PARIS — Rudolf Nureyev’s “The Sleeping Beauty,” currently being performed by the Paris Opera Ballet, is ornate, ceremonious and very, very long. It also hints at Nureyev’s ambivalence toward the Russia he left behind when he defected to the West in 1961 at 23 while on tour with the Kirov Ballet.
It was for the Kirov that “The Sleeping Beauty” was created in 1890, when the company was called (as it is again now) the Mariinsky Ballet. Its choreographer was the French-born Marius Petipa; its composer, Tchaikovsky. In its formal perfection, its reiteration of hierarchical order and its grand theme of good versus evil, “The Sleeping Beauty” represents the summit of balletic classicism. It remained a preoccupation for Nureyev throughout his career.
He first staged it at 28 for La Scala, then for several other companies before bringing it to the Paris Opera in 1989 in his last year as artistic director there. Nureyev’s “Beauty,” now being performed by the Paris company for the first time in nine years, is packed with pomp and ceremony, with Baroque court dances and decorous formations of courtiers and royals, fairies and dryads. Its décor, by Ezio Frigerio, is sumptuous, with classical columns and reclining nudes embellished by Rococo detail; the costumes, by Franca Squarciapino, are an excessively gorgeous riot of color and gold braid.
Does the ballet express Nureyev’s admiration for the pre-Soviet days of imperial splendor and the way that ballet itself reflects the social order of the royal court? Or was he, as the Paris Opera program suggests, offering “subtle criticism of power and its hold over the individual”?
Both might be true; the elaborate excesses of the ballet seem at once a veneration of the absolute authority of royal power and immutable social order, but also so exaggerated that it is hard not to imagine that a touch of irony pervades the display. But one thing is clear: It is happening very slowly.
There is never one variation, if two or three will do, and the dramatic high points — Carabosse’s curse upon the baby Aurora, the moment when the young princess pricks her finger, the prince’s arrival at the sleeping castle — are oddly muted by the leisurely staging and the decision to all but abolish the explanatory mime. They are also dampened by almost nonexistent acting; mild surprise seemed to be the emotion of choice at a performance this month, whether a curse to the death, or sudden salvation from same, was in the offing.
The lack of dramatic impulse was exacerbated by the pace of the score, conducted by Fayçal Karoui and played by the Paris Opera orchestra at tempos that ranged from lethargic to funereal. (This must be very odd for Mr. Karoui, the Paris company’s musical director, who previously held the same position at the New York City Ballet. There, the “Sleeping Beauty” staged by Peter Martins would have been past the halfway mark when Nureyev’s 80-minute first act was just ending.)
And Nureyev’s decision to use the Lilac Fairy (Juliette Gernez, in this production) as a mime counterpart to Carabosse (Nolwenn Daniel), rather than as a dancing fairy, further handicaps the narrative. It is the choreography that places the Lilac Fairy as a center of power and calm authority. Without it, she just seems to be an elegant lady in a nice purple dress, and the struggle between good and evil that is one of the ballet’s central motifs never emerges with any clarity.
Nor, in the performance of Ludmila Pagliero as Aurora, does the ballet’s other great theme become clear: the maturing of the adolescent princess into a woman through the ordeal of the curse, and her 100-year sleep. The Argentine-born Ms. Pagliero, who did not train at the Paris Opera Ballet, has a cast-iron technique, as well as a beautiful, buoyant jump and exquisitely arched feet.
She is more French than the French in this ballet, her arabesques rarely higher than a 90-degree angle, her footwork impeccably sparkling, her demeanor demure. When she relaxes, as she did in her second Act I solo, into a more lush, expansive presence, she comes to life with exciting vibrancy.
But Ms. Pagliero does not ever show the way Aurora grows into adulthood through dance. Her Aurora is mature and confident from the start, without the mystique that should draw Prince Désiré (Josua Hoffalt) to the vision that the Lilac Fairy shows him in Act II. When this Aurora is awakened with a kiss, she seems little different from her confident self of 100 years earlier; there has been no transformation.
It was for the Kirov that “The Sleeping Beauty” was created in 1890, when the company was called (as it is again now) the Mariinsky Ballet. Its choreographer was the French-born Marius Petipa; its composer, Tchaikovsky. In its formal perfection, its reiteration of hierarchical order and its grand theme of good versus evil, “The Sleeping Beauty” represents the summit of balletic classicism. It remained a preoccupation for Nureyev throughout his career.
He first staged it at 28 for La Scala, then for several other companies before bringing it to the Paris Opera in 1989 in his last year as artistic director there. Nureyev’s “Beauty,” now being performed by the Paris company for the first time in nine years, is packed with pomp and ceremony, with Baroque court dances and decorous formations of courtiers and royals, fairies and dryads. Its décor, by Ezio Frigerio, is sumptuous, with classical columns and reclining nudes embellished by Rococo detail; the costumes, by Franca Squarciapino, are an excessively gorgeous riot of color and gold braid.
Does the ballet express Nureyev’s admiration for the pre-Soviet days of imperial splendor and the way that ballet itself reflects the social order of the royal court? Or was he, as the Paris Opera program suggests, offering “subtle criticism of power and its hold over the individual”?
Both might be true; the elaborate excesses of the ballet seem at once a veneration of the absolute authority of royal power and immutable social order, but also so exaggerated that it is hard not to imagine that a touch of irony pervades the display. But one thing is clear: It is happening very slowly.
There is never one variation, if two or three will do, and the dramatic high points — Carabosse’s curse upon the baby Aurora, the moment when the young princess pricks her finger, the prince’s arrival at the sleeping castle — are oddly muted by the leisurely staging and the decision to all but abolish the explanatory mime. They are also dampened by almost nonexistent acting; mild surprise seemed to be the emotion of choice at a performance this month, whether a curse to the death, or sudden salvation from same, was in the offing.
The lack of dramatic impulse was exacerbated by the pace of the score, conducted by Fayçal Karoui and played by the Paris Opera orchestra at tempos that ranged from lethargic to funereal. (This must be very odd for Mr. Karoui, the Paris company’s musical director, who previously held the same position at the New York City Ballet. There, the “Sleeping Beauty” staged by Peter Martins would have been past the halfway mark when Nureyev’s 80-minute first act was just ending.)
And Nureyev’s decision to use the Lilac Fairy (Juliette Gernez, in this production) as a mime counterpart to Carabosse (Nolwenn Daniel), rather than as a dancing fairy, further handicaps the narrative. It is the choreography that places the Lilac Fairy as a center of power and calm authority. Without it, she just seems to be an elegant lady in a nice purple dress, and the struggle between good and evil that is one of the ballet’s central motifs never emerges with any clarity.
Nor, in the performance of Ludmila Pagliero as Aurora, does the ballet’s other great theme become clear: the maturing of the adolescent princess into a woman through the ordeal of the curse, and her 100-year sleep. The Argentine-born Ms. Pagliero, who did not train at the Paris Opera Ballet, has a cast-iron technique, as well as a beautiful, buoyant jump and exquisitely arched feet.
She is more French than the French in this ballet, her arabesques rarely higher than a 90-degree angle, her footwork impeccably sparkling, her demeanor demure. When she relaxes, as she did in her second Act I solo, into a more lush, expansive presence, she comes to life with exciting vibrancy.
But Ms. Pagliero does not ever show the way Aurora grows into adulthood through dance. Her Aurora is mature and confident from the start, without the mystique that should draw Prince Désiré (Josua Hoffalt) to the vision that the Lilac Fairy shows him in Act II. When this Aurora is awakened with a kiss, she seems little different from her confident self of 100 years earlier; there has been no transformation.
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