I wonder if anyone noticed in Coppelia the theme of an older man hopelessly, incongruously, in love with a young ideal. In 1974 Balanchine appears to have emerged from his immersion in Farrell's loss of the early 70's and he may have been able to deal better with this theme and its perhaps too personal resonance. The search for the elusive ideal woman is the theme of many Balanchine ballets, as we well know, but here we have a caricatured elderly figure, Dr. Coppelius, who loses his love to a young man, the very evocation of Balanchine's own story. The many rejections by Swanilda of the puppet master, her ridiculing of him in her dances, made me think of the Balanchine-Farrell drama. Of course, I know Danilova staged the second act, but their creation of Coppelia was a collaboration.

IMO, that became a significant undercurrent of Balanchine's output after Farrell's departure. Even works already set were modified to make the Old Man more dignified, more sympathetic. "Harlequinade" changed the character of the father from a Dr. Bartolo cognate to Don Quixote! Balanchine urged Shaun O'Brien to make Drosselmeyer "like Robespierre". Brrrr.