Compañía Nacional de Danza

The Sylphide, a ballet in two acts by Filippo Taglioni (1777-1871), premiered on 12 March 1832 at the former Paris Opéra Le Pelletier to a score by Jean Schneitzhoeffer and libretto by Adolphe Nourrit. This ballet inspired the version of the same name by August Bournonville (1805-1879) on 28 November 1836, with music by Herman S. Løvenskiold; Bournonville, who had attended the performance of the work in Paris four years earlier, bought the booklet with Nourrit's libretto that day, which he would use without modification, resulting in two works with identical dramaturgy coexisting for a time on the European stages.

The Paris Sylphide did not survive, as did an earlier one performed at the Teatro della Scala in Milan in 1822 with music by Rossini. However, choreographer August Bournonville's version, with music by Herman S. Løvenskiold, becomes the oldest ballet from the Romantic period preserved in the international active repertoire with the greatest choreographic fidelity.

The ballet The Sylphide, the initiator of the current of works on elemental spirits and a great metaphor for frustrated love, was the first great ballet to become popular in Madrid, with multiple stagings and versions, and from 1842 it was performed alternately in two theatres in the capital: the Teatro del Príncipe and the Teatro del Circo.

Bournonville, with the help of two local painters reproduced in detail at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen the original Parisian designs of Pierre Ciceri (scenography) and Eugène Lami (costumes), designs that still literally inspire today's ballet productions.