Raymonda.

Rudolf Nureyev regarded his sumptuous 1983 production of Raymonda for the Paris Opera Ballet (of which he had then just become director) as his definitive account of the ballet. He had first mounted it in 1964, at the age of twenty-six, for the Festival of Two Worlds at Spoleto. He had several other goes at it--including a version for American Ballet Theatre in 1975--but the Paris one was closest to his ideal.

The POB remounted it at the Opera Bastille in honor of the ballet's hundredth anniversary (January 19, 1898). Raymonda was Marius Petipa's last great work, created in collaboration with a young, thirty-three-year-old composer new to ballet, Alexander Glazunov.

Nureyev loved Raymonda so much from his early days with the Kirov because of the pretext it provided for glorious dancing--classical, character demi-caractere, with masses of roles for men as well as for women. The Imperial Ballet was in its prime in the 1890s Petipa could draw on the up-and-coming talents of the Legat brothers and Alexander Gorsky (the future choreographer) as well as the virtuoso stamina of Pierina Legnani, capable of executing the most taxing role Petipa had ever created for a ballerina.

Raymonda is a full-company showcase: the Paris Opera Ballet fielded thirty-two classical couples surrounding the central pair in the Act I vision scene. Six etoiles and first dancers alternating in the role of Raymonda varied from tall to petite, and the heroine's quartet of best friends came in matching heights. I caught the small cast (Geraldine Wiart, Veronique Doisneau, Bertrand Belem, and Eric Camillo) supporting Elisabeth Maurin's Raymonda. She looked like a Meissen figurine--but she had no problem in commanding the huge stage and auditorium of the Bastille in her solos: in the final one, clapping her hands in the Act III Hungarian variation, she had the hauteur of the grandest imperial ballerina.

The scenario, streamlined by Nureyev, remains absurd. The plot, however, is less important than the skillful structure of each act. Classical dancing peaks early, with the vision scene's cornucopia of steps; then come the character dancers in Act II, when Abderakhman (Laurent Hilaire) attempts to seduce Raymonda with the charms of Arabia and Moorish Spain. She becomes deliciously prudish on pointe, as do her girlfriends, inflaming his animal passions still further. It's a hard act to follow, but Petipa tops it with a wedding ceremony flavored with Hungarian folk dance: a czardas in boots for the corps, and a fiendishly difficult grand pas classique for the soloists, as if they haven't already danced enough.

You can watch Raymonda as a melodrama, falling in love with the villain instead of hissing him, or see it as pure dance--a Petipa-Balanchine ballet, developing a vast vocabulary of steps and phrases in a variety of styles. Early in January, Raymonda was playing at the Opera Bastille at the same time as the Merce Cunningham Dance Company performed in the older opera house, the Palais Garnier. Parisian dance-lovers moved between the two, marveling at the richness of choreographic invention spanning the century.

RELATED ARTICLE: INT'L VIEW

Sachertorte may be the quintessential AUstrian dessert, but the ideal way to end a day in the capital is at the Staatsoper watching the Vienna State Opera Ballet dance Rudolf Nureyev's Swan Lake (January 5-February 27, 1998). The production is better than the 1967 film of the same version starring Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn backed by the Vienna troupe. Thirty years ago the dancers plowed through the complicated choreography. Today's company glides through the footwork, complemented by Jordi Roig's nicely minimal sets and costumes.

Led by Gregor Hatala as Siegfried and Eva Petters as Odette/Odile, the cast shows how technical expertise and refinement have evolved. The men as well as the women have gorgeously arched feet and turned-out legs. Petters evokes a swan that's both delicate and decisive, yet as Odile she's a feisty vixen (her thirty-two fouettes begin with some doubles). Similarly dashing, Hatala sails through a series of triple attitude turns, cleanly and without all of Nureyev's 1967 reckless bravura. This Swan Lake proves how dependent choreography is on performers. Five years after Nureyev's death, his ballet has found apt instruments--artists who make a 120-year-old story fresh, current, vital.