The Pharaoh's Daughter
Although Petipa had a great respect for Kschessinskaya as a dancer, he thoroughly despised her as a person, referring to her in his diaries as " ... that nasty little swine." Even so, he chose her for the lead roles in many of the final revivals of his older masterworks, often devising intricate choreography for her to execute—the shade of Mlada in "Mlada" (1896), Queen Nisia in "Le Roi Candaule" (1897), the Goddess Thetis in "Les Aventures de Pélée" (1897), Aspicia in "The Pharaoh's Daughter" (1898), the title role in "La Esmeralda" (1899), and Nikiya in "La Bayadère" (1900). Such roles became notoriously difficult once Petipa revised them for Kschessinskaya.