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Music
Pyotr Il'yich
Tchaikovsky
Choreography
Peter Wright
after Lev Ivanov
Production
and Scenario
Peter Wright
Original
Scenario
Marius Petipa
(after E.T.A. Hoffmann's Nuszknacker
und Mausekönig)
Designs
Julia
Trevelyan Oman
Staging
by Christopher
Carr
Orchestra
of the Royal Opera House conducted
by
Boris Gruzin
CAST
Herr
Drosselmeyer
Gary Avis
Clara
Iohna Loots
Hans-Peter/
The Nutcracker
Ricardo Cervera
The
Mouse King
David Pickering
The
Sugar Plum Fairy
Miyako Yoshida
The
Prince
Federico
Bonelli
Rose
Fairy
Mara Galeazzi
Artists of the
Royal Ballet and Pupils of the
Royal Ballet School |
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Royal Opera House
Covent
Garden
13
Dec 2005 - 13 Jan 2007
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This
performance of The
Nutcracker
was dedicated to Peter Wright
for his 80th birthday, a highly
appropriate tribute because
Wright's Nutcracker
gives the story dramatic unity
and point, and turns what
had always been a mere spectacle
for Christmas into a ballet
worthy of its exquisite music.
In the process it reveals,
if further revelation were
needed, how dansante the score
is. Full of melody and sweet
harmony, it has long seemed
to disgruntled balletomanes
that Tchaikovsky's score is
wasted on the Nutcracker,
and in any case is more of
a concert piece than a ballet.
Wright's beautifully simple
idea - to treat the visit
to the land of sweets as Drosselmeyer's
reward to Clara and the Nutcracker
for falling in love, and to
incorporate the two of them
in the Russian and Spanish
dances - draws the previously
disparate halves of the Nutcracker
into a unity, and suddenly
the coherence of the music
is fully obvious too.
Iohna Loots is a convincing
and enchanting Clara, dancing
with youthful lightness and
enthusiasm, swift, happy and
responsive in her poise, radiating
pleasure. The pairing with
Ricardo Cervera is a stroke
of genius, for he answers
all these qualities in Loots,
and matches her delicious
talent with his own athletic
grace. Between them they are
the perfect young couple,
delighted with each other,
delighted to be in love -
and delighting the audience
in consequence.
The grand pas de deux between
the Sugar Plum Fairy and the
Prince, together with their
solo interludes, is always
a high point of The
Nutcracker,
and Miyako Yoshida and Federico
Bonelli majestically lived
up to the responsibility.
Yoshida has a maturity and
rootedness which translates
into complete security of
movement; she always seems
solidly balanced in every
transition, and is a great
pleasure to watch. Bonelli's
poise and looks make him a
natural lead, and he has the
strength and developing assurance
to complement them. It was
interesting to see Yoshida
and Bonelli dance these roles
together, because their individual
suitedness to them needed
to be - and was - mutually
conformable, especially in
the first long section where
the Prince is very much the
Fairy's lieutenant only.
In recent Nutcrackers
imagination and design have
come powerfully to the fore
to mask the fact that in Petipa's
original conception there
was a one-act story followed
by an unrelated series of
entertaining dances. The brilliance
of design, and the superb
management of staging, is
breathtaking in this production.
Elaborate sets change in the
twinkle of an eye, as if by
Drosselmeyer's magic; nothing
of the spectacular Nutcracker
tradition is lost here, only
enhanced by Wright's success
in making the tale work. .
AC Grayling |
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