Bayadere

An admirer of Mozart and a great reformer of music education at the recently opened Paris Conservatoire (1795), Charles-Simon Catel composed in 1810 Les Bayadères, an operatic masterpiece set in India, which competed successfully with Spontini’s La Vestale, which was then at the height of its popularity. Tinged with orientalism, it turns the page on Classicism and uses new musical and dramatic structures to create emotion. In a work full of action and excitement, the heroine of the opera, the bayadère Laméa – a ‘star’ role (then a new concept) – shows remarkable presence. On his arrival in Paris in the 1820s, the young and very discerning Hector Berlioz was filled with enthusiasm by this work.

Deutsche Grammophon will release the official soundtrack album for the biographical drama The White Crow. The album features the film’s original score composed by Ilan Eshkeri (Stardust, Layer Cake, Still Alice, Kick-Ass, Johnny English Reborn) and featuring violin solos by Lisa Batiashvili. Also included are ballet compositions by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Alexander Krein & Ludwig Minkus, most of which have been newly arranged for the project by Eshkeri. The soundtrack will be released digitally tomorrow, March 22 and will be available to download here. The White Crow is directed by Ralph Fiennes who also stars in the movie alongside Oleg Ivenko, Adèle Exarchopoulos, as well as ballet-world enfant terrible Sergei Polunin, Chulpan Khamatova, Olivier Rabourdin, Raphaël Personnaz and Louis Hofmann. The movie is inspired by the book Rudolf Nureyev: The Life by Julie Kavanaugh and charts the iconic dancer’s famed defection from the Soviet Union to the West in 1961, despite KGB efforts to stop him. The drama is being released in British theaters this week following its premiere at the Telluride & Toronto Film Festivals last year and will air arrive in the U.S. on April 26, where it is being distributed by Sony Pictures Classics.

Ludwig (or Léon) Minkus does not rank very high on anyone’s list of distinguished composers, but his music nonetheless survives thanks to the tuneful scores he turned out for the ballet, particularly for the choreographer Marius Petipa. And it is probably Don Quichotte that is the best-known today, closely followed by La Bayadère . Until the Russian ballet companies began touring the West in the 1950s and 60s, audiences knew only the pas de deux, which was a staple of many a touring company. But once the Kirov and Bolshoi showed us that there was considerably more to the work, productions began to proliferate. Rudolf Nureyev even made a full-length film of the ballet almost 50 years ago with the Australian Ballet Company, which allows us to see the captivating Lucette Aldous. He then went on to stage the piece for many other companies, including the Paris Opera. Aside from the fact that today we don’t know how much of Don Quichotte is actually the work of Petipa, as it was revived and revised by Alexander Gorsky, among a great many others, rendering meaningless the credit “based upon Marius Petipa,” what Nureyev gives us is his version of the ballet as danced by the Kirov during his time with that company.