"Raymonda"-simulacrum

The Mussorgsky Theater presented their version of Glazunov's work

Why do a self-respecting ballet company with zealous management stage Petipa's ballets? It's right to take them to Japan and Korea. Why put “Raymonda” in such a company? Absolutely right, because all of Marius Ivanovich’s other more compelling opuses have already been brought to Japan, and more than once.

This is exactly how things are at the St. Petersburg Opera and Ballet Theater named after Mussorgsky. He, however, now calls himself “Mikhailovsky” with a dash on his program notes - either in imitation of his colleagues who have turned from the Kirovsky to the Mariinsky, and from the “name of Pushkin” to the Alexandrinsky, or believing that larger budgets are now allocated for historical imperial names (and, of course, they master it more effectively) than under the Soviet ones. However, the theater, which townspeople continue to call the Maly Opera House out of habit, intricately combines modern marketing techniques and strategies with Soviet orders and spirit.

Here is the current “Raymonda” - where did she come from? The poster shows the dedication of the performance to the 120th anniversary of the birth of Fyodor Lopukhov, “the founder of the theater’s ballet troupe.” In fact, Fyodor Vasilyevich owns the first of five variations of Raymonda. The rest of the text is what was preserved from Petipa’s 1898 production and which was re-imagined by Konstantin Sergeev in 1948 at the Kirov Theater. The once soloist of this same Kirovsky, and now the choreographer-repetiteur of the Mariinsky, Gabriela Komleva, adapted Sergeev’s version to the much smaller stage of MALEGOT.

But the performance also has an artistic director - Nikolai Boyarchikov, artistic director of the ballet troupe. His leadership boiled down mainly to the return, firstly, of the oriental dance of Raymonda, composed by Glazunov and docked by Petipa, which now became a variation of Abderakhman, and, secondly, the White Lady. (In addition, for some reason the children’s dance in the third act was choreographed by choreographer Kovtun, but in the end this is unimportant.)

What is the meaningful meaning of these changes? Countess Raymonda is waiting for her knight groom from the crusade, sees a noble Saracen in a dream, then he appears in reality to woo her, having been refused, tries to steal the maiden, but is defeated by the knight who returned in time - and a merry feast for the wedding for the whole third act : as expected, grand pas. So, the confused, stupid libretto of Lydia Pashkova provided for the regular appearance of the ghost of a certain White Lady - the patroness of the Raymond family. How she looked in Petipa's work, you know - throughout the 20th century she was carefully eradicated from the old ballet for mysticism.

Let's say someone set themselves an artistic research task: to return the original Petipa to the stage. Then, like Sergei Vikharev, who carried out largely authentic reconstructions of “The Sleeping Beauty” and “La Bayadère” at the Mariinsky Theater, he would have to carry out a huge amount of painstaking work, rummaging through archives, looking for surviving records, comparing options, etc. But who is now interested in the author’s will, even of a genius? (In one nice country, the director of the national ballet told me: “The public wants Petipa, we write after Petipa even on something that he didn’t stage at all.”) Sergeev calmly completed the composition for Petipa, Boyarchikov for Sergeev. But he still had stylistic sensitivity. The current White Lady, in a long dress and with a crown, stylized as a medieval sculpture, dances something unimaginable, some kind of “search for Soviet choreographers” of the 60s and 70s, and all this looks as if polished Czech sideboard.

Abderakhman appears as the same sideboard - both in the newly placed variation and in general. I won’t name the artists - they say other lineups are better, and I was just unlucky. In the end, it's more important to think about something else about this ballet.

Raymonda's party is a test one, so to speak, an expert one. Not because it is extremely complex and large (there are five variations alone), but because it requires a very special ballerina. There is nothing to hide behind, there are no dramatic effects of Nikiya, the winning duality of Odette-Odile, infectiousness and brio of Kitri. Tender and brilliant at the same time, regal and fragile, not a girl, not a woman, she is the embodiment of femininity, not in its cozy-warm dimension, but as an absolute spiritual and moral value.

However, in ballet, any abstractions are created on stage by bodily means. Just as in opera there are parts where we are grateful if the singer plays all the notes, so is Raymonda’s text: if someone reproduces it more or less cleanly and without loss, the troupe is already proud that, they say, we have soloists. Well, yes, I reproduced the one that fell to me. But the trouble is not that she has a wooden body - she has a wooden head (I repeat, last names do not matter, this is a particular manifestation of the general situation). In Raymond, the spiritual imperative is expressed not in grimaces, not in “play,” but in virtuosity, brought to the point of disappearing in the movement of the memory of muscular effort. Pas de bourrée should shimmer and not crumble, petit batmans should sparkle, aplomb should be indestructible and, moreover, effortless, ambouate should be splashes of flirtatious grace, and not just bouncing... Finally (alas, the performance forces you to repeat elementary things), if all the movements, even decently executed ones, do not add up, do not merge into a dance, it is just gymnastics.

By and large, there is no need to stage “Raymonda” at all now, due to the lack of worthy performers of the title role. Once upon a time, people of culture served in the ballet. For example, Tatyana Vecheslova was friends with Akhmatova (and I happened to see in Tatyana Mikhailovna’s house a portrait of the hostess with Akhmatova’s autograph - a famous poem dedicated to Vecheslova). Ulanova was on an equal footing with the first intellectuals of her era. I still have the honor of knowing quite a few very middle-aged teachers who view the profession of a ballet dancer as a means of creating art, and not of demonstrating muscular achievements like continuous vertical splits, contrary to all style and taste. But taste is generally an ethical concept, and Raymonda’s aristocracy can only grow from such human qualities, now lost.

However, when Ulyana Lopatkina danced the third act of “Raymonda” at her benefit performance last year, the above-mentioned properties were revealed in all their fullness and precious splendor. But Lopatkina is alone. There are no more prince-princesses of blood in the vicinity.

And so everything is more or less in order. The corps de ballet, however, at the Mussorgsky Theater is an inch-sized, little boy and a little peasant. And then, somehow they raise their legs at different times and to different heights - it turns out a kind of sfumato, blurry picture. But there is more dirt in the first act, then things get better. Well, in general: they staged a huge, populous ballet - with a full cast (although it’s a little crowded, in some places, for example, in the panaderos and in the Saracen dances, there could have been fewer people). The new sets and costumes, the work of the artist Vyacheslav Okunev, are, as always, bright and clumsy, but in the Far Eastern countries they seem to like just that. They love simulacra - Christmas tree decorations that look even more real than the real thing.

Dmitry TSILIKIN, St. Petersburg