Russian Ballet Favourites

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Cat No: 8554063

Release Date: 12 January 1999

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 636943406328

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: Russian Ballet Favourites

Description
Russian BalletFavouritesGayane was conceived as a ballet in four acts and six scenes. Based, in itsoriginal version, on a libretto by Konstantin Derzhavin, it was first staged inDecember 1942 in Perm, where the Kirov Ballet had been evacuated. Choreographywas by Anasimova and decor by Natan Altman. It was restaged in Leningrad in1945 by the Kirov and in 1957 in another version by the Moscow Bolshoy. Thecomposer was awarded the Stalin Prize for his work in 1943. The ballet wasbased on an earlier work, Happiness, first produced in Yerevan in 1939, andKhachaturian re-used this music for his new score.The music of Raymonda has proved very much more satisfactory thanthe original ballet. In 1895 the minor novelist and columnist Lydia Pashkovasubmitted her scenario to the director of the Imperial Theatres, IvanVsevolozhsky. After revision this was sent to the veteran choreographer of theImperial ballet, Marius Petipa. The work was eventually staged at the Mar?»inskyTheatre in St Petersburg in January 1898, initially with a benefit performancefor Pierina Legnani, who danced the title r??le. Sergey Legat took the premierdanseur r??le of Jean de Brienne, with Pavel Gerdt in the character r??le ofAbderakhman. Sets were designed by Orest Allegri, Konstantin Ivanov and PetrLambru and costumes by Ekaterina Ofizerova and Ivan Kaffi.The action of the ballet is set in medieval Hungary. Raymonda isbetrothed to Jean de Brienne, a crusader, who is called away to the wars. Sheis also the object of desire to the Saracen knight Abderakhman, who plans toabduct her. The White Lady (Dame blanche), a guardian spirit of Raymonda'snoble family, appears and prevents the abduction, and Abderakhman is killed incombat by Jean de Brienne. The principal action ends with the second act. Thethird act honours the happy couple, Raymonda and Jean de Brienne, and issometimes offered now as a separate item in ballet programmes. It consists of aseries of divertissements, including the famous Pas classique hongrois.There have been various re-stagings of Raymonda, either in itsoriginal form, or with a revised scenario and adapted choreography, withversions by Pavlova, Balanchin and Nureyev among others. Dyagilev himself tookfrom it a men's pas de quatre, with Nizhinsky, for his opening season inParis in 1909. However unsatisfactory the narrative and dramatic structure ofthe piece, it remains, in the version of the eighty-year-old Marius Petipa, aclassic of choreography, while its music has its own lasting attractions. Glazunovshared with Tchaikovsky an ability to handle the short forms that balletdemands, within a coherent wider structure. His evocative score for Raymondais immensely colourful, whether in the varied set-pieces of the first act,with its romance, its ghostly apparitions and dance of elves and goblins, or inthe character dances of the exotic second act or in the final celebrations ofthe third.The ballet Spartacus, the score of which was completed in 1954,deals with the slave r
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