Minkus : Don Quixote
The Royal Ballet
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Martin Yates
Don Quixote has an unfortunate history with the Royal Ballet; two failed productions in the last thirty years seemed to establish that its exuberant, if somewhat chaotic mash of styles really wasn't up the company's street. It was a brave move to commission a third version from Cuban star Carlos Acosta, responsible here for both the production and much of the choreography, though based on Petipa, and on the whole, I'd say this one could be a keeper, particularly if they tone down the overly mobile sets a little.
Much as I admire Acosta as a dancer, I have to say that I've never been entirely happy with him in what I'd seen to date of the core romantic repertory. Something about his powerful physicality seems to me to clash with the essential nature of those roles. That said, Don Quixote is a ballet with a considerably stronger masculine presence overall than many works of the same period, and a far more energetic male lead than one is accustomed to see in the Petipa repertory, and it was not Acosta, dancing a role he has performed many times right from the start of his career, who was going to undermine that aspect in his re-staging. The result is a good fit for him; Basile is a cheeky chappy, bright and irrepressible, a bit of an Energiser Bunny, and Acosta still has what it takes to pull off all the required virtuosity.
The aspect of Acosta's revision that most struck me is that for the great majority of the ballet, the female corps wears heeled, rather than pointe shoes. This gives the collective numbers a slightly folksy feel that's appropriate for this piece, and it also means that the spectator isn't looking for quite the same rigorous sense of alignment and synchronicity that you do when faced with ranks of girls on pointe. Acosta was evidently keen to modernise the traditional elements of the ballet, although that was never all that strong in this piece to begin with. What suffered, by contrast, was the Vision sequence, where I felt the girls lacked precision.
There was another aspect of Act 2 that didn't quite work out. While Acosta's choreography for the gypsies was interesting, there was an insertion (written by Martin Yates) of a flamenco-inspired item, with guitars on stage, for a campfire number while the Don is building up to his hallucination about the windmill. While it was a reasonable idea, the problem is that the music for the gypsies is very distinctly Central European in flavour. Yates's cumbersome re-orchestrations may have tried to mute that somewhat, and bring it more in line with the overall Spanish theme, but did not succeed, so the flamenco number was downright intrusive, and the transition into the storm and the attack on the windmill was extremely clumsy. In fact, I disapproved of the re-orchestration altogether; Minkus was hardly the greatest of composers, but he was perfectly competent, as was his original orchestration. Yates has produced something that occasionally sounds like the blandest sort of elevator music.
Despite being the title role, the Don himself is a character part, well taken by Christopher Saunders, who presented a sympathetic, dreamy figure, if maybe a trifle youthful-seeming. All of the character roles were well done, in fact, such as Gary Avis's big bear of an irascible father, and Bennet Gartside's mincing Gamache. Of the dancing roles, Ryoichi Hirano was an excellent, strutting Espada, and Melissa Hamilton a delightful Queen of the Dryads. However, the evening was dominated by Marianela Nuñez, on truly glittering form as a deliciously vivacious Kitri, assurance and joy visible in every line of her body, and very much in tune with Acosta as a partner. It's a production that has a few rough edges, but if it can draw performances like this from its principals, then I think it's probably worth keeping around to smooth off those edges.
[Next: 18th October]
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