Anna Karenina Ballet

Anna Karenina Ballet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdapLpi1ktQ

Anna Karenina - ballet in three acts by Rodion Shchedrin . Libretto by Boris Lvov-Anokhin on the novel by Leo Tolstoy's " Anna Karenina "

The idea of creating this ballet came from Maya Plisetskaya in 1967, when she starred in the film " Anna Karenina ." The music for the film was written by Rodion Shchedrin . Ballerina recalled:

"On the set of the dramatic film" Anna Karenina ", in which I acted as Princess Betsy Tverskaya, the idea of ​​choreographic embodiment of Tolstoy's novel became clear to hover in the air ... The music Shchedrin wrote the film, was a theatrical and malleable. She could dance ... Almost all of the filming was going my internal debate with the director of the film. On top of Shchedrin and the nines quarreled with Zarkhi: slash the ungodly music.

Originally a dancer did not plan to put the ballet itself. The first choreographer to which it was addressed Igor Belsky . The following candidates have become Natalia Kasatkina and Vladimir Vasilev , their interpretation seemed too radical Plisetskaya and she decided to put the ballet itself. She sought advice from Valentin Pluchek , who recommended to involve as librettist Boris Lvov-Anokhin , as an artist - Valery Leventhal . He also belonged to the idea to differentiate staging process - most focus on Anna Plisetskaya lines, Vronsky and Karenin, and crowd scenes give assistants. They were dancers of the Bolshoi Theater Natalya Rizhenko and Victor Smirnov-Golovanov , has clearly declared itself as directors of several TV -movies ballets .

In the fall of 1971 in the Beethoven Hall of the Bolshoi Theatre Rodion Shchedrin he played for the Arts Council of ballet music of the future, and Plisetskaya and Lvov-Anokhin statement explained the plan:

"The task of translating the image of Leo Tolstoy on the ballet stage extremely difficult. How to combine the unavoidable arbitrariness of dance theater with the striking realism of Tolstoy's prose?

Nevertheless, we know ingenious experiment that made Sergei Prokofiev, creating a wonderful opera "War and Peace", and after the opera no less arbitrary than ballet.

Carefully reread "Anna Karenina", you may find that the powerful realism of Tolstoy became "perfected realism to the characters" (the expression Vl. Nemirovich-Danchenko), and this is an area accessible poetics of choreographic art. "

After the first run orchestra which was attended by officials from the Ministry of Culture of the USSR, according to unofficial order of the Minister of Culture EA Furtsevoy rehearsal of the ballet were stopped - in fact, the performance has been closed. But Plisetskaya and Shchedrin appealed for support to the Secretary of the CPSU PN Demichev and on his instructions the work on the play was resumed.