“La Bayadère” at the Rome Opera, not many performances but all sold out. “Il Corsaro” at La Scala in Milan who even inaugurated the new LaScala.tv platform. It cannot be said that the two great Italian dance companies are not in good health and success.
If in Milan Manuel Legris worked along the lines of the “Corsaro” staged at the Vienna Opera, in Rome the director of the company Eleonora Abbagnato called her trusted choreographer, Benjamin Pech to set up a title which (next to Lakes, Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty) is fully entering the leading group of the classical repertoire.
Pech, who is part of the Nureyev brood at the Paris Opéra, knows the “Bayadère” well. He allows himself some innovations but basically remains faithful to the Rudolf Nureyev-Konstantin Sergeev-Marius Petipa line, giving us a wide-ranging, grandiose product.
And above all it invites a stellar cast for the two main parts: devadasi Nikiya is Olga Smirnova alternating with Maia Makateli. The Solor warrior is Jacopo Tissi or the Brazilian Victor Caixeta.
In his revision Pech opens the first scene (a practicable at the back and a door of the temple) where the fakirs dance around the sacred fire, followed by the bajadere, but the fire is not there. Better: it’s a smoking crucible hanging overhead. There is dance but also a bit of pantomime to characterize, for example, the Brahmin in love and rejected by Nikiya, the Raja who wants Solor to marry his daughter Gamzatti (the excellent Susanna Salvi). But Solor has sworn eternal love to Nikiya and is in trouble. From there scenes of intrigues, contrasts, jealousy quarrels between the two women, the killing of Nikya concocted by Gmzatti who hides a poisonous snake in the basket of flowers with which the girl dances at the engagement party of her rival with Solor. Protagonists who arrive in sedan chairs the girls of the corps de ballet in the dance with the fan (once stuffed parrots were used and the young Natalia Makarova reminded the Kirov of the nightmare of being constantly out of time and his papugaj (parrot).
Grand divertissement à la Petipa: Golden Idol solo; dance with the jugs balanced on the head; triggering Indians in the folk moment (of character) with the drum. Great pas de deux with Solor and Gamzatti. He manège of double assemblé, she fouettè various to make your head spin. And at the end of the tragedy party with Nikiya who dies poisoned by the bite of the snake and refuses the antidote offered by the Brahmin.
The curtain opens again with Solor smoking opium: but how many drugs were consumed in 19th century ballets? However it is hallucination, underlined by lysergic poppies that make up the scene (scenes painted in the old style by Ignasi Monreal, costumes by Anna Biagiotti). And so from the top of the mountain, one by one, the ghosts of 24 bayadere emerge and descend onto the scene, endlessly repeating the same passage, the famous arabesque penché. Mythical and awaited scene. Piece of coordination prowess, delicacy and spirituality of the girls. A cloud of tutus invades the scene. Inside which here is the pas de deux by Solor and Nikya including the famous variation of the scarf. Ludwig Minkus’ music, conducted by Kevion Rhodes, is pure enchantment here.
But even the beautiful hallucinations end and Solor wakes up in front of Gamzatti already dressed as a bride in red who calls him back to duty.
Curtain Even if in the original there is a last scene of the wedding (Makarova for example has reconstructed it) with the cheaters killed under the boulders of the collapsing temple.