2017 Fall Season

[Drew]

On 8/28/2017 at 3:10 PM, Kathleen O'Connell said:

 

[...]

 

(I'm talking about the 1895 libretto; the 1877 version is rather different in a number of key respects, including Benno's not being fooled by Odile and a rather grim ending which features neither redemption nor the triumph of true love over evil. It's a better plot.)

 

So, Siegfried thinks he's (ahem no pun intended) killing two birds with one stone:  he's being true to both Odette and his social obligation to marry. Siegfried isn't undone because he thinks Odile is smokin' hot; he's undone because he thinks she's Odette. In essence, Rothbart gets him on a technicality. As far as I'm concerned, this makes the ballet hollow at its core. We are set up to believe that Siegfried has done something for which he must beg forgiveness and by which Odette will be forever doomed, but what is his crime? [...] If Siegfried's crime is being deceived when he shouldn't have been, the staging and choreography need to make that the focal point of the act. (As it happens the focal point seems to be counting fouéttes) Now, I can imagine different staging / choreography that would render Siegfried's inability to perceive the spectral -- but true -- Odette a genuine moral culpability, but that would make it impossible for the same ballerina to dance both roles, and there isn't an AD on the planet who'd even think of touching that one. [...]

 

Finally, I think it's telling that every director seems to believe that they can change the ending without doing violence to the whole -- or perhaps even believes that by changing the ending they're fixing something. A Choose Your Own Adventure approach to dramaturgy doesn't suggest a coherent dramatic arc. In theory, my outline of the plot should have included the ending, but now we are treated to everything from living happily ever after to death and destruction. But no matter which ending we get, it doesn't really solve the problem of that hollow core. 

 

 

I'm following the discussion with interest--some of what I say below echoes various things said above:

 

I've also wondered just what, exactly, Siegfried is guilty of. But I think that if he genuinely mistakes Odile for Odette, that still could be considered a moral lapse.  Kathleen O'Connell makes that point in the passage quoted, but doesn't see it realized in stagings. For me, it is there, in the traditional staging, though perhaps requires the audience give some thought to what is happening.  Siegfried should be able to make the distinction between the two figures, especially given the archetypal weight the ballet gives them. And he should not, say, behave like a ballet fan, who loses her/his head at the sight of 32 fouettes . I don't think it takes two different ballerinas dancing Odette/Odile to make this point. In fact, it should be at least somewhat hard to tell them apart--that's what makes it a kind of moral test. If the two women are no more similar than Swanilda and Coppelia than Siegfried is just a dolt like Franz. It could be done with two ballerinas, but it's subtler with one...

 

But let's say Siegfried makes no real error because he has simply been enchanted  by Rothbart  Something like that happens in the Ring--Wagner's Siegfried betrays Brunhilde because of a magic potion. Yet Siegfried's error in Wagner still seems to bear a kind of moral/historical weight even if only Brunhilde really grasps it. The idea that an idle/unintended mistake can have serious not to say tragic consequences IS sometimes a serious theme in art. Somehow one is responsible for something one didn't exactly intend to do...

 

I'm still pretty committed to the interpretation that Siegfried's mistake/misjudgment is a moral lapse; a wiser man would not have been fooled. Still, he's not Albrecht, he's not willfully deceiving Odette, and that to me  opens the possibility for his return to ask forgiveness AND the sacrifice that frees the swans, though not Odette and Siegfried who can only "be united" when they are dead--also Wagnerian, which the score reflects. Though this ending has often been mangled, I don't think the other endings work as well: to me, the sacrifice makes more serious sense of the story. I love Sergeyev's staging and have become "used" to the happy ending, but I don't really accept it. If Siegfried can just kill Rothbart by grabbing a wing, then what was all the fuss in Act II when Odette said not to kill Rothbart or the enchantment would never be broken? 

 

That the ballet is Petipa-plus-Ivanov sort of works for me in relation to the fact that Siegfried longs for something different from his ordinary life--and the ballet gives him something more "different" than just about any vision scene in the canon that I know of except maybe the Bournonville Sylphide where only the sylphs are on pointe. (Any competition from Shades in Bayadere is, to my ears, wiped out by the music, but actually Bayadere's choreography does not seem to me neo-romantic in the same way.)  I agree Swan Lake, for various reasons, doesn't have the formal perfection and coherence of, say, Sleeping Beauty. Still, in all of its awkward oddness--and a lot of productions don't gel--I think it has a real profundity. Though a profundity that would be impossible without Tchaikovsky's score.

 

Re the score: I agree -- at least my head agrees -- with Croce that in some ways, the score is not a good ballet score because no choreography can live up to it...A criticism that seems to be related to what the earliest nineteenth-century critics said. But somehow it doesn't matter.  And the white acts (which I assume Croce is referring to) come close enough to make this ballet something rather extraordinary.  There is a reason the ballerina myth is the "swan" -- that, later, Fokine, in a very different vein, apotheosized Pavlova as a "dying swan:" he may be rebelling against Petipa/Ivanov but he hadn't forgotten them.  The choreography (Ivanov's lake scenes but especially in context, as they are set off against the others) or, more exactly, the choreography enmeshed with the score, gives the ballet its weight--but also the story does so and the figure of a princess-swan that the choreography and score embody. Not perfectly -- Sleeping Beauty seems to me, in its way, just about perfect -- but with an anguish and an aspiration that takes Swan Lake into an entirely different dimension than other nineteenth-century ballets.

 

Umm...I have a lot of reservations about Martins' production too. Come to think of it, I have only seen a handful of performances where the dancing/staging and not just the music live up to what I just tried to describe as how I see the ballet!  And on a bad night even the music can go awry. I also know there are fans who find Tchaikovsky or even all nineteenth-century ballet hokey or a bore. I myself had a brief phase in my youth when I decided I had "outgrown" Tchaikovsky. Glad I outgrew THAT.  But, anyway, I find Swan Lake -- which I last saw live in 2013 but hope to see again this year -- remains strangely essential to my understanding and my love of ballet. Oh well...I guess one can make one's best serious argument on the subject...but it's a very personal matter too. 

 

I'm afraid I don't know the 1877 libretto   but obviously I should check it out!

Edited August 29, 2017 by Drew

[nanushka]

29 minutes ago, Kathleen O'Connell said:

 

I realized this when I first read Stendahl's The Charterhouse of Parma. I think half the meaningful dialogue takes place in an opera box while an opera is in progress!

 

The opening chapters of Wharton's The Age of Innocence are a great illustration as well, with a performance of Faust at the old Academy of Music. There's a great line about the "exceptionally brilliant audience" — because that, of course, is what they're all really there to see!

 

[Drew]

5 minutes ago, nanushka said:

 

The opening chapters of Wharton's The Age of Innocence are a great illustration as well, with a performance of Faust at the old Academy of Music. There's a great line about the "exceptionally brilliant audience" — because that, of course, is what they're all really there to see!

 

I was trying to remember the exact line about Wagner in Picture of Dorian Gray and finally broke down and looked it up:

 

"'I like Wagner’s music better than anybody’s. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says...'"

[nanushka]

15 minutes ago, Drew said:

Re the score: I agree -- at least my head agrees -- with Croce that in some ways, the score is not a good ballet score because no choreography can live up to it...A criticism that seems to be related to what the earliest nineteenth-century critics said. 

 

I'd be curious to read what exactly Croce says about this, and yes it sounds quite similar to some of the contemporary reaction Tchaikovsky received. Based only on your summary, I'm not sure I see her point. Is Tchaikovsky's music in this particular ballet on an artistic level that no choreography can possibly achieve? What does that say about the choreographic art in relation to musical art? And what about, for instance, Balanchine's choreography to other Tchaikovsky scores? What about Sleeping Beauty — which many believe to be a quite superior score?

 

Do you know if her comments were in one of the collected reviews? Thanks in advance if you can provide a reference!

 

16 minutes ago, Drew said:

I'm afraid I don't know the 1877 libretto   but obviously I should check it out!

 

I can't recommend highly enough Wiley's excellent Tchaikovsky's Ballets.

[Kathleen O'Connell]

46 minutes ago, Drew said:

I'm afraid I don't know the 1877 libretto   but obviously I should check it out!

 

Here's a full synopsis: http://en.tchaikovsky-research.net/pages/Swan_Lake#cite_note-note20-1

[nanushka]

28 minutes ago, Drew said:

I was trying to remember the exact line about Wagner in Picture of Dorian Gray and finally broke down and looked it up:

 

"'I like Wagner’s music better than anybody’s. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says...'"

 

Hah, yes another great one!

[Drew]

30 minutes ago, nanushka said:

 

I'd be curious to read what exactly Croce says about this, and yes it sounds quite similar to some of the contemporary reaction Tchaikovsky received. Based only on your summary, I'm not sure I see her point. Is Tchaikovsky's music in this particular ballet on an artistic level that no choreography can possibly achieve? What does that say about the choreographic art in relation to musical art? And what about, for instance, Balanchine's choreography to other Tchaikovsky scores? What about Sleeping Beauty — which many believe to be a quite superior score?

 

Do you know if her comments were in one of the collected reviews? Thanks in advance if you can provide a reference!

 

 

I can't recommend highly enough Wiley's excellent Tchaikovsky's Ballets.

 

Thanks ... I had read the Sleeping Beauty sections of Wiley's book before going to see Ratmansky' production -- will have to catch up with rest of it! And thanks Kathleen O'Connell for the link to the libretto.

 

Croce writes about Tchaikovsky's score and also (though I had quite forgotten this) some of the vagaries of the ballet's history in an essay in  Going to the Dance, "Swan Lake and its Alternatives." Above I was alluding to a passage from memory...going back to look at the piece, I think I must have been remembering, in particular this (page 185):

 

"Even in the most famous scenes--the swan scenes staged by Ivanov--we feel that the music is suggesting more than is really happening on the stage. In the standard Act IV, the gulf between the music and the action is a painful fact that convention forces us to ignore. Swan Lake is the greatest unstageable ballet ever written, and it is at its greatest, perhaps, in passages--usually left out of productions--where we cannot guess what is happening or what Tchaikovsky meant by them. Yet their visionary allure is so strong that we make a place for them anyway in our minds. Swan Lake may be unstageable but it is never unreal. When Tchaikovsky, having finished the score, heard Sylvia, he remarked with characteristic overstatement that his own work was 'trash by comparison.' He meant that Sylvia was a ballet."

 

I assume she has also addressed the ballet and its score elsewhere...in any case, if one has the time, it's worth reading what she writes about the ballet in the context of the essay which is very far from being disrespectful of the ballet's appeal. Even the passage I quote makes that clear I hope.

 

Edited August 29, 2017 by Drew

[nanushka]

3 minutes ago, Drew said:

Croce writes about Tchaikovsky's score and also (though I had quite forgotten this) some of the vagaries of the ballet's history in an essay in  Going to the Dance, "Swan Lake and its Alternatives."

 

Thanks so much! I do remember that essay now, though only very vaguely. Will definitely go back to it.

[sandik]

3 hours ago, Kathleen O'Connell said:

 

I think you gave my rant more thought than it deserved!

 

Yours is a helpful reminder that at a certain point in time, a ballet was intended to be a SHOW: spectacle, pyrotechnic display, melodrama, nods to the memes of the day (spectral maidens), specialty acts (national dances) etc. The formal elements -- the standard pas-de-deux with alternating variations and a coda; the entertainment-within-an-entertainment divertissements; the white acts; happy peasants dancing for the royals; etc. -- kept the proceedings legible: everybody knew what to expect when. I wonder if we've lost some of that legibility as directors have pushed and pulled some of these story ballets out of shape?

 

I wonder if there was a ballet equivalent to opera's aria di sorbetto: an aria for a secondary character that does nothing to advance the plot but does give you a chance to grab a snack before the evening ends.

 

For me, Petipa is the balletic version of the well-made play -- a formula for sure, but one that includes space for all kinds of beautiful things.  I love the 19th c repertory for what it can do, and what dancers can do with it, but I don't necessarily look to it for the aspects of drama that came later.

 

I'd never heard the term "aria de sorbetto," but I am bound and determined to add it to my vocabulary.  My sister and I are always talking about where in the action movie we should just get up and go to the bathroom (years of taking children to the movies) -- sounds like I have just the right term now!

[volcanohunter]

8 hours ago, Drew said:

The idea that an idle/unintended mistake can have serious not to say tragic consequences IS sometimes a serious theme in art. Somehow one is responsible for something one didn't exactly intend to do...

 

It's an awfully old idea, going back at least to Genesis, when Isaac was tricked into bestowing onto Jacob the blessing he had intended for Esau. Certainly Isaac wasn't morally culpable, only blind, literally, but it didn't matter that he was duped by Jacob's hairy-arm disguise. Isaac didn't intend to give that blessing to Jacob, but no matter how much Isaac and Esau despaired about what happened, what's done can't be undone.

 

8 hours ago, Drew said:

If Siegfried can just kill Rothbart by grabbing a wing, then what was all the fuss in Act II when Odette said not to kill Rothbart or the enchantment would never be broken? 

 

Yes, the K. Sergeyev staging is completely incoherent on this point.

 

8 hours ago, Drew said:

Re the score: I agree -- at least my head agrees -- with Croce that in some ways, the score is not a good ballet score because no choreography can live up to it...A criticism that seems to be related to what the earliest nineteenth-century critics said.

 

I wonder whether she feels the same way about "Diamonds." I doubt it, somehow. But among Russian audiences who dislike Balanchine, and Jewels in particular, you will hear the criticism that the music is too symphonic and undanceable. It's like 1877 all over again.

 

I'm not sure I agree that the score is too great. I think it is very great in parts, but also unbalanced in construction and uneven in quality. Petipa certainly recognized this, leading him to re-order the score and dispose of many numbers, some of which are downright risible. (Think of the coda Ashton used for his pas de quatre. It's so preposterous, I can barely call it music.)

 

7 hours ago, Drew said:

"Even in the most famous scenes--the swan scenes staged by Ivanov--we feel that the music is suggesting more than is really happening on the stage. In the standard Act IV, the gulf between the music and the action is a painful fact that convention forces us to ignore..."

 

Actually, I feel this way about the Vision Scene in Sleeping Beauty more so than I feel about anything in Swan Lake. (For my taste, the "Elégie" in Tchaikovsky Suite no. 3 is more like it.) But I also don't think the score to Sleeping Beauty is unadulterated genius. Consider the coda of the wedding pas de deux. It repeats the same insipid ten-note phrase 16 times in a row . Sure, Tchaikovsky dresses it up, but it doesn't alter the fact the foundation is an inane little tune.

 

I vote for The Nutcracker as Tchaikovsky's greatest ballet music. Apart from the Prince's uninteresting tarantella, notably absent from Balanchine's production, I find it to be nearly uninterrupted inspiration, frankly, something not encountered all that often in Tchaikovsky.

Edited August 30, 2017 by volcanohunter

[Kathleen O'Connell]

40 minutes ago, sandik said:

 

I'd never heard the term "aria de sorbetto," but I am bound and determined to add it to my vocabulary.  My sister and I are always talking about where in the action movie we should just get up and go to the bathroom (years of taking children to the movies) -- sounds like I have just the right term now!

 

 Naturally, there is an app for that: http://runpee.com

[nanushka]

29 minutes ago, Kathleen O'Connell said:

 

 Naturally, there is an app for that: http://runpee.com

 

OMG their site is brilliant!

[Fleurfairy]

18 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

I vote for The Nutcracker as Tchaikovsky's greatest ballet music. Apart from the Prince's uninteresting tarantella, notably absent from Balanchine's production, I find it to be nearly uninterrupted inspiration, frankly, something not encountered all that often in Tchaikovsky.

Oh gosh, yes. As I've gotten older, I've found myself getting misty-eyed when I watch the Nutcracker. The dancing is wonderful of course, but that music. The snow scene in particular just gets me! What I love about Balanchine's version is that every nuance of the choreography fits the music. You can tell he loved it and studied it in great detail.

[wonderwall]

Based on a comment Megan Fairchild made in her recent instagram post (the one of the poster for Swan Lake with Sara Mearns), it looks like she will have two shows (the 26th and 30th matinee).

[abatt]

Tiler Peck's Instagram indicates that her SL dates are Sept 27 and Oct 1.

[Olga]

Regarding some of the discussion upthread, I resolve some of the inconsistencies around Seigfried's falling for Odile by thinking of it more as a test of strength/power between the Prince

and Rothbart. This shows Siegfried as not powerful enough to overcome the spell, whatever the reason. Depending on the version, he is not powerful enough yet, or not powerful enough without Odette's spiritual force,

or never will be powerful enough.

 

[kbarber]

What do y'all think about this teaser video for Swan Lake? For me, it's a bit odd. Kinda makes you think it's a ballet about... tiaras (if it's a ballet at all... there's no dancing going on, just the tiaras).

 

[Kathleen O'Connell]

Even worse, about inert statues in tiaras!

 

Still, it's prettier than the production ...

[DC Export]

Seems like a rip of the introductory titles for Netflix's "The Crown" series.

[maps]

.

 

Edited July 16, 2019 by maps
-

[Kathleen O'Connell]

It looks like an ad for Swarosvki. They even have a Swan Collection.

 

And of course they did the tiaras and, if I recall correctly, the costume beading for the new Symphony in C costumes. The promotion of the latter featured Sara Mearns; coincidentally (or maybe not) the Swan Queen depicted in the new ad does resemble her.

 

Just sayin' ...

 

PS: I wouldn't mind a tie-in with Swarovski if the ad did a better job of selling NYCB's Swan Lake. I find the ad pretty, but rather inert - and it's not something I'd be inclined to watch again.

[ABT Fan]

That's a very strange ad. They couldn't have used a real dancer? 

[abatt]

That's Sara Mearns in the ad, isn't it?

 

 

[Olga]

Yes, it is Sara Mearns.

[cobweb]

I do not follow the dancers on social media. Have any of the other O/O's posted their dates on (public-facing, of course!) social media? 

I too was creeped out by the inert snow queen ad.