I'll put my cards on the table right away. This release is a superb
achievement. However, before I explain my enthusiasm in more detail, I think
it may be useful to offer a little background information about
Marco
Spada itself, for it can hardly be said to be a commonly encountered
work.
In December 1852 Auber presented his latest opera
Marco Spada -
the tale of an 18th century Italian aristocrat-cum-bandit's criminal
adventures and the romantic entanglements of his daughter – to the Paris
public. He was, however, evidently convinced that the story would make an
equally effective subject for dancers. Over the next four years he therefore
reworked some of the opera's more memorable melodies and added extra
material from some of his other works, the best known of which was his 1830
success
Fra Diavolo. Finally, in April 1857 he unveiled his new
ballet, somewhat unimaginatively and, indeed, confusingly given the same
name as its operatic predecessor.
The new incarnation of
Marco Spada met only a lukewarm critical
response, partly owing, it seems, to routine choreography and poor
production values. According to one contemporary critic, "There are
many new settings ... but it is far from having the attraction of ... [the
popular ballet]
Le Corsaire. ... [The choreographer] M. Mazilier
did not tax his imagination. These tarantellas and
ensembles which
run through the ballet are very crude and prove once more that the
management of the Opera must seek out young and intelligent
maîtres de
ballet" (quoted in Cyril W. Beaumont
Complete Book of
Ballets (London, 1937), p.282).
I suspect, however, that a rather confusing storyline that involved no
fewer than five central characters also accounted for the work's
failure to establish itself. Posing as a wealthy nobleman, Marco Spada is,
in reality, the head of a bandit gang, although his daughter Angela knows
nothing of his criminal activities. Meanwhile, two genuine aristocrats,
Marchesa Sampietri and Prince Federici, are engaged to be married, but in
reality each of them loves another: the marchesa's affections incline
to a certain Count Pepinelli, while the prince's heart belongs to
Angela. When Spada and the four young people attend a ball at the Governor’s
palace, the supposed nobleman’s nefarious double life is revealed. His gang
thereupon kidnaps Marchesa Sampietri and Count Pepinelli who are forcibly –
though, in reality, hardly against their will - married to each other by
order of the bandit leader so as to free up the marchesa's former
fiancé Prince Federici for Angela. Spada then removes any remaining
impediment to his daughter's union with her prince by firstly
revealing that he was not her real father at all and then conveniently dying
from a gunshot wound.
With story, production and choreography counting against it, it was
perhaps hardly surprising that
Marco Spada was soon forgotten. It
was to remain so, in fact, for more than 120 years until the French
choreographer Pierre Lacotte revived it as a showpiece for Rudolf Nureyev in
1981. That Rome production was recorded and can still be seen - in dated but
perfectly acceptable quality - on DVD (Hardy Classic Video HCD 4040).
Rather surprisingly perhaps, given the ballet's unfortunate early
history, this Moscow production is a real triumph. Much of the credit for
that is due to Pierre Lacotte who not only rescued
Marco Spada from
obscurity and rendered it fit for presentation, but, now in his ninth
decade, was also the dynamic driving force behind this Moscow production
that premiered in November 2013.
For those who may be unfamiliar with his name, it is worth noting, if
briefly, the important influence on ballet - and specifically 19th century
Romantic ballet - that M. Lacotte has exercised for the past forty years.
Having begun his career as a dancer, Lacotte eventually turned to
choreography and quickly began to specialise in recreating forgotten ballets
from the Romantic era. In many cases the original dance notation had been
lost over time and all that survived were the musical scores, contemporary
descriptions of the sets and the dancing and, in rare cases, the odd number
or two that had been preserved as an exhibition piece. By painstakingly
scouring the archives of dance companies and theatres all over Europe,
studying all the available historical sources that he could find,
interviewing ageing dancers at length and, on occasion and somewhat
controversially, making leaps of faith based on his own instinct and
imagination, Lacotte has since restored several "lost" 19th
century ballets to the stage. The first was his 1972 recreation of Filippo
Taglioni’s version of
La sylphide (1832), which was considered such
a remarkable artistic achievement that it was selected as the first colour
transmission on French TV. The following year he brought the original 1870
version of
Coppélia back to life, while in 1976 he unveiled his
restorations of two mid-19th century showpieces - the
pas de six
from Arthur Saint-Léon's 1844
La vivandière and the
pas
de deux from Taglioni's
Le papillon of 1860. Over the
years Lacotte has famously restored yet more lost or forgotten gems from the
Romantic era's most prominent choreographers, including, among
several others, Petipa's 1862 spectacular
The pharoah's
daughter (recreated 2000), Mazilier's
Paquita (1846,
recreated 2001) and Perrot's
La Esmeralda (1844, recreated
2009). With the first two widely available in very desirable DVD transfers
(on, respectively, Bel Air Classiques BAC001 and TDK DV-BLPAQ), many
MusicWeb International readers will already be aware of Pierre
Lacotte's considerable achievements. The Blu-ray disc under review
now offers the chance to assess the new Moscow production of his
Marco
Spada restoration.
Aside from M. Lacotte's invaluable work to bring it back to
something like its original form,
Marco Spada benefits immensely
from the artists who appear in this performance. David Hallberg became
famous in 2011 as the first American to be appointed a principal dancer with
the Bolshoi Ballet and he is clearly presented here as the star of the show.
Not only is he the only dancer pictured on the disc's front
packaging, but the headline billing there reads, most unusually, not simply
"Marco Spada" but "David Hallberg in
Marco
Spada". His casting in the leading role is at first something of a
surprise: he simply looks too young to be a believable "father" or
to have the authority of a bandit chief. That said, the long-legged Mr
Hallberg quickly makes the audience and we viewers at home forget such a
minor quibble by bringing to his part both tremendous raw energy and a
superlative command of technique. The crowning glory of his performance is
his ability to act - though the demands of a preposterous plot like this one
are, admittedly, not that great - and, moreover, to
interact with
the audience. He conveys throughout a playful yet affectionate awareness of
the story's absurdities and he deliberately sets out to draw the
initially somewhat bemused Bolshoi patrons into his performance. Constantly
directing a veritable battery of melodramatically villainous winks and
smirks at the front stalls - and the camera - Mr Hallberg very soon wins us
over into joining in the fun that he is so obviously having on the
stage.
Deprived by the storyline of any love interest, Hallberg's main
partner is the much-admired Evguenia Obraztsova, a favourite of the Bolshoi
audience, who takes the role of his daughter. Although she looks much the
same age as him, the fact that she is considerably shorter helps convince us
that he might
just be a believable father who’s got a particularly
good skin. Ms Obraztsova is clearly a very accomplished dancer and her
virtuosity, matching that of her partner very well, offers us repeated
thrills. One has to feel rather sad, then, that she suffers from the fact
that Hallberg's charismatic performance - and his shameless but
endearing mugging - keeps our eyes glued to him whenever he is on stage.
Risking a huge generalisation, I suspect that may reflect a temperamental
difference between Russian and American dancers. We are used, by now, to the
way in which the former often perform some utterly astounding move of the
highest technical quality and then stride imperiously or even aloofly off
the stage as though it had just been an everyday reflection of their
ability. American dancers, in the other hand, often appear to take a more
open delight in their own achievement and their audience's
appreciation, almost as if they were competitors milking the audience for
all they're worth in the
America's got talent TV
show. It reminds me a little of the way in which, at Moscow's 1958
International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, the charismatic and media-savvy
Van Cliburn distinguished himself from his dour Russian rivals.
Of the other three leading dancers, I was particularly impressed by Semyon
Chudin’s technique as demonstrated in the role of Prince Federici. Like
David Hallberg, Mr Chudin is an exceptionally lean and long legged performer
with great physical capabilities. He is let down somewhat, however, by not
imposing much in the way of individual personality on his admittedly
one-dimensional role, failing to take it by the scruff of its neck and make
something out of it as the American does. Olga Smirnova, a frequent partner
of Chudin, is a very attractive on-stage presence. She dances neatly and
with great precision, especially in the opening scene set in the busy but
criminally infested town square. The last of the dancers in leading roles is
Igor Tsvirko in the role of Count Pepinelli. He is more compactly built than
either Hallberg or Chudin, but that suits his character's more down
to earth and at times even comic persona. I enjoyed his dancing a great
deal, notably, once again, in that opening scene where he has an attractive
pas de deux with the marchesa.
The Bolshoi company's
corps de ballet has a great deal to
do throughout
Marco Spada, as they portray, variously, townsfolk,
partygoers, soldiers and bandits. Often individually and attractively
characterised, they acquit themselves with distinction and add considerably
to the overall jollity. Alexei Bogorad and the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra
play the score as if they had been familiar with it for years, though they
probably weren't too taxed by Auber's relatively unambitious
and quite repetitious writing - incorporating lots of flourishes and
fanfares as all those soldiers and bandits march to and fro across the
stage. The production itself is an attractive looking one with simple but
effectively used sets. There's one particularly attractive piece of
business (
Dance with veil) in Act 3, Scene 1, that brings a
justified round of applause from the Moscow audience and was evidently
thought to be so striking that a photograph of it takes up not just the
packaging’s back cover but also a double page spread of the accompanying
booklet.
The picture quality on my disc was of demonstration quality. It was
absolutely pin-sharp and completely steady, with no trace of the juddering
effect that sometimes affects lateral panning shots in ballets presented in
Blu-ray format. The sound quality was excellent too. More than twenty
minutes of extra material takes us usefully behind the scenes to learn
something about the background to the production from Pierre Lacotte and the
leading dancers.
Production values of the highest level are, in fact, characteristic of all
the Blu-ray discs that I have collected in recent years in the Bel Air
Classiques Bolshoi Ballet HD Collection, of which
Marco Spada is
just the latest release. All the performances have been quite outstanding
too, with, in particular, exceptional quality and expertly-filmed accounts
of
Giselle (BAC474),
La bayadère (BAC501) and
The
sleeping beauty (BAC478). I live in hope that those may be joined at
some point by Blu-ray releases of some other Bolshoi productions that were
also, I believe, recorded for worldwide cinema relay -
Le corsaire,
La Esmeralda and, especially, a
Don Quixote that starred
the incomparable pairing of Ivan Vasiliev and Natalia Osipova.
For now, though, this new disc of
Marco Spada not only maintains
that superb level of performance and presentation but is, in its own right,
very simply a real treat.
Rob Maynard
