Ballet in the works of Russian composers. The best ballet performances

Swan Lake

Ballet is an art form in which dance is the main means of expression. The dance plot is closely related to the music and the dramatic basis. Russian ballet gained fame thanks to the brilliant composers.

The most famous ballets of Russian composers embodied emotions that completely capture the audience in musical and choreographic images.

Of the most famous ballets, one can single out "Swan Lake" by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The premiere of the ballet took place on March 4, 1877 at the Bolshoi Theater. The first ballet directors were Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. It is their names that are associated with the staging of the famous "swan" scenes. The prerequisite for writing the ballet was Tchaikovsky's visit to the estate in the Cherkasy region, where he spent a lot of time on the shore of the lake. There the great composer admired the snow-white birds. The Swan Lake ballet is rightfully considered a universally recognized masterpiece of the world ballet school. And the image of the White Swan remains a symbol of Russian ballet even today.

Nutcracker

Another Tchaikovsky ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, is often called the "Encyclopedia of Classical Ballet Dance". The ballet director-choreographer was again Marius Petipa. The central figure of the musical and dance action is the ballerina. The ballet itself amazes with the variety of carefully staged choreographic scenes. And the pinnacle of this dancing splendor is the solemn dance miniature of the young beauty Aurora and Prince Désiré.

It is not without reason that famous ballets are associated with the name of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Another work by the renowned composer is The Nutcracker. The ballet premiered successfully in December 1892 at the Mariinsky Theater. The stage action does not leave the audience indifferent. The ballet was based on the fairy tale of the same name by Hoffmann with a classic fairy tale story about the confrontation between good and evil.

Ballet "Romeo and Juliet"

Another of the most famous ballets of the twentieth century is Romeo and Juliet, a work by the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. The ballet was staged based on the creation of the same name by Shakespeare. Wonderful music and amazing choreography brought worldwide popularity to the ballet. The premiere of the masterpiece took place in Czechoslovakia in 1938. But the most famous was the production, first presented in Leningrad in 1940.

The outstanding Russian composer Sergei Sergeevich Prokofiev created another famous creation - "Cinderella". S. Prokofiev is rightfully called “the master of musical portrait”. So subtly, with the help of music, he conveyed the character and experiences of the heroes. Prokofiev wrote the music for Cinderella for four years. The premiere of Cinderella took place at the Bolshoi Theater in November 1945. The ballet was staged by Rostislav Zakharov, the role of Cinderella was played by Olga Lepeshinskaya, and later by Galina Ulanova.

Igor Stravinsky's work "The Rite of Spring" is also included in the list of famous ballets by Russian composers. The precondition for the creation of the ballet was the composer's dream. In it, he saw a young girl dancing among the elders around her. To awaken the spring nature, the girl dances, losing her strength, and dies. The girl's soul is reborn in the "Light Resurrection of Nature".

"The Rite of Spring" is already in space

The premiere of the ballet took place in Paris on the Champs Elysees in May 1913. But it cannot be said that it was successful. The audience did not understand the originality of the music and dances and booed the artists. "The Rite of Spring", as one of 27 pieces of music, was recorded on the Voyager disc and sent into outer space for extraterrestrial civilizations.

World classical ballet is unthinkable without Russian composers. It was the Russian ballet school that became the locomotive of world art. She is famous all over the world, touching the subtlest strings of the soul of every viewer.

Classics are not only symphonies, operas, concerts and chamber music. Some of the most recognizable classics have appeared in ballet form. Ballet originated in Italy during the Renaissance and gradually developed into a technical form of dance that required a lot of preparation from the dancers. The first ballet company created was the Paris Opera Ballet, which formed after King Louis XIV appointed Jean-Baptiste Lully as director of the Royal Academy of Music. Lully's compositions for ballet are considered by many musicologists to be a turning point in the development of this genre. Since then, the popularity of ballet has gradually waned, "roaming" from one country to another, which provided composers of different nationalities with the opportunity to compose some of their most famous works. Here are seven of the world's most popular and beloved ballets.

Tchaikovsky wrote this timeless classical ballet in 1891, which is the most frequently performed ballet of the modern era. In America, The Nutcracker first appeared on stage only in 1944 (performed by the San Francisco Ballet). Since then it has become a tradition to stage "The Nutcracker" in the New Year and Christmas season. This great ballet not only has the most recognizable music, but its story brings joy to both children and adults.

Swan Lake is the most technically and emotionally difficult classical ballet. His music was far ahead of its time, and many of his early performers argued that Swan Lake was too difficult to dance. In fact, very little is known about the original first production, but what everyone is used to today is a production revised by the famous choreographers Petipa and Ivanov. Swan Lake will always be considered the standard of classical ballets and will be performed for centuries.

A dream in a summer night

Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream has been adapted to many styles of art. The first full-length ballet (for the whole evening) based on this work was staged in 1962 by George Balanchine to the music of Mendelssohn. Today "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is a very popular ballet that is loved by many.

The ballet Coppelia was written by the French composer Leo Delibes and choreographed by Arthur Saint-Leon. Coppelia is a light-hearted story depicting a human conflict between idealism and realism, art and life, with vibrant music and lively dancing. Its world premiere at the Paris Opera was hugely successful in 1871, and the ballet remains a success today, in the repertoire of many theaters.

Peter Pan

Peter Pan is a great ballet suitable for the whole family. The dances, sets and costumes are as colorful as the story itself. Peter Pan is relatively new to the world of ballet, and since there is no single classical version of it, ballet can be interpreted differently by every choreographer, choreographer and musical director. Although each production may differ from each other, the story remains almost the same, which is why this ballet has been classified as a classic.

sleeping Beauty

The Sleeping Beauty was Tchaikovsky's first famous ballet. In it, music is no less important than dancing. The story of The Sleeping Beauty is a perfect combination of ballet-royal celebrations in a magnificent castle, the battle of good and evil and the triumphant victory of eternal love. The choreography was created by the world famous Marius Pepita, who also directed The Nutcracker and Swan Lake. This classical ballet will be performed until the end of time.

Cinderella

There are many versions of Cinderella, but the most common is Sergei Prokofiev's. Prokofiev began his work on Cinderella in 1940, but because of the Second World War, he finished the score only in 1945. In 1948, choreographer Frederic Ashton staged a full production using Prokofiev's music, which was a huge success.

Ballet as a musical form, it developed from a simple addition to the dance, to a specific compositional form, which often had the same meaning as the accompanying dance. Originating in France in the 17th century, the dance form began as a theater dance. Formally, ballet did not receive "classical" status until the 19th century. In ballet, the terms "classical" and "romantic" chronologically unfurled from musical usage. Thus, in the 19th century, the classical period of ballet coincided with the era of romanticism in music. Ballet composers from the 17th and 19th centuries, including Jean-Baptiste Lully and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, were predominantly in France and Russia. However, with the increase in international fame, Tchaikovsky saw the spread of ballet musical composition and ballet in general throughout the Western world during his lifetime.

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History

• Until about the second half of the 19th century, the role of music in ballet was secondary, with the main emphasis on dance, while the music itself was simply borrowed from dance tunes. Writing "ballet music" used to be the work of musical artisans, not masters. For example, critics of the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky perceived his writing of ballet music as something vile.
  From the earliest ballets to the time of Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), ballet music was indistinguishable from ballroom dance music. Lully created a distinct style in which music told a story. The first "Ballet of Action" was staged in 1717. It was a story told without words. The pioneer was John Weaver (1673-1760). Both Lully and Jean-Philippe Rameau wrote an "opera - ballet", where the action was performed partly singing, but ballet music gradually became less important.
  The next big step took place in the early years of the nineteenth century, when the soloists began to use special stiff ballet shoes - pointe shoes. This allowed for a more fractional style of music. In 1832, the famous ballerina Maria Taglioni (1804-1884) first demonstrated the pointe dance. It was in Sylph. Now it became possible for the music to become more expressive. Gradually, the dances became more daring, with the rise of the ballerinas in the air by the men.
  Until the time of Tchaikovsky, the ballet composer did not separate from the symphony composer. The ballet music was used as an accompaniment for solo and ensemble dance. Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake ballet was the first musical ballet to be created by a symphonic composer. At the initiative of Tchaikovsky, ballet composers no longer wrote simple and easy dance parts. Ballet now focused not only on dance; the composition after the dances took on equal importance. In the late 19th century, Marius Petipa, a choreographer of Russian ballet and dance, worked with the likes of Caesar Puni to create ballet masterpieces that both boasted of both complex dance and complex music. Petipa worked with Tchaikovsky, collaborating with the composer in his works The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, or indirectly through a new version of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake after the composer's death.
  In many cases, short ballet scenes were still used in operas to change scenery or costume. Perhaps the most famous example of ballet music as part of an opera is The Dance of the Hours from La Gioconda (1876) by Amilcar Ponchielli.
  A radical change in mood took place when Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring (1913) was created.

The music was expressionistic and discordant, and the movements were highly stylized. In 1924, George Antheil wrote The Mechanical Ballet. It was suitable for a movie of moving objects, but not for dancers, although it was an innovation in the use of jazz music. From this starting point, ballet music is divided into two areas - modernism and jazz dance. George Gershwin attempted to fill that gap with his ambitious score for Let's Dance (1937), over an hour of music that embraced the rational and technically kicked jazz and rumba. One of the scenes was composed especially for the ballerina Harriet Hawctor.
Many say jazz dance is best represented by choreographer Jerome Robbins, who worked with Leonard Bernstein in West Side Story (1957). In some respects this is a return to "opera-ballet", as the plot is mostly told in words. Modernism is best represented by Sergei Prokofiev in the ballet "Romeo and Juliet." Here is an example of pure ballet, and there is no influence from jazz or any other kind Another trend in the history of ballet music is the trend towards creative adaptation of old music Ottorino Respighi adapted works by Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) and their joint series in the ballet is called "The Magic Shop", which premiered in 1919. Ballet audience prefers romantic music, so new ballets are combined with old works through new choreography, a famous example is The Dream, music by Felix Mendelssohn, adapted by John Lunchbury.

Ballet composers

At the beginning of the 19th century, choreographers staged performances based on collected music, most often composed of opera fragments and song melodies popular and well-known to the public. The first to try to change the existing practice was the composer Jean-Madeleine Schneizhoffer. For this, he was subjected to considerable criticism, starting with his first work - the ballet "Proserpine" (1818):

The music belongs to a young man who, judging by the overture and some of the ballet's motives, deserves encouragement. But I firmly believe (and experience supports my opinion) that motives skillfully matched to situations always better serve the choreographer's intentions and more clearly reveal his intention than almost completely new music, which, instead of explaining the pantomime, itself awaits explanations.

Despite the attacks of critics, following Schneitzhoffer, other composers began to depart from the tradition of creating ballet scores collected from musical fragments based on motives of other well-known (most often operatic) works - Ferdinand Gerold, Fromantal Halévy, and, first of all, and then fruitfully who worked with Marius Petipa, when creating his scores, he strictly followed the instructions of the choreographer and his plan - down to the number of measures in each number. In the case of Saint-Leon, he even had to use the melodies given by the choreographer: according to the memoirs of Karl Waltz, Saint-Leon, the violinist and musician himself, more than once whistled to Minkus motives that he “feverishly translated into musical notes”.

This practice did not comply with the principles of the same Schneitzhoffer, who valued his reputation as an independent author and always worked separately from the choreographer when creating scores (an exception was made only when creating the ballet "La Sylphide" together with

= 7 famous works of Pyotr Tchaikovsky =

Tchaikovsky's music exists outside of time

On May 7, 1840, one of the greatest composers in the history of music, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, was born.

During the 53 years allotted to him, the composer wrote more than 80 works, including 10 operas and three ballets - real treasures of world culture and art.

1. "Slavic March" (1876)

The march was written by Tchaikovsky at the request of the management of the Russian Musical Society and was dedicated to the struggle of the Slavic peoples of the Balkans against the Ottoman yoke in connection with the events of the Russian-Turkish war. For a long time, the author himself called it the "Serbo-Russian march". The march featured musical themes typical of Serbian folk music, as well as excerpts from "God Save the Tsar!"

In 1985, German heavy metal band Accept used the main theme from the march as the intro to the title track of their album "Metal Heart".

2. "Swan Lake" (1877)

Maya Plisetskaya and Valery Kovtun. Scene from P. Tchaikovsky's ballet "Swan Lake"

The plot was based on folklore motives, including an old German legend about the beautiful princess Odette, whom the evil sorcerer Rothbart turned into a white swan. It is widely believed that Tchaikovsky wrote the music for the ballet after visiting a lake located in the foothills of the Alps in the vicinity of the city of Füssen.

Since 1877, the score and libretto of the performance have undergone a number of changes. Today, out of all the existing editions of Swan Lake, there are hardly at least two that have completely identical scores.

Our contemporaries strongly associate ballet with the August putsch - "Swan Lake" was shown on Soviet television on August 19, 1991, canceling all planned programs.

3. "Children's Album" (1878)

Cartoon to music from P. Tchaikovsky's "Children's Album" (1976). Director - Inessa Kovalevskaya

According to Pauline Weidman, a renowned expert on Tchaikovsky's creativity, "Children's Album", along with the well-known works of Schumann, Grieg, Debussy, Ravel and Bartok, entered the golden fund of world musical literature for children and gave impetus to the creation of a number of piano opuses.

In 1976, at the Soyuzmultfilm studio, an animated picture was shot to the music from the album, and 20 years later a ballet was staged, which became a laureate of the 1999 International Festival in Yugoslavia.

4. "Eugene Onegin" (1877)

"Arioso Onegin" from the opera "Eugene Onegin". Fragment of the film "Muslim Magomayev Sings". Azerbaijanfilm, 1971. Screenplay and production - T. Ismayilov, I. Bogdanov

In May 1877, the singer Elizaveta Lavrovskaya invited Tchaikovsky to write an opera based on the plot of Pushkin's novel in verse. The composer was so fired up by this proposal that he spent the whole night awake, working on the script. By the morning he started writing music. In a letter to the composer Sergei Taneyev, Tchaikovsky wrote: "I am looking for an intimate, but strong drama based on a conflict of situations that I have experienced or seen, which can touch me for a living."

In July, the composer impulsively married a former conservatory student, Antonina Milyukova, who was 8 years his junior. The marriage broke up after a few weeks, which critics say had a strong impact on the work.

5. "Sleeping Beauty" (1889)

Waltz from PI Tchaikovsky's ballet "The Sleeping Beauty"

Before Tchaikovsky, the French composer Ferdinand Gerold turned to the plot of Charles Perrault, who composed a ballet with the same name, but already in the year of the premiere, the version of Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa was recognized as outstanding and took an honorable place among the world's masterpieces of ballet art.

Nowadays, almost every choreographer performing a new edition of The Sleeping Beauty creates a new version of its score.

6. "The Queen of Spades" (1890)

Overture from Tchaikovsky's opera "The Queen of Spades" staged by the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona (2010)

In 1887, the administration of the Imperial Theater invited Tchaikovsky to write an opera based on a story created by Ivan Vsevolozhsky based on a story by Pushkin. The composer refused due to the lack of "proper stage presence" in the plot, but two years later he accepted the order and plunged into work.

Soon after the Russian premiere, the opera "migrated" into the repertoire of many theaters in Europe and America, where it was performed in Russian, Czech and German.

7. The Nutcracker (1892)

"Waltz of the Flowers" from PI Tchaikovsky's ballet "The Nutcracker"

The innovative ballet based on the fairy tale "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" by Ernst Theodor Hoffmann occupies a special place among the later works of Tchaikovsky and ballet art in general.

With the outbreak of the First World War and the growth of patriotic sentiments, the plot of the ballet was Russified, and the main character Marie began to be called Masha. At the same time, they did not rename Fritz.

Born as an imitation of Western models, Russian opera has made a valuable contribution to the treasury of the entire world culture.

Having appeared in the era of the classical flourishing of French, German and Italian operas, Russian opera in the 19th century not only caught up with the classical national opera schools, but also surpassed them. It is interesting that Russian composers traditionally chose subjects of a purely folk character for their works.

"A Life for the Tsar" by Glinka

The opera "A Life for the Tsar" or "Ivan Susanin" tells about the events of 1612 - the Polish campaign of the gentry against Moscow. The author of the libretto was Baron Yegor Rosen, however, in Soviet times, for ideological reasons, the editorship of the libretto was entrusted to Sergei Gorodetsky. The premiere of the opera took place at the Bolshoi Theater of St. Petersburg in 1836. For a long time, the part of Susanin was performed by Fyodor Chaliapin. After the revolution, "A Life for the Tsar" left the Soviet scene. There were attempts to adapt the plot to the requirements of the new era: this is how Susanin was accepted into the Komsomol, and the final lines sounded like "Glory, glory, Soviet system." Thanks to Gorodetsky, when the opera was staged at the Bolshoi Theater in 1939, the “Soviet system” was replaced by the “Russian people”. Since 1945, the Bolshoi Theater has traditionally opened the season with various productions of Ivan Susanin by Glinka. The most ambitious production of the opera abroad was realized, perhaps, in Milan's La Scala.

"Boris Godunov" by Mussorsky

The opera, in which the king and the people were chosen as two characters, was started by Mussorgsky in October 1868. To write the libretto, the composer used the text of Pushkin's tragedy of the same name and materials from Karamzin's "History of the Russian State". The theme of the opera was the reign of Boris Godunov just before the Time of Troubles. Mussorgsky finished the first edition of the opera Boris Godunov in 1869, which was presented to the theater committee of the Directorate of the Imperial Theaters. However, reviewers rejected the opera, refusing to stage it due to the lack of a bright female role. Mussorgsky introduced into the opera the "Polish" act of the love line of Marina Mniszek and False Dmitry. He also added a monumental scene of popular uprising, which made the finale more spectacular. Despite all the adjustments, the opera was again rejected. It was staged only 2 years later, in 1874, at the Mariinsky Theater. Abroad, the premiere of the opera took place at the Bolshoi Theater in Paris' Grand Opera on May 19, 1908.

The Queen of Spades by Tchaikovsky

The opera was completed by Tchaikovsky in the early spring of 1890 in Florence, and the first production took place in December of the same year at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. The opera was written by the composer at the request of the Imperial Theater, and for the first time Tchaikovsky refused to take the order, arguing his refusal by the lack of "proper stage performance" in the plot. Interestingly, in Pushkin's story, the protagonist bears the surname Hermann (with two "n" at the end), and in the opera, a man named Herman becomes the main character - this is not a mistake, but a deliberate author's change. In 1892, the opera was staged for the first time outside Russia in Prague. Then - the first production in New York in 1910 and the premiere in London in 1915.

"Prince Igor" by Borodin

The basis for the libretto was the monument of ancient Russian literature "The Lay of Igor's Campaign." The idea of ​​the plot was suggested to Borodin by critic Vladimir Stasov at one of the musical evenings at Shostakovich's. The opera was created over 18 years, but was never completed by the composer. After the death of Borodin, the work on the work was completed by Glazunov and Rimsky-Korsakov. There is an opinion that Glazunov was able to restore from memory the overture of the opera he had once heard in the author's performance, however, Glazunov himself refuted this opinion. Despite the fact that Glazunov and Rimsky-Korsakov did most of the work, they insisted that Prince Igor was entirely an opera by Alexander Porfirievich Borodin. " The premiere of the opera took place at the Mariinsky Theater of St. Petersburg in 1890, after 9 years it was seen by a foreign audience in Prague.

"The Golden Cockerel" by Rimsky-Korsakov

The opera The Golden Cockerel was written in 1908 based on the Pushkin fairy tale of the same name. This opera was the last work of Rimsky-Korsakov. The imperial theaters refused to stage the opera. But as soon as the viewer first saw her in 1909 at the Moscow Opera House of Sergei Zimin, the opera was staged at the Bolshoi Theater a month later, and then she began her triumphal march around the world: London, Paris, New York, Berlin, Wroclaw.

"Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" by Shostakovich

The idea of ​​the opera came to Alexander Dargomyzhsky in 1863. However, the composer doubted its success and viewed the work as creative "intelligence", "fun over Pushkin's Don Juan." He wrote music to Pushkin's text "The Stone Guest" without changing a single word in it. However, heart problems prevented the composer from completing the work. He died after asking his friends Cui and Rimsky-Korsakov to complete the work in the will. The opera was first presented to the audience in 1872 at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. The foreign premiere took place only in 1928 in Salzburg. This opera has become one of the "fundamental stones", without its knowledge it is impossible to understand not only Russian classical music, but also the general culture of our country.