EKATERINBURG, February 21. /TASS/. The Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theater staged the play "Paquita" in honor of the 200th anniversary of the birth of the outstanding ballet dancer and choreographer Marius Petipa (1818-1910), artistic director of the theater Vyacheslav Samodurov told reporters on Wednesday.
The theater also dedicated the premiere to the memory of Sergei Vikharev, the choreographer and director of this ballet, choreographer Mariinsky Theater, Honored Artist of Russia, who died suddenly on June 2, 2017, without having time to complete work on the production. It was he who started the tradition of reconstruction ballet performances, restoring at the Mariinsky Theater the play “The Sleeping Beauty” of 1899, which was shown many times in Russia, America and Europe.
“Unfortunately, Sergei Vikharev died suddenly, (I) had to finish this performance... There are a lot of new things in this production in terms of design, music, direction, ideas. This is very unusual way returning to the past: we are returning to the old ballet tradition, but looking at it from the perspective today. As a viewer, I wouldn’t be interested in watching “Paquita” from the 19th century,” Samodurov said.
According to him, the new “Paquita” is not a reconstruction in the literal sense of the word, but an interpretation classical ballet. The performance restores Petipa's 1881 choreography to the maximum extent possible and preserves all the collisions of the original libretto. Especially for the production, St. Petersburg composer Yuri Krasavin made a free orchestral transcription of the historical score by Edouard Deldevez and Ludwig Minkus.
“This is a modernized version of that score, and I don’t think that the author would have recognized it... I got my hands on a rather voluminous score of the original, looked at it and was horrified, because it was made clumsily, the music there is very mediocre. At first I thought to leave something untouched, but then I realized that everything had to be remade... It would have been a sluggish, museum-like, rare performance (if you don’t change the original music - TASS), I wanted it to be interesting to listen to today,” the composer explained.
The concept of the performance belongs to Pavel Gershenzon. The new design was developed by the artists of the Bolshoi Theater of Russia Alona Pikalova (scenography) and Elena Zaitseva (costumes). The lighting score was written by Mariinsky Theater lighting designer Alexander Naumov.
About "Paquita"
The ballet Paquita was first shown in 1846 at the Paris Opera. A year later, it was with “Paquita” that Marius Petipa made his debut in St. Petersburg; he acted as director and also performed the main male role. In 1881 Petipa - already chief choreographer Imperial Theatres, renewed “Paquita” for the ballerina Ekaterina Vazem, adding several new numbers. IN Soviet years Only the final dance ensemble remained on stage - the Great Classical Pas, which in the 20th century was universally performed under the name "Paquita", the press service of the Ural Theater reported.
The French opened the ballet season at the Bolshoi Theater. This was the second part of the return tour of the Paris Opera ballet troupe. Or, rather, the return of a forgotten debt, which Brigitte Lefebvre remembered before her departure from the post of head of the Paris Opera Ballet.
She had long wanted to bring the Parisian “Paquita” by Pierre Lacotte to the historical stage of the Bolshoi, but the tour visit of the Opera ballet (February 2011) coincided with the height of the renovation, and the Parisians showed small-format ballets on the New Stage: “Suite in White” by Serge Lifar, “La L'Arlesienne” "Roland Petit and "The Park" by Angelin Preljocaj.
Neither Rudolf Nureyev nor Pierre Lacotte, the authors of large staged performances, the so-called Parisian exclusive from the category of classics, were included in the company of “imported” choreographers.
Two years ago, the Bolshoi Theater introduced a convenient practice - to open the season with a tour of some serious European theater.
In 2011, the Madrid theater "Real" came with Kurt Weill's opera "The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogany", in 2012 - La Scala showed its new "Don Giovanni". The Paris Opera Ballet's tour with Paquita fit perfectly into the scheme. And the level of artistic level of visitors is kept high.
However, these are all explanatory formalities. The message of the Paris tour is different.
Anyone who follows events in France knows that the Paris Opera Ballet is on the verge of change.
In 2014, the troupe will be headed by a new artistic director - a choreographer from Bordeaux, husband of Natalie Portman, ex-premier of New York City Balle, Benjamin Millepied.
Yes, of course, Brigitte Lefebvre, the long-time leader of the illustrious company, was not a guardian of the classical heritage; on the contrary, she did her best to promote modern dance into the repertoire. But she also cared about the local heritage - the ballets of Nureyev and Lacotte. As well as ensuring that priority for new productions in the theater should be given to choreographers or dancers who want to transform into choreographers of French origin.
This again does not mean that racism was promoted. Lefebvre invited Israeli choreographers, Algerian choreographers, and any others who were “in the conversation” to perform. Among such promising invited Frenchmen was Millepied twice - with very average works “Amoveo” and “Triad”, which were raised to the proper level by the brilliant feet of Parisian dancers and the design of fashion designers.
However, xenophobia has historically occurred at the Paris Opera School.
The school accepts a variety of capable children, but after graduation, only holders of a French passport can join the corps de ballet of the country's main ballet theater. It's cruel, but generally fair. Each theater has its own characteristics, and the institution of French ballet, as the oldest in the world, has the right to its eccentricities, the result of which has always been high level skill and, most importantly, stylistic unity.
Wherever a Paris Opera ballet dancer goes, he always carries the French style with him - this is the manner of performance, technique and special stage culture.
The same can be said about the ballerinas of the Mariinsky Theater, partly about the artists of the Bolshoi Theater, and about the soloists of the Royal Danish Ballet, that is, about representatives of the oldest national companies.
And that's all - just these three or four theaters.
Is this elitism good or bad in the era of globalization?
From the perspective of a balletomane, it is undoubtedly good. Because around these pillar theaters there are other wonderful theaters where a mixture of styles, techniques and nationalities is honored. These are the American Ballet Theater (ABT), La Scala Ballet, New York City Ballet, Covent Garden Ballet, English National Ballet, Berlin State Ballet, Ballet Vienna Opera and a few more. In addition, there are author's theaters such as the Hamburg Ballet (Neumeier's repertoire) or the Stuttgart Ballet (Cranko).
Time makes adjustments. In both Denmark and Paris, the problem of a shortage of talented students with the “correct” passport for the theater arose at the same time. There are two ways out of this situation - either change the charter and take foreigners from among the best graduates, or take all the French in a row.
Denmark is already accepting everyone, since the country is small, and the problem begins not at graduation, but right at admission - there is a shortage of Danish children.
And now a girl of any origin with the appropriate data can enter the School of the Royal Danish Ballet, but boys are accepted even without data, as long as they go. But the Danes didn’t have xenophobia before; there were simply enough Danish children to fill ballet classes.
France is still at the school level, because there, like in Russia, where, in addition to the Moscow State Academy of Arts and the ARB (Vaganovka), there are a dozen more ballet schools, with the help of which two schools in the capital can be nourished, not just one school, but several. And still, personnel problem the French are just around the corner, and it will have to be resolved somehow, and, most likely, at the expense of the “non-French”.
Meanwhile, the future artistic director of the Paris Opera Ballet, Benjamin Millepied, does not see a threat in the fact that strangers will enter the theater.
Moreover. He has already managed to arouse the indignation of etoile people with his statements in the press. In his enlightened Americanized view, the refined company lacks African Americans with their extraordinary plasticity and techniques. A normal statement from a person who has never danced at the Paris Opera and did not even study at the famous school.
Moreover, it will not be difficult for him to recruit flexible non-Europeans into the troupe at the beginning of the next season. Four etouiles are retiring at once - Nureyev’s “chickens” Nicolas Leriche (he says goodbye in the summer of 2014 in the “Cathedral Notre Dame of Paris"Roland Petit) and Agnès Letestu (her farewell performance - "The Lady of the Camellias" by John Neumeier will take place on October 10 this year), as well as Aurélie Dupont (in the ballet "Manon" in the fall of 2014) and Isabelle Ciaravola in March 2014 in the role of Tatiana in " Onegin” by J. Cranko.
According to the law, a dancer of the Paris Opera Ballet retires at forty-two and a half years old!
But in the group of first dancers, from where, in theory, future stars should be nominated for vacant positions, there are no suitable candidates in such numbers. It is clear that in a year you can manage to promote someone from the lower ranks to first dancer, but these people will then have to “pull” the most difficult roles in classical ballets. Therefore, Millepied’s idea of “diluting” the troupe with outside professionals, no matter how mediocre and tasteless it may seem, will most likely be realized. And everything, everything will change.
But while Brigitte Lefebvre is at the helm, there are no vacant positions in her troupe; on the contrary, there are excellent dancers with whom she fought side by side for 20 years for the purity and identity of the French style.
She was and remains a friend of the Bolshoi Theater - at her instigation, Moscow artists were invited to one-time performances: Nikolai Tsiskaridze danced “La Bayadère” and “The Nutcracker”, Maria Alexandrova - “Raymonda”, Svetlana Lunkina - “The Nutcracker” and “ A futile precaution", Natalia Opipova - "The Nutcracker". And secondly, thanks to the agreements between Lefevre and Iksanov, the Bolshoi Theater ballet troupe began to tour regularly in Paris.
“Paquita” brought to Moscow is a farewell photograph of the Paris Opera Ballet in the era of Brigitte Lefebvre.
A beautiful gesture by the avant-garde queen, who wants to be remembered in Russia not only as a promoter of existential wallowing on the floor.
This version of Paquita premiered in 2001. The French were then a little worried that the Bolshoi Theater, where the year before the premiere of Pierre Lacotte’s ballet “The Pharaoh’s Daughter” based on Petipa had taken place with resounding success, would take over from the Paris Opera its main expert and reenactor of romantic antiquity. By this time, the theater's repertoire included its regularly renewed La Sylphide and the rare Marco Spada.
Lacotte's version of Paquita dates back to the premiere performance in 1846, with choreography by Joseph Mazilier that has not survived.
The choreographer relied on unique documents that he discovered in Germany, which were a complete description of the mise-en-scène, the first edition of the pantomime and two variations of Mazilier, marked and written by the choreographer, plus a description of the design of the performance.
All this was needed to turn into a full-fledged performance of “The Grand Classical Pas” - a masterpiece excerpt from Marius Petipa’s “Paquita” that has survived time. These are the well-known children's mazurka, pas de trois, virtuosic female variations, the pathetic pas de deux of Paquita and Lucien and the general entre, which happily existed for a hundred years in a plotless mode.
The first French “Paquita” of 1846 arose in the wake of the fascination of the then choreographers with the legends of the Iberian Peninsula.
Spain, on the one hand, was seen as a country in which incredible stories with the kidnapping of children by gypsies and robber raids - these kinds of plots actively fed the French romantic ballet. On the other hand, Spain was famous as the birthplace of all kinds folk character dances- gypsy, bolero, cachuchi. Tambourines, tambourines, castanets, cloaks - these accessories became an integral part of the ballets of that time.
Literary basis“Paquita” was inspired by the short story “Gypsy Girl” by M. Cervantes.
Late 30's - 40's. The century before last, in general, passed under the sign of ballet gypsies. In St. Petersburg in 1838, Philippe Taglioni staged the ballet “La Gitana” for Maria Taglioni. Joseph Mazilier, even before Paquita, staged La Gipsy for Fanny Elsler. The first performer of Paquita was the equally eminent French ballerina Carlotta Grisi. At the same time, the premiere of Jules Perrot's ballet Esmeralda, the main gypsy ballet hit of the 19th century, took place in London.
But the gypsy theme in Paquita is revealed somewhat differently than in Esmeralda.
The word "gypsies" in romantic ballet was understood in some sense as an epithet for "theater robbers." So the libretto of “Paquita” tells about the extraordinary fate of a girl who lives in a gypsy camp according to its laws - by dancing, she earns her living. However, her origins are shrouded in mystery - the girl has a medallion with the image of a French aristocrat, hinting at her noble parent.
And in “Esmeralda” the word “gypsy” means “beggar woman”, “persecuted”, “homeless”, and gypsy life in the ballet is not shrouded in any romance. In this sense, the first Parisian “Paquita” is closer to “Catherine, the Robber’s Daughter” by J. Perrault. “Paquita” is a late romantic ballet, the plot of which is based on the melodrama beloved by visitors to theaters on the Grand Boulevards.
As a result, Lacotte, whom we know as a first-class dance director in the style of the Romantic era, restores in his “Paquita” - from records, engravings, sketches, reviews and articles of poets and literary critics level of Théophile Gautier - all pantomime mise-en-scène.
The play contains an entire scene, “Gypsy Camp,” which contains practically no dancing, but is full of the most dramatic pantomime, which Gautier was once delighted with.
It is difficult to compare the acting abilities of the first performer of Paquita, Carlotta Grisi, and today's ballerinas Ludmila Pagliero and Alice Renavan, but this picture itself, which is a revived engraving, looks harmonious, partly reminiscent of a dramatic intermission.
Paquita, in love with the French officer Lucien d'Hervilly, overhears a conversation between the gypsy Inigo and the Spanish governor, who are going to give sleeping pills to drink and then kill Lucien - the first out of jealousy, and the second because of hatred of the French and reluctance to marry his daughter Serafina to the hated son general Paquita warns Lucien about the danger, swaps the glasses of Lucien and Inigo, he falls asleep before committing the crime, and the couple safely escapes through a secret door in the fireplace.
In the previous film, the content was told mainly through dance. This is a Spanish dance with tambourines, and gypsy dance Paquitas, and Lucien's variations and the notorious Dance with cloaks (Danse de capes), which was once performed by travesty dancers, Lacotte gave to men, and the pas de trois, transcribed in a manner different from Petipa's.
Therefore, the “pedestrian” picture serves as a transition to the next entirely dance act - the ball at General d’Hervilly’s,
to which Paquita and Lucien, out of breath from the chase, run in belatedly. The girl exposes the evil governor and at the same time discovers on the wall a portrait of a man with features familiar from her medallion. This is her father, the general's brother, killed many years ago. Paquita immediately accepts Lucien’s proposal, which she had previously delicately rejected, considering herself an unworthy commoner, puts on a beautiful wedding tutu, and the ball continues in the mode of that “grand pas” beloved by balletomanes of all times and peoples to the music of Minkus, complicated by Lacotte in the French manner.
In an interview, Lacotte repeatedly said that “the technique of Paquita requires more liveliness than lyricism.”
And “ballerinas need to conform to the old allegro technique, which is gradually disappearing.” Paquita’s exits are a chain of small steps, jumps, “skids” and pas de sha. The soloist's variation in the pas de trois and the Lucien variations are almost a continuous flight without landings.
The line-ups of soloists that the Parisians brought to Paquita are unequal, if only because
Matthias Eyman - Lucien's performer - exists in the world in a single copy.
All the other Luciens are good, but they don’t live up to Matthias. He made his debut in Paquita in December 2007 in all parts at once. While his senior colleagues were working off their star status in the premier role, Eyman, who had just been elevated to the rank of first dancer, jumped into the pas de trois and saluted spanish dance, parallel to Lucien's flights in the rep hall.
And when he went out leading role the replacement - a boy with a pronounced Arabic note in his facial features and an absolutely incredible effortless jump - the name of the future etiquette was clearly determined (at that time, however, there was no vacancy for a long time, and the appointment had to wait at least a year).
Eyman established a completely different style of dance and behavior on stage - fearless, a little unceremonious, a little insensitive, but extremely interesting and innovative.
Today he is a venerable prime minister, whose performances are watched by Paris, and who is passionately loved by Muscovites. It was not presented on the previous tour, citing the artist’s employment in the current repertoire of the opera, thereby aggravating the shock of the discovery. Florian Magnenet, the second Lucien, is not inferior to Eyman in gallant manners, but Lacotte's variations are not yet up to his level.
On the first evening, Paquita was danced by Lyudmila Pagliero, the main virtuoso of the Paris Opera.
Etoile is beautiful, resilient, with a good jump, brilliant rotation and an extraordinary sense of adagio.
Like any hostage to technology, Lyudmila has a certain dramatic cliché, but not critical.
The other Paquita is Alice Renavan. She is also resilient, also with a jump, but she is too exotic for classical ballet. Renavan stagnated in supporting roles, which she often plays more brilliantly than other leading roles, but the mentality of a good adjutant prevents her from becoming a general.
However, the beauty Alice has every chance of soon becoming an etiquette for her achievements in modern dance- in this area she is unrivaled.
In addition to the delights of the etoile dance, the French gave the joy of neat fifth positions, restrained manners and the elegance of each artist individually.
Photo by D. Yusupov
"But there are strict limits on the volume, I had to cut it almost in half. Here I am publishing the full version. But, as every author knows, when you have to cut, you go into a frenzy, and then you don’t know which version turned out better: the full or the shortened version.
The solemn procession of ballet troupes continues, dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the birth of our ballet “everything” Marius Petipa. Paquita at the Ural Opera Ballet (Ekaterinburg) joined the festive ranks of demonstrators led by Don Quixote at the Leonid Yakobson Theater. I attended the premiere on February 22 and 23 FEA IN SWEATER.
This “Paquita” is destined to become a hit and the brightest phenomenon of the current ballet season, although its appearance was preceded by the tragic and sudden death of director Sergei Vikharev at the beginning rehearsal process. The premiere shows received memorial status, Yekaterinburg - the most unusual, fascinating and absolutely unpredictable "Paquita", choreographer Vyacheslav Samodurov - an unplanned ballet that he had to complete and release into free swimming.
The brilliant stylist and reconstructor of classical choreography Sergei Vikharev, in collaboration with Pavel Gershenzon, composed a completely provocative performance, without changing a single plot move of the libretto by Paul Fouché and Joseph Mazilier from 1846 and carefully placing all the more or less preserved choreography of Petipa into a travel bag. In the Yekaterinburg “Paquita” there is not a single formal change in the script and choreography that is familiar at the level of instincts. The French aristocrat, kidnapped as a child, still considers herself Spanish gypsy, rejects the claims of the camp leader Inigo, falls in love with a brilliant officer and saves his life, destroying a complex conspiracy with poisoned wine, four murderers and a secret passage in the fireplace; identifies the murdered parents from family portraits and marries the handsome rescued boy. The soloists of Pas de trois are still chanting the tired ballet chorus-chorus “glide - jete, glide - jete”, they are still prancing in the wedding Grand pas of the “fours” and “twos” in the textbook “Spanish” chant “pa galya - pa” galya - cabriole - pose.” But this is perceived archaeological artifacts, found during the construction of, say, a bridge, and built into it as evidence of the existence of civilization in that particular place.
Yes, the Yekaterinburg “Paquita” is a bridge that boldly connected the unconnected: the island of a ballet legend of the 19th century with the materialistic reality of the 21st century, relying on the choreographic rationalism of the 20th century. Its main designers, Vikharev and Gershenzon, confidently drove the piles of fantasy into the shaky ground of non-obvious ballet documentary, established the supports of iron logic, despite the powerful countercurrent of historical anecdotes and incidents, and streamlined the movement in both directions - from historicism to modernity and back. Paquita of the 19th century, having boarded a gypsy caravan, arrived in the third millennium at the wheel of her own racing car, not at all surprised by the transformations that had taken place.
The authors of the play placed the three acts of “Paquita” in three different eras in approximately 80 year increments. The first act, with a leisurely exposition, with the introduction of the main characters, with the beginning of the conflict (neither the Spanish governor nor the director of the gypsy camp likes officer Lucien, who decide to kill him for this), lulls the audience with a high-quality reconstruction of one of the iconic performances of the heyday of ballet romanticism . It has everything that you expect from “Paquita” and Mr. Vikharev, a brilliant connoisseur of archival choreography: naive stage positions, inventive and bewitching dances, detailed pantomime dialogues, ideal heroes, lovely costumes from Elena Zaitseva, in which the dancers bathe in a lush foam of frills and frills.
A shocking awakening awaits the touched and vigilant spectator in the second act. It seems that the authors of the play were just waiting for the moment to rip off all this false romantic veil, shamefully pulled over another physical entity. The most melodramatic almost half-hour pantomime scene, extremely loved by balletomanes for its virtuoso acting, even in the case of the most meticulous stylization of ballet theater techniques mid-19th century, would look ridiculous, in best case scenario- archaic. The director, like Bulgakov's Woland, conducts a session of magic followed by its revelation, transferring the vulgar (in general) scene into an ideal aesthetic environment: into the silent cinema of the early twentieth century. The puzzle pieces matched perfectly! The long-eyed handsome Lucien and the femme fatale Paquita, goggle-eyed with long eyelashes, actively give lines that are projected on the screen; sinister thugs with terrifying grimaces are waving sharp knives; the ideal scoundrel (Gleb Sageev and Maxim Klekovkin), laughing demonically, carries out his vile deed and himself falls victim to his own cunning, picturesquely writhing in his death agony. The action is rapidly rushing towards the denouement, the brilliant pianist-demiurge German Markhasin (and, as you know, the young Dmitry Shostakovich worked part-time as a pianist in cinemas) mercilessly destroys romantic illusions, which in the third act, drunk with coffee from coffee machine, are resurrected to sum up and sing those Eternal values, contained in Petipov's Grand pas.
But there is still a way to get to the Grand pas dense layer resting during the intermission of the performance in the theater artists' buffet. IN new reality Lucien and Paquita become the premieres of the ballet troupe, Lucien's father becomes the director of the theater, the Spanish governor, who plotted the murder of the main character, becomes the general sponsor of the troupe. Vyacheslav Samodurov, the Nostradamus of our time, already two days before the final predicted the victory of Russian hockey players at the Olympics, placing a television broadcasting the match on the stage of the theater he directed. Dramatic reality, sports and theatrical, are woven together: against the backdrop of sweet hockey victories, the rootless orphan Paquita acquires a surname, the exposure of theatrical corrupt officials and the combination of arrests and celebrations, crowned with a wedding Grand pas.
The Grand pas is danced almost perfectly: a well-trained troupe cuts through the space of the stage quite synchronously, glamorous with cabrioles and seductive with cancan ambuate. In the Grand pas, the dancers’ heads are decorated not with “Spanish” combs protruding victoriously from their kitties, but with charming French hats from the “Moulin Rouge”, and on their feet are black tights and black pointe shoes, which, coupled with charming smiles, give Petipa’s bronzed, academic choreography a purely Parisian look flair, playfulness and frivolity, completely erased in the past century. Miki Nishiguchi and Ekaterina Sapogova perform the main part with a sweet French swagger and careless indifference; they do not look for industrial records in the choreography and do not “fry” fouettés with an air of ultimate truth, but all their dance statements are impeccably precise and brilliantly articulated. Alexey Seliverstov and Alexander Merkushev, who took turns performing the role of Lucien, appreciated the plastic variability proposed by the directors - the ideal gentleman-darling in the first act, the reflective neurotic hero in the second and the impeccable aristocrat-premier in the third.
But “Paquita” became like this thanks to composer Yuri Krasavin, the author of the “free transcription” of the score by Eduard Deldevez and Ludwig Minkus. He created a musical breakthrough, reincarnating simple tunes and little songs into the powerful polyphonic sound of an incredibly integral and fascinating work. These transformations and the musical charades conceived by Mr. Krasavin plunge one into frantic delight. The introduction of an accordion, a xylophone and the increased role of percussion, sometimes carefully and delicately, sometimes chopping from the shoulder and preparing the “applause” step, added to the score of “Paquita” by Krasavin even greater plasticity and “Frenchness”. However, the blows of the whip in the most energetically intense moments do not allow one to be lulled by the charm of a deceptively ancient ballet.
The solemn procession of ballet troupes continues, dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the birth of our ballet “everything” Marius Petipa. Paquita at the Ural Opera Ballet (Ekaterinburg) joined the festive ranks of demonstrators led by Don Quixote at the Leonid Yakobson Theater. I attended the premiere on February 22 and 23 bloha_v_svitere. This “Paquita” is destined to become a hit and the most striking phenomenon of the current ballet season, although its appearance was preceded by the tragic and sudden death of director Sergei Vikharev at the beginning of the rehearsal process. The premiere shows received memorial status, Yekaterinburg - the most unusual, fascinating and absolutely unpredictable "Paquita", choreographer Vyacheslav Samodurov - an unplanned ballet that he had to complete and release into free swimming. The brilliant stylist and reenactor of classical choreography Sergei Vikharev, in collaboration with Pavel Gershenzon, composed a completely provocative performance, without changing a single plot move of the libretto by Paul Fouché and Joseph Mazilier from 1846 and carefully putting all the more or less preserved choreography of Petipa into the travel bag. In the Yekaterinburg “Paquita” there is not a single formal change in the script and the choreography is familiar at the level of instincts. Still the French aristocrat, kidnapped in childhood, considers herself a Spanish gypsy, rejects the claims of the head of the camp, Inigo, falls in love with a brilliant officer and saves his life, destroying a complex conspiracy with poisoned wine, four murderers and a secret passage in the fireplace; identifies the murdered parents from family portraits and marries the handsome rescued boy. The soloists of Pas de trois are still chanting the tired ballet chorus-chorus “glissade - jeté, glidesade - jeté”, they are still prancing in the wedding Grand pas of the “fours” and “twos” in the textbook “Spanish” chant “pa galya - pa galya – cabriole – pose.” But this is perceived as archaeological artifacts found during the construction of, say, a bridge, and built into it as evidence of the existence of civilization in that particular place.
Yes, the Ekaterinburg “Paquita” is a bridge that boldly connected the incompatible: the island of a ballet legend of the 19th century with the materialistic reality of the 21st century, relying on the choreographic rationalism of the 20th century. Its main designers, Vikharev and Gershenzon, confidently drove the piles of fantasy into the shaky ground of non-obvious ballet documentary, established the supports of iron logic, despite the powerful countercurrent of historical anecdotes and incidents, and streamlined the movement in both directions - from historicism to modernity and back. Paquita of the 19th century, having boarded a gypsy caravan, arrived in the third millennium at the wheel of her own racing car, not at all surprised by the transformations that had taken place.
The authors of the play placed the three acts of “Paquita” in three different eras with an approximate increment of 80 years. The first act, with a leisurely exposition, with the introduction of the main characters, with the beginning of the conflict (neither the Spanish governor nor the director of the gypsy camp likes officer Lucien, who decide to kill him for this), lulls the audience with a high-quality reconstruction of one of the iconic performances of the heyday of ballet romanticism . It has everything that you expect from “Paquita” and Mr. Vikharev, a brilliant connoisseur of archival choreography: naive stage positions, inventive and bewitching dances, detailed pantomime dialogues, ideal characters, lovely costumes from Elena Zaitseva, in which the dancers bathe in the lush foam of frills and little frills.
A shocking awakening awaits the touched and vigilant spectator in the second act. It seems that the authors of the play were just waiting for the moment to rip off all this false romantic veil, shamefully pulled over another physical entity. The most melodramatic almost half-hour pantomime scene, extremely beloved by balletomanes for its virtuoso acting, even in the case of the most meticulous stylization of the techniques of ballet theater of the mid-19th century, would have looked ridiculous, at best archaic. The director, like Bulgakov's Woland, conducts a session of magic followed by its revelation, transferring the vulgar (in general) scene into an ideal aesthetic environment: into the silent cinema of the early twentieth century. The puzzle pieces matched perfectly! The long-eyed handsome Lucien and the femme fatale Paquita, goggle-eyed with long eyelashes, actively give lines that are projected on the screen; sinister thugs with terrifying grimaces are waving sharp knives; the ideal scoundrel (Gleb Sageev and Maxim Klekovkin), laughing demonically, carries out his vile deed and himself falls victim to his own cunning, picturesquely writhing in his death agony. The action is rapidly rushing towards the denouement, the brilliant pianist-demiurge German Markhasin (and, as you know, the young Dmitry Shostakovich worked part-time as a pianist in cinemas) mercilessly destroys romantic illusions, which in the third act, drunk with coffee from a coffee machine, are resurrected to sum up and glorify those eternal values contained in Petipa's Grand pas.
But before the Grand pas you still have to get through the dense layer of people relaxing during the intermission of the performance in the theater artists' buffet. In the new reality, Lucien and Paquita become the premieres of the ballet troupe, Lucien’s dad becomes the director of the theater, and the Spanish governor, who plotted the murder of the main character, becomes the general sponsor of the troupe. Vyacheslav Samodurov, the Nostradamus of our time, already two days before the final predicted the victory of Russian hockey players at the Olympics, placing a TV broadcasting the match on the stage of the theater he directed. Dramatic reality, sports and theatrical, are woven together: against the backdrop of sweet hockey victories, the rootless orphan Paquita acquires a surname, the exposure of theatrical corrupt officials and the combination of arrests and celebrations, crowned with a wedding Grand pas.
The Grand pas is danced almost perfectly: a well-trained troupe cuts through the space of the stage quite synchronously, glamorous with cabrioles and seductive with cancan ambuate. In the Grand pas, the dancers’ heads are decorated not with “Spanish” combs protruding victoriously from their kitties, but with charming French hats from the “Moulin Rouge”, and on their feet are black tights and black pointe shoes, which, coupled with charming smiles, give Petipa’s bronzed, academic choreography a purely Parisian look flair, playfulness and frivolity, completely erased in the past century. Miki Nishiguchi and Ekaterina Sapogova perform the main part with a sweet French swagger and careless indifference; they do not look for industrial records in the choreography and do not “fry” fouettés with an air of ultimate truth, but all their dance statements are impeccably precise and brilliantly articulated. Alexey Seliverstov and Alexander Merkushev, who took turns performing the role of Lucien, appreciated the plastic variability proposed by the directors - the ideal gentleman-darling in the first act, the reflective neurotic hero in the second and the impeccable aristocrat-premier in the third.
But “Paquita” became like this thanks to composer Yuri Krasavin, the author of the “free transcription” of the score by Eduard Deldevez and Ludwig Minkus. He created a musical breakthrough, reincarnating simple tunes and little songs into the powerful polyphonic sound of an incredibly integral and fascinating work. These transformations and the musical charades conceived by Mr. Krasavin plunge one into frantic delight. The introduction of an accordion, a xylophone and the increased role of percussion, sometimes carefully and delicately, sometimes chopping from the shoulder and preparing the “applause” step, added to the score of “Paquita” by Krasavin even greater plasticity and “Frenchness”. However, the blows of the whip in the most energetically intense moments do not allow one to be lulled by the charm of a deceptively ancient ballet.
Paquita is a ballet with music by composer Edouard Deldevez with subsequent musical additions by composer Ludwig Minkus.
Libretto by Paul Foucher and Joseph Mazilier. The literary basis was the short story “Gypsy Girl” by Miguel Cervantes.
The first performance took place in Paris, on the stage of the Grand Opera Theater, on April 1, 1846, staged by choreographer Joseph Mazilier to music by Ernest Deldevez
Characters:
Lucien d'Hervilly
Inigo, head of the gypsy camp
Don Lopez de Mendoza, provincial governor in Spain
Comte d'Hervilly, French general, father of Lucien
Sculptor
Paquita
Doña Serafina, Don Lopez's sister
Countess, mother of Comte d'Hervilly
Young gypsy.
Summary:
In Spain, the beautiful Paquita lives in a gypsy camp. But she is not a gypsy. Her appearance in the camp is connected with some terrible crime 1795 and shrouded in mystery. Paquita carefully keeps a miniature portrait of her father, but she does not know who he is and why he was killed. She was very young and only remembers how someone took her away.
But then the Comte d’Hervilly, a French general, arrives in the valley in the vicinity of Zaragoza, where the gypsy camp lives. He demands to erect a monument to his brother Karl, who was once killed with his wife and daughter in this very place.
Meanwhile, the Governor of the Spanish province, Lopez de Mendoza, is plotting how to marry his sister Serafina to Lucien d'Hervilly. And Inigo, the head of the gypsy camp, weaves his own intrigues - he wants to achieve the love of the beautiful Paquita. However, he notices that tender feelings flare up between Lucien and Paquita. Inigo comes to the governor Don Lopez de Mendoza, and they develop a plan to destroy Lucien: give him wine laced with sleeping pills, and then specially hired killers will come.
But their plans are not destined to come true - Paquita overheard their conversation and saves Lucien by replacing the bottles of wine and giving Inigo sleeping pills. The hired killers, having received orders to kill the one in the house, mistakenly kill Inigo himself instead of Lucien.
And the main characters, Paquita and Lucien d'Hervilly, together, alive and unharmed after all the troubles, come to the place where the big ball is being prepared and where the portrait of the murdered hero Charles d'Hervilly is sculpted.
Paquita talks about the betrayal of the governor, and he is arrested. And in the portrait of the deceased hero, comparing it with the image in her medallion, she recognizes her own father.
The history of the ballet.
The premiere of the two-act play took place on April 1, 1846 in Paris, at the Grand Opera Theater.
In the main roles: Paquita - Carlotta Grisi, Lucien - Lucien Petipa; in the role of Inigo - Pearson.
The ballet was performed at the Paris Opera until 1851, while the performer worked there main party Carlotta Grisi (then she went to her common-law husband, choreographer Jules Perrot, in Russia, where she received a contract for two seasons and where Paquita was among the roles performed).
But real success expected this ballet a year and a half later in Russia, where it received the name “Paquita” and was staged several times and continues its stage life still.
The production in Russia was the next after the Paris premiere, it turned from a two-act into a three-act and was staged in the St. Petersburg Imperial Troupe on the stage of the Big Stone Theater on September 26, 1847 with music by Deldevez, orchestrated by K. N. Lyadov and with the addition of new music gallop
Marius Petipa repeated the same production at the Moscow Imperial Troupe, at the Bolshoi Theater, on November 23, 1848, himself performing the main roles together with his partner E. Andreyanova.
On December 27, 1881, the St. Petersburg Imperial Troupe performed on the stage of the Bolshoi Kamenny Theater new version ballet by choreographer Marius Petipa, where Deldevez's music was complemented by Minkus' music, for which M. Petipa specially invented several dance scenes.
The version of the ballet staged by Marius Petipa did not disappear. It was preserved by N. G. Sergeev, who wrote down at the beginning of the twentieth century ballet repertoire St. Petersburg Imperial Troupe according to the system of choreographic recording of his teacher V. I. Stepanov. Having gone into exile, N. G. Sergeev took all the recordings with him and used them himself several times, staging ballet performances on different stages where life took him. Now his collection is kept in the USA, in the library of Harvard University, and is available to all ballet workers.
In 2000, based on these recordings, Marius Petipa's edition was restored by Pierre Lacotte for the Paris Grand Opera. The ballet thus returned—though not in its original form, but in the version of Marius Petipa—to the stage from which its history began.