Ballet based on "Master and Margarita"?

[bart]

Today's LINKS has a brief notice of the death of the Russian composer Andrei Petrov. This contains a reference to a ballet he is said to have composed to the story of Bulgakov's novel, "The Master and Margarita."

A brief Google turned up some articles -- several of them expired -- refering to a "symphony-fantasy" score -- a ballet (no details) -- and a film score.

Has anyone seen this ballet? Or -- can you point me in the direction of more information?

Thanks.

P.S.: Here's the Link to the obituary:

http://www.postchronicle.com/news/entertai...e_2127044.shtml

[Andrei]

this is one act ballet choreographed by Boris Eifman. Not the best work by both of them.

[Mel Johnson]

What I'm waiting for is the ballet based on "Miss Margarida's Way" the Robert Adhayde play, and have Miss Margarida abuse the entire audience while teaching them a ballet class!

[bart]

Thanks, andrei, I will pursue this on sites connected with eifman.

I was intrigued originally by the huge (possibly too huge?) balletic potential of the novel: combining a Faustian devil in Stalinist Russia, historical flashbacks to Pontius Pilate and "Jeshua" in Jerusalem, etc. So much opportunity for visualization, characerization, moralizing and movement.

I realize that it might be hard to mine great choreography from this -- but great theater.... why not?

Connected to this, I've wondered whether the "magic realism" literature of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and others has ever been turned into dance.

Mel, thanks for the partial homonym. I remember Estelle Parsons as the school teacher in this quite a while back. As a ballet, however, her harangues would seem to require a depth, complexity, and colorfulness of mime that might be beyond contemporary dancers, not to mention the audience. It might be worth a try, however. I imagine an eccentric and screechy electronic score.

[Andrei]

Boulgakov's "Master and Margarita" is one of my favorite books and I absolutely agree with you, Bart, it could be a very good ballet. Unfortunately, Shostakovitch already dead and I don't see any composer who can write descent music for this huge project.