The Times celebrates Milan’s Raymonda… but why?

Milan’s news­pa­per, the most influ­en­tial Italian paper, Il Cor­ri­ere della Sera, almost ignored La Ray­monda at La Scala last week, with Valeria Crippa’s short art­icle dis­miss­ing it quickly.

Here the past is pre­served in moth­balls, the bril­liant Marius Petipa’s cho­reo­graphic style appears decrepit, and dull scenery frames an age­ing corps, des­pite the fresh­ness of the stu­dents of the school.

Oth­ers how­ever looked a little closer. Elsa Air­oldi for Il Giornale wrote,

Ray­monda was well received by the pub­lic, des­pite its length, and it cer­tainly delighted the bal­letomanes, though oth­ers would tire of it quite quickly. Only a theatre like La Scala, where it has been expertly recon­struc­ted in both the cho­reo­graphy (Sergei Vikharev) and the designs, has the pos­sib­il­ity to take this period piece and trans­form the ugly duck­ling into a swan.

And Ser­gio Trombetta for La Stampa,

[The cre­at­ive team] did an out­stand­ing job motiv­at­ing the entire com­pany which dances and spins as never before, includ­ing the chil­dren from the La Scala school who were vig­or­ously applauded. They have redis­covered, for example, the dram­at­ur­gical point of The White Lady in the bal­let blanc, which closes the first act — all elves, nai­ads and valkyries. That the prin­cipal role is a nerve-wracking one is con­firmed here, but Olesja Novikova is a Ray­monda of great class and brim­ming with verve.

London’s The Times sent Debra Craine over for this import­ant event in the bal­let cal­en­dar, and has devoted many column inches to a largely glow­ing review. Trombetta was gran­ted 300 words, Air­oldi a little over 100 as she had to cover the Mari­in­sky in Turin in the same art­icle, and Crippa got 230 words in.  The Times gave Craine space for more than 500 words which greatly affects the depth of a review. (The aver­age length of an Alastair Macaulay dance review for the New York Times is 1000 words!)

This says a lot about dance cul­ture in Italy. Once this import­ant centre of world dance, espe­cially the city of Milan, was form­ing extraordin­ary dan­cers: Pier­ina Leg­nani was the first Ray­monda, La Syph­ide was cre­ated for Marie Tagli­oni, Petipa chose Vir­gina Zuc­chi as Lise in his La Fille Mal Gardée, Car­lotta Grisi was the first Gis­elle, Paquita and Esmer­alda, and the first Swan­hilda in Cop­pélia was Giusep­pina Bozza­c­chi. Italy also gave birth to Enrico Cec­chetti, founder of the Cec­chetti method, the basis of the Royal Bal­let style.

What went wrong? Every now and then nature throws up an excep­tional tal­ent, dan­cers who seem to suc­ceed against the odds. Carla Fracci is per­haps the most accom­plished of these, then there’s Aless­andra Ferri and Roberto Bolle. But there are few.

Unlike the French, the Rus­si­ans and the Brit­ish who have encour­aged recon­struc­tions of clas­sic bal­lets, the first Italian attempt has been strangled at birth, with even the company’s dan­cers writ­ing scath­ing remarks about the piece on Face­book. Though it’s not, of course, a truly Italian ven­ture. The company’s dir­ector Makhar Vaziev (ex-Mariinsky dir­ector and prin­cipal) pushed the pro­ject through with Sergei Vikharev recre­at­ing the ori­ginal cho­reo­graphy. Vikharev, ex-Mariinsky prin­cipal him­self, has become a recon­struc­tion spe­cial­ist with his Sleep­ing Beauty and Bay­adère for the Mari­in­sky, and this year’s Cop­pélia for the Bolshoi seen on cinema screens all over the world. The pro­duc­tion would surely have been greeted more lov­ingly in Rus­sia — and the char­ac­ter dan­cing would have been bet­ter too.

Part of the prob­lem is that the La Scala com­pany per­forms so little, with only five titles in the whole of the cur­rent sea­son. Maybe ded­ic­at­ing such space and resources to a spe­cial­ist area such as this would be bet­ter in a com­pany such as the Bolshoi (who have 9 dif­fer­ent pro­grammes just from now until the end of the year). So it’s good to see Craine spear­head­ing the way toward inter­na­tional recog­ni­tion for the achieve­ment in recon­struct­ing Petipa’s Ray­monda.

Vikharev’s brief in Milan was to turn the clock back to Petipa’s ori­ginal inten­tions. Using not­ated cho­reo­graphic scores (housed at Har­vard Uni­ver­sity) and with the ori­ginal set and cos­tume sketches still extant, he and the La Scala team have pro­duced a sweep­ing and exal­ted trib­ute to Petipa’s grand vision.

And it doesn’t come any grander than this. With 500 cos­tumes, a cast of 150 and an over­flow­ing stream of clas­sical and national dances that cul­min­ates in the exotic Hun­garian fantasy of Act III, the danger here is of bedazzlement.

… Petipa uses his mea­gre tale as a hook upon which to hang a most mag­ni­fi­cent cho­reo­graphic cloak. A mas­ter of com­pos­i­tion, he was a genius at put­ting steps together, and real­ised that sim­pli­city of form is some­times the most eleg­ant way. His writ­ing com­bines tender romantic fan­cies with courtly ebul­li­ence, diamond-sharp pre­ci­sion with light-hearted foot­work, all of it as dec­or­ated as a Parisian sweet shop. At its centre is Ray­monda, one of the most glit­ter­ing and tax­ing roles in the rep­er­toire (it was ori­gin­ally cre­ated for the Italian baller­ina Pier­ina Leg­nani, who was cel­eb­rated for her tech­nical virtuosity).

But there is a price to pay for the extra­vag­ant pageantry. With no quiet, reveal­ing moments and no dra­matic pay­off for the lov­ers, the heroine is more cipher than flesh and blood. Visu­ally, how­ever, it’s splend­our all round. The painted flats evoke vaunt­ing castle ceil­ings and pretty, verd­ant gar­dens; the cos­tumes are copi­ous and comely, though to mod­ern eyes those for the men inev­it­ably look a little camp. The Glazunov score, con­duc­ted by Mikhail Jurowski, indulges in shim­mer­ing melod­ies and irres­ist­ible surges of sen­ti­ment; like powdered sugar on chocol­ate it’s a sur­feit of riches and we lap up every tasty morsel.

There’s a telling phrase in that: “The painted flats evoke vaunt­ing castle ceil­ings and pretty, verd­ant gar­dens”, whereas to the Italian critic the sets were “dreary”. Maybe the real reason that many Itali­ans don’t appre­ci­ate this Ray­monda is they can’t. To coun­tries used to rain and grey skies the scenery is evoc­at­ive, to the Itali­ans it’s just sad and dull. The con­trast of the sub­dued col­ours of a Con­stable land­scape with the vivid col­ours of a Michelan­gelo scene is maybe  just too much.

… I loved it!

Photo by  Marco Bres­cia & Rudy Amisano

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