Gabriel Yared is of
course best known for his high profile
film music, scores like: The
English Patient, The Talented Mr
Ripley, Possession and Cold Mountain.
But he has also written an appreciable
amount of concert music and four ballet
scores: Le diable amoureux,
Un d’ici, Shamrock and this one,
Clavigo, to Roland Petit’s choreography.
On his composition
style and inspiration, Yared commented,
"I first read Goethe’s play to
immerse myself in the spirit of the
story ... I focused on the innocent,
poignant figure of Marie. She inspired
me with a lyric theme which recurs three
times, each time under a new guise ...
[Although the setting is late 18th
century] I definitely did not want to
write ‘period’ music. On the contrary
I tried to use the greatest variety
of styles, to explore the various types
of music I like, for the sheer pleasure
of composing music one could dance to."
The story of Clavigo
follows a curious literary/musical curve.
The real Clavico, a citizen of Madrid,
in the 1760s, José Clavijo y
Farjardo, seduced Lisette the youngest
sister of the French writer Beaumarchais,
author of The Barber of Seville
and The Marriage of Figaro.
But Clavigo abandoned Lisette in favour
of seeking fame and fortune. Beaumarchais
took brotherly revenge by recounting
this unsavoury episode in his writings.
Goethe transformed Beaumarchais’s short
story into a sombre five-act tragedy
creating the diabolical character Carlos
who tempts Clavigo into debauchery,
devastating Lisette (renamed Marie by
Goethe) and causing her to die of despair,
thus pushing her brother to avenge her
by killing Clavigo. It is from Goethe’s
play that Roland Petit draws freely
for his themes for this ballet.
The production values
in this version of Clavigo are
spare with minimalist sets: grey panels
or chequered flooring; and 18th
century costumes with the women in flimsy,
wispy Empire-style gowns pinched just
below the bosom. Petit’s choreography
is striking, often quite startlingly
original and makes much demand upon
his dancers, putting them through the
most extraordinary, almost impossible-seeming
contortions, but without sacrificing
taste and refinement. His choreography
and Yared’s music complement each other
very well. In the first scene, a ball,
Yared’s dance measures are, at first,
in a classical 17th century
or earlier style to suit a calmer dance
scene but, with the entrance of Clavigo
and the development of his unsettling
influence on Marie, Yared’s music becomes
more modern, more dramatic, more unsettling
more akin to Prokofiev and Shostakovich
and there is more than a hint of Bernard
Herrmann in the music’s disquiet and
unresolved tension. The music is strongly
rhythmic and disturbingly melodious.
It returns at the end of the ballet
as we witness Clavigo’s death throes
after Marie’s brother has taken his
revenge. Nicolas Le Riche is a remarkable
Clavigo, seemingly rubber-jointed in
his sensual seduction of Marie in the
ball scene. One remarkable episode in
his seduction dance with Marie (the
equally lithe Clairmarie Osta) has them
seemingly glued in a prolonged kiss
as they weave over and around each other
in the most intricate patterns. Later,
abandoned and alone, Marie anguishes
and, in a grotesque nightmare, she hallucinates
that a figure descends a rope ladder
to her bedside, a figure resembling
a huge black spider that makes love
to her before abandoning her. The whole
of this ‘Marie’s Chamber’ scene has
sympathetic delicate choreography for
Marie and Yared’s music is tenderly
romantic and underlines Marie’s vulnerability.
In the Gambling Salon scene, a very
different femme fatale, ‘The Stranger’,
danced by Marie-Agnès Gillot,
closely resembling Ava Gardner, and
dressed alluringly in threatening red,
dances hotly, seductively to Yared in
blousy jazzy/Latin mode. Petit’s choreography
for all the lead singers and corps
de ballet, who all shine, is
consistently imaginative and beautifully
realised in pas de deux, pas
de trois or ensemble.
Fascinating modern
ballet with wonderfully imaginative
Petit choreography and a memorable Yared
score.
Ian Lace and
Grace Lace
Corps
de Ballet de l’Opéra National de Paris
TDK
DVD VIDEO DV-BLCLAV [87:00] 
