Where was the original musical score for the ballet Le papillon?
© Anna Maria Thor / iStock

A Life Passion for Music, A Love of Ballet

When conductor Jonathan Tessero heard a recording of Jacques Offenbach’s single ballet Le papillon (The Butterfly), he fell in love with it. He wanted to know how Offenbach could direct stringed instruments to perfectly mimic butterflies. So Tessero went looking for the original score.

He found plenty of information about the composer, the history of the performances, the story line. He found audio recordings and videos of parts of the choreography. He found the modern adaptation John Lanchbery did for the Houston Ballet.

Even with his passion for music and his dedication to the hunt, he could not find the original musical score.

In an age where so much information is at our fingertips, how could this be possible?

Act One

In the 1860s when Offenbach wrote this ballet (as well as his famous can-can music), every note was written by hand on paper.

Each page of the score contained just a few measures for each of the thirty instruments. The entire score was many hundreds of pages of notes.

Offenbach would have written the original copy, or the autographed copy. Then he or other scribes might have spent hours hand-making another copy or two.

At the time, the only way to perform this music was to have one of these original copies. Opera houses, libraries, and collectors kept scores like these safe.

And yet somehow Offenbach’s original score had been lost.

Ballerina Emma Livry in Le papillon, 1861
Image from National Library of France

Act Two

Tessero, a young conductor whose resume includes recordings with numerous Broadway casts and orchestras, was baffled. “This work was done in 1860 and lasted for a hundred years and then it was lost. In the modern day, when we can track anything, we lost it.”

Tessero started following some leads.

Scene 1: The Professor

The recording he had first heard was done in 1972 by conductor Richard Bonynge and the London Symphony Orchestra.

Tessero contacted Bonynge, who lives in Europe, and learned that the score he used was a copy. More precisely, it was a series of printed photographs that he had received from the owner of the autographed original, a professor in the midwestern United States. And the photos were not in great shape.

In addition, that professor, George Verdak from Indiana University, had since died. While Verdak had known the treasure he had in the autographed copy, keepers of his estate didn’t. So after his death, his copy was misplaced—perhaps sold at an estate sale, bundled up in papers returned to the university, or placed in a storage box.

Scene Two: The Italian

Simultaneously, Tessero learned of another copy in Italy. When he tried to acquire it, he was told that they do not lend it out because it is a very, very old version of the original, and the next time it is touched, it could be ruined. (Tessero plans to visit this copy one day. He won’t touch it, but he has to see it.)

Scene Three: The Librarian

Tessero also traced a copy from the Paris Opera Ballet.

About thirty years ago, the Paris Opera Ballet donated their precious scores to the National Library of France. But when Tessero contacted the library, they were unable to locate this specific document.

So after nine months of searching, Tessero wasn’t close to finding the original music. He put the project aside.

Offenbach’s original score would reveal how notes could mimic a butterfly’s movement.
© Lidiya Drabchuk / Hemera

Scene Four: The Finale

A few months later, out of the blue, a librarian from the National Library of France contacted Tessero. They had discovered, not the autographed copy, but a microfilm copy of the original score.

Oh, I see! A breakthrough.

The library sent him a copy of the microfilm, and partially for himself and partially to ensure the future of the ballet, Tessero has been transcribing the score from the microfilm to a digital file. He anticipates the task will take about a year to complete.

Once the music is all digitally input, Tessero hopes to achieve his ultimate goal: “One day a ballet company will do it, and I will get to stand there and conduct it, and then my geek dream will have come true.”

Jonathan Tessero has worked on Broadway musicals, a Super Bowl, and the Macy’s
Thanksgiving Day Parade. He plans to add Offenbach’s ballet to that list.
Image © Jonathan Tessero

Postlude: The Story

While the two-act-four-scene original score has been difficult to find, there is a lot of well-documented history of the piece and its story, thanks to the liner notes Professor Verdak wrote for the London Symphony recording.

As Tessero says, “Most ballets have a theme of nature, or love, or magic. This one has them all!”

Briefly, the story is that a jealous, old and evil fairy transforms a young princess (whom the fairy has kidnapped) into a butterfly. A prince discovers the butterfly-girl’s true identity and captures the wicked fairy. The spell on the girl is broken, the fairy is transformed into a statue, and the prince and princess can live happily ever after.

This snippet is a better representation of the magic in the story and the score.

If the video does not display, watch it here. 

Speaking about the year’s work to transcribe the ballet’s musical score, Tessero reveals again his passion for music, “I truly love the piece. If it wasn’t worth listening to, it would be harder.”

We look forward to listening as you conduct it, Jonathan!

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