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Music
by
Jules Massenet
Music
Arranged by
Leighton
Lucas
and Hilda Gaunt
Choreography
and Direction by
Kenneth MacMillan
Designed
by
Nicholas
Georgiadis
Staging
by
Monica Mason
and
Monica Parker
The
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
conducted by
Graham Bond
Manon
Leanne Benjamin
Des
Grieux
Federico
Bonelli
Lescaut
Martin Harvey
Monsieur
GM
Gary Avis
Lescaut's
mistress
Laura Morera
Madame
Genesia Rosato
The
Gaoler
Thomas Whitehead
Beggar
Chief
Steven McRae
Courtesans
Deirdre Chapman
Victoria Hewitt
Isobel McMeekan
Sian Murphy
Clients
Bennet Gartside
Alastair Marriott
Rupert Pennefather
Richard Ramsey
Henry St Clair
Old
Gentleman
Philip Mosley
Artists of
the Royal Ballet, students of
the Royal Ballet School
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Royal
Ballet at the
Royal Opera House
04 - 26 November 2005 |
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Leanne
Benjamin is an affecting Manon:
speakingly fragile, with wondrously
fluent arms and fine intuition
as an actress, she fixes the
audience's gaze all the time
she is on stage, and never
fails to satisfy it with her
accuracy and poise. It is
a wonderful role for a ballerina
of the right stamp, inviting
exploration of a wide emotional
range, and affording opportunities
for real acting in the dance:
the bedroom scene with its
profoundly moving love duet,
and the tragic denouement
in the prison colony, are
powerful moments, in which
the meaning of ballet is disclosed
with electric force.
Leanne Benjamin might have
been one of the dancers upon
whom MacMillan made the role,
so apt is she for it in her
own way. Matters were not
quite the same with Federico
Bonelli. He has a handsome
presence, but in his solos
on this evening he was finding
it hard to balance, especially
on landing from jumps. MacMillan
is a genius at constructing
beautiful and passionate pas
des deux, but his work is
sometimes awkward and unintuitive
in solos, especially masculine
ones, with angular reverse
jumps and finicky steps that
seem designed to test or even
trip a dancer. He certainly
managed to discompose Bonelli
in his first solo, and the
uneven choreography of the
opening, with its stuttering
and unconvincing arrival of
the principals, was made more
obvious by Bonelli's late
warming to the part.
But MacMillan's exquisite
duets saved him, partly no
doubt because of the inspiring
presence of Leanne Benjamin;
and with such strong support
from the rest of the troupe,
especially Martin Harvey as
an aggressive Lescaut, brilliant
in the drunken scene, the
production could not fail
to please: and please it did.
What contributed greatly to
this is the staging, and the
attention to detail - both
in the design and in the execution
of the dance - which between
them brought the story absorbingly
to life. The scene in which
the sick and weary exiled
girls disembark in New Orleans
is tellingly choreographed
and danced, and one notices
how expertly it frames the
appearance, delayed for maximum
effect, of Manon and Des Grieux
at the top of the gangway.
The piling of a Pelion of
troubles on an Ossa of despair,
in the form of the Gaoler's
determination to appropriate
Manon for himself, has the
true relentless quality of
tragedy - and the threads
that link Manon to Tosca and
other tales in which the steel
gates of crime and inevitability
slam forever behind hunted
lovers are luminous in the
quick-paced, frantic closing
scenes, well-danced and, even
more to the point, thoroughly
well-acted by Benjamin and
Bonelli.
There was not so much a rapport
between the two as a good
professional understanding,
flowing from the ballerina
to her young partner, which
gave one the sense that hers
was the sustaining achievement
throughout. It is interesting
to reflect how MacMillan's
rendition of the tale offers
different qualities to different
pairings of dancers: think
of Bussell and Cope in the
roles, say, or Guillem and
Acosta - each an event of
its own kind. The point is
not comparisons, but the endless
variety that can be savoured
in a tale as rich as this
one.
AC
Grayling |
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