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YOUR BASIC SWAN LAKE
The baseline production of Swan Lake most familiar to audiences in the western European tradition is based on not the original, not the second, not the third, but the fourth production of the ballet which was first seen complete in 1895.
Owing to the success of Tchaikovsky's two previous full-evening ballets, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, the management of the Imperial Theaters in St. Petersburg and the artistic staff of the Maryinsky Ballet were very interested in getting another ballet out of the composer, but his death in 1893 seemed to close the door on that source forever. But Ivan Vsevolozhsky, the Director of the Imperial Theaters, had been negotiating since 1886 with Tchaikovsky to revive at least a portion of his 1877 Swan. Act II was judged most fitting for immediate rehabilitation, but only a little work (a few costume designs) proceeded on this front before Tchaikovsky's death.
The Director and Marius Petipa, Balletmaster of the Maryinsky Theater at St. Petersburg, had obtained a copy of the score from the composer and had set to working piecemeal on those elements which, they felt, had impeded previous choreographers. With Tchaikovsky's cooperation and assent, Riccardo Drigo, then Music Director at the Maryinsky, was set to work reorchestrating and editing the previously-unwieldy music. Upon the death of the composer, a Memorial Concert was arranged, and on February 17th (Julian-Russian calendar)/29th (Gregorian-Western calendar), Act II was presented at the concert at the Maryinsky with Pierina Legnani in the role of Odette, the Swan Queen.
Legnani is another figure in the great partnership that produced Swan Lake. She was part of the Italian "invasion" of the Maryinsky, which also brought Enrico Cecchetti to Russia, and dazzled audiences with her astonishing technical and artistic abilities. It was said of her that she could perform an unsupported adage and take an a la seconde of such steadiness that a full wineglass could be balanced on her instep and she could then revolve in a promenade without spilling a drop. She was named prima ballerina assoluta for her excellence, a rank held only by one other dancer in the Imperial Theaters. And, as Alexandra Danilova is reputed to have said, "Prima ballerina assoluta is like a five- star General." Petipa and the rest of the management were eager to show off their prodigy, and Legnani was only too happy to allow them to do so.
Designs for the set and costumes of the updated Swan Lake were assigned to a team of designers, a Colonel Andreyev, Mikhail Bocharov, and Heinrich LeVogt for the former, and Evgenii Ponomarev, regular designer for the Maryinsky, who had drafted costume designs for Odile and the Swan-Maidens as early as 1892, for the latter. Critical and popular opinion was that these elements of the production were "appropriate and luxurious".
Exactly who is responsible for which choreography is the source of much controversy, which continues to this day. The conventional wisdom has traditionally been that Petipa choreographed Acts I & III, with his assistant, Lev Ivanov, doing the work of the "white acts", II & IV, providing the latter on notes by Petipa. Some scholars have argued that Ivanov, although a serviceable and competent choreographer, never gave a suggestion of the genius that was to mark the mighty Act II, but others raise the argument that "even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then" and hold up the notation score of The Nutcracker as evidence of the well-developed nature of Ivanov's balletic vision. Recent scholarship has put forward the proposition that Ivanov was also responsible for the Csardas (the Hungarian Dance) and the Neapolitan/Venetian (no one is quite sure which region of Italy is depicted) Dance in Act III. Still others have put forth a convincing case that it is possible that Petipa really did choreograph all four acts, with Ivanov acting as an assistant, and that Ivanov was named choreographer posthumously by Soviet revisionists who preferred their greatest choreographer to be Russian, not French.
The full four-act work was premiered on January 15th/27th, 1895. Although the production was not universally hailed (one critic called it "sluggish and monotonous", and another complained of the tediousness of the last act - a traditional weakness), Swan Lake met with immense approval. One critic hailed the Act I pas de trois, the entire second act, and the character dances and Black Swan pas de deux in Act III. Letters to the Editor columns in the local newspapers and magazines fairly gushed with praise for the new work.
This production was selected especially for inclusion in the Coronation Festival accompanying the coronation of Nicholas II, a rather fascinating choice, considering the suspicions of the populace regarding the new Tsaritsa, Alexandra Fedorovna, who was German, and the ballet's implied warning about liaisons with strangers!
Notices for the original production were profuse in their praise for Legnani, whose superb control made her adages true wonders of the ballet. As in the original Moscow production, the role of Odette was doubled with that of Odile, pressing the ballerina hard on legato in Acts II and IV and equally hard on allegro in Act III. Petipa, who knew a good gimmick when he saw it, had her perform her famous brace of thirty-two fouetées, which she had used to tremendous acclaim in his earlier Cinderella (music by Baron Shell). Her Prince Siegfried, Pavel Gerdt, was a fiftyish danseur noble whose age, it has been popularly believed, forced Ivanov to make all his pas de deux for three or more to allow the Old Man to rest. Current scholarship calls this conventional wisdom into question, as Siegfried does all the lifts in the pas de deux, while the alternate partner (usually Benno or another convenient noble) does the promenades, arguably the least strenuous part of partnering. Siegfried appears to have been very much the onlooker when his friend turns Odette around, standing back to admire her beauty. Just in case, Gerdt was understudied by Nikolai Legat, twenty-six. (And popular belief seems ignorant of the 18th century tradition of the danseur noble as being an adagio, not an allegro/virtuoso dancer. The danseur noble took part in social and court dances (as in Swan Lake's Act I court dances and Act III "Waltz of the Would-Be Brides") and partnered the ballerina, but virtuoso dancing was done by the danseurs classiques and demicaracteres.)
Star Power was not lacking in the supporting cast, either. In the Csardas, in particular, Marie Petipa, the choreographer's daughter, and Alfred Bekefi were acclaimed. Marussia drew some additional attention by studding her costume with 12,000 rubles worth of real diamonds. In the Mazurka, which has no "lead couple" save the first to enter, had in that position Felix Kshesinsky, who danced the Polish dance with his daughter Mathilde, who was later to rise to the assoluta rank held by Legnani. His appearance as a sort of cameo created a sensation, and both the Mazurka and the Csardas were given encores.
This is the production from which all others are ultimately derived.
To be continued. . .
Eventually, we will have pages about subsequent productions.