In the spring of 1896, Alexander Glazunov received a commission from Ivan Vsevolozhsky, the director of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatre, to compose the score to the ballet Raymonda. It was the composer s first experience with a score for a ballet performance. The libretto was written by Princess Lidya Pashkova, a traveler and columnist for the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro. The story involved characters that actually existed alongside fictional ones, and although it was historically inaccurate, the performance was a triumph.