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In Reply to: RE: Tchaikovsky Nutcracker via Gergiev & Marinsky Ballet on Blu Ray posted by John C. - Aussie on March 30, 2015 at 18:32:59
I don't think I've seen the one you have, but it's bound to be an improvement on that earlier (2008) performance, which was damaged by the introduction of Eurotrash staging elements. (You would think that if one area of the world would be immune from the sickness of Eurotrash stagings, it would be Russia - but apparently Gergiev thinks otherwise.) That earlier performance featured such "innovations" as zombie children dancing near the end of Waltz of the Snowflakes (with the Snowflakes costumed in black of course!), and Clara/Marie almost freezing to death. I jettisoned that one a couple of years ago, and I think the only blu-ray of The Nutcracker I have now is the Bolshoi performance of the Yuri Grigorovich choreography, released in 2012 - a kind of a slimmed down approach (in terms of number of dancers on stage for many of the numbers), but still far more faithful to the story than that earlier Mariinsky blu-ray. Here's that earlier Mariinsky cover, followed by the latest Bolshoi:
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John
What can be more subjective than music? It reflects our individual tastes, says he enjoying 13,000+ albums on a Meridian Sooloos Server.
Well there you go - that IS the version here and I must have been asleep to be unaware of the "Eurotrash" elements you mention because none of us objected!!!
The cover I showed in the original post was the only one I could find on the net (being too lazy to scan the one here) so I used it, assuming it was the same performance, but maybe not.
I'm in tune with most of your objections to Eurotrash with operas but failed to see anything weird about the performance we looked at last night. After all, most of the Nutcracker is a fantasy dream anyway! And we were impressed with the snow scene!!
Bottom line is we all have different tastes. But I respect your opinions Chris - maybe have another look at it and see if you still feel that way?
Cheers
John
What can be more subjective than music? It reflects our individual tastes, says he enjoying 13,000+ albums on a Meridian Sooloos Server.
The Eurotrash performance that I jettisoned has a different cast from the one whose cover you showed - for instance, Irina Golub danced the role of Marie/Clara/Masha in the earlier issued performance (i.e., the one with the Eurotrash elements), whereas Alina Somova danced that role in the performance whose cover you showed. More importantly, the two productions are DIFFERENT from each other - the one that Somova dances in is much more traditional.I suppose this is kind of a threshold thing - how much monkeying around with the original concept is each of us willing to tolerate before we throw up our hands and say, "The heck with it!". I suspect I would not have been happy with the original Sugar Plum Fairy, Antonietta Dell'Era, who was described by contemporaneous critics as "corpulent" and "pudgy"! (BTW, wasn't there a recent ballerina in this role who, as one critic observed, looked as if she had been eating too many sugar plums herself! - on reflection, I think maybe she was just trying to be HIP!) So the change to more willowy Sugar Plum Fairies is at least one revamp to the original concept that I willingly accept. ;-)
BTW, so you liked the zombie kids? ;-)
Edits: 03/30/15 03/30/15 03/31/15
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