It’s music that’s so over-the-top, Cecil B. DeMille would have blushed. Ottorino Respighi gets all quasi-biblical in this suite from “Belkis, Queen of Sheba.” The ballet spectacle, set at the court of King Solomon, was given its first performance at La Scala in 1932. The finale featured over a thousand performers, which likely accounts for the work’s subsequent neglect. Grandiose even by Respighi standards, the concluding orgiastic dance whipped the opening night audience into a frenzy.
Think big, and aim high! Happy birthday, Ottorino Respighi!
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
Nothing is guaranteed to get Dad out on the dance floor faster than ballet music inspired by the Prodigal Son.
As related in the Gospel of Luke, a young wastrel burns through his family fortune, then returns home to the arms of a forgiving father. The son’s elder, more responsible brother is none too pleased, but the father explains that since the younger son has repented and returned, as if from the dead – in essence, was lost, and is now found – it is cause for celebration.
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” it’s an off-center Father’s Day tribute, as we listen to ballet music inspired by the Parable of the Prodigal Son.
We’ll hear a late, folk-inspired score by the Swedish composer Hugo Alfvén, staged in honor of his 85th birthday in 1957, and Sergei Prokofiev’s alternately pungent and transcendentally lyrical opus, written for the Ballets Russes in 1928. The latter was developed simultaneously with Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 4 and shares much of the same thematic material.
Father knows best. Celebrate the Day of the Dad with “Son Dance,” ballet music inspired by the Prodigal Son, this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we conclude the long, gluttonous holiday weekend with Knudage Riisager’s ballet “Slaraffenland” (usually translated as “Fool’s Paradise”).
Inspired by Bruegel’s painting “The Land of Cockaigne,” the scenario imagines a Promised Land “where roasted pigeons fly around in the air with knives and forks in their backs, and the streets are paved with marzipan and chocolate.” The plot concerns a silly boy who wanders into the country of King Sauce and becomes ill from overindulgence. Along the way, he encounters Robin Hood, the Three Musketeers, Captain Fear, Fountains of Liqueur, Cigarettes, and the Candy Princess.
Riisager was born in 1897 to Danish parents living in Estonia. He studied music at Copenhagen University and then in Paris with Albert Roussel. Though he was a prolific composer, with some 400 works to his name, including symphonies, concertos, chamber music and songs, he is probably best known, if at all, for his ballet works.
Rouse yourself for a dose of musical tryptophan. Join me for “Fool’s Paradise” – Knudage Riisager’s “Slaraffenland” – this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
