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1 CD -
8.557500 - (c) 2005
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IGOR
STRAVINSKY | ROBERT CRAFT - Volume 2
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Igor STRAVINSKY
(1882-1971) |
The
Firebird (1910) - Ballet in
two Scenes (First Recording of
the Complete Original Version)
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44' 52" |
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Introduction
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2' 34" |
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1 |
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Scene I
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Night. Kastchei's Enchanted Garden
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1' 40" |
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2 |
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The Firebird enters, pursued by Ivan
Tsarevich
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2' 16" |
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3 |
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- The
Firebird's Dance
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1' 20" |
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Ivan Tsarevich captures the Firebird
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0' 55" |
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5
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The Firebird begs to be released
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5' 27" |
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Entrance of the Thirteen Enchanted
Princesses
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2' 17" |
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The Princesses play with the golden
apples (Scherzo)
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2' 31" |
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Ivan Tsarevich appears
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0' 59" |
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9 |
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The Princesses' Khoeovod (Round
Dance) |
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4' 37" |
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Daybreak |
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1' 28" |
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Ivan Tsarevich, entering Kastchei's
place, sets off its Magic Carillon,
alerting Kastchei's
Monster-Guardians, who capture him
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1' 35" |
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The entrance of Kastchei the
Immortal |
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1' 08" |
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Dialogue between Kastchei and Ivan
Tsarevich
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1' 03" |
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The Princesses plead for mercy |
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1' 04" |
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The Firebird enters |
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0' 36" |
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Dance of Kastchei's retinue under
the Firebird's magic spell
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0' 49" |
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Infernal Dance of Katschei and his
subjects under the Firebird's magic
spell
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4' 38" |
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The Firebird's Lullaby |
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2' 29" |
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Kastchei awakens
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1' 09" |
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Katschei's death
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1' 20" |
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Scene II |
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Katschei's spell is broken, his
palace disappears, and the Petrified
Knights return to life. General
Thanksgiving. The Marriage and |
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2' 55" |
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22 |
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Coronation
of Prince Ivan as Tsar and of the
Princess of Unearthly Beauty as
Tsarina.
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Petrushka
(1911, Revised
1947) - A
Burlesque in four
Scenes
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24' 10" |
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First Tableau
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The Shrove-Tide Fair
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5' 12" |
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The Mountebank (Flute solo)
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1' 19" |
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Russian Dance
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2' 42" |
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Second Tableau |
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In Petrushka's Cell. Impetuoso
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4' 24" |
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Third Tableau |
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The Blackamoor |
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2' 26" |
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The Ballerina (Cornet Solo)
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0' 45" |
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Valse: Ballerina and Blackamoor. Lento
cantabile
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3' 12" |
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Fourth Tableau |
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The Shrove-Tide Fair
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1' 09" |
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The Dance of the Wet-Nurses
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2' 33" |
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Peasant with Bear (Tuba solo)
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1' 23" |
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32 |
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Gypsies and a Rake Vendor
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1' 10" |
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33 |
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Dance of the Coachmen
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2' 02" |
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34 |
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Masqueraders |
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1' 35" |
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The Scuffle: Blackamoor and
Petrushka
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0' 51" |
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Death of Petrushka
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0' 44" |
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Police and the Juggler
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1' 13" |
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Vociferation of Petrushka's Ghost
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0' 51" |
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39 |
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PHILHARMONIA
ORCHESTRA
Robert CRAFT
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Recorded
at: |
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Abbey
Road Studio One, London (England):
- 27 and 29 Novembre 1996
(Firebird)
- 31 January and 1 February 1997
(Petrushka)
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Live / Studio
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Studio |
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Producer |
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Gregory
K. Squires
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Engineer |
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Michael
Sheady (Firebird)
Alex Marcou (Petrushka)
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Editor
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Richard
Price (Firebird)
Wayne Hileman (Petrushka)
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Naxos Editions
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Naxos
| 8.557500 | 1 CD | LC 05537 |
durata 76' 53" | (c)
2005 | DDD
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KOCH
(previously released) |
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Nessuna
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MusicMasters
(previously released) |
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MusicMasters,
Vol. IX | 01612-67177-2 | 1 CD
| (p) 1997 | DDD (Firebird)
MusicMasters,
Vol. X | 01612-67184-2 |
1 CD | (p) 1998 | DDD
(Petrushka)
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Cover |
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Bird of
Paradise (Jar-Ptiza), cover
from a symbolist and artistic
journal of Russian émigrés,
published in Berlin, 1921.22
(colour litho)
(Bibliothèque des Arts
Décoratifs, Paris, France /
Bridgeman Art Library) |
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Note |
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MusicMASTERS
CLASSICS
Release (1991-1998)
1 CD - 01612-67177-2 - Volume
IX
(c) 1997 *
2
CDs - 01612-67184-2 - Volume X
(c) 1998 **
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KOCH
INTERNATIONAL
Release (1996-2002)
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This
is the first recording of the
Complete Original Version of
Stravinsky’s most popular work,
The Firebird. Among the
many differences between the
present recording and its
predecessors is the restoration
of two long, valveless trumpets
on stage, each playing a
single note standing out above
the entire orchestra. This is a
thrilling effect in all
likelihood heard for the first
time since 1910 on this
recording. Compared to the lush
orchestra of The Firebird,
the sonorities of Petrushka
may seem brittle but
harmonically, rhythmically, and
instrumentally the work is
innovative on every page, a
drama of great power and
originality.
The Firebird (1910)
For the first performance of Firebird,
June 25th, 1910, the Ballets
Russes programme of the Théâtre
National de l’Opéra, Paris,
published the following
synopsis:
The Firebird,
one of the most popular
Russian folktales, begins when
Ivan Tsarevich, the crown
prince, sees a marvellous bird
of flaming gold. He pursues
but fails to catch it, and
only succeeds in snatching one
of its glittering feathers.
The chase has taken him into
the domain of Kastchei the
Immortal, demi-god of evil,
who attempts to capture him
and, as he has already done
with many valiant knights and
princes, turns him to stone.
Kastchei’s daughters and
thirteen princesses intercede
for Ivan Tsarevich and try to
save him. Finally the Firebird
appears, breaks Kastchei’s
spell, and rescues everyone.
Ivan Tsarevich and the
knights, delivered from their
fate, seize the golden apples
from Kastchei’s garden.
This
neglects to say that the ballet
concludes with the coronation
and wedding of Ivan Tsarevich,
which was Stravinsky’s idea, and
it does not explain that the
Firebird’s supernatural powers
are stronger than the demonic
powers of Kastchei.
Michel Fokine, who choreographed
the ballet, gave a greatly
amplified summary of the plot,
from which we learn that Ivan
first sees the Firebird at
moonlight, is blinded by her
lucency, prepares to shoot her
(!), and on second impulse to
take her alive. She flies to the
tree with the golden apples in
Kastchei’s garden, where Ivan
captures her. She pleads with
him, and he releases her,
whereupon she gives him one of
her fiery feathers, telling him
that it will prove useful to
him. He places the talisman in
his tunic and starts to leave.
The door of Kastchei’s castle
opens and twelve beautiful
princesses, followed by the
Princess of Unearthly Beauty,
steal out and into the garden
where they play with the golden
apples. Unearthly Beauty’s apple
rolls into a bush, where Ivan is
hiding. He retrieves it, bows to
her, and returns the apple. The
frightened princesses, though
attracted by his beauty,
modesty, and gallant manners,
shyly withdraw. Unearthly Beauty
falls in love with him and he
with her.
The approaching dawn warns the
princesses to return to
Kastchei’s palace. Ivan follows
but Unearthly Beauty stops him,
saying that it would mean his
death. Outside the wall, he
realises that he cannot live
without her and returns to
search for her. Hacking at the
gate with his sword, he sets off
the magic carillon, Kastchei’s
alarm, whereupon fiendish bolibotchki
and kikimoras stream out
of the castle and capture him.
Kastchei appears and questions
his prisoner, who respectfully
doffs his hat, then, on
beholding the sorcerer’s hideous
visage, spits at him. Ivan is
placed against the wall,
constructed of petrified
knights, and Kastchei begins the
incantation that will turn him
to stone as well. Suddenly Ivan
remembers the Firebird’s
feather. He waves it and she
appears, casting a spell over
Kastchei and his demons and
forcing them to dance until they
fall exhausted to the ground.
Meanwhile, Ivan tries to rescue
Unearthly Beauty, but the
Firebird leads him to a chest
concealed in a tree stump. This
contains an egg that represents
Kastchei’s soul and the secret
of his immortality. When Ivan
squeezes the egg, Kastchei
squirms. When Ivan tosses it
from hand to hand, Kastchei
flies from side to side of the
stage. When Ivan smashes it on
the ground, Kastchei falls dead.
His kingdom of evil disappears
and is replaced by a resplendent
city. Ivan and Unearthly Beauty
are married and crowned Tsar and
Tsarina.
The ballet world is indebted to
Sergey Dyagilev above all for
discovering Stravinsky’s genius
and, on the strength of the
young composer’s three-minute Fireworks
(1908), entrusting him with the
commission for this first modern
ballet. Stravinsky began the
composition in December 1909,
interrupting work on his opera The
Nightingale. The
sketch-score was finished in
March, the reduction for piano
two-hands on 3rd April, the full
score on 18th May.
To create advance publicity for
the Paris première, Dyagilev
invited the French critic R.
Brussel to an audition of the
score in St Petersburg, played
by Stravinsky at the piano.
Brussel wrote that:
We all sat
in the little ground-floor
room on Zamiatin Perenlok
[Dyagilev’s St Petersburg
apartment] … The composer,
young [27], slim, and
uncommunicative, with vague,
meditative eyes, and lips
set firm in an
energetic-looking face, was
at the piano. But the moment
he began to play, the
modest, dimly lighted room
glowed with a dazzling
radiance. By the end of the
first scene, I was
conquered: by the last I was
lost in admiration. The
manuscript on the
music-rest, scored over with
fine pencillings, revealed a
masterpiece.
Tamara
Karsavina, who danced the title
rôle at the première and for
many years subsequently,
recalled that:
Stravinsky
often came early to the
theatre before a rehearsal
began in order to play for
me, over and over again,
some specially difficult
passage. I felt grateful,
not only for the help he
gave me, but for the manner
in which he gave it. For
there was no impatience in
him with my slow
understanding; no
condescension of a master of
his craft towards the
slender equipment of my
musical education. It was
interesting to watch him at
the piano. His body seemed
to vibrate with his own
rhythm; punctuating
staccatos with his head, he
made the pattern of his
music forcibly clear to me,
more so than the counting of
bars would have done.
Stravinsky
arrived in Paris for rehearsals
on 7th June. During them, he
revised and corrected
extensively, leaving only a few
pages without his red ink, or
pencil, changes. During one of
the rehearsals, Dyagilev was
heard to say: “Mark the young
composer well; he is a man on
the eve of celebrity.” The
prediction proved true. The
première, at the Paris Opéra,
was an enormous success. Extra
performances had to be scheduled
and the season extended into the
summer. Stravinsky became an
international figure overnight.
Claude Debussy praised the music
and invited him to lunch with
Erik Satie, who photographed the
two of them together. But before
many years Stravinsky was
suffering from the universal
popularity of the piece, and its
use all his life as a stick with
which to beat his newer,
ground-breaking later music.
One of the many differences
between the present recording
and its predecessors is the
restoration of two long,
valveless trumpets on stage,
each playing a single note. The
clarion sonority of these
instruments standing out above
the entire orchestra, a
thrilling effect in all
likelihood heard for the first
time since 1910 in this
recording.
Petrushka (1911; revised
1947)
A cliché of Stravinsky criticism
is that Firebird,
Stravinsky’s most popular work,
is also his least
characteristic. Already in Petrushka
(1911) he turned against the
heart-on-sleeve expressiveness
and literary effusiveness of the
earlier ballet (“con
tenerezza,” “lamentoso,”
“timidamente,” “dolente,” “con
maligna giola”). But
musical imagery is similarly
tied to the storyline in Petrushka,
and no less closely. The
principal difference between the
two pieces in theatrical terms
is that Firebird remains
a naive, sweet, childlike fairy
tale, while Petrushka is
a drama of great power and
originality.
The Scenario
First Tableau. The
Admiralty Square, St
Petersburg, in the 1830s, a
sunny winter day during
Carnival Week. The scene shows
a segment of the Shrove-tide
Fair. Crowds of people are
strolling about the stage—
common people, gentlefolk, a
group of drunkards armin- arm,
children clustering around the
peepshow, women around the
stalls. A street musician
appears with a hurdy-gurdy. He
is accompanied by a dancer. Just
as she starts to dance, a man
with a music-box and another
dancer turn up on the opposite
side of the stage. After
performing simultaneously for a
short while, the rivals give up
the struggle and retire.
Suddenly a Mountebank comes out
through the curtains of a
marionette theatre. The curtains
are drawn back to reveal three
puppets on their
stands—Petrushka, the Ballerina,
and the Blackamoor. The
Mountebank charms them into life
with his flute, and they begin
to dance—at first jigging on
their hooks in the little
theatre, but then, to general
astonishment, stepping down from
the theatre and dancing among
the public in the open square.
Second Tableau. Petrushka’s
Cell. The black walls are
covered with stars and a
crescent moon. Devils painted
on a gold ground decorate the
panels of the folding doors
that lead into the Ballerina’s
Cell. On one of the walls is a
portrait of the Mountebank
scowling. While the
Mountebank’s magic has endowed
all three puppets with human
feelings and emotions, it is
Petrushka who feels and suffers
most. Bitterly conscious of his
grotesque appearance, he feels
himself to be an outsider, and
resents his complete dependence
on his cruel master. He consoles
himself by falling in love with
the Ballerina, but when she
visits him in his cell, his
uncouth antics frighten her and
she flees. In his despair, he
curses the Mountebank and hurls
himself at his portrait, but
succeeds only in tearing a hole
through the cardboard wall of
his cell.
Third Tableau. The
Blackamoor’s Cell. The
wallpaper is patterned with
green palm trees and colourful
fruits on a red ground. On the
right, a door leads into the
Ballerina’s cell. The
Blackamoor, in a magnificent
costume, is reclining on a divan
and playing with a coconut,
shaking it, then superstitiously
kneeling before it. Though he is
brutal and stupid, the Ballerina
finds him attractive and quickly
captivates him with her wiles.
Their love scene is interrupted
by the sudden arrival of the
furiously jealous Petrushka. The
Blackamoor kicks him out.
Fourth Tableau. The
Fair, as in the First Tableau.
The nighttime festivities of the
Carnival are now at a peak. A
group of wet-nurses dance
together. A peasant playing a
pipe crosses the stage leading a
performing bear. A bibulous
merchant, accompanied by two
gypsies, scatters handfuls of
banknotes among the crowd. A
group of coachmen strike up a
dance and are joined by the
nurses. Finally, a number of
masqueraders—devil, goat, and
pig—rush onto the scene while
Bengal flares are let off in the
wings. At this moment there is a
commotion in the Mountebank’s
theatre, the rivalry between the
puppets having taken a fatal
turn. Petrushka rushes out from
behind the curtain, pursued by
the Blackamoor, whom the
Ballerina tries to restrain. The
Blackamoor strikes down
Petrushka with his scimitar.
Snow begins to fall, and
Petrushka dies, surrounded by
the astonished crowed. The
Mountebank appears and reassures
the bystanders that Petrushka is
only a puppet with a wooden head
and body stuffed with sawdust.
The crowd disperses as the night
grows darker, and the Mountebank
is left behind. But as he starts
to drag the puppet off the
stage, he is startled to see
Petrushka’s ghost appear on the
roof of the little theatre,
jeering and mocking at everyone
whom the Mountebank has fooled.
The growth of Stravinsky’s
musical imagination and
technical mastery during the
months following The
Firebird is one of the
wonders of twentieth-century
music. Firebird revealed
an original musical genius in
the process of discovering
itself, but the score is overtly
influenced by the composer’s
teacher, Rimsky- Korsakov. In
contrast, Petrushka is
entirely new, harmonically,
rhythmically, and instrumentally
innovative on every page. Common
to both ballets is the reliance
on folk-music melody. The
long-line tunes in the Wet
Nurses and the Dance
of the Coachmen come from
even more popular sources than
the Ronde and the Berceuse
in Firebird.
But considered as a theatre
piece, Firebird is
devoid of real characters and
psychological dimensions, and
its plot is the flimsiest of
fairy-tales. Moreover, the
timescales of the two ballets
are wholly dissimilar. The
atmospheric Introduction to Firebird
seems protracted in comparison
to the in medias res
beginning of Petrushka,
and the dances in the earlier
ballet are detachable
set-pieces, or at any rate more
so than in Petrushka, with the
exception of the Russian
Dance - which explains why
Stravinsky was able to extract
three suites from Firebird,
but none from Petrushka.
The drama in Petrushka
takes place in Tableaux Two and
Three. The outer world, that of
the stage spectators and, at the
end, of the theatre audience, is
conjured in the First and Fourth
Tableaux. The interaction of the
two at the dénouement reveals
that the eternal triangle is the
essential geometry of the puppet
world as it often is of our own.
While the Ballerina and the Moor
are mechanical figments,
however, Petrushka is more than
that, though exactly what
remains unresolved in the ironic
ending.
Compared to the lush orchestra
of Firebird, the
sonorities of Petrushka
are brittle (the Russian
Dance) and evanescent (the
Mountebank’s music and the
ending). Moreover, Petrushka
annexes new harmonic territory.
The famous “Petrushka
chord,” which combines the
triads of C major and, remote
from it, F sharp major,
introduces bitonality, and
though Stravinsky was not deeply
interested in exploring its
possibilities in his later
music, he did make use of it on
a small scale in, for example, Circus
Polka and Danses
concertantes. At the end
of the Third Tableau, when the
Moor evicts Petrushka, the music
is in two keys, as it is again
at the end of the ballet when
the Moor pursues, and this time
kills him.
The idea of an inner and an
outer, binary world, of two
existential prisons, is
complemented in other aspects of
the work. In the First and Third
Tableaux, two melodies are
juggled in two different meters
simultaneously, first with the
competing hurdy-gurdy and
music-box, and second, in the
Third Tableau, when the
Ballerina’s Valse and
its bass accompaniment are in
two different keys.
Robert
Craft
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