Libretto by Jules Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Joseph Mazilier edited by Marius Petipa
Presented with two intervals.
Use is made in the production of music by Leo Delibes, Cesare Pugni, Pyotr von Oldenburg, Riccardo Drigo, Albert Zabel, Julius Gerber.
Music dramaturgy conception – Yuri Burlaka
Score restored by Alexander Troitsky
The original score by Adolphe Adam/Leo Delibes for Le Corsaire has been made available by L’Opera national de Paris from the archives of La Bibliotheque nationale de France
The choreographic notation has been made available by the Harvard University Theatre Collection
Evgeny Ponomaryov’s costume sketches (1899) used in the production have been made available by the St. Petersburg State Theatre Library
This Bolshoi Theatre production is intended for those who still seek for miracles in theatre. If you are moved to applaud the flooded with sunlight bazaar square which comes to view as the curtains are pulled back, if the piles of stage-prop pears and peaches delight your eye and make your mouth water, if you wish to penetrate to the gist of the touchingly naive pantomime via which these intriguing - dressed in attires that are out of this world - pasha-eunuchs-slave-girls communicate, if the magic of a shipwreck on stage excites you more than the real thing in the film version of the Titanic, then have no doubt, you are a potential fan of this Le Corsaire.
And if, in addition, you are as passionate about ballet as was Petipa, who embellished the old Paris original with marvelous choreographic tableaux and numbers of his own and if you love it as much as do the creators of the Bolshoi-2007 version of Le Corsaire - Alexei Ratmansky and Yuri Burlaka who have attempted to revive - here the creations of their famous predecessor - there - simply his signature, you will become a devotee of this ballet and attend performances of it just as regularly as you do those of La Bayadere or Swan Lake.
This is real "grand ballet" where there is enough dance for virtually the whole company at once, while the prima-ballerina proves her right to this title almost without a break. And although this Le Corsaire is far removed from its literary source (Byron’s poem of the same name, dear reader), its libretto is quite capable of satisfying society’s love of the pirate-romantic genre.
A great deal of work was involved in launching this Le Corsaire. The creators of the ballet studied archive material in Moscow’s Bakhrushin Museum and in the St. Petersburg State Theatre Library; with the assistance of the Paris Opera, the original score was retrieved from La Bibliotheque national de France; the old costumes and sets were reproduced, while, having deciphered the original dance notation in the Harvard Theatre collection, Ratmansky and Burlaka added dances of their own, their aim being in no way to sin against the spirit of that age when the last of Petipa’s Corsaires loved, drowned and finally ended up safe and sound - the 1899 revival. Just over one hundred years later - might be a suitable title for this hazardous and one hundred percent serious romance between the Bolshoi Theatre and grand ballet.
Ballet is an art whose past is fragile, relying on memory rather than a secure text. Stagings had no proper choreographic scores until the mid-20th century, and dance was handed down from performer to performer with all the inaccuracies that implies. The reclaiming of a balletic history has at times seemed like the reconstruction of a dinosaur skeleton from a single bone, and as unlikely of success. Yet latterly in Russia, at the Mariinsky and Bolshoi Theatres, there has been a quest to explore a heritage by restoring celebrated productions.
Now, in Moscow, Le Corsaire has been restaged. The keys to this and similar acts of dance-piety are the notations, in Stepanov script, of the ballets given at the Mariinsky Theatre as the 19th century ended, which the rйgisseur Nikolai Sergueyev abstracted from the theatre’s archives when he fled Russia in 1918. From these scripts stem most of the classics as we know them in the west: Ninette de Valois acquired our Royal Ballet’s versions from Sergueyev in the 1930s. These "ledgers" (de Valois’ phrase) record, in varying stages of completeness, both steps and production detail, and are now held in Harvard’s great Theatre Collection. Deciphering them, adapting them to the style of today’s dancers, is a task only for the brave and those rich in resources. Nowhere better, then, than Russia, where the balletic past is honoured.
Le Corsaire was an unfailingly popular ballet throughout Europe in the 19th century. Its grandest staging was in Paris in 1856 but it soon arrived in Petersburg, was much revised, its first score by Adolphe Adam given a patchwork of interpolations. It survived, variously corrupt, in Russia, and in London we rejoice in the Mariinsky’s madcap account - by Groucho Marx out of Ali Baba. Now Alexey Ratmansky, director of the Bolshoi Ballet, and Yury Burlaka, a specialist in dance reconstruction, have made a production that seeks to show the ballet as Petipa finally transformed it in 1899. The plot may, fragmentarily, be Byronic but it is really a romp for pirates, slave girls, assorted eunuchs, and with a shipwreck to round matters spiffingly off. The score has been cleaned.
The scenery, by Boris Kaminsky, is brilliantly of-the-period in suggesting Adrianopol under Turkish rule. The costumes by Yelena Zaitseva rework those designed in 1899 and are admirable. Ratmansky and Burlaka have restored a text, recapturing much of what I sense is the Petipa manner, and filled it with dance delights. The result is fascinating, and was given on Thursday and Friday nights, when I saw it on the Bolshoi’s New Stage, with exultant zest.
Svetlana Zakharova, as the heroine Medora, was enchanting, witty and beguiling in step and manner, and she sailed with adorable grace through ferocious choreography. (At the second performance, Svetlana Lunkina was also a delight). The celebrated Jardin anime is revealed as a far longer scene than heretofore, the stage a riot of danseuses with roses in baskets, bouquets, parterres, garlands, looking exactly like the photograph in the programme of the 1899 staging.
The shipwreck is tremendous and scary, and Gennady Yanin scuttles about the stage like an anxious crab, brilliantly comic as Medora’s venal father. And the piece lasts 3ѕ hours. Even my appetite for bravura variations, and yet more variations, began to pall. It is too much of a good thing - even though the thing is very good. As a conflation of 19th century productions, it accepts 19th century taste for gargantuan evenings in the theatre, and this may prove too fatty for today’s diet-conscious public. But it is, nonetheless, an occasion to gorge on superlative dancing, fascinating choreography, and an opulent sense of theatre. The clock has been turned cunningly back.
by Clement Crisp
The Financial times, 06/25/2007
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