / PHONETIC RESPELLING. noun. a ballet (1870) by Délibes.

The ballet is about a girl named Coppelia who sits on her balcony all day reading and never speaking to anyone. A boy named Franz falls deeply in love with her and wants to marry her, even though he is already engaged to another woman. She decides to impersonate the doll, in order to win the love of Franz.

Swanilda: Elsie Molenaar. Understudy: Caterina Brown. Franz: Justin Flores.

Poland
Coppélia is set in a small village in Poland at the end of the 18th century. Swanhilda and Frantz are young peasants. They are sweethearts. Frantz however is flirting with Coppélia, a strange girl in the dark house of a dollmaker named Dr.

Arthur St. Léon
Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann, Coppélia is considered one of the triumphant comic ballets of the 19th century and marked the passing of ballet supremacy from France to Russia. Originally choreographed by Arthur St. Léon in Paris in 1870, it was restaged by Marius Petipa in St.

Coppélia is his “daughter”, a mechanical doll who is so lifelike she is able to fool the villagers into believing she is alive. Doctor Coppelius is so enamoured of this doll that he tries to use magic to bring her to life.

Dr. Coppélius returns to discover the figure of Coppélia lying in her chair, divested of clothes, and realizes that he has been deceived. The curtain rises on the final act which is again set in the village square. Franz and Swanilda, now reconciled, approach the Burgomaster to receive their dowries and be married.

1870
Coppélia, comic ballet by French composer Léo Delibes that premiered in Paris on May 2, 1870. It was an immediate success and soon reappeared in the form of excerpts scored for piano and as an orchestral suite. Coppélia was based on German writer E.T.A.

Across the world, there are six main styles of ballet that are taught and studied.

These notations were later used to stage the St. Petersburg version for such companies as the Vic-Wells Ballet (precursor of today’s Royal Ballet). Dr. Coppélius is a doctor who has made a life-size dancing doll. It is so lifelike that Franz, a village youth, becomes infatuated with it and sets aside his heart’s true desire, Swanhilda.

A variation of the Coppélia story is contained in Jacques Offenbach’s opera, The Tales of Hoffmann, a fictional work about the same Hoffmann who wrote the story that inspired Coppélia. The opera consists of a prologue, three fantastic tales in which Hoffmann is a participant, and an epilogue.

Coppélia (sometimes subtitled: The Girl With The Enamel Eyes) is a comic ballet originally choreographed by Arthur Saint-Léon to the music of Léo Delibes, with libretto by Charles-Louis-Étienne Nuitter. Nuitter’s libretto and mise-en-scène was based upon two stories by E. T. A.

From 2011 the Little Princess Ballet Academy (LPBA) has performed Coppélia in Second Life. The adaptation follows the original in three acts, but the mime parts are problematic to perform in Second Life and has been changed, together with some changes in the sequences.