The Mariinsky Theater endured “Daughter” – Newspaper Kommersant No. 51 (7496) of 03/27/2023

The premiere of the three-act ballet The Pharaoh’s Daughter, staged by Marius Petipa more than 160 years ago, took place on the new stage of the Mariinsky Theater (Mariinsky-2). The reconstruction of the first full-length ballet by Petipa, based on the records of 1898, was carried out by the Italian Tony Candeloro. Tells Tatyana Kuznetsova.

The Pharaoh’s Daughter, Marius Petipa’s first multi-act production, after which the 44-year-old dancer received the coveted status of a choreographer, turned out to be unexpectedly fateful for the two capital troupes of post-Soviet Russia. In 2000, the Bolshoi Theater commissioned the production of this ballet from the Frenchman Pierre Lacotte. He, retaining the old libretto of Saint-Georges and a couple of surviving variations, composed his own choreography in the old French style, and this luxurious pastiche of a huge ballet pulled the capital’s troupe out of a deep repertoire crisis. The St. Petersburg premiere of The Pharaoh’s Daughter is intended to play the same role at the Mariinsky Theatre. For too long, it has remained a theater-museum, preserving the classics in 70-year-old editions and feeding on small-scale productions by young authors in an attempt to grow its own choreographer.

The Mariinsky Theater has not started such a grandiose project since the brilliant reconstruction of The Sleeping Beauty, undertaken by Sergei Vikharev in 1999. However, Vikharev’s Sleeper, as well as his own La Bayadère, did not really take root in St. Petersburg – so far Soviet productions have been considered standard, without excesses in the form of abundant pantomime, crowded processions and a return to the original choreography. Two decades had to pass for the theater to mature to the concept of historicism, once proclaimed by itself. But Sergei Vikharev was no longer alive; Alexei Ratmansky, resident choreographer of the American Ballet Theater and a recognized expert in notation, was invited to the production of The Pharaoh’s Daughter, recorded in 1898 according to Stepanov’s system. And if it were not for the delay in the production of monumental scenery and half a thousand costumes (artist Robert Perdziola), The Pharaoh’s Daughter could have been released in 2021 and would probably have been different. Ratmansky managed to stage 80% of the ballet, but from February 2022 he refused to cooperate with Russian theaters. After a not very long search, the director of the Mariinsky ballet, Yuri Fateev, found a replacement for him: ex-dancer Tony Candeloro, an Italian who was fond of antiquity, but still did not work in a large form (see Kommersant on March 21). In two months, he staged The Pharaoh’s Daughter again, and, according to Fateev, although both Ratmansky and Candeloro studied the same records, the Italian choreography turned out to be different (which, in the opinion of a person who is not familiar with the notation, seems incredible) .

For Muscovites who love their “Daughter of the Pharaoh”, there is nothing unusual in the vicissitudes of the plot about an Englishman who fell asleep in the depths of the pyramid and imagined himself in a dream as the ancient Egyptian Taor, in love with the daughter of the pharaoh. The playfully dancing unpretentious music of Caesar Pugni is also well known: both theaters created their scores according to the violin tutor (parts of two violins adapted for rehearsals), both made their own notes. The crowdedness of this pompous ballet, and the abundance of dances (in St. Petersburg there are even more of them – for example, six rivers are dancing instead of three), and the thoroughness of pantomime (in Moscow, alas, truncated after the premiere), and the multi-colored costumes, and the cyclopean scenery of the tropical forest, are familiar. pharaoh’s palace, underwater kingdom. In St. Petersburg, only the “fisherman’s hut” seemed strange – with a holey wooden roof and a giant, almost the entire wall, square opening of the “window”. It is also a pity for the two historical variations that Lacotte got “firsthand” – Ramsay’s confidante and the soloist from Pas de six. In St. Petersburg, instead of the nameless soloist, Taor dances her only full-fledged variation, cutting off the entrecha in turns and different angles, and Ramsay’s part is more extensive, but there are no lovely sharp peaks in it.

Heroes and duets do not have, moreover, Aspicia’s ensemble adagios with several gentlemen, and this is a significant difference from Petipa’s late ballets. The protagonists dance mostly in turns or in parallel, as in the Bournonville ballets, and perhaps this similarity in the structure of the solo parts with those in the Dane’s ballets should indicate historical accuracy. Lots of repetitive steps. So, in the first two acts everyone amuses themselves with “pancakes” in arabesque – from nameless luminaries to prima. Whether this seriality speaks of the haste of Petipa himself, who staged The Pharaoh’s Daughter in an emergency six weeks, or of the lack of imagination of Candeloro, who filled in the “blank spots” of the recording with jumps into arabesque, is unknown, but the “pancakes” look quite plausible.

Of course, this is a women’s ballet; besides Taor and the nameless soloist, there is almost nothing for men to do here. But the ladies – and not only Aspicia and Ramsay – are literally knocked off their feet: countless variations of “rivers”, three almae, two soloists from Pas d`action, the most complex parts of coryphaeuses and a corps de ballet – only cabriols of mermaids from the “underwater kingdom” are able to outshine everyone Sleeping Beauty Nereid. But it is not the quantity that is remarkable, but the quality of the dance, more precisely, its style and technique. Since the iron technique of Agrippina Vaganova ranked all poses and steps in order, our classical dance has taken on a somewhat stern look: both legs stretched out to a string, arms hobbled in positions, and a steel body can move along strictly measured trajectories, deviations are unacceptable. In “The Pharaoh’s Daughter” there are countless deviations from the Vaganov rules. Here they spin on half-fingers, bend their knees in jumps, squat on their fingers in a wide second position, do not raise their legs above their shoulders, and when rotating diagonally, they keep their head turned to the audience. This ancient style requires a completely different coordination – as if a right-hander was forced to write with his left hand. This is not news, in this way Ratmansky made the whole of Europe dance. What is surprising is that the violation of Vaganova’s commandments was to the liking of her most faithful adherents: St. Petersburg artists of all ranks danced animatedly and with visible pleasure, although not everyone was able to do it deftly.

In the first two performances, both Ramseys (Renata Shakirova and Nadezhda Batoeva) were impeccably light, precise and unconstrained. Prime Minister Kimin Kim, deprived of his main trump cards (large soaring jumps and whirlwind spins) in the role of Taor, took with actor’s charm; in the same role, the virtuoso Philip Stepin, with his beautiful entrecha, turned out to be a less ardent lover. It was not easy for the exemplary ballerina Victoria Tereshkina, with her many years of experience, to reorganize in a different way – both technically and mentally. Either the strong-willed queen Mekhmene Banu will suddenly wake up in her Aspicia (as, say, in a variation with a dagger), then the cou de pied will suddenly shoot up from the ankle to the knee, then the frivolous gargouillade will sound like a stern order. The second Aspicia, charming young Maria Khoreva, has mastered the new-old classics, as if she had studied it from school: gentle, but masterful hands, a melodious, flexible figure, a variety of foot speech – from a dandy tongue twister to touching crying, and extremely lively facial expressions – the joys and sorrows of her Pharaoh’s daughter were read in every fleeting detail. It is difficult to determine how the choreography, reconstructed by Tony Candeloro, corresponds to Petipa’s production. One thing is for sure: the St. Petersburg troupe, as if invigorated by adrenaline, has not danced like this for a hundred years.