La Fill Mal Gardee (The Wayward Daughter, literal translation: “The Poorly Guarded Girl” and also known as The Girl Who Needed Watching) is a comic ballet presented in two acts. In 1959, the choreographer Frederick Ashton began creating a completely new version of La Fille mal gardée for the Royal Ballet of London. This production premiered in January 1960, with the ballerina Nadia Nerina as Lise, David Blair as Colas, Stanley Holden as the Widow Simone, and Alexander Grant as Alen. Since its inception Ashton’s staging has become a celebrated classic of the ballet repertory. Originally Ashton intended to use the 1864 score of Peter Ludwig Hertel as it had been used for nearly every revival of the ballet since the late 19th century, but after close inspection of this music Ashton decided it would not suit his plans. At the suggestion of the ballet historian and musicologist Ivor Guest, Ashton found the light, simple music of the 1828 score by Ferdinand Hérold, more suitable for his conception.
Ashton then commissioned the Royal Opera House’s conductor John Lanchbery to orchestrate and edit Hérold’s score, using it as a foundation for an entirely new score, for which Lanchbery composed a few new numbers, incorporating passages of the original pastiche music from the premiere of 1789 into the score, and one number from Hertel’s score which was utilised for the famous Clog Dance. Ashton was disappointed that Hérold’s score contained no suitable Grand pas; Ivor Guest found a violin reduction of the pas de deux that Fanny Elssler had arranged for her performance in the ballet in 1837, tucked away in an old box of music at the Paris Opéra. This number is now known as The Fanny Elssler pas de deux.
Ashton created what is considered to be among his most masterful choreography for his new version of La Fille mal gardée. He resurrected the Pas de ruban for Lise and Colas, in which the lovers perform a charming pas with intricate tricks using a pink satin ribbon. Ashton took this idea to an entirely new level with the Fanny Elssler pas de deux, devising a spectacular Grand adage for Lise, Colas and eight women with eight ribbons. Ashton also included Petipa’s original mimed sequence known as When I’m Married, a passage that was performed by all of the great ballerinas of old when they danced the role of Lise. He was taught this passage by Tamara Karsavina, former Ballerina of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres and the Original Ballet Russe. She had in turn learned it from her teacher Pavel Gerdt, once the Imperial Ballet’s leading male dancer who had partnered ballerinas of the late 19th century and early 20th century in the role of Lise.
To inspire Lanchbery to write music for the Clog Dance, Ashton took the composer to a performance of Lancashire clog dancers. This dance is performed in the ballet by Lise’s mother, the Widow Simone. Lanchbery decided to use the leitmotiv for the Widow Simone from Hertel’s score. Ashton fashioned a humorous number from this music for Simone and four ballerinas, at the beginning of which Lise tempts her mother with a pair of clogs; she puts them on and whirls into one of Ashton’s most celebrated numbers, which also features the dancers using the clogs to perform sur la pointe (on their toes).
Ashton’s 1960 version of La Fille mal gardée has been staged for many companies throughout the world and has become the more or less “traditional” version, replacing the productions derived from the Petipa/Ivanov/Gorsky versions danced in Russia to the music of Hertel. Among such companies are the Bolshoi Ballet (2002), and American Ballet Theatre (2004). In spite of this, the famous La Fille mal gardée pas de deux, which is taken from the Petipa/Ivanov/Gorsky versions of the ballet, is still performed with regularity as a gala excerpt, and is often used by various young dancers on the ballet competition circuit.
After Ashton’s death, the rights to his staging of La fille mal gardée passed to Alexander Grant, the original performer of the role of Alain. In 2007, the Paris Opéra Ballet invited Grant to supervise a staging of Ashton’s version, which premiered at the Palais Garnier in July 2007 with Dorothée Gilbert as Lise, Nicolas Le Riche as Colas, Simon Valastro as Alain, and Stéphane Phavorin as Widow Simone. As part of a contract between the BBC and the Royal Ballet signed in 1961, La fille mal gardée was one of nine ballets filmed for television, and was broadcast over Christmas 1962 with the original cast. There have been subsequent video recordings issued by the Royal Ballet. In 1962, Lanchbery recorded excerpts of music from his adaptation of Hérold’s score, and in 1983 he recorded the complete work, again for Decca Records.
