La Trovatiara Pas de Cinq

Spending the winter of 1851-52 in Paris, the great Italian opera composer, Giuseppe Verdi, was persuaded to attend a performance of the enormously popular attraction, LES FILLES DE BARBARY. This all-girl North African Ballet troupe, hailing from Fezon the pirate-infested Barbary Coast, was renowned for its lurid interpretations of European Romantic Ballet and sub-Saharan Apache Dance.

So smitten was Verdi by the passionate intensity and imaginative tattoos of these pirate girls that he offered to compose a ballet especially for them, to be included in the Third Act of his new opera, La Trovatiara (The Foundling Queen).

The scene is set in Tripoli, dockside, and the pirate girls a recommended to perform a divertissement by the cruel Emir, Saddam el-Djaloppy. It is this scene that constitutes the current Trockadero revival. (In the opera, following their dance, the pirate girls are set free by the suddenly grateful Emir, and sent forth to open coin-operated laundries all over Europe).

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo is indeed fortunate to have uncovered this lost gem from a misplaced Verdi opera.