Laura Hormigón
Marius Petipa, Principal Dancer at Madrid’s Circus Theater (1844–1847)
Between 1844 and 1847 Marius Petipa was Principal dancer at the Circo Theater in Madrid. This thrilling "Spanish period" marked a significant turning-point for Petipa, both personally and professionally. The Circo Theater was actually the place where he started performing in grand romantic ballets, thus acquiring an in-depth knowledge of Spanish dance which would come through in the ballets he later created in Russia. However, his love affair with a Spanish noblewoman forced him to leave Spain hastily. This article focuses on Marius Petipa’s work on the Madrid stage and its reception by the public, while analysing the causes for the couple’s flight from Spain in 1847, after a duel in which Petipa was involved.
Valentina Bonelli
A Summer in Milan (1899)
In the summer of 1899, Pierina Legnani was in her native Milan, eagerly awaiting the renewal of her contract as "Prima prima ballerina assoluta" of the Russian Imperial Theatres. Four letters preserved in the Archives of the Bakhrushin Museum in Moscow document the correspondence between the Italian ballerina and Marius Petipa. The First Ballet Master asked her for practical information about atrip that would take his wife and daughter to Milan. The purpose of the trip was to give lessons to the young Lyubov Mariusovna, who had just graduated as a dancer, at the public school of the famous Caterina Beretta, Legnani’s own teacher. The letters also paint a picture of fin-de-siècle Italian artistic life, from a Luigi Manzotti ballet at the Teatro la Scala to a meeting at the Café Chantant with Olga Preobrazhenskaya and a train journey to Venice
Flavia Pappacena
Marius Petipa and Enrico Cecchetti in Saint Petersburg : the Meeting of two Traditions
The aim of this article is to highlight Enrico Cecchetti’s composite training in which, on the basis of the Blasisian academic school, a multiplicity of experiences was stratified, incorporating techniques from the ancient tradition of Italian grotesque dancers and mimicry including gestures inherited from the Commedia dell’arte. These elements can be found in the two roles played by Cecchetti in Sleeping Beauty : Carabosse and L’Oiseau Bleu. The author explains how the style exported to Russia by Cecchetti, although strongly linked to the Italian tradition, was now far removed from the technical and mimicry orientation that was taking hold in Italy with the innovative wave carried by Luigi Manzotti. However, while the mimicry, so detailed and conventional, might have seemed heavy-handed and old-fashioned to the Italian public, the technique was in fact very close to the sensibility of the new century for the great mobility of the whole body, typical of grotesque dancers, and for a particular virtuosity, often charged with a strong expressive function.
Donatella Gavrilovich
The Mamontov’s “Directors-set Designers” Theatre Reform, Marius Petipa and the "World of Art" (Мир искусства)
At the end of his artistic career Marius Petipa was at the center of a dispute for power and prestige, without realizing it. Alexandre Benois and Sergei Diaghilev, members of the World of Art group (1898-1904) in St. Petersburg, lashed out against the directors-designers, Alexandre Golovin and Konstantin Korovin, members of the Savva Mamontov Circle in Moscow. They had been appointed artistic directors of the Imperial Theatres in order to reform the theatrical scene as like as Mamontov did at his Private Opera of Moscow (1885-1904). The article presents the reconstrution of the events, analyzing the causes that pushed Djagilev and Benois to spread false accusation against the director of Imperial Theatres, Vladimir Teljakovskij and the Muscovite artists. For this reason, even today, these false claims justify the inglorious exit of Marius Petipa from the Imperial Theatres.
Donatella Gavrilovich
La riforma dei “registi-scenografi” mamontoviani, Marius Petipa e il Mir Iskusstva [Мир искусства]
Alla fine della sua carriera artistica Marius Petipa si trovò senza rendersene conto al centro di una disputa di potere e di prestigio, creata ad arte da Aleksandr Benois e da Sergej Djagilev, rappresentanti del gruppo pietroburghesi “Mondo dell’Arte” (1898-1904), contro l’assunzione nei Teatri Imperiali dei registi-scenografi, Aleksandr Golovin e Konstantin Korovin del Circolo moscovita di Savva Mamontov (1885-1904). L’articolo ricostruisce i fatti accaduti, mostrando le motivazioni che spinsero Djagilev e Benois a diffondere false accuse nei confronti del direttore, Vladimir Teljakovskij, e degli artisti moscoviti mediante le quali, ancora oggi, si giustifica l’ingloriosa uscita da teatro di Petipa.
Roland Huesca
Russian Ballet Memory as a Legacy.
During the Belle Epoque, the Russian Ballet triumphed on Parisian stages. Occasionally, critics perceived the influence of the French school, its knowledge and know-how. At the heart of this universe, Marius Petipa’s aura became emblematic of this glorious yet buried past. In a highly historicized Tout-Paris, a form of identity was legitimised by enjoying the precious legacies of former cultural glories. The Republic loved to reclaim the past, as it was somehow anxious about its future. It thus fine-tuned its ethics and its projects.
Natalia Zozulina
Marius Petipa’s Sleeping Beautyʼ at the Mariinsky-Kirov Theatre : analysis of the different versions
The article explores the problem of preserving classical heritage in ballet on the example of the ballet ʻThe Sleeping Beauty’ by M. Petipa and P. Tchaikovsky in the editions of F. Lopukhov, K. Sergeyev, and S. Vikharev. The author carries out a comparative analysis of the most significant scenes of the ballet in the editions of these choreographers and identifies the most valuable of them. In this work the author relies on his research into the choreographic dramaturgy and choreographic text of ʻThe Sleeping Beautyʼ.
Natalia Zozulina
“Спящая Красавица” М. Петипа в редакциях Мариинского-Кировского Театра
В статье исследуется проблема сохранения классического наследия в балете на примере балета “Спящая красавица” М. Петипа и П. Чайковского в редакциях Ф. Лопухова, К. Сергеева и С. Вихарева. Автор проводит сравнительный анализ наиболее значимых сцен балета в редакциях этих балетмейстеров и выявляет наиболее ценную из них. В данной работе автор опирается на проведенные им исследования хореографической драматургии и хореографического текста “Спящей красавицы”.
Marta Mele
The Sleeping Beauty in Rome’s Opera House
The paper illustrates the history of the ballet The Sleeping Beauty in Rome’s Opera House. The aim of the article is to analize the differences in poetics, dramaturgy and style among the various productions, examining how they were perceived by critics and public. Through this analysis it will be possible to inscribe the history of Sleeping Beauty in Rome’s Opera House in the general history of this ballet and to see new perspectives in the study of questions related to authenticity and authorship, tradition and innovation. The fundamental objects of this analysis are Boris Romanov’s production (1954), Robert Helpmann’s production (1965), Andre Prokovsky’s production (1978), Paul Chalmer’s production (2002), Jean-Guillame Bart’s production (2017) and the productions of the touring companies Sadler’s Wells Ballet (1954) and Ballet national de Marseille (1991).
Doug Fullington
Stepanov Notation and The Sleeping Beauty : Historically Informed Productions and some Peculiarities
The Stepanov system of choreographic notation was developed by Vladimir Stepanov and further refined by Alexander Gorsky in the 1890s. The system was used primarily by Nikolai Sergeyev and his assistants to document ballets and opera ballets of the St. Petersburg Imperial Ballet repertory from the 1890s through the early years of the twentieth century. The documents include choreographic notation, ground plans, mime conversations written in prose, and other performance-related details. Most extant examples of Stepanov notation comprise the so-called Sergeyev Collection held at Harvard University. They were used by Nikolai Sergeyev to stage ballets in the West from the 1920s through the 1940s. The notations documenting Marius Petipa’s 1890 ballet The Sleeping Beauty provide details relating to several peculiarities about the ballet’s early performance history. Recent historically informed productions of The Sleeping Beauty by Sergei Vikharev and Alexei Ratmansky utilized these documents to achieve different results.
Cécile Grenier
Petipa after Petipa. When Genius Petipa finds an Inspired Descendant : John Neumeier
In this article, which will follow the Petipa after Petipa research axis, we propose to study some aesthetic correspondences between the choreographic work of John Neumeier and the genre of the great classical dramatic ballet created by Marius Petipa at the end of the 19th century. It will highlight the ubiquitous and timeless influence of the French choreographer in the world of neoclassical ballet through the example of the Neumeier’s Shakespearian ballets, and particularly A Midsummer Night’s Dream [Ein Sommer-nachtstraum]. Indeed, it would seem that, by their typical form of narrative ballet divided in several acts, inspired by a dramatic literary source, as well as their creation in close collaboration with artists and stage technicians, these ballets of Neumeier have undeniable traces of the genius of classical choreographic creation. Marius Petipa seems to have paved the way for the great neoclassical dramatic ballet.
Tiziana LEUCCI
Genesis and theatrical and cinematographic reinterpretations of the ballet Swan Lake by Marius
Petipa, Lev Ivanov and Pyotr Tchaikovsky
The present study analyses the genesis and the various theatrical and cinematographic productions of the ballet Swan Lake [Лебединое озеро], since its first performance in Moscow, in 1877, till today.By focusing on the St. Petersburg version (1895), staged by the French ballet master Marius Petipa (1818-1910) with his Russian assistant Lev Ivanov (1834-1901) on the music composed by Piotr Il’ič Čajkovskij (1840-1893), I traced here the ballet’s Romantic literary and artistic ‘ancestors’ which delineated the dramatic plot and the features of its three major characters : the Princess-Swan Odette/Odile, her beloved Prince Siegfried, and the perfidious sorcerer Von Rothbart. I then showed how this ballet, since the time of its composition until now, never stopped to inspire the imagination and the creativity of those artists that constantly revived it (choreographers, dancers, actors, acrobats, puppeteers, ice skaters, painters, stage and cinema directors, etc.). Thus, each one of them perceived and performed it according to her/his sensibility by giving of this ballet their own special interpretation conceived from different perspectives and points of view (tragic, comic, political, social, economic, ecological and gender ones). Finally, amongst all the 19th century ballets still performed in the present time, Swan Lake is probably one of the most emblematic, symbolic, inspiring and intriguing ones.
Oriana Jimenez
Petipa, Putin and the Little Swans
This article aims to determine the possible instrumentalization by the current Russian government of the works and the figure of Marius Petipa, a leading figure in classical dance, both in Russia and globally. Since 2018, there has been a visible acceleration in the use of his memory, suggesting that Marius Petipa has become the subject of a memory policy. It seems that the memory and ballets of the famous French and Russian choreographer carry meanings, values, and representations from another time, which can be exploited by Vladimir Putin’s regime. Petipa’s works are not only a mirror of the society the current Russian government aspires to, but also serve as a legitimization of Vladimir Putin’s power. However, these works have also undergone a re-semantization by a Russian opposition, allowing it to express itself in a tense geopolitical context. Indeed, one of the most famous images of Petipa’s ballets, the four little swans, has become a way to call for the end of Vladimir Putin’s regime. Thus, Petipa’s ballets under Vladimir Putin have acquired a double meaning : an official meaning and an unofficial one.
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