Esmeralda
Choreography · Jules Perrot (1844)
music by Cesare Pugni (additional music by Riccardo Drigo for the 1886 and 1899 revivals)
A Romani street dancer, Esmeralda, agrees to a mock marriage with the poor poet Pierre Gringoire to save him from execution by her people, though she has no romantic interest in him. She falls for the dashing captain Phoebus, who rescues her from an abduction ordered by the obsessive archdeacon Claude Frollo, unaware that Phoebus is already engaged to Fleur-de-Lys. When Frollo, consumed by jealousy, stabs Phoebus and frames Esmeralda for the crime, she is sentenced to hang, but is saved at the last moment when Phoebus, alive and recovered, exposes Frollo as the true culprit.