The three works represented on this release, along with Tchaikovsky's three balletic masterpieces, comprise a good share of ballet's core repertoire. Giselle, Les Sylphides and Coppélia, having succeeded in their premiere performances, have retained their popularity to the present day ......

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Bibliographische Detailangaben

Weitere Verfasser:	Chopin, Frédéric 1810-1849, Delibes, Léo 1836-1891, Adam, Adolphe 1803-1856, Coralli, Jean 1779-1854
Format:	Elektronisch Video
Sprache:	English
Veröffentlicht:	[Place of publication not identified] BBC, under licence to International Classical Artists Ltd [2012]
Schlagworte:	Ballets Internet videos
Online-Zugang:	BSB01 URL des Erstveröffentlichers
Zusammenfassung:	The three works represented on this release, along with Tchaikovsky's three balletic masterpieces, comprise a good share of ballet's core repertoire. Giselle, Les Sylphides and Coppélia, having succeeded in their premiere performances, have retained their popularity to the present day ... Les Sylphides is regarded as the first plotless ballet of the twentieth century. As such, it undoubtedly had a significant influence upon the works of George Balanchine who, in his vast output, typically eschewed narrative in favour of composition. Composition is certainly at the heart of Les Sylphides, which begins and ends in a geometrically positioned tableau. Though there is no story here, there is a character who has been variously described as a poet, a dreamer, or, simply, a young man. Dramatically he is a cipher, the only male on the stage, surrounded by diaphanous creatures which sometimes engage him and at other times simply flit around him. The ballet, choreographed by Michel Fokine, is set to the music of Chopin, and at its initial St Petersburg performance was titled Rêverie romantique: Ballet sur la musique de Chopin, subsequently shortened to Chopiniana. It was in the series premiered by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes that the work became known as Les Sylphides, then lavishly cast with Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova and Tamara Karsavina. The music used varied in the early productions, but the orchestration of seven Chopin works for solo piano remains the standard musical version of the ballet. Rowena Jackson, Philip Chatfield and Nadia Nerina inhabit their ghostly glen in true Romantic style in this performance. Les Sylphides, though technically demanding, provides no opportunities for grandstanding. The dreamlike quality of the work is captured perfectly by these Royal Ballet dancers. The gaiety and charm of Coppélia is a far cry from the tale given as its source, E.T.A. Hoffmann's The Sandman. This very dark short story, written in 1816, was not only the inspiration for the ballet, but also for Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann. Both feature inanimate creations fashioned by mad inventors. In The Sandman, Coppelius is a grotesque presence whose very appearance instills fear. In Coppélia, the scenario makes him more of a buffoonish eccentric. That he attempts to give life to Coppelia, the doll he has created, by siphoning it from Swanilda's drugged betrothed is indeed nefarious, but Arthur Saint-Léon's choreography and Delibes's music make his machinations more comic than demonic. The perennial popularity of Coppélia has much to do with its score, a fusion of descriptive music underscoring the ballet's mise en scène with exhilarating folk dances appropriate to its rustic setting. The first act includes a mazurka and a czardas for the townspeople. For the second act, Delibes added a rollicking Scottish jig and a seductive Spanish dance for his heroine.
Beschreibung:	Ballets
Beschreibung:	1 Online-Ressource (1 video file (1 hr., 37 min., 22 sec.)) sound, color