Inner Struggle in Music and Vision11 February

Inner Struggle

GIUSEPPE PENNISI watches and listens to
Tchaikovsky's 'Sleeping Beauty'

The best known musical theatre adaptation of Jacques Perrault's short novel La Belle au Bois Dormant ('Sleeping Beauty') is, no doubt, Tchaikovsky's 1890 ballet commissioned by the Russian Imperial Theatres. This was a special opportunity to listen to and see the ballet at Teatro dell'Opera di Roma just after having heard and seen Respighi's opera on the same subject at Teatro Lirico Cagliari ('Full of Irony', 6 February 2017). They are only some thirty years apart but belong to very different musical worlds, or rather universes. The ballet is a long, grand, romantic show which, if performed unabridged, has Wagnerian dimensions (almost four hours including intermissions). The opera is a very ironic comedy of about one hour and a half. The Tchaikovsky has a late Romantic score based on a very nineteenth century topic: the fight between good and evil with two leitmotivs (for good and evil) always confronting each other. The Respighi is clearly twentieth century, as shown by its foxtrot ending. The ballet requires a large stage and a huge corps de ballet in addition to over twenty soloists; it was conceived for the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, the most important of the imperial theatres. The opera was planned for the small Teatro Odescalchi in Rome, specialized in marionette performances.
Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty arrived quite late on Rome's stages, but since 1954, it has been programmed about every three years at the Teatro dell'Opera and can be also seen in other theatres, occasionally with taped music instead of an orchestra. The version I saw on the opening night, 8 February 2017, was labeled as a new production. As a matter of fact, the stage sets and costumes by Aldo Buti have been the same since 2002, and there are no reasons to change them; they are elegant and effective, as the photos show.

A scene from Tchaikovsky's 'Sleeping Beauty' at Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. Photo © 2017 Yasuko Kageyama. Click on the image for higher resolution

What is different, however, is the choreography. Jean-Guillaume Bart does not follow the athletic style prevalent over the last half century. This style was imported, essentially, by Russian dancers defecting from the Soviet Union. Even Igor Stravinsky criticized that approach to Tchaikovsky's ballet, especially to Sleeping Beauty; Stravinsky emphasized the need for simplicity, grace and immediacy. In fact, beneath the score and the tensions between the two leitmotivs, is Tchaikovsky's inner struggle between his sexual tendencies, his marriage to conceal his problems, his wife becoming progressively crazy, a real tragedy under a delicate fairy tale.

Iana Salenko as Princess Aurora and Claudio Cocino as Prince Desiré in Tchaikovsky's 'Sleeping Beauty' at Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. Photo © 2017 Yasuko Kageyama. Click on the image for higher resolution

Conductor David Coleman gave the performance a relatively slow pace, with short interruptions after the main numbers (perhaps to give the dancers a short pause, and to offer the audience the opportunity for open stage applause).

Iana Salenko as Princess Aurora and Claudio Cocino as Prince Desiré in Tchaikovsky's 'Sleeping Beauty' at Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. Photo © 2017 Yasuko Kageyama. Click on the image for higher resolution

A notable exception to the almost entirely young Italian cast was protagonist Iana Salenko, a young Ukrainan, in the role of Princess Aurora. She and Claudio Cocino (Prince Desiré) received ovations during the second and the third acts as well as at the end of the performance. There followed ten minutes of accolades for the full company, and an important promotion for Cocino to primo ballerino.

Copyright © 11 February 2017 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy