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John-Michael

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Everything posted by John-Michael

  1. I think I remember reading that Balfe's opera, THE BOHEMIAN GIRL, was made into a ballet but with music not by Balfe. Is that PAQUITA? The plots seem to resemble each other
  2. Does anyone know if the Kirov and Bolshoi choose their female principal dancers partly for their beauty? Looking at pictures of principals in the past one hundred years I'm always surprised at how many of them (not all, I admit) are stunningly attractive. Currently, I find Yuliah Makhalinah, Nadia Grecheva, and Diana Vishneva especially breathtaking and they're just the tip of the iceberg. Looks has nothing to do with talent but it helps the illusion when a dancer is both lovely and talented.
  3. I don't know... I've heard the comic opera vs. operetta argument with Sullivan before and I'm not sure I agree . When I think of opera comique I think of works a little more ambitiously operatic than G&S, such as those by Adam and Auber. If G&S, Edward German, and Offenbach are more operatic than operettas such as WHITE HORSE INN, say, or ROSE MARIE I think that has more to do with the time period in which they were composed than with the attention of the composers.
  4. I have two Adam operas (TOREADOR and POSTILLION DE LONJEMEAU) which I love. I wish there were others available. I'm not a big fan of post-Wagnerian opera which I think had an unfortunate effect on all music, not just vocal. I'm also not a big fan of Sullivan's ballet music. Based on his operettas with Gilbert (I love every one... even THE GRAND DUKE which has a gorgeous orchesteral galop) I thought they'd be fantastic but I rarely listen to his two ballets as they're surprisingly dull. Offenbach is a totally different matter. He seemed to have a facility with non-vocal music that Sullivan didn't have (re: the so-so Irish Symphony) and LE PAPILLON and the ballets in his operettas are lovely.
  5. Thanks, Alexandra, for the info on the dance archives. I'm very new to the site so I haven't really gotten a chance to check everything out yet. My unofficial major at Sarah Lawrence (the school doesn't have majors) was dance history and I'm especially interested in Petipa but don't have access to a library with good dance material. At college I used to spend hours reading in the dance collection so this will be a special treat for me .
  6. I didn't know that Benno didn't do the lifts! It changes my whole conception of the pas de deux although I'd still like to see him back.
  7. I know he's not exactly a ballet composer but could we add Meyerbeer to the Drinkus thingie? I bet a lot of people that appreciate 19th century ballet music also like opera's version of a not great but fun and stupidly maligned composer. The nuns' bachanal from ROBERT LE DIABLE could sort of be a secondary anthem to the DON QUIXOTE overture. And in addition to the I like Ludwig buttons could we have t-shirts with a picture of John Lanchberry with a circle and a line going through it?
  8. Maybe it would be a lot easier (and honest!) if programs credit choreography of dubious authenticity "traditional." I saw this done in a dance concert with LE CORSAIRE and it's just as good as the "after ..."
  9. I have a question: Why are Minkus, Pugni, and Drigo (to a lesser extent Adam and the Danish ballet composers) always trashed? These scores seem to drive music critics crazy to a point that borders on the rabid. Based on the cds I've managed to collect and performances that I've either see live or own on video I've found 19th century ballet music to be very charming and similar in style to operetta. Granted, it's a bit conventional and simplistic at times but I certainly find them superior to Stravinsky's ballets (I know I've probably revealed my lack of musical sophsitication). Ugly music makes for ugly choreography. Perhaps it has something to do with the dreadful reorchestrations that are usually used. At any rate, I believe in music that sweetness of melody covers a multitude of sin and no music has more sweetness of melody than 19th century ballet scores.
  10. Thanks for the info! I'll impart a little of my own. I think that the excerpt you saw on the video is the same one that New Jersey ballet performs from time to time. In the program the choreography was credited to Vaganova after Petipa so I doubt that either Perrot or Petipa had much to do with it. I found the music and choreography, if not great, very pretty and it would be nice to see more.
  11. I haven't seen ABT's SWAN LAKE (reading the posts I don't want to do so) and I find NYCB's very entertaining but I'd say that any SWAN LAKE that takes as many liberties with the original libretto, score (I think it essential that all stage version adhere closely to Drigo's arrangement), and choreography as most current stagings do are the worst. By the way, are we EVER going to see a White Swan pas de deux with Benno assisting in the partnering. I've never seen it onstage but I've read detailed descriptions of it and seen pictures and not only did it look and sound lovely but it's Ivanov's original intent. Yeah, I know Paul Gerdt was too old to do the lifts all by his lonesome but Ivanov worked around it and apparently created something gorgeous working with the limitations. I remember reading that critics complained when Nicolai Legat took all the lifts on himself when dancing Siegfried so the pas de deux a trois couldn't have been that bad of an idea.
  12. Is there anyway to get recordings anywhere of the Kirov reconstructions of SLEEPING BEAUTY and LA BAYADERE? So far I don't think either has been released.
  13. Can anyone tell me if ESMERALDA is still danced in Russia? If so, is the choeropgraphy used by Vaganova and not by Petipa (as in an excerpt I saw a regional ballet company do)? Ever since I was a child and used to look at lithographs from the ballet ESMERALDA has had a strange fascination for me.
  14. According to Mme. d'Aulnoy's fairy tales fairies can never act in direct opposition against each other. Supposedly they must all be equal. You'll note, as well, that the Lilac Fairy doesn't counteract Carabosse's court but simply softens it.
  15. I graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in '97, a school that has a dance department with a very strong modern dance bias (ugh!). Time and time again I had to defend to students that ballet was as visceral and intellectual as modern dance. I think mime is the link. I absolutely love abstract ballets but somehow I always find them a little superficial when compared with the richness and depth of feeling that mime brings to ballet. I think a lot of the people (and, believe me, they're out there) that insist that ballet is a minor art form vastly inferior to opera or drama wouldn't think so if they understood the role that mime can play in ballet. It puts the classical dancing into a dramatic framework and brings subtexts to ballet that, quite frankly, I don't believe are present in neoclassical ballet. Take LA BAYADERE. Nikiya is a bit of a static character but Solor and Gamzatti are very complex characters that allow a tour de force for a dancer that can mime as well as dance well. I think that were mime to become again a mainstay of ballet (not to say that plotless ballets don't have artistic integrity or should be banned) in America it wouldn't be considered a poor cousin that can't compare to the sublimity of opera.
  16. I saw the July 8th performance of LA BAYADERE and was so impressed with it that I came back on Friday. It wasn't the dancing per se that impressed me (the company was good but not quite as good as I expected) but the production. Ballet is the only art form (witht the possible exception of operetta) in which future generations aren't only allowed to make substantial changes in an original production but are actually praised for doing so. It was a delight to see a production of LA BAYADERE which, if probably not an exact reproduction of the original, came much closer than later productions. Markarova's overrated version for ABT with Lanchberry's pretentious heavy-handed orchestration of the music particularly paled to this version. I was unable to attend the reconstruction of SLEEPING BEAUTY in '99 which I'm sure I would have preferred but I would say that the Kirov's new LA BAYADERE is one of the most moving, exciting, and opulent dramatic ballets I've ever seen. Several times it moved me almost to tears from seeing such a poetic work of art. First, there's the music. Minkus is no Chaikovsky (who is?) but, contrary to popular belief, he's not at all a bad composer and his delightful sparkling score for LA BAYADERE doesn't disappoint. The ballet is a breathtaking flow of lilting operetta-like melodies... charmingly tuneful and danceable in the dance sections and clear and dramatic in the mime sections. I would say that it's only slightly less successful than the scores of Adam, Delibes, and Glazunov and the Kirov Ballet Orchestra did it full justice. Then the costumes and sets are unbelievably gorgeous and give us an idea of the courtly spectacles that the Tsar and his court were privileged to see. Contemporary audiences are brainwashed into believing that old-fashioned spectacle and pageantry are somehow vulgar and crude. The richly imaginative designs for this ballet prove otherwise and transport one for nearly four hours into a make-believe exotic world. I don't know how I'm going to go back to ABT's threadbare productions after this. The choreography for the ballet is a masterpiece. We already knew that the Kingdom of the Shades scene is probably one of the most beautiful vision scenes in all ballet. Now we see the power and majesty of the rest of the ballet unvarnished with the plot actually making sense and the classical dances gaining added luster from their juxtaposition with mime and processions. Granted, "grand ballet" isn't to everyone's taste. I happen to prefer it to abstract ballets. But if the classics of the 19th century are to be revived one hopes that, as with this production, they'll be more authentic than that which we usually see. If these ballets in their original forms aren't considered conformable with contemporary tastes... they weren't intended to conform. Create new ballets that do so and allow the works of Petipa to give tribute to his genius instead of rechoreographing them to be virtually plotless ballets.
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