The Fairy's Kiss (Stravinsky)

[Joseph]

Are there any other versions of this short ballet besides Balanchine's? I recently heard the music for the first time and thoroughly enjoy it.

Thanks!

[Paquita]

James Kudelka also choreographed a ballet to Stravinsky's "The Fairy's Kiss", Le Baiser de la Fee, for the Birmingham Royal Ballet in 1996. It was presented shortly after in Toronto as part of an All Stravinsky program, however I didn't find it particularly memorable.

[Dale]

Ashton, MacMillan, Ratmansky... I believe there was one by Nijinska.

You should be able to find more in the Stravinsky database:

http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/stravinsky/

[Dale]

Just put it through the database, and there's quite a few.

[Joseph]

Wow, thanks Dale! I certainly got more information than I bargained for!

[Mel Johnson]

The Divertimento is right-sized for today's audiences, but listening to the whole score, I find it just long enough to be too long, and drags a bit.

[Brendan McCarthy]

See also David Vaughan's review of Stephanie Jordan's 'Ashton to Stravinsky' video

[Joseph]

Yes Mel, I agree actually. By divertimento, do you mean the pas de deux?

Maybe I have not listened to the whole thing????? :blush:

[Mel Johnson]

The whole ballet used to take up two sides of vinyl, so not quite an hour. The Divertimento contains the pas de deux, and runs around twenty-some minutes.

PS. Looking at the recordings on Amazon.com, I realize now that the full thing couldn't be as long as I remembered. :blush: Maybe it only seemed that long!

[leonid17]

James Kudelka also choreographed a ballet to Stravinsky's "The Fairy's Kiss", Le Baiser de la Fee, for the Birmingham Royal Ballet in 1996. It was presented shortly after in Toronto as part of an All Stravinsky program, however I didn't find it particularly memorable.

I have heard that a new production for Birmingham Royal Ballet is scheduled and I assume this is for next season(2006-2007).

[Norman]

I have heard that a new production for Birmingham Royal Ballet is scheduled and I assume this is for next season(2006-2007).

Birmingham Royal Ballet are currently producing a series of Stravinsky programmes, whilst the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Ex Cathedra are performing a range of his orchestral and choral works. In the 2005-6 season BRB are doing Apollo, Pulcinella and The Firebird. Artistic Director David Bintley invited Kim Brandstrup to choreograph a new version of either Pulcinella or The Fairy's Kiss, and he chose the former, which was premiered this week. In the 2006-7 season they are doing Agon, Stravinsky Violin Concerto and Symphony In Three Movements. Perhaps we may expect The Fairy's Kiss in due course?

[Ray]

The whole ballet used to take up two sides of vinyl, so not quite an hour. The Divertimento contains the pas de deux, and runs around twenty-some minutes.

PS. Looking at the recordings on Amazon.com, I realize now that the full thing couldn't be as long as I remembered. Maybe it only seemed that long!

Reviving this thread b/c I have been listening to Baiser a lot lately, both the full orchestral version and the wonderful piano-violin adaptation that Stravinski did for Dushkin of the Divertimento. I don't find it long at all; it's a model of economy in some ways in its "survey" of Tchaikovsky's Russian musical impulses. I think it's a score that's crying for good choreographic treatment. I wish, for instance, Mark Morris was choreographing Baiser rather than the much longer and oft-choreographed R&J.

Is Baiser singular in being a ballet composed for dance (if you look in the score you'll see it even includes stage directions!) yet so unsuccessful as a full-length ballet? It seems as though some would classify Baiser with Prokofiev's Cinderella as a "problem" ballet. Anyone know why? (I've heard about the problems in representing the final scene, for instance). Somebody had mentioned that some reviews noted the ending music was undanceable, but I can't say I understand why. It's one of my favorite parts of the score (I know, I know, just because one likes it doesn't mean it's musique dansante...).

[EricMontreal22]

I've recently become infatuated with this score (it's about 45 minutes on CD anyway)--as a Tchaikovsky geek, I love how it uses and interweaves so many of Tchaikovsky's orchestral melodies and matches them with new ones in such a clever way--and manages to be a hommage to the old Imprerial ballet (ie the very Sleeping Beauty esque Grand Pas de Deux). It's actually becoming one of my top 3 Stravinsky scores and I'd love to see it staged. Croce mentions it in After Images as one of her favorite Balanchine ballets, one that he never got the endign quite right and was constantly revising. She mentions hating the original ending which seemed like dancers crawling on a spider's web--yet in Denby's Looking at the Dance from the time it premiered, he loved it *especially* that original ending.

It was commisioned for the Nijinska production but nothign seems to have remianed from this, I've never even seen images. Croce also mentioned a version by John Neumeier (who she doesn't seem to like much) that had a "beyond clever" concept of ballet dancers rehearsing a series of fairy tale dances--to which he added real Tchaikovsky ballet music for the "dancer" scenes. Croce thought its success was due solely to the concept, not the execution--but this version hasn't seemed to remain in any repertoire either.