Many of the basic facts of the life of Ludwig Minkus are subject to dispute. He may have been born in Grossmeseritsch, in what is now the Czech Republic, for example: or he may have been born in Vienna, Austria. Likewise he may have helped Edouard Deldevez write the score of the ballet Paquita, whi... More informationch debuted in Paris in 1846. Or perhaps he did not, and that first version of Paquita was Deldevez’ alone. In either event, Minkus wrote additional material for Paquita (the story in dance of a gypsy girl in Spain during the Napoleonic wars) for an 1847 production in St. Petersburg. By 1853 he was an orchestra conductor in the employ of Prince Nikolai Yusupov, and he was thereafter an integral part of the scene in those musically fertile final decades of Czarism. Perhaps his greatest contribution to ballet music was his Don Quixote, first performed at the Bolshoi in 1869. Less information