The Nutcracker - ballet in two Acts (1892) [102:00]
After Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov
Choreography and stage direction by Rudolf Nureyev
Set and costume design by Nicholas Georgiadis
Clara - Liudmila Konovalova
Drosselmeyer/Prince - Vladimir Shishov
Luisa and Fritz/Spanish dance - Emilia Baranowicz and Davide Dato
The parents/Russian dance - Franziska Wallner-Hollinek and Gabor Oberegger
The grandparents / Arabian dance - Eva Polacek and Christoph Wenzel
The rat king - Attila Bakó and Martin Winter
Little nutcracker - Trevor Hayden
Two snowflakes - Alena Klochkova and Prisca Zeisel
Arabian dance - Ketevan Papava and Eno Peci
Chinese dance - Marcin Dempc, András Lukács and Richard Szabó
Pastorale - Ioanna Avraam, Kiyoka Hashimoto and Masayu Kimoto
Corps de ballet, students of the Ballet Academy of the Wiener Staatsoper, children of the Opera School of the Wiener Staatsoper
Stage Orchestra of the Wiener Staatsoper/Paul Connelly
rec. live, Wiener Staatsoper, 7 October 2012
Filmed in High Definition and mastered from an HD source
Sound formats: PCM stereo + DTS 5.0
Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
C MAJOR DVD 718208 [102:00]
Here we have not Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker, nor even
Wiener Staatsballett's The Nutcracker. Instead we are
offered Rudolf Nureyev's The Nutcracker. My twenty years
old VHS copy of the Paris Opera Ballet's performance of this production
also carries the great man's name above the title, so I surmise
that there may be some sort of contractual obligation to bill it that
way. It's worth, therefore, addressing any confusion among potential
purchasers by pointing out that this is Nureyev's own production
of the ballet rather than a film of him actually dancing in it:
he had been dead for two decades before this performance was actually
recorded.
While I always respected Nureyev the dancer and high-profile ballet ambassador,
I have not always appreciated his productions of some of the great 19th
century classics. His very personal take on Don Quixote, for
instance, strikes me as dumbed-down in its general approach, well exemplified
in the vulgarised orchestration that he commissioned from John Lanchbery
(see
here).
Nureyev’s Nutcracker was originally conceived in the late
1960s and is seen on this DVD is its final 1985 revision for Paris Opera
Ballet of which he was Director at the time. It, too, is a distinctively
idiosyncratic and, in this case, un-sugary take. In the opening street
scene, for example, we’re usually offered a quaint piece of middle-class
Victoriana straight out of Quality Street. Here, however, the
very first characters we see are a gang of street toughs who harass a
couple of bourgeois matrons - and actually carry one of them off on their
shoulders to who knows what fate - before they mug Drosselmeyer in an
attempt to steal his nutcracker doll. In a similar tone, the later attack
on Clara by the inventively choreographed mice has a definite atmosphere
of sexual assault about it.
The Nureyev production’s basic concept is that once Clara falls
asleep in the first Act (26:23), virtually everything that follows is
a dream. Characters from her real life reappear, sometimes in grotesquely
exaggerated form, while Nicholas Georgiadis's striking sets and
costumes frequently undermine any sense of recognisable normality. Drosselmeyer
is fortunate enough to be reinvented as the handsome prince, while the
girl's siblings become Spanish dancers, her parents take part in
the vigorous Russian peasants’ dance and her grandparents join in
the Arabian dance, on this occasion a rather strange episode in which
the participants spend much of their time languorously eating invisible
but apparently rather tasty titbits from a large platter. The corps
de ballet suffers the most striking transformation, reappearing with
monstrously enlarged heads that are even more visually disturbing for
being weirdly accurate in their reproduction of the dancers’ actual
physiognomies. They also sport voluminous cloaks that make them resemble
giant bats (52:30-55:44).
Much of Clara's dream is so dark and psychologically troubled that
it's better described as a nightmare. Jessica Duchen's useful
booklet note suggests that, faced with the transformation of the rather
sinister Drosselmeyer into a glamorous prince, adolescent Clara's
"guilt and confusion over her feelings ... lend an oppressive quality
to her dream". Julie Kavanagh, in her definitive biography Rudolf
Nureyev: The life (London, 2007) makes the point even more strongly.
Nureyev's conception, she suggests, is "far more sinister
(than we usually encounter) ... a virtual enactment of a paedophiliac
fantasy ... Freudian and forbidden... (and set in) a terrifyingly surreal
world" (Kavanagh, op. cit., 2008 edn., p.375). For me, that
dream-world appears less surreal than expressionist, but instead of debating
art history terms let's just agree to accept that it's simply
very peculiar and unsettling indeed.
Nureyev’s "dark" interpretation of The Nutcracker
has always polarised opinion. The DVD's packaging quotes critic
Clive Barnes' approving assertion that "no version... that
we have ever seen has been more potently dramatic; few have displayed
so sharp an imprint of personal style". Not everyone has been so
positive. Writing of Nureyev's original production in Dance
and Dancers magazine in 1968, Don McDonagh decried the influence
of "the agony of the analyst's couch" and queried, in
an era when PC still referred to Dixon of Dock Green, whether Clara could
believably be "sexually obsessed with a limping old man with an eye
patch who looks like Long John Silver". More seriously, perhaps,
he went on to suggest that "if the Tchaikovsky music is used, there
is no escaping its mellifluous tonality, and the attempt to make it bear
the psychological weight of tortured sexuality that Nureyev has unloaded
upon its unwary shoulders is a dreadful mistake" (quoted in Jack
Anderson The Nutcracker Ballet, London 1979, p.151).
There, then, you have both sides of the case - "potently dramatic"
or "a dreadful mistake" - and I can do no more than leave it
up to you to decide whether or not this very distinctive production may
appeal. What, I hear you asking, of the actual performances preserved
on this disc?
If the name Wiener Staatsballett is unfamiliar, I should perhaps point
out that it’s a new one that was given, just four years ago, to
the familiar ballet company of the Wiener Staatsoper. The Vienna troupe’s
credentials in this work are certainly not in doubt, for its Director
Manuel Legris was both a Paris Opera Ballet étoile and a Nureyev
protégé. In truth, however, it is the two leading dancers
who are crucial here, for Nureyev’s decision to create single combined
roles of Drosselmeyer/the prince and Clara/the princess ensures that even
heavier than usual responsibilities rest on them for the success or failure
of any performance.
Fortunately, Vladimir Shishov (see
here) rises fully to the challenge. He is one of what is these days
quite a rare breed, the danseur noble who radiates authority
and confidence merely by his physical bearing on stage. That is not to
suggest that he lacks technical proficiency, for he is certainly up to
all that the role demands. He eschews, however, the athletic flashiness
often associated with more slightly-built dancers and replaces it with
a sense of rock-solid security.
Shishov makes, thereby, an admirable partner for Liudmila Konovalova.
She does well in the first Act and certainly makes a convincing adolescent
Clara. Her girlish characterisation as she dances for her doll (20:00-21:18
and 22:12-22:50) is very effective and her Scene 5 pas de deux
with Shishov (34:56-38:50) is also very well executed. Once she is no
longer the “real life” Clara character, however, I thought
her slow to rise to the occasion in the second Act’s big romantic
moments. If that is rather surprising in such an experienced dancer (see
here), I think that the problem is that she lacks on-stage charisma
and adopts a resolutely fixed smile that fails to convey what, if anything,
is going on behind the mask. While her dancing is absolutely fine –
with its general restraint emphasised by her partner’s dramatic
flourishes - at least on the evidence of this performance she does not
yet command the stage as she needs to.
Apart from the two leads, there is some effective dancing to be seen here.
After a rather messy first 20 minutes (see below), it was something of
a relief to see some characterful work from Drosselmeyer’s three
toys. In the Act 2 divertissements - taking place in Clara’s
family sitting room rather than in the kingdom of sweets - the
“national” dances are also well executed, though played largely
for comedy rather than atmosphere. After the sweet-eating Arabs, we encounter
ten “incompetent” Russians who keep attempting to upstage
their peers when not actually bumping into them. Then come a trio of shaven-headed
and moustached Chinese clones who look like they’re on their way
home after an evening at a gay nightclub. The pastorale is danced
well enough, though by adults: my own preference is for the Russian tradition
of giving that dance to child dancers of the highest quality: see
here for a performance by three who were to grow up to be top stars
of Soviet ballet.
On the subject of children, those who play such a big role in this production’s
party scene are certainly very enthusiastic. However, undeniably, many
of them are also rather rough around the edges when it comes to dance
technique and coordinating their actions with those of the rest of the
company. Some of the younger ones, in particular, appear unsure at times
of what they are supposed to be doing. The children fill the stage to
the extent that at times they obscure the adult dancers’ actions.
Moreover, the strong accompanying whiff of am. dram. must inevitably begin
to affect all but the most indulgent viewers’ perception of the
whole production. This is a situation where everyone, apart from the claque
of doting parents in the audience, would have benefited from casting a
smaller group of only the more talented children.
The adults of the corps de ballet do well in this performance,
though sometimes with the odds decidedly stacked against them –
and I’m not only referring to those children. While the waltz
of the snowflakes that ends the first act is very prettily executed
and the dancers are flattered by some beautiful costumes, Nureyev must
have been having a bad day when he put together an Act 2 waltz of
the flowers that is, to my eyes, something of a disaster. Dull choreography,
tacky all-gold costumes for both sexes and a bland and dully-lit all-gold
stage make the whole thing a huge and seemingly never-ending anti-climax.
Turning to the music, the very experienced Paul Connelly leads the orchestra
effectively and the players don’t put a foot wrong. In general,
too, the film has been shot very well, though the unnecessary close-up
of the sleeping Clara at 26:23 unfortunately, if temporarily, destroys
our suspension of disbelief as we can see that in reality the understandably
exhausted Ms Konovalova is in desperate need of a can of anti-perspirant.
An equally unnecessary montage of earlier scenes, placed just before Clara’s
eventual awakening so as to cover the scene change, also destroys our
illusions by reminding us that we are watching some 21st century
technical manipulation rather than live on-stage action.
The disc preserves the performance in excellent image and sound. There
is a momentary judder at 55:45, attributable, I would imagine, to the
technical issues of dual layering, but it is sensitively placed and does
not disrupt the dancing. Unfortunately, the opportunity has not been taken
to add any extra features, which seems something of a missed opportunity
in the case of such a distinctive - and frequently fascinating - production.
Rob Maynard
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