Bolshoi's Swan Lake

[Rosa]

According to Amazon just this past Tuesday a new DVD of the Bolshoi's Swan Lake was released, starring the great Plisetskaya. This is not the 80-minute SL from 1957, but seems to be the whole ballet at 150 minutes. Her partner is Bogatirev.

http://www.amazon.com/Swan-Lake-Tchaikovsk...9723&sr=1-3

[carbro]

Wow, thanks, Rosa!

If you enlarge the image of the cover, the date is 1976. And the release date -- two days ago!

I'm not familiar with this recording. Anyone seen it?

[chrisk217]

This recording makes me a little sad - they should have done it 5-10 years before. There are moments of greatness but not the dancer I love here.

The production is the Grigorovich one and the video is very very dark.

[MakarovaFan]

Is this the one with Maris Liepa as Von Rothbart?

[rg]

the INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY OF BALLET notes that Maris Liepa first danced Prince Siegfried in Messerer's 'after Gorsky' staging of SWAN LAKE but it gives no indication that he danced Rothbart in this or any other production of SWAN LAKE - i'm not suggesting the dictionary's chronology is the last word, but i can't think of any instance when Liepa was connected to the role of Rothbart.

i know the grigorovich production had 'princely' dancers in this secondary role, but i haven't previously heard of Liepa's being in this role.

anyone have a source or a date for when this role might have enters Liepa's repertory?

[carbro]

Can't answer rg's Liepa question, but here's the copy on the dvd's packaging:

Tchaikovsky

Swan Lake

Maya Plisetskaya

[photo]

Bogatirev * Efimov

Bolshoi Ballet * 1976

Looks like Efimov is Rothbart here.

[FauxPas]

This was put out on a weird Russian label with a section missing from the end of Act III. I actually prefer Plisetskaya here to the 1958 where she looks heavy and dances without poetry. I think this filming has her very best Odette.

Alexander Bogatyrev is Siegfried and Boris Efimov is Von Rothbart.

[FauxPas]

Now that I know that you are able to do this, I will post a Youtube link to a clip from this performance:

This is not from the same source as the VAI release, as I would know since MarloManners66 and I are on such intimate terms that well, we are often thinking the same thing at the same time and have the same taste in everything... (How could such thing be...it's almost like we are the same person...)

You will find more selections from this performance if you click on various links on the right.

[sejacko]

This is not the 80-minute SL from 1957, but seems to be the whole ballet at 150 minutes. Her partner is Bogatirev.

Is it though? The full 1877 score with no Drigo additions/changes?

Now that I know that you are able to do this, I will post a Youtube link to a clip from this performance:

This is not from the same source as the VAI release..

The clip posted here of the Act II PDD is with the Drigo-amended version with the slow ending and *not* the fast ending in the original 1877 score..

? ?

[rg]

the Bolshoi Ballet's Messerer(?) staging of SWAN LAKE almost certainly comes down to this production from Gorsky's early 20th c. version which is based in the 1895 Petipa/Ivanov staging to the Drigo, etc. amended score. I've never known any 20th c. Russian/Soviet version of SWAN LAKE to use anything but the Drigo-ended music for the Odette/Prince pas de deux in the first lakeside sc. Even the Burmeister prod. which makes extended use of the 1877 score reverts to the Gorsky/Drigo 'text' for the lakeside sc.

Except for Balanchine's use of Tchaikovsky's '77 ending, for the Odette/Siegfried pas de deux in his one-act SWAN LAKE, which hasn't been seen much since Peter Martins's staging entered NYCB repertory, tho' happily Miami City Ballet will stage the work this fall, i know of no other evident use of the 'original' pas de deux ending in major company stagings of SWAN LAKE in the last, or current, century.

[sejacko]

According to the VAI website this production is 140 mins long. Typically the Drigo version clocks in at well under 2 hours, eg. the recent (very disappointing) Gergiev recording of the Drigo version is around 110 mins. Seems a very big difference in the timings if this is indeed the "standard" 1895 score. Maybe it was wishful thinking on my part to think that a "centenary" production (1877/1977) would involve the actual 100 year-old score, and not the 1895 one!

I've never seen the lakeside PDD (good name, since the Act-breaks are not the same in all productions) done with the original Allegro ending either, but no doubt RG has seen many more different productions than I have!

I do think that in, for instance, the Sleeping Beauty's Vision Scene the short Allegro section acts as a welcome bit of "light relief" after the intensity of the main PDD. But then I guess in the Drigo version the Dance of the Little Swans, moved to its new position after this PDD, serves the same purpose.

Jack

[Mel Johnson]

Gorski-based productions make use of several pieces of music not included in the 1895 score, such as the "Dance of the Dwarfs" in the beginning of the ballroom scene. They also tend to include repeats not in the revised version.

[rg]

As noted above the only production I know that uses the ending Tchaikovsky composed to conclude the “Love Duet” for Odette and Siegfried is in Balanchine’s 1951 SWAN LAKE – I have no idea what he arranged for the 4-act staging he created for the Ballet du Grand Théâtre, Geneva, in 1969 (“after Lev Ivanov, Marius Petipa, and Nicholas Beriozoff”).

I suppose there might be some other production still on the boards today that also incorporates this original ending to the pas de deux, but it’s not likely a prominent staging, or one of us would be naming it.