Arts
A brilliant new Swan Lake
Julie Kavanagh
On 19 January, the scheduled first night of Franco Zeffirelli's Swan Lake (his first ballet production), only one of La Scala's six tiers of boxes was occupied — by Rudolf Nureyev and his masseur/ bodyguard, Luigi. 'He's here to spy', someone laughed; 'He's come to make his peace with Zeffirelli afer two years,' said another; 'He hasn't heard about the can- cellation', said someone else. As it hap- pened, the premiere, rescheduled for the 22nd, was postponed again until the 31st; though the dancers were claiming that the first night is now finally settled at January 36. ,The reason given for the second can- cellation was that the costumes and sets — designed by Zeffirelli — were, like every- thing else in Italy, snowbound. But from the rehearsals I saw, it appeared that even at this late stage there were other factors disrupting completion. First of all, charac- teristically, Zeffirelli kept changing his mind; re-thinking both the libretto (written in conjunction with Jann Parry) and the choreography (by Rosella Hightower). Although purists and his collaborators may not agree, dance, says Zeffirelli, allows him far more creative freedom than opera 'where you have to follow the rules of the game. In ballet, everytime you start deal- ing with the material, you end up creating something completely different and ori- ginal.'
If Zeffirelli's unconventional, inspiriting approach contributed to the delay, so did Carla Fracci's late arrival on the produc- tion because of other commitments and her unexpected wish to be given more to do in the ballet. Fracci dances Odile to Allessan- dra Fern's Odette and as it is, appears in all four Acts, instead of only Act 3. Her request for a custom-choreographed pas de deux at the end of Act 2 was met with typical Italian indulgence of diva-ish will, even though, at rehearsal stage, Odette was left looking somewhat redundant at this point. In splitting the double role, traditionally performed by one ballerina. Zeffirelli says he is following the first production of 1877; but in fact there is no proof that two dancers were originally involved: it's now thought likely that the three asterisks in place of a dancer's name in the part of Odile on the 1877 poster denoted the fact that Paulina Karpakova, the first Odette, performed both roles.
The epic scale of Zeffirelli's production understandably consumed countless re- hearsal hours: in Act 3, for example, there are 53 extras on stage who, unlike the handful who serve as props in the Covent Garden production, were all given a char- acter and individual direction by Zeffirelli.
It seems that drama and spectacle are to be given equal weight as dance; and about time. As Zeffirelli says, there has been a gap for too long between the choreography and the production of a ballet. 'The choreographer can't take care of every- thing; there is definitely need for someone else to inspire and supervise things.' With Swan Lake, Zeffirelli has taken it upon himself to resuscitate aspects of the drama that have been eroded by innumerable routine performances — 'like those Rus- sian productions that are now so dead.' He will remind us, for example, that the swans are also girls who deplore, rather than passively accept, their plight. 'Agitati! Agi- tatir he screams at the corps flurrying across the stage. He instructs Ferri to convey the fact that in Siegfried, Odette sees her way to freedom; and therefore her despair at the end is caused by much more than just his infidelity. But above all, Zeffirelli focuses on the distinction — seldom successfully brought out — be- tween pure and profane love, embodied by Odette and Odile. Fracci's Odile is obviously not going to be the usual travestied interpretation — all flashing eyes and mocking smiles — that I've always felt makes a fool of Siefried for being duped. Instead, her Act 3 pas de deux is subtly and lyrically seductive: Zef- firelli has replaced the 'Black Swan' music (originally composed for Act 1) with an alternative, much softer piece; and to compound Siegfried's confusion between Odile and Odette further, the duet returns to the lake. At one point, Odile literally mirrors Odette in a pas de trois with Siegfried: this twinning of Fracci with Ferri looked extraordinarily effective in rehear- sal, despite the fact that Fracci, wearing no make-up and approaching 50, is more than double Fern's age. Zeffirelli's choice of these two dancers promises to be extreme- ly rewarding: both posses a rare natural- ness of expression which invests the drama with exactly the verisimilitude that Zef- firelli is striving for. He draws a similarly genuine quality from Maurizio Bellezza as Siegfried, demonstrating how he should cradle Odette like a lover, not a partner. After watching the Act 2 pas de deux performed with a dramatic intensity I have never seen before, I found myself retitling the ballet Swan in Love.
There is a Christian overtone to the storY which may well have drawn Zeffirelli to this ballet in particular. Certainly he is inspired by its celebration of love beyond life; of the fact that if you love to the point of laying down your own life, then love becomes a sublime force that can defeat all evil.' But at the same time, he recognises that dance, as a non-discursive art like music, can communicate indefinable, intui- tive truths and therefore should not be overloaded with ideas and implications. 'You have to go by feelings and situations; to forget about how clever you are and about the elaboration of your talent. Dance must be a feast which awakens in us the original instincts of our imagination and recaptures the innocence of childhood, a time when death was not death and everything seemed possible. (It's no coinci- dence that the greatest ballets have been based on children's stories.) TchaikovskY understood so well what ballet is about: he didn't try to force on dancers and choreog- raphers something too sophisticated or strictly symphonic — he wrote music to serve them.'
In deference to Tchaikovsky's 'beautiful and intelligent score,' Zeffirelli has under- taken a significant re-ordering of the music, bringing it closer to the original composition of 1877 (although nobody knows exactly what the original order of the numbers was, as the performance score has been lost). With the help of conductor Lorin Maazel, various redundancies 'like those endless codas and introductions
— have been eliminated as well as later additions not in the class of the rest of the score, making it a more compact and coherent piece. The brilliance of Maazel s conducting has increased Zeffirelli's appre- ciation of the score — and mine. Even at an early orchestral rehearsal, Maazel brought out a subtlety of texture and vibrancy in the music which I've not heard before. The `vroomph' — to use his word — which he enticed from the orchestra seemed to inject the divertissements in Act 3 with a buoyancy that was missing the day before. Several of the dancers went up to Maazel after the rehearsal and thanked him: 'They hadn't realised that music could be such an incredible cushion, a spring board,' said Zeffirelli. 'For the first time this marvellous score will have been taken seriously — as music — not just something ancillary to vanities or to gymnastics of dancing. For that alone, we will make history with this production.' Hardly, I Predict, an extravagant claim.
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