The Two Pigeons
Encyclopedia
The Two Pigeons is a fable by Jean de la Fontaine
(Book IX.2) that was adapted as a ballet with music by André Messager
in the 19th century and rechoreagraphed to the same music by Frederick Ashton
in the 20th.
La Fontaine gives his text a Classical turn by alluding to a poem by Horace
during its course. Horace's "Epistle to Aristus Fuscus" begins
Turtle doves are traditionally the symbol of close bonding and their appearance in Horace's poem would not be enough alone to constitute the intended allusion. But at the end of his poem La Fontaine returns to the Horatian theme of a preference for the country over life in the city. Reflecting on a youthful (heterosexual) love affair, he declares that he would not then have exchanged for a life at Court the woods in which his beloved wandered. It is this sentiment that has gained the fable the reputation of being La Fontaine's best and tenderest as it comes to rest on an evocation of past innocence:
Translations of the fable were familiar enough in Britain but the subject of male bonding left some readers uneasy (as it very obviously did Elizur Wright). Eventually there appeared an 18th century version in octosyllabic couplets that claimed to be ‘improved from Fontaine’. Here the couple are a male and female named Columbo and Turturella. Apart from this, the only real difference is that, in place of an authorial narration, Columbo relates his misadventures to Turturella after his return and she draws the moral ‘Ere misfortunes teach, be wise’. The new version, also titled "The Two Doves", has been attributed to John Hawkesworth
, one of the editors of The Gentleman's Magazine
in which it first appeared (July 1748, p 326). Unascribed there, it remained so when reprinted in Thomas Bewick
’s Select Fables of Aesop
and others (1818).
The change in gender was replicated when the fable was later made the subject of a Parisian ballet. By that time the French were already disposed to interpret it in this way. Gustave Doré
, who often transposes the fables into equivalent human situations, did so in his 1868 illustration of "The Two Pigeons". This pictures a couple in 17th century dress, the woman hanging onto the departing gallant's hand and leaning towards him with concern in her eyes.
. This was first performed in three acts at the Paris Opéra
in the autumn of 1886 with choreography by Louis Mérante
, libretto by Mérante and Henri de Régnier
.
In the original scenario, set in 18th century Thessaly
, the hero Pépio (danced then by a woman) is discontented with life at home and with the company of his fiancée Gourouli. Their uneasy relationship is symbolised by the pas de deux
the two lovers perform at the start in imitation of two pigeons they have been observing, quarreling with small irritated movements of the head and then coming together to make up. When a group of gypsies visit their village, Pépio is seduced by the energetic czardas that they dance and flirts with the dusky Djali, eventually leaving his love behind to join in their wanderings. Gourouli's grandmother advises her to follow him disguised as a gypsy. Arriving at their camp, she makes all the men fall in love with her and bribes one of them to make Pépio's life miserable. A storm breaks and the gypsies disappear with Pépio's money. He returns home chastened and asks forgivenness.
The ballet was later introduced to London in 1906 with choreography by François Ambroisiny and a shortened score by Messager himself. He used this shortened version when the piece was revived at the Paris Opéra in 1912, and it was published as a final version. A one-act version was choreographed by Albert Aveline at the Opera in 1919 and it was not until 1942 that the role of Pépio was finally danced by a man.
The discovery of the shortened score used at Covent Garden
prompted Frederick Ashton
to make his own one-hour version of the ballet, set in Paris at the time of the music's composition. At the start a French painter is revealed trying to paint his lover, who is sitting on an ornate cast-iron chair. The session is interrupted by the entry of the model's friends and his responsiveness to other female company underlines his restless spirit. A troupe of gypsies that he sees through the garret window, misunderstanding a gesture of his, now crowd in and a quarrel develops over possession of the chair between the model and a hot-blooded Carmen with whom the painter is flirting. Perceiving that they are not really welcome, the gipsy leader leaves the studio and the painter dashes off to join them. However, his intrusion into their social order is resented and he is thrown out of the encampment. Returning to the lover he has left behind, they are reconciled and sit together on the ornate chair that has dominated the room.
The ballet's title is further underlined by Ashton's use of two live pigeons to represent the lovers. Seen together during the first act, while the artist and his lover dance together, the young man's dissatisfaction and temporary desertion of the girl are underlined by one pigeon flying alone across the stage before the interval. The painter's return in the next act is prompted by a pigeon coming to land on his shoulder; once harmony is restored, both pigeons perch above the lovers on the chair. The ballet was premiered on St. Valentine's Day in February 1961 and has since been performed regularly by the Royal Ballet touring company, as well as staged by several other dance companies around the world.
constructed a closing reconciliation scene from earlier music and a passage from Messager’s operetta Véronique
, as well as revising the orchestration in favour of a richer sound. John Lanchbery recorded his version of the ballet music for EMI in 1984 with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
. In 1991 the Orchestra of the Welsh National Opera released a recording of Messager's short score.
La Fontaine's fable also served as the inspiration for Charles Aznavour
's song "Les Deux Pigeons", which was featured in a segment of the film 3 Fables of Love (1962). The song is a sad one, since in this case the pigeon has not returned home. In common with the fable of La Fontaine, a parallel is drawn between the parting of male friends (Un pigeon regrettait son frère) and a broken heterosexual relationship. The song has been many times recorded and an audio version is presently available on YouTube
.
Settings of La Fontaine's fable include one by Charles Gounod
(1883) which omits the story and only includes the 19-line final sentiment. The German composer Stefan Wolpe
set a translation by Heinrich von Kleist
: "Die Beiden Tauben" features as the third song for baritone and piano in his Drei Lieder von Heinrich von Kleist (op.3, 1925).
Jean de La Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine was the most famous French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his Fables, which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Europe and numerous alternative versions in France, and in French regional...
(Book IX.2) that was adapted as a ballet with music by André Messager
André Messager
André Charles Prosper Messager , was a French composer, organist, pianist, conductor and administrator. His stage compositions included ballets and 30 opéra comiques and operettas, among which Véronique, had lasting success, with Les p'tites Michu and Monsieur Beaucaire also enjoying international...
in the 19th century and rechoreagraphed to the same music by Frederick Ashton
Frederick Ashton
Sir Frederick William Mallandaine Ashton OM, CH, CBE was a leading international dancer and choreographer. He is most noted as the founder choreographer of The Royal Ballet in London, but also worked as a director and choreographer of opera, film and theatre revues.-Early life:Ashton was born at...
in the 20th.
The Fable
La Fontaine ascribed the fable to the Persian author Bidpai and had found it in an abridged version titled "The Book of Enlightenment or the Conduct of Kings". The original is of some length, embroidered as it is with many an exquisite flower of rhetoric upon the trellis of its exposition. In essence it differs little from La Fontaine's abbreviated version. Two pigeons (or doves in Elizur Wright's American translation) live together in the closest friendship and 'cherish for each other/The love that brother hath for brother.' One of them yearns for a change of scene and eventually flies off on what he promises will be only a three-day adventure. During this time he is caught in a storm with little shelter, ensnared, attacked by predators and then injured by a boy with a sling, returning with relief to roam no more.La Fontaine gives his text a Classical turn by alluding to a poem by Horace
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...
during its course. Horace's "Epistle to Aristus Fuscus" begins
-
- To Fuscus the city-lover I the country-lover
- Send greetings. To be sure in this one matter we
- Differ much, but in everything else we’re like twins
- With brothers’ hearts (if one says no, so does the other)
- And we nod in agreement like old familiar doves.
- You guard the nest: I praise the streams and woods
- And the mossy rocks of a beautiful countryside. (Epistles I.10)
Turtle doves are traditionally the symbol of close bonding and their appearance in Horace's poem would not be enough alone to constitute the intended allusion. But at the end of his poem La Fontaine returns to the Horatian theme of a preference for the country over life in the city. Reflecting on a youthful (heterosexual) love affair, he declares that he would not then have exchanged for a life at Court the woods in which his beloved wandered. It is this sentiment that has gained the fable the reputation of being La Fontaine's best and tenderest as it comes to rest on an evocation of past innocence:
-
-
-
- O, did my wither'd heart but dare
- To kindle for the bright and good,
- Should not I find the charm still there?
- Is love, to me, with things that were?
-
-
Translations of the fable were familiar enough in Britain but the subject of male bonding left some readers uneasy (as it very obviously did Elizur Wright). Eventually there appeared an 18th century version in octosyllabic couplets that claimed to be ‘improved from Fontaine’. Here the couple are a male and female named Columbo and Turturella. Apart from this, the only real difference is that, in place of an authorial narration, Columbo relates his misadventures to Turturella after his return and she draws the moral ‘Ere misfortunes teach, be wise’. The new version, also titled "The Two Doves", has been attributed to John Hawkesworth
John Hawkesworth
John Hawkesworth , English writer, was born in London.-Biography:He is said to have been clerk to an attorney, and was certainly self-educated. In 1744 he succeeded Samuel Johnson as compiler of the parliamentary debates for the Gentleman's Magazine, and from 1746 to 1749 he contributed poems...
, one of the editors of The Gentleman's Magazine
The Gentleman's Magazine
The Gentleman's Magazine was founded in London, England, by Edward Cave in January 1731. It ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term "magazine" for a periodical...
in which it first appeared (July 1748, p 326). Unascribed there, it remained so when reprinted in Thomas Bewick
Thomas Bewick
Thomas Bewick was an English wood engraver and ornithologist.- Early life and apprenticeship :Bewick was born at Cherryburn House in the village of Mickley, in the parish of Ovingham, Northumberland, England, near Newcastle upon Tyne on 12 August 1753...
’s Select Fables of Aesop
Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables or the Aesopica are a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and story-teller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE. The fables remain a popular choice for moral education of children today...
and others (1818).
The change in gender was replicated when the fable was later made the subject of a Parisian ballet. By that time the French were already disposed to interpret it in this way. Gustave Doré
Gustave Doré
Paul Gustave Doré was a French artist, engraver, illustrator and sculptor. Doré worked primarily with wood engraving and steel engraving.-Biography:...
, who often transposes the fables into equivalent human situations, did so in his 1868 illustration of "The Two Pigeons". This pictures a couple in 17th century dress, the woman hanging onto the departing gallant's hand and leaning towards him with concern in her eyes.
The Ballets
André Messsager based a ballet on La Fontaine’s fable under the title Les Deux PigeonsLes Deux Pigeons (ballet)
Les deux pigeons is a ballet with music by André Messager, based on a fable by Jean de la Fontaine, that was first performed at the Paris Opéra on 18 October 1886...
. This was first performed in three acts at the Paris Opéra
Paris Opera
The Paris Opera is the primary opera company of Paris, France. It was founded in 1669 by Louis XIV as the Académie d'Opéra and shortly thereafter was placed under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Lully and renamed the Académie Royale de Musique...
in the autumn of 1886 with choreography by Louis Mérante
Louis Mérante
Louis Alexandre Mérante was a dancer and choreographer, the Maître de Ballet of the Paris Opera Ballet at the Salle Le Peletier until its destruction by fire in 1873, and subsequently the first Ballet Master at the company's new Palais Garnier, which opened in 1875...
, libretto by Mérante and Henri de Régnier
Henri de Régnier
Henri François Joseph de Régnier was a French symbolist poet, considered one of the most important of France during the early 20th century....
.
In the original scenario, set in 18th century Thessaly
Thessaly
Thessaly is a traditional geographical region and an administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, Thessaly was known as Aeolia, and appears thus in Homer's Odyssey....
, the hero Pépio (danced then by a woman) is discontented with life at home and with the company of his fiancée Gourouli. Their uneasy relationship is symbolised by the pas de deux
Pas de deux
In ballet, a pas de deux is a duet in which ballet dancers perform the dance together. It usually consists of an entrée, adagio, two variations , and a coda.-Notable Pas de deux:...
the two lovers perform at the start in imitation of two pigeons they have been observing, quarreling with small irritated movements of the head and then coming together to make up. When a group of gypsies visit their village, Pépio is seduced by the energetic czardas that they dance and flirts with the dusky Djali, eventually leaving his love behind to join in their wanderings. Gourouli's grandmother advises her to follow him disguised as a gypsy. Arriving at their camp, she makes all the men fall in love with her and bribes one of them to make Pépio's life miserable. A storm breaks and the gypsies disappear with Pépio's money. He returns home chastened and asks forgivenness.
The ballet was later introduced to London in 1906 with choreography by François Ambroisiny and a shortened score by Messager himself. He used this shortened version when the piece was revived at the Paris Opéra in 1912, and it was published as a final version. A one-act version was choreographed by Albert Aveline at the Opera in 1919 and it was not until 1942 that the role of Pépio was finally danced by a man.
The discovery of the shortened score used at Covent Garden
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
prompted Frederick Ashton
Frederick Ashton
Sir Frederick William Mallandaine Ashton OM, CH, CBE was a leading international dancer and choreographer. He is most noted as the founder choreographer of The Royal Ballet in London, but also worked as a director and choreographer of opera, film and theatre revues.-Early life:Ashton was born at...
to make his own one-hour version of the ballet, set in Paris at the time of the music's composition. At the start a French painter is revealed trying to paint his lover, who is sitting on an ornate cast-iron chair. The session is interrupted by the entry of the model's friends and his responsiveness to other female company underlines his restless spirit. A troupe of gypsies that he sees through the garret window, misunderstanding a gesture of his, now crowd in and a quarrel develops over possession of the chair between the model and a hot-blooded Carmen with whom the painter is flirting. Perceiving that they are not really welcome, the gipsy leader leaves the studio and the painter dashes off to join them. However, his intrusion into their social order is resented and he is thrown out of the encampment. Returning to the lover he has left behind, they are reconciled and sit together on the ornate chair that has dominated the room.
The ballet's title is further underlined by Ashton's use of two live pigeons to represent the lovers. Seen together during the first act, while the artist and his lover dance together, the young man's dissatisfaction and temporary desertion of the girl are underlined by one pigeon flying alone across the stage before the interval. The painter's return in the next act is prompted by a pigeon coming to land on his shoulder; once harmony is restored, both pigeons perch above the lovers on the chair. The ballet was premiered on St. Valentine's Day in February 1961 and has since been performed regularly by the Royal Ballet touring company, as well as staged by several other dance companies around the world.
Musical Interpretations
As the 1912 version didn't provide a return to the opening scene at the end, Ashton's musical arranger John LanchberyJohn Lanchbery
John Arthur Lanchbery OBE was an English, later Australian, composer and conductor, famous for his ballet arrangements.-Life:...
constructed a closing reconciliation scene from earlier music and a passage from Messager’s operetta Véronique
Véronique (operetta)
Véronique is an opéra comique or operetta in three acts composed by André Messager. The French libretto was by Georges Duval and Albert Vanloo...
, as well as revising the orchestration in favour of a richer sound. John Lanchbery recorded his version of the ballet music for EMI in 1984 with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra is an English orchestra. Originally based in Bournemouth, the BSO moved its offices to the adjacent town of Poole in 1979....
. In 1991 the Orchestra of the Welsh National Opera released a recording of Messager's short score.
La Fontaine's fable also served as the inspiration for Charles Aznavour
Charles Aznavour
Charles Aznavour, OC is an Armenian-French singer, songwriter, actor, public activist and diplomat. Besides being one of France's most popular and enduring singers, he is also one of the best-known singers in the world...
's song "Les Deux Pigeons", which was featured in a segment of the film 3 Fables of Love (1962). The song is a sad one, since in this case the pigeon has not returned home. In common with the fable of La Fontaine, a parallel is drawn between the parting of male friends (Un pigeon regrettait son frère) and a broken heterosexual relationship. The song has been many times recorded and an audio version is presently available on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
.
Settings of La Fontaine's fable include one by Charles Gounod
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...
(1883) which omits the story and only includes the 19-line final sentiment. The German composer Stefan Wolpe
Stefan Wolpe
Stefan Wolpe was a German-born composer.-Life:Wolpe was born in Berlin. He attended the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory from the age of fourteen, and the Berlin Hochschule für Musik in 1920-1921. He studied composition under Franz Schreker and was also a pupil of Ferruccio Busoni...
set a translation by Heinrich von Kleist
Heinrich von Kleist
Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist was a poet, dramatist, novelist and short story writer. The Kleist Prize, a prestigious prize for German literature, is named after him.- Life :...
: "Die Beiden Tauben" features as the third song for baritone and piano in his Drei Lieder von Heinrich von Kleist (op.3, 1925).