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QUEENSLAND PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE AND EVENTS QUEENSLAND PRESENT BRISBANE EXCLUSIVE Adolphe Adam Le Corsaire Ballet in three acts Creative Credits Premiered on June 21, 2007. Presented with two intervals. Running time: 3 hours 35 minutes. Libretto by Jules Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Joseph Mazilier edited by Marius Petipa Choreography: Marius Petipa Revival: Alexei Ratmansky, Yuri Burlaka New Choreography: Alexei Ratmansky Designer: Boris Kaminsky Costume Designer: Elena Zaitseva Music Director: Pavel Klinichev Lighting Designer: Damir Ismagilov Use is made in the production of music by Leo Delibes, Cesare Pugni, Pyotr von Oldenburg, Riccardo Drigo, Albert Zabel, Julius Gerber. Music dramaturgy conception — Yuri Burlaka Score restored by Alexander Troitsky The original score by Adolphe Adam/Leo Delibes for Le Corsaire has been made available by L’Opera national de Paris from the archives of La Bibliotheque nationale de France The choreographic notation has been made available by the Harvard University Theatre Collection Evgeny Ponomaryov’s costume sketches (1899) used in the production have been made available by the St. Petersburg State Theatre Library © 2000–2011 The State Academic Bolshoi Theatre of Russia
QUEENSLAND PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE AND EVENTS QUEENSLAND PRESENT BRISBANE EXCLUSIVE Le Corsaire Background Written by Valerie Lawson. Long before the age of Hollywood blockbusters, a French choreographer conceived the balletic equivalent with the spectacular Le Corsaire. The guests of honour at the premiere in Paris were Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie. When the ballet ended, the empress, a balletomane, was so entranced that she told the director of the Théâtre Impérial de l’Opéra: “I have never in my life and probably will shall never see again anything at once so beautiful and so moving”. And, she might have added, so packed with melodramatic love triangles, so many conflicts between the naïve, the good, the greedy, and the just plain evil, and a storm on stage that surpasses The Tempest. With its slave girls and pirates, its costumes of gold, turquoise, cobalt and orange, and its postcard settings at a bazaar, a cave, a seraglio, and at sea, Le Corsaire could well have inspired a swashbuckling pirate movie, from Captain Blood, starring Errol Flynn, to Johnny Depp’s Pirates of the Caribbean. But its origins lay in the 19 th century when ballets were often set in exotic locations, far from Paris – such as La Sylphide, with its Scottish setting, La Bayadere in India and Le Corsaire in Turkey. In each of these three ballets, the appearance and costumes of the locals – kilts, harem pants, turbans, or Greek skirts and boots, are incongruously paired with the classical ballet attire of tights, tutus and pointe shoes. Le Corsaire is one of the very few ballets from the mid-19 th century that is still performed today. But its longevity is not due to the story or the settings, but to the choreographic complexity, the elegance of its tableaux, and to its bravura solos, pas de deux and ensembles - all danced to the music of no less than seven composers, Adolphe Adam, Cesare Pugni, Leo Delibes, Riccardo Drigo, Pyotr von Oldenburg, Albert Zabel and Julius Gerber. The rollcall of composers is indicative of the ballet’s past. Le Corsaire premiered in France in 1856 but soon after became linked to the history of ballet in Russia, joining the select ranks of the grand classical ballets created in the 19 th century in either Moscow or St Petersburg, among them Don Quixote, Le Bayadere, Nutcracker, The Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake. Le Corsaire was revived and restored so many times that it became a mosaic of design, choreography and score – from the production by Jules Perrot at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, to Marius Petipa’s reinterpretations, including his version of 1868 when he added the deliciously romantic scene, Le Jardin Animé, and finally to Petipa’s major new production in 1899 on which all subsequent rev isions are based. By the close of the 19 th century, the work of the ballet’s original French choreographer, Joseph Mazilier, and its composer, Adolphe Adam, had all but vanished as had any tenuous connection with the inspiration for the ballet, Byron’s poem of 1814, The Corsair. Continued
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