The 50th anniversary of Baryshnikov's defection

[Meliss]

20 hours ago, lmspear said:

  If you don't see the peasants suffering, the ruling class can remain heroic, for storytelling purposes, on on the Bolshoi stage. 

But are the peasants suffering in the canonical version of Swan Lake?

[Helene]

What is the canonical version?  One in the Stepanov notations? A Soviet version?

[Meliss]

16 hours ago, Helene said:

Had the Communist government decided that ballet was elitist and too closely associated with the monarchy and Imperial Ballet and should be banned, or had they decided to ban the Petipa classics on ideological grounds, the entire classical ballet tradition in Russia could have been lost. 

But we were not discussing the Imperial ballet itself, but how Swan Lake is connected with ideology. It seems to me that it is not connected. It's just a beautiful fairy tale.

[Meliss]

26 minutes ago, Helene said:

What is the canonical version?  One in the Stepanov notations? A Soviet version?

Why, the classical one. Staged by Petipa and Ivanov.

[Helene]

We were discussing how the pre-revolution version of Swan Lake, which came out of the Imperial Ballet, made and created to entertain and flatter royalty and nobility, would have to be compatible with the ideological standards of the Soviets in to be allowed to be performed.  Fairy tales with royal subjects were a hard sell: they were not exactly up to the definition of socialist realism, doctrines to which much art was not and was suppressed.  The only fairy tales officially allowed were the happily-ever-after of Marxist-Leninist ideology.

Some ballet fans influential in the Lenin regime did some fast talking and, seemingly miraculously won there case.
 

The Imperial Ballet was performing the Petipa/ Ivanov version plus revisions in the teens until WEI and the revolution— Petipa had been dead for 15 years by then — so it is revenant to any discussion of lineage.
 

 

[Meliss]

15 minutes ago, Helene said:

We were discussing how the pre-revolution version of Swan Lake, which came out of the Imperial Ballet, made and created to entertain and flatter royalty and nobility, would have to be compatible with the ideological standards of the Soviets in to be allowed to be performed.

There is nothing ideological about Swan Lake. Grigorovich was forced to change the tragic ending simply because in fairy tales, good must overcome evil.

[Helene]

Not according to Marxist-Leninist ideology, where all art had to pass the sniff test.

[California]

1 hour ago, Meliss said:

There is nothing ideological about Swan Lake. Grigorovich was forced to change the tragic ending simply because in fairy tales, good must overcome evil.

I had understood that the atheist Soviets also rejected the idea of happiness in an afterlife in heaven.  

[Drew]

11 hours ago, Meliss said:

There is nothing ideological about Swan Lake. Grigorovich was forced to change the tragic ending simply because in fairy tales, good must overcome evil.

Saying good must overcome evil in fairy tales IS an ideology.  But even if you disagree, that's not exactly what Tchaikovsky was doing. Certainly not in his first version of the ballet (for Moscow--before Ivanov and Petipa got their hands on it).  And, to stick to Petipa/Ivanov: In therevisions they made to the libretto good does overcome evil, but only by sacrificing itself in this life to receive a reward in the next life.  When you get rid of that sacrifice you change the meaning of the ballet. In my opinion, not for the better. (Grigorovich himself has changed his ending since the 'happy' version done during the Soviet era where Siegfried just defeats Rothbart in this world.) However, Grigorovich introduced many other changes to the ballet including cutting character dancing and mime, changing the nature of villain Rothbart etc. etc.

But I think all this is a separate issue from the more basic question you asked which has a much simpler answer that doesn't require debating ideology or whose version is better, or why one production does this and another does that  etc. You asked specifically why Nureyev and Baryshnikov felt free to change the ballet from "those who actually staged these ballets the first time" (quoting your post). Well, the versions Nureyev and Baryshnikov were dancing in the Soviet Union had themselves been repeatedly changed from what had been staged "the first time"--even during Petipa's lifetime changes were happening and later, and much more dramatically, after the Revolution.  Restricting ourselves to the Soviet Union, there were multiple productions--to take the example I know directly, the Grigorovich productions (plural) for the Bolshoi are very different from what Konstantin Sergeyev staged at the Kirov (now Mariinsky).  Staging the classics had always involved some interpretive license--especially because we don't really know exactly how they were done "the first time" and some theatrical conventions have changed --changes that different choreographers approach differently.. Nureyev and Baryshnikov and every other choreographer who stages the classics knows these problems. I believe these revisions are not always good ones--in particular I think Swan Lake has suffered from them--but that is a separate issue.

As for what was going on in the West--Nikolai Sergeyev based the productions he staged in the United Kingdom on the Stepanov notations he had spirited out of Russia at the time of the Revolution. Because they were based on notations done at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, they were considerably closer to how the ballets were done "the first time" but even his productions were not exact reconstructions of the kind some artists have tried to do since the late 20th and 21st centuries (Vikharev, Ratmansky, Burlaka--probably others I don't know about). I believe such reconstructions are never going to be exact anyway for reasons that have been debated and discussed elsewhere at great length. But separate from such historical reconstructions, there have been many productions in the West before and since the era of Nureyev and Baryshnikov -- mostly since -- and some are traditional and many others, not.

To speak personally: I haven't seen Nureyev's productions in the theater and haven't liked what I've seen of them on video; I never saw Baryshnikov's Swan Lake live or on video. I genuinely dislike Grigorovich's most recent (Post-Soviet) staging--which I have seen multiple times in the theater with great casts including Zakharova and Smirnova--and which does not have a happy ending--he changed that--and actually cuts some of the greatest music Tchaikovsky ever wrote. I did see Baryshnikov's Don Quixote which was, from what I could tell,  quite traditional even if I assume it was not an exact replica of what he danced in Russia.  In general I prefer traditional productions of nineteenth-century ballets, but I don't think traditional productions or even historical reconstructions of the kind Vikharev tried to do can be perfect renditions of how the ballets were danced originally.

Edited August 15 by Drew

[Meliss]

11 hours ago, Helene said:

Not according to Marxist-Leninist ideology, where all art had to pass the sniff test.

If you have your own theater, you stage your own play, but they don't let you do it for ideological reasons, this is censorship. If you work at the state theater, you are entitled to the author's version only if it corresponds to the repertory policy of the theater.

Edited August 15 by Meliss

[Meliss]

9 hours ago, California said:

I had understood that the atheist Soviets also rejected the idea of happiness in an afterlife in heaven.  

Well, it's clear without censorship that happiness during life and promises of happiness after it are different things.

[Meliss]

7 hours ago, Drew said:

Saying good must overcome evil in fairy tales IS an ideology. 

Is it? It's just a tradition. All literature textbooks note that a characteristic feature of a fairy tale is a happy ending.

7 hours ago, Drew said:

good does overcome evil, but only by sacrificing itself in this life to receive a reward in the next life. 

It is unlikely that most viewers would approve of such a concept. People dream of happiness in this life.

7 hours ago, Drew said:

I believe these revisions are not always good ones--in particular I think Swan Lake has suffered from them--but that is a separate issue.

I totally agree here. If you're going to change the classic version, do something brilliant, not this one:

Edited August 15 by Meliss

[volcanohunter]

Swan Lake was conceived as a tragedy. As Drew noted, the original version produced during Tchaikovsky's lifetime, for which he wrote music to correspond to the original libretto, had a particularly bleak ending, without the apotheosis of the 1895 production. 

The first production was not successful, but it is demonstrably false that audiences reject tragedies out of hand. The genre is thousands of years old, 19th-century opera was positively swamped with corpses, and the 1895 production of Swan Lake ended with a double suicide. Nearly all Western productions of Swan Lake have a tragic ending, and tickets sell out nevertheless.

Not surprisingly, given his personal history, Baryshnikov thought a lot about the nature of suicide, and the idea self-sacrifice for love was central to his production. In particular he saw the ending of Swan Lake as Wagnerian (perhaps a reference to Isolde's Liebestod).

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/07/arts/baryshnikov-searches-for-the-heart-of-swan-lake.html

[Meliss]

3 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

 

Not surprisingly, given his personal history, Baryshnikov thought a lot about the nature of suicide

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/07/arts/baryshnikov-searches-for-the-heart-of-swan-lake.html

The most surprising thing for me was that the same thing happened to Elena Chernyshova's mother and Susan Jaffe's mother. It was an incredible coincidence.

 

"the double-suicide of Odette and Prince Siegfried, who choose finally to die for love and liberate the corps of swans from the spell of Von Rothbart - or Von Rotbart, the variation American Ballet Theater uses."

To die for love? Was not it better to kill Rotbart?

 

[volcanohunter]

In Odette’s mime, which Soviet productions eliminated, she explains to Siegfried that only a vow of eternal fidelity to her can free her. That's why Rothbart concocts a plan to seduce Siegfried into breaking his vow. Killing Rothbart wouldn't work. It would leave Odette and the other maidens trapped in swan form forever.

The Soviet practice of pulling a wing off Rothbart and having him stagger around the stage with one arm wrapped around his back is perhaps the silliest spectacle in all of ballet.

Edited August 15 by volcanohunter
video link

[Helene]

I didn’t realize there were private ballet theaters presenting work during Soviet times, theaters that were free to present what they wanted regardless of ideology.

[Drew]

4 hours ago, Meliss said:

The most surprising thing for me was that the same thing happened to Elena Chernyshova's mother and Susan Jaffe's mother. It was an incredible coincidence.

 

"the double-suicide of Odette and Prince Siegfried, who choose finally to die for love and liberate the corps of swans from the spell of Von Rothbart - or Von Rotbart, the variation American Ballet Theater uses."

To die for love? Was not it better to kill Rotbart?

 

The sacrifice made by their love breaks the spell and, as in the passage you quoted, frees all of the remaining swan maidens.  It's not JUST "dying" for love: it's a redemptive act. So it's an altogether different version of the story. As described above, in the original Ivanov/Petipa version Odette prevents Siegfried from Killing Rothbart in Act II  (or Act I, scene ii) because--as she explains to him --then the spell will be eternal.  In view of her mime, just killing Rothbart is not a good idea. And that version of the story is the one Petipa and Ivanov told. Petipa and Ivanov--not "n'importe qui"...

In the original libretto (the Moscow version by Reisinger that preceded the Petipa-Ivanov version) the two lovers drown, and to me it seems even more desperate because the drowning is seemingly without the redemptive quality of their deaths leading to liberation for others.   (In accounts I have read, Tchaikovsky was thinking of earlier romantic ballets in which supernatural figures and human ones fall in love with dire results--like La Sylphide. One might also think about the nexus of love, death, and redemption in Wagner--a composer who was important to Tchaikovsky and obviously had an impact on Swan Lake.)

By now there are all kinds of other variations on the ending by modern stagings even when one restricts oneself to the stagings that still try to maintain a close relation to the Petipa/Ivanov choreography: for example, some have Odette kill herself while Siegfried lives on sadder but wiser etc. etc. One revisionary 20th-century staging that I haven't seen but would like to is Neumeier's. But generally, a traditional staging close to the original (Petipa/Ivanov) libretto moves me the most.

The ending of Swan Lake has often been discussed on this site: my position has remained the same through all of these discussions, but if you do a search you will find others who prefer the Soviet stagings.

Edited August 15 by Drew

[Meliss]

6 hours ago, Helene said:

I didn’t realize there were private ballet theaters presenting work during Soviet times, theaters that were free to present what they wanted regardless of ideology.

Precisely because they did not exist in the USSR, Soviet choreographers staged what their superiors wanted them to. Often their desires coincided.

[Meliss]

4 hours ago, Drew said:

The sacrifice made by their love breaks the spell and, as in the passage you quoted, frees all of the remaining swan maidens. 

From my point of view, in this version it is unclear what Rothbart still wants. Why does he need such a condition as the death of the prince and Odette in exchange for the disenchantment of the other girls? He could have come up with something simpler).

Edited August 15 by Meliss

[Meliss]

7 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

The Soviet practice of pulling a wing off Rothbart and having him stagger around the stage with one arm wrapped around his back is perhaps the silliest spectacle in all of ballet.

I totally agree with that. I wonder who came up with the idea.

[Drew]

3 hours ago, Meliss said:

From my point of view, in this version it is unclear what Rothbart still wants. Why does he need such a condition as the death of the prince and Odette in exchange for the disenchantment of the other girls? He could have come up with something simpler).

Rothbart himself is destroyed by their action --he doesn't free the maidens. I admit there isn't a shred of realism-

For the libretto of the Petipa-Ivanov version see The Petipa Society webpage on Swan Lake (I will put links below). I don't think that site is as clear at giving its sources as I would want it to be and there may be a few mistakes, but the overall information is very helpful and detailed.

3  links that might be of interest--

Petipa Society website (you will need to scroll down for the 1895 libretto): https://petipasociety.com/swan-lake/

Decent video of Mckenzie's ABT production: the Final four minutes of the ballet. begin at about 1:45:46 -- Murphy and Corella. The rest of the production I am not prepared to defend but I like the main aspects of this ending--I'll give a Royal Ballet link below this one. (Remember in this version, Siegfried can't just kill Rothbart outright because then the spell would be permanent.)

An older Royal Ballet production with Makarova and Dowell --I think basically by De Valois, but I'm not sure. The video isn't the greatest and the suicide itself isn't staged as spectacularly as it is in ABT's production--but still, it's Makarova and Dowell.  The boat at end is supposed to be carrying the lovers into the next world:

 

 

 

 

Edited August 16 by Drew

[Helene]

When you dump the mime, you lose the story.  If it's unclear, it's usually because of the cuts.

The curse, which it would be called if the character was Baroness von Rothbart, has to include all of the swans: it's part of what keeps Odette from either killing herself, fleeing, killing von Rothbart herself, or allowing Siegfried, who has a clear shot, from killing von Rothbart.  Any of these would doom the flock for eternity.  She's responsible for them all.

[Meliss]

On 8/13/2024 at 4:21 PM, California said:

Baryshnikov had never performed this role before and found Siegfried to be a boring character

It seems to me like "fox and grapes". Baryshnikov was simply not given this role because of his unsuitable appearance, which is why he said that the role was boring. In fact, he wanted to play such roles:

[Meliss]

12 hours ago, Drew said:

The video isn't the greatest

Thank you, but my YouTube is blocked, unfortunately, so I can't watch the video.

[Meliss]

9 hours ago, Helene said:

The curse, which it would be called if the character was Baroness von Rothbart, has to include all of the swans

Thank you. Now it is clear that Rothbart took a responsible approach to the matter of the spell).