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Sleeping Beauty Goes for Utopia
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19176 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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7 / 1991 |
1,623 Words |
| Author
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Philip Kennicott
Philip Kennicott, based in New York, is a writer on
performance arts. |
The long-awaited production of Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty by Peter Martins, by far the costliest and most ambitious effort yet made by the New York City Ballet, might be faulted for sins of omission for having trimmed and cut a few things, but not for anything it says or how it says it. By all accounts a triumph, this production should remain a staple of the City Ballet's repertoire until well into its second post-Balanchine decade.
Theatrical Scope
Sleeping Beauty was Tchaikovsky's second full-length ballet. Hardly a triumph in its first incarnation at Saint Petersburg's Maryinsky Theater, it has gone on, at least in critical circles, to become the best loved of Tchaikovsky's three evening-length ballets. It is a challenge to every company that attempts it, for its size, theatrical scope, and traditional virtuosity are unparalleled. As Martins said in an interview published in Dance Magazine before the April 24 premiere, "You know, people have always told dancers, 'If you can dance Sleeping Beauty you can dance anything.'"
The score is in three acts with a prologue. The introduction, a brief juxtaposition of the work's two major emotional elements (one representing the Lilac Fairy, the other the evil fairy Carabosse), is a tightly constructed precursor of the music to come. The scope of the music is symphonic, and despite the numerous and detailed requests made by the work's first choreographer, Marius Petipa--requests as minute as bar length requirements, orchestration details, and a complex scenario--the score never loses its sweep and flow. It is one of the greatest demonstrations of Tchaikovsky's melodic craftsmanship, and of his ability to transcend the usual composer's role as collaborator or hack in service to the choreographer.
Tchaikovsky began work on his score in 1888 and finished the major compositional effort in about six months. In January 1890 the ballet had its official premiere and received a less than enthusiastic blessing from the Czar. Although Sleeping Beauty became a favorite within Russia shortly thereafter, it took considerably longer for the work to establish itself outside its country of origin. Its first lavish foreign production was under the auspices of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, which opened its version at London's Alhambra Theater in 1921. As has become the tradition, that production was based on Petipa's original with some added touches here and there, including some newly choreographed dances by Bronislava Nijinska. It was a sumptuous setting and one that would, eventually, have a major
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