Napoli - The Flower Festival in Genzano: Pas de Deux (attributed to E. Helsted and Paulli)

Danish choreographer and ballet master August Bournonville (1805-1879) created several well-known ballets, including NAPOLI, OR THE FISHERMAN AND HIS BRIDE (1842) and THE FLOWER FESTIVAL IN GENZANO (BLOMSTERFESTEN I GENZANO; 1858). Whereas Bournonville used the composers Edvard Helsted (1816-1900) and Holger Simon Paulli (1810-1891) exclusively in the composition of THE FLOWER FESTIVAL OF GENZANO, they were only two of several contributing writers to the music of NAPOLI. The most famous selection to come from these ballets is the pas de deux long (and falsely) attributed to THE FLOWER FESTIVAL IN GENZANO and to its composers Helsted and Paulli. That is not the pas' origin, however. The music was actually written for an 1842 staging in Vienna of NAPOLI, where the principal danseur playing Gennaro created the pas de deux for Act III and asked Austrian composer Matthias Strebinger (1807-1874) to write the music for it. Following this, Bournonville decided to include this pas de deux in his newer ballet, THE FLOWER FESTIVAL IN GENZANO, and Paulli orchestrated it to suit this purpose, resulting in the future assumption that the pas de deux was composed by Helsted and Paulli rather than the insertion that it was. The original ballet disappeared shortly after its premiere, though Bournonville saved the pas de deux by incorporating it into an 1875 divertissment that he made for the Vienna Festival of Flowers. This fragment of THE FLOWER FESTIVAL OF GENZANO is all that survives, and because the pas de deux was originally written for NAPOLI, it is often also included in productions of that ballet. Despite the spurious attributions of both the ballet and the composer, this pas de deux is an extremely popular part of the repertory and is considered one of Bournonville's most perfect works, often performed to show the Bournonville style. This edition has been completed by William McDermott. Instrumentation: 2+Picc.2.2.2: 4.2.3.1: Timp.Perc(2): Hp: Str (4-4-3-3-3 in set).