"Raymonda" from Moscow

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Bolshoi Ballet Raymoda  Streamed from Moscow to cinemas worldwide 27 Oct 2019 15:00

Although Act III of Nureyev's production is in the current repertoire of the Royal Ballet, Raymonda is not a ballet that we see very often in this country. That is a pity because it has a pretty score by Alexander Glazunov and plenty of exciting choreography. It was after all created for Pierina Legnani who pioneered the 32 fouettés in the seduction scene in Swan Lake. Also, Sergei and Nicolai Legat, Olga Preobrajenska and Giuseppina Cecchetti were all in the first show. It was one of Petipa's last ballets and it has a fin de siȅcle feel to it. By that, I mean that it is close to the border in artistic as well as chronological terms between the age of the Imperial Ballet and that of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.

The action is set in medieval Europe at the time of the Crusades. The male lead is Jean de Brienne who was a real historical character. He was king of Jerusalem for a while and even took over Constantinople but none of that features in the ballet except in so far as he follows Andrew II of Hungary on crusade. I can find no reference to a historical Raymonda, Abderakhman or even Castle Doris where the ballet is set.  But then I suppose Lidiya Pashkova, who wrote the libretto, would have claimed to be writing historical fiction rather than history.

As ballets go, it is quite a good story. Raymonda is betrothed to Jean de Brienne who visits her in Castle Doris just before he is due to go on crusade. After he has left she falls asleep and dreams of an eastern prince called Abderakhman who declares his love for her.  She wakes up in a cold sweat and finds that it was all a nightmare.  In the second Act, however, the real Abderakhman appears and offers to carry her away.  She politely turns him down but Abderakhman will not take "no" for an answer. He and his followers try to adduct her but are interrupted by de Brienne. They fight each other with swords and de Brienne kills his rival. In the last Act, Raymonda weds de Brienne and they all enjoy a long Hungarian divertissement.

On Sunday's transmission, Olga Smirnova was Raymonda, Artemy Belyakov was de Brienne and Igor Tsvirko was Abderakhman.  All performed well as did the rest of the cast.  I particularly liked Tsvirko who was the most realistic of the leading characters. I have seen him several times in London as well as on screen. Ekaterina Novikova who is an excellent interlocutor switching effortlessly between her own language and English and French interviewed him while he was still in costume in the second interval. Tsvirko showed real emotion when Raymonda rejected him.  It seemed he was tearing out his heart - a gesture that his followers echoed by waggling their shields. There was some great jumping for Belyakov and some moves that must have required considerable stamina as well as skill from Smirnbiva.

The costumes were gorgeous but I was not taken with the set design.   The orchestra played well under Pavel Klinichev, their conductor.  Apart from a couple of seconds when the sound was lost temporarily the transmission was good.  Altogether it was a successful start to the Bioshoi and Pathé Live's new cinema season which is about to celebrate its 10th anniversary. 

Spartacus

Hermann Vogel "Death of Spartacus"

Bolshoi Ballet Spartacus  10 Aug 2019 14:00 Royal Opera House

Ever since I saw a streaming of the ballet from Moscow nearly 6 years ago  I have longed to see it on stage. I have had a long wait because few if any Western companies seem to perform the work and certainly no British ones.  This year, however, the Bolshoi included Spartacus in its London season so I traipsed down to London yesterday to see it.   The ticket in the centre of row G of the stalls wasn't cheap. Neither was the rail fare. The rail network was all over the place as a result of the high winds and the aftermath of Friday's power outage. Nevertheless, I can think of no better use of my time or a better way to spend my money.  I have been going to the ballet for nearly 60 years and see about 50 shows a year.  Rarely have I been more excited by a performance than I was yesterday by the Bolshoi's performance of Spartacus,

As I summarized the plot and discussed the background to the ballet in Spartacus - Streamed Direct to Wakefield 21 Oct 2013, I need not repeat them here. There is, in any case, a full synopsis on the Bolshoi's website and even a video of a performance of the whole ballet adapted for the screen featuring the incoming director of Birmingham Royal Ballet on YouTube.  The show that I saw yesterday featured Igor Tsvirko and Ruslan Skvortsov as Spartacus and Crassus and Margarita Shrayner and Ekaterina Krysanova as Phrygia and Aegina. 

I had already seen Tsvirko on screen in the peasant pas de deux in Giselle (see The Bolshoi does the Business - Giselle streamed from Moscow 12 Oct 2015), the jester in Swan Lake  (see Grigorovich's Swan Lake in Bradford 25 Jan 2015), Count Pepinelli in Marco Spada (see Marco Spada Streamed from Moscow 31 March 2014) and the jester in A Legend of Love (see The Bolshoi's "A Legend of Love" streamed from Moscow 27 Oct 2014).  Magnificent though he was on screen he is so much more impressive in person.  His strength and endurance are amazing,  Spartacus is a long ballet and he is on stage for most of the show.  There were frequent bursts of applause as he demonstrated that strength such as hoisting Shrayner into the air with one hand as though she were a feather.

The last time the Bolshoi came to London I saw Skvortsov dance Siegfried in Swan Lake  (see Grigorovich's Swan Lake in Covent Garden 31 July 2016).  Although I thought that the Bolshoi has better shows and other companies have better Swan Lakes I enjoyed Skvortsov's performance very much.  I listed Skvortsov as one of the outstanding male dancers of 2016. I had also noticed him in the screenings of A Hero of Our Time, The Bright Stream and The Golden Age.  Intensely good looking, his was the first face that appears on stage from the centre of a testudo stamping his feet and brandishing a fasces. Another dancer of prodigious strength and agility.

I cannot recall watching Shrayner dance before but she is beautiful. She has a face that communicates emotion like few others.  One of my friends who knows Spartacus well described it as a man's ballet. That is true because both the gladiators and legionnaires as well as the leading artists perform spectacular feats of endurance attracting ripples of applause throughout the show. But it is also a ballet about two strong women and Phrygia's role is by far the more dignified and graceful,  The one bit of the ballet that the British public knows well is the theme from the Onedin Line largely because the show was never off our TV screens when I was young. That is, of course, Phrygia's solo and pas de deux with Spartacus and I could not help rooting for a tissue as she danced that piece.

I was already a big fan of Krysanova before yesterday's matinee.  I loved her performance as Kathrona in Jean-Christophe Maillot's The Taming of the Shrew which is now one of my all-time favourite ballets (see Bolshoi's Triumph - The Taming of the Shrew 4 Aug 2016).  She was a great Kitri in Don Quixote which I saw on screen in April 2016.  Katharina and Kitri are heroines but Aegina is very different.  There is a telling scene immediately after the legions goosestep off to slay the slaves when Aegina appears goosestepping like the soldiers.  She had just lifted the defeated Crassus out of his despair after losing his fight with Spartacus, given him back his sword and filled him with a desire for vengeance.  I admire her all the more for that.

When you watch a show from the amphitheatre as I did when I was a Young Friend the auditorium seems cavernous.  When you sit a few rows from the orchestra the House is intimate.  You feel the audience around you.  When an audience fires up as it did yesterday there can be no experience in the theatre more thrilling.  Yesterday, the audience was boiling.  That brought out the best in the artists - the musicians under Pavel Klinichev as well as the dancers.  It was a performance that I think I shall remember for the rest of my life.

PS  I said that I was no British company had ever performed Spartacus but Sarah Lambert has sent me this footage of a rehearsal by Jenna Roberts & Iain Mackay of Birmingham Royal Ballet which suggests that I may be wrong.   At least bits of it appear to have been performed in Symphony Hall and Northampton.

Bolshoi's Giselle Second Time Round

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Bolshoi Ballet  Giselle 8 April 2016 Pathé Live

The recording of Giselle (for which the Huddersfield Odeon charged me £15.15 even with a 10% discount) was first performed on 11 Oct 2015.  I reviewed that performance in The Bolshoi does the Business - Giselle streamed from Moscow the next day.  I liked it then and I still liked it when I saw the recording on Sunday though I would have much preferred to have seen a live work.  The Bolshoi was dancing Spartacus on Sunday with Denis Rodkin in the title role, Lantratov as Crassus, Zajharova as Aegina and Nikulina as Phrygia.  Now why couldn't the Bolshoi and Pathé Live have shown us that?

However, it was good to see Zakharova, Polunin, Shipulina, Tsvirko and Khokhlova again.  In contrast to his Swan Lake about which I had expressed reservations in Grigorovich's Swan Lake in Covent Garden 31 July 2016 after I saw it in London, Grigorovich's Giselle is one of the best I have ever seen.  I explained why in my 2015 review: a superlative cast, a fin orchestra and although I found the backdrops somewhat dowdy in contrast to the Royal Ballet's they are a good deal better than the sets for the Bolshoi's Swan Lake.

I am writing this article at a time of increasing tension between my government and the government of Russia following events in Syria and Salisbury.  Though I agree reluctantly with the decisions that my government have taken in solidarity with its international partners on those issues, I am and always have been a great admirer of Russia and its people for their contributions to science and technology as well as the arts.  I have never been to that country or learned Russian but have always wanted to do so. I look forward to better days.

While watching the recording of Giselle I received an email from Kirklees Active Leisure accepting my booking of the dance studio from at Huddersfield Leisure Centre from 15:00 to 16:30 on 26 May 2018 (see We now have a studio 8 April 2018 Powerhouse Ballet). If you would like a free 90 minute ballet class in Huddersfield with an inspiring teacher click the button marked "Register" below.  You will find more details in the Powerhouse Ballet blog.

A Hero of our Time

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Bolshoi Ballet A Hero for our Time streamed from Moscow, 9 April 2017

I could not help wondering whether I was letting my love of ballet get the better of me as I drove for nearly an hour to the nearest cinema to show the Bolshoi's A Hero of our Time on the first really good day of the year, especially as the forecast for the rest of the week is nothing to write home about. But I am very glad I did because this was one of the best live screenings that I have ever seen. It was the Bolshoi Ballet at its very best.

One of the reasons why I trekked to the Pictureville cinema at the Science + Media Museum in Bradford is that I read Lermontov's short stories in translation when I was at school. It was just after I had made the acquaintance of Leon Bakst and other late 19th and early 20th century artists who in turn led me to Diaghilev and eventually to ballet. I had read Princess Mary with particular attention because the death of Grushnitsky in a duel with Pechorin foretold the manner of the author's own death. Lermontov was only 26 when he died. He had published A Hero of our Time the year before his death and it was already in a second edition in his lifetime. Think what he might have achieved and he lived as long as Tolstoy.

A young man's novellas need to be interpreted by a young composer and that is precisely what we got with Ilya Demutsky's score. Demutsky speaks English well having studied in San Francisco and he discussed his work in that language with the presenter Katya Novikova in the interval. He told her that this was his first full-length ballet which makes it all the more remarkable. Novikova had noticed that he opened each ballet with a single instrument on stage: a clarinet for Bela, a cello for Taman and a cor anglais for Princess Mary. Demutsky explained that was to set the atmosphere. For instance, Lermontov had described Taman as "the nastiest little hole of all the seaports of Russia". Demutsky spoke how he had expressed that nastiness in his music.

Lermontov's book is a collection of novellas or long short stories centring around the adventures of Pechorin, a young army officer, who makes his way through the Caucasus mountains which were then the frontier of the Russian empire. The choreographer, Yuri Possokhov, has taken three of those stories, Bela, Taman and Princess Mary. Rather than repeat the plot word for word I shall leave it to my readers to consult the excellent introduction on the "About Performance" and synopsis pages on the Bolshoi's website.

As Pechorin appears in all three ballets, it would have been asking far too much of one dancer to perform that role through the whole show. Especially as there were was a lot of jumping to be done, The role was therefore split between Igor Svirko in Bela, Artem Ovchanrenko in Taman and Ruslan Skvortsov in Princess Mary. Readers will remember that Skvortsov impressed me particularly for his performance as Siegfried in Swan Lake when the company visited London last year.

The Bolshoi fielded three of their best leading ladies with Olga Smirnova dancing the beautiful, tragic Bela,  Yekaterina Shipulina the enticing and ultimately treacherous Undine and the magnificent Svetlana Zakharova as Mary. All three ballerinas were impressive but Zakharova showed her genius in one prolonged camera shot immediately after a duel where her face expressed her complex emotions more completely than any poem or novel. I have never seen this in a dancer before and rarely in an actor, Truly an artiste sans pareil.

There were several other memorable performances in Princess Mary. Denis Savin as the unhappy Grushnitsky. How my heart leapt out to him as he flinched from aiming at his friend Pechorin who seemed to have no qualms in dispatching Grushnitsky. Why is duelling so prominent in Russian literature? There is another in Pushkin's Onegin. Duelling is homicide no less. Kristina Kretova was a compelling Vera. Yet another victim of Pechorin. Finally, the wheelchair dancers deserve a cheer. They are every bit as polished and graceful as the rest of the cast.

I should say a word for the set designer Kirill Serebrennikov and the lighting designer Simon Donger. The conjuring up of ripples of water on the backdrop in Taman impressed me particularly. So, too, of course, did the sanitorium in Princess Mary.  

I am not sure when the Bolshoi will return to Covent Garen but I hope that they will bring A Hero of our Time when they do.

The Bolshoi does the Business - Giselle streamed from Moscow

The Bolshoi Theatre

Author Theeler

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Bolshhoi Ballet, Giselle, 11 Oct 2015

Just as the Americans excel in films and we in state pageantry the Russians excel in ballet. There are other countries that do very well including ourselves as World Ballet Day reminded us but the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky are masters of the art as yesterday's live transmission of Giselle from Moscow showed. I have seen a lot of performances of that ballet in my time and I am set to see at least two more before the end of the year but, despite a couple of hiccups that I barely noticed at the time and of which I had to be reminded, yesterday's performance from my perspective was about as good as they get.

The title role was danced  by Svetlana Zakharova who was as expressive in her acting as she was impressive in her dancing. I am not the most emotional person but I was close to tears several times in the show. The first time was when she plucked the petals and found the cad loved her not. The second was when she clutched her chest. The third time as she felt the material of Bathilde's garment and her girlish joy at receiving a gift from the grand lady. Tears actually formed in the sword scene. Even though I have serious problems with Act II of the ballet for the reasons I tried to explain in Reflections on Giselle 29 Jan 2014 I was enthralled by Zakharova's dancing from the moment she emerged from her grave to the second she handed a flower to Albrecht as she went down.

The perfect partner for Zakharova was Sergei Polunin. I have not seen much of him on stage since he left the Royal Ballet - I think the last time was at the Yorkshire Ballet Summer School Gala in September 2013 - but he has never failed to amaze me with his athleticism. Can that man jump! His turns and jumps as he danced for the wilis were breathtaking. However, he can also act and he almost persuaded me with his contrition in Act II.  I can see why Giselle begged Myrtha to spare his life even though I would not have bothered.

The other star ballerina was the magnificent Ekaterina Shipulina. A strikingly beautiful woman and a fine dancer she was a perfect queen of the wilis. In the interval she was asked about the coolness with which she despatched Hilarion (called "Hans" in this production for some reason and danced well by Denis Savin) and would have done the same to Albrecht had it not been for Giselle's intercession by Katerina Novikova. The answer was that she is a spirit and that is her character.

There were two other performances that deserve mention and that is the peasant pas de deux by Daria Khokhlova and Igor Tsvirko in Act I. I had admired Tsvirko in Swan Lake earlier this year, as the jester in Legend of Love and as Pepinelli in Marco Spada and it was great to see him again. Both dancers executed that piece magnificently.

One of the advantages of watching ballet in the cinema is that viewers get to see the Bolshoi stage which seems as cavernous as an aircraft hanger. The disadvantage is that you see the backcloth which looked a bit dowdy compared to Thurrock's scenery as did the costumed.  But overall the performance was excellent. I  am looking forward to seeing Jewels next month.