Music for Esmeralda - Pas de Fleurs

[Joseph]

I realize I'm asking the impossible, but does anyone know of a decent recording of the music for the Pas de Fleur's as done in Bolshoi Ballet's replication of Cesare Pugni's Esmeralda?

[RhinoHaggis]

😬.  Hopefully we can at least identify the music.

I thought the Grand Pas de Fleurs was a later insertion with music largely by Drigo -- in other words, that there is no "original" music by Pugni for this Pas ... and that -as a standalone insertion- everyone agreed on the music.   A quick nose around youtube shows this last assumption to be hilariously false.

Is this the music you mean?:

 

[RhinoHaggis]

It also occurs to me you, if you still have a computer that can read them, you could purchase the dvd or blu-ray of the Bolshoi production.  I have never understood why in the internet era the big theaters don't have a digital marketplace with their recordings, since they would have the field entirely to themselves.  Alas.

I hope this is not too far off topic.  Years ago I read through the mp4 standard for Blu-Ray, and although there is no way to know how someone will prepare their audio -- and the audio is indeed compressed-- my takeaway was that the standard can support as high quality audio as can be obtained without giving up compression altogether.   The audio quality should be as good as anything you purchase for digital download that is not explicitly a .wav.

Similarly, the audio standard for the MPEG-2 DVD format we all now know as .mp3.  It is easy to extract the audio as a standalone file without any alteration.  It should be the same for Blu-Ray.

[volcanohunter]

The Bolshoi’s Esmeralda was never issued on DVD. If anything is available on the market, it would be a pirated recording.

[RhinoHaggis]

Ahhhhh I saw something on a quick google search and did not realize.  Sorry

[Joseph]

3 hours ago, RhinoHaggis said:

😬.  Hopefully we can at least identify the music.

I thought the Grand Pas de Fleurs was a later insertion with music largely by Drigo -- in other words, that there is no "original" music by Pugni for this Pas ... and that -as a standalone insertion- everyone agreed on the music.   A quick nose around youtube shows this last assumption to be hilariously false.

Is this the music you mean?:

 

Yes! This is the scene I mean. OK, so this is a Drigo interpolation? 

[RhinoHaggis]

24 minutes ago, Joseph said:

Yes! This is the scene I mean. OK, so this is a Drigo interpolation? 

In principle, yes.  Unfortunately I am not very familiar with la Esmerelda music and I don't know if this video is the usual music. I hope someone more knowledgeable will chime in and confirm or deny.  👀     The BalletAlert thread on the 2009 Bolshoi version is here:

... but didn't clarify the question for me.  According to the Ballet Music Handbook,  The Grand Pas de Fleur from Burlaka's 2009 production is music previously inserted into Petipa's Bluebeard, in 7 parts:
a. Grand valse (Drigo)
b. Adage (Pugni)
c. Var. I (Pugni)
d. Var II (Drigo)
e. Variation -- Phoebus de Châteaupers (Drigo)
f. Var -- Fleur de Lys - "Pizzicato"  (Drigo)
g. Grand Coda (Pugni)

but it's hard to reconcile that with the online video 😅.   In any case, the music has all the signs of being from even-more-obscure sources, so this might be a dead end.

 

One thing I have been meaning to check on for awhile is the catalogues of labels like Naxos who recorded an enormous amount of uncommon music.  I used to work in a bookstore and based on what we saw through the store and from reps,  I feel like searches in iTunes Store, Spotify, Amazon... etc.  only turn up a fraction of their library.   I'll have a nose around in the next few days and post back here. 

[Joseph]

This is fantastic and most appreciated indeed! Thank you so very much, I'll stay abreast and if I hear or learn of anything will let you know as well! 🙂

[RhinoHaggis]

It really is a wild goose chase, isn't it?

The Naxos online catalogue is here: https://www.naxos.com/Catalogue
Category browsing is only by title, so you have to do a keyword search.  As far as I can tell, there is nothing.  Both "Esmeralda" and "Bluebeard" turn up nothing (aside from Bartok and Paul Dukas).  Likewise working backward: "Drigo" and "Pugni".  I even tried misspellings (like mine above: Esmerelda). The only Pugni in their entire catalogue (music, video...) is la Fille de Pharaon  at the Bolshoi, and (when misspelled "pouni") the familiar Sofia Orchestra Paquita.

I was so surprised, I tried some other searches ("le Corsaire", "barbe-bleue") to make sure items came up and were cross-referenced... and indeed they were. (e.g. everything catalogued under "barbe-bleu"  is also retrieved by "blue beard").

Some targeted googling turned up a DVD on eBay of a Mikhailovsky (Mussorgsky) Theater performance... but on their website there is no indication of them selling merchandise. As a litmus test I went to the Paris Opera Garnier site, and there is no indication there either.  You have to follow a link to "opera Garnier themed stationery", and there is a catalogue of exactly 17 dvd titles.  Inexplicable, since they do sell videos and music on-site at the shop for current productions (or at least they used to).  I don't like the idea that the only way to find recordings from theaters might be to call them one at a time. 🤣

Not sure when I'll get around to it, but next stop for me will be a University library here in the States.  There are search resources to figure out what has been published year-to-year, and also massive media collections  (like the Smithsonian) that are otherwise behind paywalls.  It'd be nice to find at least one place that has historical recordings of interest lying around.   Not just for this search, but for All The Others.  I'm at a dead end for now : (.

[choriamb]

I'm sure you've already considered it, but I think the NYPL for the Performing Arts' database is showing some potential hits, full-length and in excerpt from galas (although only viewable on-site).  See https://www.nypl.org/research/research-catalog/search?q=Esmeralda&filters[materialType][0]=resourcetypes%3Amov

Edited September 2 by choriamb

[Joseph]

This is all very helpful and appreciated! Thank you everyone so much! 🙂 

[RhinoHaggis]

I'm not sure which label they were originally recorded under, but Decca/Philips has a series of recordings with the Kirov/Mariinsky Theater Orchestra under Gergiev, who is (according to Wikipedia) still the director there.  The titles are all Big Name Ballets, but I'll try shooting an email off and see if i get anything back.  One would like to imagine there are recordings of Not Big Names lying about somewhere.

Not getting my hopes up.  If it was a small label, I can imagine them dumping a bunch of B-sides on the internet for the 30 people who would buy them, but a big label....