The Mariinsky Theatre will be presenting its reconstruction of the 1890 production of The Sleeping Beauty in memory of ballet-master Sergei Vikharev – his first experience of such an undertaking and an incredibly important one for Russian musical theatre. Of the three performances taking place, the first will be on 15 February – the day that would have been Vikharev’s sixtieth birthday.
Today, the reconstruction of The Sleeping Beauty sits in the Mariinsky Theatre’s repertoire alongside the Konstantin Sergeyev production from 1952. The idea of reviving the imperial-era production came to Sergei Vikharev and ballet critic Pavel Gershenzon in 1998.
The collection of the St Petersburg Theatre Museum and the archives of the Theatre Library have retained the complete set of sketches for all the costumes and sets of the first production of The Sleeping Beauty, allowing this century-old ballet to be recreated. The source of the reconstruction of the choreography and the composition of the production came with notations made in the early 20th century by Nikolai Sergeyev, the stage director of the Imperial Ballet, using the dance notation system of Vladimir Stepanov (these records are held by Harvard University).
The premiere of the “old” Sleeping Beauty took place in 1999 and resulted in hotly-disputed debates – it was so radically different from the production to which several generations of audiences and dancers alike had become accustomed. The changes affected the choreographic text, the composition, the correlation of dance and pantomime and the colours and the decorativeness as a whole. This production is lengthier and has a larger cast of characters, and in it is reflected the hierarchical structure of the Imperial Ballet and its wasteful luxury. In the history of ballet, The Sleeping Beauty of Tchaikovsky, Petipa and Ivan Vsevolozhsky (the idea of a performance “in the style of Louis XIV” came from the Director of the Imperial Theatres, and it was also he who wrote the libretto and himself drew more than five hundred costume sketches) is generally considered a “summing-up” of artistic searches of the 19th century. This legendary production was admired by Alexandre Benois and Igor Stravinsky.
Vikharev’s staging of The Sleeping Beauty is but seldom seen on the playbill of the Mariinsky Theatre: the production is capacious and complex, and it runs for around four hours. In the years that have passed, however, it has been performed sixty times; it has been taken on tours to New York (the Metropolitan Opera), London (the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden), Tokyo and Cagliari.
At the premiere in 1999, a young Diana Vishneva dazzled in the role of Princess Aurora. In the coming series of performances – 15, 16 and 17 February – audiences may look forward to seeing Viktoria Tereshkina, Alina Somova and Anastasia Matvienko in this role.
To commemorate the anniversary of Sergei Vikharev’s birth, the foyer of the historic theatre will be hosting an exhibition of photographs, and on the theatre’s website there will be an online gallery dedicated to his career.
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