Ballet

Coppélia

0 upcoming performances in New York

*Coppélia* is a comic ballet first staged in 1870, built on E. T. A. Hoffmann’s tale of mistaken identity and a lifelike doll, with Léo Delibes’s score carrying much of the storytelling. The plot turns on jealousy, trickery, and the limits of what can be made to seem human, a theme that still reads clearly in an age of replicas and avatars. At New York City Ballet, the work sits inside a repertory shaped by Balanchine and American classical dance lineages. Its humor can look old-fashioned, but the ballet’s craft makes the illusion legible.