Ludwig Minkus (Russian: Людвиг Минкус, romanized: Lyudvig Minkus), also known as Léon Fyodorovich Minkus (23 March 1826 – 7 December 1917), was an Austrian composer of ballet music, a violinist and teacher of music.
Minkus is noted for the music he composed during his career in St. Petersburg, Russia. Beginning in 1871 Minkus served in the official post of Composer of Ballet Music to the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres, a position he held until it was abolished upon his retirement in 1886. During his long career in St. Petersburg, Minkus composed for the original works and revivals staged by the ballet masters Arthur Saint-Léon and Marius Petipa. Among the composer's most celebrated compositions is his score for La source (1866; composed jointly with Léo Delibes), Don Quixote (1869); and La Bayadère (1877). Minkus composed many pieces for older works. The most well-known of Minkus's additional music is the Grand Pas classique and Mazurka des enfants composed for Petipa's 1881 revival of Paquita.
Ludwig Minkus was born Aloysius Bernhard Philipp Minkus on 23 March 1826, in the Innere Stadt district of Vienna, the capital of the Austrian Empire. His father, Theodor Johann Minkus, was born in 1795 in Groß-Meseritsch, Moravia (today known as Velké Meziříčí near Brno, Moravia, in what is now the Czech Republic) and his mother, Maria Franziska Heimann was born in 1807 in Pest, Hungary. Minkus was of Jewish descent—his parents converted to Catholicism not long before their relocation to Vienna, and were married on the following day.
Minkus's father was a wholesale merchant of wine in Moravia, Austria and Hungary. Theodore Minkus eventually opened a restaurant in the Innere Stadt district of Vienna that featured its own Tanzkapelle (dance orchestra), one of many such orchestras in the imperial capital at that time. By the age of four, Ludwig Minkus began to receive private lessons in the violin, and from 1838 to 1842 he began his musical studies at the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna.
Minkus made his public début at a recital in Vienna at the age of eight. On 18 October 1845 an announcement in the Viennese newspaper Der Humorist commented on the performances of the previous season, and noted that Minkus's playing featured " ... a conservative style with a glittering performance." Soon the young Minkus was appearing in various concert halls as a soloist of note.
Minkus began composing for his instrument while he was still a student. Five pieces for the violin were published in 1846. At this time Minkus began to try his hand at conducting. For a time he was the regular conductor of an orchestra that competed with another under the baton of the young Johann Strauss II (in later years Strauss was acquainted with Minkus's brother Eugen, a bank director in Vienna).
Minkus's life from 1842 to 1852 is poorly documented—travel applications survive which show requests to visit Germany, France and England. In 1852 Minkus accepted the position of principal violinist to the Vienna Court Opera, but because this meant that he also had to fulfill the usual duties this position demanded, he resigned that same year to take up an important musical assignment abroad that would change his life forever.
In 1853 Ludwig Minkus emigrated to Saint Petersburg, Russia to serve as conductor of the Serf orchestra of Prince Nikolai Yusupov, a post which Minkus occupied until 1855. That same year, Minkus married Maria Antoinette Schwarz at the Catholic Church of St. Catherine in St. Petersburg. Schwarz was also a native of Austria, born in Vienna in 1838.
From 1856 until 1861 Minkus served as principal violinist and concert master to the orchestra of the Imperial Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow as well as conductor of the Italian Opera of that theatre. By 1861 Minkus was promoted to the prestigious position of Inspector of Orchestras to the Moscow Imperial Theatres. At this time Minkus was also working as professor of violin at the newly established Moscow Conservatory.
It was for the private performances at the Yusupov palace that Minkus composed what appears to be his first score for ballet, the mythological L′Union de Thétis et Pélée (The Union of Thetis and Peleus), first performed in 1857. During his association with the Imperial Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, Minkus composed another score for ballet, the one-act Deux jours en Venise (Two Days in Venice), produced in 1862.
Collaborations with Arthur Saint-Léon
In 1862 Minkus was commissioned to compose an entr'acte for solo violin to be added to Adolphe Adam's score for Jean Coralli's ballet Orfa, which was staged for the Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow by Arthur Saint-Léon. Since 1860 Saint-Léon was engaged as Premier Maître de Ballet of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres, a position which also required him to stage the occasional work for the Moscow ballet troupe.
It was Saint-Léon who commissioned Minkus's first score for a full-length Grand Ballet. This was the three-act La Flamme d′amour, ou La Salamandre (The Flame of Love, or The Salamander), produced for the Imperial Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow. The ballet was first presented for the benefit performance of the Russian prima ballerina Marfa Muravieva on 24 November [O.S. 12 November] 1863. Saint-Léon then mounted the ballet in an expanded edition for the Imperial Ballet of St. Petersburg under the title Fiametta, ou L′amour du Diable (Fiametta, or The Love of the Devil. The first performance at the Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre on 25 February [O.S. 13 February] 1864 was also a benefit performance for Muravieva. Minkus later accompanied Saint-Léon to Paris to mount the ballet at the Théâtre Impérial de l'Opéra in Paris, again as a vehicle for Muravieva. For this staging the ballet's title was changed again as Néméa, ou L′Amour vengé (Néméa, or The Avenged Love). Since ballets at that time were only performed at the Paris Opéra as diversions during the intermissions of full-length operas, Saint-Léon was required to mount the ballet in a redacted edition in two-acts. The first performance took place on 11 July 1864 with an audience that included the Empress Eugénie. The cast included the celebrated Premier danseur and choreographer Louis Mérante in the role of Count Molder and the ballerina Eugénie Fiocre in the role of Cupid. Minkus's score was praised by Parisian critics, among them Théophile Gautier, who found the music to be filled with a " .. haunting, dreamy quality. The music for the dances were filled with sparkling melodies and infectious rhythms." Néméa, ou L′Amour vengé was retained for fifty-three performances in the Opéra's repertory until 1871. Saint-Léon also mounted the work for the ballet troupe of the Teatro Comunale in Trieste, where it premiered on 15 March 1868 as Nascita della Fiamma d′Amore (Birth of the Flame of Love). The change of titles of this ballet has caused much confusion among historians.
In the fall of 1866 Saint-Léon was invited to stage a new work for the Théâtre Impérial de l'Opéra. This was La Source, which was written by Minkus in collaboration with the composer Léo Delibes. Minkus wrote the whole of Act I and the second tableau of Act III, while Delibes wrote the whole of Act II and the first tableau of Act III. Contemporary sources do not offer an explanation as to why the score was shared between the two composers. La Source premiered on 12 November 1866, and was retained until 1876 after seventy-three performances in the repertoire of the Paris Opéra.
Saint-Léon continued to work with Minkus throughout the 1860s. On 1 December [O.S. 19 November] 1866 Saint-Léon presented his one-act ballet Le Poisson doré (The Golden Fish), which was staged at Peterhof in honor of the wedding of the Tsarevich Alexander Alexandrovich to the Princess Dagmar of Denmark. Saint-Léon chose a Russian subject for this work, derived from Alexander Pushkin's 1835 poem Skazka o rybake i rybke (The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish). For the Imperial Ballet's 1867–1868 season, Saint-Léon expanded Le Poisson doré into a three-act Grand ballet, first presented on 20 November [O.S. 8 November] 1867 with the celebrated Italian ballerina Guglielmina Salvioni in the principal role of Galia. Minkus's score featured several traditional Russian folk melodies, as well as virtuoso passages for solo flute written especially for the renowned Italian flautist Cesare Ciardi.