La Fille mal gardée by Sir Frederick Ashton

An archive from 1962, recorded by the BBC with the Royal Ballet of London and the star dancer Nadia Nerina.

La Fille mal gardée (literal translation: The Badly Guarded Girl), was presented at its 1789 Bordeaux premiere as Le Ballet de la paille, ou Il n’est qu’un pas du mal au bien (The Ballet of Straw, or There is Only One Step from Bad to Good). Eighteenth-century titles did tend towards verbosity, but in this case one couldn’t guess from the title that this ballet told a simple story about young lovers whose betrothal was thwarted by the girl’s meddlesome mother who had another candidate in mind.