gramilano

A year ago at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala the bal­let com­pany scored a hit with its resta­ging of that dif­fi­cult piece Ray­monda. The ballet’s improb­able story, with a lack of obvi­ous dra­matic push, can make it seem lacklustre. There­fore when Rudolf Nureyev’s ver­sion for Paris hit the stage in 1983, with Jean Guizerix’s bril­liantly macho Abderam mak­ing poor Yvette Chauviré quake with fear, the bal­let really came alive, and the com­pany danced til they dropped.

La Scala’s bal­let dir­ector Makhar Vaziev (and ex-director of the Mari­in­sky) took a dif­fer­ent approach and asked fel­low Rus­sian Sergej Vikharev to try and recre­ate the spirit of  Marius Petipa’s ori­ginal 1898 pro­duc­tion. Vikharev, who has become a spe­cial­ist in such recre­ations, wanted to go back to the ori­ginal set and cos­tume designs too, and the res­ult was mag­ni­fi­cent. Like see­ing an old bal­let print come alive, the vivid col­ours of the cos­tumes stood out against the duller beige of the painted drops: neces­sary under the low light­ing con­di­tions of a cen­tury ago, but dazzling with today’s banks of spot­lights. The stage was awash with trum­peters, cher­ubs, knights, and Sara­cens. Very satisfying.

So a year later, the pro­duc­tion is back with Olesya Novikova and Friedemann Vogel repris­ing their roles. How excit­ing, I thought, to see how it’s all come together after some of the shaki­ness of the première  some­thing eas­ily for­given see­ing that the bal­let comes in at over three hours. Well this time it wasn’t all that excit­ing. Expect­ing to appre­ci­ate it more after hav­ing also seen the filmed ver­sion, I was sur­prised to find myself dis­trac­ted dur­ing the first act. It is long at over an hour, and, frankly, there isn’t all that much dan­cing. There are lots of ges­tures, walk­ing up and down, and restrained courtly dances, but noth­ing to grab the atten­tion. Novikova lights up the stage dur­ing her numer­ous solos, but it isn’t quite enough.

Also I was lov­ing a little less some of the bizarre headgear and strange col­our com­bin­a­tions, as though some evil dresser had mixed up all the cos­tumes at the last minute. Some of the vari­ous pages and cham­ber­lains looked just plain silly with their unflat­ter­ing tights and tunics. The cos­tumes for the corps how­ever, espe­cially in the last act, are sump­tu­ous. Acts 2 and 3 come to the res­cue with much more dan­cing, and finally in the last act — the fam­ous Raymonda’s Wed­ding — poor Vogel gets a chance to show what he can do.

Maybe the enthu­si­asm of a year ago was the nov­elty. Unwrap­ping a new toy. Well it seems that its ini­tial appeal has worn off some­what, and I’m already a little bored with this toy: I want it to do more. This recre­ation is an inter­est­ing exer­cise, but I doubt many would return to see it sea­son after sea­son like other nar­rat­ive bal­lets, yet it must have cost a for­tune in cloth alone and with all those extras on stage the wage bill will be astro­nom­ical. La Scala didn’t used to worry about that sort of thing, fam­ously put­ting on opu­lent new pro­duc­tions which, after six or so per­form­ances, were never seen again. Well the times they are a-changin’.

Though ulti­mately glad that La Scala suc­ceeded in mount­ing this pro­duc­tion, maybe it’s now time to get the scis­sors out and trim it a little. Includ­ing some of those costumes!

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