From Landet to Vaganova / Class Concert -4/4

Konstantin Sergeyev's gala for students of the Vaganova Academy of Russian ballet, performed in Japan in 1992.


The gala begins with a short prologue: Jean-Baptiste Landet giving a dancing lesson. Landet was the first 'Premier maître de ballet' of the newly established Imperial Ballet School, set up by the Empress Anna in the Winter Palace in 1738 with 12 boys & 12 girls, who were orphans & the children of palace servants.

Here, we see students move to the center, & we now see the product of over 3 centuries of ballet's evolution, all set to wonderful music that Riccardo Drigo composed for the works of Marius Petipa & others.


Notes on music -
1. "Pizzicato de la Fée des poupées"/Variation of Mathilde Kschessinska from "The Fairy Doll" pas de trois, 1903
2. "Variation de la Perle jaune / Variation of Mathilde Kschessinskaya" from Petipa's "La Perle", 1896.
3. "Grande valse brillante" from Petipa's "Les Caprices du Papillon", 1895

**Note - These pieces of music from the œuvre of Pugni, Minkus &/or Drigo are filled w/ fascinating bits of ballet history. When Tsar Nicholas II acceded to the Russian throne, his coronation was planned for 1896. A celebratory gala was arranged for performance at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, & among the pieces to be featured was a new ballet by Marius Petipa & the composer Riccardo Drigo called "La Perle". Among the dancers to participate in the new ballet was Mathilde Kschessinska, who had been mistress to the Tsar prior to his marriage to Alexandra Fydorovna. Because of the inappropriate nature of having the Tsar's former mistress perform in front of his new wife at the coronation gala, the Tsar's mother, Dowager Empress Marie Fyodorovna, crossed Kschessinka's name from the list of dancers who would be featured as soloists. Kschessinska then used her connections at court to reinstate herself in the gala. By then, all of the music & choreography for "La Perle" had been arranged, so Petipa & the composer Drigo were then required to create a new Pas de deux for Kschessinska & the great danseur Sergei Legat. The music featured at 1:57 in this clip is indeed Kschessinska's variation from this Pas de deux, "Variation de la Perle jaune".

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Vaganova
• School
• Class
• Concert
• Marius
• Petipa
• Konstantin
• Sergeyev
• Kirov
• Mariinsky
• St.
• Petersburg
• Russia
• Riccardo
• Drigo

[palubob]

The city was renamed Petrograd before the Bolsheviks took over because it was deemed to be more Slavic and less German than St. Petersburg. The meddling in government affairs by the tsar's then-unpopular German wife was becoming a big problem for the Government. She, by the way, was Queen Victoria's grand daughter.

[mrlopez2681]

speaking of Nicholas II, this performance includes music from "La perle", his spectacular coronation ballet of 1896.

[russianballetvideo]

Logic would say that since the communists changed the name from Petrograd to Leningrad, that they would have changed it back to Petrograd, but decided to use an earlier German name.

[mrlopez2681]

that is odd though, now that one thinks about it, that the city was not given its russian name of Petrograd after the fall of the Soviet government. Whatever the case, the Tsar and his family weren't even Russian by blood. By the 19th century, like all European royalty, & thanks to dynastic marriages, Nicholas & his family were just as German as the name of their capital. Thanks for the clarification on the date, I confused it with another performance.

[russianballetvideo]

Thanks for correcting me. I keep hearing Petrograd on Russian programs about pre-revolution, so I assumed that was how it was. So I guess that St Petersburg is correct, although i like Petrograd better.

[mrlopez2681]

the city was only known as Petrograd (officialy) from 1914 until 1924.

[russianballetvideo]

It is 1992. The older girls are 1992 graduates with the best students being Dudinskaya students. I suspect that this performance was in Leningrad and not Japan, but I do not know for certain. When Tsar Nicholas ruled, the city was known in Russian as Petrograd. Now that Russians want to remove all the communist names, they decide to call the city with a German name, St Petersburg. Call it Petrograd, like it was called 100 years ago and not the German name.

[MrGr4]

I am almost sure - it is not 1989. In 1989 school went to Amsterdam and Paris to have joint perfomance expirience with school of ABT (in Amsterdam) and school of Paris Opera (in Paris).

I think this is 1992.