Ballet Review: Comic Ballets from NYCB and ABT feature a lost great composer

Coppélia (1870)

New York City Ballet

Music by Léo Delibes

Choreography Coppélia by George Balanchine (after Danilova and Petipa)

Starring Tiler Peck and Joaquin De Luz

Conducted by Andrew Litton

Lincoln Center Koch Theater, Manhattan

May 26, 2018

Harlequinade (1900)

American Ballet Theater

Music by Riccardo Drigo

Choreography by Marius Petipa (revised by Alexei Ramansky)

Conducted by David LaMarche

Starring James Whiteside, Isabella Boylston, and Gillian Murphy

Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan

June 4, 2018

These two comic ballets written near the end of the 19^th century each received well-conceived, sprightly productions by the two big NY ballet companies, each in the midst of their late spring seasons. The effect they made on me was similar. Each provided a useful tonic to the hyper-serious, doomed-female approach to ballet I wrote about in my recent review of Giselle. I mostly smiled (even laughed) throughout each one. And each was enhanced by well-composed scores, one by a composer I had not heard of.

Coppélia (1870) tells the story of an inventor and his wind-up doll. The origin was two short 1817 stories by early romantic Prussian writer ETA Hoffmann: The Sandman and The Doll.  Both are about a windup beautiful life-size female doll (now there is an early version of female objectification!) that tempts young men. The original story ends with the doll brutally broken apart, dismembered by the two inventors who argue about who invented what part of her. Very Freudian for 1817! This gloomy story morphed into Act 1 of Offenbach’s opera The Tales of Hoffmann (1881). Here the doll sings a famous coloratura aria and tempts poor Hoffmann, then is torn apart by the two inventors as in the original story. Delibes’ ballet keeps some of this, but not the dismemberment. The doll and the inventor provide the framework for a first act in which, yes, another young man falls in love with the doll and with a real maiden Swanhilda simultaneously, eventually realizing that the real girl is a better option. Men in romantic ballet just cannot settle on one woman. The last act is an extended wedding ballet, without plot. The music by Delibes is fun and engaging, leaving many tunes humming along in my memory for weeks. This was the first real through-composed ballet score, preceding Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake by seven years. Tchaikovsky apparently admired and studied Delibes’ score, and I heard lots of the color of The Nutcracker (1892) in Coppélia.  Both have lots of ethnic dances and oriental exotica, and both make good use of percussion instruments.

New York City Ballet’s production by Balanchine pulls out the stops, with dozens of little ballerinas onstage and colorful (if faded) sets. 

Balanchine choreographed it based on his memory of the steps he learned in his youth in the Russian Imperial Ballet, so if not an academic reconstruction of the original, it is a spiritual one. The Swanhilde of Tiler Peck was fast, fun, and well acted, and the corps de ballet was generally precise and spirited in their character dances. The ending did not quite reach the level of excitement seen in this wonderful Bolshoi production with the high-flying Natalia Osipova (see if you can get the music at 2:55 out of your head), but left the New York family audience excited none the less. The mother of one of the little ballerinas was next me (she came late just in time to see her little darling) and was breathless the whole time. I gave her daughter, and the whole cast, a nice ovation.

Harlequinade (1900), composed by Riccardo Drigo, the Royal Russian Court conductor and composer for the Imperial Ballet, was last performed in its original version in 1927, then mostly disappeared from the repertory. One shortened version by Georges Balanchine is still used by some companies. American Ballet Theater’s resident artist Alexei Ratmansky has been reviving some historic productions based on extensive choreographic notes found in the Harvard Library, and this was his latest project. This was the last ballet of the great romantic choreographer Marius Petipa (Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty). It tells a very slight commedia dell’arte story of Harlequin, Colombine, and Pierrot sneaking around, dating, and beating up one another (at one point Harlequin is thrown off a balcony, dies, then comes back to life, hilariously staged with a mannequin that lost a number of body parts). Like Coppélia, the last act is a wedding spectacle with set dance numbers. So this is not the ballet for people who want a developed plot. But what music! I had never before heard a note by Riccardo Drigo (1846-1930), the conductor for the tsars from 1886 until the revolution in 1917. At that point he lost employment and lived in near-starvation conditions. Finally he returned to his native Italy, where he composed a little more and lived to a comfortable old age. While in St. Petersburg he composed 13 ballet scores and four operas (one called Flaffy Raffles), none now in the repertory except Harlequinade. He also re-orchestrated Swan Lake after Tchaikovsky’s original version was thought unsuccessful, and his version is the one still heard today. Maybe more of his music should be heard, with or without dance. His score for Harlequinade was fantastic. In the first act, a lovely serenade for (mandolin-bearing dancers) outside a balcony was followed by a stunning violin Andante written for the famed Russian court violinist Léopold Auer. It was played beautifully by ABT concertmaster Benjamin Bowman, who stood prominently visible to the audience next to the conductor, in a nice touch. There were tarantellas, polonaises, waltzes, you name it, all well-orchestrated and integrated, even including some counterpoint and little fugues, unusual in ballets. More Drigo, please!

The acting and dancing by ABT was superb, and obviously well-rehearsed—I attended the Monday “world premiere” of the 1900 ballet reconstruction, and the performance seemed very precise and locked in, despite the newness of the production to the dancers. James Whiteside was a dynamic and elfin Harlequin, bedecked in brilliant red checkered costume also reconstructed from 1900 performance notes. 

The comic acting and mime of Thomas Forster as the floppy-armed Pierrot also stood out. Isabella Boylston was technically excellent, but a little understated as Columbine, not quite matching the acting of the others. There were kids galore onstage in contrasting brilliant costumes, and the second act opening Polonaise filled the huge Met stage with dancing performers, looking like a scene from a ballroom in War and Peace. The comic acting was spot-on and delightful, just as I imagined a commedia dell’arte performance should go. I certainly hope that this fun, colorful revival of a lost ballet will stay in the repertory. See it if ABT performs in your area. And let’s hope the lost music of Riccardo Drigo can reappear somewhere!