This is a grand show,
pretty girls and boys dancing around
in pretty costumes with lavish sets.
At times there are so many people on
stage the streets of Moscow must have
been half empty. It is based on the
classical ballet style, which is to
say they simply move from one classical
ballet position to another for an hour
and forty minutes — admittedly with
grace, charm and skill. The production
does represent an amazing amount of
balletic archaeology in reconstructing
a ballet from the classic period of
the nineteenth century. In truth the
choreographer, Pierre Lacotte, had only
a small amount of authentic material
to work from, so most of it he made
up in the style, something he had been
practising doing by restoring other
classic ballets to the stage, notably
La Sylphide (Not, of course,
to be confused with Les Sylphides
if you know your ballet history).
The music is abominably
banal but serves to give everyone the
beat, occasionally add a few strains
of atmosphere. The plot involves one
Lord Wilson who is touring Egypt with
his servant John Bull(!). During a sand
storm they take refuge in a temple built
into a pyramid and pass the time sharing
opium pipes with their Arab companions.
The mummy of a Princess, Aspicia, comes
to life, magically changes Lord Wilson
into Taor, her lover, and they head
off to Pharaoh’s court. On the way,
after a lot of dancing, Taor saves the
princess’s life by shooting a lion.
But, alas, the Princess is already betrothed
to the King of Nubia and her father
is determined to honor the treaty. The
lovers escape. From the costumes and
sets it appears they’ve fled to Geneva
(a set left over from William Tell?)
after stopping in Athens to buy new
clothes (don’t expect Aspicia ever to
wear the same clothes twice on stage).
Or, from the amount of beer the fishermen
drink, perhaps it’s Munich. Nevertheless
the angry King of Nubia arrives and
demands that Aspicia marry him or he’ll
kill her. She evades him by jumping
into Lake Geneva — or the Isar — no,
it must be the Nile, even though it
is in Neptune’s court (a set left over
from Sadko?) that we next see
her. After a lot of dancing, including
a Polonaise danced with castanets, the
King of the Deep relents and sends her
back to her father’s court where Taor
is about to be executed for "kidnapping"
her. She accuses the King of Nubia,
he tears up the treaty and storms out
with his considerable retinue, and,
after a lot more dancing, including
some suicide threats, the Pharaoh relents
and the lovers are to be married — whereupon
Lord Wilson wakes up to find it was
all a dream.
But this really is
a good show. The costumes are sparkling,
lavish, colourful. The dancing is superb,
the dancers are all very attractive,
most especially the star, Svetlana Zakharova.
The precision of the corps de ballet
is excellent, but not stupefying. The
girls wear tutus, tops, tights, and
toe shoes with hard wooden ends they
tap on the stage now and then. The guys
wear only little skirts, collars and
sometimes a wig. In contrast to some
ballets I’ve seen recently, everybody
here looks strong and healthy; these
Egypto-Russian men even have suntans.
Character roles are extremely well done;
the children, the snake, and the monkey
really steal their scenes. Leave it
to the Bolshoi to have a real horse
on the Pharaoh’s chariot, but they do
mostly use a fake lion. I never heard
of the Egyptian army consisting predominantly
of female archery corps in green and
yellow tutus, but what the heck, by
now, who’s counting. When the princess
falls asleep on a moss-covered rock
in a forest in the middle of Egypt —
well, the program notes do refer to
the "hilarious" naïveté
of the scenario.
Sound and video quality
are very clear and colourful, video
direction is very good.
*Theophile Gautier
also wrote the poems Berlioz set in
Les Nuits d’Ete.
Paul Shoemaker
Orchestra of the Bolshoi Theater, Moscow/Alexander
Sotnikov. 
BEL
AIR BAC 001 [130.00]
