Romeo and Juliet has been revived at the Bolshoi Theater

On the Historical Stage of the Bolshoi Theater they presented Prokofiev’s famous ballet Romeo and Juliet, restored by Mikhail Lavrovsky, the son of choreographer Leonid Lavrovsky. I watched the first of five performances in the premiere series Tatiana Kuznetsova.

The return to the Bolshoi stage of Lavrovsky’s Romeo and Juliet seems to be a restoration of justice: this performance occupies too important a place in the history of not only the Bolshoi Theater, but also world ballet. And he was absent from the Moscow poster for too long. He appeared at the Bolshoi in post-war 1946 together with Galina Ulanova. Or it could have been 11 years earlier: the theater ordered Prokofiev’s score back in 1935. The inspired composer completed the draft version in almost two months and in October he performed the entire ballet himself in the Beethoven Hall of the Bolshoi. The audition failed miserably: by the end the hall was practically empty. That the composer left the Veronese lovers alive, believing that “living people can dance, dying people cannot dance lying down,” was only the least of his complaints. The phrase fluttered in ballet circles: “There is no sadder story in the world than Prokofiev’s music in ballet” – his complex musical world was too different from the blessed beauties of Tchaikovsky and the usual rhythms of pre-revolutionary ballet painters. However, librettists Adrian Piotrovsky and Sergei Radlov, as well as the young choreographer Leonid Lavrovsky, who convinced everyone that even the dead would dance in the ballet, did not give up. It took almost five years to stage the production in Leningrad. Over the years, the composer managed to carve out two suites from ballet music and successfully present them in Paris; Czech choreographer Ivo Psota – stage the entire ballet in the city of Brno; Adrian Piotrovsky was repressed and shot. Of course, his name was not on the poster when, in January 1940, the premiere of Romeo and Juliet took place at the GATOB. Kirov (currently the Mariinsky Theater).

And triumph struck. The performance turned out to be the pinnacle of drama ballet, a practical affirmation of the aesthetics of “life-likeness” chosen by the state. Director Sergei Radlov, however, added symbolism: he interpreted Shakespeare’s play as a struggle between the dark Middle Ages and the light of the Renaissance, to which the Verona lovers fell victims. Subsequently, Lavrovsky would write that Radlov had nothing to do with the production. However, the choreographer kept the director’s name on the poster, which indicates considerable courage: after all, immediately after the war, Radlov and his wife, who returned from Paris, were repressed and exiled.

In 1956, the ballet, which ten years earlier had been transferred to the Bolshoi and became the highlight of its poster, was taken on a large-scale tour to London – it created a sensation, becoming an ideological battering ram that pierced the Iron Curtain. The British were shocked by the grandeur of the production, its luxury, historical authenticity and psychological persuasiveness. In the West, a fashion for drama ballet was born, which was called the term ballet-story. In the 1960s, John Cranko and Kenneth MacMillan presented their own productions of Romeo, retaining the Soviet libretto but composing their own choreography.

In Moscow, “Romeo and Juliet” lived happily until in 1979, Yuri Grigorovich staged his own version at the Bolshoi – Lavrovsky’s performance was quietly buried. In 1995, he was revived by Vladimir Vasiliev, who replaced Grigorovich at the head of the troupe. It was a conceptual gesture that marked a return to old Moscow traditions. And necessity: the generation that knew Lavrovsky completed not only the stage, but also the path of life. Pensioners of the Bolshoi were involved in the work: former Nurses, maids, Lady Capulet, Father Lorenzo and other characters from the populous ballet.

Here it is necessary to clarify that drama ballet is not only choreography, mise-en-scène and scenography, which can be reconstructed from sketches, photographs and film documents. This is a whole philosophy and a unique style of stage life, passed on “from hand to hand.” It is generally accepted that the drama ballet has strangled the dance with pantomime, that its choreography is meager and monotonous. This is not entirely true: where dance was allowed freedom – say, at balls or festivals – choreographers showed imagination, which today’s authors can only envy. For other cases, choreographers developed a whole system of internal monologues: each gesture and each step meant a specific emotion or remark. For example, a series of arabesques could express different feelings – from timidity to jubilation. Only those who went through the school of drama ballet could teach such nuances to neophytes. However, Vasilyev’s revival did not survive in the 21st century: swept away by the thirst for renewal, the performance disappeared from the Bolshoi along with the former director of the theater.

The fact that our ballet would inevitably return to the Soviet past was clear already in 2022: the cultural blockade excluded access to world heritage, and large theaters would not be able to survive on new domestic productions—essentially “pigs in a poke.” For the next revival of Romeo and Juliet, initiated by general director Vladimir Urin and artistic director of the ballet Mahar Vaziev, the Bolshoi made every effort: more than a dozen teachers were listed as tutors, five casts were prepared for the premiere shows in almost all roles, monumental scenery was recreated on a grand scale – only There are five complete changes in the first act. As icing on the cake, the youngest Juliet and Romeo were announced for the premiere: 23-year-old ballerina Elizaveta Kokoreva and 20-year-old soloist Daniil Potaptsev.

The couple looked great: a thin, light brunette, similar to Olivia Hussey from the Zeffirelli film, and a stately blond with an open face and soft legs of marvelous beauty. And they danced superbly: beautiful adagio lines, light jumps, pure rotation – in any case, the double attitude turns that Ulanova was always so afraid of, Liza Kokoreva performed with imperturbable confidence. They also tried their best as actors, but the young artists did not succeed in drama ballet: their dance lived separately from facial expressions and gestures. The relief with which the youngsters threw themselves into the classical steps they understood was in sharp contrast to the actor’s efforts. The main victim was the adagio in the bedroom, which was in no way similar to the wedding night. And it wasn’t even a matter of a hitch in the climactic support (the inexperienced Potaptsev was not immediately able to squeeze the fragile Kokoreva into an arabesque on an outstretched arm, and then too carefully unloaded her onto the floor) – there was no trace of intimacy between the lovers. This Romeo rushed to the window so persistently and zealously, as if he longed to quickly get away from the affectionate Juliet. The bloody events in the square were also not a success for the handsome young man, who turned on his emotions only at the moment when he himself had to fence. In the “Mantua” scene, Daniel’s cabrioles were magnificent, especially since they had to be done on a narrow strip of the proscenium (for some reason, the set designers reproduced “Mantua” not in volume, but in the form of a painted proscenium curtain), but between the desperate jumps wedged sober and educational pirouettes.

The amazingly anemic Father Lorenzo (Yuri Ostrovsky), whose mimicry is extremely important in this performance, also failed his scenes. Other characters either fussed too much (however, the good actress Anastasia Vinokur will still be able to reduce the agility of her Nurse), or turned out to be too passive (this is how Signor Capulet of the executive Alexander Vodopetov disappeared from the field of view). The usually erased Paris (Klim Efimov) turned out to be unexpectedly bright – thoroughbred, powerful and passionate. Mikhail Lobukhin in a red wig and an unimaginably colorful clown costume with transverse stripes on one leg and longitudinal stripes on the other (an unjustified adjective of the artist Tatyana Noginova) so emphasized the unbridledness of his Tybalt that he turned the hot-tempered aristocrat into a deranged animal; graceful, ironic, precise and technically impeccable Mercutio (Vyacheslav Lopatin) was never able to enter into acting contact with him until his death. In a word, the soloists, deprived of the detailed instructions of their departed predecessors – experts in drama ballet laws, tried to the best of their acting abilities and intuition, but there was no trace of the unity of the ensemble.

The crowd scenes looked the best. Although the pantomime life of the people of Verona has not yet reached the necessary ease, their dancing activity is worthy of praise: the frisky tarantella, which occupies a good half of the second act, was performed by everyone surprisingly smoothly, clearly and even with pleasure. The public stage on the square was desecrated only by an absurd statue of a slanted short condottiere sitting on a sad horse with human legs, sculpted by set designer Sergei Grachev to replace the rider Peter Williams. But maestro Anton Grishanin and his orchestra supported the dancers with comfortable tempos and extraordinary temperament.

One must assume that the profitable three-act ballet, prices for which according to the current price list start at 30 thousand per ticket, will not disappear from the market in the coming years. That the artists will get used to it, the ensemble will level out, and the audience will not get bored, getting used to the 3.5-hour performance – at the Mariinsky Theater Romeo and Juliet has been performed continuously since 1940 to the complete satisfaction of the public. The concept of the theater-museum, which the Mariinsky Theater has been adhering to for many years, is fully consistent with today’s cultural agenda for updating the heritage of the USSR: after all, the new is always more unreliable than the proven. In addition, the theaters now have a common director. The general museum repertoire is not far off.