Funk and Wagnalls Dictionary: Sylphid: a young sylph. Sylph: a being mortal but without a soul living in and on the air, and intermediate between material and immaterial things. Although imagined by Paracelsus, a Renaissance physician and alchemyst, such a creature couldn´t fail to interest the Romantics and the world of ballet. There are two traditions concerning the ballet "La Sylphide" and both have been appreciated in our city.
My first contact with it was the Auguste Bournonville version made for the Royal Danish Ballet in 1835 on charming music by Lövenskjold, in a lovely staging by the Marquis of Cuevas Ballet with Rosella Hightower if I remember right, for this was in the Fifties. A few years ago it was revived by Mario Galizzi with Karina Olmedo. In 1974 we saw the reconstruction by Pierre Lacotte of the original, longer version (1832) by Filippo Taglioni in two acts for the Paris Opera, with a wonderful pair of protagonists: Ghislaine Thesmar and Michael Denard. It was quite a success, and the Colón kept it on the repertoire for some years.
The current revival of the Taglioni-Lacotte is done by Gil Isoart in very good style. He has followed Lacotte´s purity of line and the production by the Colón has kept the original stage and costume designs of the Paris premiere, so we have a historicist Romantic production on beautiful stage designs by Pierre Ciceri and the refined costumes by Eugène Lamy. As this is the first Romantic ballet in history that has come down to us, it has a definite value and it is a right decision to revive it here.
Alas, what a pity that Taglioni didn´t have resort to a better composer, say Adam or Auber; for the obscure Jean-Madeleine Marie Schneitzhoeffer, a percussionist of the Paris Opera Orchestra, wrote workmanlike music of very little interest. As this is a story on a plot by Adolphe Nourrit (curiously he was a famous tenor) that develops in Scotland, for the French a remote and exotic place, one could hope for music that would evoke reels and strathspeys, but there´s precious little of it and plenty of anodyne background music.
As Enrique Destaville explains in his valuable programme notes, the ballet slipper of that time didn´t have the hard point it had by the time Petipa made his Russian ballets, and so the light, airy choreography for the sylphid avoided long passages in points. It was also the period in which the tutus were imagined for the sylphids in ethereal tulles.
Let´s face it, the piece has its dull moments, and its dramaturgy falls into a trap: to be credible the narrative parts shouldn´t mix with the divertissements, as they do here; in the Tchaikovsky ballets or in Delibes´"Coppélia" they have this matter clear and it helps a lot. The best bits have to do with the "pas de trois" in which the Sylphide, seen by James but not by his fiancee Effie, intersperses her steps with those of the terrestrial couple. And there are some nice ensembles and solos.
Karina Olmedo was a correct dancer but lacked the ethereal charm of the dancers I mentioned, following the stele of Marie Taglioni, the original "sylphide"; I also found Olmedo slightly insecure at times. Her James, Juan Pablo Ledo, was very good: lithe, expressive, neat in his evolutions. Maricel De Mitri was an agreeable Effie. Madge (the Witch) was heavily characterised by the male dancer Vagram Ambartsoumian; she is a model for Carabosse in "The Sleeping Beauty" and precipitates the death of the sylphid. Disciplined and pleasant Corps de Ballet in blue and in red . Stage effects of flying sylphids added to the Romantic and fantastic ambience, aided by atmospheric lighting by Rubén Conde. Javier Logioia Orbe and the Colón Orchestra did what they could with the poor musical material.
We´ve seen plenty of "Don Quichottes" here, generally in the Zarko Prebil choreography, so I wasn´t keen in seeing yet another one. But it did give me the chance to know the Ballet of the Kiev National Opera Taras Shevchenko at the Coliseo. Of course the Ukrainian capital isn´t quite the equal in ballet to Saint Petersburg´s Maryinsky or Moscow´s Bolshoi, but they do have the true Russian school. The affinity of the Russians with Spain has always surprised me, and in the strongly Spanish music of the Pole Ludwig Minkus and of the choreography the light story of the love of Basil and Kitri is seen with pleasure. The original work of Marius Petipa was revised by Alexander Gorsky (his are the toreador´s passages), and for Kiev by Eugenia Khasianova, a lady of multiple talents as she was the author of the brilliant costumes and the painted drops. The music was recorded and well played.
The main couple was very accomplished: Katerina Khanukova and Viktor Ischuk were young, personable and charming. The other girls were first-rate: Katerina Metolkina as Cupid, Viktoria Dymovska as Street Dancer, Yulia Safonova as a Gypsy and Katerina Alaeva as the Dryad Queen. The Torero, Konstantin Pozharnitsky, was rather heavy. The character roles were too caricatured: a stiff Don Quichotte (Anatoli Vorontsov), an unfunny Sancho (Volodimyr Fomenko), a ridiculous Gamache (Maksim Valchik); only Lorenzo the tavern keeper (Valeri Popov) was adequate. It was a presentation of Texoart and Copasa Fundación Cultural, the first of four during this season.
For Buenos Aires Herald
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