Ballet Essentials: La Fille mal gardée

Escape to the countryside with Frederick Ashton’s ballet about a capricious girl who hopes to marry her love. Brimming with humour and choreographic invention, La Fille mal gardée is the perfect ballet for all the family.  

Although we can trace the history of the ballet to Jean Dauberval’s original from 1789 – making La Fille mal gardée one of the oldest works in the classical ballet canon – today, it is Frederick Ashton’s production for The Royal Ballet that is perhaps the most widely-performed. Featuring some of Ashton’s most brilliantly virtuosic choreography and comedic moments such as Widow Simone’s clog dance, La Fille mal gardée is a signature work of The Royal Ballet.  

What does La Fille mal gardée mean?  

Who choreographed La Fille mal gardée? 

What type of ballet is La Fille mal gardée? 

Who was Frederick Ashton? 

What are some famous balletic moments in La Fille mal gardée? 

Widow Simone – A rich farmer 

Lise – Her daughter 

Colas – A younger farmer who is in love with Lise 

Thomas – A prosperous vineyard owner 

Alain – Thomas’ son  

Lise, the only daughter of Simone who is a widow and owner of a prosperous farm, is in love with Colas, a young farmer, but her mother has far more ambitious plans. 

Act I 

The dawn of a busy day on the farm is heralded by the cock and his attendant hens. Lise, disappointed at not seeing Colas, leaves a ribbon tied in a lover’s knot as a token of her devotion. Colas finds it and binds it to his staff. The lovers meet, but are interrupted by Simone, who sets her daughter a task churning butter. Colas, hiding in the loft, joins her. The work is shared and then forgotten as they declare their love. 

The farm girls summon Lise to play, but her mind is elsewhere. Her suspicious and ever watchful mother catches hold of her and chastizes her. Just then Thomas, the pompous and wealthy proprietor of a vineyard, arrives with his son Alain. Simone, aware of their mission, dismisses Lise, and Thomas asks her hand for his son. When Lise returns, Alain coyly and clumsily shows off his paces. She is amused and a little shocked by his antics, but not interested. They set off for the harvest. 

After working in the fields the harvesters, led by Colas, relax in a joyful dance. Lise and Alain dance, but Colas intervenes, and the young girl makes it clear where her preference lies. One of the harvesters plays the flute, to everybody’s general delight, and Alain thinks he will have a try; but the harvesters mock him and he is rescued from their horseplay by his indignant father. 

The field is now left clear for the triumphant Colas, who dances with Lise. Simone joins in the merriment of the harvesters. Suddenly they are interrupted by a storm that drenches them, scattering them far and wide. 

Act II 

Mother and daughter, soaked by the storm, return to the farmhouse. They sit down to spin; work, thinks the mother, should keep Lise out of mischief. But she is overcome by sleep, and Lise, who has seen Colas through the gate, tries to take the key from her. Simone wakes and, in order to remain watchful, plays the tambourine for Lise to dance. But the taps grow feebler, she begins to nod, and now she is fast asleep. 

Lise runs joyfully into Colas’ arms. The knocking of the harvesters, coming for their pay, awakens Simone. Simone tells her daughter to get on with her chores as she leaves to give the harvesters a drink. Lise, thinking she is alone, dreams of the delights of married life. Colas cannot resist, and comes out from hiding. She is bashful at having been taken by surprise, but once again they declare their love. 

As Simone reappears, Lise hustles Colas into her bedroom. The ever-suspicious mother realizes that the lovers have been meeting, and in her turn hustles Lise into the bedroom, locking the door.  

Alain and his father now arrive with a notary to complete the contract. When it has been signed, Simone hands Alain the bedroom key. After a moment of idiotic indecision, he opens the door and to everyone’s dismay Colas and Lise come out. The lovers fall on their knees to ask Simone for forgiveness and a blessing. In spite of Thomas and Alain, she finally gives in amid general rejoicing. 

The charming La Fille mal gardée is one of the oldest works in the classical ballet canon, having been reimagined and restaged by numerous choreographers since its first iteration by Jean Dauberval in 1789. 

The inspiration for the ballet was Pierre-Antoine Baudoin’s 1764 painting, La Réprimande/Une Jeune Fille querellée par sa mère (translated as ‘The Reprimand/A young girl scolded by her mother’). The painting depicts a young, dishevelled girl being chastised by an older peasant woman, while in the background, a young man escapes as he pulls up his trousers.  

The painting was immensely popular at the time and was often reproduced as engraved prints sold in specialised shops. It was apparently at such a shop in Bordeaux where Dauberval first chanced upon the subject matter that would form the heart of his most well-known work. Inspired by the sauciness of the painting, Dauberval also drew on the theatrical trends of the 18th-century genre of comédie sérieuse which sought to reflect everyday reality.  

The ballet premiered in Bordeaux, France at the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux, on 1 July 1789, under the title Le ballet de la paille, ou Il n’est qu’un pas du mal au bien (translated as ‘The ballet of the Straw, or There is Only One Step from Bad to Good’.) Dauberval’s wife Marie-Madeleine Crespé, Eugène Hus and François Le Riche created the roles of Lison, Colin and Widow Ragotte respectively (Lise, Colas and Widow Simone are the modern-day equivalents of these characters). One of Dauberval’s choreographic achievements was to fluidly intersperse moments of mime acting in between danced sections, adding dramaturgic and emotional depth to achieve a greater degree of realism.  

Dauberval’s ballet was later reworked by many. Among them were Charles Didelot, one of Dauberval’s students who later would be credited as a pioneer of pointe technique and Russian ballet; Paul Taglioni, brother of the famous ballerina Marie Taglioni; and Jean-Pierre Aumer, also one of Dauberval’s students.  

It was Jean-Pierre Aumer’s version in 1823 that set the ballet to Ferdinand Hérold’s score, the score most frequently heard today. Aumer’s staging too underwent many changes – such as the subsequent inclusion of a pas de deux to music from Gaetano Donizetti’s opera L’elisir d’amore for the ballerina Fanny Elssler. Frederick Ashton and John Lanchbery would later rediscover and revive this addition for The Royal Ballet’s 1960 production.  

Frederick Ashton’s production draws mainly from the late 19th-century Russian staging by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, as it was Tamara Karsavina, a star of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and the Imperial Theatres, that encouraged Ashton to forge his own production. Petipa and Ivanov’s version too, is the result of many choreographic and musical revisions. St Petersburg audiences would have first seen Didelot’s 1818 staging, set to music by Catterino Cavos. In 1885, another version was introduced to showcase the skill of Italian ballerina Virginia Zucchi. Zucchi worked with Petipa and Ivanov, drawing on Paul Taglioni’s 1864 staging for the Königliches Opernhaus in Berlin which employed a score by Peter Ludwig Hertel. Together, Zucchi, Petipa and Ivanov revised certain dance numbers and added new sections. Zucchi’s Lise was to remain the definitive interpretation in Russia, later reinterpreted by legendary dancers such as Mathilde Kschessinska, Anna Pavlova and Tamara Karsavina. In the 20th century, Alexander Gorsky would revive the ballet, using additional music by Cesare Pugni, Ludwig Minkus, Léo Delibes, Riccardo Drigo and Anton Rubinstein.  

In 1959, Frederick Ashton started creating a fresh version of the ballet for The Royal Ballet, encouraged by Karsavina. This production would premiere on 28 January 1960, with Nadia Nerina and David Blair in the title roles. For his production, Ashton opted to go back to Hérold’s 1828 score, as suggested to him by Ivor Guest, a ballet historian and writer, though he was inspired choreographically by the Petipa and Ivanov verison. Ashton commissioned John Lanchbery, then a conductor at the Royal Opera House, to orchestrate and edit Hérold’s score to fit his particular choreographic needs. For the grand pas de deux of the ballet, Ashton and Lanchbery looked back at the history of the ballet once again. Ivor Guest had found, tucked away in a box of music at the Paris Opéra, the arrangement of Donizetti’s operatic arias from L’elisir d’amore when Fanny Elssler danced the role of Lise – this number became the Fanny Elssler pas de deux in Act I of Ashton’s ballet. Lanchbery also added his own musical numbers, including the pas de deux in Act I, several mime scenes, Alain’s comic solo and the Clog Dance. Today, Ashton’s production is perhaps the most popular version of the ballet, still danced by ballet companies worldwide.  

The many revisions and reworkings of La Fille mal gardée attest to its universality. A repertory favourite, the ballet and its charming narrative of a little village love affair provides light-hearted appeal for audiences of all ages.

Ashton’s inventive choreography for La Fille mal gardée make it a delightful watch for lovers of classical ballet. He made full use of the technical talents of his original cast – Nadia Nerina and David Blair – and this is reflected in the virtuosity of much of the ballet’s choreography: multiple pirouettes, grand lifts and fleet footwork. One can also see in the choreography Ashton’s emphasis on lyricism and épaulement (the angling of the head and upper body) – making the ballet a great example of the ‘English’ style which Ashton pioneered and for which The Royal Ballet is known.  

Other highlights include the pas de ruban (ribbon dance) near the beginning of Act I, where Lise and Colas dance together, their bodies intertwined by a ribbon – a symbol of their tender love. In the Fanny Elssler pas de deux later on in the act, Ashton elevated this choreographic idea further, devising a grand adage for Lise and Colas, who are supported by ribbons held by eight women. 

Karsavina’s influence on Ashton’s choreography was strong. Ashton included in his production the famous mime scenes in which Lise envisions the dreamy bliss of married life, which Karsavina showed to him. These passages date back at least to Petipa and Ivanov’s version of the ballet, if not earlier.  

Ashton said of his conception of La Fille mal gardée: ‘There exists in my imagination a life in the country of eternally late spring, a leafy pastorale of perpetual sunshine and the humming of bees – the suspended stillness of a Constable landscape of my beloved Suffolk, luminous and calm.’ To evoke the bliss of the rustic countryside, Ashton also included elements of national folk dance – from maypole dancing to a Lancashire clog dance for Widow Simone. These choreographic elements worked in tandem with Osbert Lancaster’s charming designs to create ‘unmistakeably English’ ballet.