Meanwhile,I was rather amazed to see that the Bolshoi Ballet's production of Asafiev's 'The Flames of Paris' (a Stalin favourite,apparently! ;D) has actually been released on dvd!! :o
I saw the show in live performance at the Bolshoi Theatre in September (a friend took me for my birthday). It's a clumsy and rather leaden work, predicated on a suitably maudlin Soviet kitchsy story of a poor-but-honest girl who is abducted and manhandled by beastly toffs. Despite listening to it for more than 2 hours, not a note of it left any impression on me (well, other than a rather improbably harmonised version of
La Marseillaise ) It's more miserable than Les Miserables.
At the BT the new version has been choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky - who has made something of a career portfolio of dusting-off soviet cast-offs. However, even Ratmansky's lively and attractive staging can't breathe much life into this weary warhorse, and I found myself twiddling my thumbs until the next lighting or choreographic stunt. As with all their productions, the quality of productions revived even from the previous season dips woefully. Ratmansky is notorious as a meticulous task-master ("You miss one rehearsal - you're out!") and probably the show was very tight when it premiered last season. But the cat's away, so the mice are at play... unsynchronised lines of performers, action which fails to finish in time with the music... and one girl who literally fell off a 1-meter platform upstage ::) I hope the material filmed for DVD release was taken from last season's shows! :-)
