Looking for La Esmeralda

[Guest Dick]

Hi,

I have been on quite a few Web sites looking for a full recording of La Esmeralda but with no success. Can anyone help?

Foretanks,

Richard

[rg]

i BELIEVE the answer is that there is no recording of ESMERALDA available and that none has ever been.

somewhere i have an oddity called 'esmeralda' and said to be pugni, a 1-disc item that is probably what passed for 'esmeralda' in soviet russian and/or eastern europe after early 20th century composers and orchestrators tinkered with the 19th c. score. anton simon wrote a version for gorsky if mem. serves and this may be enfolded into the recording i have (but cannot now put my hands on my copy).

there is a video showing the current post-soviet staging from the maly/mussorgsky th. production by boyarchikov. my PAL copy is dated 1998 but this too is the edited and re-worked version of the score, perhaps with more 'other' music than pugni.

elizabeth souritz's 'soviet choreography of the 1920s' discusses the early 20th revival of ESMERALDA and the impetus in the world of soviet ballet to 'rework' the pugni score, etc.

[Herman Stevens]

Recently I hit upon a copy of this 55 minute condensation of Esmeralda by the Maly / Mussorgsky Ballet on an "Immortal" DVD.

I wouldn't call it the greatest of shakes, but nonetheless I'm happy to have it.

It's not a live performance on stage; at times the camera work is really attempting to imitate a movie, with close ups of Elvira Khabibullina's Esmeralda looking happy, puzzled, anxious etc. Not my cup of tea. The space seems strangely constricted at times, even in the crowd scenes.

Obviously there are a lot of non-dance crowd scenes, and not all corps dancing is exquisite Petipa. One cannot help but notice these are not Russia's best dancers.

I'd say in this cruelly condensated version there are three big moments: a nice ebullient variation for Esmeralda when she meets Gringoire with a lot of romantic little jumps; the pdd when Gringoire seeks her out in her cell ("this baby loves me!") and she persuades him to drop poetry and serve as her dancing partner, and, of course, the grand pas de six at Phoebus' impending wedding. That's really what this version is all about.

Of course we know the pas de six from, for instance, the Komleva tape, but the funny thing is Khabibullina doesn't do bad at all in comparison. She is softer and younger and that doesn't hurt. It does help, dramatically, to see Phoebus and Fleur sitting close by as Esmeralda performs desperately (even though the fact that Phoebus is no feast for the eye takes away some of that drama); you really want her to whack that guy over the head with her little tambourine.

For the sake of brevity, I suppose, Esmeralda dies in the end. No Phoebus ex machina

There's a tiny little documentary at the start, with Maly's director Nikolai Boyarchikov saying a couple things about the history of the ballet. One cannot help but think a greater service would have been done to Esmeralda had a full version been taped, in a real theatre.

[Solor]

Dont worry Dick, your not missing much. I have the fim of the Malay dancing "La Esmeralda". As a ballet, it is interesting for its historical points. As far as the perfomance goes, the lead ballerina in the film is not all that great, and the ballet itself is so stupid!

I got a copy of this film from a friend that got it off TV in Europe. I was very excited to see it, finnaly for the first time, and to see the ballet that all the great ballerinas of old danced. But I was very dissapointed wiht the how obsured of this ballet.

Another thing I didnt like was that it was missing a few of the later interpolations of Petipa.