Tchaikovsky Ballet Music from The Maid of Orleans

[Michael]

What use, if any, has been made of the ballet music from Tchaikiovsky's The Maid of Orleans?

David Brown, in his critical biography of the composer, says of it: "Of course there are some positive things in The Maid of Orleans - even some fine ones . . . [The] ballet includes some worthwhile music, the dance for pages and dwarfs making a sudden retreat towards the eighteenth century for another of Tchaikovsky's rococo stylizations, while the final tumblers' dance, vigorous and characterful, provides by far the best instrumental movement in the whole opera."

The "another of [his] rococo stylizations" is the way Brown describes the score for Orchestral Suite "Mozartiana" by the way. Makes me intrigued about the incidental music from "The Maid" and what's been done with it dance-wise apart from the opera.

[Paul Parish]

i didn't see it when SF opera did it last year, but I DID hear from the SFOpera-ballet dancers that they loved the music and enjoyed being in it more than most things last season.

[rg]

a quick tho' hardly throrough search for something balletwise to ORLIANSKA DYEVA in the NYPL dance coll. came up empty.

the bolshoi op. presented this opera in a then-new, if mem. serves, designed by leventhal, but i cannot now recall if the ballet music was much used. i guess if it was it made no great impression on my memory.