> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://theparnassian.com/en/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# The ballet “The Flames of Paris” from its 1932 Leningrad premiere to the Bolshoi and Mikhailovsky stagings
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/balet-plamia-parizha-postavili-v-leningrade-k-piatnadtsatoi-godovshchine-oktiabrskoi-revoliutsii/
- Published: 2026-10-10T19:42:01.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-10T20:00:14.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Art, Moscow, Saint Petersburg

The ballet "The Flames of Paris" was staged in Leningrad for the fifteenth anniversary of the October Revolution. The premiere took place on 7 November 1932 at the Kirov Theatre of Opera and Ballet, as the Mariinsky Theatre was then called. The music was written by Boris Asafyev, the choreography was by Vasily Vainonen, and the libretto was the work of Nikolai Volkov and the artist Vladimir Dmitriev. The plot was drawn from the novel "The Marseillais" by the Provençal writer Félix Gras. In the novel, a battalion of volunteers from Marseille arrives in Paris and on 10 August 1792 takes part in the storming of the Tuileries Palace, after which the monarchy of Louis XVI fell.

Asafyev defined the genre of the ballet as a "musical and historical novel" and introduced into the score the revolutionary songs "Ça ira", "La Marseillaise" and "La Carmagnole", sung by a chorus, as well as fragments of music by Lully, Marin Marais, Méhul and Beethoven. The production was built on crowd scenes and character dance, or, more precisely, on the stage adaptation of folk dances. The Basque dance and the pas de deux, the duet of the principal characters in the last act, became the best-known numbers of the ballet. The pas de deux is still often performed at gala concerts separately from the production.

Olga Jordan, Natalia Dudinskaya, Nina Anisimova, Vakhtang Chabukiani and Konstantin Sergeyev danced the leading parts in the first cast. The Bolshoi Theatre showed the ballet on 6 July 1933\. The authors reworked the production several times, including in 1936, 1947, 1950 and 1960\. The Kirov Theatre performed it more than 80 times. After Vainonen's death in 1964 the ballet gradually disappeared from the repertoire, while the Academy of Russian Ballet preserved its best fragments as teaching material.

On 3 July 2008 the Bolshoi Theatre brought out a new version of the ballet. The choreographer Alexei Ratmansky staged it afresh, but used Vainonen's surviving choreography. On 22 July 2013 the Mikhailovsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg showed the version by Mikhail Messerer, who restored Vainonen's production