R S Edgecombe

With regard to the pronunciation of Agon, it's worth pointing out that the O sound there is the omega (literally big O), as opposed to the omicron (literally small O). Scholarly convention, as it was passed on to me, requires that omegas are pronounced to rhyme with loan, and omicrons to rhyme with pot. Something similar applies to Latin quantities. I remember once saying " in MEEdias res" in a tutorial, and my lecturer corrected me by asking, "Would you walk down Picadilly, with a poppy or a lily in your mEEdieval hand???" I think, Alexandra, that your pronunciation of ballet might reflect an east coast rather than a general habit in America. Many Americans tend to accent the last syllable in what French people would regard as even-syllabled words, as for example garAHge. I had to walk out of the film of The Chorus Line because I went to see to see it on a hot summer's day in a thin cotton shirt, and found Arctic temperatures prevailing inside the cinema. The management refused to adjust the thermostat, and so I had to exit to avoid hypothermia--but not before I had heard a song that went something like "At the ballAY, at the ballAY"!

It might be worth mentioning the provenance of this music, though many at this site will know it already. When Sobeschanskaya took over Odette from Karpakova after the Moscow premiere, she wanted a better pas de deux than Reisiger had provided her predecessor. So she went off to St Petersburg to canvas Petipa, who obliged with a pas de deux to Minkus music. When she returned, Tchaikovsky refused to permit the interpolation, and wrote new music over the original Minkus rhythms. One might call this a palimpsest after the recycled papyrus manuscripts in the ancient world, where the original script, though officially scraped off, still glimmers behind the text that has been superimposed on it. You can hear the Minkus connection most clearly in the male variation, which is very like the G major waltz attached to the Don Quixote pas de deux (actually a pas de quatre) in the original Moscow version of Petipa's ballet.

Strangely enough, given his reputation for musical naivete, I found several 5/4 waltzes by Pugni in the University Library at Cambridge, one of which might have come from a ballet, though I'm not sure about my facts at this distance in time. When I discovered them, I notified John Warrack, the Tchaikovsky scholar, and he said there had been many experiments with quintiple time before T. I know that Tchaikovsky rebuked Arensky for using 5/4 in his tone poem about Marguerite and Armand, though the date of this critical letter escapes me. He seemed to think it an affectation there, and implied it could have been notated differently--but I can't remember the details. They're in David Brown's study of T.

Thank you for an extremely interesting post, Mel. Strangely enough, I was playing Pas de Quatre on the piano this morning,. blissfully unaware that a Strauss melody was slipping through my fingers. I know hardly any music by Strauss Sr, though I have listened to his contemporary, Josef Lanner, whose Schoenbrunner (sp?) waltz figures in Petrushka. I wasn't aware of the Saint-Saens anecdote either. I had always assumed that the judgement was being passed on Rossini himself and his florid style, dated in terms of the taste-canons of 1886. I wonder if you would be kind enough to point me to the Freischuetz allusion in Giselle. I have it on the authority of Ivor Guest that it's there, but it always seems to slip past me when I listen. But then, I don't know Freischuetz very well.

Hans, I am sure that your pas de deux must the pas de dix I mentioned in another post, minus the supporting quartet of couples. If you are able to get the full version, it would be worth your while because they do extremely interesting things--too interesting, perhaps, to be absorbed from the corner of one's eye, which might be why the Kirov cuts them out in your version. After reading your post earlier this evening, I compared the danseur's variation with the second male solo from the Burgmueller pas de deux (in the Bolshoi version, which differs totally from the RB-derived text current in South Africa). I agree that they are rather similar. Each uses two identical enchainements, a diagonal of cabrioles doubles devants and advancing attitudes sautes down centre stage, though in a different sequence. I think I have read somewhere that Petipa often used to assign the choreography of male variations to Johansson (? not sure of this), which might account for the recycling of a rather limited set of dance topoi in pre-Fokine variations for the man. While I was rewatching the tape in response to your post, I became aware for the first time that the adagio seems to quote a passage from the aria "Nel cor piu non mi sento" from Paisiello's La molinara--which I know only because Beethoven wrote a set of variations upon it. I would be interested to learn if Mel Johnson agrees, or whether he thinks it's just a coincidental overlap of a fairly standard melodic sequence. If the Paisiello is really there, on the other hand, it might be an air parlant that connects the pas de deux to the action of the ballet as a whole. Does anybody know if the Carnival in Venice pas de deux/pas de dix ever made its way into Satanella?

I'm afraid my memory of the matter is a bit dim, but I seem to recall that A H-G once wrote an article about her reconstruction of the Vivandiere pas de six in Dancing Times. In it (if I am not misremembering), she says that Anthony Tudor raised an eyebrow at the pirouette saute a la seconde she had assigned to the male, saying that this was too early a ballet to have featured a step so virtuosic. But, A H-G points out, the person independently responsible for the Kirov reconstruction of Saint-Leon's text (I seem to recall a Russian name, not Lacotte, but I could well be wrong) had come to the identical conclusion with regard to this passage--and so she felt vindicated. If someone has back issues of Dancing Times they might try to look up the piece and correct any misinformation in this posting.

I want to subjoin my grateful thanks to RG for these splendid photographs. The one of MK is absolutely ravishing. I wish contemporary danseuses were as full-bodied as she is; I much prefer the contour of plumpish arms to thin ones, which always a little angular at wrist and elbow.

There is a duel in the Gluck/Angiolini Don Juan which makes 1761 a definite terminus a quo for echt sword fighting in ballet, and there must certainly have been a duel in Galeotti's Romeo and Giulietta of 1812, though Bournonville was rather scathing about it, and said it had more to do with Steibelt's opera than Shakespeare's play.

Thank you very much indeed for this exhaustive response, rg. I am extremely grateful. I haven't yet got round to consulting Beaumont, but shall do so soon. Do you suppose that Legat revised the Petipa text as extensively as Petipa himself revised, say, the Coralli/Perrot Giselle? I would have thought that he would have been more circumspect with an obvious master. The male choreography in my tape is almost certainly souped up and Sovietized, but the female variation seems to be vintage Petipa.

I greatly enjoyed this thread--having at last learned to navigate my way around the site. I was amused by your flying veil observation, Alexandra. Clearly falling veils have remained in vogue, for I recall one in Agnes de Mille's Oklahoma ballet--if indeed it was her choreography that was staged in the Cambridge Theatre, London, in the early eighties. I was sitting near the stage, and was puzzled by a bucket suspended from one of the lighting battens. Its function became apparent when it tilted a veil on to the ballerina during the ballet. With all good wishes Rodney

Mel, it might also be worth mentioning the English gigue that Tchaikovsky initially composed for the ballet after Petipa had mooted a suite of national dances for the Act II divertissement. It can be heard in Graeme Murphy's version of the ballet, where it accompanies Clara's arrival in Australia. By the way, I forgot to thank you for your Carnival in Venice posting in the ballet history section. My video attributes the music for the pas de dix to Pugni, but it has been harmonically and orchestrally altered by a Soviet hand. With all good wishes Rodney

Many thanks for these extremely helpful leads. I shall consult the Beaumont book tomorrow. My tape features Kirov dancers in (I think) a Japanese theatre. I agree with Doug Fullington (I hope I have remembered his name correctly) that there are some Bournonville touches in the choreography--or perhaps the aging Petipa simply drew again on the style of the French ballets he known in his youth, and which Bournonville preserved so faithfully in his own idiom.

Could someone please precis the narrative of Petipa's Talisman for me, and explain how the surviving pas de deux fits into the action? I am curious to know what its various stages signify. In my videotape of the piece, the woman wears a ballet paraphrase of the chlamys (a la Symphonic Variations or the RB Sylvia), and the man a ragged and asymmetrical costume. He appears to be rather tempestuous when he enters, but is placated by his partner's deferential arabesques. That enchainement is repeated, with roles reversed, toward the end of the pas de deux. The whole is capped, most unusually for Petipa, though not for Bournonville, with a mirror dance in contrary motion to the music of the entrada. I haven't been able to find out anything about this ballet from my reference books. Also, could someone please tell me the source of the Carnival in Venice pas de dix. A friend told me it might have been inserted in a Satanella revival, but that he wasn't entirely sure. Many thanks. With all good wishes Rodney Edgecombe