Bolshoi Ballet (HD broadcast), 06/12/2015

The Lady of the Camellias (chor. John Neumeier, mus. Chopin)

Artists of the Bolshoi Ballet
Pyotr Chuknov, piano
Alexei Melentyev, piano
Orchestra of the Bolshoi Theatre
Pavel Sorokin
It's been a real pleasure to see the Bolshoi open up its repertory to modern choreographers, both inside and outside Russia.  There was a point, somewhere in the 70s, when it looked like the company was stagnating in its Grigorovich-infused classics.  John Neumeier is, of course, a sure value, one of the world's foremost choreographers this last forty years and more, and still producing work from his Hamburg base.  I've seen very little of Neumeier's narrative work, and more of the abstracts, particularly his Mahler choreographies, but The Lady of the Camellias, based on Alexandre Dumas's famous eponymous novel and set to Chopin's music, is a relatively early piece, created for the Stuttgart Ballet where Neumeier had worked under John Cranko, and its principal ballerina, Marcia Haydée.

Give that my experience of Neumeier's ballets has tended to be aesthetic rather than dramatic, there was an emotional strength here I was not quite expecting.  The diversity of characterisation, on the other hand, was more than welcome.  Three acts is quite a long time to spin out what is a relatively slight story, at least in dance.  Verdi managed it admirably with his opera, but he had a text to help things along, it's much harder to communicate in depth with just movement.  So Neumeier complements the central couple with a rich cast of secondary characters, from the imaginary couple of Manon Lescaut and Des Grieux, whose destiny foreshadows that of Marguerite and Armand, to the light-hearted frivolity of Armand's friend Gaston and his bubbly mistress Prudence.  Imaginatively staged, with minimal decor, some props, and a well endowed wardrobe of beautiful costumes, Neumeier gives us the set pieces when we expect them, but with his personal touch to enliven and illuminate them, and the pas de deux - three major ones for Marguerite and Armand, and one for Manon and Des Grieux - are magnificent, expansive, and full of soaring lifts.

The Bolshoi brought the piece into the repertory in the spring of 2014, opening with pretty much an identical cast to the one seen tonight, a cast whose principals had gone to Germany to work with Neumeier, and whose Armand, Edvin Revazov, is actually one of Neumeier's Hamburg principals.  He's a remarkable Armand, almost painfully eager, puppyish, leaping and falling at Marguerite's feet in wide-eyed adoration, an excellent foil to Svetlana Zakharova's weary, wounded Marguerite.  All through their second duet (the "white" pas de deux), you sense she is incredulously happy, waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak.  We, the audience, know that it is going to drop, of course, but the contrast between Zakharova's pained wonder and Revazov's untrammelled enthusiasm was marvellously handled, while the solo for Armand when he discovers Marguerite has left him was extraordinary, wild and disjointed, the steps stretched to breaking point.

I felt Anna Tikhomirova's Manon was a little abrupt in style, at least in her first two appearances, but the last pas de deux, with Semyon Chudin as Des Grieux, was more affecting.  Kristina Kretova was an effervescent Prudence, sly and sexy, well-matched by Mikhail Lobukhin's raunchy, preening Gaston.  All of the dancing was strong and vital, with clean, crisp lines and focused performances in terms of the acting.  Some of the filming was less successful than usual; however,  there's a lot going on on stage much of the time, I just didn't entirely approve of the director's choice of camera shot at times, but it was a small niggle in an otherwise outstanding presentation.

[Next : 8th December]