23 March commemorates sixty years since the world premiere of The Legend of Love, one of the key choreographic texts of the Soviet era and the greatest ballet produced by Yuri Grigorovich. The Mariinsky Theatre, where this production was created, will be marking the anniversary with three performances – on 23, 24 and 25 March.
The Legend of Love (1961) was a child of "the thaw" under Khrushchev and denoted an aesthetic breakthrough in Leningrad ballet. The young choreographer Grigorovich, like his other Soviet colleagues living in isolation, experienced the most powerful artistic shock when the ballet company of the Opéra de Paris toured to the USSR. Balanchine's Le Palais de cristal was seen here for the first time – a ballet without a plot, without pantomime and without sets. In The Legend of Love Grigorovich was not about to reject the principles of Soviet drama-ballets, costumes and sets, though he did afford his opus laconism and dynamic sharpness. The choreographer's co-creator, the designer Simon Virsaladze, dressed the dancers in leotards, focussing the audience's attention on the dancers' bodies and lines.
The initiative to create a ballet about Ferkhad and Shyrin came from the Azerbaijani composer Arif Melikov. The composer brought his completed score to Leningrad, but Yuri Grigorovich criticised it: he believed that the ballet required a different scenario and a radical reworking of the music. Melikov was willing to perfect his opus, and at his behest the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet transformed his own work into a ballet script.
Queen Mekhmeneh Bahnu is disfigured as a hag in order to save the life of her sister to whom she is devoted; the artist Ferkhad will never love her, and she autocratically separates the lovers. The story of the fated impossibility of love, with the male protagonist sacrificing his personal happiness for the sake of the people, seems to be determined ideologically. If anything, in fact, the plot is actually anti-Soviet: the human misery in The Legend of Love is dissipated within State-wide delight.
The anniversary performances are to be danced by Viktoria Tereshkina, Anastasia Matvienko and Yekaterina Kondaurova (Mekhmeneh Bahnu), Alina Somova, Elena Yevseyeva and Nadezhda Batoeva (Shyrin) and Kimin Kim, Vladimir Shklyarov and Andrei Yermakov (Ferkhad). Arseny Shuplyakov will be conducting.
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