United Kingdom Rudolf Nureyev’s The Nutcracker: Dancers of The Royal Ballet, Covent Garden Opera Chorus / John Lanchbery (conductor). Filmed (directed by John Vernon) on the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, 10.3.1968 and re-released on DVD by Opus Arte in 2020. (JPr)
It is sort of 85 years since Rudolf Nureyev’s delivery and shortly it is going to be 30 years since his deeply unhappy, untimely loss of life and I really feel the necessity to mark these anniversaries in some small means. For those that noticed him, as I did a number of occasions, Nureyev had exceptional private and inventive charisma and we’ll by no means see his like once more. He can also by no means be forgotten due to his zealotry in all the time giving male dancers – himself initially – as a lot to do as doable in any new model of the classics. He could not all the time have gotten the steadiness completely proper; however what he did was usually thought-provoking and spectacular, as witnessed by his Sleeping Beauty (1975) and Romeo and Juliet (1977) for London Festival Ballet (as English National Ballet was then) that I grew up going to see as usually as I may. There have been a number of evenings at Covent Garden too, and within the early Nineteen Eighties I noticed him dance in his fantastic Swan Lake which he created for Vienna State Ballet in 1964 and which had its 243rd efficiency within the Austrian capital in March 2022.
Also, one of many earliest ballets I ever noticed was The Royal Ballet’s The Nutcracker at Covent Garden in 1977 and it has remained in my reminiscence – and I have a tendency to say it in each Nutcracker overview I write! – with out having seen it once more other than the recording of a 2018 Vienna revival (right here). Because I solely have watched ballet stay, within the cinema or streamed on-line I used to be blissfully unaware of any recording of Nureyev dancing in his personal manufacturing. During this previous Christmas the BBC confirmed The Classical Collection with some seasonal fare together with a pas de deux from the 1968 recording of The Nutcracker with Nureyev’s Prince and Merle Park as Clara. What we noticed then – and subsequently on this DVD – is the fifth efficiency on tenth March and a few additional analysis reveals that after I noticed it on thirteenth January 1977 that was the thirty fifth of solely 36 performances it ever had at Covent Garden. That was regardless of The Royal Ballet’s founder, Dame Ninette de Valois, calling it ‘the best Nutcracker England ever had’, which most likely stays the case at this time.) Though, clearly, the manufacturing has been subsequently staged many occasions elsewhere, most just lately in December 2022 at La Scala, Milan.
In 1958, Nureyev – simply 19 and nonetheless a pupil on the Vaganova Academy (Kirov Ballet college) – made his debut because the Prince in a revival of Vasili Vainonen’s well-known 1934 The Nutcracker. Apparently, it was this manufacturing which impressed the primary one Nureyev staged for Swedish National Ballet in 1967. With new designs from the late Nicholas Georgiadis – who he had labored with on his Vienna Swan Lake – Nureyev created this The Nutcracker for The Royal Ballet. His Freudian model takes place, as traditional, on Christmas Eve, and Georgiadis (2023 is the centenary of his delivery) as soon as instructed we’re proven 1905 fin-de-siècle Russia. The ballet begins with 4 younger males enjoying about in entrance of the Stahlbaums’s spectacular villa frontage because the friends – together with Drosselmeyer – arrive for his or her occasion. (More than ever this opening scene jogged my memory of Wayne Eagling’s present English National Ballet Nutcracker.) The costumes are conventional – and usually Russian – with elegant ball robes and gold-braided officers’ uniforms. Later there’ll later be Hussars on horses (effectively, of kinds!). The decorations are as practical and as elaborate because the costumes, with a big candlelit tree to the rear of an enormous salon.
The limping Drosselmeyer seems to be relatively piratical together with his tricorn hat and eyepatch (it’s his look that was my abiding reminiscence from 1977). He has a gold and white Nutcracker doll for Clara and in a vivid crimson and black cloak entertains the youngsters trying like an eccentric wizard. Nureyev consists of – similar to Vainonen – Drosselmeyer’s puppet present which foreshadows the next dream sequences. There is a captivating solo for a reflective Clara earlier than her brother Franz breaks her treasured doll and Drosselmeyer repairs it, cementing him as a father-figure to Clara. It has all been relatively an excessive amount of for her and he or she falls asleep because the clock strikes twelve.
Now begins the psychoanalytical twist Nureyev brings to the ballet as Clara goals she is menaced by 18 scurrying rats and her Nutcracker doll turns into her white knight. Eventually – after issues don’t go that effectively for the battling toy troopers and Clara has been surrounded – she vanquishes the massive Rat King by throwing a candle at it relatively than one in every of her footwear. The Nutcracker has now reworked into the Prince Clara’s pubescent coronary heart wishes and there may be an interesting duet for them, earlier than the Prince’s joyful solo, 26 glowing Snowflakes, and the calming singing of the Covent Garden Chorus, brings the primary act to a detailed in gently falling snow. (Intriguingly this has been staged in a glacial-looking backyard setting with a slope and a few angel statues on the again and the snowflakes exit going slowly up it within the reverse approach to the well-known entry of the shades in La Bayadère.)
The second act begins with a ship trip to the Land of Sweets which introduced again reminiscences of the jaw-dropping one Nureyev devised for the panorama scene in his Sleeping Beauty for London Festival Ballet. It then continues with one prolonged dream sequence after one other and extra Freudian imaginings. Firstly, there’s a nightmarish sequence because the acquainted faces of household and associates from across the Christmas tree seem costumed as bats and we’ll see a few of these faces once more within the Spanish, Arabian, Russian, Chinese, and Pastorale dances. (The Sixties was the time when two slaves robbing a relatively portly pasha who has been entertaining his harem and three caricatures of Chinese folks engaged in some tough and tumble by no means gave anybody a second thought!)
By now it’s Drosselmeyer who has been proven turning into the good-looking prince who will dance with Clara within the sublimely classical grand pas deux and never the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier. As a coda, Drosselmeyer cradles the sleeping Clara in his arms earlier than handing her over to her mom as – together with all the opposite friends – he leaves the occasion. Clara rouses herself and searches in useless for Drosselmeyer earlier than going slowly up the steps nonetheless clutching her Nutcracker doll.
The choreography was filled with Nureyev’s acquainted demanding balances, intricate footwork and armography, He additionally introduced geometric patterning to the group motion – and particularly to the ‘Waltz of the Snowflakes’ scene – that probably owed a lot to Vainonen. I do imagine dancers’ approach and athleticism has improved significantly throughout the intervening 50plus years and the corps de ballet didn’t all the time transfer as one when they need to have. (Sometimes dancers can truly look overtrained as of late.) As Clara, Merle Park’s dancing had virtuosity, grandeur, and most importantly, naturalness.
Nureyev’s pantherine pyrotechnics, gravity-defying leaps and velocity throughout the stage will make you maintain your breath however equally necessary was how sensitively and securely he partnered Park. I want to see what trendy ballerina may very well be thrown within the air, twist horizontally and get caught by the Prince’s arms with the benefit Park and Nureyev dropped at this, in addition to the tip to their adagio the place she lies on his raised leg.
There are quite a lot of different legendary names in a forged who dance committedly and enthusiastically. How nice it was to see Monica Mason, Lesley Collier, Michael Coleman, Wayne Sleep, amongst others, on the peak of their careers. Especially poignant was to observe English-Australian composer and conductor, John Lanchbery, launch the orchestra into the ballet’s transient overture as 2023 additionally marks, like Georgiadis, the a hundredth anniversary of his delivery in addition to the twentieth of his loss of life at 79. The sound on this DVD isn’t the perfect nevertheless it was clear Lanchbery and his musicians did justice to Tchaikovsky’s unceasingly scintillating rating and the tempi have been swift which challenged a number of the dancers, although not after all, Nureyev.
Jim Pritchard
Production:
Music – Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky
Choreography and Production – Rudolf Nureyev (Vasili Ivanovich Vainonen – Act II: The Prince’s Variation)
Set and Costume designer – Nicholas Georgiadis
Lighting designer – William Bundy
Chorus Master – Douglas Robinson
Cast included:
Clara – Merle Park
Herr Drosselmeyer / The Prince – Rudolf Nureyev
Dr Stahlbaum – Leslie Edwards
Frau Stahlbaum – Betty Kavanagh
Fritz – Keith Martin
Luisa – Ann Jenner
The Nutcracker – Wayne Sleep
Spanish Dancers – Georgina Parkinson, Michael Coleman
Arabian Dancers – Gerd Larsen, Ann Howard, Alexander Grant, Gary Sherwood
Chinese Dancers – Kenneth Mason, Keith Martin, Geoffrey Cauley
Russian Dancers – Monica Mason, Jane Robinson, Derek Rencher, Ronald Hynd
Snowflakes – Deanne Bergsma, Monica Mason
Shepherd Dancers – Lesley Collier, Carole Hill, Wayne Sleep
Rat King – Ronald Plaisted