THE PLACE TO PURSUE LIFE'S PASSIONS - Sarasota Ballet

THE TWO PIGEONS
“An allegory in two acts and three scenes
based on a fable by Jean de la Fontaine”
Les Deux Pigéons premiered at the Paris
Opéra on 18 October 1886, in a choreography
by Louis Mérante (a leading
dancer and ballet master of the day, in
the year before his death), to a new score
by André Messager (1853-1929) and a
commissioned libretto by Henri Régnier.
The three-act ballet was based on one of
the fables of the great French storyteller,
Fontaine, and the ballet remained popular
in France for many years, although its
first performance in the English-speaking
world was at London’s Royal Opera
House in 1906.
The ballet’s narrative frankly declares it a
cousin of “The Prodigal Son,” ”The Wizard
of Oz” or ”The Fantasticks,” with its erring
protagonist and theme of the need
for adventure, bitter experience, and a
world-weary return to home values and
forgiveness, although it is perhaps a gentler
parable than the biblical story from
which Balanchine made his classic ballet
of the 1920s.
Sir Frederick Ashton’s 1961 ballet, a twentieth-century
classic in its own right, revisited
the French classical tradition with
respect (much as he had done with La Fille mal Gardée
in the previous year), creating a two-act ballet
for his stunning original cast of Lynn Seymour and
Christopher Gable, and since its Royal Ballet premiere
(14 February 1961) at Covent Garden, this version
has become a much-loved and much-revived
staple of the international repertoire.
For his account, Ashton retained Messager’s lovely score and rejected
Regnier’s three-act scenario, in favour of an allegorical treatment
of the story, touching back to Fontaine’s original fable, and
adding the beautiful and memorable touch of symbolising his
temporarily parted and ultimately reunited lovers, with two live
birds, whose coming together touchingly expresses the journey of
the lovers in the fable.
Ashton’s essential lightness of touch, musicality and true understanding
of the French Romantic ballet tradition makes his Two
Pigeons a complete delight, its forgiving warmth and human understanding
a balm to the more dramatic tale of a wandering lover
adrift in a tough and bewildering world, and his ultimate return to
true love, home and reconciliation.
ANDRÉ MESSAGER
The Two Pigeons
18 November 2011
Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall
19 November 2011
Ruth Eckerd Hall
choreography Sir Frederick Ashton
music André Messager
design Jacques Dupont
Staged by Margaret Barbieri and Iain Webb
first Performed by The royal Ballet
14 February 1961
The French composer, André Messager was born at Monluçon in
1853. He studied at the Niedermeyer School in Paris and under
such leading French composers as Camille Saint-Saëns and Gabriel
Fauré (collaborating with Fauré on his Mass for the Fishermen of Villerville),
before being appointed (1874) organist at the leading Paris
church of Saint-Sulpice and (1880) music director at Sainte Marie
des Batignolles. In 1876 Messager won the gold medal of the Society
of Composers with his only symphony (1875).
But it was with his 45 stage works (including 8 ballets) that Messager
established his reputation as a theatrical composer, with a series
of successful operettas and ballets from the mid-1880’s onwards,
including The Two Pigeons (Paris Opéra 1886), La Basoche and La Béarnaise
(both given at the Opéra Comique in Paris and transferred
first Performed by The Sarasota Ballet
30 November 2007
to London, where several of his light
operas were produced by Gilbert & Sullivan’s
famous impresario, Richard D’Oyly
Carte).
Largely forgotten and rarely performed,
Messager’s impressive output of comic
operas, of which Madame Chrysantheme
(1893), Mirette (1894), Véronique (1898)
and Monsieur Beaucaire (1919) all enjoyed
long runs in Paris and London,
where Messager frequently conducted,
becoming a director of Covent Garden
Opera in his later years.
Messager died in Paris in 1929 and is buried
in Passy cemetery.
SIR FREDERICk AShTON CBE
Sir Frederick Ashton was born in Ecuador
in 1904 and determined to become a
dancer after seeing Anna Pavlova dance
in 1917 in Lima, Peru. Arriving in London,
he studied with Leonide Massine and later
with Marie Rambert (who encouraged
his first ventures in choreography) as
well as dancing briefly in Ida Rubinstein’s
company (1928-9). A Tragedy of Fashion
was followed by further choreographies
(Capriol Suite, Façade, Les Rendezvous),
until in 1935 he accepted de Valois’ invitation
to join her Vic-Wells Ballet as dancer and choreographer.
It was in 1935, too, that Ashton began a
long creative association with Margot Fonteyn, for
whom he would create many great roles over 25
years.
Besides his pre-war ballets at Sadler’s Wells, Ashton
choreographed for revues and musicals. His career
would also embrace opera, film and international commissions,
creating ballets in New York, Monte Carlo, Paris, Copenhagen and
Milan. During the War, he served in the RAF (1941-5) before creating
Symphonic Variations for the Sadler’s Wells Ballet’s 1946 season
in its new home at Covent Garden, affirming a new spirit of classicism
and modernity in English postwar ballet.
During the next two decades, Ashton’s ballets, often created around
the talents of particular dancers, included: Scenes de ballet and Cinderella
(1948), in which Ashton and Robert Helpmann famously
played the Ugly Sisters. He created La fille mal gardée (1960) for Nadia
Nerina and David Blair, The Two Pigeons (1961) for Lynn Seymour and
Christopher Gable, and The Dream (1964) for Antoinette Sibley and
Anthony Dowell.
Appointed Associate Director of the Royal Ballet in 1952, it was
under Ashton’s direction that after 1970 the company rose to
new heights. His choreographic career continued with Monotones
(1965), Jazz Calendar, Enigma Variations (1968), A Month in the
Country (1976) and the popular film success The Tales of Beatrix Potter
(1971) in which he performed the role of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.
Now named Founder Choreographer of the Royal Ballet and knighted
in 1962, Sir Frederick died in 1988. His ballets, which remain in
the international repertory undiminished, show a remarkable versatility,
a lyrical and highly sensitive musicality, and an equal facility
in recreating historical ballets and creating new works. If any single
artist can be said to have formulated a native English classical ballet
style and developed it over a lifetime, it is Sir Frederick Ashton.
Sarasota Ballet wishes to thank Birmingham Royal Ballet,
Birmingham, UK, for the use of their sets and costumes.
LES PATINEURS
It was Constant Lambert, the troubled
but inspirational Musical Director of the
Vic-Wells Ballet and lover of the young
Margot Fonteyn, who suggested that
the ballet music from two of the French
composer Meyerbeer’s operas (L’Étoile du
Nord and the 1849 La Prophete – which
had famously featured a corps de ballet
on roller skates, well over a century
before Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express!)
might furnish the ideal score for a skating
ballet in development in 1937.
Ninette de Valois, the young company’s
founding director, found herself unable
to make headway with the Meyerbeer
project, and handed it over to her rising
young choreographer, Frederick Ashton,
who reciprocated by delivering to her
The Rake’s Progress which was proving
equally challenging for him. This proved a
happy exchange, resulting in a significant
landmark work for each dance-maker.
Ashton knew precisely nothing of skating
and had never visited an ice-rink in
his life, but the delightful ice-skating divertissement
he concocted premiered
at Sadler’s Wells to great public acclaim,
spectacularly demonstrating just how far
the nascent British ballet had come in six
short years from its inception by de Valois.
The ballet’s premiere benefited from an illustrious
cast, with Margot Fonteyn (Ashton’s muse in the late
1930’s) and Robert Helpmann as the pas de deux
couple and Harold Turner as the Blue Skater (a role
not unrelated, perhaps, to the Blue Bird of the classical
Sleeping Beauty). It was in this popular success
that the dancer Michael Somes first made his mark, attracting
notice with his spectacularly impressive elevation, as the leading
dancer and Ashton inspiration he was to become.
GIACOMO MEYERBEER
Les Patineurs
9–10 December 2011
Sarasota Opera House
choreography Sir Frederick Ashton
music Giacomo Meyerbeer,
arranged by Constant Lambert
design William Chappell
Like his contemporary Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer was German-Jewish,
born Jacob Liebmann Beer (1791) near Berlin. Both his parents
came from wealthy backgrounds and two of his brothers became
respectively a well-known astronomer and poet. Like Mozart, his
precocious talent led to an early musical debut. He performed at
the age of 9 and studied with Salieri.
Moving from virtuosic performance to composition and renaming
himself Giacomo Meyerbeer, he studied in Italy, where he came
under Rossini’s influence. He composed 17 operas (1812-1865),
of which the best-known are probably Les Huguenots (1836) and
L’Africaine (1865), although his first major success Il Crociatto in
Egitto in Venice, Paris and London (1824-5) was the last opera to
feature a castrato.
Meyerbeer’s biggest hit Robert le Diable (Paris, 1831) is often (and
inaccurately) considered the first “grand opera”, but his melodramatic,
historical plots, sumptuous scores, huge casts and staging
demands ensured the success of his operas, until the sustained personal
attacks of Wagner (whose 1842 opera Rienzi was maliciously
dubbed “Meyerbeer’s greatest work”!) and growing anti-semitism
in Germany traduced his popularity, leading to a total ban under
the Nazis.
Staged by Margaret Barbieri and Iain Webb
first Performed by Sadler’s Wells Ballet
16 March 1937
first Performed by The Sarasota Ballet
19 December 2008
Meyerbeer’s huge wealth was enhanced
by the success of his operas. He became
Musical Director to the Hohenzollern
court in Berlin (1842-9) and died in 1864,
before the eclipse of his reputation,
which has steadily risen since 1945.
SIR FREDERICk AShTON CBE
Sir Frederick Ashton was born in Ecuador
in 1904 and determined to become a
dancer after seeing Anna Pavlova dance
in 1917 in Lima, Peru. Arriving in London,
he studied with Leonide Massine and later
with Marie Rambert (who encouraged his
first ventures in choreography) as well as
dancing briefly in Ida Rubinstein’s company
(1928-9). A Tragedy of Fashion was
followed by further choreographies (Capriol
Suite, Façade, Les Rendezvous), until
in 1935 he accepted de Valois’ invitation
to join her Vic-Wells Ballet as dancer and
choreographer. It was in 1935, too, that
Ashton began a long creative association
with Margot Fonteyn, for whom he would
create many great roles over 25 years.
Besides his pre-war ballets at Sadler’s
Wells, Ashton choreographed for revues
and musicals. His career would also embrace
opera, film and international commissions,
creating ballets in New York,
Monte Carlo, Paris, Copenhagen and Milan. During
the War, he served in the RAF (1941-5) before creating
Symphonic Variations for the Sadler’s Wells Ballet’s
1946 season in its new home at Covent Garden,
affirming a new spirit of classicism and modernity in
English postwar ballet.
During the next two decades, Ashton’s ballets, often
created around the talents of particular dancers, included: Scenes
de ballet and Cinderella (1948), in which Ashton and Robert Helpmann
famously played the Ugly Sisters. He created La fille mal gardée
(1960) for Nadia Nerina and David Blair, The Two Pigeons (1961)
for Lynn Seymour and Christopher Gable, and The Dream (1964) for
Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell.
Appointed Associate Director of the Royal Ballet in 1952, it was
under Ashton’s direction that after 1970 the company rose to
new heights. His choreographic career continued with Monotones
(1965), Jazz Calendar, Enigma Variations (1968), A Month in the
Country (1976) and the popular film success The Tales of Beatrix Potter
(1971) in which he performed the role of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.
Now named Founder Choreographer of the Royal Ballet and knighted
in 1962, Sir Frederick died in 1988. His ballets, which remain in
the international repertory undiminished, show a remarkable versatility,
a lyrical and highly sensitive musicality, and an equal facility
in recreating historical ballets and creating new works. If any single
artist can be said to have formulated a native English classical ballet
style and developed it over a lifetime, it is Sir Frederick Ashton.
Sarasota Ballet wishes to thank Birmingham Royal Ballet,
Birmingham, UK, for the use of their sets and costumes.
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