La Bayadere

[MinkusPugni]

In the Paris Opera version, there are pieces that aren't in my CD. Maybe my CD is just missing some but these are the Manou Dance, the Indian Dance, the Overture and the Slave Dance. Are these just missing from the CD or did Lanchberry compose them and not credit himself to them?

[rg]

there an several ballet-music-minded readers who post regularly on this site.

i'm not one of them, but in short, lanchbery worked directly w/ makarova, who could not during the soviet get the score from leningrad and who wanted to cut it for her staging, which differed from the standard version being done at the kirov theater. (Paris used the leningrad version that nureyev's stager, ninel kurgakina knew well.)

to date the maryinksy/kirov has not recorded either on CD or DVD the re-constructed 'original' minkus score used for the vikharev 'reconstruction' of BAYADERE in 2002 - that version now has a current maryinsky copyright, i understand.

makarova cut the 'danse manu' as well as the 'indian dance' and the so-called 'slave dance' - this last named was added by k.sergeyev as a number for his wife, ballerina natalia dudinskaya, and s. kaplan as the unnamed 'slave' and is likely from ESMERALDA (and thus maybe by Pugni) as it appears in some recent ESMERALDA stagings from leningrad/petersburg, where it appears as part of the betrothal scene of phoebus and fleur de lis - this number was not included in the vikharev staging.

there are no recordings of the 'original' BAYADERE score that i know of.

any number of replies are likely to be made in reference to the CORSAIRE recording you mention elsewhere.

[Hans]

As far as I know, they've performed the Manu/Manou dance in Russia since before Lanchberry was around.

[rg]

BAYADERE'S 'danse manou' is in most productions - it's been famous in russia over the ballet's history often b/c the little girls attending the central dancer w/ a water jug on her head later become well-known ballerinas: ulanova was one of these "little" girls in her early years on stage.

if memory serves of the several BAYADERE productions on stage these days only makarova's cuts the dance.

the problem is that the currently available recording is the arrangement of the score by lanchbery, w/o this and the other previously mentioned dances and w/ lanchbery's own handiwork, which clement crisp once wrote was distinguished by 'gratutitous burblings'