THE BALLETS RUSSES AT THE MARIINSKY ( $1.99 for 99 hours rental )

 

THE FIREBIRD

Russian fairytale in two scenes

 

Music by Igor Stravinsky

Libretto by Michel Fokine

Revived by Isabelle Fokine & Andris Liepa

Set and costume design by  Alexander Golovin, Léon Bakst & Michel Fokine

Reconstruction of sets and costumes by  Anna & Anatoly Nezhny

Coach: Olga Chenchikova

 

Kashchei's Kingdom. Twilight. On the horizon a tremendous horseman appears - it is Night. The morning glimmers. A mys­terious light sparkles on the trees; these illuminations are magic apples. The Firebird appears. She flies down to the tree just like a flame and starts to whirl around it. She dances, slight and beauti­ful, and does not notice Ivan-Tsarevich, who has jumped over the fence to catch her. She tries to escape, to fly away, and pleads with him to release her. Ivan-Tsarevich yields to her entreaties. As she flies away, she leaves the Tsarevich three of her feathers as a to­ken of gratitude. Ivan then catches sight of the princesses coming down from the castle. They have been taken hostage by Kashchei the Immortal. Ivan wants to speak to the princesses but they turn out to be very deft and quick, so that Ivan has no chance of catch­ing them. However, Ivan's handsome and respectable appearance wins them over and the Princess of Great Beauty confides to him the sad story of her abduction. Ivan-Tsarevich wants to free the princesses.

 

The sun rises and a white horseman - Day - passes the Magic Garden. The princesses rouse themselves and leave. They are sub­ject to Kashchei's sorcery. Kashchei's servants, guards, witches, spirits and wizards start to appear from all sides. At last Kashchei the Immortal himself appears. Ivan-Tsarevich wants to escape, but Kashchei's guards seize him. Kashchei's wrath is terrible towards those who dare to enter his territory. Ivan-Tsarevich must die. Like many other brave heroes he will be turned into stone.  But suddenly Ivan recalls the Firebird's three feathers, which he plucked from her. The Firebird herself appears near him. She casts a spell over Kashchei's servants and they begin to dance furiously against their will. Even Kashchei himself starts to dance, unable to resist. Their movements get faster and faster. Meanwhile Ivan-Tsarevich has seized hold of the huge egg in which Kashchei's soul is stored. He lifts his arm and throws the egg at Kashchei, who dies as soon as the egg breaks.

 

 

LE SACRE DU PRINTEMPS

Scenes from pagan Russia in two parts

 

Scene plan by Igor Stravinsky and Nikolas Roerich

Music by Igor Stravinsky

Musical Director and Conductor: Valery Gergiev Choreography after Vaslav Nijinsky

Reconstructed and staged by Millicent Hodson

(Reconstructed choreography © 1987 Millicent Hodson)

Décor and costumes after Nicholas Roerich

Reconstructed and supervised by Kenneth Archer (Reconstructed costume and decor designs © 1987 Kenneth Archer) Decor reproduced by Boris Kaminsky

Costumes reproduced by Tatiana Noginova

Lighting by Sergei Lukin

Musical Preparation by Lyudmila Sveshnikova

Coach: Vyacheslav Khomyakov

 

 

World premiere: 29 May 1913, Ballet Russes di Diaghilev,

Théatre de Champs-Elisées, Paris

Premiere at the Mariinsky Theatre: 2003

 

Cast:

The Chosen One played by Alexandra Iosifidi

300- Year-Old Woman played by Elena Bazhenova

Shaman  played by Vladimir Ponomarev

                              

Production of the ballet Le Sacre du printemps sponsored

by The Mariisky Theatre Trust (Great Britain)

 

 

Part One: The Adoration of the Earth       

Introduction    

Augurs of Spring        

The Game of Abduction         

Spring Rounds

Games of the Rival Tribes      

Procession of the Elders

Adoration of the Earth

Dance of the Earth

 

 

Part Two: The Sacrifice

Introduction

Mystical Circles of the Maidens

Glorification of the Chosen One

The Evocation of the Ancestors

The Ritual Action of the Ancestors

Sacrificial Dance (the Chosen One)

 

The 20th century began politically with a murder on August 1914 in Sarajevo. Artistically, it began with a scandal one year be­fore in Paris' Theatre de Champs-Elisees. Against the background of Roerich's stage curtain, archaic bearded men in fur hats and ruddy-cheeked girls in red, blue and white sarafans stamped their heels outward in hitherto unheard rhythms. The Chosen Meiden, with face of stone, her leg digging up half the stage with superhuman strength, falling dead in the finale. Against a back­ground of catcalls, whistles, swearing and people fighting in the aisles of the luxurious auditorium, it was barely possible to hear any of the score recently written by the fashionable composer Stravinsky. He was whistled at; behind the scenes, the famous dancer Nijinsky, who hat choreographed the ballet, jumping onto a chair, tried to salve the day, desperately calling out instructions to the hysterical dancers. It was if the Theatre de Champs-Elisees had been hit by thunderbolt. Only one man was triumphant, a man with a face like a bulldog-Serge de Diaghilev, director of the fashionable Ballets Russes - at last, ballet's new age had begun. Thanks to him, Diaghilev.

 

The Triumph was absolute. With Le Sacre du printemps, the genetic code for the next hundred years of art had been set. From now on, each main artistic age would consider itself duty-­bound to stage its own Sacre. Moreover, Le Sacre was staged as great piece of choreography only at the height of a new artistic wave, failing miserably when conditions were not right. The four main choreographic versions of Le Sacre du printemps of the 20th century, by Vaslav Nijinsky, Maurice Bejart, Pina Bausch and Mats Ek, represent an almost comprehensive of the main ears in 20th century art: the early expressionism of the 1910s, the height of abstract expressionism of the 1950s, the hyper-realism of the post-modernism of the 1980s. There is no other ballet score which art has discussed to such an exhaustive degree.  Yulia Yakovleva

 

 

LES NOCES

 

Music by Igor Stravinsky

 

Cast

 

The Bride played by Anna Sysoeva (debut) 

The Brides Mother played by Elena Bazhenova 

The Brides Father played by Roman Skripkin 

The Groom played by Sergei Popov 

The Grooms Mother played by Valeria Karpina 

The Grooms Father played by Pyotr Stasyunas

 

Soloists: Elena Sheshina, Maxim Khrebtov

 

Piano solo:  Maxim Mogilevsky, Alexander Mogilevsky, Yulia Zaichkina, Svetlana Smolina

 

Vocals performed by:  Irina Vasilieva (soprano), Olga Savova (mezzo soprano) , Alexander Timchenko (tenor)  Gennady Bezzubenkov (bass)

 

Percussion solo: Andrei Khotin, Yuri Alexeyev,  Mikhail Peskov, Yuri Mishchenko, Yevgeny Zhikalov, Vladislav Ivanov, Arseny Shupliakov

 

 

Les Noces is one of Stravinsky's landmark works. He started composing the music in 1914, immediately after completing Le Sacre du printemps. Together with this famous ballet, Les Noces forms a unique diptych. Stravinsky turned to the sources of ancient Slavic culture in both these works, recreating savage, pagan rituals linked to the cult of fertility and the rite of human sacrifice.

 

The premiere of the ballet Les Noces was conducted by Ernest Ansermet on 13th June 1923 in Paris, with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska and sets and costumes by Natalia Goncharova.  The concert version of Les Noces is an unusual suite in four tableaux and is performed without interruption. The first scene, The Tresses, recreates the start of a wedding ritual, the unwinding of the Bride's plaits, mourning the loss of virginity and the Bride's farewell to her friends. The second scene, At the Bridegroom's House, is marked by an intense and brutal "masculine" flavour. The laments of the Groom's parents alternate with a ponderous choral recitative, bold and jest­ing responses and violent cries. The third scene, The Departure of the Bride, begins with a return to the light, girlish images and already familiar melodies of the first scene. After the orgiastic swell and the howls of the chorus, everything becomes still - in the silence, the mothers of the Bride and Groom can be heard weeping. The fourth scene, The Wedding Feast, is the grandest and the most tense. At last, the long-suppressed colourful revelry of the pagan rite bursts through with the spirited cries of the feasting guests, wedding songs, the ritualistic conversing of the male and female sections of the chorus and the farewell words to the newly­weds. The last scene, with the young couple being shown to the marriage bed, is filled with sadness at the passing of their carefree, happy youth.