The Pharaoh's Daughter
In late 1885 the great Italian ballerina Virginia Zucchi began her two-year engagement with the St. Petersburg Imperial Ballet, making her debut in a revival of Petipa's "The Pharaoh's Daughter". A few weeks later Zucchi appeared as Lise in a revival of Paul Taglioni's 1864 version of "La Fille Mal Gardée", staged for the benefit performance of Pavel Gerdt by Petipa and Lev Ivanov. The Petipa/Ivanov production of "La Fille Mal Gardée" would be retained in the repertory of the St. Petersburg Ballet for many years, serving as a useful vehicle for such noted ballerinas as Mathilde Kschessinskaya and Olga Preobrajenska. In 1886 Petipa mounted a revival of Jules Perrot's "La Esmeralda" especially for Zucchi, a production that is considered to be his definitive revival of that work. For her performance, Petipa interpolated the famous "La Esmeralda pas de six" to the music of Riccardo Drigo, a dramatic "pas d'action" that allowed Zucchi to display her incomparable flair for drama and mime. For Zucchi's benefit performance in February 1887, Petipa staged the ballet "L'Ordre du Roi" ("The King's Command"), a work based on Delibes' operetta "Le roi l'a dit". Zucchi scored an enormous success in the principal rôle of Pepita when the ballet premiered on . Nevertheless, many critics complained that the ballet had a weak libretto and mise en scène. Petipa would later stage an abridgement of "L'Ordre du Roi" as "Les Élèves de Dupré" ("The Pupils of Dupré") in 1900 for a special performance given at the Theatre of the Hermitage for the Imperial Family and their special guest, Kaiser Wilhelm II.