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.