Thus her interaction with Danila Korsuntsev was without any spark or real investment, something I will return to in my comment on his portrayal of Prince Sigfried. Every move was perfection, but without passion – as if all Lopatkina’s emotions had been locked away in the faultlessness of her motions. I think this was a very precise description of what I experienced. Someone wrote in a review I came across that her Odette seemed to be captured in a world of her own where no one could interact with her, not Prince Sigfried, not Rothbart and not the audience. It is not that she isn’t an accomplished dancer, technically she might even be better than Letestu, but she portrayed a very cold Odette. I didn’t much care for her as Odette, I must admit – finding myself slightly bored in the second act. As Odette/Odile is Uliana Lopatkina, idolized in and outside of Russia, and perhaps perceived as the Odette of our time. The Mariinsky Ballet (formerly known as Kirov) is as traditionalistic as one would expect of a Russian company staging Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake – a ballet russe if anything ever were. To present the casts in the order I watched the shows, I will begin with the Russian version.
#SWAN LAKE PARIS OPERA BALLET FULL#
The Russian, on the other hand, had an amazingly strong ensemble, led by the figure of the Jester and at its full strength in the party scenes, both in the first and the third act where the various solists really came across at their best. In my opinion, the French had the stronger main character portrayals, with Agnés Letestu as Odette/Odile, José Martinez as Prince Sigfried and, as mentioned above, Karl Paquette as Rothbart. Each on their own, they had their strong points. In this manner, the two performances seemed to accentuate the aspects that were weaker in the opposite version, and if mixed together, they would have formed one perfect “Swan Lake”. The acts taking place at the castle were warmer, close to carnevalesque in quality, in the Russian version, with a very prominent Jester as danced by Andrei Ivanov and a wonderful, motherly Queen played by Alexandra Gronskaya. Rothbart also played a much larger role in the French version, danced as a double role by Karl Paquette (the tutor in act 1, Rothbart in the following acts).
The French, in comparison, is almost minimalistic in its staging, the only props being a throne and a crossbow. The Russian was explosive in its colourfulness and the use of countless props. Not only were the endings different, but the two performances of Swan Lake were as dissimilar as could possibly be. As such, she is forced by Rothbart to leave Sigfried behind by the lake’s shore as she and Rothbart ascend in their bird shapes. In the first scene, Prince Sigfried sees an owl carrying a swan with it into the heavens, and it proves to be a premonition of what happens after he breaks his vow to Odette by pledging his true love to Odile Odette consequently confined to eternal swanhood.
In opposition to the happy ending given to the two lovers in the Russian, the French ties the story together by having the first scene and the last scene be identical. The synopsis is to be found on Wikipedia, where the ending of the Russian staging is given in more detail, whereas the French one isn’t represented. Not only did the two companies interpret the tale very differently, but the very story was shown in two of its many diverse editions. The two performances I found at the library were representatives of the two big schools of ballet in the world, the French and the Russian. Of course I would have loved to watch this ballet of ballets on stage, but I must say that the filmed performances I got my hands on were quite satisfactory, on very different levels. However, due to health issues, I had to cancel the trip to Copenhagen for now and instead settle with a couple of DVDs from the library. I’d originally planned to have my first viewing of Swan Lake be a live one, since the Royal Danish Ballet is staging it this winter, the final performance being on the 19th of December.
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