Don Quixote - May 31st, 2013
Wiener Staatsballet: Don Quixote (May 31st, 2013)
Such a special evening... The Opera was full, the audience seemed to “understand” what it was all about and the performance on stage was fantastic.
I cannot use too many words to describe the greatness of the dancers on stage… It would seem profane… like an irreverence to what is sacred and, yes, ballet is sacred for many of us…
Orchestra, Costumes, Lighting, Stage settings everything in full harmony…
Energy – lots of energy – flowing from the Stage of the State opera last night…
Demi-soloists like Greig Matthews making a terrific job at the Cops-de-Ballet, strong, muscular dancers like Alice Firenze “fighting” on stage, Kirill Kourlaev as the great, imposing Torero, Misha Sosnosvschi catching the audience’s attention and milking applause with all his tricks as the gypsy… and, most importantly, each single element of the perfect Corps-de-Ballet involved in this happy staging… Rafaella D’albuquerque, Flavia Soares and so many others. Energy, yes, pure energy!
Maria Yakovleva was perfect. Her Kitri (Quitéria, by the way… I think this is funny because this was my great-Grandmother’s Christian name!) was more than enjoyable. Funny, lovely, emotional, wild… and her Dulcinea on the second act… no words… like a piece of expensive china that should be treasured inside a vitrine. She touched me.
Thank you, Maria!
Vladimir Shishov… great… what a naughty Basil…
He keeps on surprising me: His Basil was really a young man… of 18 or 19… how come that a dancer can transform himself so much on stage?
Well, people say that Sarah Bernhard, while she was performing Jean D’Arc with more than 70 years old, turned to the audience, while she was asked about her age and said: I am sixteen… and everyone believed that. These great mysteries of the performing arts, of talent…
Even though Nureyev’s choreography is the hell for the principal male dancer, Vladimir Shishov did a marvelous job. Even though those endless, unnecessary Ronde-de-Jambes en l’air - which were “natural” for Rudolph and that were the reason why he added so many of them to the choreography – and even if the solutions for the male part in the Coda of the third act are questionable, Mr. Shishov gave one of the greatest performances which I have ever seen of this choreography. The audience simply loved him!
Chapeau, Miss Yakovleva e Mr. Shishov…. Great performance.
And then... a glass of wine, just the three of us, Flavia & Vladi Sishov and I, at "Sacher"! What a pleasure! The evening was complete!
P.S. A funny fact happened during one of the intermissions. While I was having a glass of wine and eating some crayfish hors-d’œuvres I heard some people just beside me, criticizing Kirill Kourlave’s blond hair (because he was playing a Spanish man). Especially a couple that was quite loud… they seemed to belong to a Viennese “ballet club” (or something like that kind of “Fan stuff”). I had to “get into this conversation” to remind them that Ingrid Bergman also played “Maria” in “For whom the bell tolls” (Hemingway’s great novel placed during the Spanish civil War) and that she was a blue-eyed blond… like thousands of Spanish men and women that come from the Sierra Nevada! That’s common knowledge. I don’t think this couple is going ever to talk to me again!
Ricardo Leitner / Attitude-devant
