Zéphire et Flore [Zephyr and Flora]
Ballet in three scenes
- Producer: Les Ballets Russes de Serge Diaghilev
- Premiere: 28 April 1925, Théâtre de Monte Carlo, Monaco
- Costume design: Georges Braque (with additional masks by Oliver Messel in London in November 1925)
- Scenery design: Georges Braque
- Music: Vladimir Dukelsky
- Choreography: Léonide Massine
- Libretto: Boris Kochno
- Main characters: Flora, Zephyr, Boreas, Cupid, muses
This ballet is set on Greece’s Mount Olympus, where Boreas, the north wind, is plotting to abduct Flora, the wife of Zephyr, the west wind. Boreas initiates a game of blind man’s bluff to separate the pair and leads Zephyr off, killing him with an arrow. After he takes Flora off to his cave, she swoons from fright. Meanwhile nine mourning muses bring Zephyr’s body to Olympus, where he revives after his funeral procession. The muses then tie Flora tightly to Zephyr’s wrist so that she will not be lost again, and Boreas is punished.
Flore et Zéphire was first produced by Charles-Louis Didelot (1767–1836) in London in 1796, becoming a popular part of the ballet repertoire throughout the nineteenth century. The original ballet became famous for its introduction of technical innovations such stage machinery and strung wires to support dancers as if in flight, as well as pointe work for the female dancers. As a pre-Romantic ballet, its exploration of Anacreontic classicism found favour again during the neoclassical design revival of the 1920s.8 Its theme of lightness, characterising Zephyr’s role, also appealed to mid-1920s designers and audiences enthralled with the idea of speed and flight. The principal dancers’ brief costumes allowed for enough skin exposure to emphasise the sensual athleticism of their roles, while the short, sequinned, flapper-style shifts for the muses gave them a fashionable, if unflattering, modernity. Oliver Messel’s bronzed papier-mâché masks de-emphasised the dancers’ personalities, adding to the pared-back classicism of the production.
