No expense was spared to mount the first production of Le Corsaire at the Thtre Imprial de lOpra in Paris early in 1856. Soon finding a permanent home in the Imperial Ballet of St. Petersburg thanks to the choreography of Marius Petipa, this full-length ballet quickly became an established classic of the genre. Audiences have thrilled ever since to its story of brigands, very loosely based on Byron and centred around the role of Medora, which was designed originally to display the full tale