The Nutcracker
The Nutcracker is a two-act ballet, originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto is adapted from E. T. A. Hoffmann's story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King".
Swan Lake
Swan Lake, Op. 20, is a ballet composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1875–76. Despite its initial failure, it is now one of the most popular of all ballets.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was a Russian composer of the romantic period, whose works are among the most popular music in the classical repertoire. He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally, bolstered by his appearances as a guest conduct…
Full Answer
Why is Swan Lake so popular?
Jeremy Nicholas Swan Lake is one of the most popular of all classical ballets, and the first of Tchaikovsky ’s three ballets (the others being The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker) that opened a golden age of Russian ballet.
Is Swan Lake a ballet or opera?
Swan Lake (Russian: Лебеди́ное о́зеро, romanized: Lebedínoye ózero ), Op. 20, is a ballet composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1875–76. Despite its initial failure, it is now one of the most popular of all ballets.
Is Swan Lake Tchaikovsky?
Swan Lake (Russian: лебединое озеро/Lebedinoye ozero), Op. 20, is a ballet composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1875–76. Despite its initial failure, it is now one of the most popular of all ballets.
What movies have been made out of Swan Lake?
In 1968–69, the Kirov Ballet along with Lenfilm studios produced a filmed version of the ballet starring Yelena Yevteyeva as Odette. In the film Funny Girl (1968), Barbra Streisand, playing Fanny Brice, dances in a comedic spoof of Swan Lake. The ballet is central to the plot of " Étoile " (1989).
Are Swan Lake and The Nutcracker the same?
Swan Lake and The Nutcracker are tales of magical transformation and love, that are among the most beloved ballets, performed worldwide. Composed by P.S. Tchaikovsky, Swan Lake premiered in 1877, and is one of the most beautiful ballet scores. The company will be performing The Nutcracker for the first time in Israel.
Are swans in The Nutcracker?
Swan Lake features a very famous score by Piotr Ilych Tchaikovsky, the same Russian composer who brought us the famous strains of The Nutcracker. His bird ballet was written before his Christmas ballet. The dramatic story features a gentle White Swan, Odette, and her evil doppelganger, Black Swan Odile.
What period is The Nutcracker and Swan Lake from?
19th Century Russian composer. A collection of evocative, colourful and imaginative orchestral ballet music.
What fairytale is Swan Lake based on?
The Lake of SwansLibretto and score The story of the ballet was based on "The Lake of Swans", a German fairy tale. Tchaikovsky used a musical theme from this children's ballet in the mature Swan Lake. Little else is known of this ballet for children. In 1875 Vladimir Begitchev asked Tchaikovsky to write a ballet about swans.
What are the biggest roles in The Nutcracker?
Clara is the ballet's main character, a young girl who lives with her parents and her brother. Clara's Godfather and Uncle, a toymaker who brings magic and mystery wherever he goes. The Nutcracker transforms from a toy into a prince and dances with Clara. In some versions, it is Drosselmeyer's nephew.
What are the acts in The Nutcracker?
Act 1Track 1 – Miniature Overture.Track 2 – The Decoration of the Christmas Tree.Track 3 – March.Track 4 – Children's Galop and Entry of the Parents.Track 5 – Arrival of Drosselmeyer.Track 6 – Grandfather's Dance.Track 7 – Clara and the Nutcracker.Track 8 – The Battle.More items...
Is Swan Lake the hardest ballet?
“Swan Lake” — which opens, in a production choreographed by Kent Stowell, at Pacific Northwest Ballet on Feb. 2 — is, of course, much more than a sequence of turns. The technically and artistically demanding double role of Odette (White Swan) and Odile (Black Swan) is perhaps the most difficult in all of ballet.
Why is Swan Lake so famous?
The stirring Tchaikovsky score. Swan Lake was Tchaikovsky's first ballet. By creating a score that was more like a symphonic work, he radically raised the bar for ballet music. But, at the time of its 1877 premiere, Tchaikovsky didn't realize he'd written a masterpiece.
Is Swan Lake the most famous ballet?
Swan Lake is perhaps the most well-known ballet, next to The Nutcracker. Petipa choreographed this famous ballet, danced to a glorious score by Tchaikovsky, in 1877.
What does the black swan represent in Swan Lake?
homosexualityHere, Odette, the white swan, symbolises the perfect woman, the one to which Siegfried must go to, even though he is irremediably attracted to a darker more shameful desire (homosexuality?) represented by Odile, the black swan.
What is the moral of Swan Lake?
Odette embodies beauty and purity, but cannot fulfill her natural birthright as a woman. Siegfrieds love with is potential to humanize Odette can free her from her curse so she can shed her swan identity and be the woman she was born to be.
Are Odette and Odile the same person?
Because the character of Odile is actually the evil Von Rothbart's daughter magically disguised as Odette, the two roles are most often portrayed by the same dancer, but occasionally they are danced by two different dancers in the same performance.
What pieces are in The Nutcracker Suite?
The Suite consists of eight numbers, grouped in three movements:Ouverture miniature. Allegro giusto (B-flat major, 182 bars). Corresponding to the Overture from the ballet.Danses caractéristiques: Marche. Tempo di marcia viva (G major, 88 bars). ... Valse des fleurs. Tempo di valse (D major, 353 bars).
What instruments play in The Nutcracker?
The ballet is scored for a large orchestra consisting of 3 flutes (2nd and 3rd doubling piccolos), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets (in A, B-flat), bass clarinet (in A, B-flat), 2 bassoons + 4 horns (in F), 2 trumpets (in A, B-flat), 3 trombones, tuba + 4 timpani, triangle, tambourine, cymbals, bass drum, tam tam, ...
Is Clara the Sugar Plum Fairy?
Clara. In English National Ballet's Nutcracker, Clara herself transforms into the Sugar Plum Fairy at the end of the ballet. After her many adventures, and after the Mouse King has been defeated, she transforms into the Sugar Plum for the lavish celebration that takes place in an enchanted garden.
Is a nutcracker a bird?
The nutcrackers (Nucifraga) are a genus of three species of passerine bird, in the family Corvidae, related to the jays and crows. The genus Nucifraga was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760 with the spotted nutcracker (Nucifraga caryocatactes) as the type species.
What is the Swan Lake ballet?
Swan Lake: Masterpiece Guide To Tchaikovsky’s Romantic Ballet. For such a famous work the genesis of Swan Lake, the greatest of all romantic ballets, is surprisingly vague. Every summer, Tchaikovsky was in the habit of visiting the same three places and friends. It was in these locations that he wrote the Second and Third Symphonies, and Swan Lake.
How many performances of Swan Lake were there?
Nevertheless – and this is not often recorded- this production survived in the repertoire for six years and had 41 performances, more than many of the other ballets in the Bolshoi repertoire. But it was not until after Tchaikovsky’s death that Swan Lake achieved the success it deserved in a revised version of the score by Riccardo Drigo (1846-1930), the Italian composer, conductor and long-serving Director of Music of the Imperial Ballet of St Petersburg. Various changes to the libretto were made (see above) and the four acts became three (Act 2 became Act 1 scene 2). The new Swan Lake was given its premiere at St Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre on Friday 27 January 1895 and was warmly received.
What was the premiere of Swan Lake?
Yet with all this, the premiere of Swan Lake on Friday 4 March 1877 at the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, was something of a fiasco. The conductor was incapable of doing justice to so complex a score, the scenery and choreography were second-rate and, to cap it all, the brilliant ballerina Anna Sobeshchanskaya, for whom the main role of Odette had been intended, was removed after a senior official in Moscow accused her of agreeing to marry him, taking all the jewels she received as gifts, selling them, and then running off with a fellow dancer. “The poverty of the production,” wrote Modest Tchaikovsky, the composer’s brother, “the absence of outstanding performers, the ballet master’s weakness of imagination, and, finally, the orchestra … all of this together permitted (Tchaikovsky) with good reason to cast the blame for the failure on others.’”
How many numbers are in Swan Lake?
Today, we take Tchaikovsky’s magnificent score of Swan Lake for granted but it was revolutionary in its time. There are 33 numbers in the complete ballet scored for a large symphony orchestra (five instruments more than the pit orchestra for Tristan Und Isolde, for example). No longer was the music a string of unrelated dance movements with no attempt to portray characters or events on stage, as was usual in the fare provided by the ‘specialist’ ballet composers. Apart from a full symphonic score, Tchaikovsky offered moments of magical orchestration too numerous to mention, and, with the sophisticated use of different tonalities, links the various elements of the narrative into a cohesive whole (using B minor for the Swans, for instance, F minor for Rothbart).
When was Swan Lake written?
I was ashamed, for if I had known of this music then, I would not have written Swan Lake .”. Between 18 July and mid-August 1875 Tchaikovsky finished his Third Symphony and wrote two acts of Swan Lake. The score was finally completed in April 1876.
Where was the ballet Swan performed?
It was performed at the country estate of Tchaikovsky’s sister Alexandra Davydova at Kamenka (in Ukraine). One informant claimed that the ‘swan theme’ familiar from the later ballet made its first appearance at this time; another claimed that the production had taken place in the summer of 1867.
Who choreographed Swan Lake?
However, what is most usually seen today is a revised version of the score with choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov which premiered at St Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre on 27 January 1895, two years after Tchaikovsky’s death. Listen to our recommended recording of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, featured on Tchaikovsky: Ballet Suites performed by ...
What is the grand adage in Swan Lake?
The Grand adage (a.k.a. the Love Duet) from the second scene of Swan Lake was fashioned from the final love duet from his opera Undina (Tchaikovsky), abandoned in 1873. By April 1876 the score was complete, and rehearsals began. Soon Reisinger began setting certain numbers aside that he dubbed "undanceable.".
How many performances did Swan Lake have?
Unlike the première of The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake did not dominate the repertory of the Mariinsky Theatre in its first season. It was given only sixteen performances between the première and the 1895–1896 season, and was not performed at all in 1897.
What technique did Tchaikovsky use in Swan Lake?
Tchaikovsky most admired Adam's 1844 score for Giselle, which used the Leitmotif technique: associating certain themes with certain characters or moods, a technique he would use in Swan Lake, and later, The Sleeping Beauty . Tchaikovsky drew on previous compositions for his Swan Lake score.
How long did it take Tchaikovsky to compose Swan Lake?
Tchaikovsky's excitement with Swan Lake is evident from the speed with which he composed: commissioned in the spring of 1875, the piece was created within one year . His letters to Sergei Taneyev from August 1875 indicate, however, that it was not only his excitement that compelled him to create it so quickly but his wish to finish it as soon as possible, so as to allow him to start on an opera. Respectively, he created scores of the first three numbers of the ballet, then the orchestration in the fall and winter, and was still struggling with the instrumentation in the spring. By April 1876, the work was complete. Tchaikovsky's mention of a draft suggests the presence of some sort of abstract but no such draft has ever been seen. Tchaikovsky wrote various letters to friends expressing his longstanding desire to work with this type of music, and his excitement concerning his current stimulating, albeit laborious task.
How many litres of water is in Swan Lake?
In the second act, the stage is filled in 5000 litres of water, and features the conflict between White Swan and Black Swan.
Who composed the score for Swan Lake?
Begichev commissioned the score of Swan Lake from Tchaikovsky in May 1875 for 800 rubles. Tchaikovsky worked with only a basic outline from Julius Reisinger of the requirements for each dance.
Who wrote the Nutcracker?
t. e. Swan Lake (Russian: Лебеди́ное о́зеро, romanized: Lebedínoye ózero listen (help·info) ), Op. 20, is a ballet composed by Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1875–76. Despite its initial failure, it is now one of the most popular ballets of all time.
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