Le talisman
Le Talisman ( The Talisman ; also: Le Porte-bonheur ("The lucky charm")) is a fantastic ballet ( Ballet fantastique ) in a prologue and 3 acts by Marius Petipa and Riccardo Drigo on a libretto by Konstantin Tarnovsky, which will be premiered in In 1889 in Saint Petersburg . The fairytale and exotic action takes place in ancient India .
people
- Amravati, queen of heaven
- Ella (later: Niriti), her daughter
- Uragan (later: Vayou ), the wind god
- Noureddin, a maharajah
- Kadoor, a weaver
- Nal, his son
- Nirilya, Nal's fiancée
- King Akdar
- Princess Damayanti, daughter of Akdar, fiancee of Noureddin
Heavenly and earthly deities and spirits, retinues of Noureddin and Akdar, people
action
The following table of contents is based on the original libretto and an article by Gerhard Wischniewski.
prolog
In heavenly realms, above the clouds
The Queen of Heaven Amravati is sad because her daughter Ella (Niriti) has to go down to earth according to an old custom to test her heart against earthly temptations. Amravati fears that she will not be able to come back and calls the god of wind Uragan (Vayou) to accompany Ella (Niriti). Amravati hands her daughter a talisman that is supposed to protect her and with the help of which she can get back to heaven. If she loses this talisman, however, she cannot go back unless it is found by a mortal person who willingly gives it back to her. Before Ella (Niriti) and Uragan (Vayou) begin their journey, Amravati warns her daughter of the pitfalls of earthly love.
Act 1
In the house of the weaver Kadoor
Nal, the son of the weaver Kadoor, and his fiancée Nirilya happily prepare for their wedding the next day and dance.
The Maharajah Nourreddin, who is passing through and is exhausted, enters and asks the weaver for night quarters.
After the others have withdrawn and Noureddin has gone to sleep, it begins to thunder and flash: Ella (Niriti) and Uragan (Vayou) appear. They look around in astonishment, and while the wind god leaves the house again, Ella (Niriti) lies down to rest. Noureddin comes into the room and when he sees the goddess, he falls in love with her at first sight. He tries to approach her, but she keeps backing away from him in horror. Without realizing it, she loses her talisman. Suddenly Uragan (Vayou) appears and "saves" Ella (Niriti) from this situation by disappearing with her. Noureddin finds the talisman and keeps it as a souvenir.
Enter King Akdar and his daughter Damayanti, Noureddin's fiancée, and take Noureddin with them to their palace.
Meanwhile Ella (Niriti) has noticed the loss of her talisman; Desperate, she returns to the weaver's house with the wind god to search for the magical piece of jewelry - in vain.
Act 2
In the gardens by the palace of King Akdar in Delhi
Preparations for Noureddin and Damayanti's wedding are in full swing. After the two fiancés have danced together, Akdar, the bride and the court retire so that Noureddin can take a rest.
When Noureddin is alone, Ella (Niriti) appears to him as the queen of flowers with an entourage of other flower and gemstone spirits ( Grand Ballabile "La Rose de Bengale" ). She tries to get Noureddin to return the talisman to her, but to no avail.
King Akdar, his daughter and her entourage return, but now Noureddin informs them that he cannot marry Damayanti because he loves someone else. Akdar is outraged and a fight ensues between him, Noureddin and their respective entourage. Uragan (Vayou) appears under thunder and lightning and drives away Noureddin's adversary.
Act 3
Scene 1: A bazaar on the banks of the Ganges
At a bazaar, Noureddin meets Ella (Niriti), disguised as a slave, and the wind god again. The Maharajah enters into negotiations with Uragan (Vayou) to buy the beauty he adores. But the latter only wants to cede the “slave” to him if Noureddin gives him the talisman. But Noureddin is now suspicious. He makes Uragan (Vayou) drunk with wine in order to render him harmless and to elicit the secret of the talisman from him. The ruse succeeds and Noureddin learns that Ella (Niriti) has to stay on earth if she does not get the talisman back. Since the drunk Uragan (Vayou) is out of action, Noureddin succeeds in kidnapping Ella (Niriti).
Scene 2: Ancient ruins at night
Alone with Noureddin, Ella (Niriti) asks him to return the talisman to her so that she can return to her mother in heaven. Instead, he asks her to stay with him and become his wife. But when she threatens to kill herself, he gives her the talisman back.
Scene 3: The sky above, the ruins below
Amravati appears in the clouds to receive her daughter. But at that moment Ella (Niriti) realizes how much she loves Noureddin and that they would both be unhappy without each other. So she decides in favor of earthly happiness with Noureddin and throws the talisman away.
Performance history
Emergence
The ballet was created for a benefit performance for the Italian prima ballerina Elena Cornalba . Unusual for the time is the cast with two male leading roles, originally created for Pawel Gerdt and the famous Italian dancer Enrico Cecchetti . Le Talisman is considered a milestone in the history of male dance: because at a time when ballet was completely dominated by female dancers, which were strongly idealized in Romanticism, and men were almost exclusively limited to pantomime and served as supporters of the ballerina - especially in the ballet centers of Paris and London - Petipa let his male dancers really dance and even designed the role of the wind god Uragan (later: Vayou) with a view to Cecchetti's extraordinarily virtuoso abilities (including big jumps). This enabled him to step out of the “shadow” of the prima ballerina.
The first version of Le Talisman had four acts and seven scenes. The premiere in the Imperial Mariinsky Theater in Saint Petersburg on January 25th jul. / February 6, 1889 greg. went over the stage with enormous effort and splendor. Elena Cornalba (Ella), Pawel Gerdt (Noureddin), Enrico Cecchetti (Uragan), Anna Johansson (Amravati), Alfred Bekefi (Nal) and Petipa's daughter Marie Petipa (Nirilya) danced as soloists. Drigo's music and choreography were a success, but the libretto and the enormous amount of scenic effort were the subject of discussion and criticism.
A few years later, Petipa revised the ballet and brought it in a new version in three acts and seven scenes on October 22nd . / November 3, 1895 greg. again at the Mariinsky Theater, this time with Pierina Legnani as Ella, Pawel Gerdt as Noureddin and Alexander Gorsky as Uragan. In its new form, Le Talisman was a huge success.
In 1908 the ballet was also given at La Scala in Milan under the new title Le Porte-bonheur ("The lucky charm"). Another revision of the work was carried out in 1909 by Nikolai Legat . The composer Drigo revised his score either for Milan or for Legat's version (or for both?). Legat changed some details of the choreography and the names of some characters: the female main figure Ella was called Niriti and the wind god Uragan was renamed Vayou. In this production, Olga Preobrazhenskaya (Niriti / Ella) and Vaslav Nijinsky (Vayou / Uragan) danced , who caused a sensation as the wind god Vayou.
The original choreography of the entire ballet has not been preserved, only the Grand Pas d'action in Act 2 was written down around 1900 in the Stepanov notation method and is part of the Sergeyev Collection at Harvard University .
Later performances
Le Talisman was forgotten after the October Revolution of 1917. An important reason may have been that the rather "mystical" plot with its Indian deities and maharajas did not correspond to the Soviet Russian ideology.
For the 150th birthday of the composer Riccardo Drigo, Paul Chalmers brought Le Talisman to the stage in a new choreography for the ballet of the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona . The premiere was on March 16, 1997 at the Teatro Verdi in Drigo's birth town Padua , with 61-year-old Carla Fracci in the lead role of Niriti.
The entire ballet was also performed in 2019 in a choreography by Alexander Mishutin with the Buryat Ballet Ulan-Ude. This production was nominated for the Golden Mask Award .
The pas de deux le talisman
A piece that is sometimes performed at galas these days is the talisman pas de deux , which, however, has little to do with the actual ballet and was created by Pyotr Gusev in 1955 , using some musical numbers from Le Talisman and others Ballets:
- the entrance is the Valse des esprits from the prologue of Le Talisman ;
- the adage is from the last act of Le Talisman ;
- the male variation is by Cesare Pugni and comes from the Grand Pas des Caryatides in act 2 of La Fille du Pharaon (1862);
- the feminine variation is by Drigo and corresponds to the pizzicato of the black pearl from Petipa's ballet La Perle (1896);
- the coda in waltz time comes from Act 1 of Le Talisman .
Web links
- The Talisman , article on the Marius Petipa Society website (accessed December 26, 2020)
- Libretto for Le Talisman on the Marius Petipa Society website (in English; accessed December 26, 2020)
- Gerhard Wischniewski: The talisman , brief information and detailed table of contents in the Tamino-Klassikforum (accessed on December 26, 2020)
Grades:
- Riccardo Drigo: Talisman, Le , manuscript of the score in the Archivio Storico Ricordi (accessed on December 26, 2020)
- The Talisman on IMSLP
on Youtube:
- Le Talisman (overall), version by Alexander Mishutin after Petipa, with the ballet of the Buryat Opera, April 12, 2019. Nominated for the Golden Mask Award (private video, somewhat limited quality; access on December 26, 2020)
- Talisman-Pas de deux , with Yolanda Correa, Yoel Carreno and the Corps des Yakobson Ballet Theater, at the Dance Open Festival 2018 (accessed on December 26, 2020)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b The Talisman , article on the website of the Marius Petipa Society (English; accessed December 26, 2020)
- ↑ Libretto for Le Talisman on the website of the Marius Petipa Society (English; accessed December 26, 2020)
- ↑ Gerhard Wischniewski: The Talisman , brief information and detailed table of contents in the Tamino-Klassikforum (accessed on December 26, 2020)
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Section History , in: The Talisman , article on the website of the Marius Petipa Society (English; accessed on December 26, 2020)
- ↑ In Paris in particular, men no longer danced at all in the second half of the 19th century; instead, dancers in trouser roles were used there. For such travesty roles z. B. Eugénie Fiocre known.
- ↑ a b section Enrico Cecchetti as Uragan , in: The Talisman , article on the website of the Marius Petipa Society (English; accessed on December 26, 2020)
- ↑ See the list of works ( Maestro Drigo's compositions - Ballets ), in: Riccardo Drigo , biography on the website of the Marius Petipa Society (English; accessed January 10, 2021)
- ↑ The Marius Petipa Society states that both the Milanese version (in the list of works for the biography of Riccardo Drigo) and Legat's version (in the article on Le Talisman ) have revised the score. But of course it would be conceivable that both productions were musically the same revised version.
- ↑ For ideological reasons, other Petipa ballets from the repertoire of the former imperial ballet were discontinued after the October Revolution of 1917. B. Drigos Le Réveil de Flore from 1894 (mythological story with Greco-Roman deities ), Mikhail Ivanov's La Vestale from 1888 ( ancient Roman story about a priestess of the Roman goddess Vesta ), Pugnis La Fille du Pharaon (considered to be too "decadent "and aristocratic, plot about a pharaoh's daughter , allusions to reincarnation and opium dreams ). Some authors suspect that even the permanent suppression of the 4th act (" The Wrath of the Gods ") by La Bayadère (1877) had to do not only with too great a scenic and financial expense, but also with the content. However, the reverse also happened: Pugnis La Esmeralda (1844/1850) remained in the repertoire, but with massive changes in content: The original happy ending was (as in Hugo's novel) transformed into a tragic ending; the originally small role of the amorous and vicious priest Claude Frollo was expanded during the Soviet era and moved to the center; the aristocratic figure of Phoebus, who appears positively in the original ballet and as a last-minute savior, has been negatively changed into an unscrupulous seducer; for such drastic changes, Pugni's existing music had to be rearranged, and additional music and choreography were composed for new scenes. See the articles on: The Awakening of Flora ( Le Réveil de Flore ), The Vestal ( La Vestale ), The Pharaoh's Daughter ( La Fille du Pharaon ), La Bayadère and Esmeralda , on the Marius Petipa Society website January 11, 2021)
- ↑ Gerhard Wischniewski: The Talisman , brief information and detailed table of contents in the Tamino-Klassikforum (accessed on December 26, 2020)
- ↑ See text accompanying the YouTube video of this production: Le Talisman , version by Alexander Mishutin based on Petipa, with the ballet of the Buryat Opera, April 12, 2019 (accessed on December 26, 2020)
- ↑ a b section “Le Talisman Pas de deux” , in: The Talisman , article on the website of the Marius Petipa Society (English; accessed December 26, 2020)