Swan Lake in Paris - A Christmas Eve Treat

Karl Paquette, Myriam Ould-Braham and Mathias Heymann

Photo Helen McDonough
(c) 2016 Helen McDonough: all rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of the author

Paris Opera Ballet, Swan Lake Opera Bastille, 24 Dec 2016

Here is the New Year treat I promised you. My fellow blogger and ballet goer, Helen McDonough, who tweets as @Scarfie1, went to Paris for Christmas. While there she attended the Paris Opera's performances of Swan Lake which she agreed to review for us.  I think you will agree she has done a very good job.

"On Christmas Eve I set out from Manchester Airport for Paris although the aeroplane did try to hamper this by requiring a wheel change which delayed me by 3 hours! However, I eventually got to Paris in good time for 2 performances of Swan Lake.

The Paris Opera Swan Lake is choreographed by Nureyev after Petipa and Ivanov and after watching 2 performances you can really see his stamp on it for reasons which will become clear.

Act 1 opens with the Prince asleep on a throne played by the very elegant Mathias Heymann. While the Prince dreams, Rothbart (Karl Paquette) appears at the rear of the stage in a large cape which he sweeps over Odette who has been dancing towards the back of the stage, turns her into a swan and makes off with her.   It is not clear who danced Odette's steps in this prologue as Myriam Ould-Braham is not due on stage for some time yet! The dramatic scene has Rothbart in black and Odette in white being lifted high up into the fly area.

 Rothbart then reappears as the tutor to the Prince (who makes a habit of whispering to the Prince throughout). With the Prince now awake the corps de ballet appear on stage and perform several ensemble dances.  There follows a lovely solo for the Prince and then a Pas de Trois for him with some of his lady friends.

 Mathias Heymann is a beautiful dancer to watch: one of those men with exquisite line and movement and lovely hands/fingers.

 I personally found the corps de ballet a little ragged at points but what I found very refreshing was that Nureyev has decided to employ the male element of the corps quite heavily in Act 1 - and Act 3 for that matter. It was a real “dancer’s ballet” for the men if you see what I mean!

 Over and over through this ballet one sees geometric formations. A lot of work in groups of 4 and 6 went on. For example, with the men the front 4 at the front right of a group would move out of the main group of 16 and move across the stage and then the next group of 4 would follow until all 4 groups of 4 had move around whichever way required etc... There were also joint male and female dances as well in Act 1. At times the large Bastille stage looked a tad overcrowded!

The jewel in this performance’s crown (never mind just Act 1) was the Pas de Trois. I give you Francois Alu! Wowzer! What an amazing dancer! Not since I saw Ivan Vasiliev explode onto the stage in Don Quixote with the Bolshoi years ago, or saw ENB’s young Cesar Corrales in Le Corsaire as Ali, have I been this trilled by a dancer. He was ably partnered by lovely Leonore Baulac and Hannah O'Neill. Both of whom are great to watch but Francois Alu really stole the PdT in my eyes! His circle of 12 tours en l'air had each one as exact as the next right to the end. No slacking. He put his own stamp on the turns as he had one leg slightly straighter. It  looked really difficult to do. His other jumps and cabrioles were similarly high and powerful. He was on fire! I am so pleased I got to see him as it was totally unexpected! He danced again in Act 3 in the Czardas which was great too.

In this version there is no interval between Act1 and 2 (great) so we moved swiftly on to Act 2 where Odette appears and meets the Prince. The mime was good and I could see it clearly even from my eagle’s nest of a seat! Ould-Braham has lovely soft arms, but I did not get much emotion – I think because I was so far away in this huge theatre! However, the “piece de resistance” were the swans:-

Corps de Ballet

Photo Helen McDonough

(c) 2016 Helen McDonough: all rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of the author 

Corps de Ballet

Photo Helen McDonough

(c) 2016 Helen McDonough: all rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of the author 

I especially adored the choreography for the swans. I was seated in the 2nd tier - so very very high up – but it was the perfect place to see all the details of the choreography and detailed it was. There were 32 swans at times on the stage and it was sight to savour – thankfully Paris Opera Ballet utilise proper “pancake” tutus so all the better for effect. The swans entered the stage very much like the Shades in La Bayadere as they snaked across and down the stage to form their bolt straight lines. The swans were really well “together”, moving as one with lines so straight and moves so well executed that there can only be the Mariinsky that is better when it comes to swans, in my humble opinion. The swans moved as if on air around the stage going from a circle to a pointed V moving forward towards the audience. 

Then they would divide up into groups and make 4 smaller Vs with the points to the middle of the stage so making a square and then they moved again into another shape - I was totally immersed in this geometry and symmetry! Quite how Nureyev managed this I do not know – genius perhaps?

The 4 cygnets were danced very competently and were followed by the 4 big swans doing their piece – all really lovely.

I’m afraid I am not well versed enough to say much about Ould-Braham and Heymann other than that they were very good as you would expect from Etoiles of the POB! My attention was 100% absorbed with the swans! 

 Ending Act 2 though the Prince swore his love to Odette as per usual....

After the single interval we moved on to Act 3 and all the national dances and a Queen desperate for her son to marry.

The dances were very nice and well danced but none of them particularly stood out for me. Rothbart dances a solo piece just before the Prince and Odile do their fireworks so that altered the flow of the story for me a little bit BUT on the plus side it made good use of Rothbart (see more male dancing - Nureyev’s touch?). This allowed Karl Paquette to show that he still has what it takes.  

Miriam Ould-Braham did her 32 fouettes although I found that she did travel quite a bit across the stage if I am being picky, and her "error" was to do a double right at the end, after having done singles, so she landed a little untidily. Mathias Heymann whipped off his 16 turns perfectly and it was all quite the thrill to see. 

Once the Prince realises he has been duped when he sees the vision of the real Odette there was a brief pause and then Act 4 began. 

The fabulous swans returned to the stage and were just as amazing as before in Act 2 with their precise lines and wonderful patterns.

The ending is quite tragic as Odette throws herself off a cliff closely followed by Rothbart and the two of them go up to heaven whilst the Prince is left lying on the stage - I presume dead."

HELEN McDONOUGH

Helen also attended the Christmas day performance and has reviewed it for us.   I will publish it tomorrow.

International Mariinsky Far East Festival in Vladivostok

Standard YouTube Licence

On the 31 March 2016 I wrote about The Mariinsky Theatre's Primorsky Stage which appears to be a little bit of that famous opera house 4,067 miles from St. Petersburg. That theatre came to my attention a few days ago when I learned through Facebook that Xander Parish and Hannah O'Neill were there. They have been taking part in the International Mariinsky Far East Festival in Vladivostok which ends today which ends today with a concert featuring  Leonidas Kavakos and Yeol Eum Son and the combined orchestras of the Mariinsky Theatre and the Primorsky Stage  under the direction of Valery Gergiev.

Vladivostok is one of those places that I have always dreamt about but never quite got round to visiting. I must add that I have not yet been to Russia even though I have long admired its literature, music and. of course, its ballet though not always its governments - particularly not during the cold war. I hope to put that right some day while I am still able to travel. I had always imagined Vladivostok to be a rather romantic city though descriptions in Wikipedia, Wikitravel, Lonely Planet and even the local tourist board website suggested that it might have a lot in common with Hull as it is a major fishery or perhaps Portsmouth as it is an important naval base. This YouTube video by two local students show some interesting architecture that reminds me a little of both San Francisco and Vancouver while the surrounding hills look very much like those on the coast of Northern California.

Returning to the Festival it appears from the Primorsky stage website that there have been 25 operas, ballets, and concerts over the last 12 days featuring

"the most brilliant soloists of the Mariinsky Theatre as well as leading guest artists from Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Mongolia, Germany, Greece, The United Kingdom, The United States, and Puerto Rico."

For some reason the website has omitted New Zealand, the country of O'Neill's birth, and France, the land where she now works, from that list.

Be that as it may, O'Neill danced with Parish in Giselle on 6 Aug 2016 and again on 8 Aug 2016 in a Ballet Gala with Ulyana Lopatkina, Soo Bin Lee, Ekaterina Kondaurova, Konstantin Zverev, Danila Korsuntcev, Oksana Skorik and Renata Shakirova in a programme that consisted of works by Ilya Zhivoi, Maxim Petrov, Eldar Aliev, Anton Pimonov and Asaf Messerer as well as the pas de deux from Petipa's The Talisman which is not well known in this country. Interestingly. it is not based on Sir Walter Scott's novel but is set in India like La Bayadere. Another example of Russia's fascination with India that I mentioned in La Bayadere - where it all took place on 24 July 2016. More familiar works in the programme were the pas de deux from Swan Lake, Fokine's The Dying Swan and Lavrovsky's Romeo and Juliet which Parish danced with O'Neill. I should mention in passing that I saw Parish dance that role in London with Viktoria Tereshkina two years ago and he was jolly good (see Reet Gradely: Romeo and Juliet, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera House 29 July 2014 31 July 2014).

As the score to Romeo and Juliet was written by Sergei Prokofiev it is also worth mentioning that the Festival was dedicated to the 125th anniversary of that composer's birth. His opera Betrothal in a Monastery (which I have to confess I do not know) was performed on 30 July 2016. If you click the link I have just given you, you will find a recording of some great music. I believe that opera would go down very well here if only someone would stage it.  Also in honour of Prokofiev, the violinist Clara-Jumi Kang and pianist Sergei Redkin played his Violin Concerto No 2 in G Minor, Op. 63 and his Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26 in concert on 1 Aug 2016.

Kondaurova and Lopatkina also took part in a triple bill on 3 Aug 2016 called Ballet Stars of the Mariinsky Theatre which consisted of Alicia Alonso's Carmen Suite, Jerome Robbins's In the Night and Balanchine's Symphony in C. The blurb on the website states:

"Diversity of talents of the Mariinsky Ballet Company will be presented at the festival with the program of one-act ballets. In the legendary Carmen Suite by Bizet-Shchedrin that was created specifically for Maya Plisetskaya by choreographer Alberto Alonso, today’s dancers create their own version of independent Carmen.
Choreographic stories of love, united in In the Night by Jerome Robbins, present three totally different by temperament pairs of soloists. Hypnotic thoughtfulness and tenderness of a first date in the adagio, performed by first couple is followed by restrained manifestation of feelings of the second duo. And third pair shows true culmination of love passions.
Evening’s final piece Balanchine’s Symphony in C is perfectly suited to demonstrate the best assets of the company: four parts of the ballet are shared by four pairs of soloists. This ballet allows the company to display its multivalent talents, from the most technically demanding movements in the allegro, to the proud and regal grace required in the adagio."

It must have been lovely.

Alonso's Carmen Suite and Balanchine's Symphony in C were performed the next time in Ballet Stars of the Mariinsky Theatre but in this programme Hans van Manen's The Old Man and Me was substituted for In the Night.  The programme notes state:

"Hans van Manen’s ballet The Old Man and Me is a story of the emotional turmoil people experience when they are drawn to one another but cannot be together. The tenderness of this story is revealed by the dancers’ remarkable transformation into the characters they portray, and the depth, with which they feel their partner's every movement."

 Kondaurova danced Carmen as she had the night before but in this triple bill she was joined by Diana Vishneva, Vladimir Malakhov, and Yekaterina Osmolkina.

Vishneva also attended a screening of a documentary on her life after which she answered questions from members of the public and signed autographs in a special Evening with Diana Vishneva in the chamber hall on the 5 Aug.

The last ballet of the Festival was  Sergeyev's Swan Lake which was first staged in 1950. I am pleased to note that in this production Rothbart is called Rothbart and not the "Evil Genius" as in Grigorovich's version which the Bolshoi have performed in London on their current tour.  When I complained gently in Grigorovich's Swan Lake in Covent Garden on 31 July 2016 that this renaming was change for change's sake though not on the same scale as David Nixon who created an entirely new libretto. introduced new characters such as Simon, Anthony and Odilia and opened with chaps riding bikes somewhat unsteadily onto the stage (see Up the Swannee 17 March 2016) I was put firmly in my place by Amelia of BalletcoForum. She wrote:

"Poor Yuri Grigorovich has been rebuked enough for many “sins” committed by him against “Swan Lake”. Please allow me to clear him of the "Change for change's sake” charge.
Dear Terpsichore, as long as I remember there were no German names in the Bolshoi’s cast lists since 1940s.
Ziegfrid was called Prince and Rothbart was Evil Genius. The reason for that was that German names stirred strong negative feelings at that time. No need to remind about what the German army did on the Russian soil. The worst abusive word to a person at that time was not an ‘idiot’ or ‘bastard’ or… but “Fritz”, an allied name for Germans, like “Jerry” in English. The Russians were shuddering from German names for a long time after the end of the 2WW.
Grigorovich was still at school then. So let’s exonerate him from changing the names."

I had not heard that explanation and I thanked her for it.  I added that I thought that the Bolshoi had missed a trick. The code name for the German invasion was Barbarossa which means Red Beard in Italian which is almost the translation of Rothbart from German. St Petersburg, which was besieged for nearly two and a half years had even more reason than Moscow to dislike the Germans but the Mariinsky (or Kirov as it would then have been called) does not appear to have changed the names of the characters in its version. Anyway, getting back to the ballet Skorik was Odette-Odile, Yevgeny Ivanchenko was Siegfried and Sergei Umanetc was the wicked baron.

There was lots of other good stuff which I don't have time or space to discuss:

• a concert on board the flagship of the Russian Far East Fleet by the Mariinsky Orchestra on 31 July 2016, 
• a children's concert called Legends of the Sea which my 5 year old grandson manque, Vlad the Lad, would have adored, 
• the Vladivostok premiere of Madame Butterfly (surprising that it has never been performed before given ifs maritime plot and the port's relative proximity to Japan),
• music by the Stradivarus Ensemble, and even 
• a concert by the Orchestra of Pacific Fleet the Russian Navy earlier today.

Apparently this is the first such festival by the Mariinsky in Vladivostok. If they ever do it again I shall save my kopeks and take the Trans-Siberian Railway.