Le Corsaire

Interview with the choreographer

Anna-Marie Holmes first became known worldwide as a ballerina, and later taught and choreographed in more than thirty countries across five continents. The Canadian-born artist worked with the Hungarian National Ballet in 2017 on one of the most successful and most frequently requested works of her professional career, Le Corsaire. Holmes was the first North American dancer to be invited to join the Kirov Ballet. She has also worked with the London Festival Ballet, the Royal Scottish Ballet, the Berlin State Ballet, and the Dutch National Ballet. Her interpretations of Russian classics are widely known and have been performed by the most prestigious companies from Lisbon to Naples and from New York to Tokyo.

What lies behind the creation, staging, and popularity of Le Corsaire?

It is a very long story. My mentor, Natalia Dudinskaya, advised me that I should start thinking about this ballet. I remember her telling me that it was a shame the original work was not in the repertoire anywhere. Around that time, the Bolshoi Ballet also presented a new version, and although the older costumes and sets were all in Moscow, they were not being used at all. It was Dudinskaya’s idea that I should purchase the entire production for the Boston Ballet, and the artistic director at the time, Vladimir Vasiliev, was open to the proposal. That is how Dudinskaya, Diznitsky, and I ended up in the capital of Massachusetts, I invited them from Saint Petersburg to help teach the choreography. The fact that we eventually took it all around the world was not my decision: Le Corsaire simply began to live a life of its own.

The first step was when Kevin McKenzie travelled to Boston to see my ballet, and then the idea arose of whether I would also stage it with the American Ballet Theatre in New York. Of course I said yes, but by then I was already insisting on certain changes. Looking back, this creation went through countless transformations after its U.S. premiere. On one occasion, for example, we had to shorten the three acts of dance material because the performance was followed by the screening of a film made in memory of Rudolf Nureyev. I realized that this condensed version was more exciting and better than the previous one. I changed the order of the numbers; there was too much female dancing in the third act, so I simply moved some of it to the beginning of the ballet. Now I believe that every single modification was fortunate—they made the composition more alive and fresher. It benefited from them.

Can we see the same Le Corsaire everywhere in the world?

Yes and no. Here in Hungary, for example, the Opera House is creating its own sets and costumes. Together with ballet director Tamás Solymosi, we are “adapting” the choreography to the company. It essentially corresponds to the most recent version, but minor adjustments are unavoidable. This is partly because I work with different companies, and partly because the sets and costumes also change, which means that certain movements always have to be reconsidered. Furthermore, every artist is different: even if they execute the same steps, they think and feel differently about the characters, which results in their movements taking shape on stage in very different ways. I love working with dancers! Every place and every opera house is exciting in its own way; the entire rehearsal process unfolds a little differently everywhere, and for me this is what makes art truly beautiful.

We have worked together in Italy and in the United States as well, and Tamás Solymosi is truly wonderful to collaborate with. I was very happy when, more than a year ago, he asked me to bring the production here. So last autumn I travelled to Budapest to get to know the company. I attended several performances, rehearsals, and ballet classes; I needed to see the artists’ capabilities, because Le Corsaire is a very demanding ballet. In addition to perfect technical mastery, it also requires acting skills from the dancers. Experience helped with casting, since I have already staged the work in New York, Pittsburgh, Istanbul, London, and Washington, and in the autumn and spring I will be traveling to Hong Kong and then Milan for the same purpose.

How can the same choreography be “tailored” to different companies?

This always depends on the ensemble in question. I often meet guest ballet dancers who have previously learned the work with another company. That is, of course, a help, but when this is not the case, I teach everyone myself: the principal dancers, the soloists, and the corps de ballet. Le Corsaire is not as widely known as Swan Lake or The Nutcracker, so it also represents a great deal of novelty for the artists. An essential part of my work is that wherever I go, the drama and the story of the ballet are always foremost in my mind. Without real substance, it simply becomes unnecessary and aimless. For me, ballet is never just about steps: it must have meaning, both for the dancers and for the audience.

The interview was conducted by Anna Braun for Opera Magazine in 2017

A Romantic epic poem

The story of Le Corsaire is based on the poem of the same title (The Corsair) written by one of the greatest figures of the Romantic generation of English poets, Lord George Gordon Byron (1788–1824). The tale in verse, which was written in 1814, reflects the poet’s adventurous and scandalous life, the experiences he had on his journeys (he had travelled around Spain, Italy and Greece) and his romantic yearning for liberty: “With regard to my story, and stories in general, I should have been glad to have rendered my personages more perfect and amiable, if possible, inasmuch as I have been sometimes criticised, and considered no less responsible for their deeds and qualities than if all had been personal. Be it so – if I have deviated into the gloomy vanity of ‘drawing from self,’ the pictures are probably like, since they are unfavourable; and if not, those who know me are undeceived,” – he wrote in the preface to his work.

Rebelling against apathy and frequently disregarding customs and rules, the poet clearly identified himself with Conrad, the mysterious corsair, whose home is the ever-changing and endless sea as he lives a life amidst nature in love with the beautiful slave girl Medora. Perhaps this is why a portrait of the protagonist Conrad, published in one of the editions of the work, bore Byron’s own facial features. Byron’s work – which proved to be so successful that ten thousand copies were sold on the first day after its London release, requiring seven reprints within a month – has a tragic ending: Medora dies, and her beloved Conrad vanishes to an unknown island in the sea. The success of the sad story was increased by the fact that a staged version was written in the same year and premiered at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London with music composed by William Reeve (1757–1815). This was probably the first staged version of Byron’s verse.

The Romantics, especially in Britain, were especially fond of pirates as characters. Similarly to Romantic traditions elsewhere in Europe, where figures outcast from society were presented as heroes (e.g. the outlaw, the convict or the highwayman), the pirate represented a kind of romantic ideal too. Pirates had existed since mankind first began to sail. Classical Greek and Latin sources mention them, as do the stories of Christian sailors who fought Moorish and Saracen. Starting with the Renaissance, however, the perception of these maritime bandits became divided. In one view they were marauding murderers who would stop at nothing to obtain loot, while in the other they were the heroes of the seas, who never attacked their own countrymen and even protected them when necessary, and only fought foreign sailors. In the 16th century, in the rivalry to rule the waves, famous pirates captain became genuine national heroes; Francis Drake (1540–1596), for example, was eventually knighted by Queen Elizabeth for his service to his country. Although Drake was a national hero for the British, the Spaniards, who called him El Draque (The Dragon), considered him to be nothing more than a pirate, and King Philip II put a price of 20,000 ducats on his head. This dual view is mirrored in the English language. The corsair was an honourable hero of the seas who protected British harbours from enemy ships. These pirates paid a tax to the royal treasury on their booty. Many of them earned the title “Corsair of Her Majesty” and could even be knighted. The other English term, “pirate”, referred to shipborne bandits who were regarded as criminals, since they plundered English ships as well as anyone else they happened to come across. Their only aim was pillage and destruction.

Byron’s tale in verse was therefore a successful work of literature in its own era, and later on also served as a fine basis for other works of art, mainly librettos for musical dramas. It is no surprise that the adventurous theme inspired several composers: Vincenzo Bellini composed an opera titled Il pirata in 1827, and Verdi wrote his Il corsaro in 1848; Berlioz composed his Le Corsaire overture in 1831, and Adolphe Adam, the composer of Giselle, created a ballet with the same title in 1856. The theme appeared in the fine arts of the day too. The emblematic French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) depicted Gulnare and the pasha in one of the episodes of the tale in 1831.

It was no coincidence that contemporaries were so impressed by the subject, as it represented a topos: the emblematic and overarching theme of the man who is cast out from society, a topic used in 19th-century literature by almost all of its major artists, including Schiller, the Abbé Prévost, Dumas père and fils, Victor Hugo, Prosper Mérimée, Flaubert, Thomas Hardy and even José de Espronceda and Lermontov. The essence of this phenomenon is that the 19th-century bourgeoisie, while adhering to their settled existence and conventional family life, felt a shiver of excitement at the thought of those who in one way or another rejected society’s accepted model of how life should be lived. And in addition to feeling this thrill, they also secretly, without admitting it to themselves, yearned to join the outlaws. Although in real life they would never accept this rejection of the social order and even condemned it, in art a Jean Valjean or a Count of Monte Cristo served the side of justice.

Art, and sometimes the Romantic artist himself, were more courageous than the bourgeois: they also dared to present those who are excluded from the circle of society as better, more righteous and certainly more remarkable than those living inside the circle. Also appearing in the story of Le Corsaire are other Romantic elements like the exotic Eastern bazaar and the harem, which also stimulated the imaginations of the day. Choreographers, naturally, were no exception: The 1833 ballet The Revolt of the Harem by Filippo Taglioni (1777–1871), which treated the same theme, conquered the stages of London in 1834 when it was performed on 43 occasions at the Drury Lane Theatre.

A forgotten artist’s late Romantic ballet

Lord Byron’s pirate theme provided a genuine Romantic central motif for one late-Romantic ballet in 1856. We also know of previous ballet adaptations based on the same work, which attest to the popularity of the subject. Deserving mention among these – by virtue of being the first – is the version by Giovanni Galzerani’s (1789–1853), staged at La Scala Milan in 1826 as a “story in mime in five acts”. The first version that can be considered significant in terms of dance history was the work that was premiered at the Paris Opera on 23 January 1856. The libretto was based on the English poet’s work and written by perhaps one of the most famous French librettists of the era: Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges (1799–1875). Writing a ballet libretto was no novelty for Vernoy de Saint-Georges, who was also a skilful writer of novels and opera librettos, because he had proven his talent in this genre in 1841 with the highly successful Giselle. Contemporary reviews pointed out that, compared to Byron’s original work, Vernoy de Saint-Georges had written a melodramatic libretto with a happy ending, and the story of the tale is more entertaining than the gloomy romanticism of the English poet’s text.

Although the choreographer of the three-act 1856 version of Le Corsaire has since been almost completely forgotten, he was a popular and prolific artist in his own era. The Italian-born dancer and ballet master Joseph Mazilier (originally named Giulio Mazarini) (1797–1868), began his career in Lyon and Bordeaux and became a principal dancer in Paris in 1825. Between 1830 and 1851, he worked for the Paris Opera. The audience was impressed with his excellent acting along with his qualities as a dancer. In keeping with the tastes of the era, he played the roles of romantic heroes with lyrical sensitivity. He would get to demonstrate his comedic abilities in the ballet Le Diable à quatre of 1845, for which he created the choreography. This was the first time he collaborated with the composer Adolphe Adam on a dance work.

Mazilier spent the 1851/52 season in St. Petersburg and then returned to the Paris Opera as its principal ballet master. He created about two dozen ballets during his career. He had little interest in the world of dreams of the “ballet blanc”; instead preferring more romantic subjects which he conceived for the stage using modern and spectacular approaches. Naturally, he also made use of the increasingly virtuosic innovations in dance technique, which were mainly related to ballerinas’ pointe technique. The heroines of his works were no longer fairy-like figures floating ethereally in the air. Also appearing in his works were the Romantic tropes of “longing to be elsewhere” and “the allure of other lands”. None of Mazilier’s works can be seen in their original form today. Although a number of related documents (librettos, set and costume designs, descriptions) have survived, very little is known about the choreographies that were actually performed at the premieres. Contemporary reports and reviews emphasised how the dance and pantomime appeared as a unity in his works and what a good sense the choreographer had for depicting rich and complex stories.

The world premiere of Le Corsaire took place at the Paris Opera on 23 January 1856. Emperor Napoleon III and his beautiful wife, the Empress Eugénie, honoured the premiere with their presence, and the newspapers reported that they expressed their satisfaction with frequent applause. Some French sources mention that the empress, who was a great fan of ballet herself, made some remarks about the libretto of the ballet as she was preparing for the premiere. Vernoy de Saint-Georges was paid the hefty sum of 3000 francs for the extra work entailed by the required revision. The playbill listed the works as a ballet-pantomime in three acts. The music was composed by Adolphe Adam, and the set was designed by Édouard Despléchin (1802–1871), the best-known French designer of the era, together with Charles-Antoine Cambon (1802–1875) and Joseph Thierry (1812–1866).

This was the heyday of spectacular stagings at the Paris Opera. All the operas and ballets premiered in these years were presented to enthusiastic audiences with opulent displays of meticulously and masterfully crafted scenic design that used perspective to give the illusion of reality. As for the costumes, since these ballets combined exotic spectacle with the style and techniques of Romantic ballet, the costumes also combined oriental motifs and the romantic tulle skirts that came into fashion during the era, popularised by Marie Taglioni. Generally speaking, the sets and the costumes worn by the male performers were exotically Oriental, while the ballerinas, who played the main roles on the ballet stages of the time, were presented as clearly and pronouncedly European in appearance and danced in a Romantic style. Therefore, regardless of the subject of the ballet, the ballerinas always wore light and soft tulle skirts, which reached just below the knees, and only the upper part of their clothing could display some stylized motif that identified the character, perhaps showing their nationality.

The principal roles in Le Corsaire were danced by the stars of the era: Medora was danced by the Italian Carolina Rosati (1826–1905), a former student of the famous Blasis School, and Conrad was danced by Domenico Segarelli (1820–1860), an- other Italian and a dancer with excellent pantomime skills. The male principals in contemporary ballets mainly appeared in character roles, requiring expressive movements rather than technical dance skills. Naturally, they also had to highlight the ballerina’s femininity and technical perfection. The principal character in this version was therefore undoubtedly Medora, not only because of the high-level dance techniques required, but also because she represented a female figure who fights for her freedom and herself chooses the man she loved.

Even with this approach, the plot basically corresponded to the version that can be seen today, and its ending differed from Byron’s poem in that the story closed with both a happy ending and a poetically romantic monument to the protagonists’ love. In terms of the dancing, outstanding parts of this version included the Pas des éventails that Medora dances with her fellow female slaves in Act Two and the Dance of the Odalisques in the harem scene. After the successful premiere, the ballet remained on the programme for two years and was almost immediately taken to London, where it was again successful. The ballet was revived in Paris in 1867, for which Mazilier choreographed a new dance interlude in the harem scene with the title Pas des Fleurs, and commissioned Léo Delibes (1836–1891) to write the music for it. Although the new music did not really suit the more poetic atmosphere of Adam’s score, the changes brought another string of triumphs, as the ballet was performed no fewer than 80 times that year. This, however, was the end of its successful run in Western Europe, at least for a while.

Marius Petipa’s versions

In January 1858, in the last year of the Russian ballet master’s career, Jules Perrot (1810–1892), the choreographer of Giselle brought Le Corsaire to Russia, where he introduced Mazilier’s ballet to the St. Petersburg audience. This marked the beginning of a new chapter in the history of the ballet. Marius Petipa (1818–1910), the creator and absolute monarch of Russian classical ballet, participated in the St. Petersburg premiere of Perrot’s version of Le Corsaire in 1858. He took part in the production in a dual role: as an assistant in the revision of the choreography and as a dancer in the role of Conrad. Petipa would go on to deal with the ballet a total of four more times (in 1863, 1868, 1885 and 1899). On each occasion, he made minor or major modifications to the choreography, and the updates mainly affected the key dance scenes. In fact, on the very first occasion, in 1858, he and Perrot rechoreographed the Pas des éventails and the Dance of the Odalisques and also added the Pas d’esclave as an innovation.

With the continuous changes in the ballet’s musical material, a number of other composers’ names started to appear on the playbill in addition to Adam’s: Delibes, Pugni, Drigo, Minkus, and even Duke Peter Georgievich of Oldenburg (1812–1881), who composed the music for the part which became well-known as the Pas d’esclave. In addition to being a ballet fan, the duke was an excellent pianist and composer. He contributed to the musical material of Petipa’s other ballets and even composed a piano concerto. In 1863, when Petipa was reworking the part of Medora for his wife, Maria Surovshchikova Petipa (1836–1882), he revised and expanded the original music material with a composition by Cesare Pugni (1802–1870). The scene Le jardin animé was included in the ballet now for the first time, mainly because the large female corps de ballet needed more opportunities to dance.

Similarly to the productions in Western Europe, the scenography was spectacularly rich on the Russian stages too, which was the work of the German-born scenic designer of the Imperial Theatres, Andrei Roller (1805–1891). As chief designer, Roller designed the sets for more than 200 productions in St. Petersburg and Moscow between 1833 and 1879. According to some sources, he experimented with electromagnetic radiation to create lightning in the shipwreck scene of Le Corsaire. This was a truly novel technique in scenic design at that time.

The most important of Petipa’s revisions was the third, completely revised, version of 1899, which he specifically created for Pierina Legnani (1868–1930) at the zenith of her career. It was in this production in which classical ballet technique, polished by Petipa to an extreme degree of perfection, found its culmination. Perhaps this was the reason why this version – which remained on the programme of the St. Petersburg theatre until 1928 – served as a basis for many revivals of Le Corsaire later on, with parts also often being taken from the ballet and performed independently. Dance history traditionally holds Legnani to be the most virtuosic ballerina of the era, and she was the first to execute – en pointe – 32 rond de jambe fouettés, the most difficult type of rotation in ballet technique. It was believed for a long time that the famous Le Corsaire pas de deux, the music of which was composed by Riccardo Drigo (1846–1930), appeared in this production of 1899 and even became the highlight of the whole ballet. In addition to the Le Corsaire pas de deux, other famous parts of various versions included the Pas d’esclave, which has been mentioned above, and the Jardin animé, in which the corps de ballet was given the opportunity to present itself spectacularly in a part of the ballet that clearly had the character of a divertissement.

Rita Major