La Fille mal gardée is a comic ballet presented in two acts, inspired by Pierre Antoine Baudouin's 1789 painting Le Reprimande/Une Jeune Fille Querellée par sa Mère. The ballet was originally produced and choreographed by the Ballet Master Jean Dauberval to a musical pastiche adapted from 55 popular French airs by an unknown hand. The ballet was first presented under the title Le Ballet de la paille, ou Il n’est Qu’un pas du mal au bien (The Ballet of Straw, or There is Only One Step from Bad to Good) at the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France on 1 July 1789.
The oldest, and one of the most important works in the modern ballet repertory, La Fille mal gardée has been kept alive throughout its long and complex performance history by way of many revivals for well over two centuries. The work has had many changes of title, and no fewer than six known scores—many of which were adaptations of older music.
Today La Fille mal gardée is normally presented in one of two different versions: many ballet companies in Russia, Europe, the Caribbean and South America retain productions of the ballet which stem from the 1903 revival of Alexander Gorsky to the score of Peter Ludwig Hertel. Gorsky's version was derived from the late 19th century revivals of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, which was itself a revival of Paul Taglioni's version staged in 1864 for the Court Opera Ballet of the Königliches Opernhaus in Berlin. It is from this version of the ballet that the so-called La Fille mal gardée pas de deux is extracted.
Modern audiences are perhaps most familiar with the production staged by Sir Frederick Ashton for the
The appealing simplicity and the naïve familiarity of the action of La Fille mal gardée have lent it a popularity that has established it in the repertory of many ballet companies all over the world.
