Cesare Pugni
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Cesare Pugni (ru. Tсезар Пуни - Tsezar Puni / Чезаре Пуньи - Cesare Pugni) (31 May 1802?, Genoa?, Italy — 26 January 1870, St. Petersburg, Russia) was an Italian composer of ballet music, and, in his early career, composer of Bel canto opera, symphonies, and various other forms of orchestral music. He is most noted for the ballets he scored while serving as Ballet Composer to Her Majesty's Theatre in London, and First Imperial Ballet Composer to the Romanov's Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg.
Pugni is the most prolific composer of the genre of ballet music that has ever lived - by the end of his life he had scored 312 original ballets, myriad incidental dances, such as divertissements, variations; he also adapted and revised ballet scores by other composers. Of his original ballets, Pugni best-known for Ondine (a.k.a. The Naiad and the Fisherman) (1843); La Esmeralda (1844); The Pharaoh's Daughter (1862); and The Little Humpbacked Horse (a.k.a. The Tsar Maiden) (1864). Of his incidental dances, etc. he is most noted for the Pas de Six from La Vivandière (a.k.a. Markitenka) (1844); the Pas de Quatre (1845); the Satanella Pas de Deux (a.k.a. the Carnival in Venice Pas de Deux or The Fascination Pas de Deux from Satanella) (1859); and his additional music for Le Corsaire (c. 1856, 1863).
Pugni's works were written for the most influential choreographers of the 19th century from Milan, Paris, Berlin, London, and St. Petersburg. Among them were Jules Perrot, Arthur Saint-Léon, Paul Taglioni, and Marius Petipa. Nearly every great Ballerina of the Romantic era, from Marie Taglioni to Fanny Cerrito, Lucile Grahn, Fanny Elssler, Carlotta Grisi, and Carolina Rosati, danced the majority of their legendary triumphs in ballets set to his music. During his early career, mostly while in Milan, he also scored five well-received Bel canto operas, over forty masses, 4 (known) symphonies, and many other orchestral pieces, the majority of which were written for small ensembles such as string quartets.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Historians are not certain of the exact year of his birth: both 1802 and 1805 are cited; likewise the place of his birth remains unknown: both Milan and Genoa have been given, but the most authoritative facts concerning the composer's birth appear to be Genoa, Italy on May 31, 1802. His father, Carlo Pugni, was a well-known clockmaker with a successful shop in the Palazzo del Duomo, near Milan's cathedral. It is interesting to note that the word Pugni means fists in Italian.
[edit] Education
It was certainly in Milan that the young Pugni received his musical education, though he was not instructed at the Milan Conservatory as has been stated by many historians.[1] He began his musical studies at a very young age, likely by way of private lessons, under Bonifazio Asioli, who taught him composition and counterpoint, and from Alessandro Rolla, who taught Pugni the violin (Rolla is also noted as the teacher of the young Niccolò Paganini). Other names associated with Pugni's musical training are Peter Von Winter and Carlo Soliva, both of whom scored operas for La Scala between 1816 and 1818.
At the age of seven Pugni scored his first composition, probably for the violin, with which he excelled. Pugni "grew up" in the theatre, so to speak, likely making himself more and more useful to the artists of La Scala as he became a young man. In time he began to show a great facility for composition, with an extraordinary talent for creating melody and successful orchestration.
[edit] Milan
The first ballet to be associated with the composer was the Balletmaster Gaetano Gioja's (teacher of Fanny Elssler) Il castello di Kenilworth (The Castle of Kenilworth - based on Walter Scott's novel Kenilworth), produced at La Scala in 1823. The printed libretto for this work credits the music as being a pastiche of themes derived from "various well-known composers". In 1826 Pugni received his first commission for the ballet Elerz e Zulmida, to be produced by the Balletmaster Louis Henry.
The success of that work brought about three more commissions from Henry, and soon Pugni was sought out by some of the most distinguished choreographers then working in Italy, among them Salvatore Taglioni (uncle of the legendary Marie Taglioni), and Giovanni Galzerani. Pugni's growing popularity as a capable composer of light, melodious music for dancing was attested by the publication of a number of piano reductions of excerpts from his works, among them, the popular Scottish Dance from his 1837 ballet L'Assedio di Calais (The Siege of Calais), which, like every one of his works published during his life, sold very well.
Though he demonstrated considerable talent for composing ballet music, Pugni's real ambition was to become a celebrated composer of opera. There had been occasions where he had been commissioned to compose an aria "to order" for various performances at La Scala, and such assignments encouraged him to pursue this ambition further. In 1831, his opera Il Disertore Svizzero (The Swiss Deserter) premiered at the Teatro Canobbiana in Milan, with his teacher Alessandro Rolla conducting. The work was praised for its variety and originality, and was revered by the composer's fellow musicians.[1] Pugni's next opera was La Vendetta, produced at La Scala in 1832, which premiered with great success.
It was during this time that Pugni began to compose a substantial number of masses, symphonies, and various other orchestral pieces. One Sinfonia in particular was scored for two orchestras, both of which would play the same piece but with one orchestra a few bars behind the other. This piece so impressed Giacomo Meyerbeer that he was known to hold up a manuscript of the work in order to show his friends a supreme example of virtuosity in composition. These great successes of Pugni's as a musician appropriately lead to his appointment as Maestro al Cembalo (or Director of Music) at La Scala. In addition to fulfilling these duties, Pugni also taught the violin and counterpoint when time allowed. He even instructed the visiting Mikhail Glinka, who revered Pugni as a composer and teacher of music.
Pugni scored two more operas for the Teatro Canobbiana in 1833 and 1834, both of which were listened to with considerable respect (though many historians have claimed that Pugni's last three operas were failures). Pugni also continued composing various orchestral pieces, together earning him great prestige and notoriety.
[edit] Paris
Despite Pugni's initial success in the field of music, only two years after his appointment as Maestro al Cembalo, all of his prospects collapsed, and he was dismissed from La Scala for what appears to have been the misappropriation of funds, a likely by-product instigated by his notorious passion for gambling and liquor which had caused him to amount considerable debt. In early 1834, Pugni left Milan in an effort to flee from his creditors, and the post of Maestro al Cembalo was taken over by his two assistants, Giacomo Panizza and Giovanni Bajetti.
With his wife and children, Pugni made his way to Paris, where they lived in poverty while the composer searched desperately for employment. He was employed for a time as the chief copyist for the famous Théâtre Italien, where in late 1834 he was reunited with an old friend, the Italian composer Vincenzo Bellini, who at that time was engaged at the theatre to mount his opera I Puritani, and at the same time, in the process of preparing a special version of the work for the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples. For the Naples production the principle soprano role was to be revised for the vocal talents of the Prima Donna Maria Malibran, and since the production of I Puritani in Paris was putting Bellini under considerable pressure, he called upon Pugni to copy the parts of the score that would be presented in Naples without change.
Pugni did this, but he also made a second copy of the complete score, and subsequently sold the manuscript to the Teatro di San Carlo at a high price. Soon Bellini was told that the theatre had purchased and official copy of score, and would no longer require his services. Bellini was crushed, for he had not only paid Pugni the five francs for the copying but had also given him money when needed in order to feed his family, and was often known to not only give Pugni his own unwanted clothes but begged his lady friends to send their unwanted dresses over to Signora Pugni. Bellini wrote in his journal, "It will be a lesson to me. Were it not for his six innocent children, I should like to ruin him." Bellini would later recall in an unfinished letter written in 1835 how Pugni's "infamous conduct shattered my faith in human nature."[1].
In 1836, Pugni received a commission from Louis Henry, choreographer of several of his first ballet scores, to compose music for the ballet Liacone, to be produced in Naples for the Ballet of the Teatro di San Carlo. At that time Henry was engaged at the Paris Opéra, staging the ballet sections of Gioacchino Rossini's opera William Tell, for which Henry utilized music from Pugni's ballet L'Assedio di Calais. Pugni then traveled to Naples to assist with the music for the opera's dance-sections. Soon after this, Henry died of cholera.
Pugni returned to Paris where he accepted a position teaching violin at the Paganini Institute and, most importantly, began serving as a "musical ghost writer" of sorts for the Paris Opéra (the theatre at that time being the legendary Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique). Pugni was charged with the editing, correcting, and orchestrating of nearly all of the music for the ballets presented on the stage of the theatre. Often composers of the era left orchestrations to the copyist or principal conductor of an Opera House, and with his extraordinary facility at sight reading and scoring, Pugni was often given the task of arranging the compositions of others. Pugni served in this function at the Opéra from 1836 until 1843, and even supplied unuanymous "custom-made" supplemental Pas and variations for visiting Ballerinas when needed.
It was during this time that Pugni became acquainted with the great Balletmaster Jules Perrot, who aside from being a much celebrated dancer, was a renowned choreographer and Balletmaster to the Ballet of Her Majesty's Theatre in London. While being engaged as a guest artist to the Paris Opéra in the early 1840s, he encountered Pugni's extraordinary facility with composition and orchestration. At the suggestion of Perrot, and with his incredible references, Benjamin Lumly, the director of Her Majesty's Theatre, offered Pugni the post of Ballet Composer.
[edit] London
In the fall of 1843, Pugni left for London, and soon enjoyed a period of great renewed success. These were very prolific years for the composer: between the theatre's 1843 and 1850 seasons, Pugni produced an impressive series of scores for three of the greatest choreographers at that time: Jules Perrot, Arthur Saint-Léon, and Paul Taglioni.
Next to the complete ballets he composed during this time in London, he also wrote a substantial number of supplemental Pas, variations, divertissements, and incidental dances. In 1845 alone, he produced six new scores, including the celebrated divertissement Pas de Quatre, and his music was always highly praised by the public and critics alike. During this period, Pugni was composing four to five full-length works every year for Perrot, Taglioni and Saint-Léon. Also, at some point not long after this move to London, Pugni married his second wife Marion (or Mary Ann) Linton.[1]
[edit] Perrot
From 1843 onwards, few ballets were produced by Jules Perrot at Her Majesty's Theatre that were not composed by Pugni, and nearly everyone of these works was a great success: the public and critics marveled at how fresh and new both choreographically and musically each spectacle was[citation needed].
In 1843, Perrot produced Ondine, a tale of a jealous Naiad in love with an Italian fisherman, for Fanny Cerrito. In 1844, Perrot produced his most celebrated and enduring work, La Esmeralda for ballerina Carlotta Grisi. Two years later, Perrot produced the oriental extravaganza Lalla Rookh. for which Pugni composed a score full of Arabian styled themes. Also in 1846, Perrot and Pugni collaborated on Catarina, which would be one of Lucile Grahn's greatest triumphs.
During the late 1840s, Pugni and Perrot worked to stage these pieces in various theatres throughout Europe. In 1845, they staged La Esmeralda at La Scala in Milan, and later that year for the Court Opera Ballet in Berlin, where the title role was danced by the great Fanny Elssler. In 1847, Pugni and Perrot did Catarina and later Lalla Rookh at La Scala. In 1848, Perrot was invited at the behest of Fanny Elssler to stage La Esmeralda for the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia.
[edit] Taglioni
In the short span of their collaboration, Pugni wrote many celebrated scores for Paul Taglioni, guest choreographer at Her Majesty's Theatre, who would later call Pugni the greatest composer of ballet music he had ever worked with. In 1847, Pugni wrote four short ballets for Taglioni, among them, Coralia and Thea. In 1849, Taglioni produced The Winter Pastimes and in 1850, he did Les Métamorphoses (a.k.a. Satanella).
[edit] Saint-Léon
Pugni also left a profound impression on Saint-Léon, who was also sometimes a guest choreographer in London, but one who worked in Paris. During the 1840s, Saint-Léon was engaged as Balletmaster at the Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique (or Paris Opéra), and Pugni traveled there often to compose music for the choreographer's works. Pugni and Saint-Léon created many successful works while in Paris, among them, La Vivandière in 1844, La Violon du Diable in 1849, and Stella in 1850.
[edit] Russia
While in the Imperial capital, Jules Perrot was offered the position of Maître de Ballet (First Balletmaster/Chief Choreographer) to begin in the 1850-1851 season, which he accepted. In this position, Perrot recommended to the Court Minister that Pugni accompany him to Russia so that he may serve as the official composer of ballet music to the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres. Up until that time in Europe, the composition of new ballet music always fell into the hands of the orchestra's head conductor, who was in this case, Konstantin Liadov. A new position was thus created, First Imperial Ballet Composer, for Pugni.
In the winter of 1850, Pugni severed all ties to London and Paris, for he was never to return to western Europe again. He arrived in St. Petersburg with English wife Marion (or Mary Ann) Linton and their seven children, which included his son, Alberto Linton-Pougny (1848-1925), father of the famous avant-garde artist Ivan Puni (1894-1956). By 1860, Pugni was maintaining two households - the first with his English wife, Maron Linton, and the second with the Serf woman named Daria Petrovna, with whom he fathered eight more children before the end of his life.[1]
In the winter of 1861, Anton Rubinstein hired Pugni to teach composition and counterpoint at the completely new Saint Petersburg Conservatory of Music a position he held with great acclaim and respect until his death. Among those he taught was the great Tchaikovsky himself.
In 1855 Pugni wrote The Star of Granada, his first ballet for the choreographer Marius Petipa, who had been serving as Jules Perrot's assistant and Premiere Danseur to the Imperial Ballet since his arrival in Russia in 1847. Petipa was fast becoming a celebrated choreographer in his own right, creating ballets more and more.
In 1858 Perrot left Russia, and Pugni found himself in need by both Petipa and Arthur Saint-Léon, the latter by then being engaged as Maître de Ballet to the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres. The two choreographers, both highly gifted in their art, were engaged in a rather healthy and productive rivalry on the Imperial stage, and though their ballets were considerably different in style and technique Pugni scored the music for nearly every one of them.
[edit] Later life
Pugni began to become more and more unreliable as he aged, becoming severely depressed, drinking, gambling and leaving his family to fend for themselves for days at a time. As a result, Petipa found it increasingly difficult to extract music from him, and the quality of his work underwent a marked decline. In his memoirs, Petipa quoted a letter written him by Pugni in 1860:
| “ | "I tearfully ask you to send some money; I am without a sou". The letter also included freshly composed sections for Petipa's upcoming ballet The Blue Dahlia. | ” |
The premiere of The Blue Dahlia was approaching, and Petipa had been receiving music from the composer in a piecemeal fashion. It became clear to Petipa that Pugni had put off scoring the more difficult sections and left them to be done last. By the mid 1860s, such situations became commonplace.
In 1862, Pugni scored music for Petipa's The Pharaoh's Daughter, produced in only 6 weeks for the Italian Prima Ballerina Carolina Rosati. The production was so successful that it won for Petipa the position of second Balletmaster. In 1864, Pugni scored the music for Saint-Lèon's The Little Humpbacked Horse, which itself was as successful as The Pharaoh's Daughter. The march from the third act of this ballet became a favorite of Tsar Alexander II (many of Pugni's marches and entr'actes were thus performed at Imperial balls and diplomatic functions).
Pugni began inventing excuses for not delivering music on time: for example, he once told Petipa that his cat had scratched his hand, making him unable to hold his pen. On another occasion, Pugni came to rehearsal without the day's required music, informing Petipa that he had no candles by which to write. When Petipa subsequently arranged to have a large box of candles delivered to Pugni's home, the composer told him at the following day's rehearsal that he did not write the required music because he was forced to sell the candles in order to eat.
Many of Pugni's colleagues found themselves helping him whenever possible. Petipa was even forced to hire someone to watch over the composer to ensure that music would be prepared on time. Nevertheless, Pugni managed to compose eight new scores between 1865 and 1868 for the Imperial Ballet, though these were mostly short one-act ballets and divertissements.
Saint-Léon was also having difficulty with the unreliable Pugni, and he began to turn to the Czech composer Léon Minkus for ballet music. In 1865 Saint-Léon wrote to his friend Charles Nuitter:
| “ | Pugni has nearly died. He was found in the woods 16 versts from the city (St. Petersburg) owing 300 roubles to tradesmen. The Court Minister paid the sum, and a collection from the dancers of the company, who produced 200 roubles, is serving to feed him, his wife, and his eight children, five of whom are very young. He owes 5,800 roubles in all, while for the past twenty years he has been receiving 1,200 francs a month (for Royalties for scores performed in Paris) plus a benefit! | ” |
In 1868, Pugni composed the music for Petipa's Tsar Kandavl (a.k.a. Le Roi Candaule). This was to be Pugni's last evening-length score. Unbeknownst to many, Petipa originally made plans to have Pugni compose music for his ballet Don Quixote, to be mounted at the Moscow Bolshoi Theatre in 1869. But Pugni's irresponsibility quickly forced Petipa to reconsider, and instead he turned to Léon Minkus (Don Quixote would prove to be one of both Petipa and Minkus' most celebrated and enduring works).
[edit] Death
In late 1869 Pugni pulled himself together to score the music for Petipa's one act ballet The Two Stars. This score was widely considered to be among his greatest works for the ballet, but it was also to be his last - he died on January 26, 1870.
Cesare Pugni was buried in the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in St. Petersburg where Marius Petipa, Lev Ivanov, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky also lay. Pugni died in utter poverty, and at his death his large family was completely destitute.
In honor of the composer, and for a benefit performance for his family, a gala was prepared with excerpts from many of Pugni's works by Petipa in May of 1870. Later that year, Petipa mounted a revival of Catarina, premiering on November 1, 1870, again as a benefit performance for the composer's family. Petipa then presented Pugni's final work, The Two Stars, on January 21, 1871 for the benefit performance of the Imperial Ballet's Premiere Danseur Pavel Gerdt. The ballet premiered to great success and remained in the repertory of the St. Petersburg ballet until just before the Russian Revolution of 1917. Petipa also staged the work under the title The Two Little Stars for the Ballet of the Moscow Imperial Bolshoi Theatre in 1878. The ballet was re-staged for the company in a new version by the Balletmaster Ivan Clustine in 1897, a production which was retained in the Bolshoi's repertory until 1925.
[edit] Descendants
Three of Cesare Pugni and Daria Petrovna's descendants danced with the Imperial Ballet: his son Nicolai Cesarevich Pugni, who danced in the Corps de Ballet from 1882 until a few months before his death in 1896; his granddaughters Léontina Konstantsiia Tsezarevna Pugni and Julia Tsezarevna Pugni, daughters of Pugni's son Cesare Cesarevich. Léontina Pugni danced as a soloist from 1903 to 1913 with the Imperial Ballet, and toured Scandinavia and Germany with Anna Pavlova's company from 1908-1909. Julia danced in the corps de ballet from 1910 until 1919 and as a soloist, and served as a teacher to the young students of the post-revolution Imperial Ballet School until her death in 1929. Pugni's grandson Alexander Shiraev, son of Pugni's daughter Ekaterina Cesarevna, was also much celebrated soloist and character dancer in St. Petersburg, and served as the successor to Lev Ivanov as Marius Petipa's second Balletmaster to the Imperial Theatres. Another of Pugni's grandsons is the celebrated artist Ivan Puni (or Jean Pougny) (1894-1956), son of Pugni's son Alberto Linton-Pougny (1848-1925), who was born of his second wife, Marion Linton.
[edit] His music
[edit] Composition
The majority of Pugni's music which survives in modern performance contains many numbers which included borrowed themes. It is thus widely assumed that Cesare Pugni based his scores primarily on the melodies of others. This "borrowing", however, was usually done at the behest of a balletmaster or ballerina who desired a particular theme[citation needed]. Pugni was known for attempting to curry the favor of ballerinas by dedicating scores to them or incorporating their favorite themes.
One Parisian critic of the publication Le France Musicale reviewed Diavolina (1863):
| “ | ...has found it fit to pillage the celebrated collection of popular airs called 'Passatempi Musicali' ... with an admirable candour, he has literally transcribed from it a dozen well-known airs... | ” |
Pugni was famous for the speed with which he worked. He was able to prepare ballets in weeks, individual dances and divertissements in a single day, and supplemental variations for a ballerina in an hour or less.
Pugni was always on the lookout for inspiration for his scores. According to Benjamin Lumley's account of the creation of La Esmeralda Pugni and Perrot collaborated closely:
| “ | ...[Perrot and Pugni] often burnt the midnight oil in working out the scenario, where Pugni was always ready to seize any idea that might suggest itself for a situation or Pas. | ” |
More than did his contemporaries, Pugni always had his scores reflect the genre, locale, or mood of the scenario.
| “ | The music graphically describes every episode, even imitating the sound of gliding on ice. | ” |
[edit] In rehearsal
Like many other ballet composers, Pugni used rehearsals to create his scores. He would traditionally present multiple melodic passages to the balletmaster for approval for a particular scene[citation needed].
[edit] Analysis
Modern musicologists who study Pugni's masses, operas, symphonies, and other orchestral pieces, are quite surprised that their author also scored such ballets as Ondine, La Esmeralda, or The Pharaoh's Daughter, remarkably innovative and original pieces[citation needed].
These symphonies were written in the same style as those of Joseph Haydn, where as his operas were scored in the same manner as those of Rossini, or perhaps Bellini. A few of his masses and his orchestral pieces, particularly his pieces for small orchestras, can be occasionally heard in performance, largely in Europe, by many prominent ensembles[citation needed].
[edit] Archives
An extensive archive of Cesare Pugni's music is to be found in the archives of the Paris Conservatoire, which is today incorporated in the Department of Music of the National Library of France. Some manuscripts are also held in the British Library, and the Paris Opéra. The collection in the Paris Conservatoire is mostly of the ballets of Jules Perrot, the majority of which were scored by Pugni.
Many of these ballets, along with most others Pugni composed in London and St. Petersburg were published first in piano reduction. The National Library of France holds a few scores, but does contain manuscripts of some of the ballets Pugni scored for Arthur Saint-Léon, including the original manuscript for The Little Humpbacked Horse.
Perhaps the greatest archive of Pugni's original scores is in the Mariinsky Theatre of St. Petersburg, which it has been said contains every ballet Pugni wrote while in Russia (including revisions to other works created for other theatres abroad), among them, the coveted original score for The Pharaoh's Daughter. Another archive of Pugni's work is to be found in the Harvard University Library Theatre Collection, which holds the famous Sergeyev Collection.
[edit] Revivals and Works still in performance
[edit] The Little Humpbacked Horse
Only The Little Humpbacked Horse and La Esmeralda. The Little Humpbacked Horse left the active repertory of the Kirov/Mariinsky Ballet (the former Imperial Ballet) long ago, and today the work is only presented in its full-length form by the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet (school of the Kirov/Mariinsky Ballet), occasionally given with the top graduates of a school year in the lead roles. Petipa revived The Little Humpbacked Horse for the first and last time in 1895 (under the title The Tsar Maiden), with the great Ballerina Pierina Legnani as the Tsar Maiden. Since then the ballet has been kept alive by many different Balletmasters, teachers, and choreographers, among them - Alexander Gorsky, Pyotr Gusev, Agrippina Vaganova, Natalia Dudinskaya, Konstantin Sergeyev, and Ninel Kurgapkina. Today the ballet is far removed from the spectacle that it once was, with Pugni's score heavily weighed down with additional music from many different composers. Musically and choreographically only fragments of Pugni, Saint-Léon, and Petipa's text remain, giving one a tiny glimpse at what was once this opulent ballet.
[edit] La Esmeralda
La Esmeralda is given in modern times in a more authentic staging both choreographically and musically, by way of the Mussorgsky Ballet's 1981 revival. This production was mounted by Nicolai Boyarchikov, director of the Mussorgsky Ballet, and Tatiana Vecheslova, former Prima Ballerina of the Kirov/Mariinsky Ballet. Vaganova mounted a revival of La Esmeralda with Vecheslova in the lead in 1931. Prior to this Vecheslova had danced in Petipa's last revival of the ballet (for Mathilde Kschessinskaya in 1898), which was retained in the Kirov/Mariinsky Ballet's repertory until 1928. The Mussorgsky Ballet director Boyarchikov decided to mount a revival of La Esmeralda as it was danced before Vaganova's version, which Vecheslova still remembered. Vecheslova restored many of the scenes and dances which had become either lost or altered over time, including Mathilde Kschessinskaya's original Pas de Deux written especially for her by Riccardo Drigo in 1898 (known in modern times as the La Esmeralda Pas de Deux), and the elaborate Grand Pas Classique from Act II danced by Fleur-de-Lys, Captain Phoebus, 3 female soloists, and the Corps de Ballet. For this production Pugni's score, with additions by Drigo dating from 1886 and 1898, was restored with the aid of a repètitèur used by the Imperial Ballet before the turn of the 20th century. Today this production is still in the active repertory of the Mussorgsky Ballet, and was recently filmed and released onto DVD, though unfortunately the near 3-hour production was edited for the filming, trimming it down to a little over 55 minutes.
The Pugni/Drigo La Esmeralda Pas de Deux (in which the lead Ballerina dances the famous "Tambourine Variation") is often incorrectly credited to Pugni alone - the male variation was scored by Pugni - it was originally interpolated into the Pas by Vakhtang Chabukiani in the 1940s, as the Pas de Deux originally contained no male variation - the music for this variation was originally a variation for Esmeralda from a different scene in the context of the original full-length ballet. The coda of the Pas de Deux is also by Pugni as well - it is an extraction from Act II of The Pharaoh's Daughter, being the Marche de Pharaon. The famous "Tambourine Variation" for the Ballerina is by Drigo, though it is based on a theme from Pugni's Romanesca from his and Perrot's 1846 ballet Catarina.
[edit] Pas de Six
Regarding modern revivals, Arthur Saint-Léon's 1844 Pas de Six from the ballet La Vivandière (AKA Markitenka, as it is known in Russia) was reconstructed in 1975 by the dance notation expert Ann Hutchinson-Guest and Pierre Lacotte for the Joffrey Ballet from Saint-Léon's own original choreographic notation, which included the original orchestral parts for Pugni's music. In 1978 the Balletmaster Pierre Lacotte staged the work for the Kirov/Mariinsky Ballet, who still maintain it in their repertory. Today this reconstructed Pas de Six is given by many companies throughout the world.
In 2000 Lacotte mounted a revival of the 1862 Pugni/Petipa ballet The Pharaoh's Daughter, last performed in 1928, for the Bolshoi Ballet, though unfortunately he was refused access to Pugni's original score, preserved in the archives of the Mariinsky Theatre, and Lacotte was forced to piece together the music from various sources, with the Bolshoi Theatre conductor Alexander Sotnikov serving as orchestrator. In 2006 Lacotte mounted a revival of the original production of the 1843 Pugni/Perrot ballet Ondine (AKA The Naiad and the Fisherman) for the Kirov/Mariinsky Ballet. Both works were choreographed by Lacotte "in the style of the epoch", with The Pharaoh's Daughter containing only 4 dances from Petipa's own staging, a few of which were reconstructed from the Stepanov Choreographic Notation from the Sergeyev Collection.
[edit] Others
In the west (primarily in North America ) the average balletomane will likely only ever encounter Pugni's Pas de Quatre (revived by Anton Dolin in 1941), originally staged by Perrot in 1845 at Her Majesty's Theatre. It is the most performed work of all of Pugni's output, though the music is usually presented in a reorchestration by Leighton Lucas, as the original manuscript was destroyed when Her Majesty's Theatre burned down in 1867. The original piano reduction of Pas de Quatre is housed in the National Library of France, which includes Pugni's original orchestral parts for the Variation of Mme. Cerrito, the only part of the complete score to have survived.
Western balletomanes may encounter Pugni's additional music for the ballet Le Corsaire, as has been staged in recent years in the United States by American Ballet Theatre and the Boston Ballet - the Variation of Gulnare, usually interpolated into the scene Le Jardin Animé, or his extended version of Adolphe Adam's Pas des Odalisques, for which he added the first, and second variations and coda for Petipa's revival of 1863.
The great band leader and composer John Phillip Sousa included two suites from Cesare Pugni's ballets in his band's programs - Florida, and The Pharoah's Daughter.
[edit] Orchestral pieces
Rarely will one ever encounter the various other pieces Pugni scored for the orchestra alone, such as his many hymns, masses, and chamber music, which occasionally turn up in orchestral performances. Pugni's most performed orchestral pieces are his Gran Quartetto in E flat major for clarinet, violin, viola and cello in 3 Movements, and his Terzettino for Two Violins and Viola , which is are both staples of European string ensembles. These pieces show how different Pugni's style of writing was from his ballet music, and are a testament to his ability to write many forms of orchestral music. Unfortunately his five Bel canto operas, all of which were much revered in their day, have not survived in performance.
[edit] Historical Lithographs and Photos from the ballets of Pugni
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[edit] Works
[edit] Full-length ballets
| Premiere | Title | Theatre | Choreographer | Original leads | Notes | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 22, 1843 | Ondine (a.k.a. The Naiad and the Fisherman) | Her Majesty's Theatre | Perrot | Fanny Cerrito | Premiered as Ondine, au la Naiad. | |
| March 9, 1844 | La Esmeralda | Her Majesty's Theatre | Perrot | Carlotta Grisi; Perrot; Arthur Saint-Leon | Inspired by Notre Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo | |
| January 18, 1862 | The Pharaoh's Daughter | Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre | Petipa | Carolina Rosati; Nicholas Goltz; Marius Petipa; Lev Ivanov | Libretto by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges from Théophile Gautier's Le Roman de la Momie | |
| December 3, 1864 | The Little Humpbacked Horse (a.k.a. The Tsar Maiden) | Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre | Arthur Saint-Léon | Marfa Muravieva, Timofei Stukolkin | Libretto by Saint-Léon, from Pyotr Yershov's The Little Humpbacked Horse. Revived by Petipa in 1895 as The Tsar Maiden |
[edit] References
[edit] Bibliography
- Beaumont, Cyril W. Complete Book of Ballets.
- Bolshoi Ballet. Program from The Pharaoh's Daughter. Bolshoi Theatre, 2001.
- Edgecombe, Rodney Stenning. Cesare Pugni, Marius Petipa, and 19th Century Ballet Music. Musical Times, Summer 2006.
- Kirov/Mariinsky Ballet. Program from Ondine. Mariinsky Theatre, 2006.
- Petipa, Marius. The Diaries of Marius Petipa. Trans. and Ed. Lynn Garafola. Published in Studies in Dance History - 3.1 (Spring 1992).
- Guest, Ivor Forbes (1979), "Cesare Pugni", Dance Gazette (no. 1): 22-24.
- Guest, Ivor Forbes. Cesare Pugni: A Plea For Justice. Published in Dance Research - Vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 30-38
- Guest, Ivor Forbes, ed. Letters from a Balletmaster - The Correspondence of Arthur Saint-Léon
- Wiley, Roland John. Dances from Russia: An Introduction to the Sergeyev Collection Published in The Harvard Library Bulletin - 24.1 January 1976.
- Wiley, Roland John, ed. and translator. A Century of Russian Ballet: Documents and Eyewitness Accounts 1810-1910.
[edit] External links
[edit] Video
- The Grand Pas des Naiads from the Kirov/Mariinsky Ballet's revival of Ondine
- Excerpt from of Act I of the Kirov/Mariinsky Ballet's revival of Ondine, including the The Pas des Pâcherus
- Excerpts from the Mussorgsky Ballet's production of La Esmeralda
- The Pharaoh's Daughter - excerpts of the revival as danced by the Bolshoi Ballet.
- The Pharaoh's Daughter - Excerpts from the Grand Pas d'action
