A Tale of Two Onegins

Author Helen McDonough
© 2017 All rights reserved

Helen McDonough

La Scala Ballet Onegin 28 and 29 Sept 2017 La Scala Theatre, Milan 

I travelled to Milan at the end of September to catch 2 performances of Onegin at the Teatro Alla Scala. It is one of my favourite ballets because it has it all – drama, love, tragedy, great music, great choreography. The version being performed by La Scala was the definitive Cranko one, which I do not think can be bettered.

Set to the stunning music of Tchaikovsky, beautifully played by the La Scala Orchestra under the baton of Felix Korobov, the dancers brought the story to life. The two casts I saw were as follows:

Character	28 Sept 2017	29 Sept 2017
Onegin	Roberto Bolle	Gabriele Corrado
Tatiana	Marianela Nunez	Emanuela Montanari
Olga	Alessandra Vassallo	Agnese Di Clemente
Lensky	Timofej Andrijashenko	Claudio Coviello
Gremin	Mick Zeni	Riccardo Massimi

The performance of Nuñez as Tatiana was great. She really owns the role of Tatiana. You could see her joy in playing the innocent girl with a crush (or is it love?) for Onegin....Bolle was greeted with lots of applause as he entered the stage looking very elegant in the all-black attire of Onegin. The roles of Olga and Lensky were well played by Vassallo and Andrijashenko although he wobbled a bit with some of his positions to start with but settled down later. One of my favourite parts of Act 1 is the fabulous running leaps across the stage lead by Olga and Lensky followed by the flying corps de ballet. The corps was wonderful on both nights, I found them pretty precise and stayed well in their formations.

In the bedroom pas de deux, Nuñez was fabulous. Bolle performed well considering he is not as young as he was. He managed all the lifts and jumps. Being seated at quite a distance, and even with opera glasses, it was hard really to get their facial expressions. But the drama of the pas de deux came across well. Contrast this to the following night when the younger Corrado brought added lightness to the lifts and jumps and I think I preferred him as Onegin. Montanari is a more mature ballerina and playing the older Tatiana suited her better than the younger girl of the earlier acts. I was left wondering what Corrado and Nuñez would have been like together!

The second cast benefited from having principal dancer Coviello as Lensky. He was far more confident and assured and his technique was much stronger than that of Andrijashenko. I was really impressed with Coviello. Equally impressive was the delightful Agnese Di Clemente who is very young but danced the role of Olga perfectly. I happened to meet her mother and brother at the stage door after the show. Vassallo also danced Olga very well.

The peasant dances and ballroom scenes were beautifully danced by the corps de ballet on both nights and I do wonder if the second performance I saw had “the edge” because they were not dancing with an Etoile? I must praise the male corps dancers for dancing with great gusto in the Act 1 peasant dances, some showing off their party piece jumps which were pretty spectacular!

The final Act 3 pas de deux between Onegin and Tatiana was really good in both performances. Some of the moves that the dancers have to perform at the end of a 3 act ballet were pretty demanding. Tatiana has to get up off the floor straight en pointe then bend backwards and then there is a move where Tatiana is on the floor (again) and gets pulled up by Onegin into flying splits it must be very hard to do this late on in the ballet so all credit to the dancers.

It was definitely good to see a second performance on a successive night because I started to notice choreography I had not noticed before. For example, Olga and Lensky having an animated argument at the back of the ballroom after Onegin has flirted with Olga much to the dismay of Tatiana.

It made a pleasant change to see a different set and costumes for the ballet although the choreography was Cranko’s. The women in the corps de ballet had lovely sparkly evening gowns for the ballroom scenes. Tatiana wears a lovely deep blue velvet dress for the final pas de deux in Act 3, rather than the usual dull purple gown with white lace collar.

On balance. I think the second performance was my favourite though I thoroughly enjoyed both and they were equally good. As I said earlier, I think it would have been very interesting to see Nuñez with Corrado. Nonetheless, both performances ended with rapturous and seemingly endless applause. There were numerous curtain calls on both nights with the dancers coming back 2, 3 even 4 times, even after the lights had come on.

For the first performance, I was seated on the highest tier in La Scala, the Second Gallery, with a front row seat and a great view of the stage. On the second evening, I had a central box seat (a stool actually) but with a very good view too even though there was a person in front of me. I could only afford the box because it was a Scala Aperta night when tickets are 50% off subsidised by the City of Milan and only go on sale one month before the show.   I’d highly recommend giving it a go for the ambience. Scala Aperta nights do not tend to have étoiles but Scala Aperta are still worthwhile.

I was thrilled to meet all the dancers after the shows at the stage door. For me, that really rounds off the experience. All were very happy to sign autographs and have photos taken by the many adoring fans. It was quite a rugby scrum for Bolle!

Jewels - The Royal Ballet at its best

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The Royal Ballet, Jewels, transmitted live to cinemas, 11 April 2017, 19:39


I once asked a distinguished panel of dance critics, dancers and the artistic director of Scottish Ballet whether a narrative ballet needed a plot (see My Thoughts on Saturday Afternoon's Panel Discussion at Northern Ballet 21 June 2015). All said no except Tobias Batley who was then a premier dancer at Northern Batley and seemed to have an interesting point to make but did not get the chance to develop it. When I asked that question I had Balanchine's Jewels in mind which actually tells a lot of stories from the history of ballet to the choreographer's life history without actually having a libretto.

Jewels is like a denial of service attack on the senses. Each of the three ballets is a feast in itself. You feel you can only take so much colour, and movement, and music in one evening - but after each act, there is more.  The only experience with which I can compare this ballet is, in fact, my first sight of real jewels. The Crown Jewels on my first trip to London. The impression that the dazzling display of light and colour made on a little five-year-old from the North in post-war Britain was very much the same as the concatenation of dancers in green, red and white create whenever I see Balanchine's masterpiece.

On Sunday I remarked that I had seen the Bolshoi at its best (see A Hero of our Time 10 April 2017). Yesterday, audiences around the world saw the Royal Ballet at its best. The company fielded Beatriz Stix-Brunell, Valeri Hristov, Laura Morera, Ryoichi Hirano, Emma Maguire, Helen Crawford and James Hay in Emeralds.  As readers know, I am one humongous fan of Morera whose hand I once had the good fortune to shake (see Laura Morera  25 Aug 2015). She always delights me but yesterday she raised my admiration to a new level.

More favourites in Rubies - Sarah Lamb, Steven McRae and Melissa Hamilton. If Emeralds was lyrical, Rubies was spectacular. One gorgeous explosion of movement after another culminating in McRae's exit in chaînés. A dynamo harnessed to McRae at that moment could have powered a fair size town. Rubies is the shortest work in the three ballets but it is the one I like best, possibly because of Stravinsky's Capriccio possibly just the New World razmataz. The energy. The fun.

Diamonds, the white act, is sublime. An homage to Petipa. Marianela Nuñez and Thiago Soares were majestic. Stix-Brunnell and Hay returned to join them together with Claire Calvert, Tierney Heap, Yasmine Naghdi, Nicol Edmonds, Fernando Montaño and Valentino Zucchetti. Not all Petipa's ballets end well but some of them do. Think of The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker and all your other favourites rolled into one and combine it with Tchaikowsky's Polish symphony and you understand why I compared the overpowering of the senses to the overwhelming of a website by millions of messages.

I should also say something about the presentation. I was very impressed with Kristen McNally. I warmed to her the moment she opened her mouth. Proud, elegant, knowledgeable, amusing and above all, Northern. I do hope the Royal Opera House enlists her services again. It was also good to see Darcey Bussell as it always is but this time she was there in her capacity as a great ballerina escorting a member of the original cast to the jeweller's shop that inspired Balanchine. A beautiful dancer surrounded by beautiful things. That is how I like to think of her. It would be good to see more of her in scenes like that.

The Sleeping Beauty in Huddersfield

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The Royal Ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, The Royal Opera House, screened to cinemas, 28 Feb 2017 ay 19:30

It was great to see Dame Monica Mason and Dame Beryl Grey on the big screen last Tuesday. I saw Dame Monica on stage often when she was a principal of the Royal Ballet.  She is one of my favourite ballerinas. Nowadays I see her often at meetings of the London Ballet Circle. I have also met Dame Beryl but I have only seen films of her dancing.

Dame Beryl was in the Sadler's Wells Ballet's first performance at Covent Garden on 20 Feb 1946 which I referred to in The Sleeping Beauty - a Review and why the Ballet is important on 20 Sept 2013. Aurora's awakening has been likened to the country's recovery from war and also to the reopening of the Royal Opera House as a theatre. The restaging if The Sleeping Beauty this season commemorates that reopening.

There have been a few changes to the ballet since 1946. Additional choreography has been contributed by Sir Frederick Ashton. Sir Anthony Dowell and Christopher Wheeldon.  Dame Monica had produced the show with Christopher Newton. Oliver Messel's designs were supplemented by Peter Farmer's. The biggest change of all is that the Royal Ballet has grown considerably in size and international reputation.

The title role was danced by Marianela Nuñez. Her suitors in the rose adage included two of my favourites, Gary Avis and Thomas Whitehead. The other two, whom I also enjoyed. were Valeri Hristov and Johannes Stepanek. One of the advantages of watching the ballet on the big screen is that it is easier to appreciate the difficulties of this scene. Aurora's prince was Vadim Muntagirov, also greatly admired for his virtuosity.  Claire Calbert was a delightful lilac fairy. Alexander Campbell was a fine bluebird. Kristen McNally was a splendid Carabosse and richly deserved her flowers at the curtain call.

The HDTV transmissions from the Royal Opera House have improved though they are still mot perfect. It was a right to partner Darcy Bussell with an experienced presenter but I bristled when he called Dame Beryl by her first name and teased Darcy Bussell over her tracing the dancers' steps. The Royal Opera House's productions really need a presenter like the Bolshoi's Katerina Novikova.

The Winter's Tale Revisited - Some Ballets are better Second Time Round

Antigonus and the Bear from The Winter's Tale 

Author: Thomas Bragg (printmaker)
Folger Shakespeare Library Digital Image Collection

Source Wikipedia

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The Royal Ballet, The Winter's Tale, Royal Opera House, 16 April 2016

Sometimes a dish tastes better second time round. That may be because the meat has a chance to marinate. Or it may be because of a mood change. If you've set your heart on fish and chips and that's no longer on the menu nothing on earth is going to make you enjoy Yorkshire pudding and onion gravy in the same way however tasty that may be.

Theatre can be a bit like that. You see a performance one day and it washes over you. You  see the same show again some time later perhaps with a different cast and it really speaks to you. That has happened to me with Christopher Wheeldon's adaptation of The Winter's Tale.  When I saw it for the first time just over two years ago I thought it was sort of OK but nowt to write home about as we say in Yorkshire and I regret that I damned it with faint praise (see Royal Ballet "The Winter's Tale" 14 April 2014). I wrote:

"I expected so much of The Winter's Tale. I had been looking forward to it for months. A new work by Christopher Wheeldon based on Shakespeare by a fine choreographer for our national company with a stellar cast. It should have blown me off my feet. Well I quite liked the show but blown off my feet? I wasn't."

I saw it again on Monday and loved it unreservedly.

Why the change? I think the reason I didn't get The Winter's Tale the first time round was that I had just not been in the mood for it.  As I wrote at the time:

"Now I have to say that I was not in the most receptive frame of mind when I entered the Royal Opera House. I had a horrible journey down to London and I had been working late throughout the previous night. I had skipped breakfast and had only a light lunch. Consequently I was tired and hungry. Had I not paid a lot of money for my ticket I would have gone straight to bed. Moreover, the reason that I had to work through the night was that I had spent a couple of hours in Huddersfield town hall listening to the Choral's performing one of the most memorable concerts I have ever attended or am ever likely to attend. It may be that anything after that concert was going to be an anticlimax."

In fact, I began to appreciate the ballet when I saw it on screen a few days later (see The Winter's Tale - Time to eat my Hat 29 April 2014).  I enjoyed it all the more when I saw it again on on telly on Christmas day.

On Monday I was in the mood for Wheeldon's ballet even though I had been up since 04:00 our time in order to catch my flight home from Budapest after a memorable experience the night before and a hard day's work in London. It is a very satisfying work, architectural in its symmetry with recurring features such as the colour coding of the courts of Bohemia and Sicilia, the bands on stage in all three acts, the moving statues, the trees and galleons .... I could go on. There is much drama in his choreography such as Leontes's contortions to denote his jealousy in act 1 and the symbolic reconciliation of the laying on of hands in act III first by Perdita and Florizel and later by her father. That moment and also the reunion of Perdita with her parents a few moments later had me close to tears. There are moments of great joy such as the folk dancing in act II that I have always liked:

"Act II is very different. Set around a gnarled moss covered tree there is a festival with exuberant dancing accompanied by the most infectiously vibrant music. Perdita danced by Sarah Lamb and Florizel by Stephen McRae fall in love. They are spied on and discovered by Polixenes, king of Bohemia, who threatens to kill them but they set sail to Sicily with the king of Bohemia in hot pursuit. Little details like the fact that Bohenia is landlocked don't seem to have bothered Shakespeare or even Wheeldon. However there is such a thing as poetic licence and this is a case where it applies. Nevertheless, this is is the best bit of the ballet and that is possibly because it is the part that owes least to Shakespeare."

This time I loved it. Similarly, I have always  enjoyed Joby Talbot's score: "Valiant Talbot" as he is described by Nigel Bates in the programme notes. And the special effects - especially the ships and even the bear with its ghostly muzzle - were outstanding.

Did I like this cast more than the last one?  I don't think that could have been possible as I admire Cuthbertson, Lamb, McRae and Watson enormously. But Marianela Nuñez was a magnificent Hermione, Beatriz Stix-Brunell a delightful Perdita, Vadim Muntagirov a charming Florizel and Bennet Gartside reflected the torrent of emotions in Leontes's head brilliantly. Monday was the first time I had noticed Itziar Mendizabal. She danced Paulina, loyal to Hermione and Leontes, and the agent of their reunion and reconciliation which is one of the most moving scenes in any ballet. As he comes from Bradford it is always a pleasure to see Thomas Whitehead. He danced the old shepherd on Monday.

I would love to see this ballet again and I think I owe it to the dancers to see the same cast as I saw in 2014. There will be performances of the work between now and the 10 June.

Au Revoir but not Adieu

Embedded pursuant to YouTube's standard licence

I was very tempted to attend the Royal Ballet's mixed programme to see Carlos Acosta's last performance on the main stage of Covent Garden on Thursday night for I was offered a ticket for the grand circle for only £100. The reason I was tempted was that I knew that I would see a little piece of balletic history. But then I would have missed Phoenix Dance Theatre at the Royal Opera House and I knew that that would be good too. Torn though I was I opted for Phoenix (see The Phoenix Soars over London 13 Nov 2015) as they are from Leeds. I see them nearly every time I attend an adult ballet class. Some of these classes even take place in their studios.

One of the reasons why I chose to watch Phoenix in the Linbury was that I knew the mixed bill would be filmed and that I would get a chance to see that film at the Huddersfield Odeon on Sunday, That is what I did. The Royal Opera House HDTV transmissions have just about got it right now. The show was introduced by Fiona Bruce who is an experienced TV presenter. Darcey Bussell interviewed Carlos Acosta and Kevin O'Hare and contributed anecdotes from her experience as a principal dancer. The programme consisted of four ballets: Liam Scarlett's Viscera. Jerome Robbins's Afternoon of a Faun, Tchaikowsky Pas de Deux by Balanchine and Carlos Acosta's Carmen. It was a thrilling programme showing the Royal Ballet at its best.

Ever since I heard Laura Morera's talk to the London Ballet Circle I have wanted to see Viscera (see Laura Morera 25 Aug 2015). Although the work was commissioned by Miami City Ballet it is associated with Morera in this country.  In the cinema transmission Morera was accompanied by Ryoichi Hirano and Marianela Nuñez.  Viscera is a spectacular ballet in three movements. It reminds me very much of David Dawson's Empire Noir which I saw in Amsterdam as part of the Dutch National Ballet's Cool Britannia programme earlier in the year  (see Going Dutch 29 June 2015) in that everything except the second movement is done on the double. There were spectacular turns and jumps by in the first and last movements and a delicious duet in the middle with the most delicate lifts and holds. The ballet was set to Lowell Liebermann's First Piano Concerto. You can get a taste of Liebermann's work from this concert performance of the third movement on this YouTube video.

Viscera was followed by an interval which showed an interview of Carlos Acosta by Darcey Bussell over tea. Acosta spoke about his career in England: how he entered ballet largely on his father's insistence, his short time with the English National Ballet where he actually contemplated giving up dance, his audition with the Royal Ballet, his career with the company and the two works that he created for it. Bussell shone as Acosta's interviewer. She coaxed the story from Acosta adding her own reminiscences here and there. This is what she does well.

The next act consisted of Afternoon of a Faun and the Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux.  These are two short works by two of America's best known choreographers.  Robbins's Afternoon  shares the music and title of Nijinsky's L'Après-midi but, as can be seen from archive film of the Nijinsky's work and a video of the Ballett am Rhein's performance of Robbin's, the narratives are quite different.  I am not sure which work I prefer. The Robbins probably makes more sense as it is set in a dance studio with the audience acting as a mirror on the fourth wall. Nobody is dressed in an animal costume or moves like a faun. However, Nijinksky's work for Diaghilev has the rich backcloth by Leon Bakst. Afternoon was danced by Vadim Muntagirov and Sarah Lamb. This was the first time I had seen them together and they teamed up well. Balanchine created the Pas de Deux from music that Tchaikovsky wrote originally for Swan Lake. It is a gorgeous work with male and female solos and a thrilling coda. It was danced magnificently by Steven McRae and Iana Salenko.

There followed quite a long interval when I went in search of a hot dog to avoid the tweets and trailers which is the one part of the Royal Opera House's transmission that I wish the House would drop. Towards the end there was a short interview of O'Hare by Bussell in which they discussed World Ballet Day, the career of Carlos Acosta and his latest work Carmen.  Then the curtain rose on the last Act which was Carlos Acosta's Carmen.

Acosta is not the first choreographer to transpose Prosper Mérimée's novella and Bizet's score into ballet. Roland Petit created a version for himself and Zizi Jeanmaire in 1949. So, too, did Alberto Alonso for the Bolshoi and the National Ballet of Cuba with Maya Plisetskaya in the lead  (see Wikipedia's Carmen Suite (Ballet)). Neither of those works has stuck and I am not sure why.  It seems that a full length opera does not translate easily into a one act ballet. Whether Acosta's work fares any better than his compatriot's or Roland Petit's remains to be seen. If it does not, it will not be for want of trying. Acosta threw just about everything bar the kitchen sink into the mix - voice, flamenco, contemporary and a new character called Fate danced by Matthew Golding. Surprisingly, Acosta found no role for Michaela which might have been an interesting one for a ballerina. I have mixed feelings about the work but it was certainly exciting. Acosta danced Don José, Nuñez was Carmen and Federico Bonelli Escamillo. Fiona Kimm sang the fortune teller's role.

Whatever the strengths of the work the audience loved it. As you can see from the above video there was a flower throw. O'Hare made a speech. The whole cast appeared on stage, It must have been one of those memorable evenings that the Royal Opera House does so well. I stayed in the auditorium for as long as the video of the applause continued long after everyone else had left with the ushers glancing pointedly at their watches. I felt that was the least I could do for Acosta who has given me and many others so much pleasure over his long career.

More Thoughts on Don Quixote

Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev of the Bolshoi   Source Wikipedia

The performance of Don Quixote which was streamed to my local Odeon last Wednesday has prompted me to think about the ballet generally and to ponder why it is not staged more often (see ¡Por favor! Don Quixote streamed to Huddersfield 17 Oct 2013). Lots of companies dance Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker and Giselle but not so may include Don Quixote in their repertoire.  It is one of those ballets like La Sylphide that everyone has heard of but not actually seen. I have only seen one version of Don Quixote on stage and that was London Festival's at the Coliseum in the late 1960s or early 1970s.  Dame Ninette de Valois tried to stage the ballet for what is now the Royal Ballet in 1950 but it does not seem to have been very popular. 

Although the ballet takes its title from Miguel Cervantes's well known novel it is very much a Russian work (or perhaps, more accurately Eastern European as the score was contributed by an expatriate Austrian).  It is one of Petipa's earliest works having been staged for the first time in 1869 and that may be one of the reasons.  It provides scope for some brilliant dancing by the principals and soloists but it does take liberties with the novel. The ballet really ought to be renamed Basilio and Kitri for that is what the story is all about - a Hispanic Fille mal gardée with a touch of Carmen.  

Save for the coda in the last Act, the music is not very well known.  I had (and possibly still have) a vinyl LP somewhere which I bought from the old Ballet Bookshop in Cecil Court. Does anyone else remember that wonderful source of ballet memorabilia? I played that disc often when I was a student - particularly when I had an essay to write.  The composer Ludwig Minkus wrote a lot of music for the ballet. After many years service at St Petersburg, Minkus returned to his native Vienna where he subsisted on a pension from Russia.  That remittance ended with the First World War as the Austro-Hungarian empire and Russia were on opposite sides.  He died in 1917, the year of the Bolshevik revolution, in very straightened circumstances. Having to cope with such circumstances poor old Minkus had more than a little in common with with Cervantes's creation. 

From what I could see from the images that were streamed from Covent Garden, Carlos Acosta has reworked substantially the Petipa ballet.  By dancing Basilio himself and casting another Marianela Nunez, another Latin American dancer, as Kitri he has reclaimed the work for the Spanish speaking world. As I said in my review, the screening left me dissatisfied. All the remaining performances of the ballet this season are fully booked.  I hope Acosta's version stays in the Royal Ballet's repertoire rather longer than de Valois's because I should really ought to see it.