Ballet in operas

[chrisk217]

After watching the Polotsvian dances from the "Kirov celebrates Nijinsky" DVD I'm thinking of extending my limited opera horizons by taking the easy route: starting with operas that contain some kind of dance or ballet piece.

So I'd like to ask Ballettalk's opera literate population what operas (aside from Prince Igor and La Gioconda) contain dance interludes. What should the dance oriented viewer know about the choreography/length/context etc. of each piece?

Also your personal opinion on these small ballets would be greatly appreciated!

[richard53dog]

After watching the Polotsvian dances from the "Kirov celebrates Nijinsky" DVD I'm thinking of extending my limited opera horizons by taking the easy route: starting with operas that contain some kind of dance or ballet piece.

So I'd like to ask Ballettalk's opera literate population what operas (aside from Prince Igor and La Gioconda) contain dance interludes. What should the  dance oriented viewer know about the choreography/length/context etc. of each piece?

Also your personal opinion on these small ballets would be greatly appreciated!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well there is a sort of ballet in Flora's party scene in La Traviata. There are also ballets in the 3rd acts of Massenet's Manon and Cilea's Adriana Lecouvrer.

There are also bacchanales in Wagner's Tannhauser, Gounod's Faust, and Saint-Saens' Samson and Dalila.

In general at the Paris Opera, a ballet was expected in the 2nd or 3rd act, I forget which, but it was so the Jockey Club could come late and oggle the ballerinas.

So Verdi's Don Carlos and at least one other of his operas (maybe Vepres, as this as well as Don Carlos premiered in Paris in French) have full blown ballets.

These are almost never done, the operas are very long, and the ballet are the first to be cut but I think Balanchine used the music from one of these for Ballo della Regina.

Aida also has a series of slave dances. There is a video from the 60s from one of the Italian outdoor arenas that uses the Kirov Ballet.

Balanchine also choreographed a Polonaise in a Met production of Boris in the 70s.

I have to tell you though that the only one of these that I've thought were worth watching is the Polovtsian Dances, and only in the Kirov Opera's version of Prince Igor where the Kirov Ballet was used.

But there' plently of choiced to get you started! Although not all of these are easily found on video.

Richard

[Ariodante]

Some of the most breathtaking ballet scenes are in Kirov's production of Glinka's "Ruslan and Ludmila"! (DVD Philips) This one is really worth getting!

In general, any French opera should have a ballet. Try to get some baroque operas by Rameau - there is quite a few of them out on DVD (Platee, Les Boreades). They are mostly done by French opera comapnies, usually with a modern twist which may be a blessing or a curse, depending on what you like. I love the dancing in Platee - it is modern and funny. Les Boreades may be fun to watch for a while but then the ballet seems very repetitive to me (although the choreography is quite stunning).

Massenet's "Manon" has indeed a ballet scene which is beautifully done in the production released by TDK (with R. Fleming).

Tchaikowvsky's Eugene Onegin also has some dancing.

[Mel Johnson]

There is a ballet in Faust, which over the years has been a collecting-point for all the most indifferent choreography. The best settings of it, from an audience standpoint, have been independent from the opera, as Lavrovsky's version and Balanchine's.

[Farrell Fan]

To echo Mel's point, the choreography performed by opera company ballet troupes is usually mediocre. (No reflection on the dancers.) Opera audiences and managements seem resistant to good choreography. Balanchine's experience at the Metropolitan Opera was an unhappy one. Which is not to say opera composers did not write good ballet music. Verdi in particular, though he was forced to do so by the Paris Opera formula, wrote some marvelous stuff for them. But the ballet music from his "Macbeth," and "Otello," for instance, is almost always cut completely. Fortunately, Balanchine and Robbins provided a life outside opera for some of Verdi's ballet music, in "Ballo della Regina" ("Don Carlo") and "The Four Seasons," ("I Vespri Siciliani") respectively.

[richard53dog]

Some of the most breathtaking ballet scenes are in Kirov's production of Glinka's "Ruslan and Ludmila"! (DVD Philips) This one is really worth getting!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ruslan is worth getting for the whole package, music, scenery, dancing, singing, etc.

It's a tremendous production, filled with fantatic (as in fantasy) elements. Glinka would pretty much considered the first great Russian opera composer.

The Kirov's production is stunning, I saw it when the Kirov came to NYC on one of their American tours. The audience(which was filled with Russians) went wild over it.

And this is the production you will see on the Philips DVD that Ariodante mentions.

I would also recommend it highly.

Richard

[chrisk217]

Thank you all for your answers. I'm buying Ruslan and Ludmila and I'm quite excited about it. Can't wait to see/hear it.

Whenever I search for ballet, Amazon.co.uk suggests the following DVDs:

Falstaff Verdi (La Scala Ballet Company, Bernadette Di Nissa, et al. )

Gluck: Iphigenie en Tauride, Zurich Orchestra La Scintilla, William Christie, et al.

Macbeth - Verdi [1972], Kostas Paskalis, James Morris, et al.

Giulio Cesare - Handel [1994] Australian Opera and Ballet Orch, Yvonne Kenny, et al.

Mazeppa - Tchaikovsky [1996] Kirov Opera Orchestra And Choir, The Kirov Ballet, et al.

Should I try any of these DVDs? And if so, should I expect an interesting dance interlude or should I buy it only for the music? I feel I could try all (except, maybe, Mazeppa)

(If the moderators feel that my question has become too much "Other arts" please move my post to the appropriate forum)

[bart]

To echo Mel's point, the choreography performed by opera company ballet troupes is usually mediocre. (No reflection on the dancers.) Opera audiences and managements seem resistant to good choreography.

I can't really think of exceptions to this, in my opera experience. But WHY is this the case? Surely the creative people involved in opera production aren't intentionally stopping everything so that the audience can twiddle its collective thumbs through the (a) dull, limited classiscal choreograhy, (b) corny caberet ethnic dancing, or © semi-amateur posing and arm-waving which constitute "dance" in most of the opera ballets I've seen. Nor does the audience really seem to care for it. So why do it?

[Kathleen O'Connell]

To echo Mel's point, the choreography performed by opera company ballet troupes is usually mediocre. (No reflection on the dancers.) Opera audiences and managements seem resistant to good choreography.

I can't really think of exceptions to this, in my opera experience. But WHY is this the case? Surely the creative people involved in opera production aren't intentionally stopping everything so that the audience can twiddle its collective thumbs through the (a) dull, limited classiscal choreograhy, (b) corny caberet ethnic dancing, or © semi-amateur posing and arm-waving which constitute "dance" in most of the opera ballets I've seen. Nor does the audience really seem to care for it. So why do it?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I was pondering this very same point a couple of evenings ago after seeing New York City Opera's production of Bizet's The Pearl Fishers. Wow. The choreography was awful -- no, worse than that -- it was amateurishly awful (not professionally awful in the way that, say, Musagete is ...). Really, I've seen better stuff in high school productions of South Pacific. It was like "Blue Snake" in Altman's recent film with less money thrown at it (and no point shoes -- for which we should probably be grateful). The choreographer added dollops of South Asian dance vocabulary here and there to evoke the setting (Sri Lanka), but forgot to listen to Bizet's score. The real problem was that the dance sequences were used to add some action to what is addmittedly a pretty static libretto, but rather than enhancing the music (and the drama expressed through it) actually served to distract attention from it -- much as a smouldering wreck on the highway distracts one's attention from the road ahead.

Now NYCO has used dance successfully in the past -- Morris' Plateé is an obvious example, but there are others (e.g., some of their Handel productions) -- so what is the source of the institutional lapse of taste and judgement that continues to perptrate the stinkers? (I suppose one could levy the same charge against some of their productions in general ...)

[Ari]

I suspect the poor quality of choreography in opera ballets can be traced to the uneasy relationship between the two art forms. They started out as one and the same and then, amoeba-like, split in two, but have been forced to cohabit ever since. Neither side is entirely happy with this state of affairs.

Leaving aside the fact that finding good new choreography these days is rare enough in ballet companies , I suspect that many choreographers are reluctant to work in opera because they resent being asked to provide some light refreshment where the audience has come for the heavy main course. It reinforces a prejudice that exists in some quarters that ballet isn't a serious art form but a fluffy interlude for girl watching. (In this regard I've always considered Kenneth MacMillan's insertion, in Mayerling, of an operatic interlude, to be a great in-joke. I think this was payback time. )

By the same token, I don't think opera companies want their audience to take the ballet too seriously, because it's not what they do. They want the crowd to come for the singing. The experience of Balanchine and The American Ballet at the Met may have been an extreme example of this, but I don't think it was unrepresentative.

Ballet and opera companies share houses and, in many cases, orchestras, and outside of North America they coexist at the same time, divvying up the week's performances. In that relationship, the opera is always king. They get more performances and the choicest dates, and when the dancers are expected to do some service to the opera companies, well, it just makes matters worse. It's only natural for ballet companies and choreographers to resent this.

[Ariodante]

Thank you all for your answers. I'm buying Ruslan and Ludmila and I'm quite excited about it. Can't wait to see/hear it.

Whenever I search for ballet, Amazon.co.uk suggests the following DVDs:

Falstaff Verdi (La Scala Ballet Company, Bernadette Di Nissa, et al. )

Gluck: Iphigenie en Tauride, Zurich Orchestra La Scintilla, William Christie, et al.

Macbeth - Verdi [1972], Kostas Paskalis, James Morris, et al. 

Giulio Cesare - Handel [1994]  Australian Opera and Ballet Orch, Yvonne Kenny, et al.

Mazeppa - Tchaikovsky [1996]  Kirov Opera Orchestra And Choir, The Kirov Ballet, et al.

Should I try any of these DVDs? And if so, should I expect an interesting dance interlude or should I buy it only for the music? I feel I could try all (except, maybe, Mazeppa)

(If the moderators feel that my question has become too much "Other arts" please move my post to the appropriate forum)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well, as far as I remember, there isn't any ballet in Falstaff. I have the DVD you mention (LaScala) and there is no mention of La Scala Ballet in the cast. Di Nissa is a singer. Amazon often makes mistakes in description of their product.

Gluck - I haven't seen this production but Gluck - being basically a French (in spite of being German) opera composer - certainly guarantees ballet scenes. This particular production was very controversial and if it does include ballet, it would be a modern dance group. But I can't really say. I love the opera itself but know it only from recordings.

I'm no expert on Verdi so maybe sb else can help you out here.

I don' t know this particular production of Giulio Cesare but ballet scenes in Handel operas are generally not extensive. In GC there isn't any special need for a ballet but there may be some dancing, depending on the director. I would get a DVD of Giulio Cesare for the opera itself though - gorgeous stuff (but as far as I know, no perfect DVD of it is available yet. I rather like the English national Opera one, under Mackerras, but it's in English, not the original Italian, though it makes it much more fun to watch!).

Well, Mazeppa isn' t bad music at all and as a fan of ballet you might actually be interested in hearing Tchaikovsky in some of his operas. Maybe Mazeppa is not the best to start with - it is rather sad and involves a serious historical plot - but you could try Eugene Onegin, for example. There is always some dancing in Tchaikovsky's operas but those are usually either court or folk dances (or both) and they are always important to the plot. If I had to choose one Tchaikovsky opera, I would go for Onegin - there is quite a lot of dancing there and it is really good music and interesting plot.

Anyway, Ruslan&Ludmila will keep you busy for some time!

Ariodante

Edited April 19, 2005 by Ariodante

[canbelto]

There's a ballet in Act 2 of Die Fledermaus, and often some additional dancing if there's a "gala" during Orlofsky's party. There's a video from Covent Garden in which the Act 2 party scene has Merle Park and Wayne Eagling dance to "Voices of Spring," choreographed by Ashton.

Les Troyens also has a ballet, and that's actually usually kept in productions.