Tag Archive: Yuri Smekalov

Reassuring

August 7, 2024

Sochi Olympics 2014
Sochi, Russia
August 2024

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2024 by Ilona Landgraf

Given the nauseating freak show at the opening of the Paris Olympics last week, re-watching the ceremony held ten years ago at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi helps to restore belief in culture. It included the mini-ballet Natasha Rostov’s First Ball (choreographed by Radu Poklitaru, Andriy Musorin, and Oleksandr Leshchenko), which was based on Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Russia’s finest dancers were featured next to the two hundred couples waltzing to Eugen Doga’s film music for A Hunting Accident (Russian title: Мой ласковый и нежный зверь, meaning, My Sweet and Tender Beast). The Bolshoi Ballet’s Svetlana Zakharova danced the young, romantic beauty, Natasha Rostova; ballet legend Vladimir Vasiliev played her father, Count Rostov.

The Mariinsky Ballet’s Danila Korsuntsev performed the role of Prince Andrei Bolkonsky; Alexander Petukhov portrayed Pierre Bezukhov; as the dashing hussar, Anatoly Kuragin, Ivan Vasiliev delivered breathtaking jumps that made the audience cheer. The ball came to an abrupt end when Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso No. 1 ushered in the dark times that subsequently swept over Russia. (more…)

Petipa’s Vapid Aesthetic?

December 27, 2014

“Raymonda”
Maryinsky Ballet
Festspielhaus Baden-Baden
Baden-Baden, Germany
December 21, 2014

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2014 by Ilona Landgraf

1. V.Tereshkina and ensemble, “Raymonda” by M.Petipa in the version of K.Sergeyev and with choreographic fragments by F.Lopuchov, Maryinsky Ballet © N.Razina 2014“Raymonda” in several aspects marks a turning point amidst the classics. Premiering in January 1898 at the Maryinsky Theatre it was Marius Petipa’s last grand ballet before being gradually disempowered at the Imperial Theatre from 1903 on. By comparison, its score was Alexander Glasunov’s first attempt at ballet music. Relatively unknown as composer, he had been chosen to fill the gap caused by Tchaikovsky’s death in 1893. Though not pleased at first when he faced the kind of detailed array Petipa had used to predetermine Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet scores, Glasunov nonetheless produced varied, colorfully romantic music which won him public appreciation. Albeit a pillar of the ballet repertory in Russia, “Raymonda” attracted little attention abroad possibly because of its unconvincing libretto. Set in medieval times in Southern France, it’s about a young noble lady Raymonda who waits for her fiancé Jean de Brienne’s return. Being an Hungarian knight, he’s off crusading in the Holy Land. While preparing for the celebration of Raymonda’s birthday (or, depending on the text source, name day) the Saracen knight Abderakhman appears as one of the well-wishers. (more…)