Francesca da Rimini

Ballet in two scenes

• Producer: Ballets Russes de Col W de Basil
• Premiere: 15 July 1937, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London
• Costume design: Oliver Messel
• Costumier: Barbara Karinska
• Scenery design: Oliver Messel
• Music: Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky
• Choreography: David Lichine
• Libretto: David Lichine and Henry Clifford
• Main characters: Francesca, Gianciotto Malatesta, Paolo Malatesta, Chiara, Girolamo, Domenico, the Signori of Rimini, Francesca’s ladies, the Angeleic Apparition, Guinevere, Lancelot, soldiers, servants, dwarfs, townspeople

The Lord of Ravenna attempts to establish a peace with the neighbouring province of Rimini by offering his daughter, Francesca, to the future Lord of Rimini, Gianciotto Malatesta. Malatesta is worried that his physical deformity will disgust his future bride and so sends his brother Paolo as a proxy to marry Francesca. During the journey back to Rimini, Francesca and Paolo fall deeply in love. When the lovers arrive, Malatesta’s spy, Girolamo, alerts his master to the situation, causing the enraged Malatesta to carry Francesca off, to the distress of Paolo. The second scene opens with the lovers reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere, who come to life and dance before the couple as they kiss. The arrival of Malatesta and his entourage interrupts the tryst. Paolo is found hiding on the terrace and is killed in a fight with his brother. The distraught Francesca then fatally throws herself on her husband’s sword.

This ballet is set in the period of the early Renaissance and is partly taken from the tragedy of Paolo and Francesca from Canto V of Dante’s Inferno. It was based on the 1853 play by the American playwright George Henry Boker (1823–1890). Mikhail Fokine had created a version of the story as a ballet for the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg in 1915 but it was not produced by a Ballets Russes company until its 1937 production in London. With his well-established credentials as a historicist designer, Messel was an appropriate choice to bring authenticity to Francesca da Rimini’s Italian setting and its tragic characters.