Ballet “The Fountain of Bakhchisaray”

Russian composer and leading 20th-century musicologist Boris Asafiev’s ballet The Fountain of the Bakhchisaray is a poetic story of love’s various “faces”: passion, jealousy, cruelty, and tenderness.

Maria, the daughter of a Polish magnate, inflames the heart of the Crimean Khan Girei, who kidnaps Maria and takes her back to his harem. Here, Maria is thrown into the midst of a psychological war; in a fit of rage and jealousy, Girei’s wife, Zarem, attacks and kills the Polish girl. Khan Girei tries to soothe his pain by gazing into the Fountain of Tears, whose bubbling water brings him back to his past, and his feelings once again come to life…