ABSTRACT
An old man in tattered, eighteenth-century dress shuffles across the stage toward the seated figure of a beautiful woman. A young man sits slumped at a table nearby. Four horns sound an anxious minor chord as the old man raises his arms in a commanding gesture over the motionless woman. This is the moment when the scheming Dr Coppélius believes he can bestow consciousness onto his pretty facsimile of a woman. The delicate creature shudders, rises, and-to the old man’s incredulous joy-takes her first waltz steps. “I have made you and you are beautiful,” the strange alchemist seems to exclaimas he has exclaimed nightly, on stages across the world, for 125 years (Croce 1974:77). Inseparable from the delight Coppélius takes in his creative powers is the anticipation that he will be master of his progeny. The inspirited woman, however, has plans of her own.
