The story“In a Persian Market” is a piece of light classical music for orchestra with optional chorus by the English composer, conductor and pianist Albert Ketèbey who composed it in 1920. Subtitled Intermezzo Scene, it was published in 1921.Originally, it evoked exotic images of camel-drivers, jugglers, and snake-charmers. When it was first published in a version for piano, it was advertised as an “educational novelty.”
A synopsis of scenes by the composer mentions a caravan arriving, beggars, a princess carried by servants, jugglers, snake-charmers, and a caliph. After the princess and the caliph have left, a muezzin calls to prayer from a minaret. The caravan continues its journey, and the market becomes silent. The duration is around six minutes.
An opening march shares “exotic” intervals, A – B – flat – E, with the composer’s orientalintermezzo Wonga, used for the play Ye Gods in 1916. A chorus of beggars sings: ” Baksheesh, baksheesh Allah”; passers-by sing “Empshi” (“get away”). A romantic theme portrays the princess, similar to Stravinsky’s Firebird. Trumpets announce the caliph. The concluding section “Call to prayer” of 22 measures was added later.
The music was first announced in Musical Opinion in January 1921 as a piano piece, in a section “Educational novelties”. Half a year later, Bosworth printed the orchestral version.
In a Persian Market has been regarded as a work of orchestral impressionsm. The work has been used as theatre music for comic oriental scenes, used in sketches by Morecambe and Wise, and by The Two Ronnies, and also in schools as theatrical repertory.
The music:Arranger, sometime trumpeter and trombonist, and the leader of a band during the swing era, Larry Clinton recalled “In a Persian Market” from his childhood. But when he pondered how to approach this tune in the late 1930s, he had been immersed in the music of the swing era for several years. First, he wrote arrangements for the very successful Casa Loma band, then for Tommy Dorsey’s band, which in the late 1930s was a quite capable swing unit that played a wide variety of music. Clinton scored a number of hits for TD, including “The Dipsy Doodle,” and “Satan Takes a Holiday.” Bunny Berigan made a memorable recording of Clinton’s “A Study in Brown” in 1937. In late 1937, Clinton began leading his own band.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake was composed in 1875 after he received a commission from Vladimir Petrovich Begichev, the intendant of Moscow’s Russian Imperial Theatres. The ballet’s content is based on a Russian folktale, and over the course of two acts, tells the story of a princess turned into a swan. On March 4, 1877, Swan Lake premiered at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre.
The Original Production of Swan Lake
Much is unknown about the original production of Swan Lake – no notes, techniques, or instructions concerning the ballet were written down. What little information that could be found exists in a handful of letters and memos. Like The Nutcracker, Swan Lake was unsuccessful after its first year of performance. Conductors, dancers, and audiences alike thought Tchaikovsky’s music was far too complicated and the ballet dancers, in particular, had difficulty dancing to the music. The production’s original choreography by German ballet master, Julius Reisinger, was criticized harshly as uninspiring and unoriginal. It wasn’t until after Tchaikovsky’s death that Swan Lake was revived.
From 1871 to 1903, ballet’s most influential dancer, choreographer, and teacher, Marius Petipa held the position of Premier maître de ballet at the Russian Imperial Theatre. Thanks to his extensive research and reconstruction efforts, Petipa along with Lev Ivanov revived and revised Swan Lake in 1895. Performances of Swan Lake today, are likely to feature Petipa’s and Ivanov’s choreography.
The Meaning of the Swan
We do know that Tchaikovsky was granted a great deal of control over the story’s content. He and his colleagues both agreed that the swan represented womanhood in its purest form. The stories and legends of swan-maidens date as far back as ancient Greece; when the Greek god Apollos was born, flying swans circled above their heads. Legends of swan maidens can also be found in The Tales of the Thousand and One Nights, Sweet Mikhail Ivanovich the Rover and The Legend of the Children of Lir.
Pierina Legnani and Swan Lake
Swan Lake is known for its demanding technical skills all because of one extremely gifted ballerina, Pierina Legnani. She performed with such grace and discipline, the bar was quickly set in the minds of all who saw her. It’s no surprise that every ballerina to dance the part of Odette/Odile after Legnani was judged against her performance. Legnani performed 32 fouettes (a fast whipping turn on one foot) in a row – a move many ballerinas loath because of its extreme difficulty. However, the magnitude of skill required to dance the part of Odette in Swan Lake is why the ballet remains a favorite for many girls; its a goal, an aspiration to take center stage. The prestige that comes with performing Swan Lake flawlessly is invaluable and can turn ballerinas into stars overnight.
The Latin Institute of Music appointed Prima Ballerina Assoluta, Alicia Alonso, ”Star of the Century” for her work heading the Cuban ballet school.
Prima Ballerina Assoluta, Alicia Alonso
Alicia Alonso has been a true promoter of ‘the Latin cadence’ since classical dance, communicated the cultural institution with headquarters in Mexico.
The world’s most renowned Cuban artist will receive the award in February 2019, which was also given to musician Benny More.
Other stars such as Libertad Lamarque, Pedro Infante and Agustin Lara, among others, have also received this award.
Last December 21, Alonso celebrated her 98 birthday while the company she directs rehearses one of her favorite classics, El Lago de los Cisnes (Swam Lake), an unavoidable work in her career.
Together with the Fernando and Alberto Alonso, she founded the first professional ballet company in Cuba, 60 years ago, when this art was scarcely understood in Latin societies.
The Nutcracker is the cheesiest ballet of all time.
That may enrage some readers for whom attending The Nutcracker is a beloved Christmastime tradition. But as a former dancer who has performed or watched some version of the production for 18 years now, I can state it with certainty: The Nutcracker is the cheesiest ballet of all time.
Just try to recite the plot with a straight face: A young girl’s most cherished Christmas present, a nutcracker, comes alive, saves her by defeating an army of mice and their king, and then the pair travel together to a magical kingdom of sweets. Ballet really doesn’t get more gauche than that.
So why is it so popular in America? To answer that, we’ll have to go back in history a bit.
Thu Huệ is one of the solist in Nut Cracker – A wonder land version 2018 by VNOB
In 1844, French writer Alexandre Dumas adapted an earlier, darker version of The Nutcracker by E.T.A. Hoffman that had been intended strictly for adults, making it “happier and more appropriate for children.” The master of the Russian Imperial Ballet liked Dumas’ new, lighter version of the story and decided to transform it into a ballet, commissioning Peter Ilyitch Tschaikovsky to compose the score, now some of the most recognizable pieces of music in the world.
Many years later, in 1933, Russian-born choreographer George Balanchine was invited to the United States by a young arts patron who shared Balanchine’s conviction that high quality dance training was severely lacking in this country. They co-founded a ballet school, and in 1948, the now world famous New York City Ballet.
As a young dancer in Russia, Balanchine had performed several different roles in The Nutcracker — a mouse, the Nutcracker/Little Prince, and the Mouse King. When he was older, he danced the part of the jester, which involves gracefully wielding and jumping through a large hoop.
A scence in Nut Cracker – A wonder land version 2018 of VNOB
In 1954, Balanchine, who today is revered as the “Father of American Ballet,” decided to choreograph his own version of The Nutcracker. While a smart business decision, it was also a deeply emotional one. As Vanity Fairreports:
He was not just reaching back to the Mariinsky Nutcracker — which in Russia is performed throughout the year — but calling up the Christmases of his childhood, the sense of warmth and plenty that was embodied in a tree brimming with fruits and chocolates, glittering with tinsel and paper angels. “For me Christmas was something extraordinary,” Balanchine told the writer Solomon Volkov. “On Christmas night we had only the family at home: mother, auntie, and the children. And, of course, the Christmas tree. [Vanity Fair]
When asked by a donor years before if he would be interested in doing a popular abridgement of The Nutcracker, Balanchine answered, “If I do anything, it will be full-length and expensive.” That donor ultimately gave him $40,000 — $25,000 of which he spent on the giant tree that trademarks the New York City Ballet’s adaptation to this day. When he received pushback on the astronomical expense of the Christmas foliage, he simply responded, “The Nutcracker is the tree.”
Balanchine was right. The magic of The Nutcracker isn’t in the brilliance of the music or the excellence of the dancing. It’s the tree. It’s the juvenile warmth of the excited children in the party scene. It’s the familiarity of the whole production, even if you’re just seeing it for the first time. It’s the ballet’s ability to reach out and touch a part of you that triggers a warm holiday memory — that’s The Nutcracker.
Before The Nutcracker, the future of the New York City Ballet was still uncertain — and while many people were excited about the kind of “deeply poetic, uniquely plotless, modestly decorated ballets” Balanchine was known for making, the company did not possess the kind of “mainstream” following needed to consistently fill the house. The Nutcracker changed that.
Kids were another secret weapon.
There are a slew of parts for young dancers in The Nutcracker, and in many of Balanchine’s big productions. He believed it was important to have kids on stage for a few reasons. First, it helps children in the audience connect with the ballet. Second, very astutely, Balanchine reportedly surmised that “each child brings four people: mom, dad, sister, and aunt. Multiply this by all the children in the ballet and you have an audience.”
The first production, giant tree and all, ended up costing $80,000, but it was a blockbuster hit within the year. Since then, the ballet has been filmed and broadcast hundreds of times to people all over the world.
The NYCB performs The Nutcracker 47 times each season, but countless professional, amateur, and juvenile companies all over the country perform some version of the holiday special. The hundreds of adaptations have also given rise to new, even cheesier characters — like butchers, dancing pigs, and shepherdesses complete with lambs in the particular version I grew up with.
In many ways, The Nutcracker rallies against what a ballet is supposed to be — graceful and high-brow — (and truly there is nothing elegant about a sprightly young woman in pointe shoes wildly waving a fake plastic sword while dressed in a pear-shaped mouse costume) but that’s exactly the spirit from which The Nutcracker draws its enchantment.
There was no piano in Astor Piazzolla’s vacation home in Parque del Plata, Uruguay, where he spent the summer of 1968 working with the poet Horacio Ferrer on an operita, a “little opera,” so he composed on the bandoneón. The resulting work, “María de Buenos Aires,” is an intense cocktail of poetry, tango music and dance that is performed by a folk contralto, an operatic baritone and one male actor. But it’s the fourth voice — the bandoneón, the soulful South American accordion — that calls the shots and, to borrow Ferrer’s words, “burns in the back of your throat.”
It was appropriate, then — and a sign of the substantial Argentine contingent among the capacity audience in Le Poisson Rouge on Friday evening — that the applause at the end of Opera Hispánica’s production of “María” was loudest for the bandoneónist J P Jofre, who took his bow last. The production, directed by Beth Greenberg, was billed as the first fully staged one to be presented by Opera Hispánica, which is now in its third season. Most of the nightclub’s narrow stage, however, was taken up by the excellent nine-member band, conducted by Jorge Parodi, leaving the singers and dancers to stalk one another on just a few claustrophobic square feet of space.
But then, it’s in the nature of tango to express oversize passions with a rigorous economy of gesture. And despite its limitations, Opera Hispánica’s production was an elegant tribute to Piazzolla’s and Ferrer’s ability to combine music, movement and words of hallucinatory power in a concentrated format that is as pungent and stimulating as a cup of espresso.
The work is more of an oratorio than an opera. Written in the key of “Ay! minor” (Ferrer’s libretto is laced with musical puns), it’s a Passion play in which the central character, María, represents both Jesus and the Virgin. She sleepwalks through scenes of sexual violence, her burial and dreamlike confessions to a chorus of psychoanalysts until, resurrected, she gives birth to a new version of herself.
The concert “Autumn Melody 2018” by the Choir and Orchestra of Vietnam National Opera and Ballet (VNOB) already ended, but its beautiful melodies remain in the hearts of classical music enthusiasts. Hanoi Grapevine invites you to take a look back at some of the most brilliant moments from the show that marked the beginning of a romantic and serene Hanoian autumn.
