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Music
by
Piotr Tchaikovsy
Choreography
by
Marius Petipa
and Lev Ivanov
Staged
by
Christopher
Carr
Designed
by
Yolanda Sonnabend
Orchestra
of the
Royal Opera House
conducted by
Pavel Sorokin
Odette/Odile
Roberta Marquez
Seigfreid...
Ivan Putrov
The
Princess
(Siegfried's mother)
Genesia Rosato
An Evil
Spirit,
later Von Rothbart
Alastair
Marriott
The
Tutor
Jonathan
Howells
Benno
Bennet Gartside
A General
Henry St
Clair
Lord
Chamberlain
Henry St
Clair
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The Royal Ballet
Covent Garden
3 - 27 Feb 2007 |
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Tchaikovsky
said that he would never have
complosed Swan
Lake
if only he'd heard Delibes'
Sylvia
beforehand, since his own
ballet was 'poor stuff' in
comparison. Time has judged
differently, and now Sylvia
is rather obscure, and Swan
Lake
is one of the best-loved of
ballets. It is almost an epitome
of this strange art. Demanding
intense skill and control,
defying gravity, hinting at
the impossible, ballet is
at the height of contrivance.
Yet it is the only art whose
very essence is our physical
nature, and in which humans
become animal and express
themselves only and entirely
through their bodies. Swan
Lake,
which actually centres on
the transformation of women
into swans, and from swans
back into women, and in which
the same dancer is its heroine
and its identically-alike
villainess, is almost an archetype
of ballet.
It was first produced in 1877,
and Anthony Dowell's 1987
production, now revived at
Covent Garden, harks back
to the ballet's origins, placing
the action, not in the typical
volk-lore land of medieval
Germany, but in Tchaikovsky's
decadent fin de siecle. The
set by Yolande Sonnabend is
magnifienctly reminiscent
of the Symbolist painters.
Sometimes the colours and
movements of the dancers and
their surroundings look as
if the fronded gateways and
tendrilling nymphs in a picture
by Gustave Moreau or Edmund
Dulac had come alive.
Starting, in a gated space,
with dancing and revelling
for Prince Siegfried's birthday,
a golden afternoon fades into
twilight and, as Prince and
courtiers rush out with their
cross-bows to hunt, the huge
festooned gates open out into
the darkening unknown. An
oval shape (aperture or mirror)
hangs in front of the lowered
curtain, with silver satin
water rising behind it, before
it whisks away to reveal a
lake and wrought-iron ruins.
When the courtiers, wearied
with hunting and drinking,
leave the stage, the Prince
enters and sees a crowd of
swans, one of whom transforms
into a beautiful woman. Like
her companions, she, Odette,
is the victim of a cruel enchanter
- they are swans by day, and
she only turns back into a
woman at night. She dances
with the Prince, who, for
the first time ever, falls
in love, and pledges himself
to her. But during the next
scene, a costume ball in a
cobweb-garlanded ball-room,
he sees what he thinks is
his beloved but is in reality
a magically-identical woman,
daughter of the cruel enchanter.
Unaware of Odette, who appears
in a magic mirror to warn
him, he is dazzled by her
simulacrum to whom he swears
marriage and eternal love.
Finally, he and Odette escape
his betrayal and her bewitchment
by throwing themselves into
the lake, shattering the mirror
of illusion. Roberta Marquez,
who dances the Odette/Odile
role is wonderful as the Swan
Princess - her thin lithe
arms twist and twine with
the grace and vulnerablity
of a bird - but she could,
perhaps, be more predatory
and sensual as the cruel seductress,
Odile. Ivan Putrov (Siegfried)
is a superb dancer but not
convincingly amorous. The
fin de siecle echoes - Moreau's
Salome
, Khnopff's
Sphinx
- go
unheard.
Like many revivals, Dowell's
Swan
Lake
lacks a sense of freshness,
but it is still powerful,
if only because of its dazzling
music and spectacle, and,
with its transcendent setting,
it is at the arched cusp of
the artificial and the natural.
Jane O'Grady |
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