Corsaire Question

[Solor]

I just watched for the first time "Le Corsaire" by the Kirov....it was a great video and it seemded stuffed with bravura show peices......does anyone know what parts of the ballet were composed by which composer? I know there are 4.....does anyone know who did what? Or if there are more that werent metioned? Im intrigued by its score I thought it was great.

Solor

[Mel Johnson]

It's been so mixed up over the years, that the four different composers are all the way from Mid-Romantic Adam, through Pugni, Delibes, and a Russian amateur composer at court contributed the adage of one pas de deux. Drigo and some later musicians did some heavy-duty arranging so they didn't sound too awfully dissimilar. The Delibes is pretty much all by itself in the "jardin animé" section, but the others are all combined pretty freely throughout the score. Drigo usually gets the credit for the score, but it's a good question whether he contributed anything of his own, or just arranged as much musique dansant as he could cobble together in one show!

[rg]

i have none of my possibly useful notes at hand, and perhaps some of those who specialize in russian ballet will chime in (is jeannie in the countryat present? or reading this from mother russia as i type?) but one prince oldenbourg is repsonsible for the music of the slave-market duet, where gulnare is unwound from her chiffon 'wrapper,' and known as the 'pas d'esclave'.

otherwise mel's commentary seems to cover a lot. anton simon, is, i believe, responsible for one of the alternate solos used for the famous drigo 'pas de deux a trois' - it's the one we also see on occasion in the 'dream scene' of DON Q. but now that i say this i think it's not the one included in the gusev/vinogradov 'text' of the ballet as done by the kirov. (it's the variation known to fonteyn and nureyev watchers, from the version the pas nureyev set for himself at the royal ballet, as a standard pas de deux, and that fonteyn did consistently.)

maybe john-michael or doug knows further details.

(i can't recall if alexandra put into her archives here a little fact sheet i cobbled together when the kirov first brought its CORSAIRE to nyc and which is probably in sore need of re-editing, but it is a start to some of the identifications of the bits and pieces that make up the current soviet/russian CORSAIRE stagings.)