The truth about youth

03/09/11 11:44
(http://www.klassa.bg/)

by Petar PLAMENOV

16 March (Wednesday), 19:00
National Opera and Ballet
Address:
Sofia, 1 Vrabcha Str.
Phone: 02 987 13 66

Conductor: Grigor Palikarov
Choreography: Marius Petipa
Libretto by Marius Petipa after the novel of the same name by Miguel de Cervantes
Cast: Marta Petkova, Nikola Hadjitanev
Dilyana Nikiforova, Darina Bedeva, Ekaterina Stanimirova, Rosen Kanev, Alexandra Drangazhova

“Don Quixote” ballet by Ludwig Minkus has a curious fate. The content is simple and devoted love. The plot centers on the adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Don Quixote and his squire, Sancho Panza, help a beautiful Kitri who is in love with Basilio, a poor barber, to deceive her father Lorenzo, a greedy nobleman. Lorenzo wishes to marry his daughter off to Gamache, a nobleman…

This thrilling spectacle of classical dance was first performed at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in 1869, choreographed by Marius Petipa, who had just become artistic director of the Maryinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg. More than twenty years earlier he’d spent three years in Spain and learned to love Spanish dance — much celebrated in this ballet — though he left Spain rather suddenly to avoid a duel against a French marquis, a member of the French embassy, with whose wife he’d been having an affair. Petipa was quite a lad as a young dancer!

Don Quixote was revised by Alexander Gorsky in 1900, the year he became manager of the Bolshoi, and is a staple of their repertory. In fact it’s arguably their jewel in the crown, endowed with a mass of glorious costumes, and sets that allow ample room for the ballet’s choreographic pyrotechnics, which were on brilliant view here.

Ludwig Minkus (1826–1917) was an Austrian famous composer of ballet music, a violin virtuoso and teacher. Minkus's father was a wholesale merchant of wine in Moravia, Austria and Hungary. He opened a restaurant in the Innere Stadt district of Vienna that featured its own small orchestra. This may have influenced the young Minkus—it is possible that he composed for his father's Tanzkapelle, one of many such orchestras in the imperial capital. By the age of four he began to receive private lessons in the violin, and from 1838 to 1842 he began his musical studies at the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna.Minkus made his public début at a recital in Vienna at the age of eight. On 18 October 1845 an announcement in the Viennese newspaper Der Humorist commented on the performances of the previous season, and noted that, " ...

In 1863 he composed the music for Saint-Leon’s Fiamenta, of which a shortened version was given in Paris as Nemea in 1864. Minkus maintained his ties with Paris where in 1866, 20 years after his debut there, he himself was the older, more experienced musician who wrote the larger part of a ballet, La Source; one act only was entrusted to the younger Delibes.

On returning to Russia Minkus began writing ballet music for Petipa’s creations. In 1868 Petipa planned his Don Quixote for the Bolshoi Theater, with music composed by Minkus. It had an enormous success when first performed in 1869. This won for Minkus the post of Official Composer to the Imperial Russian Ballet, a position held previously by Italian Ceasare Pugni who composed music for more than 300 ballets. Minkus held the position until it was discontinued in 1886. These were fertile years for Minkus, and his many compositions included La Bayadere in 1877.

His ballet music may be summarized as full of melody and rythmic verve, much of which is charming and of immediate appeal. Although his orchestrations were not elaborate, and as John Lanchbery observed, "..it can occasionally lapse into trite note-spinning," Minkus had the ability to give an emotional feel or mood to a piece without dominating it, allowing the dancers to be seen to full advantage. He possessed the gift of making even the clumsiest listener want to get up and dance. A waltz time aficionado, he had gypsies, rajahs, Spanish bullfighters, Indian temple maidens, alive and dead, all dance to a waltz rhythm.