Harlequinade

[BW]

I would love to get a hold of a recording of the music from this ballet but when I search Amazon it doesn't seem to bring me anything appropriate.

Does anyone have any suggestions. I am assuming that it's Ricardo Drigo that is the composer...is this correct?

Thanks!

[Mel Johnson]

The actual title is "Les Millions d'Arlequin", and the only part that has ever been recorded was the little pas de trois that was cobbled together by the Legat Brothers for Anna Pavlova to use in their pastiche of the "Doll Fairy". The rest of the score remains unrecorded to date, as far as I know.

[BW]

Hmm, I saw that versin "for sale" but it was only about three minutes long... I wonder how it was that my daughter's group performed to the music with a recording... Guess I'll have to ask.

[paulofnyc]

I love the music to Harlequinade also and have been searching to find a recording of it with no success.

[Natalia]

The rest of the score remains unrecorded to date, as far as I know.

The Act I "Serenata" was standard "palm court fare" during the early 1900s. The vocal version has been recorded by practically every tenor from Caruso on down. The instrumental version less so, although I finally settled on a lovely account of it by flautist James Galway [album title "Serenade"].

The Feodor Lopukhov staging of the full-length Arlekinada, for the St. Petersburg Maly (now Moussorgsky) Theater, was telecast in Russia a few years ago. BW, I wouldn't be surprised if a "recording" of that telecast made its way to your daughter's dance school. The Maly version's score is not performed in the sequence of the Balanchine-NYCB version....and Columbine's Act II adagio music is missing in the Russian version. [That makes me wonder if Balanchine took that solo's music from another Drigo ballet.]

[Mel Johnson]

Or even something that just sounded like Drigo. "Musique dansant" has a way of making the rounds of all available ballets. I can recall from my student days that sections of the "Alouettes" and "Scaramouches" made their ways into classroom music recordings, but nobody could place them until Balanchine set "Harlequinade" on NYCB. "Oh, is THAT where that's from?!"

[Majinsky]

Though originally Harlequinade was choreographed by Petipa, most of the choreography has been forgottened. What has been savaged from the original has been what Balanchine brought into his version. Though the score is called Millions d'Arlequin, the score has not been recorded onto a soundtrack yet, probably because it's not a very commonly performed ballet. Good luck though!

[Solor]

There is a video called "Ninel Kurgapkina" that has the Soviet version of the pas from Harlaqiunade.