Octave Fouqué's Ballata is a delicate piece of French salon music written with an emphasis on sentimentality. Its distinctiveness lies in the gentle interplay between the melody and light, arpeggiated accompaniment.
Ensure the voicing of the melody remains clear above the rolling accompaniment patterns.
Comparable difficulty and character — good candidates for what to learn next.
Ballata is rated Henle level 5 of 9 — late intermediate repertoire, roughly ABRSM grades 6–7. In the RCM system it corresponds to about level 6.
You should be comfortable at Henle level 5 — meaning you can already play level 4–5 pieces cleanly. Learning it one level early is possible as a stretch piece, but more than that usually leads to months of frustration.
A typical performance of Ballata lasts about 4 minutes.
Ballata is available as free public-domain sheet music on IMSLP — the score is linked directly from this page.
Pieces at a comparable difficulty and character include Étude in E major, No. 3 by Frédéric Chopin, Albumblatt für Clara Schumann by Johannes Brahms, Bright Eyes by Florence Price — see the full similar-pieces list on this page.