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The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
For your truly amazing work on Marius Petipa, I hereby award you a most well-deserved barnstar. Your edits monopolised my watchlist and forced me to unwatch it, causing pain and suffering when I had to search for the article every day to goggle at your work. Congratulations!
— Editor at Large(speak) 12:55, 16 November 2006 (UTC)


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Contents

[edit] Articles created so far from scratch (see Petipa section below as well)

[edit] Substantial contributions to already existing articles

[edit] Articles created on the ballets & revivals of Petipa


[edit] Non Fair-Use Image Contributions

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[edit] Headline text

Alexander Shiryaev (10.09.1867 – 25.04.1941). Son of the ballet dancer SHIRYAEVA and a grandson of the composer Cesar Puni, in1885 Alexander Shiryaev graduated from the St. Petersburg Theatre School. He was a student of M.Petipa, P.Gerdt, P.Karsavin, L.Ivanov. Since 1886, he had been the leading dancer of the Mariinsky Theatre working under Moris Petipa. Since 1900, he had been an aide of the Mariinsky Theatre ballet-master. Since 1903, he had been the second ballet-master at the Mariinsky Theatre. He restored the ballets: «Naiad and fisherman», «The Harlem tulip», «Coppelia». In his years at the Mariinsky Theatre, he performed in 32 ballets. Among his parts are: Milon in “The King’s Order”, Fairy Karabos in “The Sleeping Beauty”, Ivan-the-Fool in “The Hunchback Horse”, Quasimodo in “Esmeralda”, Harlequin and Cassandr in “Harlequinade”, Coppelius in “Coppelia”, Seif-Pasha in “Corsair”, Abdurrahman in “Raymonda”, Marceline in “La fille mal gardée”, Fool in “Mlada”, Buffoon in “Nutcracker”, and others. In 1905, he retired and organized a Class of Character Dance at the Mariinsky Theatre. In 1909 -1917, he worked as a dancer and ballet-master in Germany, England, France and other countries. He worked also as a coach in Anna Pavlova’s group. In 1891-1909, he was a professor at the St. Petersburg Theatre School. In 1918-1941, he was a professor at the Leningrad Choreographic School. Among his students are:A.Monakhov, A.Orlov, B.Romanov, F.Lopukhov, A.Chekrygin, N.Anissimova, P.Gussev, and others. He is a co-author of the first in the world handbook “Elements of Character Dance” (1939), an author of yet unpublished book: “The St. Petersburg Ballet: memoirs of the Mariinsky Theatre dancer” (1941).


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The productions of Le Corsaire which are performed today by ballet companies throughout Russia, particularly by the Kirov/Mariinsky Ballet, are the product of a long evolution, the result of several revivals staged throughout the Tsarist and Soviet periods. During the latter half of the 19th century, Le Corsaire acquired a substanital number of new pas and variations via Petipa's revivals, the majority of which are still retained in modern productions.

It is important that we now discuss the most important of the revivals of Le Corsaire staged since its original inception down through our own time, and to give an explanation, as much as possible, of the origins of the ballet's notable additional scenes, pas, incidental dances and variations.

Much interest in Le Corsaire stirred after Rudolf Nureyev performed the so-called Le Corsaire pas de deux with Margot Fonteyn for the first time on 5 Novemeber, 1962 at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. For decades thereafter all that was known of Mazilier's grand opus was this so-called Le Corsaire pas de deux, and it would be many years before the full-length work would be staged outside of Russia. Nevertheless the famous pas de deux became a major repertory staple with ballet companies all over the world, thus becoming one of the ballet repertory's most celebrated and performed excerpts. The Boston Ballet was the first company outside of Russia to include the full-length Le Corsaire in their repertory. Their production, staged by Ann-Marie Holmes in 1997, was later rented by American Ballet Theatre in 1998. Since then the ballet has become very popular, and many companies throughout the world have staged productions of their own.

Although Le Corsaire was created in Paris in 1856, it was the many revivals staged in Russia that gave the work its longevity. Jules Perrot was the first to stage Le Corsaire for the St. Petersburg Imperial Ballet,in 1858. It appears that Marius Petipa, who performed the role of Conrad in this production, was responsible for interpolating the Pas d'action known as the Pas d'Esclave, a number which replaced Mazilier's original Pas de cinq of national dances performed by the slave girls of the turkish bazaar of the first tableau. The music appears to have been taken from the 1857 ballet La Rose, la violette et le papillon, a work set to the music by Peter Georgievich of Oldenburg (grandson Emperor Paul I). By the turn of the 19th century the original variation for the female had been replaced by a solo taken from the additional music Riccardo Drigo added to Mikhail Ivanov's score for Petipa's 1888 ballet La Vestale, being a variation the composer wrote especially for Maria Gorshenkova's performance as the character Claudia. The male variation that is traditionally danced during the Pas d'Esclave in modern productions of Le Corsaire was added to the pas in 1914 by the Imperial Ballet's danseur Pierre Vladimirov. The music is credited to a composer known only as Zibin.

The first revival of Le Corsaire staged by Petipa himself premiered on 24 January (5 February) 1863 for the benefit performance of his wife, the Prima Ballerina Maria Surovshchikova-Petipa who performed the principal role of Medora. For this revival Petipa certainly staged an elaborately revised and updated production, requiring Maestro Pugni to prepare a substantial adaptation of Adam's score that included quite a few additional pieces and expanded versions of already exsisting dances. Pugni composed a new overture to proceed the first tableau, and expanded Adam's Bacchanale des corsaires into what became the Danse des corsaires — Ballabile d'action, in which the corps de ballet of corsaires lead by Medora and Conrad enacted through dance and mime the goings-on of a day in the life of a corsaire at sea. For the 1863 revival Petipa expanded Mazilier's original Pas des odalisques into a Pas de trois des odalisques: Adam's original waltz was retained as an entrée for the three ballerinas, and Pugni supplied music for two new variations and a final coda. The third variation was set to music taken from the Adam's suite of dances performed for pilgrims by the Pasha's harem girls during the third act. In spite of the many revivals of Le Corsaire, Petipa's strict academic choreography for the Pas de trois des odalisques has been passed down nearly unchanged.

Petipa's second revival of Le Corsaire was presented for the first time on 25 January (6 February) 1868. This revival was staged especially for the ballerina Adèle Grantzow, who had performed the role of Medora in Mazilier's revival in Paris in 1867. It was for the 1867 production that Mazilier added the Pas des fleurs to the music of Delibes, a piece which Petipa also incorporated into his revival of 1868 as Le jardin animé. It appears that Delibes's music for the Pas des fleurs was brought by Grantzow in a piano reduction, as Pugni prepared an elaborate orchestration of the music that included expanded passages for Petipa's spectacular choreography.

Petipa again used the occasion to add new dances of his own, with Maestro Pugni again supplying the music. A Danse des forbans was created for the first tableau of act one - a lively mazurka in which the corsaires perform with their scimitars. A new classical Pas de six was created for Grantzow, replacing Mazilier's Grand pas des Éventails, though Mazilier's number was returned to the ballet on occasion. Another of Pugni's additional dances was a polka used by Petipa to accompany Grantzow's pas de caractéristique called Le Petit Corsaire, in which the heroine Medora performs a charming character dance holding a prop bugle and dressed as a corsaire. It is significant to note that an early 20th century performance of this number by an unidentified danseuse was among the first pieces from the art of ballet to ever be filmed. Interestingly, it was Pugni's grandson Alexander Shiryaev who was the camra-man.

Petipa presented his second major revival of Le Corsaire on 22 (10) November 1880, with the great Russian ballerina Eugeniia Sokolova in the role of Medora. Among the most notable musical additions to this production was a variation composed by the Northern Bolshoi Theatre's principal harpist Albert Heirich Zabel. This solo, composed especially for Sokolova's performance in the scene Le jardin animé, is traditionally performed by the character Gulnare in modern productions of Le Corsaire.

Petipa's final, and certainly his most important revival of Le Corsaire was mounted especially for the benefit performance of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatre's Prima ballerina assoluta Pierina Legnani. The first performance on 25 (13) January 1899 at the Mariinsky Theatre included Pavel Gerdt in the role of Conrad and Olga Preobrakenskaya in the role of Gulnare. This revival contained suprisingly few musical modifcations. It seems Petipa was far more concerned with giving his choregraphy a "finishing touch". The Ballet Master transfered the Danse des forbans from the first tableau to the second tableau, and created completely new choreography for the Pas d'Esclave. Although variations from already exsisting ballets were added for the principal dancers, only one additional number, an adagio for Medora and Conrad during the second tableau by the composer Riccardo Drigo, was included.

It has been accepted for many years that Petipa created the so-called Le Corsaire pas de deux for the 1899 revival to music composed especially by Riccardo Drigo, and source after source claim this as fact: recordings, films and modern programs credit the number as the creation of Petipa (or as "after Petipa"), and the music as being composed by either Adolphe Adam, Riccardo Drigo, or Ludwig Minkus (and, at times, all three), with Drigo being teh composer credit most fo the time. The origins of the music are even more obscured by ballerinas who have long substituted variations taken from many of Petipa's ballets when performing in the piece.

Contemporary programs of Petipa's 1899 revival credit no such number that comes even remotely close to being the Le Corsaire pas de deux we are familiar with today. In the context of the full-length ballet, every modern production includes the piece during the second tableau of act I, and the program for Petipa's 1899 included Mazilier's Grand pas des Éventails during this tableau, apparently being the required pièce de résistance of this particular scene. Furthermore, the 1899 programs do not indicate such a pas in any other part of the ballet.

Riccardo Drigo did in fact compose a new Grand pas de deux as an interpolation into the St. Petersburg production of Le Corsaire in 1887 for a performance that featured Emma Bessone and Enrico Cecchetti in the principal roles of Medora and Conrad. This number, however, appears to have no connection to the piece we have come to know in our own time as the Le Corsaire pas de deux, and although Drigo did in fact score a few other additional numbers for the ballet between 1887 and 1899 none of these dances appear to have any connection with the piece in question.

In 2006 the Bayerisches Staatsballett (Bavarian State Ballet) of Munich presented a revival of <Le Corsaire that included twenty-five of Petipa's dances reconstructed from the Stepanov choreographic notation of the Sergeyev Collection, which is today held in the Harvard University Library's theatre collection. For the production the ballet company's musical director Maria Babanina prepared an extensive note for the theatre program detailing, as much as possible, the origins of the many additional dances included in the production. The Mariinsky Theatre Central Music Library was consulted by Babaina, and the pieces researched was the origins of the Le Corsaire pas de deux.

According to the program, the Le Corsaire pas de deux was created in Petrograd for a new production of Le Corsaire that was first presented at the Mariinsky Theatre on 24 (11) January 1915. This particular production of the ballet was staged under the supervision of Samuil Andrianov, the Imperial Theatre's Ballet Master perhaps best remembered as the instructor of the young George Balanchine at the Imperial Ballet School, and for being the husband of Pavel Gerdt's daughter, the great pedagogue Elizaveta Gerdt. Among the revisions executed by Andrianov for this production was the addition of a Pas d'action that is often referred to today as the Le Corsaire pas de deux or, on occasion, as the Le Corsaire pas de deux à trois depending on the number of dancers participating. In the context of the full-length ballet, every modern production of Le Corsaire places this pas in the second tableau of act I, being the scene set in the corsaire's cave.

The Pas d'action was likely created especially for Tamara Karsavina, who performed the role of Medora in the 1915 revival, and was choreographed by Andrianov for three dancers: Medora, Conrad, and an additional suitor borrowed from the Pas d'Esclave of the first tableau of act I. As was typical practice at this time, music taken from various sources was brought together to serve as accompniment. The opening andante was set to a nocturne by Drigo titled Rêves de printemps, a piece which, it would seem, was never intended for choreography (certainly when one listens carefully to this piece one can hear why such a title was bestowed upon it). Following the andante were the usual string of classical variations for the each of the principal characters with the pas ending in a rousing coda. It appears that all of the numbers which were bought together to form this pas are still in place today. According to the Bayerisches Staatsballett's program, for their 2006 revival of Le Corsaire, the variation in triple time, originally performed by the character Conrad, was taken from Yuli Gerber's score for Petipa's 1870 Trilby, while the polka variation performed by the character Medora was taken from Boris Fitinghof-Schell's score for the 1893 grand ballet Zolushka. Although the coda is certainly in the style of Pugni, the program credited Drigo as its author.

It would be the subsequent Soviet revivals of the full-length Le Corsaire that would shape the Le Corsaire pas de deux/pas d'action into the form we are familar with today. By the late 1920s the additional suitor who took part in the piece was transformed into a character known as the Rhab, the Russian word for slave. In time this character also took over Conrad's variation. In 1931 Agrippina Vaganova extensivley revised the piece for the graduation performance of Natalia Dudinskaya, who was partnered by Konstantin Sergeyev. Vaganova transformed the pas d'action into an athletic pas de deux for the steller virtuosa Dudinskaya.

Vaganova's version of the Le Corsaire pas de deux found its way into the Mariinsky Theatre's full-length production of Le Corsaire when the ballet was revived in 1939. Vakhtang Chabukiani performed the role of the Rhab in this production and was the first to the charcateristic chains and baggy pants to the Slave's costume which are familar in this piece today. It was Chabukinai who had the greatest hand in re-fashioning the choreography for the male dancer of the Le Corsaire pas de deux, and it is his revisions, coupled with Vaganova's choreography for the ballerina, that made up the version passed down at the Kirov to such dancers as Rudolf Nureyev, the first to stage the Le Corsaire pas de deux in the west.

By the time Le Corsaire was removed from the Mariinsky Theatre's repertory in 1928, the ballet had been performed 228 times since the premiere of Petipa's 1899 revival. In 1931, Agrippina Vaganova presented a new version of the work, and in 1936 yet another revival of the ballet was staged. In 1941 the full-length Le Corsaire was again removed from the Kirov Theatre's repertory (the Mariinsky Theatre was re-named as the Kirov State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet in 1935). Until 1959 Le Corsaire was performed on rare occasions by the Kirov Ballet until the work all but dissappeared from the repertory until Konstantin Sergeyev staged his version of the ballet for the company in 1973.

Sergeyev's version included a new variation for the characters Conrad and Birbanto in in the first act fashioned from themes taken from Adam's original score. Sergeyev also included two dances taken from Riccardo Drigo's score for Petipa's 1894 ballet The Awakening of Flora: a dance for eight slave girls for the first tableau, and an adagio for the characters Medora and Conard in the second tableau (this number is often referred to as the Pas de deux de la chambre).

Sergeyev's revival only lasted nine performances in the Kirov Ballet's repertory: the production was pulled when the Ballet Master fell into disfavor with the Soviet government due to the recent defections from the U.S.S.R. of Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov. His production was replaced in 1977 by Pyotr Gusev's revival, which was staged by the company's newly appointed director Oleg Vinogradov.

Pyotr Gusev's version of Le Corsaire was originally staged for the Maly/Mussorgsky Theatre in Leningrad. This was the first production of the work to present a modified version of the libretto, written by Gusev and the ballet historian Yuri Slonimsky. A new character was also included: the slave Ali, a character which evolved out of the Slave who took part in the Le Corsaire Pas de Deux in the early Soviet productions of Le Corsaire at the Mariinsky Theatre.

Gusev's most striking change was his choice to include a completely new version of the ballet's score. Although the Ballet Master retained the traditional interpolations as handed down from Imperial times, he discarded nearly all of Adam's original score in favor of music fashioned from airs taken from Adam's 1842 ballet La Jolie fille du gand and his 1852 opera Si j'étais roi, with the conductor Eugene Kornblit adapting and orchestrating the music accordingly. Gusev opened the ballet with an edited version of the overture from Adam's Si j'étais roi.

Additional dances were also added: a pizzicato taken from Riccardo Drigo's additional music for Petipa's 1899 revival of La Esmeralda was used to accompany a dance for coryphées in the scene Le jardin animé. Gusev also added dances for Turkish, Persian, and Arabian slave-women for the scene in the bazaar. With the new music fashioned from Adam's other works, new leitmotifs were created for the ballet's main characters.

Gusev also created a new prologue in his revival, which included the famous shipwreck transferred from the last scene. There followed a scene set on a beach where Gusev staged a pas for the characters Medora, Gulnare and ten coryphées, followed by a scene in which the heroine and her companions are abducted by the character Lankendem and his cohorts in order to be sold as harem slaves.

In 1977 the director of the Kirov Ballet, Oleg Vinogradov, staged Gusev's version for the company, who still retain the production in their repertory.

In 1987 the Kirov Ballet decided to present a revival of Le Corsaire for its upcoming world tour. There was much debate as to whether Gusev's staging would be retained or whether Sergeyev's version would be reinstated. The company chose to retain Gusev's version, which was given a new production in 1989. A performance of the new production was filmed that same year at the Mariinsky Theatre with the ballerina Altynai Asylmuratova as Medora, Yevgeny Neff as Conrad, Konstantin Zaklinsky as Lankendem, Yelena Pankova as Gulnare and Farouk Ruzimatov as Ali. This film has been released onto DVD/video.

In 1992 Yuri Grigorovich, director of the Bolshoi Ballet of Moscow, invited Sergeyev to mount his 1973 revival of Le Corsaire for the company. This production, which included a heavily re-edited and re-orchestrated score by the Bolshoi Theatre's conductor Alexander Sotnikov, premiered on March 11, 1992 to great success, but after only seven performances Grigorovich decided to pull the production from the repertory. After witnessing the success of Sergeyev's production, Grigorovich decided to stage his own version, which premiered on February 16, 1994. Grigorovich's production was then taken out of the repertory after the director left the company in 1995. In 2005 the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Yuri Tkatchenko recorded the version of the score used for Grigorovich's 1994 production, which was released by the Japanese publishing company Shinshokan onto CD.

The sets and costumes designed by Irina Tibilova for Konstantin Sergeyev's 1992 Moscow production sat unused in the archives of the Bolshoi Theatre for almost five years. At the suggestion of Sergeyev's wife, the Ballerina and teacher Natalia Dudinskaya, Anna-Marie Holmes staged Sergeyev's production for the Boston Ballet (with the assistance of Dudinskaya, Tatiana Terekhova, Sergei Berezhnoi, Tatiana Legat, and Vadim Disnitsky). The music for this production was copied from the conductor's score used for Sergeyev's production in Sotnikov's orchestration, as well as additional parts taken from the Mariinsky Theatre Library. In some cases the Boston Ballet used copies of the Bolshoi's score from Grigorovich's 1994 version, which also contained orchestrations by Alexander Sotnikov. The Boston Ballet music librarian Arthur Leeth, the company pianist Marina Gendal, and conductor Jonathan McPhee performed a cut-and-paste operation on the score as the choreography was adapted for the new staging. This required the re-ordering of many numbers, as well as a few new transitional passages which were composed by Kevin Galie. Galie also did some minor reorchestrating throughout many parts of the score. This production premiered on March 27, 1997 with the Ballerina Natasha Akhmarova as Medora, to great success.

Nearly one year later, American Ballet Theatre rented the Boston Ballet's production of Le Corsaire. The staging went through even more revisions both choreographically and musically, with modifications performed by American Ballet Theatre conductor Charles Barker and the company pianist Henrietta Stern. With regard to the plot, a crucial revision was made by the transformation of Mediterranean Corsaires into Caribbean Pirates. This production premiered on June 19, 1998, with Nina Ananiashvili as Medora, Ashley Tuttle as Gulnare, Giuseppe Picone as Conrad, Jose Manuel Carreño as Ali, and Vladimir Malakhov Lankendem. The ABT production was later filmed at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, California by PBS for Great Performances in 1999, with Julie Kent as Medora, Paloma Herrera as Gulnare, Ethan Stiefel as Conrad, Angel Corella as Ali, and Vladimir Malakhov as Lankendem. The film has since been released onto DVD/video.






Three: VI

insert for p. 1402 to follow at line 8 the sentence ending with " ...have been choreographed by him." "


It would appear that Marius Petipa, aside from performing the role of Conrad, had a hand in some aspects of staging the 1858 production of Le Corsaire. According to a program for a performance of Le Corsaire from the Kirov Ballet's 1989 season in New York, Petipa himself revised the choreography for the Pas des Éventails of the second tableau and the Scène de séduction of the third tableau. According to a chronolgy of Petipa's works given in Marius Petipa: materialy, vospominaniia, stat'ii (translated into english by Lynn Garafola in The Diaries of Marius Petipa, 1992), Petipa was responsible for staging the pas d'action from the first tableau known as the Pas d'Esclave, set to the music of Prince Pyotr of Oldenburg. 0........

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