Italy Alexei Ratmansky’s Coppélia: Dancers of La Scala Ballet, Orchestra of La Scala, Milan / Paul Connelly (conductor). Broadcast (directed by Stefania Grimaldi) from La Scala, Milan, 17.12.2023. (JPr)
Creatives:
Choreography – Alexei Ratmansky
Music – Léo Delibes
Units and Costumes – Jérôme Kaplan
Lights – Marco Filibeck
Dramaturgy – Guillaume Gallienne
Forged:
Nicoletta Manni — Swanilda
Timofej Andrijashenko — Franz
Christian Fagetti — Coppélius
Franz’s Buddies – Domenico Di Cristo, Federico Fresi, Mattia Semperboni, Saïd Ramos Ponce
Swanilda’s Buddies – Gaia Andreanò, Camilla Cerulli, Agnese Di Clemente, Marta Gerani, Giordana Granata, Asia Matteazzi
Allegorical Variations – Linda Giubelli, Navrin Turnbull, Maria Celeste Losa, Rinaldo Venuti
After the just about non-existent story for The Nutcracker (overview right here) there’s now the equally simple Coppélia: in the course of the village festivities for a brand new church bell, {couples} will obtain a present of cash in the event that they marry. Alexei Ratmansky (presently artist in residence of New York Metropolis Ballet) was born within the Ukraine and his reinvigoration of Coppélia is ready in Galicia which straddles the border between his house nation and Poland. Swanilda is the fiancée of Franz, a good-looking younger villager, and on the eve of their wedding ceremony she has trigger to doubt the seriousness of his affections when he’s seen flirting with a gorgeous woman sitting on the balcony of the eccentric Dr Coppélius’s home. After a bucolic Act I the place we even see the legend of the stalk of wheat mimed, the second act has Swanilda and her six playful companions examine Coppélius’s home and she or he clothes because the doll and pretends to come back to life. This act ends with the whole humiliation of the oddball inventor. Act III principally is only a succession of allegorical dances (which on this model seem to allude to Swanilda and Franz’s future life collectively) earlier than the marriage celebrations. On the finish of the ballet, Coppélius stays one thing of an outsider who just isn’t placated by cash however by having the doll’s gown returned to him.
Coppélia relies on an unique E.T.A. Hoffmann story referred to as The Sandman in any other case higher identified for the Olympia doll act of Jacques Offenbach’s 1881 The Tales of Hoffmann. Within the opera one other ‘hero’ additionally turns into obsessive about a realistic-looking determine which a loopy scientist and toymaker has made, and he has the urge to get to know ‘her’ higher. In his new Coppélia Ratmansky cranks up the jealousy between Swanilda and the fickle Franz over the doll. He additionally – as you generally see – makes Coppélius fairly extra sinister in his urge to conjure the ‘life-force’ from Franz (who has handed out via drink) to his creation within the second act.
As carried out by La Scala Ballet Coppélia appears the near-perfect antidote to all of the unhappy and tragic information in our present merciless and dispiriting world. Really, there was loads of tragedy following the 1870 premiere of this sunniest of works as inside just a few months its choreographer, Arthur Saint-Léon, was useless, as was the primary Coppélius and the primary Swanilda, Giuseppina Bazzacchi, died of smallpox on her seventeenth birthday. As if this was not sufficient, the Franco-Prussian struggle started and would quickly shut Paris’s Théâtre Impérial de l’Opéra the place the ballet was first placed on. Nonetheless, Coppélia has endured in a thread unbroken from these first performances to the current day.
This highlights the magnificence and the issue with ballet: it’s incredible – as right here – to see such a splendid re-creation of a masterpiece however ‘re-creation’ primarily is all it’s. While appreciating what we see, we should additionally pay homage to those that got here earlier than. The unique choreographer gave in to the style in Western Europe on the time for a girl to look en travesti as Franz. As time went on this prompted an issue as Léo Delibes wrote no music for a proper pas de deux and Franz’s musical themes proved fairly light-weight for male dancers down the following years. Trendy productions have normally been primarily based on Lev Ivanov and Enrico Cecchetti’s 1894 Moscow revival of Marius Petipa’s unique choreography and infrequently attempt to use music which is all-Delibes. La Scala’s new Coppélia has been – so I perceive – totally re-choreographed by Ratmansky while honouring what has gone earlier than. Because the ballet proceeds with all of the fussy little coupés, modifications of path and far else that appeared acquainted in Ratmansky’s steps it appeared like a Coppélia Rudolf Nureyev by no means choreographed (although I did see him dance Franz).
What Ratmansky does is to point out Swanilda as a spirited, extra trendy, unbiased lady who we first meet at her window watering her vegetation. She will get incensed when she sees her happy-go-luck, jack-the-lad Franz blowing a kiss at one other ‘woman’. (Kudos to Ludovica di Pasquale as Coppélia who Ratmansky provides a extra intriguing mime sequence to than we normally see for a mechanical doll). Swanilda turns into so indignant that – though she solely too clearly loves him – she refuses to marry Franz later within the first act. In the meantime we’ll see how Franz is way more concerned (additionally Nureyev-like) within the ballet and together with Swanilda there’s an try and combine each extra into the village dances such because the high-stepping mazurka. Units and costumes are by Jérôme Kaplan and the curtains opened on a typical olde-worlde, sepia colored, central European village which we’ll see is filled with joyful, smiling villagers. The ladies are in conventional embroidered, pastel-shaded dirndls while the boys are in leather-looking breeches and a number of other put on hats. Later in Act I they may dance a really full of life, hand-clapping csárdás exhibiting the corps de ballet on notably exuberant type.
Act II takes place in Coppelius’s mad-scientist lair full of wierd figures and artefacts. Swanilda’s associates (Gaia Andreanò, Camilla Cerulli, Agnese Di Clemente, Marta Gerani, Giordana Granata and Asia Matteazzi) deserve a point out for his or her impeccable contributions in Act I however particularly now in Coppélius’s workroom they may hardly be bettered in all their naturalistic reactions to some weird occasions corresponding to when some near-naked dolls start to maneuver jerkily or discovering out that Coppélia can be a dull doll.
The technically impeccable Nicoletta Manni (her Act III fouettés had been near-perfection) was an achieved actor-dancer able to conveying the total vary of Swanilda’s feelings, whether or not playfulness, love or jealously. Manni excelled when pretending to be Coppélia and in her Spanish bolero and Scottish gigue. Franz has little to do within the second act, after all, other than mendacity principally comatose on a mattress. Elsewhere Timofej Andrijashenko was a really convincing younger tearaway, there was brio in each step he did, and the vitality of his dancing turbocharged the virtuosity required within the third act. Andrijashenko was courteous, flirtatious, or revealed a twinkling sense of enjoyable. He was an equally achieved and delicate associate to Manni who was probably the most good, humorous and feisty, Swanilda possible. Ratmansky made the chemistry between the 2 leads so plausible that I felt Swanilda and Franz’s bickering transcended the artificiality of ballet. Christian Fagetti was a really trendy Coppélius in his black leather-based coat and workman’s apron, a single-minded, evil genius wanting a bit like Edward Scissorhands however with out the scissorhands.
Principally, Act III entails lots of balletic ‘padding’ with these ‘Allegorical Variations’ filling the time earlier than the grand pas de deux. There was the ‘Waltz of the Hours’ and Linda Giubelli in orange with three boys and three women (who is perhaps hinting at what’s to come back for Swanhilda and Franz), there was Navrin Turnbull in a blue Greek tunic and Maria Celeste Losa in a golden-brown tutu who danced an animated solo. Lastly, a roistering gypsy (Rinaldo Venuti) acquired the boys combating over their ladies and the ladies over their males. With an brisk gallop this Coppélia – like most variations – simply fizzles out following Ratmansky’s fairly lowkey grand pas de deux as the wedding of Swanilda and Franz is widely known after she has forgiven him.
The skilled Paul Connelly and the Orchestra of La Scala, Milan, appeared to relish Delibes’s effervescent rating and the enjoying sounded nearly as good as it could actually for a ballet efficiency. As heard via loudspeakers there was some glorious enjoying with a number of elegant solo contributions.
Jim Pritchard
Featured picture: Nicoletta Manni (Swanilda) and Ludovica di Pasquale (Coppélia) © Brescia e Amisano/Teatro alla Scala
