Great Dance, Great Music, Disgusting Story, quess which ballet.

[Tom47]

My first experience with the ballet Le Corsaire was when I saw the Pas de Trois with Medora, Ali and Conrad on TV.  I felt it was great, but I didn’t understand what it was about.  With the feather I thought Ali was supposed to be a Native-American, but I couldn’t understand who the others were and why there were two men dancing with one woman.  Eventually I got DVDs of it, one from ABT and another from The Kirov Ballet.  The dancing and the music is great and I enjoyed them until I started thinking too much about the story, which is about enslaved women being bought and used. For example in the beginning of the ABT version the Pasha is shown giddy and salivating over the prospect of purchasing two enslaved females, but what he is anticipating is the raping of these two women.  He bought the women and he can do anything with them and they cannot say no, that is rape.  The whole scene and the whole ballet is treated as a comedy, a comedy about rape.  Later after the Corsaires brought the women to the grotto Medora asked Conrad to free them.  Conrad thinks for a moment then agrees, not because he is concerned about the enslaved women, but only because Medora asked him.  The other corsaires become angry either because they wanted to sell the women to someone who would rape them or because they wanted to rape them themselves and the female corsairs don’t seem to care.  This is terrible - disgusting. I feel this is a shame, as otherwise it is such a good ballet.  A Libretto from the Petipa Society https://petipasociety.com/le-corsaire/, shows that in the ballet, at a time, Medore was originally a ward of Lanquerdem who sells her because the Pasha Sevd offers so much money. 

Tom,

[Mashinka]

It is based on the Byron poem, with such a different story line that now only  the names remain.  The first version was by Mazilier in  Paris complete with Conrad rescuing Gulnare from the burning palace.  I imagine the later 19th century's love of Orientalism informs the new story line. Ingres has a lot to answer for.

[volcanohunter]

The only similarity between Byron and the ballet is that there are characters named Conrad, Medora, Gulnare and Pasha Seyd, and that Conrad gains access to the palace by pretending to be a pilgrim. The Bolshoi's former production by Burlaka and Ratmansky also hinted at Conrad being tortured in captivity, but only thanks to his slightly torn and bloodied shirt in the final act.

Byron's story includes no slave market. Medora is Conrad's wife and never leaves Greece. Gulnare is the one who rescues Conrad from a dungeon by killing Seyd in his bed. There are no characters named Birbanto, Lanquedem and certainly not Ali. There is no mutiny against Conrad. Medora, despairing that he will never return, commits suicide at the end.

Verdi's Il corsaro is much more faithful to the original story. The ballet is a travesty, but that's not Byron's fault.

[Tom47]

Mashinka, thankyou for letting me know of the first version with Conrad rescuing Gulnare from the burning palace.  I didn’t know any ballet had that in it.  I don’t suppose that any video now shows that and I would like to learn more about it.  Where did you find out about it?  I have read the poem, most recently just before posting this and I agree it has a different storyline and I would say a better storyline.  Here is a link to the poem for anyone who has not read it and who would like to: https://readerslibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/The-Corsair.pdf.

One problem with the current ballet is that it presents the subject in a very light and flippant way, but the poem is much more serious.  Le Corsaire has gone through many changes as shown by it having five composers so it could be changed again.

I had posted a plan for a re-imagined Le Corsaire, which is more serious and closer to the poem, but not the same, here in 2020: https://balletalert.invisionzone.com/topic/45619-re-imagining-le-corsaire/.

This is something I found recently.  An early movie of Le Petit Corsaire, a dance that was added to the ballet in 1863.  See here 1 minute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhGiObHInXM with Natalia Matveyeva.

How many people guessed the ballet from the post’s title?

Volcano, thanks for commenting.  I agree with you the problem with the ballet is not Byron’s fault.

Tom,

[RhinoHaggis]

Let me first say that yes, I correctly guessed the ballet from the thread title.  But the classical ballets never strike me this way, because they are so absurd, applying ethical or reasonable standards to the characters or plots is impossible.  While a better plot for le Corsaire would be cool, I'm a little shocked by the tacit implication that it sticks out as particularly egregious compared with other ballets.   I've seen this tone before form different people in different threads, and I'm genuinely puzzled by it.  What is there not to understand about silliness?  Gilbert and Sullivan are masters of silliness.  If I leave a comic opera with a bad taste in my mouth about ethics, my first assumption is that they didn't do it well, not that suddenly and inexplicably I don't like preposterous stories.

(edit: ... or that they did it a little too well, like G&S.  But clearly that doesn't apply here XD)

Edited September 6 by RhinoHaggis

[RhinoHaggis]

If we're sitting around bored, and I tell you a pirate story, my head pirate is going to have an eye patch, a limp, a raunchy parrot. S/he will have the obligatory "pirate" accent, and will CONSTANTLY be saying things like "avast", "aye, matey!", "shiver me wee frickin' timbers" and "ya point the guns the other waaay you scurvy dogs!".  This reflects both my complete ignorance of actual pirating, and my lack of interest in correcting that for the sake of storytelling.  Sometimes we do things, just for the sake of entertainment.

Pirates! A harem! Our Heroine, enslaved and sold at market!  A rogue with a heart of gold!
To me, a ballet like "le Corsaire" answers questions like "how can we give our male leads a cool new leap?", "how big of a gold-painted headdress can we put Sven in, and he can still turn 7 pirouettes",  "we need a scene where at least five people from cool places introduce themselves by dancing", "Can we have pirates? and also the costume mistress has been demanding a harem ever since that fabric store went out of business and we bought all the tulle".

[Tom47]

Rhino, you write that a “better plot for Le Corsaire would be cool” seems to me that you would prefer a different plot.   I feel the silliness is what makes this ballet worse, its making a joke about rape and then makes light of it.  You may feel a certain way, that doesn't mean that everyone does, I don’t.  Also, you wrote “Our Heroine, enslaved and sold at market” you forgot to mention raped.

Tom,

[volcanohunter]

I would happily excise the jardin animé section as a plotless one-act ballet and throw the rest onto the trash heap. Honestly, I don't need to see the pas d'esclave, the pas de trois or the odalisques ever again. Le Corsaire is an absurd ballet completely lacking artistic integrity. A few years ago, when ABT last presented its production, it included a disclaimer that seemed to place the blame for the plot on Byron, which was specious and lazy.

[California]

25 minutes ago, volcanohunter said:

I would happily excise the jardin animé section as a plotless one-act ballet and throw the rest onto the trash heap. 

As most of you probably remember, Baryshnikov did stage jardin anime in 1981 for ABT: https://www.abt.org/ballet/jardin-anime/

As I remember his comments at the time, this was part of his effort to strengthen the company's experience with Petipa. 

I wouldn't mind seeing them try that again, especially given the many problems with the full length Le Corsaire.

[Helene]

This is one of the ballets that Doug Fullington  and Phil Chan are trying to re-envision.

Blaming Byron for this plot is like blaming most authors for the movie versions. 

[Tom47]

Volcano, California and Helene, thank you for commenting.

Here are links to articles criticizing the ballet Le Corsaire.  This one goes to an article by Jennifer Stahl entitled “Why Le Corsaire is My Favorite ‘Terrible’ Ballet.”  (No longer available) and this one goes to an article by Ivy Lin entitled “Wildly offensive, but wildly entertaining too: ABT’s Le Corsaire:” https://bachtrack.com/review-corsaire-american-ballet-theatre-new-york-june-2019.  In addition, ABT seems to recognize that there are “. . . images that some find offensive . . .”  See here for their disclaimer: https://dancetabs.com/2019/06/american-ballet-theatre-le-corsaire-new-york-3/ in an article written by Lauren Gallagher.  And in this article by Lyndsey Winship, Misty Copeland, who has portrayed Gulnare, is quoted as saying “You think of Corsaire as this light thing, but it’s not really – it’s about slaves, these women chained up:” https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/nov/20/fu-manchu-moustaches-blackface-does-ballet-have-a-race-problem.

Interestingly all of these articles and the statement by Misty Copeland seem to be by women, none by men.

Tom,

[volcanohunter]

I remember that Alastair Macaulay's reviews of Le Corsaire objected to many elements of the ballet long before 2019.

I suspect that he would also object to ABT creating a Corsaire Suite consisting of the jardin animé, the odalisques and the pas de trois, which would be as much of a musical and choreographic hodgepodge as the ballet as a whole:

"The 'Corsaire' episode, listed as Petipa’s choreography and Adolphe Adam’s music, is actually a nutty conflation. You no sooner start to watch - and listen to - its women-only garland-waving 'Jardin Animé' scene than one confusion arises. This music (the 'Naila' waltz) isn’t by Adam but by Leo Delibes. (Many New Yorkers will recognize it from Balanchine’s ballet 'La Source.') The program notes establish that by the time of Petipa’s final 1899 staging, the complete 'Corsaire' had music by 11 composers; in these excerpts we hear work by at least four.

"And what we’re watching has been considerably overhauled by successive post-Petipa hands. This staging doesn’t make it clear that the setting is a harem or that the three women who dance a virtuoso pas de trois are odalisques. In the middle comes a grand pas de trois from another part of the ballet: the ballerina Medora dances with her Byronic partner, Conrad, and his slave, Ali. Then Medora and the harem girls resume their horticultural scene as if the male intruders had been irrelevant anyway." [2008]

https://www.alastairmacaulay.com/all-essays/at-the-kirov-can-too-many-cooks-spoil-the-ballet?rq=CORSAIRE

"This 'Corsaire' is superficial and frivolous about everything from its depiction of Muslims to ballet’s own potential as an art of music drama. In the poem, Medora is a desperate and melancholy heroine; her lover, the corsair/pirate hero, Conrad, is distraught near the end to find her corpse. In this ballet, she’s a playful coquette. When the bad guys, led by Conrad’s false friend Birbanto and the slave-dealing bazaar owner Lankendem, abduct her, she briefly turns serious and stabs Birbanto in the arm; but soon she’s merry again.

"Conrad — onto whom Byron projected the qualities of roaming despair and doom that were part of his own legend — here resembles the protagonist of a fun action cartoon. Fooling the idiotic pasha, Seyd, and his Muslim guards, especially when they’re at prayer, is just the kind of prank he enjoys." [2013]

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/arts/dance/le-corsaire-american-ballet-theater.html

There are ballet plots that may qualify as unrealistic. Le Corsaire is different in that it is also offensive on almost every level. Macaulay had problems with how it depicted Muslims (and the awful, awful Holmes production is particularly bad in that regard). If Misty Copeland used her clout to point out to ABT how problematic the ballet is in its depictions of slavery, particularly of women, then good for her!

I can understand trying to salvage, say, Raymonda or even La Bayadère because it features a more-or-less cohesive score by a single composer, and the choreography can be restored on the basis of Stepanov notation recorded during Petipa’s lifetime. I'm not sure Le Corsaire has the same qualities to recommend it. (How much of Adam's music is used, anyway?)

I also distinctly remember the intermission interview Ratmansky gave during the Bolshoi’s second broadcast of Le Corsaire in 2017 in which he seemed to pooh-pooh the production, which he co-staged 10 years earlier, before he was a Stepanov-reader and took to serious reconstruction. In 2017 he said he would have approached it differently. I don't know how he would approach it now.

[Tom47]

Volcano, I must have misunderstood you when you wrote earlier that “The ballet is a travesty, but that’s not Byron’s fault” and then I answered “I agree with you the problem with the ballet is not Byron’s fault” I thought you were referring the buying and selling of women, but reading your latest comment it seems you were commenting on the choreography and the music.  In regard to that I don’t agree.  The Jardin animé, the odalisques and the pas de trois are among my favorite parts, along with the petit corsaire if I can get past the issue of female slavery, which I am finding it harder and harder to do.   I feel that Ethan Stiefel, Vladimir Malakhov and particularly Angel Corella are great dancers, along with Paloma Herrera and Julie Kent in the ABT version.  The Jardin animé scene in the ABT version is very colorful.  In the Kiron version Faroukh Ruzimatov and Altynai Asylmuratova are also very good.   

Le Corsaire premiered in France in 1856 at a time when the second class citizenship of women was common and legal hereditary chattel slavery existed in many countries, although France, England and Mexico had ended it prior to that date.  Also, despite females being the major performers, the writing of librettos, the choreography and other decisions as to the choosing of the ballet were completely or almost completely done by men.  I wonder what the ballet would have been like if women were involved in producing it.  Regardless, times are much different now, although men are still primarily, but not totally in charge of ballets, so it is time to change Le Corsaire or perhaps make it a plotless ballet, ridding the dancing of Seid Pasha, Birbanto and Lankedem.  At least we could have Gulnare kill Seyd-Pasha, as she does in the poem.  She would be taking control over her destiny instead of being a helpless damsel in distress.  As I wrote I enjoy the dance and music of the ballet very much and would hate to see that eliminated.

Tom,

[volcanohunter]

Another problem with Le Corsaire, which was more obvious in the Burlaka/Ratmansky production, was the depiction of Isaac Lanquedem as a grotesque antisemitic caricature, complete with prosthetic nose. Again, this doesn't come from Byron, because his story didn't include a slave trader with an insatiable lust for money, and Medora wasn't anyone's ward to be sold.

I think it would be difficult to alter the story significantly given the tinkly dance music that has come down to us. Kader Belarbi's production tried to bring the story closer to the original French version, but the inserted music by Sibelius and Massenet sounded completely bizarre next to the previously interpolated music by Drigo and Pugni.

Actually, the thing that I found repellent about Byron's original was that Gulnare was motivated to save Conrad because of the romantic feelings he stirred in her (of course ). But when they were sailing to their escape, he found himself revolted by her because she was a murderer.

Of all the ingratitude. 

Edited September 9 by volcanohunter

[Tom47]

I am very interested in the character Gulnare from the poem.  The name Gulnare comes from the name of an enslaved woman in an Arabian Nights story, “The Story of Gulnare of the Sea.”

Near the end of The Corsair poem Gulnare and Conrad return to the island of the Corsairs to find that Medora has died.  Soon after Conrad sails away never to be seen again.  In the same year that The Corsair was published, Byron wrote another poem, “Lara” which is considered by some to be a sequel to the first.  Count Lara, a man, has arrived from the east with a Page named Kaled.  Lara and Kaled speak a foreign language.   At the end of this poem, Lara dies on a field of battle with Kaled by his side.  After a time it is discovered that Kaled is a woman.    She is devoted to Lara and remains by his grave the remainder of her life.  In the poem The Corsair it is shown that Gulnare is grateful to Conrad for saving her from the fire, kills the Pasha in part to save Conrad and is falling in love with Conrad.  Gulnare also killed the Pasha because she hated him as I would think an enslaved woman would.  Court Lara in the second poem could be seen as Conrad returning from the east after his adventures shown in The Corsair. His early life is never fully explained there.  And Kaled the page who turns out to be a woman could be Gulnare who had fallen in love with Conrad, who had left with him and now is devoted to him.  I prefer to think of it that way.

Volcano, I do not know as much about music and ballet as you do, but I know what I like.  In the post 42 ballets I put together four excerpts from Le Corsaire, the Petit Corsaire, the dance between Medora and Ali, the three Odalisques and the jardin anime.  I would enjoy a plotless ballet of these four with the colorful jardin anime from ABT.  It could also be made to avoid any reference to Muslims or Arabs.  Of the male characters I like Ali the best, although in the ABT version all three male dancers are very good.  I agree that in the original poem Conrad's feelings toward Gulnare shows ingratitude.    

Tom,

[Mashinka]

9 hours ago, Tom47 said:

It could also be made to avoid any reference to Muslims or Arabs. 

Do you feel the same about Abdallah?  It's pretty harsh on mothers in law.

[Tom47]

Mashinka, I don’t know what the reference is about Abdallah.  Also, can you give me any more information about the first version by Mazilier in  Paris which showed Conrad rescuing Gulnare from the burning palace. 

Tom,

[Tom47]

57 minutes ago, Mashinka said:

Do you feel the same about Abdallah?  It's pretty harsh on mothers in law.

Mashinka, I don’t know what the reference is about Abdallah.  Also, can you give me any more information about the first version by Mazilier in  Paris which showed Conrad rescuing Gulnare from the burning palace. 

Tom,

[Tom47]

Here is an engraving of a 1832 painting of Gulnare from the poem The Corsair by Miss L. Sharpe, possibly Louisa Sharpe or her sister Eliza Sharpe. Gulnare appears to be entering Conrad’s cell with a lamp. 

Gulnare

This is a picture of Kaled, possibly Guinare en travesti from the poem Lara.

Kaled, possibly Guinare en travesti

Here is a picture of Lord Byron in Albanian dress.

Lord Byron in Albanian dress

This link goes to a poem by Letitia Elizabeth Landon entitled “Gulnare,” 1833. 

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Tom,