sleeping beauty
The Vienna State Ballet is part of the Vienna State Opera and Vienna Volksoper
sleeping beauty Ballet in one Prologue & three Acts Music The Sleeping Beauty op. 66 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Ferne Landschaft II for orchestra by Toshio Hosokawa Libretto Martin Schläpfer after the fairy tale La Belle au bois dormant by Charles Perrault, after Ivan Alexandrovich Vsevolozhsky & Marius Petipa Choreography Martin Schläpfer & Marius Petipa Musical Direction Patrick Lange Stage Design Florian Etti Costumes Catherine Voeffray Light Design & Video Thomas Diek Dramaturgy Anne do Paço WORLD PREMIERE 24 OCTOBER 2022 – VIENNA STATE OPERA
about today’s performance There are countless variations on the fairy tale of Princess Aurora who is cursed by Carabosse and protected by the Lilac Fairy and falls into a hundred-year sleep until Prince Désiré finally manages to find his way into her castle overgrown with roses. The story of a woman who remains dormant until she is reawakened by the kiss of a brave hero is a trope of numerous sagas and myths. Sleeping Beauty is one of the gentlest and most beautiful of these, while other versions are more violent and cruel. Its openness to interpretation persists to this day: in telling a story about the battle of light against darkness, time against evil and bitterness, and also a story where fairies and other creatures are a natural part of people’s everyday life. The folk tale, which already existed in a number of variations, was first written down in 1636 by the Italian Giambattista Basile. The best-known versions are by Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. The story found its way on to the ballet stage as early as 1829, where it was performed at the Paris Opera, choreographed by Jean-Pierre Aumer to music by Louis Joseph Ferdinand Hérold and with a libretto by Eugène Scribe – established theatre makers who did not, however, score a hit on this occasion. Brought together at the behest of the theatre director Ivan Alexandrovich Vsevolozhsky, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – with his magnificent score Spyashchaya krasavitsa – and the choreographer Marius Petipa – with a structure of perfect proportions – managed to create perhaps the most complete work of the Russian ballet repertoire, which was first performed on 15 January 1890 at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. To this day, staging this work with such a rich array of characters, dances and themes remains a sublime and challenging task. Martin Schläpfer has now created his own version with the Vienna State Ballet, using dance of beauty and virtuosity to probe the inner life of its characters. Martin Schläpfer’s Sleeping Beauty aims at the very heart of the fairy tale, exposing it to the questions of our own time.
ABOUT TODAY’S PERFORMANCE
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BROTHERS GRIMM
“Long ago there lived a King and Queen who said every day, ‘If only we had a child!’ But for a long time they had none. One day, as the Queen was bathing in a spring and dreaming of a child, a frog crept out of the water and said to her, ‘Your wish shall be fulfilled. Before a year has passed you shall bring a daughter into the world.’ And since frogs are such magical creatures, it was no surprise that before a year had passed the Queen had a baby girl. The child was so beautiful and sweet that the King could not contain himself for joy. He prepared a great feast and invited all his friends, family and neighbours. He invited the fairies, too, in order that they might be kind and good to the child. There were thirteen of them in his kingdom, but as the King only had twelve golden plates for them to at from, one of the fairies had to be left out.
An amazing feast was held and when it came to an end, each of the fairies presented the child with a magic gift. One fairy gave her virtue, another beauty, a third riches and so on – with everything in the world that anyone could wish for.After eleven of the fairies had presented their gifts, the thirteenth suddenly appeared. She was angry and wanted to show her spite for not having been invited to the feast. Without hesitation she called out in a loud voice, ‘When she is fifteen years old, the Princess shall prick herself with a spindle and shall fall down dead!’ Then without another word, she turned and left the hall. The guests were horrified and the Queen fell to the floor sobbing, but the twelfth fairy, whose wish was still not spoken, quietly stepped forward. Her magic could not remove the curse, but she could soften it so she said, ‘Nay, your daughter shall not die, but instead shall fall into a deep sleep that will last one hundred years …’”
synopsis
Prologue The King and Queen have wished for a child for many years. Nine months later, the Queen has given birth to a baby girl. She is to be called Aurora. Her parents give a magnificent party to celebrate her Christening. Amongst the many guests are six fairies, their partners and children. They bring generous gifts for the child. Then the Master of Ceremonies Catalabutte bursts in, agitated. He has made a mistake and failed to invite one fairy: Carabosse. Outraged at being slighted, she enters the room with her entourage. All attempts to calm her down are in vain. Carabosse places a curse on the Princess: once Aurora has grown to be a young woman, she will prick her finger on a spindle and die. But the Lilac Fairy stands up to Carabosse. She manages to mitigate the curse of death to a long sleep. The King and Queen lament Aurora’s fate – and their own. Catalabutte is devastated.
Act 1 Aurora has grown up at the royal court, where she is protected from every danger. Today is her 16th birthday. Pages have the job of ensuring that all the security measures are followed, but discover that one of them cannot stop spinning – which is forbidden at court. The party is already in full swing when Aurora enters the ballroom. Everyone is enchanted by the young Princess – including the four Princes who have all come to ask for her hand in marriage. Suddenly a stranger appears among the guests and hands Aurora a spindle. Fascinated by this unfamiliar object, she starts to dance with it and – before anyone can stop her – she pricks herself. The stranger reveals herself to be Carabosse. However, the Lilac Fairy keeps her promise and prevents Aurora’s death. The Lilac Fairy and Carabosse face off against each other.
SYNOPSIS
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Act 2 For a hundred years, people have spoken about an enchanted castle where a Princess and her entire court must sleep until a Prince breaks the spell. Désiré has heard this story too. He has already travelled through countless forests in a vain search for the sleeping beauty. But today feels different. Nature is talking to him – a Woman from the Woods, a Faun, the Lilac Fairy. He finds the path to Aurora and breaks the spell with a kiss. They both fall in love at first sight. The court, too, awakens from its enchanted sleep. Aurora is able to hug Catalabutte and her parents and introduce them to Prince Désiré. Carabosse is forced to acknowledge that she has been defeated. Désiré forgives her.
Act 3 Aurora and Désiré celebrate their wedding. Numerous guests offer their congratulations, including the fairies, the Bluebird, his Princess and two cats. Suddenly the room falls silent – the Woman from the Woods and the Faun have appeared. Prince Désiré brings Carabosse back to join the others. There is a final confrontation with the Lilac Fairy. Aurora and Désiré dance the wedding waltz. The King and Queen know that their time is now over. They pass on their crowns and the responsibilities that go with them to Aurora and Désiré and withdraw – along with the fairies, animals and woodland creatures.
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SYNOPSIS
MARTIN SCHLÄPFER
“I want to tell the fairy tale as a fairy tale, in all its beauty, but also with all the questions that arise for me when reading the story and studying Tchaikovsky’s brilliant music: How do I deal with the characters? What are their motivations? What do they think and feel? Mother-child and father-child is the deepest relationship there is. Something has to happen between Carabosse and the king and the queen – a friction that gives the story depth without taking away its lightness and fairy tale quality.”
at the heart of the fairy tale ANNE DO PAÇO
“I keep looking at the great romantic ballets, I admire them and study them – and I appreciate their greatness, their genius more and more. At the same time, I am a presentday choreographer: I have a different view of humanity and love a different freedom”, Martin Schläpfer said a number of years ago – and since then he has created a body of work comprising more than 80 different ballets that not only proves he is a “dance maker” but also someone exploring the innermost core of the art of movement, at times with probing seriousness and then again with a light, poetic touch. “Where can I go with what I’ve come from?” and “How much distance am I capable of putting between myself and the masterpieces of the past and at the same time, how much proximity?” are questions that he has repeatedly asked himself and which ultimately led him to his unmistakable Schläpfer style: a dance language that not only integrates the vocabulary and forms of classic danse d’école, but consistently remodulates it from one piece to the next, whose rhythm and intensity he calibrates individually through the personalities of his dancers. This style is familiar with the sweeping and heightened nature of Romanticism and the greatest virtuosity. But it is also familiar with falling out of harmony, a sharp piercing of the surface. It is aware of the ambiguity of any kind of idyll and goes beyond pure form, posture and standardised poses to tell of something that comes from within: of a paradise lost, a yearning for this and an intuition that (in common with Heinrich von Kleist) even a “round the world journey” will prove in vain because it is not “open from behind”.
AT THE HEART OF THE FAIRY TALE
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While still a student at the Royal Ballet School in London, Martin Schläpfer was thrilled by the féerie Sleeping Beauty: “It was the classical ballet that I saw most in London, over and over again with casts including Jennifer Penney and David Wall, Lynn Seymour, Rudolf Nureyev and many others”, he recalls. “Later, when I was a dancer myself, the Bluebird was one of my most beautiful and fascinating roles. This piece has never let go of me.” However, dance fans would spend a long time looking in vain for an exploration of Tchaikovsky’s classics within his choreographic œuvre, which Martin Schläpfer now explains as follows: “I spent many years wanting to do these pieces, I studied them, I worked on them, but I repeatedly discarded my ideas because as a director of companies with small casts, I was not interested in staging a Swan Lake, a Sleeping Beauty, a Nutcracker that would be categorised along with all many ‘small’ versions of these works.” He never stopped studying these works, but the results tended to be reflected in symphonic ballets such as Pathétique (2007), 24 Préludes (2008), Johannes Brahms – Symphony No. 2 (2013) and Nacht umstellt (2013), before leading to his own version of Swan Lake for the Ballett am Rhein Düsseldorf Duisburg in 2018. “After that work on Swan Lake, I felt it was obvious that I would tackle another major Tchaikovsky ballet sooner or later. The right time for Sleeping Beauty seemed to have come in my third season in Vienna, because with all my works the first thing I look for is which artists I have in front of me”, says Martin Schläpfer. “What fascinates me about Sleeping Beauty is the interaction between the material, the music, the dance and its reception: Tchaikovsky’s score, its amazing beauty, the music’s Apollonian quality, the high proportion of pure dance, the fairy tale as told in the books of Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, among others, but also what is practically engraved in the heads of the audience as ‘the original ballet’. In between those elements, I am looking for a way that does not try to break with everything that already exists but is still something other than yet another version ‘after Marius Petipa’.”
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky & Marius Petipa What the Frenchman working in St. Petersburg staged for the first time at the Mariinsky Theatre on 15 January 1890 is one of the greatest events in the history of ballet. In close collaboration with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and the multi-talented theatre director Ivan Alexandrovich Vsevolozhsky, who not only co-wrote the libretto, but also designed the costumes, a ballet was created that is unequalled in its musical composition, choreographic and dramaturgical structure, metaphorical intensity and the symbolic richness of its imagery, and which represents far more than a theatre director’s attempt to help a ballet company with a tarnished reputation achieve new glories. On the threshold of the 20th century, Sleeping Beauty embodied the vision of Romantic ballet tradition carried forward into the modern age – with far-reaching consequences: George Balan chine admitted in his conversations with Salomon Volkov: “It was thanks to Sleeping Beauty that I fell in love with ballet.” Anna Pavlova was so enchanted by this piece when 11
AT THE HEART OF THE FAIRY TALE
she was a little girl that her mother arranged ballet lessons for her. Tamara Karsavina first attracted attention as a Spirit accompanying the Lilac Fairy. The painter, stage and costume designer Léon Bakst, who would later have a key influence on the aesthetic of the Ballets Russes and was then a student at St. Petersburg Academy of Art, wrote: “I spent three hours enchanted and dreaming, bewitched by fairies and princesses, by lavish golden castles and a magical fairy tale … It was as if the rhythms and the beautiful melodies with their glowing, fresh and yet familiar flow resounded through my entire being … That evening, it seems, my vocation was decided.” And when Sergei Diaghilev produced the piece in London with his Ballets Russes in a production by Nikolai Sergeyev on a vast scale and at huge expense in 1921, it almost ruined him financially – but from then on the work’s importance was assured, not only within the classical repertoire of the 20th and 21st centuries, but its title also repeatedly occurs at significant points in recent ballet history.
Martin Schläpfer’s Sleeping Beauty While some regard Sleeping Beauty as a perfect specimen within the canon of Russian ballets, at the same time it also raises questions on numerous levels and retains its potential for new interpretations, not least due to the underlying fairy tale, whose world of imagery consistently broadens the reader’s or viewer’s imaginative powers in highly ambivalent fashion. While in Petipa’s ending the “other” world that intervened in the lives of Princess Aurora and her parents appears, secularised in a festive theatre of fairy tale figures, by following his chosen course, Martin Schläpfer discovers a different ending, conscious that the fairy tale must not be underestimated: instead of reflection, it demands sensuality – instead of obedience, scrupulous attention. “I want to tell the fairy tale as a fairy tale, in all its beauty, but together with all the questions I ask myself when I read the libretto and study the music: How do I deal with the characters? What are the reasons that motivate them, what do they think and feel?” Right from the start, Martin Schläpfer adopts an approach that has consequences for the whole of the rest of the action of the play: he presents both the Queen and the King desperately longing for a child. “They have both done everything they could to have this little girl – they have prayed, taken cures, consulted a wise woman, talked to a frog … For me they are not passive, elitist rulers but parents who have a very close relation ship with their daughter – and they are therefore two characters who are not simply representative. I have also given them a lot of dancing to do.” Catalabutte is close to both the ruling couple and Aurora. In Martin Schläpfer’s version, he is the one who has forgotten to invite Carabosse – without the dramatic intensity of deliberately excluding her or the metaphor of lacking golden spoons, it is a simple human failing that leads to Carabosse’s far-reaching and disproportionate abuse of her magical powers. “My fairies are not as ethereal and fragile as they are often portrayed, but very powerful creatures. Reading the different versions of the fairy tale has expanded my view a great deal because the fairies are often depicted as wise women or magicians”, explains
AT THE HEART OF THE FAIRY TALE
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DIANE PURKISS
“It appears that human mind cannot bear very much blankness – where we do not know, we invent, and what we invent reflects our fear of what we do not know. Fairies are born of that fear.”
Martin Schläpfer, who sees Carabosse “not as a wicked, ugly ‘old woman’ often played by a man, but a woman of great beauty, the most mature and powerful of this fairy clan”. As in Tchaikovsky’s musical characterisation, the Lilac Fairy and Carabosse represent two sides of the same coin while avoiding stereotypes: the Lilac Fairy not only repre sents light, goodness and hope, she also has more military tones, and Carabosse develops substantially over the course of the play: “When she is finally forced to recognise that her curse has not worked, she accepts that it is over and begs for forgiveness. Prince Désiré is able to grant this and brings Carabosse back into society at his wedding – without any discussion.” Surrounding his telling of the story of the Queen and the King, Aurora and Désiré, Catalabutte, the Lilac Fairy and Carabosse, which provides the framework of the plot, in the divertissements of the three party scenes – the Christening, birthday and wedding – Martin Schläpfer enthusiastically throws himself into the variations Tchaikovsky has composed with great virtuosity in order to present all the talents of the Vienna State Ballet’s dancers. The prologue has a flowing softness and tender poetic quality, suffusing the festivities to honour of the little Princess with great warmth – until the point of Carabosse’s dramatic entrance – while also integrating students from the ballet aca demy, though not as a “children’s ballet” but as an ambitious variation on child sprites with the fairies and their partners. By contrast, the mood on Aurora’s birthday is entirely different: here there are leaps, spins, battements, caprioles, but also waltzes – sometimes in small ensembles and solos, sometimes in large groups: full of elegance, refinement and a delight in dancing, but also with a sense of humour, for example when the four princes who are Aurora’s suitors show off with loutish leaps. At both the key moments when the plot revolves around the parents having to let go – Aurora’s bridal show, the so-called Rose Adagio, in Act One and the grand pas de deux at Aurora and Désiré’s wedding in Act Three – Martin Schläpfer has chosen to integrate choreography by Marius Petipa: “These two scenes are so perfectly choreographed and are such delightful works in terms of their themes and symbolism that I wanted to find room for them in my Sleeping Beauty.” This is not done in the form of a quotation or insert of “outside material” but as a reference to and also debate about an art of choreography that to this day remains the source and starting point of attempts – such as those of George Balanchine, William Forsythe, Hans van Manen and indeed Martin Schläpfer – to carry the language of classical ballet forward into the present. Martin Schläpfer deliberately introduces this material and then moves on again, steeping his choreography in echoes of Petipa at two further points – his dance of Aurora’s friends in Act Two and the variation of the Bluebird and his Princess in Act Three. He is consistently aware of the question of portraying character, which on a formal level leads to the question of the balance between plot and divertissement, between corporeal narrative and abstraction: “For me, dance does not mean that dance cannot also tell a story – on the contrary. But I want to go beyond that, to explore the extent to which I can approach the dramaturgy more flexibly, ‘fraying’ a divertissement out by as it were ‘combing’ it into the next thread of the narrative, with the aim of portraying the characters – because the scenario does not leave me much room to do that.”
AT THE HEART OF THE FAIRY TALE
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Sleeping Beauty is a story about children growing up and their parents having to relinquish control. But it is also a story about love, and about a world in which – as usual in fairy tales – fairies, spirits, fabulous beasts and other creatures appear quite naturally alongside humans. In both these cases – between the fixed “once upon a time …” and the no less fixed “… and lived happily ever after” – Martin Schläpfer regards the fairy tale as open, he frees himself not only from the libretto but he also breaks with Tchaikovsky’s musical dramaturgy in an Act Two that tells of both the miracle of being redeemed by love and an encounter with nature’s primal forces. One hundred years have passed since Aurora pricked her finger on Carabosse’s spindle, for one hundred years she – along with her family, the entire court and her four suitors – has slept an enchanted sleep in which she must have dreamed over and over again of the Prince who will rescue her. And he, Prince Désiré, has already heard of the sleeping beauty and set off to find her – not on a hunting expedition, surrounded by the whole entourage of a court, but venturing forth alone into a forest where nature starts to speak to him: a mysterious woman of the woods draws him under her spell, he meets a faun and finally the Lilac Fairy. This scene was originally created to the “lyric poem dedicated to Venus” from 1965, Anahit by Giacinto Scelsi – whose work is now subject to a ban on choreographic use, so for the current series of performances Martin Schläpfer has had to reconceive Act Two of his ballet. Its musical basis is now Toshio Hosokawa’s Ferne Landschaft II, a score from 1996 for which the Japanese composer was inspired by East Asian landscape painting in which empty, unpainted space is of equal importance to the drawn image: it is music born of silence, static formations of sound that disable our sense of time and – according to Hosokawa – “call to mind ancient and repressed layers of memory”. To the Sarabande, which is practically never heard in a ballet production – in a masterly rewriting of Baroque thinking from the perspective of a late Romantic sympho nist, Tchaikovsky used it to establish a moment of calm reflection before the finale of Act Three whose strict composure conjures up a complete bygone age –, Martin Schläpfer has the Queen and King hand over their crowns to Aurora and Désiré. They know that their time has come and withdraw – as do the fairies, the Bluebird and Princess Florine, the cat and the tom cat, but also the woman of the woods and the faun who had all come to Aurora and Désiré’s wedding. With his interpretation of Act Two, Martin Schläpfer has opened up a space that removes the story from the world of “fairy tales” and makes it possible for its inhabitants – whether they are fairies, fabulous creatures or nature in animated or socialised form – to stake their claim to reality.
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AT THE HEART OF THE FAIRY TALE
WALTER BENJAMIN
“The fairy tale tells us of the earliest arrangements that mankind made to shake off the nightmare which the myth had placed upon its chest. In the figure of the fool it shows us how mankind ‘acts dumb’ toward the myth; in the figure of the youngest brother it shows us how one’s chances increase as the mythical primitive times are left behind; in the figure of the man who sets out to learn what fear is it shows us that the things we are afraid of can be seen through; in the figure of the wiseacre it shows us that the questions posed by the myth are simple-minded, like the riddle of the Sphinx; in the shape of the animals which come to the aid of
the child in the fairy tale it shows that nature not only subservient to the myth, but much prefers to be aligned with man. The wisest thing – so the fairy tale taught mankind in olden times, and teaches children to this day – is to meet the forces of the mythical world with cunning and with high spirits … The liberating magic which the fairy tale has at its disposal does not bring nature into play in a mythical way, but points to its complicity with liberated man. A mature man feels this complicity only occasionally, that is, when he is happy; but the child first meets it in fairy tales, and it makes him happy.”
Gaspare Li Mandri, Javier González Cabrera (Pages), Jackson Carroll (Catalabutte), Olga Esina (Queen), Masayu Kimoto (King), Adi Hanan (Page)
Ketevan Papava (Queen), Gala Jovanovic (Carabosse), Ensemble
Jackson Carroll (Catalabutte), Ensemble
Claudine Schoch (Carabosse), Igor Milos & Calogero Failla (Carabosse’s Entourage), Ensemble
Hyo-Jung Kang (Aurora), Kristián Pokorný, Rashaen Arts, Arne Vandervelde, Géraud Wielick (Four Princes), Ensemble
Elena Bottaro (Aurora), François-Eloi Lavignac (Catalabutte), Ketevan Papava (Queen), Eno Peci (King), Ioanna Avraam (Lilac Fairy)
Brendan Saye (Prince Désiré), Daniel Vizcayo (Faun), Yuko Kato (Woman of the Woods)
Marcos Menha (Prince Désiré), Ioanna Avraam (Lilac Fairy)
Hyo-Jung Kang (Aurora), Brendan Saye (Prince Désiré)
Davide Dato (Prince Désiré), Elena Bottaro (Aurora), Ensemble
Natalya Butchko (Princess Florine), Arne Vandervelde (Bluebird)
Masayu Kimoto (King), Olga Esina (Queen), Ensemble
rhythm space imagination
THOMAS STEIERT
Two brief musical portraits of the adversaries from the fairy world – the furious, evil, sharply gesticulating Carabosse and the benevolent, gently hovering Lilac Fairy – and then the curtain rises to the sound of a march approaching from the distance as the ladies and gentlemen of the court enter. Once Catalabutte, the Master of Ceremonies, has ponderously checked the list of invitations sent to the fairies, grand ceremonial fanfares announce the arrival of the King and Queen with their retinue and Aurora’s cradle. In this opening to the ballet Sleeping Beauty, the events on stage, choreographic plan and musical form all appear to come together quite naturally in unison. The music provides the rhythm, the choreography charts the space in which the action takes place and this in turn takes its dramatic dimension from the music. Narrative, dance and music are so intertwined that each of these aspects can be appreciated independently while also being influenced by the other two. The music, for example, might not achieve a symphonic autonomy – but neither does it restrict itself to a mere rhythmic accompaniment of the dance moves or an illustration of events. Instead, the principles underlying the ballet’s music grow out of its inseparable integration with the choreographic process and what happens in the story.
RHYTHM SPACE IMAGINATION
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This image of the ballet as a fabric made up of dance, music and narrative takes a direct practical form – as the conceptual foundation of the ballet the choreographer prepares a so-called “minutage”: a plan that lays down specific timings for the choreography and links these to events in the story. This “minutage” contains a formal breakdown of the events of the plot into numbered scenes and dances; in terms of music, the choreographer decides on the metre and number of bars for each number and he also gives precise instructions for the expressive character of the music. This prescribed order has to be accepted unconditionally by the composer on one hand, on the other – and here lies Tchaikovsky’s genius – these “restrictive” requirements actually seem to stimulate his imagination. Another crucial factor – and credit here goes to Marius Petipa – is the level of the choreographer’s musical understanding. When reading Petipa’s instructions for the composer, it is easy to believe that he had already heard Tchaikovsky’s music before it had been composed. In only a few words he succeeds in pinpointing various expressive moments, emotional nuances and atmospheric moods to guide the composer’s ideas in the desired direction. This is epitomised by the moment in which Prince Désiré kisses the sleeping Aurora: “The music reaches a crescendo, at the moment of the kiss it pauses. The spell has been broken. The music expresses amazement, then joy and delight. A fiery and quaking motif until the end of the act.” The musical solution to this key moment for the entire ballet is as simple as it is effective: the pause in the music is followed by an explosive tam-tam beat as a sign that the spell has been broken. This sonic marker for the magical realm is also heard at the moment when Aurora is put to sleep. Both breaks in the music emphasise the broader significance of these events within the conflict between the Lilac Fairy and Carabosse. The musical and dramaturgical structure of the composition is based on the confrontation between good and evil, characterised by the portraits of Carabosse and the Lilac Fairy mentioned above. As underlying musical characters they not only determine individual scenic moments, but also the entire tonal atmosphere. Especially the final scene of the prologue and Acts One and Two represent different stages in the development of this conflict; each leading into a gently modified reprise of the Lilac Fairy theme that also dominates the vision scene in Act Two [cut in Martin Schläpfer’s version] and whose floating air also finds a sequel in the “panorama”. The terse Carabosse motifs are heard one last time in the transformation music that builds up to Petipa’s required “crescendo” and which ultimately leads to victory over the powers of sorcery. The sound worlds of the Lilac Fairy and Carabosse that create the atmosphere are contrasted with the musical parties that form the space, that derive their unique form from their correspondence with the spatial dimensions of the choreography. So the broadly arranged marches in the entrance scenes in the Prologue and Act Three are not pieces that reveal character through music and dance, but larger forms that provide a framework whose dynamic and compositional structure accommodates both establishing an opening scene and detailed storytelling. On the other hand, the music is also capable of condensing scenic sequences such as the dialogue between Catalabutte and the King into a large whole purely through individual character motifs.
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RHYTHM SPACE IMAGINATION
The ballet’s dance highlights: the fairies’ pas de six in the prologue, the two pas d’action in Acts One and Two and the pas de deux in the final act, are presaged by extended instrumental solos. These at times highly virtuosic violin, flute and harp parts switch from a developing narrative to featured solo dances by conveying both elaborated adorned “musical initials” and the exclusivity of the situation. In contrast with the rhapsodic freedom of these musical passages, in the dances themselves the rhythmic motifs of the music dominate, aligning as closely as possible with the choreography. The principles of the ballet music thus develop out of its relationship with the choreography on one hand and with the narrative on the other. Their primary categories are rhythm, space and imagination, which manifest themselves in the reality on stage as movement, form and expression. The secret of Tchaikovsky’s ballet compositions lies less in the inexhaustible variety of his musical invention than in his unique ability to transform the proportions of the choreography and the dramaturgy of the story into musical form.
“The score fascinates with its variety of new colours created by unusual instrumental combinations and extreme registers. There is, for example, the canary fairy with a ‘chirping’, ‘fluttering’ piccolo, the appearance of the wicked fairy with mockingly ‘bleating’ woodwinds, and the fairy tale characters from Perrault’s collection Contes de ma mère l’Oye, including the singing Bluebird or the hissing Puss in Boots, are also painted with unusually colourful instrumentation.” MALTE KORFF
RHYTHM SPACE IMAGINATION
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Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to the director of the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg Ivan Alexandrovich Vsevolozhsky FROLOVSKOYE, 13 / 25 AUGUST 1888
Most respected Ivan Alexandrovich! […] I have not received the ballet libretto. If it were being sent to me from Petersburg, then might I enquire of you, most kind Ivan Aleksandrovich, who should be reminded of this. I am most interested in this subject. [...] For some time I have been drawn towards subjects not of this world, where jam is not boiled, people aren’t executed, mazurkas aren’t danced, no one is drunk, no petitions are served, etc. etc. […] Once again you have my heartfelt thanks. Sincerely devoted, P. Tchaikovsky
MOSCOW, 22 AUGUST / 3 SEPTEMBER 1888
Dear and most respected Ivan Alexandrovich! I am hastening to inform you that the manuscript of La Belle au bois dormant finally reached me, just as I was boarding the train going from Moscow to Kiev. I have not been here more than a few hours, but I have managed to read through the scenario, and I very much wanted to tell you forthwith that I am delighted and enchanted beyond all description. It suits me perfectly and I ask nothing more than to make the music for it. This delicious subject could not have been better adapted for the stage, and to you, its author, permit me to express my warmest congratulations. I am leaving for Kiev, returning home on 2 September, and on the 12th of the same month I will be in St. Petersburg. I will hasten to come and see you and beg you to bring Monsieur Petipa and I together to settle the details relating to the setting of the music in your scenario. But this is for the 1889-90 season, is it not? Because it is absolutely impossible for me to be ready for this season. I have much travelling to do during the winter, I must spend the whole summer in Paris, and I shall only be able to deliver my score towards the beginning of the next season. The idea of this work gladdens me. […] As from today I shall be thinking only about the ballet. Please excuse my poor handwriting, I am in a great hurry. Thank you, thank you! Your very devoted, P. Tchaikovsky 33
FROM THE LETTERS
To Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky MOSCOW, 22 AUGUST / 3 SEPTEMBER 1888
Little dove Modya! [...] I got the libretto for the ballet. It’s excellent. Yours, P. Tchaikovsky
To his patron and admirer, the officer, lawyer and archaeologist Vladimir Petrovich Pogozhev FROLOVSKOYE, 1 / 13 OCTOBER 1888
Honoured and kindest Vladimir Petrovich! I have just returned from Moscow, where I attended the funeral services and burial of my old friend Hubert. This trip has delayed my reply to you. [...] As for the ballet, I tell you that I like its subject very much, and that I shall take the greatest pleasure in working on it. I emphasised it, for I have not yet written a single note. It is necessary for me to have a thorough discussion with the ballet master before I begin composing. I was supposed to be in St. Petersburg in September, but it did not happen, and now, being delayed by the hurried completion of two large symphonic compositions, I shall remain in the village without leave until the end of October. About the 1st of November I shall be in St. Petersburg for quite a long time, and I shall see the ballet master to agree on the how, the what and the when. In any case, in view of my forthcoming travels, I shall not be able to submit the score of the ballet to the Board of Directors until the beginning of the next season at the earliest, i.e. in about a year’s time. As you seem to think that the music for the ballet is already finished, I am afraid that Ivan Alexandrovich will not consider me capable of writing the music during the current season. Will you, kindest Vladimir Petrovich, tell him all this? Goodbye! Thank you once again from the bottom of my heart. Yours, P. Tchaikovsky
FROM THE LETTERS
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To the friend and patron Nadeshda von Meck FROLOVSKOYE, 12 / 24 JULY 1889
My dear, dear friend! [...] I continue my quiet working life in the country. The ballet is developing gradually, but only gradually; I can’t work as fast as I used to. The good thing is that I am incredibly happy with my new work, and I am aware of the fact that I can still calmly face the going down of my inventiveness which will more or less threaten me in the near future. I feel that the time of decline has not yet come, and this awareness that I am not yet an invalid makes me happy. I know that I haven’t yet reached the years when my strength will fail me, but I have worked too much in my youth, exhausted myself too much, and perhaps that’s why I have this fear that the decline will come sooner than it should. God bless you, my dear friend. May He give you all the best. Yours, P. Tchaikovsky FROLOVSKOYE, 13 / 25 AUGUST 1889
My dear, dear friend! [...] In a few days I will breathe a sigh of relief and feel the strangely sweet feeling of a man who has completed a challenging work. When the piano arrangement is finished, I will send it to you immediately, my dear friend! I regret that you will not be in St. Petersburg this winter to hear my new work. I have worked on the instrumentation with particular care and love and have chosen some entirely new combinations for the orchestra, which I hope will sound very beautiful and interesting. Infinitely devoted and grateful to you, P. Tchaikovsky
To the music critic Semyon Nikolayevich Kruglikov FROLOVSKOYE, 16 / 28 AUGUST 1889
Most respected Semyon Nikolayevich! […] Congratulate me; today I finished the enormous full score of the ballet. A whole mountain has been lifted off my shoulders. Yours, P. Tchaikovsky 35
FROM THE LETTERS
distant landscape Born in Hiroshima in 1955, Toshio Hosokawa draws his distinctive musical language from the tension between Western avant-garde and traditional Japanese culture. For him, music is an art form in which “sound and silence” meet. As a student of composition and piano in Tokyo, he initially concentrated on Western music. When he moved to Germany in 1976 to study with Isang Yun in Berlin and Klaus Huber in Freiburg, this “detour” awakened his interest in the diverse styles and instruments of the music of his homeland. The active shaping of time typical of Western music is contrasted in his works with its “flowing” expansion as understood by Zen Buddhism and reflected in the static structures of Gagaku – the traditional Japanese court music. The “musique concrète instrumentale”, which he studied with Helmut Lachenmann, with its integration of everyday noises and sounds, which according to conventional ideas are by-products of sound production that should be eliminated as far as possible, serves him to “express an euphony that is combined with sounds that can be experienced in nature” (Walter-Wolfgang Sparrer): “In Japanese we say ‘sawari’ [...], to touch – for me this means somehow touching in a different way”, writes Hosokawa. “In the early days, people thought that music was a way of touching nature and the universe, and vice versa, that music mirrored the sounds of nature and the universe. When you listen to traditional Japanese music, there are always very many sounds that sound of nature, like the sound of the wind, especially when it is played by the flutes. They are not ugly noises, but always like the sounds we hear in nature and which we approximate by music in order to touch their spirit. That is the idea of ‘sawari’: Listening to nature and touching its spirit. […] I also want to have, write and listen to such sounds – every tone touches itself with the force of nature and thus possesses something that reaches beyond the human being.” Ferne Landschaft II was commissioned by the Gunma Symphony Orchestra and premiered by the orchestra under its chief conductor Ken Takaseki on 20 March 1996. It is one of a series of works composed since 1987 – Ferne Landschaft I-III and the Landscapes collection – for which Hosokawa has drawn inspiration from East Asian landscape painting and calligraphy.
DISTANT LANDSCAPE
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TOSHIO HOSOKAWA
“In 1987, I wrote Ferne Landschaft I for the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra. In this piece, I attempt to create a landscape of sound, an idea that came to me while looking at landscape paintings depicting Kyoto. The tones are treated as strokes of the brush, supported by empty space, by the white canvas that reveals nothing. Ever since I made the acquaintance of Gagaku, the traditional music of the Japanese imperial court, some eight years ago, I have composed several pieces, in which I used the mouth organ, shô, to create a form, or imitated the sound of the mouth organ using other instruments. Characteristically, these sounds wax and wane continuously in the background. They represent the earth, the place where the strokes of the paint brush or the sounds are produced or originate. In Ferne Landschaft II (1996), I take up nearly the same concept as in Ferne Landschaft I, however, I introduce a new stylistic element I discovered about a year ago that I call the ‘temple bell mode’. In Japan, temple bells sound 108 times at midnight on the eve of the new year and they are ascribed redeeming power. As with these bells, which are made to swing with long intervals between the knells, the ringing bell is heard from beyond in the ‘temple bell mode’, seemingly generating an echo by mixing with the impulses of other bells and finally producing a new knell. In this piece, the sound of the temple bells is rendered by a brief, violently swelling orchestral tutti, with a full-sounding harmony from which – as a distant echo – quiet sounds gradually and continually create the background that represents the air or the fog. When one hears the ring of a bell coming from afar, the memory of something distant and past is evoked. But perhaps the experience of a newly generated knell allows the listener to catch a glimpse of a foreign, hitherto unknown world. A ‘distant landscape’ can therefore either evoke old or repressed layers of memory or serve as a window to a sound world, we have never heard before.”
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DISTANT LANDSCAPE
Viennese photographer Florian Moshammer photographed the campaigns for the 2022 to 2024 seasons of the Vienna State Ballet and spent several weeks following the rehearsals for Martin Schläpfer’s ballet Sleeping Beauty. The result is an extensive series of photographs, an intimate look at the art form of dance and the artists of the Vienna State Ballet. By capturing a specific moment of movement, an encounter or a detail of a body, and by tracking the interplay of movement, light and architecture, Florian Moshammer penetrates beyond the documentary image into the structures and hidden details of dance, finding a visualisation of nuances and an abstraction of the visible. Florian Moshammer collaborates with artists from a variety of backgrounds and exhibited a selection of his work for the first Fotos Florian Moshammer time in Moscow in 2020/21 in collaboration with Leica.
PATRICK LANGE – MUSICAL DIRECTION Patrick Lange studied conducting at the Music Academies in Würzburg and Zurich. In 2005 he was accepted into the Dirigentenforum of the German Music Council and was appointed assistant conductor of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra by Claudio Abbado, whom he also accom panied to the Berlin Philharmonic, the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and the Orchestra Mozart Bologna. In 2007 he was awarded the European Cultural Prize in the category Advancement Award for Young Conductors and in 2009 the Eugen Jochum Scholarship of the BR Symphony Orchestra. He began his career as an opera conductor in Zurich and Lucerne. Following his debut at the Komische Oper Berlin with Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, he was appointed First Kapellmeister in 2008 and Principal Conductor in 2010. His interpretations of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Rusalka and Der Freischütz have received international acclaim. Patrick Lange made his debut at the Vienna State Opera in 2010 with Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and has been a regular guest there ever since. His acclaimed debut with Mahler’s Lied von der Erde, choreographed by John Neumeier, at the Opéra national de Paris in 2015 was followed by regular re-invitations. Further engagements have taken him to the Semperoper Dresden, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden London, the Hamburg State Opera, Opera Australia Sydney, the Opera Zurich, the Canadian Opera Company Toronto, the Korean National Opera Seoul, the Stuttgart State Opera, the Opéra national du Rhin Strasbourg and the Frankfurt Opera. He made his debut with the Dutch Radio Filharmonisch Orkest in January 2021 with a concert performance of Janáček’s Jenůfa at the Concert gebouw Amsterdam. Another highlight was his debut at the Bavarian State Opera as part of the Munich Opera Festival 2021 with Wagner’s Das Rheingold. Among the orchestras with which Patrick Lange has worked are the Bamberg Symphony, the Essen Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Weimar, the Munich Radio Orchestra, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the SWR and WDR Symphony Orchestras and the WDR Radio Orchestra. On tour, he has conducted the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, the Stuttgart Philharmonic, the Vienna RSO and the German National Youth Orchestra. From 2017 to 2022 Patrick Lange was General Music Director of the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden. In 2022/23 he conducted Sleeping Beauty, Im siebten Himmel and Die Fledermaus at the Vienna State Opera. In 2023/24, after a new production of Madama Butterfly in Seong nam, Korea, he will conduct Giselle and a ballet evening with works by Maurice Ravel at the Opéra national de Paris as well as Ariadne auf Naxos with the Bavarian State Opera at the Hong Kong Arts Festival. Concerts at the Teatro Real Madrid and the Jerusalem Lyric Opera are planned.
BIOGRAPHIES
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MARTIN SCHLÄPFER – CHOREOGRAPHY Martin Schläpfer has been Ballet Director and Chief Choreographer of the Vienna State Ballet since September 2020. Born in Altstätten (Switzerland), he studied ballet with Marianne Fuchs in St. Gallen and at the Royal Ballet School in London. In 1977, Heinz Spoerli engaged him for the Basel Ballet, where he quickly became one of the company’s most charismatic soloists. An engagement with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet took him to Canada for a season. In 1990, he founded the Dance Place ballet school in Basel, where he established the first base for his work as a dance teacher. Martin Schläpfer’s intensive work as a choreographer and ballet director began in 1994 with his appointment as director of the Bern Ballet. He transformed the ensembles he directed – the Bern Ballet (1994– 1999), ballettmainz (1999–2009) and Ballett am Rhein (2009–2020) – into distinctive companies. Ballett am Rhein has been voted “Company of the Year” four times by the magazine tanz and has also thrilled audiences at guest performances in Europe, Israel, Taiwan, Japan and Oman. Martin Schläpfer’s œuvre comprises more than 80 works created for his ensembles as well as for the Bavarian State Ballet Munich, Het Nationale Ballet Amsterdam and Stuttgart Ballet. The Zurich Ballet presented his Forellenquinett. In 2012, Martin Schläpfer returned to the stage as a dancer for Hans van Manen’s The Old Man and Me, and in 2014 the Dutchman created the world premiere Alltag for him as a soloist. In 2017, he was a guest choreographer and teacher at Canada’s National Ballet School in Toronto. In 2023 he was a member of the jury for the Prix de Lausanne. After winning the Prix de Lausanne as “Best Swiss Dancer” in 1977, the choreographer and director Schläpfer went on to receive numerous awards, including the Art Prize of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate (2002), the Spoerli Foundation Dance Prize (2003), the Prix Benois de la Danse (2006), the Gutenberg Medal of the City of Mainz (2009) and Der Faust in 2009 and 2012. Martin Schläpfer received the Swiss Dance Prize in 2013 and the Taglioni – European Ballet Award in the “Best Director” category from the Malakhov Foundation in 2014. His ballet DEEP FIELD, based on a commissioned composition by Adriana Hölszky, was nominated for the Prix Benois, and in 2015 he received the Music Prize of the City of Duisburg. In 2010, tanz magazine named him “Choreographer of the Year”, followed by the same award from Die Deutsche Bühne magazine in 2018 and 2019. He has been a member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts since 2017. In 2018, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, followed by the Grand St. Gallen Culture Prize in 2019. In 2022, tanz magazine named the Vienna State Ballet the “Highlight of the Season” and nominated Martin Schläpfer as “Choreographer of the Year”. 45
BIOGRAPHIES
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Sleeping Beauty Martin Schläpfer Season 2023/24 PUBLISHER Vienna State Opera GmbH, Opernring 2, 1010 Vienna General Director: Dr. Bogdan Roščić Administrative Director: Dr. Petra Bohuslav Director & Chief Choreographer Vienna State Ballet: Martin Schläpfer Managing Director Vienna State Ballet: Mag. Simone Wohinz Editing: Mag. Anne do Paço Design & Concept: Fons Hickmann M23, Berlin Image Concept Cover: Martin Conrads Layout & Type Setting: Miwa Meusburger Producer: Print Alliance HAV Produktions GmbH, Bad Vöslau PERFORMING RIGHTS For the choreography © Martin Schläpfer Toshio Hosokawa: Ferne Landschaft II © Universal Edition AG, Vienna on behalf of Schott Music GmbH & KG, Mainz on behalf of Schott Music Co. Ltd. Tokyo CD RECORDING Toshio Hosokawa: Koto-uta, Voyage I, Concert for Saxophone and Orchestra, Ferne Landschaft II. Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Musical Direction: Ken Takaseki © Kairos 0012172KAI, 2001 TEXT REFERENCES About today’s performance, Synopsis, At the heart of the fairy tale (English translation: David Tushingham) and Distant Landscape are original contributions by Anne do Paço for this program. Reprint only with permission of the Vienna State Ballet/Dramaturgy. Pp. 4–5: Grimm’s Household Tales. English Translation & Ed.: Margaret Hunt. London 1884 / p. 13: Diane Purkiss: Troublesome Things. A History of Fairies and Fairy Stories. London 2001 / pp. 16–17: Walter Benjamin: The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov. In: Illuminations. Ed. & Intro: Hannah Arendt, English Translation: Harry Zohn. New York 1968 / pp. 30–33: Thomas Steiert: Rhythm, Space, Imagination. Reprint of the original contribution to the Vienna State Ballet’s program Dornröschen, Season 1994/95 (English Translation: David Tushingham) / p. 33: Malte Korff: Tschaikowsky. Leben und Werk. München 2014 / pp. 33–35: Letters by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: tchaikovsky-research.net.
PHOTO CREDITS Cover: © Antti Laitinen: detail from Broken Landscape IV (2018) Pp. 3, 9, 39–43: © Florian Moshammer (p. 3: Masayu Kimoto, Olga Esina, Ensemble / p. 9: Martin Schläpfer / p. 39: Yuko Kato, Daniel Vizcayo, Marcos Menha / p. 40: Sinthia Liz, Helen Clare Kinney / p. 41: Hyo-Jung Kang, Brendan Saye / p. 42: Daniel Vizcayo / p. 43: Liudmila Konovalova, Claudine Schoch) / pp. 18–29: © Ashley Taylor / p. 44: © Neda Navaee / p. 45: © Andreas Jakwerth Rights owners who could not be reached are requested to contact the editorial team for the purpose of subsequent legal reconciliation.
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