Olga Petrova 5/28/19 Olga Petrova 5/28/19

Leon, Lightfoot / Van Manen

So I’ve skipped a whole bunch of operas and ballets that I have attended since coming back from Argentina in January. These ranged from quite good (Dvorak’s Rusalka and Strauss’ Die Fledermaus, my first operetta - note to self: love the genre, need to see more of it!) to predictably classical (Verdi’s Otello) and even borderline pornographic (Chostakovitch’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk).

On May 20, I went to see three new ballet pieces at the Palais Garnier here in Paris, Leon, Lightfoot / Van Manen. The first one, Sleight of hand choreographed by Paul Lightfoot and Sol León to Philip Glass’ Symphonie # 2, was, in my opinion, nothing short of incredible. It felt like a ballet version of the 2006 movie The fountain (except that I did not fall asleep this time - granted, the ballet lasted 20 minutes instead of an hour and a half): beautiful, even breathtaking at times, and probably full of symbolism none of which I got. The only thing that I did not appreciate about it was that there were two roles, performed by a male and a female, which were 100% symmetric except that the female gets stripped of her clothes at the end while the male does not. Seriously?.. I find that such pointless exploitation of female nudity inevitably cheapens whichever context it appears in. On the plus side, the choreography was really spooky and unique, and Phillip Glass’ (Glass’s?) music was hauntingly beautiful even pre-recorded.

Sleight of Hand. Image credit: Agathe Poupeney for OnP

I don’t have much to say about the second piece, Trois Gnossiennes. The third one, Speak for Yourself, started off really weird (the audio thing in the beginning - what the hell was that?..) but it did have a really cool visual effect of a rain later on:

Speak for Yourself. Image credit: Agathe Poupeney for OnP

Normally I am not a huge fan of these super-contemporary-conceptual types of performance art (Goecke / Lidberg / Cherkaoui that I watched in the same opera back in winter was a nice evening, but left no lasting impression, I must admit). The Sleight of Hand, on the other hmmm hand, was a rare jewel!

My final highly subjective verdict: 8/10 (more precisely, I would give the first part a 10, and not bother rating the rest)

XOXO

Olga

Olga Petrova 11/30/18 Olga Petrova 11/30/18

Cendrillon by Rudolf Noureev

One of the vinyls I used to listen to as a small kid living on a naval base in the Far East of Russia was Cinderella, an audio fairy-tale set to music excerpts from Prokofiev’s 1940s ballet. I wonder what I would have thought if someone told me back then that the next time I would hear those tunes would be in a Parisian opera house :)

Tonight (although I am sure it will be a few days before this post sees the light of day) I went to the opening night of Cendrillon - Prokofiev’s ballet choreographed by Rudolf Noureev (aka Nureyev in the English-speaking world), again at Opera Bastille. I first started attending ballets back when I lived in Dresden, 2013-2016. Ah the fond memories of the Semperoper… Remains one of my favorite opera houses to this day, but I digress. Back to Cinderella!

Ever since I discovered the wonderful over-the-top operatic acting, I have been a lot more into opera than I am into ballet. Still, it is good to change things up every once in awhile, and Cendrillon is certainly a fine way to do just that. Not mind-blowing by any means, but entertaining, speckled with funny moments, and undeniably pretty. During an opera (at least ones I enjoy) I tend to be too engrossed in the story to pay much attention to the music, but while watching a ballet, my mind tends to wander. Wandering to Sergei Prokofiev’s music is an adventure, and a whimsical one at that :) The starting chords gave me a strong sense of déjà entendu: but where could I have heard it before? I was never one for classical music growing up. Reading, on the other hand, has been been my passion from a young age, and before that there were audio books. Twenty five years ago these came in the form of vinyl records. One of those vinyls I used to listen to as a small kid living on a naval base in the Far East of Russia was Cinderella, an audio fairy-tale set to music excerpts from Prokofiev’s 1940s ballet. I wonder what I would have thought if someone told me back then that the next time I would hear those tunes would be in a Parisian opera house :)

Cendrillon. Apparently that’s just French for Cinderella, but when I first heard it, I figured that it was some sort of a male counterpart. That not being the case, here comes a twist within a twist: in a way, Cendrillon was a tribute to Noureev’s own rocky road to success - from a soviet defector in 1961 to director and chief choreographer of the Paris Opera Ballet up until 1992, how is that for a Cinderfellow story!

To keep up with the times, in Noureev’s creation Cinderella gets transplanted into Hollywood, her fairy godmother gets replaced with a movie producer, ball with a film set, and prince with who appears to be a leading movie star. And who needs a wedding when you can sign a movie contract? Surprisingly, despite these seemingly major changes to Perrault’s story, the atmosphere and the general feeling of the original remain untouched. Could I be biased because I heard Prokofiev’s music while listening to the unedited fairytale in my childhood? Maybe. Is the music alone, visual charm of the experience aside, worth braving the cold November rain? It is.

My final highly subjective verdict: 6/10 (nice to see)