KIROV BALLET.

KIROV BALLET MARYINSKY THEATRE ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA MARCH 30-31, 2000

The Kirov Ballet's premieres in recent years were not numerous and all of them were one-act ballets. This abandonment of new, full-night productions with dramatic plots was seen as a mistake by the troupe itself and also by its Saint Petersburg audience. So this spring the Maryinsky chose to present a well-known ballet, Manon, created in 1974 by Kenneth MacMillan for The Royal Ballet in London, set to the music of Jules Massenet, with the plot based on the Abbe Prevost novel, L'histoire du chevalier Des Grieux et la Manon Lescaut.

MacMillan's constant assistant Monica Parker successfully transferred the two-hour and fifty-minute, three-act production to the Maryinsky's stage. Manon is a choreographic drama--a genre once premiered frequently by the Kirov Ballet; The Fountain of Bakhchisarai (1934) and Romeo and Juliet (1940) are both still in the Maryinsky's repertoire. In portraying vivid dramatic characters, realistic pantomime plays as important a role as the dance. This distinguishing characteristic of the genre leaves narrative composition as a weak point, since as a rule the stories are based on widely known literary works. The ballets are only illustration to the dramatic plot.

This was true of MacMillan's Manon. The scene "in the Madame's place" in act two is obviously overloaded with dances, whereas the first two scenes from the third act are almost devoid of them. From the next scene, the four attractive duets of main characters are perceived as an original choreographic poem about a fatal love. Without prior knowledge of the story, it was not easy to understand that Manon intended to spend her youth in a convent and not become a demimondaine in Paris. If one had not read the libretto one would never know that she was exiled to remote America, and that Des Grieux had followed her. The list of examples could be easily continued.

Of the performers participating in the series of premieres, Altynai Asylmuratova and Igor Zelensky had special status--they had danced this ballet on the London stage. Their interpretation of their roles, therefore, was well thought out and convincing, though the sophistication of the dancers made it somewhat difficult for the audience to empathize with their naive characters. On the following day the audience saw the same characters presented in a quite different way by Diana Vishneva and Ilya Kuznetsov. It seemed that the young ballerina decided to try on the Manon image rather than merely perform it, combining it with her own individuality. She achieved a brilliant success in doing so in the first act, then seemed to have lost momentum. The tall and good-looking Kuznetsov looked a perfect chevalier living through all the ups and downs of his life. The audience was pleasantly surprised by the dynamism and artistry of the young Maxim Khrebtov (Lescaut). Together with Natalia Sologub (who portrayed his mistress) he was especially good in the "not-sober duet" from the third scene. Experienced masters Alexander Kurkov and Dmitri Korneev painted images of villains with bold strokes, alternately performing the parts of Monsieur G.M. and the Gaoler.

Generally the premiere was a great success. The new production continues to inspire ballerinas; in succeeding performances the part of Manon was to be danced by Yulia Makhalina and Svetlana Zakharova.