Carnaval is a ballet based on the music of Robert Schumann's piano suite Carnaval, Op. 9, as orchestrated by Alexander Glazunov, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Anatoly Lyadov and Alexander Tcherepnin. It was choreographed by Michel Fokine to his own libretto, with costumes designed by Léon Bakst, and premiered in Pavlovsk on 5 March (old style, 20 February) 1910.

The leading dancers of the Imperial Ballet were engaged in the production: Tamara Karsavina (Columbine), Leonid Leontiev (Harlequin), Vera Fokina (Chiarina), Ludmila Schollar (Estrella), Bronislava Nijinska (Papillon), Vsevolod Meyerhold (Pierrot), Vasily Kiselev (Florestan), and Aleksandr Shiryaev (Eusebius).

The ballet became world-famous due to its production by Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (Theater des Westens, Berlin, 20 May 1910), with new sets and costumes by Bakst, with Lydia Lopokova as Columbine and Vaslav Nijinsky as Harlequin.

History
Carnaval was created in three spontaneous rehearsals in 1910 for a charity performance in Pavlov Hall, St. Petersburg, to benefit the magazine Satyricon.

When Michel Fokine was approached by two young men involved in the publication (Mikhail Kornfeld, later to be its publisher, and the later-famous poet Potemkin) they gave him free rein, although they mentioned that the theme of the event was to be carnival. The choreographer immediately thought of Schumann's Carnaval suite for piano, which he had long admired.

On 14 September 1933, the ballet was revived in London by the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo (staged by Woizikovsky) for Alexandra Danilova (appearing as Columbine). In 1937, it was staged by the Vic-Wells Ballet with Margot Fonteyn playing the role of "Columbine".

Score
The score has musical references to Frédéric Chopin and Niccolò Paganini, literary ones to the four commedia dell'arte characters Harlequin, Columbina, Pierrot and Pantalone, and stage directions written in after it was completed.

There are also autobiographical references to Ernestine von Fricken, with whom Schumann was in love when he was very young, to Clara Schumann, his wife, and in the final section of the music, entitled "Marche des Davidsbundler contre les Philistines", to the composer's advocacy of the "new" art, as against the conservation of the old. The Davidsbündler was an artistic society invented by Schumann as a foil to the conservative musical establishment.