Maria: Yekaterina Osmolkina
Vaslav: Andrei Yermakov
Ghirei: Yuri Smekalov
Zarema: Maria Bulanova
Nurali: Maxim Izmestiev
The name of Galina Ulanova is a synonym for the poetry of dance. Admiring her amazing talent and unashamed by her grand style, contemporaries referred to Ulanova as an “ordinary goddess”, an “elusive soul, a genius of Russian ballet”, they said that “she was filled with sacred fire”. The strength of the impression from her dance naturally raised the degree of epithets but, despite the mighty words accorded to the ballerina, her art was alien to pathos. Whatever Ulanova danced, she captivated with her simplicity and sincerity. Images of her individuality drawn with watercolour-like shades touched audiences to the depths of their souls – those who witnessed the stage accomplishments of the dancer spoke of what they had seen as of a miracle.
Galina Ulanova’s repertoire included comparatively few roles: she would only undertake the ones that suited the nature of her talent, the ones that she “felt”. The ballerina’s nature prompted her to lyrical and dramatic roles. The natural quality of the plastique intonations and the lifelike essence of the gestures of the heroines whose destinies she lived out in performances were things that Ulanova sought with selfless conviction. Staggering virtuoso skill was never an end in itself for her: the flawless technique inherited from Vaganova as if dissolved in the imagery of her dance.
Her lead roles – those in which she was incomparable – were created by Ulanova in Leningrad, at the Kirov The atre, where from her childhood she had breathed in the atmosphere of the scene, absorbing the traditions of the St Petersburg dance style and where she commenced her professional career after graduating from the school on Architect Rossi Street. It was in Leningrad that she created her Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and her Maria in The Fountain of Bakhchisarai; staged for her, these roles when performed by Ulanova were to be masterpieces of acting skill in ballet, to become legends of choreographic expressiveness. Of the classics, Galina Sergeyevna had a particularly high regard for Giselle and Odette – having prepared the roles in Leningrad, she kept them in her repertoire when, in 1944, she continued her career in Moscow.
Having become a ballerina with the Bolshoi The atre, Ulanova frequently came to dance in her native city, and her each and every performance was an event. The theatre did not have the capacity to accommodate all the grateful and admiring people who came to see her dance and be stunned. In her performances the dancer lived through emotion and through the music. On-stage, the dance of Ulanova – in life reserved and aloof – was filled with a temperament that made hearts flutter, even in the breasts of those sitting in the very back row of “the gods”. And, when performed by her, stories of worldly passions became heartfelt tales of the greatness of the soul. Olga Makarova
Premiere: 28 September 1934, The State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet (Mariinsky)
Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes
The performance has two intervals
The "star hour" of the drama ballet was heralded by the appearance in 1934 at the Leningrad Theatre, then not yet known as the Kirov, of the ballet The Fountain of Bakhchisarai. In it the desire to combine choreography with the themes of high literature and the defence of new Soviet art for the sake of realisticity crystalised the new direction of ballet's development.
The Fountain of Bakhchisarai emerged in an atmosphere of creative discussions of the progressive cultural elite of Leningrad: Professor Boris Asafiev of the conservatoire, an authoratitave composer and music historian, stage director Sergei Radlov who defined the theatre's artistic policy at the time, conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky, designer Valentina Khodasevich, librettist Niklai Volkov and the critic Ivan Sollertinsky. The twenty-seven-year-old choreographer Rostislav Zakharov found himself at the epicentre of artistic and theatre life. He, as a debutant in grand ballet and as a graduate of the stage-directing faculty of the Leningrad Institute of Stage Arts who had recommended himself with his productions of dances in operas and plastique in productions at Radlov's Youth Theatre, was invited to stage the choreography of the new ballet.
Inspired by the recently-published Letters about Dance by Noverre with an introductory article by Sollertinsky about the dramatic effect of dance, in his new ballet the young choreographer introduced well-learned lessons from stage drama to the ballet stage. The dance at times remained on the periphery of the choreographer's attention, the ballet was born not from the dance but from the plot, the cleverly enacted mise-en-scènes. In reaction to the stage director's preferences there was also the inclusion of the acting cast. The expressiveness of Galina Ulanova and Konstantin Sergeyev, who were allocated the lead roles, was to prove an essential element of the production's success. The once-and-forever chosen artistic path of The Fountain of Bakhchisarai and the production of ballet plays brought great acclaim to Zakharov. The literary centrism was to become the "main song" of Zakharov and the mainstream of Soviet ballet for the next twenty years. The poetic nature of ballet, oriented exclusively towards truly the emotional (real or unreal) were interminged with everyday prosaic elements. What remains unsaid in Pushkin's poetry demanded logical explanations, and in The Fountain of Bakhchisarai a new character appeared - Vaslav, Maria's beloved, was included in the plot in order to underscore the difference between the world in which the Polish princess Maria had a happy life and the world of her Tatar captivity. Zakharov taught his dancers to work as actors on their roles, to prepare them for that previously unknown "table-chat" with the director to deal with the characters and the conflicts. And it is not by chance that of performers of the era of drama ballet it was said that "the ballerina is an actress and the danseur an actor." Embodying on the stage the characters of Pushkin's heroes and thus laying the foundations of the traditions of acting expressiveness in Soviet ballet became the mission of the generation of the 1930s-1940s. And Zakharov and his comrades-in-arms who reigned on the Soviet stage throughout the period of so-called drama ballet taught the audiences to ask the question "What are they dancing about". Wishing to be understood, the choreographer forced audiences to think and, at times, thus to forget the eloquence of the dance unburdened by a lexical word-for-word through dance. Olga Makarova
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