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Frederick Ashton, Founder Choreographer of The Royal Ballet, created Les Deux Pigeons for The Royal Ballet Touring Company in 1961. Find out more: www.roh.org.uk/productions/the-two-pigeons-by-frederick-ashton
He restaged the work for the main company later that year as The Two Pigeons. He and his regular collaborator John Lanchbery (La Fille mal gardée) worked together to adapt André Messager’s 1886 score, created for a ballet by Louis Mérante at the Paris Opéra. Like Messager and Mérante, Ashton turned to La Fontaine’s fable of the same title for inspiration – but Ashton tells quite a different story. He explores the nature of love in a work that has deft comic lightness and soulful pathos in equal measure.
He restaged the work for the main company later that year as The Two Pigeons. He and his regular collaborator John Lanchbery (La Fille mal gardée) worked together to adapt André Messager’s 1886 score, created for a ballet by Louis Mérante at the Paris Opéra. Like Messager and Mérante, Ashton turned to La Fontaine’s fable of the same title for inspiration – but Ashton tells quite a different story. He explores the nature of love in a work that has deft comic lightness and soulful pathos in equal measure.