Stravinsky And The Ballet Russes: The Firebird/The Rite Of... [2009] [Region Free]

I got this after seeing a clip of "The Rite of Spring" on youtube. I had to see the whole thing! This is a different production to the one I saw on YT but it is a recreation of the original performance with its costumes and it's stunning. How a ballet is put together with music, choreography, sets and costume is simply beyond me. This ballet is >100 years old but it feels very modern and the story and theme is quite unsettling - I can't imagine the impact this must have had back in the day. The 2nd performance on the disc is quite superb and uplifting too. I'm not into ballet but I really enjoyed this and seeing it live is now on my bucket list. The disc also has an interesting interview with the director/choreographer and adds value to this. Recommended.

This disc offers two major ballets by Stravinsky plus an interesting and detailed bonus feature to support the productions. The productions are a determined attempt to recreate the two ballets as originally envisioned by Fokine and Bakst (Firebird 1910) and Nijinsky (Rite 1913). The Firebird was not too difficult to research as this choreography had not previously been lost and is familiar as the basis of most modern performances. The Rite is much more of a problem as Nijinsky did not notate it for posterity. This production has been painstakingly recreated from a considerable number of sources, not least the highly detailed criticisms received from the press and other opponents.As mentioned above, this performance of the Firebird uses familiar choreography and settings such as in the earlier Royal Ballet version on Opus Arte or the freer Russian TV film version available on Decca. This new production, I find, presents a friendlier Firebird character - slightly less dramatic facial make-up and actions, but essentially the same. The dancing is exquisitly done by the four main characters of the Firebird (Ekaterina Kondaurova), The Prince (Ilya Kuznetsov), the princess (Marianna Pavlova) and Kashchei (Vladimir Ponomarev). The corps de ballet perform with the excellence we all expect from the Kirov Ballet. This is an outstanding account.The Rite is more ground-breaking in concept. One major change is the way that at times all 47 members of the ballet are separately choreographed as if individual soloists. This fragmentation is intended to maximise the limited stage space and was a Nijinsky innovation which he first tried out in Debussy's 'Afternoon of a Faun' ballet - also the subject of audience unrest. Other new effects include instances of foot stamping and hitting the floor with choreographed hand slaps to create additional sound effects that were clearly meant to be heard and thus create an extra dimension.The choreography is very stylised in its portrayal of a primitive Rite but, with its use of bright colours for costumes, is generally effective on its own terms. However, the curious idea of pigeon-toed choreography seems to me to be merely odd rather than primal. The dancers do all that is required of them here though and they do it as well as could be expected. Where the choreography mainly fails to convince for me is the final dance to the exhaustive death of the chosen victim. This is just not wild enough - she barely breaks sweat. Instead it seems that she dies largely as a result of fear - she stands transfixed for extended periods of time. Basically it seems to me that the choreography simply fails to match the violent intent of the music and it is this that I am sure could be better done by choreographers working today - I have been told that there is a version by MacMillan for instance.However, that is hardly the point. The point is that with this recording we are able to gain a real insight into the past and what has contributed so much to our present and will lead to the future. An invaluable documents therefore.The imaging is crisp and with excellent colour rendition. The dancers are seen from various angles including vertically downwards from above. This gives an interesting additional idea of the layout on the stage but not that as originally envisioned. The use of close-up imaging is interesting at times but more full-stage shots would have been even more rewarding in my opinion. The sound is spectacular in the DTS surround format and reveals every footfall of the dancers and one can be in no doubt about their weight and the effort required for the lifts! Stereo is also available. The orchestral contribution is fully revealed as expert in its precision under Gergiev.The bonus is interesting as already mentioned above but it is for the two ballets, and especially for the Rite, that this will be bought. This is a seriously successful attempt at the Rite as originally conceived and a good performance of the Firebird. As a total purchase this makes a very fine disc and should give a great deal of pleasure to a great number of people. As such, in my opinion, I am sure a 5 star rating is fully deserved.

Hmm.I liked the Firebird. It's a bit childrens' panto, but the leading lady in her incandescent red dress is, well, incandescent. I can't criticise her dancing. Her mime/acting is very good indeed -- very clear, expressive, but not overplayed. And she's my kind of Firebird -- she doesn't freak out when a human turns up to dance with her, she's a bit wary at first but then she raises an eyebrow and finds out whether he can dance. She's a confident, self-possessed, modern gal. And I liked the head baddie, who was acting rather than dancing but did the pantomime villain very well. There's good work from Gergiev and the orchestra too.As a couple of other people said, there are too many close-ups and funky camera angles in Firebird. But only a few too many and they're not the end of the world. I thought the overhead was actually a rather good idea. Besides, it's not a documentary. So long as the dance works for the viewer, I don't mind whether it looks like the view from centre stalls.Rite, on the other hand, really does suffer from the zoomed-in camerawork. This one *is* somewhat a documetary, since I'm sure most of us are watching it partly out of intellectual curiosity to see what the fuss was about. The choreography is heavy on groups and patterns, and different things going on on different parts of the stage, and you just can't see what's going on for rather too much of the time. They should have put a camera in the first circle and locked the cameraman in a cupboard. I'd recommend the Joffrey version instead, even low-res YouTube, since you can see how the ballet works and why it was groundbreaking.Camerawork aside, I think maybe the original Nijinsky Rite is "radical" and "important" and "interesting" rather than brilliant choreography, but it ain't bad. Watching it I had the strangest memory of walking around the City or Paris modern art museum, which has a lot of work from this period. It's just how I expect an avant garde 1913 ballet about pagans to look. The costumes could be Sonia Delaunay.The BluRay includes a very interesting half hour interview with the two academics who restored the Rite. They talk about the history of the work, and it's impact, and the restoration they did. This is the best extra I've seen in a few years. The other short doc which is more focussed on Firebird is nice enough.Pretty good video and sound by BluRay standards -- 1080i60 for good motion, adequately sharp and free of noise, vibrant but not silly colour, not much encoder blocking in the shadows.