La Scala’s Raymonda “is a true banquet: pomp, circumstance, and an entire world on stage”, says the Financial Times

The Fin­an­cial Times vis­ited Milan’s his­toric theatre to wit­ness Sergei Vikharev’s recon­struc­tion of Ray­monda — a pro­duc­tion which is send­ing ripples of interest and excite­ment around the bal­let community.

This blog alone, and its asso­ci­ated You­Tube chan­nel, has received thou­sands of extra vis­its to read about Ray­monda, push­ing the asso­ci­ated posts to the top of the most viewed list. The coun­tries most inter­ested seem to be Amer­ica, Rus­sia, Bri­tain and, of course, Italy.

Dur­ing August when the Mari­in­sky Bal­let was vis­it­ing at the Royal Opera House in London, The Fin­an­cial Times awar­ded many 4 and 5-star reviews dur­ing the three week run. But this is unusual, and they are handed out with cau­tion. With Ray­monda, La Scala got a 5-star review and some glow­ing words for a com­pany which has often puzzled vis­it­ing crit­ics in recent years.

Ray­monda is not an easy bal­let to stage. With its big cast, dif­fi­cult baller­ina role and slight storyline, it has often been over­looked or changed bey­ond recog­ni­tion, but Vikharev, who has recon­struc­ted 19th-century bal­lets for com­pan­ies round the world, has restored fea­tures long dropped from inter­na­tional pro­duc­tions. One of his great strengths is that he has com­plete faith in Petipa: the story is told as it was ori­gin­ally writ­ten, with extens­ive mime, and as a res­ult everything finally makes sense. The White Lady, a non-dancing role, presides over Raymonda’s castle again, and the love story, so for­get­table in most ver­sions, bene­fits from the scale and unhur­ried rhythm of Acts I and II.

It is the calmness of the storytelling which gives the audi­ence time to enter this fantasy world. Musical cuts can reduce the length of a piece by the clock, but not neces­sar­ily in the head. This is not a bal­let for the stressed busi­ness­man who arrives a minute before the lights dim after hav­ing battled with Mil­anese traffic. The ideal spec­tator is one who has set apart the even­ing for the bal­let, has maybe read a little of its his­tory before­hand, and doesn’t have to catch the last train home: it’s a long even­ing at over three hours. Then it is pos­sible to appre­ci­ate “the ori­ginal painted sets and hun­dreds of repro­duced cos­tumes”. In fact “the pro­duc­tion is a true ban­quet: pomp, cir­cum­stance, and an entire world on stage to absorb over the course of an evening.”

The FT’s critic Laura Cap­pelle continues,

For La Scala Bal­let, a com­pany that has lacked a clear iden­tity in recent years, this Ray­monda is also a strong state­ment. The num­bers involved are unheard of in mod­ern bal­let pro­duc­tions: dozens and dozens of dan­cers and chil­dren from La Scala Academy, all impec­cably coached, flood the stage as knights, celes­tial maid­ens, cher­ubs or Sara­cens. With them Raymonda’s court is alive again, and the crisp soloist vari­ations and com­mit­ted char­ac­ter dan­cing prove the dan­cers are ready for more challenges.

The com­pany and its soloists come out well from this ven­ture and, as it has already been sold around the world, this Ray­monda should become a vital call­ing card for the La Scala bal­let. It is a testi­mo­nial to the import­ant work being car­ried out by Makhar Vaziev who, for thir­teen years, was at the helm of the Mari­in­sky Bal­let. Now he is striv­ing to bring the same rig­or­ous­ity to the Italian com­pany which proved so suc­cess­ful at home in Rus­sia. Buona for­tuna!

Photo: Olesya Novikova and Friedemann Vogel in Ray­monda, Teatro alla Scala — Marco Brescia/Rudy Armisano