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TDK presents two masterpieces of French post-war ballet and a homage to Roland Petit, its most influential representative. Premiered in June 1946, The Young Man and Death marked the start of a whole new generation of choreography in liberated Paris, becoming the trademark of existentialist ballet.
For Roland Petit, just twenty-one years old in 1945 and the wunderkind star of the newly-formed Ballets des Champs-Élysées, the liberation of Paris was also a liberation from academic restraint in art and as a star danseur, ballet master, choreographer and supplier of ideas, he reflected the spirit of post-war Paris, bursting with joie de vivre and encouraged by a host of artists from all genres, including poets, musicians, painters.
He soon founded a new company, which he alone headed, the Ballets de Paris de Roland Petit. Before long, he was the darling of London, where his 1949 ballet Carmen became a world hit and launched the career of Zizi Jeanmaire, later his wife, who danced the title role.
Generations of dancers have since coveted the lead roles in both Petit ballets, which have long been part of the standard repertory. In this recording filmed at the Opéra National de Paris in July 2005, the star soloists of the Opéra ballet company take on the challenge: Nicolas Le Riche, born in 1972, became a member of the company in 1988 and in 1993, with Nureyev’s support, was appointed “danseur étoile”. Marie-Agnès Gillot was born in 1975, entered the Paris Opéra ballet company in 1990 and was appointed “danseuse étoile” in 2004. Clairemarie Osta, the Carmen in this production, was born in 1970, became a member of the corps-de-ballet at the Paris Opéra in 1988 and was promoted to “danseuse étoile” in 2002.
The plot for The Young Man and Death (Le Jeune Homme et la Mort) was provided by Jean Cocteau (1899-1963), the ubiquitous homme des arts et lettres. The setting is a down-at-heel garret that disappears to show a nighttime panorama across the roofs of Paris in which the city somehow becomes the ballet’s third protagonist. Petit's choreography conveys an expressionistic naturalism that leaves nothing to the imagination in its erotic significance. In Petit’s original conception of the piece he set it to pronounced jazz music, but the music was changed to the overture to Mozart's Magic Flute just a few days before the premiere. The Mozart then turned out to be too short and at the last minute the decision was made to set the piece to Bach's famous Passacaglia in C minor which forms a decidedly antagonistic audio backdrop to Georges Wakhevitch's sparse scenery adding further dramatic tension.
Petit choreographed his Carmen ballet, which is loosely based on Prosper Mérimée's story, to a musical potpourri from Bizet's opera. To match the colourful sets and costumes designed by Antoni Clavé, he arranged five scenes of an erotic thriller, in which Don José, who has been captured by bandits, murders the torreador before, in the final scene, stabbing Carmen out of jealousy - the murderer becomes the victim of his own crime passionelle. The premiere was staged in London in 1949 and it cemented the global fame of the French choreographer, then just 25 years old, who with this ballet, proved himself the legitimate dance heir to the French story-telling tradition of Mérimée, Maupassant and Colette.
Roland Petit enjoyed a successful career, which took him all over the world. He spent long years as a dancer in his own various ballet companies, as a choreographer at leading theatres from Leningrad/St. Petersburg to Tokyo, as Director of the Casino de Paris, where together with Zizi as the top star, he produced revues; as head of the National Ballet of Marseille, and as a guest choreographer popular with dance stars like Nureyev and Baryshnikov, Fonteyn and Makarova.
Wherever he worked, the ballet danced with the “zeitgeist”. His choreographic style was always classically founded, but enhanced with alternative dance theatre forms. He was the epitome of a classical man of the theatre. His stories are mostly literature-based and the two ballets featured on this live recording are a testament to his love of literature. Filmed with great visual and musical mastery, both works are documents of Petit’s enormous influence on post-war ballet and this DVD can be regarded as a homage to the grand seigneur of French dance.
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