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Ludwig Minkus Don Quixote
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Book Synopsis The Ballets of Ludwig Minkus by : Robert Ignatius Letellier
Download or read book The Ballets of Ludwig Minkus written by Robert Ignatius Letellier and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The composer Ludwig Minkus represents one of music’s biggest mysteries. Who was he? Hardly anything is known about him, and yet he occupied an influential position in the theatres of the Imperial ballet in late nineteenth-century Russia. He has been recognised as a predecessor of Tchaikovsky, but as a musician is commonly held to have been so feeble as to be beneath contempt. Yet despite the scorn heaped on him, and his consequent obscurity, Minkus is far from being forgotten. Since the early 1960s his name has slowly begun to re-surface. Two works, Don Quixote (1869) and La Bayadère (1877), have been presented in their entirety for the first time to new audiences all over the world. The musical and dramatic power of both ballets has taken people by surprise. The stories have a very real human appeal, the choreography attracts the admiration of balletomanes, and the music, with its rhythm, verve, and beauty of melody, holds attention and engages the heart wherever it is heard. This introduction seeks to discover something more behind the blank façade of Minkus’s life and work. What do we actually know about him as a man and as an artist? Are we able to apprehend his oeuvre as a whole, and how much can we establish from the available material? What is the nature of the music he created for those few works that have survived the years, and that have come to the fore again recently to delight those who have ears to hear? This study includes iconography from the life and times of the composer, many musical examples from his works, and a comprehensive bibliography and discography.
Book Synopsis Ludwig Minkus La Bayadère by : Robert Ignatius Letellier
Download or read book Ludwig Minkus La Bayadère written by Robert Ignatius Letellier and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2008-12-11 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: La Bayadère was first produced at the Maryinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, on 4 February 1877. The scenario was by Sergei Khudekov and Marius Petipa, who also devised the choreography. The music was by the Austrian composer Ludwig Minkus (1827-1917), who spend most of his life working for the Imperial Ballet in St Petersburg. His music for this ballet—long scorned, never published, and endlessly re-arranged— has slowly emerged, since its revival began in the West in the 1960s, as a viable and significant musical achievement in its own right. Apart from the strongly defined melodies, infectious rhythm, and affecting harmonies, there is a powerful unity of conception and a sustained attention to mood that establishes its own unique incidental atmosphere. In its evocation of far-off times, the score conjures up an exotic Indian setting, where two spheres are set in contrast—a bright external world of colour and pomp, of ambition, rivalry and death; and an internal realm of night and dreams, of ideals, transcendent love and life—all realized most completely in the famous Kingdom of the Shades in act 3. The generous self-offering love of the temple dancer Nikia is one of the great stories of the Romantic ballet. Here for the first time is the piano score of the entire ballet. The music derives from four sources: a clear manuscript from the days of the Soviet Union; a version of Act 4 as held in the Library of Covent Garden; a beautiful Russian copy of the Kingdom of the Shades; and a potpourri from the 1880s by Johann Resch—the only music ever published from the score.
Book Synopsis Ludwig Minkus by : Robert Ignatius Letellier
Download or read book Ludwig Minkus written by Robert Ignatius Letellier and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2010-04-16 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1868 the choreographer Marius Petipa planned his ballet Don Quixote for the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, and the Austrian composer Ludwig Minkus was invited to compose the music. The plot of Don Quixote was based on the adventures of Quiteria (known as Kitri in the ballet) and Basilio, which Petipa had developed from the second part of Miguel de Cervantes's novel (1605). The ballet was an enormous success, both in Moscow (14/26 December 1869) and in St Petersburg where it was represented at the Bolshoi Theatre on 9/21 November 1871 in an expanded version as Don Quichotte—with revised scenario and choreography that took cognizance of the more sophisticated expectations of the Imperial capital. Changes were made to the story, with a new fifth act in three scenes, for which Minkus wrote additional music. Don Quixote no longer regarded Kitri simply as his protégée, but now actually mistakes her for Dulcinea, and she appears as such in his Dream Scene. Provision was made for one ballerina to perform the double virtuoso role of Kitri and Dulcinea. The big classical scene for Don Quixote's dream was rewritten. Greater emphasis was now placed on this episode, where Kitri/Dulcinea was surrounded by a large corps de ballet and seventy-two children dressed as cupids. Alexandra Vergina was partnered by Basilio (Lev Ivanov), and supported by Pavel Gerdt in the last scene. The cast also included Timofei Stukolkine (Don Quixote), Nicholas Goltz (Gamache), and Alexei Bogdanov (Lorenzo). Don Quixote became established in the repertory, and its continued life on the Russian stage bears testimony to the appeal of its exuberance, “the life-asserting and life-loving nature of its dances” (Natalia Roslavleva). Generations of Russian ballet-masters and dancers preserved these dances in essence, and the ballet is still part of the Russian repertory, given today in all Russian and Siberian companies, in the Moscow version of Alexander Gorsky, in three acts and seven or eight scenes. Petipa’s version of Don Quixote, with its life-affirming music by Minkus, has during the 20th century spread throughout the world, not least because of the work of Rudolf Nureyev who made a film version of the Australian Ballet production in 1971 that became very famous. It co-starred Robert Helpmann and Lucette Aldous, and made world history in being the first ballet to be produced with full film technique, so providing wider scope for imaginative handling of the famous story. Don Quixote has become the standard ballet version of the Cervantes tale, and one of the most popular pieces of the international repertory. Much of its emotional fervour is captured in the celebrated virtuoso Grand Pas de Deux for the wedding of Kitri and Basilio in the last scene. This piece, with a spectrum of feeling enshrined in its rapturous melodies and irresistible rhythmic élan, has assumed a life of its own as a concert piece in countless renditions wherever ballet is performed. The piano score of the St Petersburg version was published as Don Quichotte (St Petersburg: Theodore Stellowsky, c. 1882). This version is reproduced here.
Download or read book Marius Petipa written by Nadine Meisner and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This cultural biography of the nineteenth-century ballet master Marius Petipa -- creator of The Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake -- tells the full story of his life and work in the remarkable context in which he lived.
Book Synopsis Ludwig Minkus, Don Quixote by : Robert Ignatius Letellier
Download or read book Ludwig Minkus, Don Quixote written by Robert Ignatius Letellier and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2010-03-08 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ballet Don Quixote, with music by Ludwig Minkus and scenario and original choreography by Marius Petipa, is one of the most enduring creations to have emerged from the flowering of the ballet in late 19th-century Russia. Still popular, it has become a standard repertory piece in ballet companies all over the world. The work was first performed in Moscow at the Bolshoi Theater on 14/26 December 1869. The plot, in four acts and eight scenes, was based on an episode which Petipa had developed from the second part of Cervantes’s novel, relating the love story of Quiteria (known as Kitri in the ballet) and Basilio. Petipa devised the original version to suit the unsophisticated taste of Moscow's audiences. Soon after, he prepared a version for St Petersburg, using the same music and designs, but with major choreographic revisions. This St Petersburg version, premiered on 9/21 November 1871, was in five acts (eleven episodes, a prologue and an epilogue). It took into account the Imperial capital's preference for a more classical interpretation of the ballet and amounted to a new and very different version. Alexander Gorsky staged his Moscow revival of Don Quixote in 1900 using Petipa's St Petersburg scenario and some of his choreography, and reducing the work to four acts. Two years later, in 1902, the director of the Imperial Theatres, Vladimir Teliakovsky, invited Gorsky to restage an updated version of Don Quixote at the Maryinsky Theatre in St Petersburg. The ballet became a staple of the repertoires of the Moscow Bolshoi Ballet and the Leningrad Kirov Ballet and was regularly modified as it was continually restaged, ending up as three acts with a prologue and six scenes. This version of the score, containing several interpolated pieces by other repertory dance composers, is the standard performing edition used in Russia. Don Quixote was first seen outside of Russia in an edited two-act version danced by Pavlova and her company in England in 1924. The first time the full work was staged for a Western company was by the English Ballet Rambert in 1962, by Witold Borkowski. Notable productions outside of Russia to Minkus's music were those by Rudolf Nureyev for the Vienna State Opera (1966), and Mikhail Baryshnikov for American Ballet Theatre (1978), which for the most part followed the traditional versions they had performed in Russia. Another major source of publicity for the ballet came in 1976 when the iceskater John Curry’s inspired routine to music from the ballet won him a gold medal at the European Figure Skating Championship, the World Figure Skating Championship and the Winter Olympics. No standard editions of Minkus's scores have ever been produced, and no full score of Don Quixote has been published. Every ballet company usually comes up with its own arrangements of his music, the revisions by John Lanchbery being the most widely known. Lanchbery’s work, however, tampers with both the orchestration and, more seriously, the harmony, of Minkus’s music, and is often closer to a rewriting than an arrangement. The resurgent popularity of Minkus's Don Quixote and La Bayadère, as well as his additions to Deldevez’s Paquita, have revealed the innate skill and charm of his music, despite the ubiquity of the arrangements and distortions of his scores. Minkus's writing, like so much Romantic ballet, is closely allied to operatic conventions, with arias, duets and ensembles that are enacted rather than sung, and with each ballet sustaining its own special atmosphere. The Town Square, Gypsy Camp and Dream Sequence in Don Quixote are full of musical buoyancy and melodic verve, demonstrating a careful use of tonality and dramatic style. The famous Grand Pas de Deux from the finale “is lively, well-crafted and ablaze with attractive invention” (Ian Woodward). Until such times as a definitive version of the manuscript score can be established, this performing edition as used in Russia acknowledges the living tradition of this work, and the vibrancy of Minkus’s splendid music.
Book Synopsis 101 Stories of the Great Ballets by : George Balanchine
Download or read book 101 Stories of the Great Ballets written by George Balanchine and published by Anchor. This book was released on 1975-05-20 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Authored by one of the ballet's most respected experts, this volume includes scene-by-scene retellings of the most popular classic and contemporary ballets, as performed by the world's leading dance companies. Certain to delight long-time fans as well as those just discovering the beauty and drama of ballet.
Book Synopsis Ludwig Minkus; Fiammetta/Néméa by : Robert Ignatius Letellier
Download or read book Ludwig Minkus; Fiammetta/Néméa written by Robert Ignatius Letellier and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2010-03-08 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aloysius Ludwig Minkus (1826–1917), famous for his ballets Don Quixote (1869) and La Bayadère (1877), was born in Bohemia, and grew up in the dance capital Vienna. He hoped to establish a reputation as a violinist and composer, and by 1853 had emigrated to St Petersburg where he became the conductor and solo violinist of the private orchestra of Prince Nikolai Yusupov. In 1861 he was appointed violin soloist and, a year later, conductor of the Moscow Bolshoi Orchestra. He began a happy collaboration with the great French choreographer Arthur Saint-Léon (1821–1870), who was a real friend and inspiration to Minkus, and more than anyone else, helped to launch his career as a theatrical composer, producing five works in association with him in St Petersburg and Paris. Minkus’s first ballet, the three-act Plamya lyubvi, ili Salamandra (The Flame of Love, or the Salamander, also called Fiammetta), was given its premiere on 13 February 1864 at the Bolshoi Kamenny Theater in St Petersburg (with Marfa Muravyeva in the leading role). The scenario and the choreography were by Saint-Léon, the most important dance master of the day in both Paris and Russia. Saint-Léon’s influence secured this work production in the French capital, and it was perhaps for this occasion that Minkus accompanied Saint-Léon to Paris to mount the work at the Académie Royale de Musique. Reduced to two acts, and re-christened Néméa, ou l’Amour vengé (with a scenario adapted by Henri Meilhac & Ludovic Halévy), the ballet was performed at the Paris Opéra on 11 July 1864, with considerable success (again with Marfa Muravyeva, and with Eugénie Fiocre as Cupid). It remained in the repertoire for seven years, attaining 53 performances by 1871. Théophile Gautier remarked on the atmospheric quality of Minkus’s music, its “haunting, dreamy quality.” Roqueplan singled out Saint-Léon's choreography for its “imagination and originality, his ability to handle masses.” Some of the Airs de Ballet were almost immediately published by Henri Hegel (1865), and are reproduced here. By now Minkus was becoming known internationally. So when five years later the Paris Opéra ordered a new grand ballet from Saint-Léon to a libretto by Charles Nuitter, Saint-Léon involved Minkus in the project, securing for him a hand in the composition of the first and fourth scenes of this new work, La Source. The other two scenes were entrusted to the young Léo Delibes, thirty at the time, who had drawn favourable attention to himself in the preparation of the ballet music for the première of Meyerbeer’s posthumous L’Africaine in 1865. The first performance of La Source on 12 November 1866 was great success for Delibes, whose bold and colourful composition was praised at the expense of Minkus’s subtler contribution. Saint-Léon immediately began planning another work with Nuitter and Delibes, and one which would crown the young French’s composer’s success with triumph, Coppélia. Saint-Léon nevertheless continued to work with Minkus, despite his busy engagements in Paris. The choreographer’s greatest ballet for Russia was his work with Cesare Pugni, Koniok-Gorbunok (The Little Humpbacked Horse) (1864), based on a Russian fairytale. He now tapped into the same folk material in a new work with Minkus, Zolotaya rybka (The Golden Fish), based on Alexander Pushkin’s Legend of the fisher and the little fish. On 20 November 1866, for the celebration of the Tsarevitch’s wedding, Saint-Léon oversaw the production of a one-act version of this new ballet, Le Poisson doré, at the Bolshoi Kamenny Theater in St Petersburg. The work was then developed as a three-act ballet for the same theater a year later (8 October 1867). Minkus’s music was very well received. As with La Source, it was carefully adapted in form and mood to the scenario, remarkable for its panache and beautiful writing for solo instruments (violin, flute, cello, cornet), and for reflecting the nature of the fairytale scenario in the appropriation of national folk styles (Polish, Kazak, Cossack). The score was considered worthy of full publication in piano reduction by the St Petersburg house of Stellowsky (c. 1870), and is reproduced here. The last collaboration between Minkus and Saint-Léon followed two years after that, a partial arrangement of La Source, given in St Petersburg as Liliya (Le Lys) in 1869.
Book Synopsis Ludwig Minkus and Léo Delibes by : Robert Ignatius Letellier
Download or read book Ludwig Minkus and Léo Delibes written by Robert Ignatius Letellier and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2010-02-19 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume reproduces the piano score of the ballet La Source, a joint composition by Ludwig Minkus and Léo Delibes. After the success of Néméa (1864), the Paris Opéra ordered a new grand ballet from the famous choreographer Arthur Saint-Léon to a libretto based on a Persian legend by Charles Nuitter. Saint-Léon involved his musical collaborator in St Petersburg, Ludwig Minkus, in the project, securing for him a hand in the composition of the first and fourth scenes of the of this new work, La Source, a fantastic ballet in three acts. The composition of the other two scenes (the second and third) were entrusted to the young, unknown Léo Delibes, thirty at the time, who had drawn favourable attention to himself in the preparation of the ballet music for the première of Meyerbeer’s posthumous L’Africaine in 1865. The first performance of La Source was on 12 November 1866 at the Théatre Impérial de l’Opéra, with the principal dancers Guglielmina Salvioni (Naila), Eugénie Fiocre (Nouredda) and Louis Mérante (Djemil). The ballet as a whole was very successful, with 73 performances until 1876. Saint-Léon immediately began planning another work with Nuitter and Delibes—Coppélia—one which would crown the young French’s composer’s success with triumph. This was premiered on 25 May 1870, the last of Saint-Léon’s work, and the last great success of the French Romantic ballet at the Salle Le Peletier before the crisis of the Franco-Prussian War, and the end of the Second Empire. As regards the music of La Source, Delibes’s contribution to the score, his first essay at ballet music, was noted for its vigour and many delightful melodies. In Jouvin’s opinion, his music was “vivacious and especially lively,” and contrasted effectively with the plaintive melodies of Minkus. “The style of the two composers,” observed the critic of La France Musicale (18 November 1866), “is essentially different and easily recognizable at a first hearing. M. Minkus's music has a vague, indolent, and melancholic character, full of grace and languor. That of M. Delibes, fresher and more rhythmic, is much more complicated in orchestration, and sometimes a little more ordinary. I should add that this difference in style is perfectly justified by the: contrasting character of the two parts of the ballet.”
Book Synopsis He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box and Other Plays by : Adrienne Kennedy
Download or read book He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box and Other Plays written by Adrienne Kennedy and published by Theatre Communications Group. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In her first new work in a decade, Adrienne Kennedy journeys into Georgia and New York City in the 1940s to lay bare the devastating effects of segregation and its aftermath. The story of a doomed interracial love affair unfolds through fragmented pieces--letters, recollections from family members, songs from the time--to present a multifaceted view of our cultural history that resists simple interpretation. This volume also includes Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side and Mom, How Did You Meet The Beatles?
Book Synopsis Stories from the City of God by : Pier Paolo Pasolini
Download or read book Stories from the City of God written by Pier Paolo Pasolini and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2019-05-21 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in paperback, a collection of the legendary filmmaker's short fiction and nonfiction from 1950 to 1966, in which we see the machinations of the creative mind in post-World War II Rome. In a portrait of the city at once poignant and intimate, we find artistic witness to the customs, dialect, squalor, and beauty of the ancient imperial capital that has succumbed to modern warfare, marginalization, and mass culture. The sketches portray the impoverished masses that Pasolini calls "the sub-proletariat," those who live under Third World conditions and for whom simple pleasures, such as a blue sweater in a storefront window, are completely out of reach. Pasolini's art develops throughout the works collected here, from his early lyricism to tragicomic outlines for screenplays, and finally to the maturation of his Neo-realism in eight chronicles on the shantytowns of Rome. The pieces in this collection were all published in Italian journals and newspapers, and then later edited by Walter Siti in the original Italian edition.
Book Synopsis From Petipa to Balanchine by : Tim Scholl
Download or read book From Petipa to Balanchine written by Tim Scholl and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engaging and provocative re-evaluation of ballet's development from the 1880s to the middle of the twentieth century.
Book Synopsis The Cambridge Companion to Ballet by : Marion Kant
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Ballet written by Marion Kant and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-06-07 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays by international writers on the evolution of ballet.
Download or read book Anna Pavlova written by Jane Pritchard and published by Booth-Clibborn. This book was released on 2013-03-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anna Pavlova is a legendary ballerina. Originally from the Imperial Russian Ballet, she performed to great acclaim in Europe for various impresarios at the beginning of the 20th century including Sergei Diaghalev creator of the famous Ballets Russes. Anna Pavlova formed her own dance company in 1912 and based herself in London at Ivy House, Hampstead This book celebrates the centenary of Anna Pavlova's residency at Ivy House, Hampstead, which became her home base from 1912 until her death in 1931. The book presents a lively outline of her career, focusing on her contribution to the ballet scene in Britain.
Book Synopsis Daniels' Orchestral Music by : David Daniels
Download or read book Daniels' Orchestral Music written by David Daniels and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-06-30 with total page 1464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Daniels’ Orchestral Music is the gold standard for all orchestral professionals—from conductors, librarians, programmers, students, administrators, and publishers, to even instructors—seeking to research and plan an orchestral program, whether for a single concert or a full season. This sixth edition, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the original edition, has the largest increase in entries for a new edition of Orchestral Music: 65% more works (roughly 14,050 total) and 85% more composers (2,202 total) compared to the fifth edition. Composition details are gleaned from personal inspection of scores by orchestral conductors, making it a reliable one-stop resource for repertoire. Users will find all the familiar and useful features of the fifth edition as well as significant updates and corrections. Works are organized alphabetically by composer and title, containing information on duration, instrumentation, date of composition, publication, movements, and special accommodations if any. Individual appendices make it easy to browse works with chorus, solo voices, or solo instruments. Other appendices list orchestral works by instrumentation and duration, as well as works intended for youth concerts. Also included are significant anniversaries of composers, composer groups for thematic programming, a title index, an introduction to Nieweg charts, essential bibliography, internet sources, institutions and organizations, and a directory of publishers necessary for the orchestra professional. This trusted work used around the globe is a must-have for orchestral professionals, whether conductors or orchestra librarians, administrators involved in artistic planning, music students considering orchestral conducting, authors of program notes, publishers and music dealers, and instructors of conducting.
Book Synopsis Quixote: The Novel and the World by : Ilan Stavans
Download or read book Quixote: The Novel and the World written by Ilan Stavans and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-09-08 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking cultural history of the most influential, most frequently translated, and most imitated novel in the world. The year 2015 marks the four hundredth anniversary of the publication of the complete Don Quixote of La Mancha—an ageless masterpiece that has proven unusually fertile and endlessly adaptable. Flaubert was inspired to turn Emma Bovary into “a knight in skirts.” Freud studied Quixote’s psyche. Mark Twain was fascinated by it, as were Kafka, Picasso, Nabokov, Borges, and Orson Welles. The novel has spawned ballets and operas, poems and plays, movies and video games, and even shapes the identities of entire nations. Spain uses it as a sort of constitution and travel guide; and the Americas were conquered, then sought their independence, with the knight as a role model. In Quixote, Ilan Stavans, one of today’s preeminent cultural commentators, explores these many manifestations. Training his eye on the tumultuous struggle between logic and dreams, he reveals the ways in which a work of literature is a living thing that influences and is influenced by the world around it.
Book Synopsis La Vivandiere Pas de Six by : Ann Hutchinson Guest
Download or read book La Vivandiere Pas de Six written by Ann Hutchinson Guest and published by Noverre Press. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Pas de Six from La Vivandiere is the only ballet preserved intact from the glorious period of the Romantic Ballet. Because it was recorded in detail by the choreographer Arthur Saint-Leon in his own dance notation system it could be revived faithfully for audiences to enjoy and students and scholars to study. The historical background of the piece - the period, the choreography, the style - has been provided by world renowned ballet historian Ivor Guest. The Study and Performance Notes which provide a guide in studying and reviving the ballet are the result of productions of the work for professional companies. Publication of the ballet in Labanotation, the contemporary dance notation system, makes the choreography accessible internationally to researchers, students, teachers and dancers. While the steps are technically challenging, the ballet is an excellent piece for students to dance, thereby gaining insight into the Romantic Ballet style.
Book Synopsis Bolshoi Confidential: Secrets of the Russian Ballet from the Rule of the Tsars to Today by : Simon Morrison
Download or read book Bolshoi Confidential: Secrets of the Russian Ballet from the Rule of the Tsars to Today written by Simon Morrison and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2016-10-11 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this “incredibly rich” (New York Times) definitive history of the Bolshoi Ballet, visionary performances onstage compete with political machinations backstage. A critical triumph, Simon Morrison’s “sweeping and authoritative” (Guardian) work, Bolshoi Confidential, details the Bolshoi Ballet’s magnificent history from its earliest tumults to recent scandals. On January 17, 2013, a hooded assailant hurled acid into the face of the artistic director, making international headlines. A lead soloist, enraged by institutional power struggles, later confessed to masterminding the crime. Morrison gives the shocking violence context, describing the ballet as a crucible of art and politics beginning with the disreputable inception of the theater in 1776, through the era of imperial rule, the chaos of revolution, the oppressive Soviet years, and the Bolshoi’s recent $680 million renovation. With vibrant detail including “sex scandals, double-suicide pacts, bribery, arson, executions, prostitution rings, embezzlement, starving orphans, [and] dead cats in lieu of flowers” (New Republic), Morrison makes clear that the history of the Bolshoi Ballet mirrors that of Russia itself.
