The Vsevolozhsky Reforms

This chapter describes the arrival of Ivan Vsevolozhsky as director of the Imperial Theatres; Alexander III was a conservative and yet it was under his reign that the monopoly of the Imperial Theatres was dissolved. This brought about the emergence of commercial theatres, and with them, middlebrow entertainments, featuring virtuoso Italian ballet dancers. They also promulgated the féerie: a spectacular genre, emphasizing visual effects. The influence of the féerie and of Italian dancers on the Imperial Ballet and Petipa’s work is discussed, as are Vsevolozhsky’s reforms and his drive to elevate ballet music by introducing concert-hall composers, notably Tchaikovsky and Glazunov.

Ballet Wars Real and Imagined

This chapter starts with the arrival of Arthur Saint-Léon as first ballet master and Petipa’s appointment as his deputy. It describes the warring ballet fans, the Petipists and Muravevists, and their respective ballerinas, Maria Petipa and Marfa Muraveva, along with the enduring dichotomy in ballet between technical brilliance and graceful expressiveness. The rivalry between Petipa and Saint-Léon was probably imaginary, but Petipa’s focus on near-exclusive foreign or fantastical subject was not, and was part of the recurring question of Russian versus Western themes in Russian art. The chapter ends with an account of the end of the Petipas’ marriage and a profile of Petipa’s daughter, Marie Petipa, a popular dancer in the Imperial Ballet.

Big Music, Big Dance

This chapter deals with the Tchaikovsky and Glazunov collaborations and the late-flowering of Petipa’s genius, facilitated by Ivan Vsevolozhsky. At the age of seventy-two, Petipa created his greatest ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, and, with Lev Ivanov, Swan Lake and The Nutcracker. The often-asked question of whether he suppressed Ivanov’s talent gets a further airing, before moving on to Petipa’s penultimate big ballet, Raymonda, set to Glazunov’s first ballet score. For these ballets, Petipa made use of two more Italian dancers: Carlotta Brianza and, the greatest of all, Pierina Legnani. In 1899 Vsevolzhsky, who had written the Sleeping Beauty’s libretto and designed the costumes, was removed from his post and with his departure came the beginning of Petipa’s problems.

Overture

On 24 May 1847, I reached St Petersburg by ship, and since that time have been employed by the Imperial Theatre. Sixty years of service in one place, in one institution, is quite rare, and a destiny not granted to many mortals. 1 MARIUS PETIPA’S DESTINY, it is true, was exceptional, even if he was only one of many French artists and other foreigners who flocked to Russia because their services were in high demand. For more than a century and a half, Russia had been turning its gaze to the West, seeking to acquire the cultural apparatus that would help transform it into a modern world power. When Petipa arrived in St Petersburg he had the promise of a contract and the hope that he would make a career, if not a fortune, although foreign dancers were rewarded with higher pay than native Russians. He was twenty-nine, not so young for a dancer. In his suitcase were three scarves, packed by his anxious mother. ‘She was,’ he wrote, ‘very disturbed about the fate of my nose, which would have to bear the onslaught of frosts so severe that even the bears could hardly stand them.’...

Apotheosis

In recent times there has been a re-evaluation of artistic values in all areas of art, views on art have changed in many ways, new trends have appeared and the ballets of Petipa have, of course, receded into the background. But the merit of Petipa has not diminished at all, it will remain eternal in the annals of Russian choreography, which today has earned worldwide fame and universal recognition....

Enter Vladimir Teliakovsky

Chapter 10 records the arrival of Teliakovsky as the new director. Championing the new artistic ideas that were flourishing in Moscow, he wanted to bring these to sclerotic St Petersburg where the flop of Petipa’s last big ballet, The Magic Mirror, epitomized just how out of touch Petipa was. Teliakovsky saw Petipa as finished, ‘a squeezed lemon’, and set about pushing him out. The reforms in theatre design, as represented by Konstantin Korovin and Alexander Golovin, meant there was revolution inside the theatres, just as there was revolution outside on the streets, with the march on the Winter Palace in 1905. The political fervour spread to elements in the ballet company, who wanted more control and the return of Petipa. But he was too old; the chapter concludes with his death in 1910 and the many tributes to him.

At Home and at Work

After a description of Petipa’s home life and six children with his new partner, Liubov Savitskaya, chapter 7 continues the previous chapter’s subject of Petipa’s aesthetic. It examines his working methods, his dance language, the importance of the ballerina’s variation and her primacy in nineteenth-century ballet, to the point that women sometimes appeared en travesti. Petipa’s principal ballerina in the 1870s was Ekaterina Vazem, made prominent not only by her own talent, but by the decision not to invite foreign ballerinas. Although less important than the ballerina, the male dancer in Russia enjoyed more prominence than in the West. Even so, he was treated differently: where ballerinas fused the two components of dance and mime, for men they were often separated, the performer specializing in one or the other. Among the ballets, Mlada and its influence on La Bayadère are considered in detail. The chapter ends with Petipa’s ballet, Night and Day, for the coronation of Alexander III, following the assassination of Alexander II.

The Travelling Dancer

Focusing on Petipa’s professional life before his arrival in Russia, this chapter deals with his time in the French provincial theatres of Nantes and Bordeaux, describing the conditions there, listing his early ballets and roles, outlining the importance of national or folk dance on the ballet stage. It follow this with his adventures—on stage and off—in Spain; he fought a duel and eloped with a young Spanish noblewoman, events described in his memoirs that appear, according to the evidence, to have really happened. The chapter also touches upon two other members of the Petipa family: his brother Lucien, star of the Paris Opera; and his father Jean, an eminent ballet master, who briefly joined a company on tour to New York.

Questions of Style and Structure

The principle focus of chapter 6 is aesthetic, examining Petipa’s structures and devices; most of his big ballets fitted the same model started by The Pharaoh’s Daughter. As part of the tendency for ever-bigger scale and precedence of dance over narrative, Petipa used massed ensembles to great effect. He considered important the inclusion of national dance, but equally made recurring use of dream or vision sequences as classical-dance interludes. To conclude his ballets, he usually liked to present a tableau to bring a satisfying resolution. Don Quixote and King Candaules illustrate Petipa’s methods and are examined in detail. The chapter ends with Saint-Léon’s sudden death in Paris.

Looking Back, Moving Forward

After Petipa’s marriage to his first muse, Maria Surovshchikova, and the death in Russia of his father, Jean, chapter 4 travels back in time to trace Jean’s career as a ballet master in Marseilles and in Brussels at the Théâtre de la Monnaie. It describes Marius’s early family life, his siblings, and the impact of the Belgian Revolution. Returning to Russia, it looks at Petipa’s impact as a teacher and his choreographic beginnings in St Petersburg, which included the one-act Parisian Market. This is the ballet the Petipas took with them to show at the Paris Opera with Maria Petipa dancing, a season which triggered two law-suits, one of them involving Petipa’s old friend Perrot. There then follows an account of the circumstances around The Pharaoh’s Daughter, the big ballet that brought Petipa to prominence.