He does not part with his loved ones: Eifman brought the "Red Giselle" to Moscow
The Boris Eifman St. Petersburg Ballet Theater has brought the Red Giselle to the capital. The troupe presented the premiere of a radically reinterpreted version of the world-famous play on the stage of the K.S. Stanislavsky and V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater at the Open Art Festival "Cherry Forest". The biography of the unsurpassed ballerina Olga Spesivtseva, who went from the Mariinsky stage to the madhouse in exile, was told in the language of dance. Theatergoers, beau monde and stars rushed to the premiere. Izvestia also visited MAMT.
The return of "Red Giselle"
The arrival of Eifman's troupe in Moscow always causes a stir. Three nights in a row, full houses are normal. Tickets were sold out a month ago, although it was only in the summer that the St. Petersburg theater presented its hits - the ballets "Russian Hamlet" and "Crime and Punishment" — on the Bolshoi stage. Now Eifman has returned with a new performance to the music of Tchaikovsky, Schnittke and Bizet, telling about the fate of the Russian ballerina Olga Spesivtseva, who was nicknamed Red Giselle abroad. The Russian audience is well aware of Alexey Uchitel's debut film about her called "Giselle Mania", where she was played by Galina Tyunina.
The premiere took place within the framework of the Cherry Orchard Festival. This event is fashionable and glamorous. Socialites, politicians, athletes, and artists could be found in the lobby. Leonid Yarmolnik, Sergey Filin, Georgi Smilevsky, choreographer Gediminas Taranda, Olympic champion Svetlana Khorkina, lawyer Mikhail Barshchevsky, former head of the Bolshoi Theater Vladimir Urin, director of the Operetta Theater Vladimir Tartakovsky, and TV presenter Kirill Kleimenov were seen.
As Eifman says, performances are becoming obsolete. And he doesn't want to show them as museum relics. The viewer should see an accurate reflection of the actual technical, plastic and professional capabilities of his theater. But if some performances become history, then "Red Giselle" got a lucky ticket: she was waiting for a rebirth. The legendary 1997 production traveled halfway around the world. And in 2025, "Red Giselle" returned to the repertoire of the theater, only in a new reading. An absolutely original, new ballet.
— There are heroes that you don't want to part with, — says Boris Eifman. — The play tells about the tragic fate of the greatest ballerina of the twentieth century Olga Spesivtseva. And I wanted the play to be dedicated to her and those actors who left the stage, but remained in the audience's memory, in history for centuries.
Go crazy
The prima ballerina lived 96 years. Her life was full of both bright events and scary ones. In 1913, Olga Spesivtseva became part of the Imperial Ballet Company and made her debut on the Mariinsky stage. Mikhail Fokin, the founder of classical romantic ballet, noticed her and invited her to America. But she preferred Paris, where Sergei Diaghilev organized the "Russian Seasons". The entrepreneur was putting together his own ballet. Olga Spesivtseva and Anna Pavlova were his primates. But the first one remained the prima of the Mariinsky Theatre until 1924. Spesivtseva was considered an unsurpassed Giselle. As contemporaries recall, Olga Spesivtseva's heroine was fragile, defenseless, as if from another world.
In 1924, Spesivtseva emigrated to France. Her husband Boris Kaplun, who was a member of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, helped her in this. He was later shot. The ballerina worked with Fokine, Balanchine, Lifar, Nijinsky, and was the prima ballerina of the Grand Opera. And in 1939 she moved to the USA. Life didn't work out there. There were signs of mental illness. She spent 20 years in a hospital. She managed to recover, but Olga Spesivtseva was done with ballet. She lived a long life in a boarding house of a charitable foundation. She died in 1991, and a few years later Boris Eifman staged "Red Giselle" in memory of the great ballerina.
"She said so herself.": "I'm so immersed in this role that it's getting harder and harder for me to return to real life." And then one day she didn't come back," Boris Eifman says. — For me, insanity is not a disease, but some kind of special human world that we cannot know.
The fate of Giselle has also become the fate of a ballerina, whose name is inextricably linked with the heroine of the ballet by Adolphe Adam.
The Red Commissioner and the flying Head
In Eifman's production, the characters don't have names, they're just a Ballerina, a Commissar, a Teacher, a Partner. The choreographer entrusted the main part to the leading soloist of his ballet, Victoria Mokrousova.
Her character begins her journey in a ballet class, where, among all the students, she is singled out by a Teacher (Sergey Volobuyev). He's the one who takes her to the stage of the Imperial Theater. There the Bolshevik leaders notice her: the revolutionaries reject bourgeois art, but they cannot help but admire the ballerina. A new love also comes in the person of the Commissioner's patron (Igor Subbotin). And now the Ballerina is already performing for workers and peasants. The teacher challenges the Commissioner, and the incredible dance-fighting scene of the duel between the two rivals ends with the unconditional victory of the new government. But it's too early for the Commissioner to celebrate the victory.
Victoria Mokrousova, the performer of the main role
— The most important moment in the play is when her husband helps her leave her homeland at the cost of his life: she runs to the steamer with a suitcase, and he is killed, — says Victoria Mokrousova.
The Ballerina gets a Partner abroad (Philip Arzhanov). This is the prototype of Serge Lifar. They dance together in the ballet "Giselle" by Adana, but they are not destined to be together off stage. One of the scary scenes is the Ballerina's madness. She went crazy after being rejected by her Partner. And now she can only fantasize how she kisses and hugs his head. The scene is technically difficult: the dancer is hidden at the back of the stage behind black curtain panels. Only the head hovers over the stage, then falling, then soaring up, escaping from the embrace of Red Giselle.
A ray of light in the dark realm
The volume of scenery created by the set designers is amazing in the performance. Vyacheslav Okunev reproduced literally the stage and the Mariinsky Auditorium on the MAMT stage. The boxes sparkle with gold, the chandelier plays with lights. These decorations are replaced by Komsomol construction sites, ballet classes, Parisian cabarets, the stage of the Grand Opera, the interiors of a psychiatric hospital and even a scaffold.
Boris Eifman during the bows
The grandiose light score was created by Gleb Filshtinsky and Boris Eifman. The light is fascinating, it creates mystery, it strikes fear, it terrifies. He is another full-fledged hero of this play. All the features of the MAMT equipment are used. Boris Eifman believes that next year his troupe will find its own building and will shine its spotlights there. In the meantime, the next screenings of "Red Giselle" will take place on October 17 and 18 at the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
