Every week, certain stories arise and develop in serious media, especially if there is a serious premiere and all cultural departments write about the same thing. This week everyone wrote about the main ballet premiere of the season.
Using the example of the premiere at the Bolshoi Theater, one can trace the usual algorithm of work of media culture departments, which are usually called serious.
The ballet “Lost Illusions,” staged to specially commissioned music by Leonid Desyatnikov, has been anticipated for a long time and with great trepidation.
Desyatnikov’s reputation, like Ratmansky’s, is the most obvious: if not them, then who? Therefore, pre-premiere art preparation began long ago. Moreover, throughout the last season both the composer and the choreographer were consistent newsmakers. And not always of their own free will.
Ratmansky was especially lucky, whose ballets appeared on the capital's stage this year with amazing regularity. And here, first of all, it is worth recalling the festival performance of the play “Anna Karenina”, brought from the Mariinsky Theater, as well as the tour of the American Ballet Theater (as part of the Rostropovich Memorial Festival), which showed in its program one of latest works choreographer - .
Over the weekend, the Bolshoi Theater hosted the premiere of “Russian Seasons,” a one-act ballet by Alexei Ratmansky to the music of Leonid Desyatnikov, with great success. This is Ratmansky's last production as chief choreographer of the country's main theater. “Russian Seasons” was staged for the first time two years ago in New York, after which Ratmansky, the pride and main hope of the Russian choreographic school, received a lot of tempting offers. In his interview, Alexei Ratmansky refuses to sum up the results of his “reign” at the Bolshoi, but he happily discusses the fate of modern ballet.
Ratmansky, however, is a dancing man, not a talking one, so the composer, one of the main public intellectuals of the current art scene, had to take the rap for the idea of an “invisible masterpiece.”
Here we should make a digression and say that the current media writes about the same thing, intellectual copy-paste blooms and smells, which challenges our reviews important task by isolating the dry residue (“rema”). That is why both this and subsequent reviews will contain mainly “exclusive” details and quotes that are not repeated in other publications. After all cultural work it's all about the exchange real, and not imaginary information.
Because when, on the eve of an event, one or another artist is forced to give dozens of interviews, repetitions are inevitable. And here, of course, a lot depends on the personality of the interviewer. After all, you can always ask something special.
Leonid Desyatnikov withstood the burden of publicly speaking about his brainchild with honor. The composer gave one of his first big interviews to the website GZT.Ru, where Olga Romantsova, among other things, asked him why, in fact, engage in such an outdated business as composing ballets:
- “In our time, absolutely everything is outdated, both art and culture are outdated. Everything we do, we do contrary to the existing order of things. It's a matter of choice: either you do it, or give up everything, do business or something else. And the fact that no one needs this is certain.”
Two of his interviews were simultaneously published the day before the premiere in announcement supplements to Kommersant and Vedomosti.
Sergei Khodnev asked in Weekend why poems by F. Tyutchev, sung in both Russian and French, were included in the score:
- - Like vocal text. There are two poems by Tyutchev, both written in French. At the beginning of the first act, the first poem is heard in the original, the second appears at the end of the second act in the Russian, brilliant, congenial translation by Mikhail Kudinov, and both of them - in a mirror image - are heard at the end of the third act. You see, there is a lot of material in ballet that could be described as frivolous. Gallops, all sorts of mazurkas...
- More cachucha, probably.
- There is cachucha, yes. That is, there are genre rudiments there, without which this ballet cannot do. And it seemed necessary to me to contrast this with a completely different pole. The search for a suitable text ultimately led me to Tyutchev. The poems are French, the poet is Russian - even though the Year of France - Russia has long ended. It seems to me that these verses were just perfect for my purposes.
- “The performance features 68 musicians and 48 ballet dancers. The main parts were rehearsed by 5 performers, 3 compositions of Coralie-Lyusenov-Florin reached the finals: Lunkina-Lantratov-Shipulina, Osipova-Vasiliev-Meskova, Stashkevich-Lopatin-Rebetskaya. The casting is most interesting, because the artists assigned to the same role are so different in temperament, appearance and role that, lo and behold, instead of one performance there will be three different ones. So, experienced dancers, enthusiastic balletomanes, biased journalists, the inexperienced public, and influential people - in a word, the entire theatrical world, which is so vividly depicted in Lost Illusions and which has hardly changed over the past 180 years, will certainly see on the Bolshoi stage at least some of your favorites and idols. And, hopefully, he will not lose his illusions.”
The journalist's wish, however, did not come true. Reviews of the performance came out restrainedly sour. However, before moving on to them, let’s quote another interview with Desyatnikov, recorded by Pyotr Pospelov for “Friday” (it seemed to me, or does the composer really answer his colleague’s questions with fatigue or some reluctance? Although he tells a lot of interesting things - Pospelov himself writes homage music , that’s why he asks extremely precise questions).
- - Your hero, composer Lucien, creates two ballet scores based on the plot. The result is art about art, theater within the theater, ballet within ballet. Is there anything in your music left to the share of a simple emotional listener, not accustomed to reflection?
I categorically do not accept this question. Your “simple emotional listener” is the musical incarnation of the so-called common man, composed and brought to life by Soviet agitprop. I'm talking about a phenomenon described by Olga Sedakova with the passion and skill inherent in another outstanding entomologist - Vladimir Nabokov. Are you concerned about the aesthetic needs of a listener who is not accustomed to reflection? Why, the whole world belongs to him today. Can I not be sad about his fate, at least at the moment of our conversation?
Your colleague Vladimir Martynov once told me that if the profession of a composer still exists, it is only because tactile contact with music paper has not disappeared. You, too, still write by hand, while most composers enter notes directly into the computer. What are your reasons?
There are many of them, I will name only two - not the most important, but significant. Firstly, the imperfection of musical notation programs. They were apparently developed by people who were not very familiar with musical notation. Secondly, I am worried about my own Internet addiction and I want to at least spend my working hours away from the computer.
After Good Friday arrived Holy holiday Easter, the Bolshoi Theater presented the public with the first cast of performers, and staff observers of the capital's media took a break until Wednesday (such is the technological cycle), carefully weighing their review formulas.
The first, as always, to move into battle were bloggers, whose assessments varied from unconditional admiration (as the usually skeptical _Harlequin_ describes it) to complete rejection with active mockery in the comments (especially revealing from Dolchev, one of the most consistent opera and ballet pogroms).
By the way, _Harlequin_ seems to be the only reviewer who noted the truly wonderful work of the set designer.
- “I was ready to see a masterpiece, and, especially after the Mariinsky Anna Karenina, something else. But I still didn’t expect that in a plot ballet based on the original modern music everything can come together so perfectly. “Lost Illusions” is luxury without kitsch and sophistication without mannerism. About the scenery (artist Jerome Kaplan) one cannot say that they are modest - they are “rich” in the best and correct sense of the word, but so stylish that the design seems minimalist, and indeed it is, if minimalism is understood broadly, as the absence of anything whatever was superfluous; and at the same time, each picture is played out in a new setting, rooms and halls, streets and squares - everything is indicated precisely, objectively. Meanwhile, the action is not interrupted by rearranging the scenery thanks to a light curtain that serves as a backdrop for interlude episodes.”
Well, Dolchev, whose set of unchangeable preferences supposedly allows him to smash and not understand everything that was not made by his favorites like Nikolai Tsiskaridze, according to the principle “everything is shit except urine,” never bothered with analysis. His “cheese” mask allows him to scold everything that sings and moves in a heightened (to the limit) emotional register.
- “It’s not very clear why this ballet is at the Bolshoi Theater... Not a single dancer in it will sparkle with new colors, will not sparkle with any facets of their talent, and no one will look at them from any other point of view.
Ivan Vasiliev, just as Spartak was, no one will remember Lucien.
Osipova, just as Kitri was with a tambourine and a fan, so they will go to “Lost Illusions” and then write “ how I want Natasha to dance Kitri ».
Krysanova received a role that practically does not exist in this ballet; unless the money will be paid for the ballerina's performance.
And for Ovcharenko, the game is quite consistent with his talent, but he still didn’t jump over his head here.”
The first of the “official” critics to shoot back was Maya Krylova in Gazeta.Ru, who refrained from direct and unambiguous assessments.
- “This ballet is worth listening to first of all. Desyatnikov, who honestly says “my music is inspired by someone else’s,” wanted us to remember both the great romantic authors and the composers of simple ballet “music.” The touching melodies of the piano and strings, playing out the opuses of Liszt and Schumann, are interspersed with the irony of the wind instruments; at other moments, outright grotesque thunders from the orchestra pit. But there are episodes where the author’s minors a la Chopin’s nocturne penetrate right through, and at the beginning and end of the ballet female voice sings Tyutchev's poems with melancholy. Maybe the luxurious score, interpreted by conductor Alexander Vedernikov, is a calculated illusion of sincerity?
The choreographer solves his own problems at this time. It is clear why Ratmansky considers the previous libretto “very theatrical”: as the action progresses, the audience sees two “ballets within a ballet” with different types romantic "local color". The first, the sublimely dreamy “La Sylphide” (also a play about the loss of illusions), Lucien writes for his beloved, the idealist Coralie. The second, rollicking folklore opus “In the Mountains of Bohemia”, he, succumbing to weakness, composes for Coralie’s rival, the insidious Florina. Connoisseurs will remember that the basis of the confrontation between the heroines is the real rivalry between the great ballerinas of the 19th century - Maria Taglioni and Fanny Elsler."
In the same way, Izvestia and Moskovskie Novosti reported quite neutrally, in the spirit of an “objective approach.” Svetlana Naborshchikova in Balzac and Dreams, the only one who writes about ballet, included the name of the author of the novel, on which one Russian ballet was first staged, and then another, in the title of the text (Izvestia has never been alien to educational intentions).
- “Commitment to stage drive and reluctance to impose “psychology” on the viewer is another commonality of the co-authors. Events follow each other with the dynamics of a good Hollywood movie. Lyrical digressions- the required minimum. In fact, in the three-act ballet there are only two major generalizations - the first duet-explanation of Lucien and Coralie and the masterfully made trio: Coralie the Sylphide dances with the first dancer, and Lucien, as in a mirror, repeats his movements. The rest of the author's summaries fit into a few bars and gestures, and sometimes this is not enough. The finale, for example, calls for another duet between Coralie and Lucien. A duet-memory, a duet-farewell, a duet-forgiveness - you never know where the authors’ remarkable imagination will lead them.”
Anna Gordeeva in the recently updated Moscow News, which has now become daily, pays tribute to all the creators of the play, noting the mistakes of the casting.
- “It’s surprising that with such an idea, the choreographer chose two artists for the premiere evening, for whom energy is the main thing in their existence on stage. The role of Coralie was given to Natalia Osipova, the role of Lucien was given to Ivan Vasiliev. Osipova is the heroine of record-breaking fouettés and stage-breaking jumps, but neither one nor the other appeared in this role. Actually, the ballerina would be much more suited to the role of the second heroine, Florina, the one who led the composer away from the lyrical wallflower. For this lady, Ratmansky staged a great trick - fouetté on the gaming table. But Ekaterina Krysanova became Florina - and, I must say, she performed the part brilliantly. And Osipova tried very hard to indicate the nobility, the inner silence of the heroine, but she was best successful in the scene when the ballerina, who has not yet parted with her rich patron, fools him by hiding her fresh lover.
Ivan Vasiliev is the best Spartak of the theater today, a commoner and a rebel. The role of the young composer suited him a little better - yes, there is no trace of any rebellion in Lucien, but the artist managed to play a simpleton captivated by the big city quite well. True, it seems that the part was not choreographed for this dancer - there are too many small details in it that he is not good at. And also - could such a simpleton compose the score of La Sylphide (as the libretto suggests)? But this is probably a question for the long-time librettist, and not just for today’s authors and artists.”
However, the main complaints about the production were expressed in Kommersant and Vedomosti, and, in accordance with the specifics of their publications, the reviewers of both newspapers paid attention to different things.
Anna Galaida and Pyotr Pospelov in Vedomosti focused their review on the musical moments, and Tatyana Kuznetsova from Kommersant focused on the shortcomings of the choreography (their pathos becomes clear from the title - “Spent Illusions”).
- “Since Ratmansky’s dances were so simple this time, music became the hero of the performance. But she also has more intelligence than real creativity. Desyatnikov wrote Desyatnikov's music. Ingredients from French (including Chopin) and Soviet (including Khachaturian) music are covered, like scrambled eggs, with a recognizable layer of authorship. As was the case in the opera “Children of Rosenthal,” the omelette included primary sources that were not involved either in Balzac or in the Soviet ballet of the 1930s. For example, the music before the quarrel between Lucien and Coralie is like two peas in a pod like the introduction to the scene at the groove from " Queen of Spades" The scene in Lucien’s attic is exactly the same as the painting “At Parsley’s,” and the piano solo in the orchestra is exactly the same. The ballet “In the Mountains of Bohemia”, where the trumpet plays and the tuba quacks - why not Ballerina and the Moor? Like a burdock, Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky stuck to someone else's plot, and Desyatnikov, not daring to cut off the unnecessary, reduced the shine of the cultural game. Intentionally devoid of full orchestral sound, the musical fabric is formed from a system of instrumental ensembles - this makes the score similar to examples of high European modernism and thereby also works outside the theme. The music itself is not as natural as in other works by Desyatnikov, which are considered masterpieces. In the third act, where the composer’s favorite mood of melancholy is created, beautiful pages follow one after another: Desyatnikov always succeeds in scenes where a lonely composer suffers, be it Lucien or Wolfgang Amadeus. Tyutchev's poems, sung from the pit, give volume to the plan, but do not replace the central idea that is missing in the project.
Ratmansky and Desyatnikov, having chosen the plot and name, seemed to have declared that drama ballet of the 30s type is nowhere cooler today. But they didn’t explain why. Their opus does not want to enlighten us, nor anger us, nor puzzle us. He wants to leave us alone. And the winner was Balzac, whose universal name now describes the feelings of those who hoped to watch a decent ballet at the Bolshoi Theater.”
- www.vedomosti.ru
- “The choreographer Ratmansky himself interfered. Renowned for his musicality, he not only did not exploit the possibilities of the score. The choreographer staged his most unmusical ballet. And not only according to the tempo-rhythmic letter, although the anemic herring arabesques in which the heroes of the ballet “In the Mountains of Bohemia” tremble to the castanet incendiary coda also hurt the eye; and a naive semi-pantomime of the denouement, performed to a heartfelt aria based on Tyutchev’s poems (it would have been better if the characters didn’t move at all!); and frequent inconsistencies between music and range of motion. What is more serious is that the banality of these movements contradicts the very spirit of the music. It seemed that the choreographer was filling the stage time with cliches that had been stuck in his memory since college. In any case, never before had the inventor Ratmansky allowed himself to launch an entire series of schoolboy pas de bourre - pas de cha, never before had he repeated the same combination so often. Ratmansky’s usual mass runs from backstage to backstage and the corps de ballet’s alternate performance of the same steps here exceeded all compositional standards, plunging into chaos both the masquerade stage and the performance of the ballet La Sylphide, which we observed as if from behind the scenes.
The hope that the master of stylization Ratmansky would play a romantic ballet collapsed as soon as the sylphs he invented began to stir with their hands, like seaweed in a storm, and began to jump in strong-willed leaps and kick their legs like cancan workers. The main sylph, ballerina Coralie, danced “on stage” approximately the same way as “in life”. And although she danced a lot, the choreographer did not stage a single winning variation for the heroine. Her love duets with Lucien, full of all sorts of “logs”, “passages” and uplifts, also looked rather amorphous (however, erotica was never Ratmansky’s strong point - he always has “before” and “after”). Due to the incomprehensibility of Coralie’s part, her rival came to the fore: Florina at least has one full-fledged variation and, in addition, 32 fouettés performed on the table - the only episode of the ballet that caused unanimous applause.”
Nevertheless, for some reason, staff reviewers were in no hurry with their assessments, preferring, in accordance with logic production cycle, wait until midweek.
However, it is clear why - the range of ratings for the performance is so great that no one wanted to get ahead of others and sit in a puddle with exorbitant praise or rabid criticism. Solo performances are always in full view of everyone, while a one-time choir neutralizes any conflicting impressions.
Unfortunately, a similar picture is observed not only in ballet and music criticism.
Balzac's Bolshoi Ballet
BIG ORDERS THE MUSIC
In 2005, 28 years after it happened in last time, The Bolshoi Theater released the premiere of a specially commissioned work - the opera “Rosenthal's Children”, which received recognition from opera fans not only in our country, but also abroad - in Latvia and Finland. Almost already then it was decided that the creative alliance with its author, the very interesting and very popular composer Leonid Desyatnikov, would be continued in the field of ballet.
Jerome Kaplan, production designer of the play:
In Europe it is very difficult to find a composer who would write good music for a full-length, story ballet. I think everyone just forgot how to do it. I really like Mr. Desyatnikov’s music - it is both romantic and at times not at all romantic, strange, but bewitching. Leonid definitely found the key to creating the musical world of Lost Illusions.
Alexey Ratmansky:
This is written very sincerely. It feels like it was simply taken out of the soul, from the heart. The music tells everything that happens in the story.
EXCURSION INTO ALMOST COMPLETELY DIFFERENT HISTORY
The history of Russian ballet knows a performance that was based on the plot collisions of Balzac's novel. In 1936, the ballet “Lost Illusions” premiered at the Kirov Theater (now the Mariinsky). The music belonged to Boris Asafiev, choreography - to Rostislav Zakharov. The era of the drama ballet reigned, which was based on great and, of course, progressive literature and prescribed dancing only when the plot required it. Balzac, with his active rejection of the philistinism, the power of money and the bourgeois as a type of personality, could certainly be considered a progressive writer to a certain extent. And the wonderful theater artist Vladimir Dmitriev, who wrote the libretto based on the novel, prepared the ground for dancing by turning the main character, journalist Lucien, into a ballet composer and making the heroines - dramatic actresses - ballerinas of the Paris Opera.
Without forgetting to describe the pernicious influence of the environment on the unstable hero, noting that he had slipped into “banality and formalism” in his work, Dmitriev, nevertheless, wanted to undertake a wonderful experiment, introducing two small stylized romantic ballets (to the music of Lucien) into the choreographic fabric of the performance and in the production of the Paris Opera), which, in essence, could reflect the essence of art and the intensity of the struggle between two great rival ballerinas of the 19th century - Maria Taglioni and Fanny Elsler. However, “Illusions” still turned into a “pedestrian” ballet; the dances did not shine with success, just as their music itself did not shine in any way. And they very quickly lost their place in the repertoire, leaving no vivid memories - with the exception of acting works, first of all, Galina Ulanova, who performed the role main character Coralie.
NEW PERFORMANCE OF THE BIG
The Bolshoi performance is a new ballet, with new music and only original choreography, and if it has some - indirect - reminiscences of the heritage, then this is the universal heritage of the European romantic ballet theater XIX century. But it was to the old libretto that he owed his birth.
Alexei Ratmansky came across Dmitriev's Lost Illusions while looking through the collection One Hundred Ballet Librettos, and immediately noted how dramatically well made and attractive they were for him personally. (A good libretto is a unique thing and is an extremely successful find for the director). Dmitriev's libretto was later highly appreciated by ballet directing consultant Guillaume Gallienne, actor and director of the famous French theater Comédie Française, and the production designer, the famous theater artist Jerome Kaplan. (Although the patina of Soviet ideological consistency from this text, of course, had to be wiped away).
TEAM
Alexey Ratmansky has already worked with Desyatnikov’s music, including at the Bolshoi Theater - he staged the ballet “Old Women Falling Out” to the music of the vocal cycle “Love and Life of a Poet” (2007) and “Russian Seasons” (2008). A year before the premiere at the Bolshoi, in 2007, Ratmansky staged “The Seasons” at the Dutch National Ballet. Then in Amsterdam Jerome Kaplan looked at them and was very inspired by them. An idea arose to work together - and last year it came true in the same Dutch troupe, which, thanks to this cooperation, received a new edition of the ballet Don Quixote. To embody "Illusions" this French artist, according to the choreographer, was ideal. And Jerome Kaplan personally invited lighting designer Vincent Millet and “dramatic” consultant Guillaume Gallien to participate in the production. This is how this team came together.
OUR CONTEMPORARY HONORE BALZAC
The power of money, the power of vulgarity and glamor - and the loss of all illusions: a very timely novel for our time, which should re-read Balzac with great interest and sympathy.
Alexey Ratmansky:
This story is for all time. It shows timeless situations, there are motivations for actions that are understandable to everyone. This is a novel about human nature.
As for life and morals in our ballet, the help of Guillaume Gallien was very useful. He knows what money the characters should pay with, how to convey the meaning of the scene to the actors in one word, for example, to add drama to running - you just need to say “Run as if you want to throw yourself into the Seine.”
LUCIENA
Alexey Ratmansky:
How a person can or cannot cope with his desires, what choices he makes in life, how the environment influences him and what happens to his wonderful inclinations if there is no will... Throughout the ballet, Lucien changes a lot and makes fatal mistakes. But we love him because there is no cynicism in him. Everything he does, he does very sincerely.
Leonid Desyatnikov:
Balzac's Lucien certainly deserves some condemnation. But Lucien in the ballet is just a restless youth, and that says it all.
The solo piano, Lucien's instrument, plays an important role in the orchestra. At times it’s almost like a concerto for piano and orchestra. But when Lucien writes “In the Mountains of Bohemia” - out of compulsion, not “at the behest of his heart” - the piano falls silent.
HIGH CLOUDY
Jerome Kaplan:
The main scenographic idea is very simple. I decided to play with the name and came to the conclusion that the design of the scene should give rise to the image of something elusively elusive, unsteady and vague, like memories. This is where the clouds came from. But I wanted to combine these ephemeral clouds with an absolutely realistic setting - with the Opera building, Coralie’s chambers or the Duke’s palace. That is, there is architecture everywhere, but this architecture is always painted with clouds. And, so real, under these clouds it suddenly loses its materiality, going into the realm of memories. Working on the design of a historical, narrative ballet is always fraught with the danger of falling into excessive materialism, making the same realistic scenery that is made for cinema. We need to create something different - the world of this ballet. But for me, the world of Lost Illusions is something as unclear as clouds.
For the same reason, when choosing the main color, I decided to use sepia. The scene began to look like an old postcard, like yellowed photographs of your family, looking at which you see your grandmother as a child. This is also important. In my opinion, this gives depth to the past, the illusions that went with it and the wonderful memories of them.
And I followed a completely different idea when creating costumes. Costumes should be more “explicit”, “obvious”. This is especially true for the main characters. You must identify them instantly; you often simply don’t have much time for “long-term recognition.” Everyone should have a defining paint. Coralie is pink color. Florina has more red and orange (the color is ambiguous and defiant). Lucien is always blue. The Duke is green, which, in my opinion, is not bad for a bad person.
There is a big premiere on the Bolshoi stage. was created specifically for the Bolshoi Theater. The performance features four casts of soloists. The first will take the stage on Sunday evening.
Balzac's novel "Lost Illusions" was turned into a ballet back in the 30s of the last century. At the Kirov Opera and Ballet Theater - as the Mariinsky Theater was then called - Rostislav Zakharov staged a performance to the music of Boris Asafiev. This Moscow premiere is not a restoration of the Leningrad production. This is a ballet with new music, which... And new choreography by Alexei Ratmansky.
Both are well acquainted with the artists of the Bolshoi Theater. Desyatnikov was the musical director here last season. Ratmansky headed the Bolshoi ballet troupe for five whole years - now. It was he who, looking through the collection “One Hundred Ballet Librettos”, came across “Lost Illusions”.
“I was amazed that the libretto was written in such a way that it can be used today. Despite that time and the fact that there were inevitably some ideological clichés in the text, we cut them off. But the plot scheme remained, which works perfectly today,” - says choreographer Alexei Ratmansky.
True, Balzac probably would not have recognized his characters. Main character Lucien turned from a poet into a composer. Coralie and Florina, from actresses, have retrained as ballerinas and dance at the Paris Opera. Leonid Desyatnikov was finishing the score when rehearsals were already in full swing. At the Bolshoi they even joke now that Ratmansky was dancing while Desyatnikov was composing.
“This is a rare phenomenon in our time, when almost never music is created specifically for ballet. Choreographers usually use music written for some other purpose. But in the 19th century this was a common practice. And, say, in the collaboration of Petipa with Tchaikovsky there were enough harsh conditions and the framework that Petipa set for Tchaikovsky,” says the composer himself.
Ratmansky did not set strict limits. He also gave freedom to the artist. Jerome Kaplan decided to play with the name.
“There are clouds everywhere, a symbol of lost illusions. The stage itself looks like an old postcard, a yellowed photograph. And the costumes, on the contrary, are bright. And each character has its own color,” says production designer Jerome Kaplan.
Ambitious Lucien - in blue. Fragile Coralie - in soft pink. Passionate Florina - in bright red.
For Desyatnikov and Ratmansky, “Lost Illusions” is the third collaboration. They are already planning a new one. No secrets are revealed. They say that for now it is a dream, an illusion. Which you want not to lose, but to embody.
Russian season at the Paris Grand Opera. The Bolshoi Theater brought only one performance to the French capital - “Lost Illusions”. Large-scale historical scenery, complex dance parts, leading soloists and guest stars - sophisticated viewers watch the three-hour performance in one breath.Paris Opera begins New Year a big premiere in the truest sense of the word. One of the world's leading theaters, the Bolshoi, brought an unusual ballet to the Opera Garnier. A story that people here seem to know by heart. "Lost Illusions", based on Balzac, is a story about what happened behind the scenes of this legendary scene in the 30s of the year before last, the 19th century.“We are pleased to host the Bolshoi Theater with a new production. For many French people this came as a surprise. We continue the tradition of exchanges between our theaters,” says artistic director ballet troupe Paris Opera Brigitte Lefebvre.“The Parisian audience loves, even misses, the artists of the Bolshoi Theater. And our previous visit was an amazing tour, it was a real triumph, a full house, and a success,” says Sergei Filin, artistic director of the Bolshoi Theater Ballet.Everything new, as we know, is well forgotten old. This is what the choreographer, Alexei Ratmansky, thought. “Lost Illusions” was already staged at the Leningrad Kirov Theater in 1936. But the performance, despite the participation of the legendary Galina Ulanova, turned out to be weak and did not last long. "Lost Illusions" in the new production is a completely different ballet to modern music by composer Leonid Desyatnikov."The name Desyatnikov is not accidental. This is one of the most beautiful composers modern. His music is not only fresh and rhythmic, which is important for ballet, but also very modern,” notes choreographer Alexei Ratmansky.The world around us is still full of illusions, ready to dissolve in a second, like clouds floating above the stage. Composer Lucien wants to create. For the prima of the Parisian theater Coralie, he wrote the beautiful ballet La Sylphide. Success, fame, and the love of a young ballerina come to him overnight.
OpenSpace.ru, April 27, 2011 Dmitry Renansky, Anna Gordeeva"Lost Illusions" at the Bolshoi
Dmitry Renansky explains how Leonid Desyatnikov's Lost Illusions was made, and Anna Gordeeva explains how Alexei Ratmansky reflected his relationship with the theater in this drama ballet. 
In search of lost time
Leonid Desyatnikov's previous work in musical theater, also initiated by the Bolshoi, was “Rosenthal's Children” (2005). Despite the visible external differences (where, it would seem, an opera according to Sorokin, and where a ballet according to Balzac), “Children of Rosenthal” and “Lost Illusions” (LL) form a duology: the plot of both scores is a work not so much with musical language and compositional technique, as well as with cultural paradigms.
The key to Leonid Desyatnikov's new score should be sought in the circumstances of its commission: Alexei Ratmansky, as is known, invited the composer to write music to the finished libretto created by Vladimir Dmitriev for the drama ballet of Boris Asafiev and Rostislav Zakharov. If UI-1936 was written as a theatrical remake novel of the same name Honore de Balzac, then the authors of the UI-2011 started not so much from a specific text or story, how much from their reflections (and distortions) in historical and cultural prisms.
In the UI-1936 art imitated life, in the UI-2011 it imitates only art: if Dmitriev - Asafiev - Zakharov retold Balzac’s plot in musical and theatrical language, then Desyatnikov works rather according to the recipe of Nabokov’s Sebastian Knight (and his guru Igor Stravinsky): “ I want to show you not an image of a landscape, but an image in various ways images of a certain landscape, and I believe that their harmonious fusion will reveal in the landscape what I wanted to show you in it».
The plot of "Rosenthal's Children" was the impossibility of opera's existence in today's world and ultimately its death. Considering that in the hierarchy of musical genres (and even in the hierarchy European culture) opera occupies the highest position, it becomes clear that in “Rosenthal’s Children” Desyatnikov spoke about the fundamental contemporary artist impossibility creation- about the loss of the last illusions regarding the notorious possibility of utterance. In UI he does not so much speak as he retells, he does not so much create as he reconstructs.
Role confession perform French poems by Fyodor Tyutchev set to music: performed by the transcendental mezzo-soprano Svetlana Shilova, they sound in the original and in the Russian translation by Mikhail Kudinov in the prologue and epilogue - like the author's quotation marks enclosing the music of the ballet. " And I ask for time: oh, don’t run, wait" - this motto UI summarizes the main idea fixe of all Desyatnikov's creativity since the times of "The Gift" and "Lead Echo": a spellbound observation of the passage of time (in in this case- cultural time), the desire and impossibility of stopping it.
Tyutchevskaya " the abyss between us - / Between you and me" - this is the abyss between the cultural situation today and the past of art, which Desyatnikov always hovered over and which throughout his career he tried to overcome. Therefore, the main means of expressiveness and the main building material UI becomes cantilena: she is the one “ knot, tape, snare, hook, key, chain", capable of not only connecting one note to another, but also building bridges in musical and historical time, the course of which Desyatnikov is still trying to stop through tempo rubato and endless grace notes, detentions, singing and rehearsals.
In the big adagio of the first act of UI there is a waltz, entirely built on an ostinato repetition of the same short motive (hello to Liszt’s “Forgotten Waltzes”). This attempt, clinging to a fragment of musical thought, to remember something almost lost is a miniature model of the entire work: Desyatnikov wrote a ballet-memory of musical romanticism, which is from modern cultural context seems to be that same lost illusion. Therefore, in the UI there is most often no conflict between the original and the borrowed that organizes the dramaturgy of Desyatnikov’s works: what is composed is assimilated with what has been re-composed, “one’s own” absorbs what is “alien” (one would like to continue: after all, in memoirs, fiction is most often inseparable from fatti reali, and subjective - from reality).
Because of this, there are so few accurately attributed quotes and allusions in the UI. There are, in fact, a couple of them for the entire two hours of pure music: variations on the theme of the introduction to the sixth scene of “The Queen of Spades” (Lisa at the Winter Canal) and a bell-encrusted replica of the coda to the second movement of Maurice Ravel’s G Major Concerto. There is also, of course, the whirlwind figure of the “Snowflake Waltz” from “The Nutcracker”, waves from the finale of Beethoven’s Seventeenth Sonata, an arpeggiated accompaniment from Saint-Saëns’ “The Swan” and parallel chords from Erik Satie - but Desyatnikov uses them as common figures musical speech, without considering it necessary to retouch the original authorship and refer to the original source.
For the appearance of the UI, the overall romantic vector of the essay is much more important. The score of this ballet could well become a piano concerto, one of the main musical genres of the 19th century: the virtuoso solo part, in which perhaps the best of the young Russian pianists Lukas Geniušas feels like a fish in water, embodies a generalized romantic idiom, in which synthesized and Chopin's, and Liszt's, and Schumann's. Accurate identification is deliberately difficult: having limited the field of style play of the UI, Desyatnikov at the same time avoids the purity of style and prefers not to directly answer the questions that arise from the audience - after all, relying on memory (even the auditory memory of mankind), one cannot be completely sure of anything.
Therefore, the key leitmotif of the UI is a questioning piano prelude hanging in the air; Therefore, Alexei Ratmansky made the jump a key element of the choreographic vocabulary of the performance - as an attempt to overcome gravity, an attempt to hover between. Therefore, perhaps, Desyatnikov chooses the French musical tradition, with its harmonic, rhythmic and intonation freedom, as the dominant one in the Institute; with its fundamental instability, variability and constant desire to overcome the orthodox framework of Austro-German musical thinking.
Zum Raum wird hier die Zeit- you can’t say anything better about UI than Wagner’s line from the climax of the first act of Parsifal (“Space has become time”). The subject of this score is the meeting of three eras and three cultural models. From the postmodern today, Desyatnikov looks at the romanticism of the nineteenth century and the time described by Balzac through the nostalgic neo-romanticism of the twentieth century, which had just become disillusioned with the ideals of modernist youth (which is why one of the main sources of the UI, sensitively emphasized by the musical director of the production Alexander Vedernikov, is the romanticism of the mature and late Prokofiev) . Desyatnikov's score is infused with two centuries of European experience of the loss of cultural illusions - and that is why it is so unbearably bitter.
No ending
“Lost Illusions are important for each of us,” said Alexei Ratmansky at a press conference preceding the premiere. “For the generation, for the country, for the art of ballet as a whole.” And a few minutes later, answering the question whether the performance he staged had much in common with the novel by Honore de Balzac, he noted: “The social, which is so strong in Balzac, is not the sphere of ballet. The sphere of ballet is the movement of the soul.” On the evening of the premiere, it was discovered that the second phrase had much more to do with the final product - the ballet Lost Illusions, staged by the choreographer at the Bolshoi Theater - than the first. There is nothing there about the generation and the country; about the movements of the soul of the choreographer Ratmansky, who worked for five years as artistic director at the Bolshoi Theater - three acts. Three hours with two intermissions.
In Balzac's novel, a young poet tries to conquer Paris by engaging, among other things, in theatrical journalism - and this despicable craft leads him to moral and material collapse. Vladimir Dmitriev, in 1936, writing a libretto for composer Boris Asafiev and choreographer Rostislav Zakharov, changed the profession of the hero: from a journalist, a worthless creature, according to theater people, he became a creative person - a composer. Lucien - the name remained from the novel - brought the score of the newly written ballet La Sylphide to the Paris Opera, where the director at first greeted him with contempt, but then accepted the ballet for production, under the influence of prima Coralie, who liked the music. Next is an affair with Coralie; the anger of her wealthy patron, who was abandoned by the ballerina for the sake of the young creator; the intrigue of Coralie’s rival in the theater, Florina, who also wanted to get a brand new ballet, for herself personally. And finally, the composer’s downfall: he leaves the highly gifted Coralie for the technical but empty Florina and writes peppy, not highly spiritual music for her. Creative torment, repentance - but happy Days you won't return it; Lucien comes running to Coralie’s apartment too late: the disappointed girl has returned to her daddy who took care of her.
The story takes place in the theater, near the theater and with theater people connected. And Ratmansky, having decided to tell this story again (to completely new music written by Leonid Desyatnikov), took exactly this old libretto. He had something to say about the theater.
Ratmansky's "Lost Illusions" - no matter what he says about the country (in which, of course, there are no illusions left) - is the story of his personal relationship with the theater. And, it seems, unfortunately, with the theater in general, and not just with the one that has been undergoing renovation for ten years in the center of the Russian capital. From this point of view, several are important key scenes performance.
Lucien's first arrival (in the first cast - the plump Ivan Vasiliev, in the second - the more romantic-looking Vladislav Lantratov) at the Opera. The artist Jerome Kaplan, who chose for everything - costumes, scenery - slightly faded, slightly etched colors, effect old photograph, Degas clearly recalls, his ballerinas in the class. The ballerinas are practicing in the center of the stage, the prime minister is warming up at the barre, and everything seems to be in order, but as soon as the music stops (and the class works to the violin, as was customary in the 19th century, and not to the piano, as in our time), the snow-white a flock of goddesses turns into buzzing hens, approaching the choreographer-tutor who was teaching the lesson, with loud claims - they are talking and screaming on stage. And the prime minister (Artem Ovcharenko, the next evening - Alexander Volchkov), who had just performed graceful steps, has a row with the author because of an overly complex text in which he looks unprofitable, and then I immediately remember all the discussions that I had with the premiers at the Bolshoi Ratmansky . (The result of these disputes was that, both during the days of the choreographer’s reign at the Bolshoi and now, none of the leaders of the “old guard” are involved in the performance.)
The first performance of a ballet composed by Lucien. The scene is not shown, it is located somewhere behind the real right backstage, the light is shining there, and fake bouquets are flying from there. But a cardboard tree is shown, behind which the author is hiding, watching the progress of the performance. From there, out of the light, flocks of dancers run out, from there flies Coralie, this unearthly girl with whom he immediately falls in love (Natalya Osipova, in the second cast is Svetlana Lunkina). The hero becomes dizzy, and when the kilt-clad premiere flies onto the stage (they are dancing La Sylphide, we remember), Lucien experiences that emotional upsurge that only happens at a successful premiere.
The dances of the premiere and Lucien are staged synchronously - in the same movements they move opposite each other and next to each other: Lucien quite clearly sees himself, his embodiment, in the dancer. (This is unlikely to happen directly with composers, but you need to ask Desyatnikov about this, but translating oneself into a performer is a natural thing for a choreographer.) And at this moment of happiness, triumph, Lucien does not remember how, to put it mildly, he behaved unpleasantly prime minister at rehearsal. And this is the truth of life: at the moment of the performance, the nuances of the relationship between the artistic director-boss and the artist-subordinate disappear. The performance just needs to be successful.
The theater is still full of charm for Lucien, he is ready to look at everything (that is, the viewer is invited to look) with emotion: even at two workers who are dragging some wooden nonsense onto the stage at the wrong time. But the charm will disappear very soon.
In the second act at the carnival, the insidious Florine seduces Lucien in order to force him to write her a ballet: “romance” is, of course, important here, but in essence, we are talking about a different temptation here. The 1936 libretto suggested that Coralie and Florine had real prototypes: Maria Taglioni and Fanny Elsler, two wonderful ballerinas, the first of whom became famous as a lyrical prima, the second as a bravura prima. The scene at the carnival is a temptation for the composer with bravura: and even though in the “described times” fouetté had not yet been invented, Florina (Ekaterina Krysanova, then Ekaterina Shipulina) plays fouetté on the gaming table. It seems to me that it was important for Ratmansky that it was after this fouetté that the first applause from the audience broke out. “What needed to be proven”: the audience reacts to a pure trick, and not to lyrical arabesques. That is, it is actually the audience that seduces the composer, not Florin.
The third act is a ballet within the ballet “In the Mountains of Bohemia”. Instead of sophisticated sylphs on the stage (now it is fully revealed to us, and the chairs have been placed, and the clackers are sitting on them and shouting at the right moments), there is a cabaret divertissement with mustachioed robbers. Such a cute skit with exaggerated gestures, something like a parody of all adventure ballets at once (you can remember, for example, “The Corsair”, which Ratmansky did together with Yuri Burlaka). Well, jokes and jokes, but it’s not for nothing that Lucien, who “composed” this music, rushes around the stage. It's not even that he himself doesn't like what he came up with - that happens. And the fact is that the choreographer who staged this ballet, an elderly comic character, is clearly more enthusiastic about this nonsense than about the previous La Sylphide. The person who has just staged the most important music for you is now passionately engaged in “horse” music (theatrical folklore, to which horses in the circus march). That is, there are no criteria: it is not clear what is good and what is bad and to whom artistic sense can trust. This is why you can go crazy and rush around the proscenium (“foggy embankment of the Seine”), deciding whether to drown yourself or wait.
The ballet has no ending. That is, he is: Lucien is sitting by the open door through which Coralie (his muse? his talent?) just left; he didn’t find her. He sits and stares into space. Whether there will be anything ahead is unclear.
culture art theater theater Bolshoi Theater. Desyatnikov Lost illusions
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