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"Sleeping Beauty," a Legend in Progress

Yale University Press

Chapter One

Like many stage works now regarded as classic, Sleeping Beauty received a decidedly mixed reception at its premiere in 1890. Sharp differences in critical opinion revealed new faults developing in the terra firma of Russian ballet. Ironically, given that Sleeping Beauty came to be regarded as the quintessence of late nineteenth-century Russian ballet, a number of the ballet's first critics were certain that Sleeping Beauty marked the decline of the art form. And these general condemnations had little to do with the choreography, which was mostly appreciated when noticed at all. Instead, writers noted that the ballet's music, visuals, and narrative all marked significant departures from Imperial Ballet practice. Many of the ballet's original critics were not certain that Sleeping Beauty was a ballet at all.

Sleeping Beauty drew these issues into relief at a time when the presence of foreign dance troupes on Petersburg stages (after the prohibition on private theaters had been lifted in 1882) began to allow for a direct comparison with the visiting troupes and dancers (mostly Italian) then appearing in St. Petersburg. The Imperial Ballet could scarcely be considered a nationalenterprise, with foreign balletmasters, composers, teachers, and visiting artists, yet the distinctions Petersburg critics perceived between the local and guest performances boosted nationalist pride in the Russian ballet.

Dance writers in nineteenth-century Russia mostly belonged to the cadre of inveterate dance fans known as "balletomanes." Conservatism and connoisseurship characterize their writing on the ballet, and their interest in the ballet was proprietary: they saw themselves as defenders of a tradition they "owned." In general, these writers opposed Sleeping Beauty's music as well as its thin narrative and regarded the ballet's elaborate visuals with deep suspicion. When they perceived imitations of Western European ballets in the production of Sleeping Beauty, they expressed their outrage and concerns for the ultimate decline of the Russian ballet.

A more progressive set of critics saw things differently: they endorsed the ballet's music and its plot, hailing both developments as potential solutions to the Russian ballet's perceived difficulties. Where the balletomane-insiders expressed a proprietary interest in an art form they perceived as national and superior, these outsiders (mostly music critics) expressed their interest in the development of an art form they viewed within a much larger context: contemporary performing arts traditions in Russia and in Western Europe.

Reactions to the production of Sleeping Beauty suggested two very different scenarios for the future of Russian ballet. Sleeping Beauty's blend of "high" and "low" generic traditions, its unprecedented juxtaposition of "symphonic" music with visual and choreographic elements borrowed from lower dance genres posited two possible outcomes: the ballet could take its place among the high arts (alongside the opera and the symphony) or remain true to itself (if not exactly "low") and maintain the status quo. Sleeping Beauty raised an important new question: Were Russian ballet's interests best served by merely maintaining national superiority or should the art form entertain more cosmopolitan hopes for the future?

In this book I will examine the mutual interdependence of this very important ballet and the art form for which it came to function as an exemplar: Sleeping Beauty's role in shaping the history of Russian and Soviet ballet over the course of a century, and how the history of the art form, especially in the Soviet Union, influenced the evolution of Sleeping Beauty. In this chapter I will detail the beginning of that process, examining the tensions that greeted the Petipa-Tchaikovsky-Vsevolozhsky ballet in 1890.

Of the ballets of the Russian nineteenth-century repertory, the 1890 Sleeping Beauty possesses the fullest documentation. In addition to the choreographic notations in the Sergeyev Collection, Russian researchers preparing for the 1999 reconstruction of the ballet made use of an abundance of photographs (made on stage as well as in photographers' studios), machinists' instructions, light plots, Vsevolozhsky's famous costume designs, original costumes, sketches of the sets, at least one model (the hunt scene), and conductor Riccardo Drigo's notes in the original performance score.

The written record of the ballet's first production falls into two categories: journalistic accounts and memoirs. I cite sixteen accounts of the ballet, from the perfunctory to the detailed, that appeared in Russian newspapers and periodicals in the weeks surrounding the ballet's premiere, as well as reviews of subsequent Russian productions. Ironically, the Sleeping Beauty reviews from the late nineteenth century devote the least space to the ballet's choreography. Information about the dancing generally focuses on the execution and interpretation of leading dancers, and discussions of the choreography follow a similar pattern: the choreographer is similarly judged on the "execution" of his craft. Originality and invention play a role in the evaluation of the balletmaster's contribution, though the reviewers' tendency to judge the dances "appropriate" or not suggests the relatively narrow range of expectations these reviewers held for the choreographer and the art form at the end of the nineteenth century. The 1890 reviews of Sleeping Beauty circle consistently around four issues: the music, the plot, the visuals, and the ballet's genre. Compared to the column inches devoted to these, the choreography receives scant attention.

THE MUSIC

The single most divisive aspect of the new Sleeping Beauty proved to be the one element that guaranteed the ballet's livelihood in more tumultuous times: the ballet's music. The commission of a serious native composer (in place of the usual foreign house composers) signaled a departure from Imperial Theater routine and was widely discussed in reviews of the new ballet. A few of these writers mention Tchaikovsky's earlier attempt at ballet composition, the ill-starred premiere of Swan Lake in Moscow in 1877, though none attests to familiarity with more than that ballet's music.

The polarized response to Sleeping Beauty in the press divides rather neatly between the balletomanes (and those who faithfully report their position) and critics chiefly interested in the ballet's music. Mikhail Ivanov, the music critic of Novoe vremya, suggests that Tchaikovsky's contribution to the ballet attracted a wider public as well as a more diverse group of reviewers: "Sleeping Beauty, a ballet novelty, whose music was written by Mr. Tchaikovsky, is now the most important event in the musical theater. Mr. Tchaikovsky attained such a level of popularity after Eugene Onegin, even among a public indifferent to art, that he forces it to take an interest in all his new stage works" (22 January 1890). Several newspapers sent two critics (dance and music) to the performance. Those writers mostly limited themselves to their respective specialties, though Konstantin Skalkovsky, Ivanov's colleague at Novoe vremya, summarized balletomane reaction to the music in his review: "Our music critic will make a more detailed and competent judgment of Mr. Tchaikovsky's music. We will note only that the music is melodious, easy to listen to, elegantly orchestrated, and pleased the public, which called for the composer several times. In places, as in the prima ballerina's variations, the rhythm is not sufficiently distinct, which is very disadvantageous for the performer. Of course, a too-marked rhythm imparts vulgarity to music, but is necessary in dances. They gain in their illustrative quality and hold the public's attention in the appropriate place" (5 January 1890). Skalkovsky's relatively diplomatic assessment of the music's unsuitability paled before the admonishments of the Peterburgskaya gazeta critics. The bastion of balletomane opinion, the newspaper was edited and published by dance critic, historian, and ballet librettist Sergei Khudekov. "Concerning Mr. Tchaikovsky's music, its orchestration shines, it is always elegant and transparent ... but ... but ... for the ballet it is nonetheless far from suitable. In the audience they called it either a symphony or a melancholy. There are several numbers, especially in the last scene, that caress the ear ... but in general the music didn't satisfy the balletomanes" (4 January 1890). A subsequent review in Peterburgskaya gazeta provides a fuller account of Tchaikovsky's failings. The author frets that Tchaikovsky is attempting to be "original," to say something new. The reviewer allows that this is natural for any artist, but that Tchaikovsky's innovations in external form come at the expense of musical thought.

Why, for instance, did the composer need such dense colors and the massive orchestration for the depiction of Aurora's Christening, the first scene, which is superfluous in the ballet-both to the narrative (is there a christening in the tale?) and to the music. Judging from the music, one might guess that it was something about Macbeth and his witches.

Isn't this like weaving a spider-web with a rope? In ballet one awaits music that is more or less transparent, light, and gracious, that speaks to the fantasy of the plot. Instead, Sleeping Beauty's listeners find themselves under an influence that nearly borders on the sensation that follows some sort of "good" act of The Ring. Operaticism, and especially symphonicism in the ballet-when they have no dramatic content whatever (in contrast to Mr. Ivanov's La Vestale, for example)-too rich and heavy, are armor in costume's place. (16 January 1890)

The reviewer's charges of "operaticism" and "symphonism" in Sleeping Beauty suggest a further problem with the music (and one to which most writers only alluded): not only was the music insufficiently rhythmic, it was encroaching on the hostile (and higher-genre) territory of the opera and the symphony. The review in Peterburgsky listok, which compares Tchaikovsky's "failure" to that of Ambroise Thomas, whose ballet La Tempête had premiered in Paris six months earlier, reveals the peculiar balletomane anxiety vis-à-vis these higher genres:

Concerning the music of such a venerable composer like P. I. Tchaikovsky, it proved in the most positive sense that the most talented opera maestro may be unsuccessful as a ballet composer. In this case, P. Tchaikovsky suffered the same fate as the great French artist-composer of many wonderful operas, Ambroise Thomas, who wrote the music for the ballet The Storm. We attended the premiere of La Tempête in the Grand Opera in Paris last summer. The ballet suffered a fiasco, thanks primarily to Thomas' music, which turned out to be completely unsuited for dance, although it was very rich with the beauties of a serious symphony. Almost the same occurred a few days ago in the Maryinsky Theater. The difference being that P. Tchaikovsky's music for the ballet wasn't a failure in the end (and it couldn't be, since there was not ballet). But like Thomas' music, it didn't suit dances. Our famous composer isn't the guilty party here: nature grants that every artist is given "his" special purpose. Minkus, Pugni, and Delibes couldn't have arranged such an opera as Eugene Onegin. And Tchaikovsky couldn't cope with the demands of ballet music. None of this, by the way, prevents the first three or the last from being great musical artists in his own line and genre. (5 January 1890)

Ivanov's Novoe vremya review and another, unsigned review in Nuvelist enjoin this discussion of contemporary ballet composition, broadening the debate to include ballets in operas. The Nuvelist writer first gives a historical overview:

It has been several years already since the theater administration changed the former order of things regarding the composition of music for new ballets. Before, there was a special post in the theater-the "composer"-who was obliged to write music for all the ballets that appeared on the state stages without exception. This position, which even now still seems to exist in Moscow, was occupied by Pugni for the last thirty or forty years and after him, by Minkus. Both are experienced in their craft and undoubtedly talented, especially the latter. But the choreographic routine in which they were supposed to vegetate, the job of inevitably writing one or even two ballets every year, could not help but weigh heavily on their fantasy and on their very attitude to the work. Mr. Minkus, who, together with Delibes, wrote one ballet for the Paris stage (La Source, it seems), should have known of the new tendency in ballet music, a tendency that was revealed in France and that took on a serious aspect that even the music for such a wonderful ballet as Adam's Giselle doesn't evoke. Mr. Minkus remained faithful to the traditions that have already ruled on the Petersburg stage more than a half century, traditions that accorded music a distinctly second place and demanded nothing of music but light tunes, with rhythms mostly marked by a bass drum. He has several wonderful ballets, in which his talent speaks vividly, but there is no doubt that he nonetheless has remained outside the movement evident among the ballet composers of France. (3)

The writer contrasts this "new wave" of ballets composed in France (including the ballet numbers in the operas of Meyerbeer and Rossini, and by Russian composers Glinka and Rubenstein) to the "lousy models" provided by recent Italian ballets. "French composers, with Delibes in first place, first showed that even for the ballet one could write music that was accessible to all, comfortable for the choreographer's goals, and together with that, such music that any developed musician could sign on to" (4).

Ivanov, in Novoe vremya, shares the opinions of the Nuvelist writer-to such an extent that one suspects they are the same author. Like his colleague (and alter ego?) at Nuvelist, Ivanov sees the future of ballet music in recent French ballets and in dances composed for Russian and European operas: "Meyerbeer, Gounod, Glinka, and many other opera composers gave us more than a few models of excellent ballet music in their operas that have nothing in common with the ballets of the past. The new generation of composers who write music for the ballet should have followed, and have followed, their example, using means to achieve a symphonic genre of music. Of course, the music of one is more successful than that of the other, and one shows talent and the other is boring. But the direction remains unavoidable, and the ballet composers of other countries are joining the movement begun in France (Delibes, Lalo, Salver, Thomas, and others) and in Russia" (22 January 1890).

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from "Sleeping Beauty," a Legend in Progress by Tim Scholl Copyright © 2004 by Tim Scholl. Excerpted by permission.
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