If you are a ballet lover, you will love Le Corsaire from the American Ballet Theater
I spent a wonderful afternoon yesterday relaxing and watching Le Corsaire on a Dance DVD from the American Ballet Theatre. All I can say is: Wow!
I didn’t realize how complex the story was, and my only experience with the ballet was watching fragments of Fonteyn and Nureyev’s dance excerpts from the second scene. Le Corsaire is fast and exciting and is about slavery and pirates. The DVD begins with the dancers giving an account according to them about the history of the ballet.
The first performance of Adam’s Le Corsaire was at the Paris Opera on January 23, 1856. It was a great success, mainly due to the perfect combination of scenery, choreography, dance and music.’ The elaborate final scene was a success.
A romantic poem that was published in 1814 was the inspiration for Le Corsaire. Héctor Berloiz was inspired by the poem to create his concert overture for the ballet. Between the librettist Jules-Henri de Saint George and the choreographer Joseph Mazilier, who became the first ballet master of the Paris Opera in 1853, they turned the poem into a wonderful ballet. They had opulent set designs and illusory grand theatrical effects supported by Adam’s music that contributed to the great success of the world premiere of Le Corsaire.
Second Empire Parisian high society flocked to performances of Le Corsaire just to see Victor Sacre, who was the opera’s principal engineer, stage the dramatic sinking of the pirate ship in a turbulent storm at sea.
The original backdrops and costumes were destroyed in a fire. The Paris Opera presented a new production under Mazilier in 1867. In this performance, a number of pieces of music by other composers were added as enduring supplements to Adam’s original score.
In 1899 Marius Petipa made a complete break with the material of the original Paris production and subjected Le Ciorsaire to the forms of dance expression of the classical Russian school.
The American Ballet Theater is one of the world’s leading dance companies. It was founded in 1940 and has been a guest at all the most important dance festivals in the world. Every year, the American Ballet Theater tours America, reaching more than 600,000 spectators, making this Company one of the few American cultural institutions that receives subsidies from the United States Department of State.
The ABT performs primarily at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. ABT also runs its own ballet school. Soloist Kevin McKenzie has led the famed company since 1992. Under his direction, the American Ballet Theater celebrated the 60th anniversary of its founding with a series of gala performances in 2000.
American Ballet Theaters’ interpretation of Le Corsaire is nothing short of brilliant and is performed by well-known dancers Ángel Corella, Joaquín De Luz, Paloma Herrera, Julie Kent, Vladimir Malakhov and Ethan Stifel. You may remember Julie and Ethan from the movie Center Stage.
It was wonderful to see so many brilliant dancers on stage at the same time, all playing leading roles of some kind in Le Corsaire.