Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes Celebrates 150 Years

It’s Saturday night! Celebrate by cutting a rug with Sergei Diaghilev. The famed ballet impresario was born on this date 150 years ago.

The company he founded, the Paris-based, world-renowned Ballets Russes, never actually performed in Russia, due to the upheaval of the Russian Revolution. However, from 1909 to 1929, the Ballets Russes performed throughout Europe, and North and South America, collaborating with some of the most-esteemed artists of the time and building a reputation as the most influential ballet company of the 20th century.

Among those commissioned or employed by Diaghilev were composers Igor Stravinsky, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Sergei Prokofiev, and Erik Satie, choreographers Marius Petipa, Michel Fokine, Vaslav Nijinsky, Bronislava Nijinska, Léonide Massine, and George Balanchine, visual artists Vasily Kandinsky, Alexandre Benois, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse, and costume designers Léon Bakst and Coco Chanel.

The enterprise flourished until the double-blow of the Great Depression and the death of its founder in 1929. In 1932, the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo rose from the ashes, reconstituted by Colonel Wassily de Basil, a Russian émigré entrepreneur from Paris, and René Blum, ballet director of the Monte Carlo Opera.

Within four years, the organization was rent by creative differences, and a splinter group, led by Blum, emerged. This ultimately promoted itself as the Original Ballet Russe.

During World War II, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo spent significant time touring the Americas. As dancers retired and left the company, they began teaching or founded their own studios – Balanchine started the New York City Ballet – so that Diaghilev’s influence pervaded American dance. Tamara Toumanova, Maria Tallchief, Cyd Charisse, Ann Reinking, and Yvonne Craig were all alumni of the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo.

Alumni of the Original Ballet Russe, which toured mostly in Europe, were influential in teaching classical Russian ballet technique there.

For the sesquicentennial of Sergei Diaghilev, get your toes tapping with 12 works written or adapted for the Ballets Russes!

MAURICE RAVEL, “DAPHNIS ET CHLOE”
Shepherds, pirates, and Pan!

NIKOLAI TCHEREPNIN, “NARCISSE ET ECHO”
Tcherepnin was actually Diaghilev’s first choice to compose “The Firebird.”

IGOR STRAVINSKY, “PULCINELLA”
Diaghilev produced Stravinsky’s three breakthrough ballets, “The Firebird,” “Petrouchka,” and “The Rite of Spring,” but this one is the most unremittingly joyous.

RICHARD STRAUSS, “JOSEPHSLEGENDE”
Poor Richard Strauss never got paid for his opulent biblical ballet on account of WWI.

MANUEL DE FALLA, “THE THREE-CORNERED HAT”
Ballet meets flamenco.

PETER ILYCH TCHAIKOVSKY, “AURORA’S WEDDING”
Stokowski conducting, at the age of 95!

LORD BERNERS, “THE TRIUMPH OF NEPTUNE”
Sailor Tom Tug’s adventures in Fairy Land.

CONSTANT LAMBERT, “ROMEO AND JULIET”
Not really an adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy, but a backstage romantic comedy. Just a clip, with set and costume designs by Max Ernst and Joan Miro.

OTTORINO RESPIGHI, “LA BOUTIQUE FANTASQUE”
“The Fantastic Toybox,” after melodies of Rossini.

SERGEI PROKOFIEV, “THE PRODIGAL SON”
Bad boys get the best music.

ERIK SATIE, “PARADE”
Selections, choreography by Massine and designs by Picasso.

FRANCIS POULENC, “LES BICHES”
Before you get any smart ideas, the title means “The Does,” slang for coquettish young women.

PHOTO: Diaghilev, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Igor Stravinsky

March 19, 2022
Early Music in Film Scores

March is Early Music Month. While the concept may seem somewhat remote from the world of film music, this week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll set the Wayback Machine and enjoy four scores that employ melodies and modes of the Middle Ages.

We’ll hear selections from “Becket” (1964), by Laurence Rosenthal. In the film, based on a play by Jean Anouilh, Richard Burton plays the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Peter O’Toole, King Henry II. The music is reliant on chant, with a quotation from the familiar Gregorian melody “Dies Irae” (“Day of Wrath”), occurring fairly early in the action.

Then we’ll hear music from “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1939), by Alfred Newman. This time based on a novel – “Notre Dame de Paris,” by Victor Hugo – the film features Maureen O’Hara as Esmeralda and Charles Laughton as Quasimodo, with Cedric Hardwicke, Thomas Mitchell, Edmond O’Brien, and Harry Davenport in the supporting cast. The project was one of nine scored by Newman that year, which many historians regard as Hollywood’s finest. Again, the composer evokes the era through sacred choral passages and secular dances.

“The Warlord” (1965) starring Charlton Heston, Richard Boone and Rosemary Forsyth, is the tale a knight who falls in love with a peasant woman, and in order to keep her, claims his right of “droit du seigneur” – his prerogative to spend the first night with any bride among his serfs. Unfortunately, she falls in love with him, and all hell breaks loose.

It was an unusual project for the composer, Jerome Moross, who is best-known for the kind of breezy Americana sound employed in his best-known music, that for “The Big Country.” Here, he evokes the 11th century with an underscore that, again, finds inspiration in authentic music of the era.

Finally, we’ll turn to “The Lion in Winter” (1965), adapted from a play by James Goldman, an historical drama set at the Christmas court of Henry II – again, as in “Becket,” played by Peter O’Toole. Henry spars with his estranged wife, the temporarily paroled Eleanor of Aquitaine (played by Katherine Hepburn), in a familial power struggle, which also involves their three sons, played by Anthony Hopkins, John Castle, and Nigel Terry. Timothy Dalton appears as Philip II of France.

The film was the winner of three Academy Awards, including one for Best Original Score. The composer was John Barry. Yet again the music is steeped in that of the Middle Ages, yet given a distinctly modern twist.

Plentiful intrigue and funny haircuts are guaranteed. However, there’s nothing Middling about the music. Film composers make history, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

PHOTOS: Dual O’Tooles, as Henry II in “Becket” (top) and “The Lion in Winter”

March 19, 2022
Altered States, William Hurt, and Existential Dread

As one of our viewers wryly observed last night: “Showed up for a discussion about ‘Altered States’ and ended up hearing how Ross and Roy spent their youth getting into R-rated movies.”

Fair enough. The digressions were front-loaded and thick on the ground.

But we also talked a bit about the nature of existence, too. If there is a God, I’m pretty sure He’s not some bearded Michelangelo sitting on a cloud. From the evidence of Paddy Chayefsky’s screenplay, the Universe is a pretty cold place and whatever comfort exists is in the here and now. So be thankful for the love you’ve got. And don’t do too many ‘shrooms.

The chill of the Universe is nothing next to the tension that existed onset between Chayefsky and director Ken Russell. There’s plenty of hard fact amidst the dime store philosophizing on last night’s show, a tribute to the late William Hurt, now archived at the link.

I can’t say it will expand your consciousness, but there’s every possibility you could regress.

Next week, we’ll observe the 91st birthday of William Shatner, with a discussion of one of his immortal screen classics, “Kingdom of the Spiders” (1977). The Shat demonstrates his incredible versatility, going from starship captain to Southwestern veterinarian, in a town besieged by crazed tarantulas. The comments section will be devoid of arachnophobes, on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. Roy and I will have the best legs in the room, when we livestream on Facebook, Friday evening at 7:00 EDT!

https://www.facebook.com/roystiedyescificorner

PHOTO: Hurts, don’t it? Maybe Edvard Munch was right.

March 19, 2022
Rimsky-Korsakov’s Middle Finger to the Tsar

I know Russian music isn’t exactly “in” right now. But on Rimsky-Korsakov’s birthday, I am reminded of how the last act of this most venerable of Russian nationalist composers was to give a great big middle finger to the Tsar.

With the completion of “The Invisible City of Kitezh” in 1905, Rimsky thought he was through with the operatic stage. He had composed 14 operas in all, and for “Kitezh” he brought the utmost in his artistry to bear. It would form the capstone in a kind of pantheon to a distinctly Russian national sound in music, the foundations of which were laid by Mikhail Glinka, beginning in the 1830s and ‘40s.

But political indignation stirred Rimsky to take up his pen for one final statement, a sardonic take-down of autocratic rule, Russian imperialism, and military incompetence during the Russo-Japanese War.

To say that the conflict, in which rival empires clashed for supremacy around the Yellow Sea, proved to be an enormous embarrassment for Russia would be an understatement. After a series of staggering defeats, Emperor Nicholas II remained headstrong in his determination to win. Even beyond the point of all hope for victory, he doubled-down to try to save face, rather than submit to a “humiliating peace.” He ignored an olive branch from Japan and rejected the idea of ending the war.

The inadequacy of the Russian military and Japan’s decisive victory stunned the world. It led to the decline of Russian prestige and influence abroad, and contributed to growing domestic unrest that culminated in the 1905 Russian Revolution.

It didn’t help that at home the Imperial Guard had fired on workers during an unarmed demonstration, a peaceful march to the Winter Palace. The actions of the Tsar’s soldiers resulted in the deaths of men, women, and children. Depending on who you believe, casualties were somewhere between 96 (according the official record) and 4,000. Ironically, the Tsar wasn’t even in residence at the time.

That was in January. The war finally ended in September with the Treaty of Portsmouth, mediated by Theodore Roosevelt.

Rimsky himself had earlier served as an officer in the Russian Imperial Navy and later as a civilian inspector of its bands. In 1905 he took to the ramparts, figuratively speaking, when he stood with student agitators at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Rimsky was in his 60s at the time and a much beloved presence. For his actions, he was dismissed from his professorship, approximately 100 students were expelled, and the conservatory was threatened with closure.

A second demonstration by students during a performance of one of Rimsky’s earlier operas, “Kashchey the Immortal,” led to a ban on his music. Widespread outrage rippled beyond Russia’s borders. 300 students staged a walkout at the conservatory until Rimsky was reinstated. Not long after, in 1906, Rimsky would resign to launch into work on his final opera, with a pen warmed up in hell.

On its surface, “The Golden Cockerel,” after Pushkin, is a fairy tale. But like all the best fairy tales, it also serves as a thinly-veiled allegory. The Astrologer in the work’s prologue and epilogue tells us that the characters are all based on real persons and that the moral is valid and true. In between, we’re introduced to a paranoid ruler who reneges on his promises, commits criminal acts, makes war on a sovereign state, displays military ineptitude, and in the end has his jugular pecked out by a cockerel.

There’s no way the Russian censors were ever going to allow this work onstage. Rimsky, whose health was in decline, demanded that no changes be made, and suggested to a friend that he arrange for it to be performed in Paris. It got there eventually, staged as “Le coq d’or,” the title by which it has frequently been identified in the West ever since.

But the actual premiere took place in Moscow in 1909, the year after Rimsky’s death. And yes, the libretto was judiciously pruned and the staging carefully modified.

In his lifetime, Rimsky-Korsakov was one of the most prominent and respected musical figures in all of Russia. The St. Petersburg Conservatory, from which he was fired, now bears his name.

As the ironies continue to pile upon ironies, history is poised to repeat itself. In 2022, Rimsky’s barbed response to the events of 1905 now seems uncannily prescient.

From a New York City Opera telecast, in English, with Beverly Sills in 1971. The Tsar (Norman Treigle) gets the big peck at 1:38:30.

There are plenty more legible productions on YouTube, but most are sung in Russian, and not many have subtitles.

Here’s a more vivid production, with no translations:

Perhaps the opera’s best-known number, “Hymn to the Sun”

Arthur Fielder conducts the orchestral suite:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPnNeYW0Xls

March 18, 2022
Ina Boyle Irish Composer Rediscovered

Ina Boyle was an Irish composer, born near Enniskerry, County Wicklow, who made regular trips to London to study with Ralph Vaughan Williams. She did receive a number of first performances in England in the 1920s and ‘30s. The music was well-received, but failed to gain any real traction. Family obligations kept her at home, but she continued to compose every day and was active in her correspondence and sending out scores. Yet performances were infrequent, and only one of her works (“Wildgeese”) was programmed twice in her lifetime. She died in 1967 at the age of 78.

Boyle wrote some really lovely stuff, and it’s only comparatively recently that much of it has been recorded. Even so, there’s still plenty that hasn’t made it before the microphones (including two of her three symphonies).

Here’s one of her works that I had never heard before:

Website of the Ina Boyle Society Limited:

https://www.inaboyle.org/

This is highly recommended, if you can find it. If you can’t, some of the pieces have been posted on YouTube.

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2018/May/Boyle_orchestral_CDLX7352.htm

More Ina Boyle, please!

March 17, 2022

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