Coppélia is a ballet by Leo Delibes based upon a story by E.T.A. Hoffmann entitled "The Sandman". It concerns an inventor who makes a life-size dancing doll. It is so life-like that a young man falls in love with it. If Mary Shelley's Frankenstein represents the dark side of the theme of scientist as creator of life, then Coppelia is the light side.
Some influence on this story comes from travelling shows of the late 18th and early 19th centuries starring mechanical automations. This field of entertainment has been under-documented, but a recent survey of the field is contained in The Mechanical Turk by Tom Standage (2002). These shows were later to also influence Charles Babbage in his invention of the difference engine.
Coppelia, sottotitolato “La ragazza dagli occhi di smalto”, è il risultato di un lavoro di collaborazione.
Ambientato nella piazza di una cittadina di alcuni secoli fa, all’inizio si vede Coppelia seduta su un balcone a leggere un libro mentre Swanilda entra.
Coppelia (or The girl with enamel eyes) is a mime-ballet in two acts and three scenes.
She tries to attract the attention of Coppelia, standing as always, still and serious in the window, a strange girl whom the inhabitants suppose to be the old magician-craftsman's daughter.
Coppelia was, in fact, the last ballet produced at the Paris Opera before the Franco-Prussian War forced that theater to close its doors, and marked the end of an epoch for ballet as for much else.
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