4 replies to this topic

[mlarke]

Hello,

Does anyone know exactly what Meyerbeer peices were used for Les Patineurs?  I know that Le Prophète was involved, but I seem to remember reading that other operas were used as well.  Can I get a list of the exact original pieces somewhere?

thanks,

MLarke

[California]

This web site has quite a bit of information about the music:

http://theballetbag..../les-patineurs/

"The music for Les Patineurs was arranged by Constant Lambert who orchestrated different selections from Meyerbeer’s Le Prophete together with the aria “Bel Cavalier” from L’Etoile du Nord."

[Jane Simpson]

I think there's actually more from L'Etoile du Nord than this implies - the Royal Opera House site and David Vaughan's Ashton archive both describe the selections as 'ballet music and one aria from Le Prophète, and Waltz from Act II, Prelude to Act III, and Ismailov's aria "Bel cavalier" from L'Etoile du nord'.

If you go to the Classics Online page about L'Etoile du Nord you can hear the beginning of the Waltz (also the beginning of the ballet, I think) and of the Act 3 Prelude (one of the ensemble pieces?) - from what I can gather, Bel Cavalier is part of the sequence at the beginning of Act 2 but you would have to buy the tracks to hear it!

[mlarke]

Thank you for these indications.  the Ballet Bag site does not in fact have "quite a bit" of informatoin, but it and the other answer do get me a step or two forward.  Many thanks.

ML

[Mel Johnson]

Prophete has an ice-skating ballet (Act III), which is subsumed in toto by the Lambert "Les Patineurs".  Etoile du Nord also has a skating sequence which was intended by Meyerbeer to be a party scene in an earlier comic opera loosely based on incidents in the life of Frederick the Great.  As it was, it ended up in a comic opera about PETER the Great, and a good thing, too.  Pete was a lot more fun than Fred.  

All these shows cluster, timewise, around the same time as the first "Les Patineurs" ballet, music by Deldevez, which used an innovative kind of inline skate with bronze wheels borne on ball-bearing chases.  The invention started a roller-skating craze in France.