Le Corsaire, Don Quixote
Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera House
For many years in the West, Le Corsaire was just a pas de deux, a dazzling bravura number historically associated with male ballet legends such as Rudolph Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov. Then, in the mid-Eighties, the Kirov Ballet, now Marijinsky Ballet, came along with a fast-paced, colourful and highly entertaining complete version, loosely based on the much-interpolated 19th-century original. Since then, a few more versions have cropped up here and there, including the 2007 one signed by Alexei Ratmansky and Yuri Burlaka, respectively the former and current artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet.
Entertaining as it might be, Le Corsaire is not a masterwork. The dramatic adaptation of Byron’s poem is untenable and somewhat cheesy, criminally reduced to a mere pretext for as many nonsensical dance numbers and as many old-fashioned theatrical effects as possible.
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