The Ballets of Maurice Ravel

Creation and Interpretation

Deborah Mawer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351546034
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Maurice Ravel, as composer and scenario writer, collaborated with some of the greatest ballet directors, choreographers, designers and dancers of his time, including Diaghilev, Ida Rubinstein, Benois and Nijinsky. In this book, the first study dedicated to Ravel's ballets, Deborah Mawer explores these relationships and argues that ballet music should not be regarded in isolation from its associated arts. Indeed, Ravel's views on ballet and other stage works privilege a synthesized aesthetic. The first chapter establishes a historical and critical context for Ravel's scores, engaging en route with multimedia theory. Six main ballets from Daphnis et Chlo hrough to Bol are considered holistically alongside themes such as childhood fantasy, waltzing and neoclassicism. Each work is examined in terms of its evolution, premiere, critical reception and reinterpretation through to the present; new findings result from primary-source research, undertaken especially in Paris. The final chapter discusses the reasons for Ravel's collaborations and the strengths and weaknesses of his interpersonal relations. Mawer emphasizes the importance of the performative dimension in realizing Ravel's achievement, and proposes that the composer's large-scale oeuvre can, in a sense, be viewed as a balletic undertaking. In so doing, this book adds significantly to current research interest in artistic production and interplay in early twentieth-century Paris.

Chapter 1

Cultural and critical backdrop

In collaboration with some of the greatest contemporary ballet directors, choreographers, dancers and designers, Maurice Ravel provided musical scores, plus certain scenarios, for a broad range of ballets. These ballets offer a distinct and sizeable contribution to the audio-visual feast consumed in Paris both before and after the First World War, essentially across the years 1909-29, which mirrors the existence of the Ballets Russes itself. This varied repertory includes Ma Mère l’Oye (Mother Goose), Valses nobles et sentimentales (retitled Adélaïde ou Le Langage des fleurs), Daphnis et Chloé, Alborada del gracioso, Le Tombeau de Couperin, La Valse, L’Enfant et les sortilèges (an opera-ballet), ‘Fanfare’ for L’Eventail de Jeanne and Boléro.

With these Ravel ballets as its focus, this book seeks to view ballet ideally as a composite artistic genre whose status despite the challenges, even compromises, of collaboration should be upheld alongside that of opera. Puns aside, ballet should not be seen as a ‘Cinderella’ art-form. Its lack of verbalized text does not hinder the development of detailed scenarios, and can increase artistic freedom, so that one balletic facet may complement, and sometimes create judicious tension with, another. The whole, in theory at least, should be greater than the sum of its parts: to study or experience ballet music as an abstracted symphonic suite is to miss the point. Nonetheless, questions of musical autonomy versus collaborative issues are highly germane, and are aired below.

Historical context and collaborative ballet network

In the ballet world of the earlier nineteenth century France had been centre stage, thanks particularly to Marie Taglioni (1804-84) who made her Paris Opéra début in 1827; contemporaneously, ballet became interpolated within operatic productions. Taglioni was reputedly the first to utilize work sur les pointes as an expressive device. Ironically, in terms of French identity, this Parisian star was half-Italian and half-Swedish, and her greatest glory was the Scottish-inspired tragedy La Sylphide,¹ choreographed by her father and premiered at the Opéra on 12 March 1832, which came to symbolize Romantic ballet.² In turn, the supernatural story staples of French Romantic ballet, with their simulated flights of fairies and sylphs, are at some level echoed in Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortilèges. Another hugely popular work, still a mainstay of current repertory, was the tragic Giselle premiered on 28 June 1841, with music by Adolphe Charles Adam to a scenario by Théophile Gautier. It was closely tailored to the choreographic requirements of Jules Perrot and Jean Coralli, who sought to showcase the talents of Carlotta Grisi (while Romantic ballet adored and promoted the ballerina, standards of male dancing lagged behind). By the late 1840s, the heyday was already over and a slow decline ensued, even if this was halted temporarily by the comedy Coppélia, to the music of Léo Delibes and choreography of Arthur Saint-Léon, premiered on 25 May 1870.³

As France’s balletic fortunes were waning, those of Russia were in the ascendant. Indeed, Taglioni and La Sylphide had appeared in St Petersburg by 1837, with Fanny Elssler soon after. Other French citizens chose to develop their careers in a Russia that was briefly culturally sympathetic and distant from European unrest epitomized by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, with Perrot and Saint-Léon bringing productions to St Petersburg. The greatest French émigré was arguably Marius Petipa (1818-1910),⁴ whose brother had first danced Albrecht in Giselle. Petipa was hugely influential in his long-held appointment at the Maryinsky from 1869, formulating his own set principles that favoured lavish and intricate large-scale constructions: complex plots, multiple scene changes and magnifi-cent costumes. The prima ballerina, usually imported, still constituted the focal point, with fixed formulae for solos, pas de deux, and the corps de ballet in their national dances. It was Petipa who choreographed to great acclaim Tchaikovsky’s La Belle au bois dormant (The Sleeping Beauty) Op. 66 (1888-9),⁵ a ballet which launched the celebrated teacher Enrico Cecchetti (1850-1928) as the Bluebird. This work, premiered at the Maryinsky in 1890, with a young Igor Stravinsky reputedly present, was amongst the first by a composer of serious orchestral music, a tradition that Ravel would continue in France. Other Petipa highlights included Don Quixote (1869) and La Bayadère (1877), both to music of Léon Minkus. This latter ballet explored exotic mélange based upon an Indian tale of a warrior and temple dancer, and was a choreographic tour de force. Additionally, the Hungarian-inspired Raymonda, to Alexander Glazunov’s score, was premiered in 1898.

And so Russia, having benefited from French expertise, definitely had the edge, although Petipa’s ideas themselves became dated. While musical quality improved, the plots lacked dramatic unity, with the corps de ballet remaining ‘outside’, and the dancing leaving much scope for increased expression and imagination. But nowhere was the problem of conservative, formulaic ballet more acute than in France. Fundamental change was needed to espouse a forward-looking aesthetic that embraced modernism – a ballet fit for the twentieth century. Consequently, the stage was most appropriately set for a group of dynamic Russian émigrés who sought the artistic freedom,⁶ opportunities and cultural cachet of Paris just after the findesiècle. And thus Franco-Russian cross-fertilization worked in reverse.

Cue the dynamic but ruthless impresario Serge Diaghilev (1872–1929), who in creating the Ballets Russes became a catalyst for ballets by Stravinsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Reynaldo Hahn, Ravel, Prokofiev, Erik Satie, Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud and many others in the first two decades of the twentieth century.⁷ Diaghilev had also been the founder of a magazine entitled Mir Iskusstva (The World of Art), which acted as a vehicle across 1898-1904 to publicize avant-garde views on ballet in Russia, including his own ‘Complicated questions’ about artistic aesthetics. Joint editorship of the magazine was assumed by Diaghilev, Léon Bakst (1866–1924) and Alexandre Benois (1870–1960). Bakst, the pseudonym of Lev Rosenberg of Jewish origin, was to become famous for his astonishingly prolific, eclectic Russian designs, contributing half of the entire sets and costumes for the prewar Paris seasons, as well as being active in producing scenarios.⁸ As Robert Hansen has commented, ‘In the public imagination no designer was more strongly associated with the Ballets Russes.’⁹ Additionally, Bakst acted as a teacher, in 1906 setting up a small art school that numbered among its pupils the young Marc Chagall who, fifty years on, would also be involved with Ravel’s music. Meanwhile Benois, the spokesperson for Mir Iskusstva, was another highly respected painter, art historian and writer,¹⁰ especially sensitive to music. He was convinced that ‘it was the music which provided ballet with its centre of gravity. The moment had arrived when one listened to the music and, in listening to it, derived an additional pleasure from seeing it … this is the mission of ballet.’¹¹

Michel (Mikhail) Fokine (1880-1942), a product of the Imperial Ballet, also came to the fore as a result of his ‘liberating’ reformist views.¹² He was significant as a choreographer, dancer and writer, publishing memoirs and articles of a manifesto nature. He worked too as a teacher, including among his pupils in Stockholm around 1913 the young Jean Börlin, who would later choreograph Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin. Like Benois, Fokine was very interested in music and benefited from musical training. His main balletic creed may be summarized as seeking a stylistic flexibility tailored to thematic requirements and period; balletic movement rather than mimed story-telling should communicate dramatic expression and the corps de ballet should play an integral part. (For detail, see Chapter 3.)

In Paris, although the Opéra kept a smallish company, indigenous ballet no longer reflected the golden age of Giselle; Diaghilev neatly seized on the West’s growing fascination with the ‘East’ – the exoticism of the Russian Steppes – by persuading Anna Pavlova (1881-1931), Tamara Karsavina (1885-1976), Vaslav Nijinsky (1888-1950), his younger sister Bronislava Nijinska (1891-1972) and Fokine to showcase their talents. On 18 May 1909, inventive dances from Borodin’s Prince Igor and Tcherepnin’s Le Pavillon d’Armide first performed to a most receptive public, especially impressed by the male dancers’ technique, led to Diaghilev’s establishment of a permanent touring company, starring Karsavina and Nijinsky. As premier danseur, Nijinsky became legendary for gravity-defying leaps, but his career ended early with a tragic descent into mental illness.¹³

Amongst early productions was the beautiful Fokine/Benois Les Sylphides, previously choreographed in St Petersburg as Chopiniana, which took up where Romantic ‘ballet blanc’, with full-length white net skirts, had left off, except that it was innovatively plotless. This work’s re-branding sought to outdo its nineteenth-century referent, La Sylphide. A little later, Rimsky-Korsakov’s exotic Shéhérazade,¹⁴ Stravinsky’s L’Oiseau de feu (The Firebird) and Petrushka, with Fokine and Benois, strongly affected Ravel who had already been approached amongst the first major Western composers to provide the score for Daphnis et Chloé – one of several Greek projects, inspired ultimately by Isadora Duncan (1878-1927), that also included Cléopâtre and Narcisse. And so Ravel came into contact with the legendary Ballets Russes, this powerhouse of theatrical design and forward-looking choreography. The troupe’s defining achievements occurred across 1912-13: Nijinsky’s ground-breaking choreography for Debussy’s Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un faune whose masturbatory gestures, even if exaggerated by the press, scandalized its spectators, followed by the violently awesome Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring),¹⁵ which sparked a public riot during its premiere at the new Théâtre des Champs-Elysées on 29 May 1913. (For Ravel’s views, see p. 20 below.)

Ballet was no longer boring, but Diaghilev’s volatility meant that in parallel with unprecedented success ran fundamental ruction. Fokine walked out after the strife of Daphnis and was appointed Maître de Ballet of the Stockholm Royal Opera, producing there his Les Sylphides, Shéhérazade and Cléopâtre. Nijinsky too set up his own breakaway troupe in 1914, for which Ravel produced an orchestration of Schumann’s Carnaval and a reorchestration of Les Sylphides. The incorporation of new blood included the choreographer Léonide Massine (1896-1979), who was involved in the triumphs of Satie’s Parade (1917), Stravinsky’s Pulcinella (1920) and Prokofiev’s Le Pas d’acier (1927).

Through the 1920s, the Ballets Russes inevitably lost some prewar iconoclasm; there were fewer innovations and more revivals. Witness the production of Tchaikovsky’s La Belle au bois dormant at the Alhambra Theatre, London in November 1921, although the move was arguably innovative in introducing this extended work to a Western audience. Equally, one should not oversimplify, since June 1923 was still to see Stravinsky’s astoundingly percussive and rhythmic Les Noces, choreographed in constructivist fashion by Nijinska (see Chapter 5). Other Nijinska creations included Stravinsky’s Renard (1922), Poulenc’s Les Biches and Milhaud’s zany divertissement Le Train bleu (1924), while the Stravinsky/Balanchine Apollon Mus...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half title
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Note on the text
• Introduction
• 1 Cultural and critical backdrop
• 2 Childhood fantasy and exoticism: Ma Mère l’Oye and L’Enfant
• 3 Greekness and myth in Daphnis et Chloé
• 4 Essays on the waltz I: Adélaïde ou le langage des fleurs (Valses nobles)
• 5 Essays on the waltz II: La Valse and epilogue
• 6 Neoclassical divertissements: Le Tombeau de Couperin and ‘Fanfare’ from L’Eventail de Jeanne
• 7 Spain, machines and sexuality: Boléro
• 8 ‘Danse générale’: Ravel’s œuvre as ballet
• Appendix Overviewing the feast: selected productions of Ravel’s ballets
• Select bibliography
• Index