Violetta Elvin

A czarist captain stops at nothing to learn the secrets of a countess rumored to have sold her soul to the devil in order to always win at cards.

A studio performance of the ballet Les Sylphides by Michel Fokine, first broadcast on 3 April 1953 and starring Alicia Markova, John Field, Violetta Elvin and Svetlana Beriosova.

A pair of twin girls are separated when their parents divorce. They meet again by accident when they are both sent to the same Summer camp, and while there they start to hatch a plot to get back together.

This ballet is choreographer Michel Fokine's new reading of his ballet created a few years before, Chopiniana, where he pays a tribute to the old days romantic ballets. The work does not follow a logical narrative progression, as Karsavina says in the introduction, it is a "Romantic reverie." The unique male dancer (John Field in this version) embodies a Poet. The corps de ballet and the three women soloists Alice Markova, Violetta Elvin and Svetlana Beriosova are intimately linked to the Russian Ballet and to Russia as a whole.

Rural Australian Nellie Melba becomes an opera star in 1900s Europe and the United States.