World premiere: 20 April 1967 , Bolshoi theatre, Moscow, Russia
Carmen-Suite
Music by Georges Bizet – Rodion Shchedrin Choreography by Alberto
Alonso Production Choreographer: Viktor Barykin Production Designer: Boris
Messerer Lighting Designer: Vladimir Lukasevich
Carmen-Suite was first staged in Moscow in 1967 by the Cuban
choreographer Alberto Alonso for Maya Plisetskaya, at her own request and at his
own desire. The music for the ballet is a transcription by Rodion Shchedrin of
Georges Bizet’s grand ballet.
At that time there was no talk of foreign
choreographers, though a politically-motivated exception was made for the Cuban
– following the Cuban Missile Crisis things were different. But those who
allowed it could not have imagined what they were getting involved in.
First of all, the ballet was provocatively un-classical; Plisetskaya paced across the stage not en pointes but in plain shoes, neither did she wear a tutu, but rather
in a risqué short skirt, and her body did not look remotely balletic. And in
general the ballet was intense in utterly impermissible passion, true eroticism
and the equally impermissible – and so intoxicating! – idea of freedom that was
so clearly expressed in it that it could never be shown in any Soviet theatre.
But it happened – for the same purely political reasons. The final decision
was preceded by a battle between two women. “You are a traitor of classical
ballet!” exclaimed the Minister of Culture Yekaterina Alexeyevna Furtseva with
pathos, “Your Carmen will die!”; “As long as I live Carmen will not die,”
replied – with just as much pathos – Maya Mikhailovna Plisetskaya.
Carmen did not die – she was to be one of Plisetskaya’s major roles, her calling card, and not because Plisetskaya danced this ballet longer than she did Swan Lake or
Don Quixote, but because the image of Carmen was the best expression of her
individuality and her expressive and dazzling gift; impertinence in character
and impertinence in dance, a passionate nature and musical subtlety, a loving
challenge and a challenge to the canons of dance. And a sharp silhouette, a
vivid profile, and heat and tragedy.
Apropos, the non-Russian Alonso
actually staged it even more freely and radically; it is known that Plisetskaya
and Fadeyechev asked him to control his ardour and reduce the erotic element so
that the ballet was not totally banned. This took the heat out of Alonso, but
even in such form the authorities were in a state of apoplexy. Alonso spoke of
how in this work he had combined the classics with elements of Spanish and Latin
American dances. But more than that, he had included, if not “modern” dance, it
was a totally new, unheard-of expressionism in the USSR. It was constructed on
two dance postulates: the classics taken to the extreme – iron-like movements,
iron-like poses, pointes as if nailed to the floor, battements tendus and bodies
taut like a string (that’s where the classics blend with Spanish dances), and
here we have an utter rejection of the classics, he rejection of any carcass –
the same feet “digging”, the hot response of the body and, ultimately, those
turned-out poses that make the fateful woman Carmen seem like a stubborn girl.
Alonso also said that he was inspired to produce his Carmen by dramatic theatre
– the movements have to “speak”. Since then much has happened in dance and now
it seems so clear, but there is something else that is much more important: back
then, in the Thaw of the 1960s this ballet was part of a general theatre context
– the Taganka Theatre had been on the go in Moscow for three years, and
Carmen-Suite with its – for the time – shocking conditionality and asceticism of
stage space were at the cutting edge. Apropos, in the acclaimed Taganka
production of The Good Man from Sechuan there was a mise-en-scène in which the
characters sat on chairs set in a semicircle – a motif comparable with a similar
motif used by Boris Messerer in hs set design’s for Carmen-Suite. In Moscow
Carmen-Suite was Plisetskaya’s “best” ballet – without Maya it did not exist,
and neither did Maya exist without it. But there were other performers of it
throughout the world. Also in 1967, Alonso staged it in Havana for the great
Alicia Alonso (having taken into account the Moscow censorship “corrections” and
restoring the passion cut from the duets) and then produced it internationally,
moreover not staging just the same production but variations; each time the
chorographer has brought something new to Carmen.
In Moscow the ballet only
existed as long as Plisetskaya danced; she has gone and only the legend of
Carmen remained. But twenty years passed and the Bolshoi Theatre took a risky
yet victorious step – for Maya Plisetskaya’s jubilee year her Carmen was
revived, as a tribute and as a homage. The elderly Alonso came, too, and staged
another new version for the theatre’s prima ballerina Svetlana Zakharova; then
came other performers and the ballet now sits firmly in the repertoire. The
legend has become a classic. “Now Carmen will never die,” Plisetskaya said.
In 2007 during a tour to the Bolshoi Theatre Ulyana Lopatkina appeared in
this ballet. She presented her own interpretation, her own vision of the role.
The new Carmen was externally reserved; her passions were all on the inside,
rarely coming to the surface. But the theatrical iron of Lopatkina’s Carmen is
less of a contrast between classical plastique and free plastique as it is a
sharp plastique accentuation of the music – it is from this sharpness and these
accents that the image itself was born. Today Moscow’s Carmen can be seen at
the Mariinsky Theatre, at last joining the repertoire’s legacy. Inna
Sklyarevskaya
World premiere: 20 April 1967, Bolshoi Theatre,
Moscow Premiere at the Mariinsky Theatre: 19 April 2010
Running time: 45 minutes
At the heart of the ballet lies the tragic destiny of Carmen the
gypsy girl and José the soldier who falls in love with her, though Carmen
abandons him in favour of the young Torero. The relationships between the
protagonists and Carmen’s death at José’s hands is predestined by Fate. Thus the
story of Carmen (in comparison with the literary source and Bizet’s opera) is
presented symbolically, which is reinforced by the unity of the setting of the
plot (an arena which hosts a bullfight).
Violetta Mainietse
Le Divertissement du roi
Music by Jean-Philippe Rameau Choreography by Maxim
Petrov Costume Designer: Tatiana Noginova Lighting Designer: Konstantin
Binkin Libretto by Bogdan Korolyok
Le Divertissement du Roi is a neoclassical fantasy on a baroque
theme, it is recollections of the happy beginnings of the art of ballet that
unfolded in the Louvre and in Versailles. The protagonist of the ballet is a
King who loves to appear at the theatre dressed as the Sun. The prototypes
number more than just Louis XIV: contrary to popular opinion, the epithet Le Roi
Soleil was first attributed to his most august father, Louis XIII. Just as much
as his son, he loved to take part in Court masquerade balls, and not always as
the star of day. Much more frequently he appeared as marginalised urban dwellers
and port idlers - such as a drunken Dutch captain.
Maxim Petrov’s ballet is
a catalogue of cherished images of baroque ballet. Although the music used is by
Jean-Philippe Rameau – and this is a very late score from the baroque theatre
tradition – the divertissement features entrées typical of earlier times. There
are peasants on the stage (the indispensable gallants), Play and Pleasure as
well as miraculous snails which are also ugly furies. But the protagonist of the
evening is Armide the magician. The mistress of enchanted salons that appear and
disappear as she waves her hand is, arguably, a key feature of baroque art,
tensely feeling the border between dreams and reality, trying to separate
illusions from truth. In brief, no-one can ultimately guarantee that the entire
so-called “king’s divertissement” is not an illusion – a jester’s trick with
fairground comedians. Bogdan Korolyok
Premiere: 14 June 2015, Mariinsky Theatre, St
Peterburg Age category 6+