Le Corsaire is loosely based on Byron’s 1814 poem, but it was not until 23 January 1856 that it received its fifth and most famous dramatic adaptation. This was the ballet choreographed by Joseph Mazilier at the request of Empress Eugénie (she and her husband attended the first three performances) and presented at the Théâtre Impérial de l’Opéra. The libretto was commissioned from Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges. The composer was Adolphe Adam who was paid 6000 francs for his efforts, but who hardly had time to enjoy his money as he died only four months after the ballet’s premiere. But the Emperor so liked the ballet that he ordered that all the box office receipts from the night of Adam’s death should be donated to his widow. Part of the inspiration of the work came from the director of the Théâtre Impérial and was designed as a vehicle for the celebrated Italian ballerina Carolina Rosati, who danced Medora. Another Italian, Domenico Segarelli, created the role of Conrad, but he was more famous as a mime artist than as a dancer. It took a long time before the role of Conrad was danced.
       The work was a great success from all points of view including the staging and stage effects. It was a spectacle of dancing and visual virtuosity. But after a long run it came out of the repertoire in 1859. However, it was quickly taken up by the Imperial Ballet in St Petersburg with the young Marius Petipa as Conrad, now dancing. So much did like the work that Petipa revived the work several times in Russia but each time he added dances and thus had to commission new music. Thus by the end of the 19th century and even today only part of the score is by Adam. The programme of the American Ballet Theatre lists Cesare Pugni, Leo Delibes, Riccardo Drigo and Prince Oldenbourg as additional composers. This fact alone should indicate that a modern performance of Le Corsaire gives little idea of what impressed Empress Eugénie and her husband so much, not least because after 1894 a notational method for the dance steps enshrined the later 19th century choreography and different versions more firmly in ballet companies’ minds. In the 20th century few have been able to leave the original alone, and dances have been allocated to different dancers, music has been changed and altered and so on.
       So what is one to make of a production of Le Corsaire? By what standard should it be judged? One can’t compare it with supposed original because it is not only not that, but there are so many different versions since that it has, as far as text is concerned, to be self-justifying thus beyond criticism. Moreover, the piece is a kind of time-warp with its pirates and barely p.c. Ottoman pashas. So many hands have tinkered with the music that that too is hard to assess, as much of its sounds like the worst kind of Italian 19th century rum-ti-tum clichés.
       In the end all one judge is the dancing and the spectacle. Le Corsaire is simply an excuse for virtuoso dancing with hundreds of interruptions to the so-called story for the dancers to take a bow. It’s a circus with highly organized acrobatics set against scenery that must have gladdened the hearts of some as it was so conventional and realistic. Gustav Doré immortalized the famous final shipwreck, and in the current production this was also staged with all that the stage-designers of ENO and the ballet company could devise.
       So is there anything to enjoy? The short answer to that is yes. but the longer answer is don’t linger to think. What was most impressive, what alone was impressive, was the dancing which was outstanding. There were no weak links. Gillian Murphy’s Medora was graceful and seductive, Angel Corella as the slave was athletic and stripped to the waist. Marcelo Gomes as Conrad wowed us in the love scenes in the second act as Herman Cornejo did as Lankendem in the first. Victor Barbee stuffed to look prosperous looked huge alongside the physical beauty of the dancers on the stage and mimed his part wittily.
       You wouldn’t go to this ballet unless you were a ballet aficionado able and willing to savour the leaps, turns, pirouettes, piques and petits sauts. That’s all the evening was: an anthology of marvellous dancing that explored every step in the book. If that’s what you want then the American Ballet Theatre provides this in plenty. If you want a moving evening in the theatre go opposite to A View from the Bridge.
Roderick Swanston