Marc Haegeman

....

As for Schipulina..... I can't imagine that her Medora would be a total write-off.

Not at all. She is competent...a nice "house ballerina" but, IMO, not in the league of Alexandrova and Osipova or even Krysanova.

YID, I too noticed that the Osipova switch to the Saturday matinee meant that Anna Nikulina's big chance as medora was not to be. Honestly, I would have preferred Nikulina in place of Osipova on the night of the 19th. So, in the end, Schipulina gets three Medoras and Nikulina gets zero. Bummer.

Why bummer? Count your blessings, America.

Many thanks for this brilliant review, Helene - apt descriptions, great analogies - I had much fun reading it!

My review of the Royal Ballet of Flanders "Artifact" is up at Danceviewtimes.com: "Artifact"- Next episode of the Flemish Forsythe saga

Yes there is, passion and understanding for a start. You will find it with Svetlanov, Dorati, Monteux, Fistoulari and the likes. ;-)

I too have found Dutoit's recording a disappointment; "unballettic" for lack of a better word. Strange that it was so highly rated when it came out, and is *still* widely recommended in the mainstream classical press as a first choice of the complete score. (But then so is the Pletnev/Beauty!)

I've always been a bit suspicious how Decca managed to squeeze the whole ballet onto 2CDs.. does Dutoit play all the repeats, and in particulat all those "false starts" in the Dance of the Prospective Brides in ACT 3?

For me, the sheer excitement of Ermler's ROH version is unmatched, even though it lacks the Sobeshchanskaya PDD. For that I have the Bonynge box set, although I dont think he's at his best in the rest of the ballet (though he has his moments).

Charles Dutoit - whom I think of very highly of as a conductor - has always been a favourite of the Penguin Guide, Gramophone magazine etc. Dutoit and his Montreal Symphony Orchestra have moreover benefited from one of the best Decca-produced sounds in the digital era. They made some wonderful discs of Ravel, Saint-Saëns, Fauré, Debussy and others. Yet Tchaikovsky was something else. With Swan Lake they also bravely released Tchaikovsky's 4, 5 and 6 Symphony, and all what was basically left was the sound quality.

Nobody today can compete with the "mature male stars" of the past, Drew. But if you limit your urge to buy tickets with this criterion, staying home and watch the next episode of Lost is a fine alternative

The Bolshoi is playing for safe with Spartacus. None of the other ballets mentioned here, can guarantee the same box-office appeal: just playing the devil's advocate, but imagine how a Massine triple bill would fare (Massine, who? and to be honest, it's really not that delightful the way they dance it), or the Paquita Grand Pas (another new/old reconstruction...), Coppelia (and yet another...), Class Concert (all the stars have to be there and local kids need to be trained), Flames of Paris (Stalin's favourite??) ....

Thank you, Emilienne and Sacto. Yes, I was referring to the 1992 Dutoit &Montréal Symphony Orchestra, which I bought several years ago. I also own the Fedotov, which I got me on Ebay . From the two, I find myself playing the Dutoit the most. I was just curious to see if there's "anything" out there from the original score that could had slipped out of the Dutoit.

Yes there is, passion and understanding for a start. You will find it with Svetlanov, Dorati, Monteux, Fistoulari and the likes. ;-)

Wow Mark, thanks a lot, this review is just brilliant.

Thanks white swan, glad you liked it.

My review of the evening at danceviewtimes

The big positive: many solo opportunities for the younger dancers and the chance to see Lopatkina once again, as she refuses to dance the 1890 version.

If I remember correctly, the original 1890 version of Spyashchaya Krasavitsa had what became the Lilac Fairy danced not en pointe but as a character dancer. It wasn't until MUCH later that the choreography changed so the Lilac Fairy danced en pointe.

In the 1890 staging as danced by the Mariinsky the Lilac Fairy does dance on pointe in the Prologue. According to Doug Fullington, in his magnificent article on the reconstruction of the 1890 Sleeping Beauty, "The Lilac Fairy variation [in the Prologue] is notated twice and both versions include pointe work." Later in the ballet she appears on heeled shoes. Doug Fullington's article here: The Kirov's reconstructed Sleeping Beauty.

Sacto you really aren't helping anybody with continuously posting inaccurate facts. Please check your sources first.

(And, besides, which music-lover would bother with a full-length Sleeping Beauty in MP3 format? )

I don't think that's the point. 3rd party online vendors wouldn't have access to those "missing tracks" unless the record companies made them available to them separately from the already available (incomplete) CD versions.

If for instance EMI made the "missing tracks" available from the wonderful complete Sylvia & Coppelia (Paris Opera Orchestra, cond. Jean-Baptiste Mari, 1977/78), I'd buy/download them in a flash (even though I already have the existing CD versions which contain about 80% of the music). Mind you, I'd *only* buy those missing tracks, not the whole lot..

Yes, but then as wave files, or in some lossless format, not as MP3's.

These services offer commercially available CD's not complete recordings.

I have to respectfully disagree here! Both the iTunes Music Store and Amazon MP3 download service here in the USA often offer special versions of album releases with extra tracks (Amazon did it recently with Enya's current album And Winter Came... by adding an Amazon-exclusive extra track if you downloaded the whole album). Since downloaded music doesn't have to fit within the 74 to 80 minute limitation of a commercial CD, both services could easily offer the unabridged version of the Dorati-conducted version of Sleeping Beauty with no problems.

Theoretically they could of course. But we're not considering "special" versions of albums here with bonus tracks resulting from specific agreements between record labels and download services. In the case of Sleeping Beauty these are CDs that were once released complete, but have reappeared for economical reasons in edited form, missing out a few tracks here and there. (And, besides, which music-lover would bother with a full-length Sleeping Beauty in MP3 format? )

Esina has been long-gone to Vienna for a few years. If memory serves, this DON Q was taped in April 2006, as was a complete JEWELS with Ayupova, Novikova & Lopatkina as the leaders of the three sections. The omission of Vishneva from 'Rubies' caused a big brou-ha-ha, I remember.

Perhaps the JEWELS airing and DVD will soon follow? I had all but given up on the DON Q and it is now coming. So there is also hope for the JEWELS. A chance to see the elusive Ayupova!

The filming of Jewels ran into some problems with the Balanchine Trust as far as I remember. Good to hear the Don Q is due for release, though, now that the featured dancers are still active.

If you want to have the best CD recording of the Sleeping Beauty, I'd go for Antal Dorati - Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

Co-sign: Dorati delivers the 5 star performance.

Since the iTunes Music Store and the Amazon MP3 download service doesn't need to consider fitting all the music into two CD's, how about either one of them offering the Dorati-conducted full version for downloading?

These services offer commercially available CD's not complete recordings.

There's the rough-and-tumble BBC Legends recording by Gennadi Rozhdestvensky and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. It's

Interesting you mention the live Rozhdestvensky one. Around the same time (literally days before/after) he made a studio recording (also with the BBCSO) which was released at the time on LP on the BBC's own label in the UK, and on Eurodisc in mainland Europe. I've been trying to find out for some time whether it's ever been out on CD, but I cannot find any trace of that, so I gather it hasn't.

Unlike the live version (which is "slightly abridged"), the studio version was complete, and from the few references I've been able to find, it was very good indeed. It was highly praised in the Gramophone magazine at the time (Sept 1980). The BBC Legends live version (given a Rosette in the Penguin Guide -- whatever you may think of that publication), has been criticised elsewhere as having harsh-ish (not ideal) sound, and for the brass (understandably) sounding a bit tired towards the end. It really is a shame that the BBC are letting the studio version gather dust in their archives in favour of the imperfect live version. But it's one to look out for in the future, who knows..

In the meantime I find the Bonynge version very satisfying, even though the recording itself is rather over-rich, Decca overegging the pudding a bit (as in the other Tchaikovsky ballets also; maybe a sympathetic new remastering would help). For a perverse kind of pleasure, I occasionally listen to Pletnev's bizzarly fast-paced reading (you can almost see the producer sitting there with a stop-watch thinking, "we're gonna get this baby in on two CDs whatever it takes!"). It also features a kind-of x-ray-vision-type clarity of sound (and left/right devided violin desks) which allows one to hear every tiny detail of the score in a quite unnatural way. But it completely lacks any sense of magic, which this of all ballets simply cannot do without. It too was highly praised in the Gramophone as well as the Penguin Guide, but I would certainly not recommend this version to anyone as their only complete Beauty on CD.

I've not heard Previn's version, but I've read good things about it -- anyone familiar with that one?

Previn's ballet recordings have always received a lot of praise in the Gramophone and Penguin Guides (as indeed have most of his discs), but I frankly never warmed for any of them. I find his readings very neutral and lacking in character, while the sound is rather typically EMI from that period and recording venue - boxy and harsh. If you need an "English" Beauty than I would go for John Lanchbery and the Philharmonia, also on EMI, but a lot better recorded and played with balletic elegance and refinement missing with Previn - now also in a bargain series on 2CD and thus sadly omitting a couple of numbers.

Pletnev's clinical recording is indeed to be avoided. The only interesting thing about it is as mentioned the left/right division of the violins, which creates a different soundscape in a few places.

There has been a report this morning of the passing of Ninel Kurgapkina at the age of 80 in a car accident near St. Petersburg. Nothing available in the news yet. Anyone with further news - it would be greatly appreciated.

Yes, that's what I heard as well. No official news yet.

What's a musical score version?

If you want to have the best CD recording of the Sleeping Beauty, I'd go for Antal Dorati - Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Not abridged in its original 3-CD release (nla), yet in the current version they criminally omitted the entr'acte after the Panorama in order to make it fit on 2 CDs. Evgeny Svetlanov is pretty exciting as well, with one of the most beautiful Panorama's ever comitted to disc, but the unbalanced, harsh Soviet-time recording may be considered a letdown.

What can I add to the title?

Indeed.

The Bolshoi will be performing in... Chapel Hill!!!!!!! in June.

http://www.carolinaperformingarts.org/perf...9a-1401d501e54b

Casting is as follows:

Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill

Don Quixote

June 10, 7.30 pm

Kitri - Maria Alexandrova

Basilio - Andrei Uvarov

June 11, 7.30 pm

Kitri - Yekaterina Shipulina

Basilio - Alexander Volchkov

Swan Lake

June 13, 8.00 pm

Odette-Odile - Anna Nikulina

Prince Siegfried - Andrei Uvarov

The Evil Genius - Artem Shpilevsky

June 14, 2.00 pm

Odette-Odile - Yekaterina Krysanova

Prince Siegfried - Alexander Volchkov

The Evil Genius – Yuri Baranov

I sadly missed out on the chance to buy tickets due to some rather complicated distractions, but am still (pointlessly?) searching for possible opening night tickets for Alexandrova in Don Q. I've seen Shipulina before, but can't quite imagine her as Kitri. Thoughts? Or thoughts on Swan Lake casting?

Kitri is not Shipulina's best role by any means, and Volchkov isn't really your dream Basilio either. If choice is allowed, go for Alexandrova/Uvarov in Don Q and Krysanova/Volchkov in Swan Lake. Krysanova has to my mind developed into one of the company's most interesting young ballerinas.

Just to add that Osipova and Lopatin were awarded a special prize from the jury for their La Sylphide pas de deux. Not quite the same of course, but still they weren't totally ignored.

A number of us seem to be following the Osipova Saga to Washington, DC on Sunday 21st, to see "Le Corsaire" at the Kennedy Center, where many of the better seats are less expensive than at the Met, but where they don't have the cheapest seats ($36 in the Family Circle). With the cheap bus fares mentioned above, it isn't necessarily more expensive to take the day round-trip on Sunday (matinee begins at 1:30) than to attend a performance in NY, and there are no conflicting ABT performances on Sundays. The "Le Corsaire" on the 19th would require a stayover or driving home in the wee hours of the morning. (The last cheap bus leaves at 11:59pm, which might be impossible to make, given the length of the ballet.)

I'm starting to feel sad for "TBA" on the 19th.

As it is now, Osipova's ABT Sylphide on the 19th has been cancelled. She will dance Le Corsaire in Washington with the Bolshoi.

Why is she not appearing in the previous stops of the Bolshoi tour? Because she is rehearsing with ABT. You can't win 'em all, but like somebody wrote earlier: there's a big chance they will invite her back at ABT.

Osipova is more than just jumps and port de bras --

check out the youtube clip of her mad scene as Giselle -- she's a powerful dance actress with tremendous imagination -- she's young yet, and her taste is not always perfect, but she is a tremendous artist in the very early stages of growth, and not just a stylist or technician....

or at least that's the way it looks from just seeing the evidence on youtube.

Check out 3 things -- the Giselle mad scene, her Sylphide, and her peasant pas de deux to see three VERY different kinds of artistry -- and then look again at her Kitri...

Precisely, one of the greatest (pleasant) suprises in Osipova's development is her ability to adjust her plastique and style to the very different ballets she has been performing in recent years. There is absolutely no trace of a one-ballet ballerina here.

Tickets go on sale this coming Thursday, April 9, for the Bolshoi's performances of 'Le Corsaire' at the Kennedy Center, June 16-21. Casting is here: http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/ind...amp;event=BJBSH

Great that they still list Alexei Ratmansky as Bolshoi Director of Ballet. Can somebody update them?

Maybe it’s time for you to renew your experience with Osipova, Leonid. Indeed she has moved on. When one doesn’t focus solely on this appalling youthful Esmeralda variation or a performance of Kitri a couple of years ago, but instead takes into account more recent roles she tackled, there are a few qualities popping up which shouldn’t be overlooked. There is an undeniable emotional intensity in all her performances, an enormous amount of feelings underpinning her every step and moment on stage – I personally find this fascinating and always had the impression she explodes on stage – or as a friend once said about her Giselle: “You can act, it’s really not necessary to die for real on stage every time at the end of the 1st Act.“ And lest we should forget, she has tremendous stage presence and magnetism. It’s great to dream about academic classical ballet as a sophisticated art, yet when it’s served without any soul (as it is for most of the time), it’s about as attractive as football on a rainy day. And the great examples of the past won’t come back either. As the octogenarian Russian dance writer Vadim Gaevsky wrote Osipova is the Kitri of the 21st century, with all that implies.

Osipova is a young artist, her dancing is far from flawless, and the biggest hurdle precisely might be that she needs to learn to control herself, but in spite of that I can't think of anybody else of her age (or indeed of any age) who has given me such pleasure for spending those £ 80 or £ 90, as you call it Leonid, as Osipova did over the last years, whether it was her Frivolity in Massine's Les Présages, her Kitri, In The Upper Room, Giselle, the Sylph, the Ballerina in The Bright Stream, Jeanne in Flames of Paris, and now recently Swanilda… she was worth every ruble of it. And one doesn’t really need to be a fan (damn the word!) to appreciate that.

Marc, How did the Vikharev Coppellia mime compare to Patricia McBridee's in The Danilova/Balanchine version? I've seen that and am HUGELY impressed with McBride's mime -- well, indeed, There's a celebrated essay by Arlene Croce in which she praised McBride's mime for all the reaons I would -- namely, that it's as intelligbile and natural as a sunrise.

I've always assumed that Danilova as a great Swanilda andtaught the mime very much as she was taught it --but that was St Leon's version. is the Vikhaoev reconstruction of St Leon or of Petipa's version? (Wasn't there one? THOSE would be interesting to compare.)

Paul, I can't help you there, since I haven't seen the Danilova/Balanchine version of Coppélia. Ideally we need video-recordings of both to compare the mime in detail. A very superficial comparison of the mime in Vikharev's staging and in Pierre Lacotte's for the Paris Opéra Ballet School made it seem that at least some of the mime in the French version has been updated, made to look more "contemporary", maybe by Aveline or Lacotte himself.

Following the premiere in Paris in 1870 Marius Petipa created his version of the ballet for St. Petersburg in 1884. He re-choreographed the dances, yet how far he went in this is impossible to tell. Ten years later Petipa revived the work for the Mariinsky Theatre with the help of Enrico Cecchetti (when Swanilda was danced by Pierina Legnani). It's this last version which Vikharev reconstructed, but it's guesswork to distinguish the different hands. You might say this is Coppélia combining the French, Russian and Italian schools. Vikharev gives an example in his programme notes. The Thème slave varié he considers Saint Léon reworked by Petipa, while Swanilda's solo is already more Italian school.

i take Marc's points to be the way things have long been w/ post-imperial/soviet ballet traditions.

the kind of silent-movie acting, however refined or clear, etc. that has been demonstrated by Maryinsky- and Moscow/Bolshoi lineage over the past decades needs to be distinguished from the kind of pantomime that the 'old' ballets ask (and that the notations often - if i understand these things correctly - spell out in words if not in specific gestures) and that any number of post-imperial balletmasters have discarded.

Gorsky would seem and Fokine would seem to have spearheaded the 'away with the old pantomime' movements in early 20th c. russia. (Balanchine was another one too i suppose, though he did retain various, isolated passages for the 'old world' ballets he staged at NYCB - the little prince in NUTCRACKER and various moments in HARLEQUINADE and in COPPELIA, for instance.)

on this account, can anyone who saw the recent Bolshoi/Vikharev COPPELIA tell how those specifice mime moments were rendered?

Exactly, as Robert points out, it's two different things we are considering.

N. Sergeyev indeed recorded the mime in words, but according to the specialists (Doug will be able to tell us more) printed piano reductions of the score of for example Beauty and Coppelia contain detailed remarks which allow to recreate the mime quite elaborately. There was nothing silent-movie style about the mime in the Bolshoi /Coppélia.