Arthur Saint-Léon in the context of Cesare Pugni

Ludwig Minkus (Russian: Людвиг Минкус, romanized: Lyudvig Minkus), also known as Léon Fyodorovich Minkus (23 March 1826 – 7 December 1917), was an Austrian composer of ballet music, a violinist and teacher of music.

Minkus is noted for the music he composed during his career in St. Petersburg, Russia. Beginning in 1871 Minkus served in the official post of Composer of Ballet Music to the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres, a position he held until it was abolished upon his retirement in 1886. During his long career in St. Petersburg, Minkus composed for the original works and revivals staged by the ballet masters Arthur Saint-Léon and Marius Petipa. Among the composer's most celebrated compositions is his score for La source (1866; composed jointly with Léo Delibes), Don Quixote (1869); and La Bayadère (1877). Minkus composed many pieces for older works. The most well-known of Minkus's additional music is the Grand Pas classique and Mazurka des enfants composed for Petipa's 1881 revival of Paquita.

La source (The Spring) is a ballet in three acts/four scenes with a score composed by Léo Delibes and Ludwig Minkus (Minkus: Act I & Act III-Scene 2/Delibes: Act II & Act III-Scene 1) which was premiered in Paris in 1866 with choreography by Arthur Saint-Léon. In 1878 in Vienna it was called Naïla, die Quellenfee (Naïla, the Waternymph).

The Romantic ballet is defined primarily by an era in ballet in which the ideas of Romanticism in art and literature influenced the creation of ballets. The era occurred during the early to mid 19th century primarily at the Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique of the Paris Opera Ballet and Her Majesty's Theatre in London. It is typically considered to have begun with the 1832 début in Paris of the ballerina Marie Taglioni in the ballet La Sylphide, and to have reached its zenith with the premiere of the divertissement Pas de Quatre staged by the Ballet Master Jules Perrot in London in 1845. The Romantic ballet had no immediate end, but rather a slow decline. Arthur Saint-Léon's 1870 ballet Coppélia is considered to be the last work of the Romantic Ballet. Romantic ballet is believed to have been experienced in three main phases: The zenith phase from 1830 to 1840, the decline phase from 1850 to 1880, and the revival phase in the 1890s prior to Diaghilev. Each phase is synonymous with the production of a few specifically stylized ballets.

During this era, the development of pointework, although still at a fairly basic stage, profoundly affected people's perception of the ballerina. Many lithographs of the period show her virtually floating, poised only on the tip of a toe. This idea of weightlessness was capitalised on in ballets such as La Sylphide and Giselle, and the famous leap apparently attempted by Carlotta Grisi in La Péri.

Coppélia (sometimes subtitled: La Fille aux Yeux d'Émail (The Girl with the Enamel Eyes)) is a comic ballet from 1870 originally choreographed by Arthur Saint-Léon to the music of Léo Delibes, with libretto by Charles-Louis-Étienne Nuitter. Nuitter's libretto and mise-en-scène was based upon E. T. A. Hoffmann's short story Der Sandmann (The Sandman). In Greek, κοπέλα (or κοπελιά in some dialects) means young woman. Coppélia premiered on 25 May 1870 at the Théâtre Impérial de l'Opéra, with the 16-year-old Giuseppina Bozzacchi in the principal role of Swanhilda and ballerina Eugénie Fiocre playing the part of Frantz en travesti. The costumes were designed by Paul Lormier and Alfred Albert, the scenery by Charles-Antoine Cambon (Act I, scene 1; Act II, scene 1), and Édouard Desplechin and Jean-Baptiste Lavastre (Act I, scene 2).

The ballet's first flush of success was interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War and the siege of Paris (which also led to the early death of Giuseppina Bozzacchi, on her 17th birthday), but eventually it became the most-performed ballet at the Opéra.