|
|
|
| | Arts Calendar / January 30 / Ballet |
|
|
|
|
|
 Ballet to music by Jules Massenet. 190 min (with two intermissions). Choreography: Kenneth McMillan. Music Director and Conductor: Felix Korobov. Manon was MacMillan’s second three-act ballet as artistic director of the Royal Ballet. He based his scenario on the 1731 novel by the Abbé Prévost, L’Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut. Various musical numbers out of different works by Jules Massenet were selected and orchestrated by Leighton Lucas. Assisting MacMillan was also the ballet troupe’s coach Hilda Gont. She helped him to select the music for the pas de deux with which he, after his custom, began the work on the ballet. Nicholas Georgiadis’ designs reflect the precarious division between opulence and degradation in pre-Revolutionary France (the ballet is set later in the 18th century than Prevost’s novel). MacMillan was quoted as saying that he found his clue to Manon’s behavior in her background of poverty: ‘Manon is not so much afraid of being poor as ashamed of being poor. Poverty in that period was the equivalent of long, slow death’.
Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Music Theater  |
|
|
|
|
|
|
The virtual community for English-speaking expats and Russians
