artists such as De Quincey – gave Gautier the possibility of adding a brighter aura to his characters by setting them on the borderline between life and death from which all Egyptian art took nourishment. So as not to overwhelm his readers with terror, Gautier frequently appeals to irony, which has an anticlimactic effect. Irony serves the same function in the ballet, for example in the moment when Lord Wilson, the quintessence of Englishness, impassively attempts to sketch the scene of the desert disturbed by the simoom, or when Aspicia, after rising from the sarcophagus, looks into a mirror and is pleased to find herself as pretty as she was a few millennia before. The story called for an artist in the title role who had a special dramatic talent (as did Rosati), because of all the scenes of love, fear, and courage which culminated in Aspicia's attempt to cast herself onto a flower-basket hiding a snake, a classic gesture since Cleopatra's time. Twenty years later, Virginia Zucchi (less conventionally) portrayed an unusually humane princess, not as arrogant and voluptuous as that of her successor Mathilde Kschessinskaya who, on the other hand, made it more of a virtuoso role. Petipa's penchant for folklore enhanced the dance of unlikely bayadères and the pageant of the rivers (from Guadalquivir to Neva), all dressed up in national costumes, but historical inaccuracy and mixing of styles raised, especially in Moscow, a few criticisms, in spite of the general taste for sets and costumes reinvented with a minimum of realism and a maximum of grandeur. Photographs of The Pharaoh's Daughter References Anderson, J. 1992. "Ballet & Modern Dance: A Concise History", 2nd edition. New Jersey: Princeton Book Company. Bremster, M. 1993. "International Dictionary of Ballet" Detroit: St James Press. External links Interview with Pierre Lacotte concerning his 2000 revival of The Pharaoh's Daughter Ballets by Marius Petipa Ballets by Cesare Pugni 1862 ballet premieres Ballets by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges Egypt in fiction Ballets based on works by Théophile Gautier Ballets premiered at the Bolshoi Theatre, Saint Petersburg