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The Birthday of the Infanta
In 1919, Russian choreographer Adolph Bolm was invited by the Chicago Opera Ballet to devise an original production based on Oscar Wilde's short story "The Birthday of the Infanta," in which a dwarf misunderstands the attention paid him by the royal Infanta. The ballet-pantomime's score was by John Alden Carpenter with scenic design and costumes by Robert Edmond Jones, today heralded as the most celebrated of early twentieth-century American designers.
The story is set in seventeenth-century Spain. Jones's sets and costumes embrace the Baroque luxuriousness of the period. First performed at the Chicago Opera House on December 23, 1919, it travelled to New York, where it was staged at the Metropolitan Opera House. Ruth Page danced the role of the Infanta and Bolm danced the role of the very ugly dwarf who was madly and hopelessly in love with her. |