History
The two chapters of the novel that the ballet is mostly based on were first adapted for the ballet in 1740 by Franz Hilverding in Vienna, Austria. In 1768, the great Balletmaster Jean Georges Noverre mounted a new version of Don Quixote in Vienna to the music of Josef Starzer, a production that appears to have been a revival of the original by Hilverding.
Charles Didelot, known today as the "father of Russian Ballet," staged a two-act version of Don Quixote in St. Petersburg for the Imperial Ballet in 1808. In 1809 a version of the work was mounted at Her Majesty's Theatre by James Harvey D'Egville. Paul Taglioni (uncle of Marie Taglioni) presented his own version of Don Quixote for the Berlin Court Opera Ballet in 1839, and his uncle, Salvatore Taglioni, set a production at the Teatro Regio, in Turin, in 1843.
The most famous and enduring ballet adaptation was created by the choreographer Marius Petipa, unrivaled Maître de Ballet of the Tsar's Imperial Ballet of St. Petersburg, and the composer Ludwig Minkus. By special commission, Petipa mounted the work for the Ballet of the Imperial Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. The production premiered on 26 December 1869 to great success. Principal dancers at the premiere were Wilhelm Vanner (Don Quixote), Anna Sobeshchanskaya (Kitri), Sergei Sokilov (Basil), Polina Karpakova (Dulcinea), Vassily Geltser (Sancho Panza), Leon Espinosa (Harlequin), and Dmitri Kuznetsov (Gamache).
Petipa then restaged the ballet in a far more opulent and grandiose production for the St. Petersburg Imperial Ballet, premiering 21 November 1871. Principal dancers included Alexandra Vergina (Kitri), Timofei Stukolkin (Don Quixote), and Lev Ivanov (Basil). This new production consisted of five acts (eleven episodes, a prologue, and an epilogue) and used the same designs as the first production.
Alexander Gorsky presented his revival of the ballet for the Ballet of the Moscow Imperial Bolshoi Theatre on 19 December 1900, a production that he then staged for the Imperial Ballet of St. Petersburg, premiering 2 February 1902. The cast was an eminent one: Kitri was danced by Mathilde Kschessinskaya, Basil by Nikolai Legat, Don Quixote by Aleksei Bulgakov, Sancho Panza by Enrico Cecchetti, and Gamache by Pavel Gerdt, with the roles of the Street Dancer, Amor, and Juanita taken by the young ballerinas Olga Preobrazhenskaya, Tamara Karsavina, and Anna Pavlova respectively.
For his productions of 1900 and 1902 Gorsky interpolated new dances. For his 1900 production, Gorsky added new dances to music by Anton Simon – a variation for a new character added by Gorsky called the Dryad Queen, and a dance for the Dryad Queens's mistresses, as well as an additional Spanish dance for the last scene. When he staged the production in St. Petersburg in 1902, the composer Riccardo Drigo composed two new variations for Kschessinskaya – the famous Variation of Kitri with the fan for the ballet's final pas de deux, and the Variation of Kitri as Dulcinea for the scene of Don Quixote's dream (these variations are still retained in modern productions and are often erroneously credited to Minkus). Gorsky then interpolated the Grand pas des toréadors from the 1881 Petipa/Minkus ballet Zoraiya, a piece that is still included in modern productions of Don Quixote.
The ballet lived on in Russia well after the revolution of 1917, whereas many other ballets ceased to be performed into the Soviet period. As a matter of fact, it became part of the permanent repertoire both of the Moscow Bolshoi Theatre (the most famous productions being those of Rostislav Zakharov and Kasyan Goleizovsky in 1940, which included new music by Vassily Soloviev-Sedoy) and the Leningrad Kirov Theatre (which saw productions by Fedor Lopukhov in 1923, with new choreography for the fandango, and by Pyotr Gusev in 1946, with the scenario modified by Yuri Slonomsky and with new dances introduced by Nina Anisimova).
Read more about this topic: Don Quixote (ballet)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every member of the family of the future will be a producer of some kind and in some degree. The only one who will have the right of exemption will be the mother ...”
—Ruth C. D. Havens, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“The history is always the same the product is always different and the history interests more than the product. More, that is, more. Yes. But if the product was not different the history which is the same would not be more interesting.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)