Le Corsaire - Le Corsaire in Leningrad and The West

Le Corsaire in Leningrad and The West

Petipa's 1899 revival of Le Corsaire—which was given its final production in 1915—remained in the repertory of the Mariinsky Theatre until 1928 (after the 1917 Russian Revolution the ballet company was known as the State Petrograd Ballet, and later the State Academic Ballet, before it was renamed the Kirov Ballet). By 1928 Le Corsaire had been performed 224 times since 1899 at the Mariinsky Theatre.

Agrippina Vaganova, the revered pedagogue of Russian Ballet, supervised the first noted post-revolution revival of Le Corsaire for the Kirov Ballet, first performed on 15 May 1931. In 1936 another revival of Le Corsaire was given by the Kirov Ballet, with Natalia Dudinskaya as Medora, Mikhail Mikhailov as Conrad, and Vakhtang Chabukiani as the Slave (or Rhab, as the character was known in Russia). This was the first production of the full-length work to include Vaganova's 1931 revision of Le Corsaire pas de deux as staged for Dudinskaya's graduation performance. Over time, Konstantin Sergeyev—artistic director and chief choreographer of the Kirov Ballet from 1951–1955 and 1960-1970—added various new pieces. From 1941 the production was only given on rare occasions until it was totally removed from the repertory in 1956.