Here’s something of a find! The 1953 Les Sylphides is
apparently the first film of a complete ballet that survives
in the BBC’s archives. Giselle is also a very early example
of televised ballet. That means that we see these productions
in black and white - or rather, as I have observed before in
reviewing early TV broadcasts, in varying shades of light grey
and dark grey. Their vintage also explains a few technical glitches,
notably the odd split second or two of poor focus where it appears
that a camera-man wasn’t properly ready when the director cut
to his camera. The fact that the slips weren’t subsequently
edited out may well indicate that these were live broadcasts,
as so many were at the time, but the booklet remains frustratingly
silent on that question.
With those relatively minor caveats, what we have here are two
significant pieces of ballet history. Tamara Karsavina who,
at almost seventy years of age, tops and tails the Les Sylphides
broadcast. Karsavina had been one of the stellar soloists
- along with Nijinsky, Pavlova and Baldina - at the Ballet Russes’s
1909 Paris premiere of the work in this form. She offers some
idiosyncratically charming observations. While the occasional
off-camera glance suggests that she might not have been entirely
comfortable with the medium, she makes a delightful hostess,
welcoming us to “her” drawing room and then encouraging us to
look out onto the garden at twilight where the action of the
ballet takes place. In her heavily accented English, Madame
Karsavina introduces the soloists: “If we had our choice tonight,
whom would we invite to dance for us? Alicia Markova, of course,
for the prelude and pas de deux. And the poet
who tries to catch her elusive image – that fine young dancer
John Field. For the mazurka we need dancing of the highest
quality – why not Violetta Elvin, straight from her triumph
in Milan? And for the waltz, who more fitting than this
beautiful young ballerina Svetlana Beriosova?”
You would need to be getting on a bit to have seen any of these
dancers performing live. Elvin gave up a top-flight career for
marriage and retired from the stage at the age of 30 in 1955;
Field had moved into ballet administration by the end of the
1950s; Markova’s last stage appearance was in 1963; and Beriosova
retired in 1975. This disc – billed as a “first DVD release”
– is therefore a welcome opportunity to watch them in action.
The three women certainly do not disappoint. Unsurprisingly,
their technique is of the highest order throughout and if, in
truth, none exhibits a great deal of individual characterisation,
that is only to be expected of a ballet that is essentially
a plot-less “Romantic reverie” and a showcase for dance in its
purest form. John Field suffers from the fact that male dancers
played an essentially self-effacing and second fiddle role to
the ladies in British ballet in the early 1950s and were not
expected to hog the limelight. That, coupled with the rather
hammy acting style of the time, makes him come across as rather
effete and sexless. Only later would the status of male dancers
in UK be reassessed, firstly as a result of the Bolshoi Ballet’s
1956 London performances when their virile, energetic and often
stage-stealing men made a huge impression and, secondly, by
the charismatic Rudolf Nureyev’s defection to the West in 1961.
The corps de ballet, drilled by Lydia Sokolova - born,
more prosaically, as Hilda Munnings, and taking the role of
the mother in Giselle in the second film on this disc
- dance well and showcase the soloists admirably. Meanwhile,
Roy Douglas’s arrangements of Chopin’s music are given a competent
account under the direction of Eric Robinson, the BBC’s favoured
conductor of classical “pops” at the time. Incidentally, he
was twice conductor for the Eurovision Song Contest, though
it may be of some significance that on both occasions (1960
and 1963) the UK failed to win.
The unnamed television director has, on the whole, done pretty
well. He or she ensures that the whole of the studio floor-space
is utilised, not only from side to side but also from front
to back. As a result, this is a surprisingly “3D” production,
with plenty of dancers running forwards towards the camera and
then veering away to disappear off-screen behind it. While that
occasionally costs us the top of a head or two, it’s a technique
that successfully injects valuable life and vitality into the
proceedings.
Both camera technique and the quality of the visual image improve
markedly for 1958’s abbreviated version of Giselle, though
there are still one or two glitches that once again suggest
this may have been a live broadcast with no opportunity for
later editing. Thus we see something that looks suspiciously
like a moving camera in the background behind Hilarion’s shoulder
in just the opening minute or two. And, later on, when Giselle
lies distraught on the ground after her lover’s betrayal, the
camera gets in so close that we can clearly see her mother’s
fingers surreptitiously loosening the girl’s braids so that
when she gets up her dishevelled hair will add to her manic,
distraught appearance.
Those quibbles aside, the essential historical value of this
film is to preserve Nadia Nerina’s charismatic performance in
the title role. Nerina is a somewhat overlooked figure today
in that the pre-eminence she might have enjoyed in the 1960s
failed to materialise when, following Nureyev’s arrival in the
west, Margot Fonteyn extended her own career rather longer than
had been anticipated. Miss Nerina – just 5’4” in height and
only a little over 7 stone in weight – was always renowned for
her on-stage vitality and, especially, her superb footwork and
it is difficult to avoid using words like “elfin” and “pert”
in any consideration of her superbly assured technique. But
quite apart from her technical skills, it is also very apparent
in this broadcast that she was a considerably talented communicator
of character and emotion. She is well supported by the Bolshoi
Ballet star Nikolai Fadeyechev (who partners Galina Ulanova
in the same role in one of my choices for MusicWeb International
Recordings
of the Year in 2008, though both he and Niels Bjørn Larsen,
dancing Giselle’s rejected suitor Hilarion, are prone to a degree
of over-obvious emoting that may be suitable for the stage but
is far too lacking in subtlety for TV close-ups. The rest of
the cast – even down to the pair of large hounds that the Prince
of Courland arrives with on stage – appear very comfortable
in their roles and contribute considerably to one’s enjoyment
of the production.
Although the recording can make it sound a little shrill in
places, the Covent Garden Orchestra plays the score well under
the direction of the Royal Ballet’s Musical Director at the
time, Hugo Rignold - an interesting if sadly under-recorded
figure who had started his musical career in the 1920s as a
highly acclaimed jazz musician.
An ex-dancer herself, the broadcast’s producer and director
Margaret Dale uses the confines of the studio to great effect,
even if some of George Djurkovic’s designs are a little on the
twee side. It would be idle to pretend that the filming of ballet
hasn’t improved by leaps and bounds over the fifty years since
this film was produced, but its quaint studio intimacy has a
charm all its own.
Anyone interested in ballet and its history in the UK will certainly
want to watch this fascinating disc.
Rob Maynard
Broadcast 3 April 1953 (Les Sylphides), 23 November 1958
(Giselle), recording dates and locations not specified 
[93:51] 
