MANON at Covent Garden - High drama, emotion and tears - and a ballet too

It had been an evening I was looking forward to for several reasons: first to see again Kenneth MacMillan's dark and dangerous MANON which we first saw last year, and secondly we were finally to see the wonderful Steven McRae dancing the male lead of des Grieux as he was returning from injury.

Abbé Prévost published his novel of Manon Lescault in 1731 only to have the print run banned because of it's sexual subject but pirated copies made it hugely popular.  In the 20th Century it inspired seven silent and sound films, four operas, a Japanese musical and two ballets!  Kenneth MacMillan choreographed his for the Royal Ballet in 1974, the critics disliked it but the audiences loved it and here we are 45 years later and it is still in the repertoire.

MacMillan wanted his new creation to show off not only the Royal Ballet principals but to also showcase the ensemble, and MANON certainly does that.  It also gave him another chance to explore the presentation of dangerous, corrupted love through dance.  The score was commissioned by MacMillan from composer / conductor Leighton Lucas, compiled from works by Jules Massenet and it is a remarkable achievement as it does sound like a unified piece.

Young Manon, on her way to a convent, arrives at a Parisian tavern to meet her brother Lescault.  He notices a passenger watching her so Lescault escorts him inside to arrange a meeting.  Outside, Manon meets student des Grieux and it's love at first sight.  They flee but another rich man, Monsieur GM, approaches Lescault and offers him a reward for Manon.  They track the lovers to their lodgings and Manon chooses Monsieur's diamonds over des Grieux's love.  The four meet again at a debauched party and Manon lets des Grieux know she still loves him. Monsieur discovers des Grieux cheating him at cards and again the lovers flee but Monsieur appears with police to arrest Manon as a prostitute and he shoots Lescault in anger.  Deported to New Orleans as a prostitute, a lecherous gaoler attempts to rape Manon, but des Grieux, who has followed her to America, kills him and again they flee... but in the swamps of Louisiana their love reaches it's tragic climax.

Partnered with Akane Takada's well-danced but colourless Manon, Steven McRae provided his brand of vivid, charismatic dancing as des Grieux and it was a joy to see him back onstage after an injury-strewn year and a half.  He partially tore his Achilles tendon at the start of 2018 which nearly ended his dance career and at the start of this year he injured his knee on the set of the upcoming film of CATS.  All in all, we missed four productions he was due to appear in so seeing him back on the Covent Garden stage for the first time in nearly a year was a joy.

The lights came up for the last scene of the Second Act; Des Grieux has rescued the wayward Manon from the corrupt clutches of Monsieur but is unaware that his rival is closing in.  Alone on stage, McRae executed two small gazelle leaps and two relatively small pirouettes then stretched up... froze for a second or two... then limped into the wings with his right leg raised.  After a moment or two a stage manager came on and asked us for a moment while they sorted out a problem.  The curtains were quickly brought in but not before we, his shocked audience, could hear Steven's heartbreaking wails from backstage.

Kevin O'Hare, the Director of The Royal Ballet, appeared to tell us what we all suspected, that Steven had sustained an injury and would not be able to complete the performance.  Reece Clarke who had just appeared as a guest in the party scene was able to play des Grieux for the final scene of Act II and all of Act III.

The show continued and Clarke has to be applauded for stepping in at such short notice and be able to focus on his own performance knowing that everyone's minds were obviously elsewhere. Congratulations too for Akane Takada who had only 30 minutes to recalibrate her performance to partner the taller Clarke who has a different style of McRae - needless to say both received a big ovation at the curtain.

Any difficulty in emotionally engaging with MANON's relentlessly shallow characters is enveloped in the glorious sweep of MacMillan's vision, recreated here by Julie Lincoln.  Manon's world is still wonderfully realized by the late Nicholas Georgiades' designs; the design suggests that behind the opulent world that Manon aspires to is desperate poverty and danger where people can be discarded if they overstep their class or usefulness.

The supporting characters were all performed by the same dancers from last year and were still excellent: James Hay as Lescault was well-partnered in his drunken pas de deux by Yuhui Choe as his mistress, Thomas Whitehead was very hissable as Monsieur and Kristen McNally gave the procuress a suitably decadent panache.  I am really glad I saw MacMillan's masterpiece again but I wish it had been under happier conditions.

Steven McRae's injury was diagnosed as a full Achilles tendon rupture and he will have surgery in the week starting 28th October.  He is the king of positivity but at 33 he must have worries about his future.  Hopefully the operation and recovery will be successful and we can see this magical dancer for a few years more.  Steven posted the pictures of him and Akane Takada rehearsing the famous pas-de-deux from Act III which he did not get to perform on the night which is a shame as it looks amazing.

All best wishes Steven!

ROMEO AND JULIET at Covent Garden - Grief so Brief

“O, swear not by the moon, th’ inconstant moon..." or your favourite dancers.

It is now four years since we discovered the Royal Ballet's wonderful repertoire and one of the first productions we saw was Kenneth MacMillan's classic Shakespeare adaptation ROMEO AND JULIET with Steven McRae dancing Romeo.  Steven soon became our favourite male dancer, a performer with real star quality, and when it was announced he was dancing the role again this year, tickets were snapped up.  However on his last day of filming CATS, McRae had a knee injury which required a surgical procedure.  "Romeo, Romeo... wherefore art thou Romeo?"  He's resting his knee that's where he is.  This is sad as we also missed him last year in SWAN LAKE and MANON through being out injured.  Anyway where were we?  Oh yes, "Two households both alike in dignity..."

McMillan's production originated in 1965, his first full-length work for the Royal Ballet.  He had expanded a pas-de-deux filmed for Canadian TV with the young pairing of Lynn Seymour and Christopher Gable and was determined they would be his original star-crossed lovers.  But the production was due to tour the USA after it's premiere and the American promoter wanted the star wattage of Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev and the Royal Ballet management gave in, so Gable and Seymour were demoted to the second cast and even had to teach the two more famous dancers some of the moves which must have been particularly galling.  McMillan felt betrayed by the decision and left the Royal Ballet the next year to run the ballet company at the Deutsche Ballet in Berlin.  He would return to Covent Garden as the Artistic Director in 1970 but resigned seven years later to be the company's principal choreographer.

I still find it remarkable that a production can remain for 54 years in a repertoire - no matter how hard you look you will not find Franco Zeffirelli's MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING or Peter Wood's LOVE FOR LOVE at the National Theatre or Peter Hall's THE HOMECOMING at the Royal Shakespeare Company.  But it's a minor quibble as ROMEO AND JULIET is still a glorious creation, involving from the start with a thrilling choreographed sword fight in the city square which ends with five dead bodies piled up centre-stage, McMillan's Verona is always a hair's breath away from danger.

John B Read's lighting and the original evocative set design by the late Nicholas Georgiadis combine to give you an immediate understanding of place while McMillan's truly thrilling choreography is realized by Julie Lincoln and Christopher Saunders.  Sergei Prokofiev's score sounded excellent played by the Opera House orchestra under the baton of Paul Murphy.

Steven McRae's replacement was Ryoichi Hirano and Juliet was danced by Akane Takada - who always seems to be on when we visit.  Hirano was technically fine but was dramatically colourless; Takada embodied the full arc of Juliet, delicate and joyful at the start, troubled and passionate in love and death at the end.

As usual, there was fine support from James Hay and Bennet Gartside as the deadly rivals Mercutio and Tybalt, Kristen McNally and Thomas Whitehead were fine as Juliet's controlling parents, and there was great scene-stealing from the vivacious strumpets led by Itziar Mendizabal.

Despite Steven McRae's absence, ROMEO AND JULIET was wonderful to see again and to relive Kenneth McMillan's creative genius.

MANON at Covent Garden: Love, Death and MacMillan

In 1731 Abbé Prévost published "L'Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescault" to instant notoriety and it's print run banned in France.  Pirated copies filtered out to an eager public and Prévost's tale of the tragic love affair of Manon and des Grieux went on to inspire writers and to be referenced in novels such as "The Lady of The Camillias", "The Red and The Black", "Venus In Furs" and "The Portrait of Dorian Gray".

The tale is also the basis of seven silent and sound films, four operas, a Japanese musical and two ballets!  The last of these dance versions was choreographed by the great Kenneth MacMillan for the Royal Ballet in 1974 and although it was greeted with unfavourable reviews, it became an instant hit with audiences and last week I saw it's 274th performance at Covent Garden.

MacMillan had been looking for a new, sweeping ballet which would show off not only the Royal Ballet stars but also give the ensemble a chance to shine, and the teaming locations of Manon and des Grieux's love proved ideal.  It was to be the first original work after his controversial ANASTASIA and it can be seen as a further exploration of where the physical boundaries were for the female and male dancers of his time (and after).

"Manon Lescault" had been suggested to MacMillan as a subject by the designer Nicholas Georgiades although it had been on the choreographer's mind since it had been mooted to the previous Royal Ballet supremo Sir Frederick Ashton but he had rejected it as he felt it was too close to his "Camille" ballet MARGUERITE AND ARMAND.  There's only so many demi-mondaines to go around...

MacMillan asked composer and conductor Leighton Lucas to compile a score from the work of Jules Massenet whose opera version of the tale was in the Royal Opera repertoire and it is a remarkable achievement as it does seem like a whole unified score.

I will agree with the criticism levelled at the piece that it's hard to feel totally engaged with the characters but maybe it is down to the performers dancing on any given night, I am sure if Steven McRae had been dancing des Grieux I would have been more involved in his character but he was unable to dance due to an injury.  Instead we had fellow-Australian Alexander Campbell as des Grieux and Akane Takada as the eponymous anti-heroine.

Young Manon is on her way to a convent when her coach stops at a bustling inn outside Paris; there she meets her brother Lescault who promptly notices a fellow-passenger is lusting after her, Lescault, an enterprising heel, takes the passenger into the inn to sell his sister to him.  In the courtyard Manon meets young student des Grieux and the pair - of course - fall in love at first sight.  They decide to flee to Paris immediately, leaving Lescault high and dry - and the old man penniless as Manon has stolen his money!  Another rich man, Monsieur GM, approaches Lescault and offers a reward if he too can have Manon.  Lescault takes up the challenge...

In Paris, Manon and des Grieux are living in his lodgings and, despite their obvious love for each other, as soon as Lescault and Monsieur GM track her down and entice her with Monsieur's riches Manon chooses diamonds over love.  Some time later, at a debauched party at a brothel, the four meet again and Manon intimates to des Grieux that she still loves him.  Attempting to deprive the rich man of his cash, des Grieux is discovered cheating at cards and they flee to his lodgings, where Monsieur appears with police to arrest Manon as a prostitute; in the melée Lescault is killed.

Deported to New Orleans as a common prostitute, Manon is singled out by a lecherous gaoler, but des Grieux, who has followed her to America, murders the gaoler and, again, the couple are on the run but in the shadowy swamps of Louisiana their love reaches it's tragic climax.

Any difficulty in emotionally engaging with the relentlessly shallow characters is offset by the glorious sweep of action that MacMillan conjures - his production is recreated here by Christopher Saunders and Julie Lincoln.  MacMillan's wish that his MANON would showcase the ensemble is fulfilled as they give colour and life to Manon's world.  Georgiades' designs also help MacMillan's subtext that the opulent world that Manon aspires to sits like a bubble on top of a society of desperate poverty and danger, his sets are always juxtaposed against backdrops of decaying clothes hanging as silent witnesses to the corrupt world of Monsieur GM, where people can be discarded if they overstep their class or usefulness.

As I said, while technically excellent, Takana and Campbell were low on star wattage but the pas de deux that define their relationship were thrilling to watch: full of the passion and desire of new love, then more hesitant and incomplete as Manon wavers between the worlds of love and wealth, then the desperation of love in the face of death.

The supporting performances shone brighter: James Hay was excellent as the opportunistic Lescault and was well partnered by Yuhui Choe as his mistress, Thomas Whitehead brought his own air of menace to the lethal Monsieur GM and Kristen McNally also gave the Madame a suitably decadent panache.

MANON, an enduring testament to the genius of Sir Kenneth MacMillan.

MAYERLING at Covent Garden: Kenneth MacMillan's Obsessional Classic...

Mystery still hangs over the deaths in 1889 of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire Crown Prince Rudolph and his mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera in the Imperial hunting lodge of Mayerling.  He was 30 and she was 17, and as soon as their bodies were found a cover-up started to protect both the Hapsburg Empire and the image of the happily-married Prince.  The story has been told several times on film but Kenneth MacMillan's 1978 ballet MAYERLING for the Royal Ballet casts a gripping spell.

Needless to say the reality in 1889 was anything but what was reported at the time.  History has revealed Rudolf to be a morbid death-obsessed womanizer who at the time of his death was riddled with syphilis and addicted to morphine.  His politically expedient marriage to Princess Stephanie of Belgium left both miserable but his request that they separate was refused by his father Emperor Franz Josef - an act of gross hypocrisy as his father and mother, the Empress Elizabeth, lived fairly separate lives with their own lovers.

A former mistress of Rudolf was Empress Elizabeth's niece and lady-in-waiting Countess Marie Larisch who was a friend of Mary Vetsera's mother, and these two women who both craved advancement at court, actively promoted Rudolf's attraction to young Mary.  She was a wilful, highly-strung teenager passionately in love with her Prince Charming (as she saw him) and would do anything for The Grand Gesture.  That came on 31st January, three months after their meeting, when they were both found dead in his bedroom.

Marie left a letter full of fateful talk of them going into an uncertain beyond but they were going together.  Needless to say, this was the last thought on the Hapsburg Empire's collective mind after their bodies were found: Mary's uncles were summoned to Mayerling and, propping her up between them in a carriage, was buried immediately in a nearby monastery cemetery, while Rudolf was mourned as having died from a heart rupture. Eventually a version of the murder/suicide was released but with the emphasis that the Prince's mind was deranged so the church allowed for his body to be buried in the Hapsburg burial crypt.

Kenneth MacMillan's brooding masterpiece opens with a moonlit burial, only when it is repeated at the end do we know this is the hasty funeral of pathetic Mary Vetsera.  The ballet flashbacks to the wedding of Rudolf and Princess Stephanie but unsettling undercurrents swirl around the court as Stephanie is terrorized by the crazed Rudolf in their room.  The second act has Rudolf making his wife accompany him as he tours the taverns drinking and womanizing, Stephanie leaving in distress when he dances with his ex-lover Mitzi Caspar who eventually hides him from a police raid; meanwhile Countess Larisch visits Mary and her mother and tricks the girl into believing that her destiny is to be Rudolf's lover.  The act ends with the first tumultuous lovemaking of Rudolf and Mary.

The third act opens with a shooting party where Rudolf shoots a courtier dead who is standing near the Emperor (an incident that happened in reality) and while the Empress discerns the hand of Countess Larisch in the relationship, Mary and Rudolf decide on their fate.  At Mayerling, the Prince's servant tries to entertain the couple as he has done before but stops when he realizes the couple are totally self-absorbed, fatally leaving the couple alone...

39 years after it's debut performance MacMillan's ballet is a darkly glittering masterwork; a driven, haunting work of tortured sexuality that leads inexorably to the grave.  It's fascinating that MacMillan ends the first and second acts with Rudolf having violent sex but whereas the first act has Stephanie manhandled by Rudolf and cowering as he brandishes a revolver, in the second act Rudolf finds Mary a match for him, a match made in a dangerously out-of-control place.  MacMillan's extraordinary choreography is still a hypnotic, thrilling thing to see.

The ballet, which is based on a scenario by Gillian Freeman, has been re-staged by Christopher Saunders, Grant Coyle and Karl Burnett and uses the original designs by the late Nicholas Georgiades.  The lead roles of Rudolf and Mary were danced by Thiago Soares and Lauren Cuthbertson, and while Cuthbertson brought the wildly passionate teenager to vivid and thrilling life I found Soares to be quite uncharismatic and almost lumpen, I can only imagine the electric quality that more live-wire performers like Edward Watson and Steven McRae would bring to the role.

There was much more to be enjoyed in the supporting roles: Yuhui Choe played the distressed Stephanie well while Claire Calvert was a vibrantly sensual Mitzi Caspar, the real-life mistress of Rudolf who reported him to the authorities when he suggested a suicide pact.  I enjoyed Tristan Dyer as the Prince's servant Bratfisch who has a delightful solo in the tavern and whose faltering repeat of it at Mayerling was very touching.  However they were all outshone by the always watchable Itziar Mendizabal as the devious Countess Marie Larisch, the go-between for the lovers. 

In real life, Countess Marie was ostracized by Empress Elizabeth when her involvement in the deaths was revealed and she led a peripatetic life, marrying often and living in various countries, always trying to make money off of her involvement with the Hapsburg royalty.

MAYERLING was wonderful to see and stands as a tribute to the remarkable choreographic genius of Kenneth MacMillan, who tragically died of a heart-attack backstage at Covent Garden during a revival performance of the ballet in 1992.

ROMEO AND JULIET at Covent Garden: a 50 year old love affair...

On February 9th 1965 the choreographer Kenneth MacMillan premiered his ballet of ROMEO AND JULIET with the iconic pairing of Margot Fonteyn and Rudolph Nureyev playing Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers but it wasn't meant to be them.

MacMillan had originally planned - and indeed collaborated - with the younger dancers Christopher Gable and Lynn Seymour in the roles but they were relegated to the second cast, they even had to help teach the more famous pair their roles due to time constraints in rehearsals. 

It was all due to the promoter of the American tour that was scheduled after the London opening who wanted guaranteed box-office names to sell tickets.  The production was filmed for cinema release the following year and since then the production has been staged countless times in the Royal Ballet's repertoire and here it is back again in it's 50th anniversary year.

Just in time to fit into our year of New Cultural Things (aka ballet and opera).  It's interesting how ballet and opera companies will keep a production going year after year; where are the National Theatre productions from the 1960s directed by John Dexter or Laurence Olivier or the RSC productions by Peter Hall or Peter Brook in the company's repertoires?  Not to be seen.

But what did I think of this year's production which has been recreated by Julie Lincoln and Christopher Saunders?  Well Constant Reader, I thought it was excellent, thanks for asking.

Prokofiev's almost filmic score sounded big and bold under the baton of Koen Kessels and MacMillan's choreography was still thrilling in it's sweep, lyricism and sheer story-telling bravura.

The cast we saw were all very good: Steven McRae was a vital, virile Romeo (despite his lute-playing) and Iana Salenko was excellent in Juliet's short journey from innocent rapture at her first love to her desperate anguish in the tomb.

Alexander Campbell was a quicksilver Mercutio and was well-partnered with Thomas Whitehead (an ex-Matthew Bourne Swan King) as Tybalt.  The co-stager Christopher Saunders was an imperious Lord Capulet and Genesia Rosato made the most of Lady Capulet's anguish over the death of Tybalt.  A special mention too for Itziar Mendizabal, Olivia Cowley and Helen Crawford who were feisty and spirited as the three tarts of Verona!

Nicholas Georgiadis' evocative set is a timeless design which allows for both grandeur and intimacy and I am sure the production will last for many years to come in the repertoire.

I think our adventures into the more rarefied arts this year have been interesting but for me the dance productions are out in front so far.