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rg

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Everything posted by rg

  1. doug, do i read your post rightly about wanting to see the blair staging of act iv. do you have the makarova/nagy abt telecast? it's of the blair staging unless i'm totally off this morning. tho' w/ makarova in the lead all the formal pantomime passages are cut, the last act is pretty much there as blair staged it. it used to be marketed, along w/ the baryshnikov/makarova 'giselle' but both, distributed by 'bel canto' if mem. serves, are now off the market but they are 'around.'
  2. firstly, apologies for neglecting to see that Jane Simpson had already made the original libretto's points w/regard to Odette's grandfather, etc. etc. secondly, to alexandra re: my point about the differences between the 1877 and the 1895 librettos, was given to note how in '77 the transformation was not a wicked deed but a useful, magical way for Odette and her friends to have some freedom from her stepmother's evil designs (her mother after all was a good fairy, and so i suppose Odette had inherited some magic powers). with modeste's re-write the transformation of the women into swans becomes a sinister way for the evil genie to control Odette and her band to his satisfaction. the point about 'my mother's tears' is certainly in recent (early-mid-20th c.) lore, and is there whenever the mime is performed nowadays, i just wonder what precisely that 'narrative' was in '95. maybe the stepanov spells it out, the way the '77 scenario specifically states: Odette's Narrative. (the '95 scenario does not fully give, at least in the version given in wiley, any mention of 'my mother's tears, etc. etc.' but perhaps beaumont does, which i'm not looking at right now.
  3. FYI: when trying to sort through the characters and motivations of "Swan Lake" it might be useful to refer to the original, 1877 libretto as well as that for the revised scenario of ‘95. Note that originally the swan transformations were a form of self-protection. Also note how originally it was Odette's grandFATHER's tears that formed the lake of the swans, not her mother's, etc. etc. Unfortunately the ‘95 libretto does not spell out the particulars of Odette's mime. (Though I suppose it may be written in the Stepanov notation, which Doug Fullington might be able to provide.) But it would seem that in the re-written scenario, the evil stepmother becomes the genie (Rothbart) and that the grieving grandfather becomes, perhaps, Odette's mother, whose tears, Odette's pantomime now-traditionally tells us, created the lake of the swans. And in the revised version the bewitchment is no longer a means of self-protection but a sinister spell. The following is from the 1877 libretto of ‘Swan Lake' i.e. "Lebedinoe ozero" with regard to the bewitchment of Odette into her swan form, from Roland John Wiley's "Tchaikovsky's Ballets" (p. 323 -324) "[Odette's narrative.] ‘Yes Listen...My name is Odette, my mother is a good fairy; against her father's will she fell in love with a noble knight and married him, but he destroyed her, and she was no more. My father married another, forgot about me, but my wicked stepmother, who was a witch, hated me and nearly killed me. But my grandfather took me in. The old man loved my mother very much and cried so about her that from his tears this lake was formed. He himself went to a place there in the deepest part and concealed me from people. Now, not long ago he began to indulge me, and is giving me full freedom to make merry. Thus by day with my friends we transform ourselves into swans, and merrily fly through the air, high, almost to heaven itself; and by night we play and dance here near our dear little old man. But my stepmother even now leaves neither me nor my friends in piece.' At this moment the sound of an owl rings out. ‘Did you hear?...This is her ominous voice,' says Odette, looking around alarmed. ‘Look, there she is!' In the runs appears a huge owl with eyes lit-up. [The appearance of an owl.] ‘She would have destroyed me long ago,' Odette continues. ‘But grandfather follows her vigilantly, and keeps me from harm. With my marriage the witch loses her chance to injure me, but until then only this crown saves me from her wickedness. [Odette: ‘with my marriage, etc.] And that is all, my story is not long.'" Of the revisions made by Modeste Tchaikovsky for the 1895 production Wiley states thus (p. 248): "Modeste substantially recast Act II. Siegfried has been separated from the other hunters when the latter discover the swans. Benno sends the rest to find the Prince, and then is accosted by the swan maidens. Apart from this scene, which is incidental to the main story line, Modeste clarified and abbreviated. Odette no longer has to mime a complicated family history: she and her friends are enchanted by an evil genie who may appear either in the form of an owl or a human. But the conditions of her release are different and more complex: instead of marriage a pledge of eternal love is required, from someone who has never pledged it to another, plus the sacrifice ofhis life. Odette warns Siegfried of the dangers that await him at the Princess's ball, and this predictive element, thanks to the reduction in unnecessary detail in the act as a whole, emerges more clearly now than it had in the original." The Third Tableau from the ‘95 scenario as published in Wiley, pp. 338 -39: "Siegfried, struck by her beauty, forbids his comrades to shoot. She expresses her thanks to him and explains that she, Princess Odette, and the young girls subject to her are the unhappy victims of a wicked genie who bewitched them. By day they are condemned to take the form of swans and only at night, near these ruins, can they regain their human form. Their master, in the form of an owl, watches over them. His dreadful spell will continue until somebody falls truly in love with her, for life. Only a person who has not sworn his love to any other can be her deliverer and return her to her previous state. Siegfried, enchanted, listens to Odette. At this moment an owl flies in, and having transformed itself into an evil genie appears in the ruins, having listened to the conversation, it disappears. Horror strikes hold of Siegfreid at the thought that he could have killed Odette when she was in the form of a swan. He breaks his bow and throws it away in indignation. Odette consoles the young Prince."
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