With sudden ardour the Blackamoor starts up, and flinging away his wretched plaything, seizes and embraces his fascinating visitor. The latter seems nothing loth, and gratified by this easy conquest the Blackamoor seats himself to receive the homage of a further dance. The lady, eager to make the most of opportunity, exerts herself in even livelier fashion than before, and finds occasion tofall provocatively into her admirer’s arms. The Blackamoor is now entirely captivated, and when the Dancer begins, to a sugary, sentimental strain, apas de fascinationof which his sluggish wits at length realise himself to be the object, his fondness is grotesquely manifested. From the edge of his divan he fatuously ogles the fair one, and is thrown into transports of delight when she accepts a rapturous invitation to sit upon his knee.
The flirtation receives unwelcome interruption by the unexpected arrival of Pétrouchka. Fired by jealousy, and impelled by his infatuation for the Dancer, he has escaped at last and come to seek her in the hated rival’s domain. But the poor fellow is so ineffectual that he cannot make even a passably impressive entry. In his blundering haste he gets caught in the swinging door and hangs there, half in the room, half out, an object of derision to his inamorata and her dusky swain.
Even when he has struggled free of this embarrassment and confronts the guilty pair, Pétrouchka is pathetically at a loss. Tortured by vague fears, he has yielded to a vague impulse, only to find himself unable to deal with the situation he has so rashly sought.
Not so the Blackamoor, whose lower type of intelligence is beset by neither doubts nor fears. While the Dancer, with nice sense of propriety, goes off into a genteel swoon, he bounces angrily off the divan, and advances threateningly upon the intruder. Pétrouchka, half urged by passion, half intimidated by force, and wholly at a loss, takes refuge in a futile demonstration, which has not the least effect. Gloating, like a true bully, over the discomfiture of his rival, the Blackamoor hustles him to the door, and with a vicious kick sends him flying across the threshold. Boastfully jeering at his defeated enemy, he executes, as the curtain comes down, a loutish dance of triumph.
Meanwhile the fair, to which the action of the ballet returns in the concluding scene, is still in progress. But evening is approaching, and the revels are beginning to take on a noisy, riotous turn. To swinging, pulsing music there is a dance of nursegirls and coachmen, which sets the feet of all who watch it sympathetically a-stamping. The advent of a performing bear, walking gingerly upright at the end of the chain which his owner holds, creates a small diversion; a more lively one is produced by the reappearance of the tipsy merchant, who scatters bank notes promiscuously among the crowd. The horseplay which has already begun receives a fillip from the inrush of a group of masqueraders (a devil with horns and tail among them) whose hideous disguises cause pretended alarm among the women and girls. Snow begins to fall, and under the play of flickering coloured lights, which spasmodically illumine the gathering dusk, the fun waxes fast and furious.
Of a sudden the crowd becomes aware of a great commotion inside the puppet booth. The curtains are drawn across the front,but their violent agitation, now at this end, now at that, indicates that something untoward is happening within. The passers-by pause and look curiously at the booth. In a moment the curtain at one end is flung back and Pétrouchka dashes forth. Close on his heels the Blackamoor, brandishing his sabre, strides vindictively. The Dancer (agitated, but as pink and white of cheek, as glassy of stare, as ever) brings up the rear.
Fleeing in panic down the length of the booth, Pétrouchka vanishes behind the curtain at the other end. The Blackamoor and Dancer follow. A wild commotion of the curtain at its middle part suggests a fearful struggle within. A moment later the three puppets dash forth again, Pétrouchka still in front and seeking vainly to escape the uplifted sabre. In the middle of the market-place the Blackamoor overtakes his rival, and with a vicious blow fells him to the ground.
The spectators, up to this point too taken aback to interfere, crowd round in consternation. Hapless Pétrouchka lies huddled on the ground, and though they seek to succour him, no sound but a painful squeaking comes from him. He strives to rise, but cannot; ineffectual to the last, he can compass nothing more dramatic at his end than a few indeterminate jerky motions and a last pitiful squeak.
An alarm has been given, and at this juncture a policeman approaches with the ancient puppet-showman, an odder figure than ever, wrapped in a voluminous black coat with a tall hat upon his head. The crowd, bewildered by the strange events just witnessed, draws back and watches the showman with puzzled curiosity as he bends over the prostrate figure of Pétrouchka. Can it be they have been spectators of a tragedy?
The showman is in no wise disconcerted. Stooping, he takes hold of the bundle of gaily-coloured rags that lies so forlornly onthe street, and lifts it up. It dangles limp and lifeless from his upraised hand before the astonished eyes of all. A corpse? Nothing of the sort—a doll! Incredulous hands are stretched out to touch, but there is no need of that. The showman begs the company to see for themselves. The head is wooden; the body (as a thin powdery stream falling to the pavement testifies) is stuffed with sawdust!
The crowd disperses. Satisfied that the tragedy was no tragedy, they yet feel a distaste for the scene of an occurrence so disturbing, and drift away to another part of the fair. The showman is left alone.
With a shrug the old magician moves towards his booth, trailing behind him the draggled figure of his puppet. As he nearsthe steps a shrill screech bursts upon his ears. He starts and looks fearfully about him, for he recognises the sound. Again the screech greets him, and looking up he espies, mopping and mowing above the cornice of the booth, the ghostly figure of Pétrouchka.
The trailing bundle of rags and sawdust drops from the sorcerer’s hands. Horror-struck, he turns and flees.
“Pétrouchka” is the joint work of MM. Igor Stravinsky and Alexandre Benois, of whom the former composed the music, while the latter designed the scenery and costumes. The restraint, the fine selective instinct, which Benois has shown in his manipulation of the wealth of material lying to his hand produces a most artistic result. The local colour is firmly, but without offending emphasis, insisted upon—that it is a Russian fair in which we find ourselves, there is no mistaking. Nor does he lack humour; nothing could be defter than the grotesque touches with which the rival puppets’ boxes are adorned, nothing more truly bizarre than the opera cloak and silk hat in which he garbs the fantastic showman for thedénouement.
In “Pétrouchka,” as in “L’Oiseau de Feu,” Stravinsky shows himself a master of the art of writing ballet music. Throughout the four scenes he displays not only a nice sense of dramatic fitness, but a shrewd appreciation of character. Whether his theme is the quasi-pathetic sufferings of Pétrouchka, the dollish coquetry of the Dancer, or the grotesque humours of the Blackamoor, he never fails to be expressive. In the treatment of such a subject as “Pétrouchka” (described by the authors as a series of “burlesque scenes”) his humorous perception is of large assistance. In the trumpet dance, for instance, by which the Blackamoor is first inveigled into the fair one’s toils, or in the slowerpas de fascinationby which the conquest of him is completed, Stravinsky’s sense of the ludicrous has turned two slender occasions to mostdiverting account. Conceive a tender, sentimental passage between two grotesque dolls, and in these engaging little melodies you have the exact expression of the absurd situation. Even more ingenious, as a piece of clever orchestration, is a passage at the outset of the opening scene, where the composer succeeds not only in reproducing (with the merest note of burlesque) the peculiar sounds of an antique hurdy-gurdy, but weaves the opposition between two such competing instruments into a most entertaining and harmonious discord. As to the music which hurries the revels of the carnival upon their riotous course, it has the true note of full-blooded vigorous enjoyment—a rhythmic pulsing quality which belongs to the fresh and unsophisticated pleasure of simple folk not too much hampered by conventions.
“Pétrouchka,” however, would fall short of its ultimate effect but for the subtle art of its interpreters. Kotchetovsky, as the Blackamoor, wonderfully realises the undisciplined temper and coarse appetites which are all of humanity that this puppet has acquired; and the Dancer, whether played by Karsavina or Nijinska, pirouettes or tiptoes with the exactitude of mechanical action. But to the presentation of Pétrouchka Nijinsky brings more than mere cleverness. There is a touch ofdiableriein his impersonation of the luckless puppet which most poignantly conveys the sense of atrophied humanity. It is not merely that from his jerky half-mechanical motions one can deduce the exact anatomy of the doll, a joint here, a loosely hung limb there; he puts the whole character upon a plane above the level of mere grotesquery. Pétrouchka in his hands acquires a significance which places him amongst the centaurs and other half-brute, half-human creatures of mythology. That the ballet is thereby endowed with a meaning, an inwardness, which it might not otherwise possess, must be accounted as a tribute to the dancer’s genius.
Choreographic Drama by Léon Bakst
Music by Balakirev.
Scenes and Dances by Michel Fokine.
Scenery and Costumes Designed by Léon Bakst.
IN no ballet, perhaps, are the resources of the Russians so characteristically and comprehensively displayed as in “Thamar.” In certain other spectacles particular aspects of their art receive more emphasis, are more acutely perceived. But in this barbaric legend from the far Caucasus their powers are revealed at their ripest and fullest. There is a “body,” a full-blooded vigour in this swift, fierce drama, and its vivid enactment, which bespeaks maturity. The miming, the dancing, the verymise-en-scènedraw fire from quickened pulses, albeit so subordinated to controlling restraint, that of no ballet is it less possible to resolve into component elements the spontaneous, arresting whole. Theensembleis perfect. And what “Thamar” lacks in preciosity is compensated by abounding vitality.
It is possibly not mere fancy which suggests that in “Thamar” the Russians give peculiarly spontaneous vent to their artistic impulses. Western Europe has a proverb, which it would scarce be gallant to repeat here, anent the affinity between a Russian and a Tartar; and it would certainly seem as if to the presentment upon the stage of this old tale from the folk-lore of wild Georgia had gone a native appreciation—a relish—of all that it embodies, which must be wanting to the treatment of themes more conventional or exotic. Only in the wonderful exuberance of the crowded Moscow fair in “Pétrouchka” does one find again that subtle access of spontaneity and vitality which can derive from a national instinct alone.
For the story of “Thamar” it seems there is some warrant in history. At least tradition reports that the castle, now in ruins, which stands in the gorge of Dariol, had once a royal mistress, whose inhospitable custom it was to lure unsuspecting strangers into her toils, and presently cause them to be hurled to destruction from a secret door giving upon a precipitous face of the rocky crag on which the castle is perched. What measure of historical fact is foundation for the legend, who shall say? Certain it is that the tale has lost nothing by the telling, in the handing down from one generation to another; that the lurid colours in which Queen Thamar’s character has been painted have lost nothing—have gained, indeed—in intensity. Yet, if time has not mellowed their barbaric crudity, at least it has arranged them decoratively. Romance has been busy at her loom, from which at length has issued a legend so cunningly woven as needs only the gorgeous embroidery of the Russians’ art to reach an apotheosis.
The master hand of Léon Bakst has designed nothing more startling and impressive than the great chamber of the castle in which Queen Thamar holds perpetual court. By some wondrous trick of
his art he has induced a sense of height that leads the eye upward far beyond the proscenium’s limit, and creates a loftiness that seems to dwarf the figures grouped about the floor. Even more remarkable is the form and colouring of the decorations. Crude is the word that first presents itself, but crudity ill suggests the ultimate harmony of this astounding tableau. Violence is rather the note—violence of colour, violence of form: meet setting for such deeds of violence as are soon to be enacted. And as with the chamber, so with the dress of its occupants—the splendid, violent trappings of æsthetic barbarism. Nothing is subdued; it is the very occasion, as the spectator thrills to feel, for passions to be loosed, unbridled and untamed.
Something of the same inspiration seems to have prompted Balakirev’s music, which not only hurries the swift drama to its impending climax, but seems charged with a sensuous violence of its own that enhances, to a point of fascination almost dreadful, the orgy of passionate intoxication on the stage.
Thamar is an exciting experience. In the first few bars of the short prelude which precedes the rising of the curtain the note of mystery, of eerie phantasy, is struck. The listener is transported from reality to the region of legendary lore. To such strains would one choose to read of witchcraft and of magic spells; at least, the music has that degree of kinship with those voices of the elements which raise the hair with unfelt breath, and send a shiver through the stoutest heart.
The curtains, lifting silently, disclose that striking tableau just referred to—acoup d’œilin a very special sense. Upon a divan at the back, sinuous, a panther in repose, lies Thamar. At one side, flooding the head of the couch with evening light, a huge casement gives outlook, over the river’s turbulent flood, upon the wild snow-covered slopes that surround the mountain fastness of the Queen.In groups about the chamber are scattered Thamar’s women, some close in attendance upon their mistress, others reclining on low cushions, a few watching intently the distant prospect through the open window. Guarding the door, tall henchmen.
A steadfast immobility has transfixed all. So, statuesque, stood the guards and retinue of the Sleeping Beauty. This much the spectator is permitted, at the lifting of the curtain, to apprehend. The stillness is noted, lasting for just that brief but appreciable moment which invests it with significance, and makes dominant that note of phantasy, of unreality, which the opening strains of music sounded. The illusion achieved, the spell of stillness is broken. A woman, one of those whose watchful gaze has been directed through the window, stirs. It is the merest gesture, but a gesture eager, alert: and on the instant, though none other yet moves, the scene becomes instinct with life.
The woman looks again at the distant scene; then turns to another with a whispered word. At the movement heads are turned, figures that seemed indolent lose their sloth. Something is toward; the whispers are pregnant with meaning. Thamar alone, recumbent on her couch, gives no sign of life. One might suppose she slumbered, but for the cat-like swiftness with which, at a word from one of her attendants, she turns towards the window. Half raising herself, as a stalking leopard lifts shoulders and neck to watch its distant prey, she takes a wisp of gauze from her pillow and slowly waves it above her head. A stranger, errant among the lonely mountain sides, has espied the castle, and approaches. Even now he stands below the walls gazing at the fateful casement. Twice and again the seductive signal is repeated. Its purpose then appears to be achieved, for the scarf is dropped and Thamar, springing from the couch, turns to her expectant court.
Orders are issued, but of these there scarce seems need, with such accustomed readiness do the Queen’s minions set about their tasks. Without ado the guards stationed at the doors prepare to sally forth, wrapping themselves in voluminous black cloaks. A subtle touch, those cloaks. They suggest the bleak, inhospitable wilderness without, emphasising the warmth and luxury of the brilliant scene within—an emphasis which is enhanced by the decorative value, considering the scene pictorially, of the black irregular masses which the shrouded high-capped figures present against the general riot of colour. When presently the stranger is led in, likewise cloaked and muffled, that contrast is again insisted upon. The stranger, it is instantly apparent, is travel-weary: one divines the curiosity and wonder with which he finds himself led into an atmosphere of ease and luxury which his tired senses, despite the bandage over his eyes, must gratefully apprehend.
Meanwhile, the Queen has been preparing for the advent of her guest. As the escort departs to bring him in, the women busy themselves with Thamar’s person. Deftly and swiftly she is robed, and ere the door opens to admit the doomed stranger, she is ready and awaiting her prey.
Wonderful mime that she is, I doubt whether Karsavina in anyrôleexcels her impersonation of the feline Thamar. Her every movement, under its sinuous grace, has that suggestion of stealth which fascinates while it affrights. From the moment that the guileless stranger is brought before her—for there is that in her attitude, as she awaits his coming, which proclaims him not guest, but victim—till the fierce climax, she never relaxes the tension under which his apprehension of her close-pent, volcanic energy places the spectator. It is as though one watched a panther sporting with some innocent creature that mistakes the play for mere kittenish frolic: as beautiful, as horrid, and as certain in its
ending is Thamar’s way with her victim. The final pounce one awaits as inevitable: the interval is filled with the exquisite agony of suspense.
Embodiment of action in arrest is Queen Thamar as, for a brief moment, she regards the figure of the unsuspecting stranger. Then, loosing suddenly her restraint, she springs upon him, and reaching up a slender arm with eager fingers tears the bandage from his face. Fiercely she scans him: he is fair to see. So, too, is Thamar, and if in that swift interchange of searching looks the wild blood courses more hotly through the siren’s veins, be sure that passion scarce a whit less fiery kindles in the youth, so strangely and suddenly confronted by the glowing, sinister beauty of the Queen.
At a sign from Thamar attendants come forward to relieve the stranger of his travelling gear. Disengaging herself from his grasp, the Queen retires to a table at the side, on which stands a wine cup and flagon. From the background she watches avidly while her women are busy. The stranger’s cloak and high-crowned hat are removed, and he stands revealed—handsome, well-favoured, a very proper figure of a man. He gazes about him rapt in admiration and delight, but ere he can espy again the figure of the arch enchantress, a group of dancing girls advances and encircles him. The graceful measures which they tread distract his attention as he stands, pleased and diverted, in their midst.
The bevy of girls gives way to a more potent allurement. Thamar herself, darting forward, now begins a dance of fascination before the stranger’s eager eyes. With her first lithe movements she asserts her mastery over his enraptured senses. As the moth round the flame of the candle, he hovers on the outskirts of her mazy dance, the reviving blood within him gaining warmth as he feasts his quickening senses on her beauty and grace.
As Thamar continues to dance, so increasingly wavers the young man’s hold upon himself. She saps his power of restraint to the very verge; then on a sudden interrupts the dance, and runs to the table. Ere the stranger can collect himself she is before him, offering with regal courtesy a brimming wine cup. He hesitates to drink, but held by the fascination of her eye he suffers her to lead him, unresisting, to the couch. As they gain the steps of the divan a troupe of dancers enters. Musicians, with quaint stringed instruments, are already seated along the walls, and forthwith, a joyous revel is begun.
The lilt of the music, the throbbing rhythm of the dance, complete the spell which Thamar’s beauty has begun. With eyes intent only upon the face of his enchantress, the stranger puts the potion to his lips. As he sets the wine cup down, Thamar eludes the embrace he proffers and glides away. The youth pursues her through the whirling ranks of dancers, but at a sign from Thamar the women take him by the hand and lead him from the chamber. Reluctant to go, he yet submits to be escorted thus, since the purpose is but to attire him more fitly for the night-long revel.
Left alone amidst her court, Thamar draws inspiration for her approaching deeds of lust and violence from the savage frenzy of her followers. Her henchmen crowd around her, goading her willing spirit with the vigour of their dance. Rapidly the frenzy of that dance increases; the armed men draw their daggers, hurling them points downward to the floor in the midst of their whirling evolutions. Thamar, aloof, looks on with heaving breasts. As she watches her excitement grows, till at length with an imperious gesture she bids her attendants bring the stranger in once more. The women fly at her behest, and Thamar, with sudden resolution, masters her outward evidences of passion, and gains the divan just as the stranger, in rich gala attire, is ushered in.
The dance of armed men has ceased, and the entering youth is greeted by a bevy of girls, each with a tabor in her hand, who dance before him, and presently lead him to the royal couch. The youth advances gladly; but Thamar, stealthily immobile, affects to ignore him. Spurred thus to ingratiate himself, the stranger essays a dance before the object of his passion. He is tall, he is shapely, he is active; his leaps and nimble movements display to advantage his virile elegance and grace. Thamar, watching him intently, is swept past all restraint and casts dissimulation aside. Swiftly she darts upon him, and joins him in the dance. The swaying measure which they foot in concert sets their pulses throbbing to the point beyond endurance. As the music swells in volume, the women are caught by the intoxication of the moment, and as the armed men in their turn join the dance, the stranger finds himself supporting the form of Thamar in their midst. The moment of ecstasy, of abandon, is reached. A pregnant pause—then Thamar has flung herself upon the stranger, fastened her lips upon his, and fleeing from the chamber, drawn him in pursuit.
The disappearance of the two protagonists is the signal for resumption of the revels. Violently and yet more violently throbs the music, wilder and yet wilder rages the furious dance. The casement which earlier admitted the sunset rays has long been closed, and one may believe the night to be far spent ere the revels have reached this pitch of bacchic frenzy. The orgy is at its height when the stranger, alone, re-enters the chamber. His breath is laboured, his gait unsteady, as he staggers under the heady influence of overmastering passion. At sight of him the dancers pause, eyeing him askance, curious but aloof. The wretched youth, at grips with his passion, pays no heed to them, but even as he yields and turns again towards the door, the object of his thirsting desire confronts him. The Queen takes him by the handand fawns upon him, savagely seductive. The youth is wax beneath her fierce caress, and though the watching eyes of all the court are upon him, he can but gaze, spell-bound, upon his Circe.
Thamar, not less than her victim, is in the clutch of over-whelming passion. The hour is at hand, and as the fateful moment approaches, she thrills with fearful expectancy. Bemused, the luckless stranger sees not the dagger which Thamar with stealthy motion of the hand withdraws from her girdle; neither does he note the yawning abyss, revealed through a panel in the wall a watchful guard has rolled noiselessly aside, towards whichhis unheeding steps are being surely and relentlessly guided. There comes at last the climax. Even as the infatuated youth leans towards her, with a tigerish spring the Queen stabs him to the heart. He is already on the brink of the open precipice; and as he reels backward under the blow, a push from the minion at his elbow sends him hurling to the rushing torrent far below. Thamar with outstretched neck watches, in gloating ecstasy, the consummation of her fell design.
The panel in the wall slides back again. The guards resume their posts of duty. The courtiers, grouped about the chamber, relapse into immobility. The appointed doom is achieved. What was to be, is. Once more the sense of fantastic unreality asserts itself in the spectator’s mind. Mere ghouls, dread phantoms in human form, this dazzling throng of courtiers—not creatures of warm flesh and blood as in the midst of their simulated revelry he had almost deemed them. Thamar alone exhibits emotion. It is not remorse, however, which sets her shivering as with an ague, and turns her knees to water. Reaction must follow action, and the hideous spectre that treads so close upon the heels of indulgence has her in its grip. The hour has passed, the supreme moment has gone; and Thamar, like every true artist, is plunged in depths that are measurable only by the heights she has erstwhile scaled.
The court, regarding her attentive but impassive, is dismissed with a gesture, and the great chamber is cleared of all save Thamar and her women, by whom she is now unrobed. As the festal garments drop from her, the Queen’s exhaustion, physical and mental, seems to verge upon collapse. Slowly she gains the head of her couch, as the arras is drawn from before the window. Night has fled and the purple rays of the dawn pour into the room. The Queen steps into the midst of this luminous flood, drinkingdeep of the morning glory. Her senses revive, she imbibes new vigour, the black shadows are lifted from her. As presently she lays herself upon the couch, her women sink to rest upon their cushions.
Thus from supreme climax the action of the ballet subsides gradually to statuesque immobility once more. Stillness broods over the quiet figures of Thamar and her women. Realisation comes suddenly to the spectator that the scene is now identical with that which the lifting curtain first disclosed. And at that moment of quick apprehension—a woman stirs! In a flash of inspiration the spectator’s eye, outrunning the action on the stage, foresees the inevitable happening. Is not the whole ghastly round yet fresh and vivid in his mind? The woman looks again, whispers to another. A third bends to the Queen’s ear, and as the curtain slowly descends the treacherous scarf is being once more lightly tossed into the air.
Pantomime-Ballet by Michel Fokine.
Music by Robert Schumann,
Orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov, Liadov, Glazounov and Tcherepnin.
Scenery and Costumes Designed by Léon Bakst.
“LE CARNAVAL,” which has been built upon Schumann’s well-known music, is a ballet of the type which defies pedestrian description. If one may term “incident” so trifling an affair as, let us say, a butterfly’s flirtation with a flower, then “Le Carnaval” is full of incident. But it has no story, no dramatic development of a plot, to give a theme for narrative. The very characters bear relation to each other only as thepersonæof a carnival.
The characters, indeed, are scarcely to be regarded as actual men and women. Harlequin, Columbine, Pierrot and the rest who flit across the scene, are no mere impersonations of those traditional figures of fancy by gay revellers at abal masqué, but themselves—living embodiments of different phases of irresponsible humanity. The spectator is conscious of an atmosphere of unreality, a sense almost of illusion. On the wings of fancy he is transported far from the realm of adamantine fact, and in a region of pure sentiment sees materialised the whole idea of Carnival.
It is to the appearance of unreality, perhaps, that the ballet owes its peculiar appeal and charm. Elsewhere some explanation has been attempted of the fascination which the puppet exercises on the human mind, and similar comments apply in the present case. For though the figures of “Le Carnaval” are not, as in “Pétrouchka,” poor dolls aping humanity, in essence they arepuppets just as much—embodiments in miniature of various human traits at which we can afford to laugh without offended vanity. Watching “Le Carnaval,” indeed, we are verily in puppet-dom; so completely is a severance from matter-of-fact reality achieved.
This note of fantasy is maintained in chief by the exceeding deftness of the performers, and the sensitive lightness of their touch. But not a little is owed to the bold simplicity of Bakst’sdécor. There is no scenery; merely an immense green curtain for background, and for furniture a couple of odd little stripedsofas. The bareness of the stage, the great height of the curtain behind, have the effect of dwarfing the figures of the dancers; the elimination of all superfluous detail produces a needed concentration of attention on their movements. There being no dramatic action to unfold, sentiment rather than passion—and that of the most artificial kind—being the matter for portrayal, gesture and the dance are here submitted to the severest test as means of expression. Artificiality demands, in representation, the most deft and polished art—of course, of a strictly conventional and academic kind. That formal perfection the Russians achieve in “Le Carnaval”—a perfection so absolute that formality is forgotten, eclipsed in its own apotheosis. So nicely do the performers exploit, while never transgressing, the conventions by which the ballet is conditioned, that for once artifice seems natural, and sentiment as real as passion.
The costumes devised by Bakst are of the Victorian period—crinolines andpeg-top trousers, of which the quaint prim style, so far removed from modern tendencies, exactly suits the dainty little puppets that flit magically across the stage. Pierrot, of course, appears as ever in voluminous white clothes, but Columbine and Harlequin, though instantly to be recognised, are dressed a little differently from the mode which the harlequinade, as it used commonly to be presented in this country, has stereotyped. But then, neither Columbine nor Harlequin in “Le Carnaval” are the stilted, meaningless creatures to which the base usage of the English so-called “pantomime” has degraded them. Their true characters are restored: they intrigue the eye as airy figments of irresponsible fancy—she the embodiment of freakish sentiment, he of freakish humour. Columbine is no longer a well-favoured wench attired in a scantytu-tu, pirouetting with moderate skill upon her toes, but the incarnation of feminine mutability and charm: bespangled Harlequin has lost the silly wand with, which he was wont to slap about him indiscriminately, and has become Arlecchino, the spirit of unbridled mirth and mischief. The dance (in which general term one includes the supplementary art of pantomime) alone perhaps can express these conceptions of modern mythology, and the embodiment, the reality, which Karsavina and Nijinsky give to them is possible only through their perfection in that art. Than Nijinsky’s performance in “Le Carnaval,” no more complete exposition can be imagined of all that the dancer’s art comprises.
Three times have separate couples—fantastic, irresponsible figures—flitted lightly across the stage in arch retreat and gay pursuit, when the curtains at the back are parted and Pierrot’s white face protrudes. Dismally he glances left and right. No one is near, and with every motion of his dejected figure eloquent of suffering, he advances from his hiding-place. A few paces taken, he pauses, the victim not only of misery, but of indecision. Poor
Pierrot, “temperament “ personified, in everything it is all or nothing with him. Just now he finds himself deceived—and his abandonment to grief reaches the utmost limits of despair. He has no longer zest for anything in the world—and his vacillation is equally intense. Why should he go forward—or backward—to left or right? Why stand up—why sit down? Why do anything,beanything? So he stands there, the picture of indetermination, his baggy clothes hanging anyhow about him, his very limbs so loosely jointed that they seem to be without definite control.
Sprightly and agile, extremity of contrast to nerveless, flabby Pierrot, there enters Harlequin. Mischief, all spry and self-contained, is ignorant of pity, and Folly becomes an instant butt for mockery and ridicule. Poor witless Pierrot, defenceless against the shafts of raillery, takes a few wild steps in blundering flight. But even that impulse fails him and he collapses in an inert heap upon the floor. And as he lies there, a huddled heap of misery, there passes before his dismal gaze all the mirth and gaiety in which he cannot pluck up heart, for all his longing, to join. He sees the sentimental pairs go by in elegant procession, each swain intent upon his mistress, and never a look, demure or bold, from bright eyes in his direction: he is witness of the pleasant melancholy of lovelorn youth, seeking and in ecstasy finding the object of its tender passion. He is present unobserved at a declaration of love, and it is this which spurs him at length to a spasmodic effort. For as the amorous pair, the declaration made and enchantingly accepted, trip gaily from the scene, Pierrot, with sudden zeal for emulation, dashes madly after them.
It is but a fitful flash of energy, however, and hardly has another sentimental passage ended betwixt a gallant and his fair, when Pierrot, disconsolate, returns. But even as he slouches mournfully in, he encounters Papillon, whose fluttering butterfly grace fills him with instant rapture. Gloom is banished on the instant: the fickle Pierrot is in a transport of delight. Clumsily he pursues her, hat in hand, seeking like a loutish boy to capture her. But her fluttering steps elude him; she leads him here and there in a dizzy maze and is gone, out of reach, at the very moment when the foolish oaf flings his hat down and thinks to have imprisoned her. With grotesque excess of cunning he lifts the hat’s brim, an eager paw ready to pounce upon the pretty captive. But nothing is there! The idiotic leer fades from his face, his whole figure sagsas the momentary zest dies out, and plunged once more in the depths of despondency, he drifts aimlessly away.
The gay and sentimental revelry goes on. Columbine appears,with Harlequin dancing attendance. Hardly have they come upon the scene when they encounter Pantalon—an odd little figure of fun with yellow coat, green gloves, and a preposterous stripe down the length of his trouser. Concealing her roguish escort behind her petticoat, Columbine makes an easy victim of the senile Pantalon, only to hold him up to ridicule when he plunges into fervent protestations. Heartlessly she mocks her unfortunate dupe as, whirled off his feet by the agile Harlequin, he is made to beat an ignominious retreat.
There follows not only an enchantingpas de deuxby Columbine and Harlequin, but some delicious pantomime between the two.Harlequin makes as if to lay his heart at Columbine’s feet (he verily seems to pluck it from his bosom and place it before her): she receives the tribute with becoming favour, and retiring to one of the sofas in the background, continues the flirtation. Whilst the pair are still seated, there trip on to the stage some score of couples, and amongst them Pierrot, once more animated, and again seeking vainly to capture Papillon. His new attempt is no more successful than his first, and in the dance to which all abandon themselves he alone is partnerless.
In some degree inspired out of his melancholy, however, Pierrot capers awkwardly amongst the rest, till Harlequin and Columbine spy a chance for further mischief. They join him in the dance, one on either side, and seizing an opportunity when Pantalon, as undeterred by his first rebuff as a moth whose wings are only singed, is hovering near, they throw the two into collision, deftly envelop them with Pierrot’s long sleeves, and secure the grotesque partnership with a hasty knot. As the curtain descends the two victims of their gay malice are seen stumbling in each other’s clutch amidst the mockery of the dancing throng.
Choreographic Drama in One Act by Michel Fokine.
Music by Arensky, Taneiev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glinka and Glazounov.
Scenes and Dances by Michel Fokine.
Scenery and Costumes Designed by Léon Bakst.
IT is the supreme merit of “Cléopâtre” that it is of an even and sustained excellence throughout. All concerned in its production and performance have surpassed themselves, but since each has risen equally to the occasion there are no outstanding features to distract the balance of the whole. The result is merely the elevation of the latter to a very high artistic level.
It will be agreed that few subjects more suggestive and inspiring could be found than Cleopatra. For colour, movement and dramatic intensity the legend of the Egyptian queen affords opportunities which have in no wise been allowed to slip. Léon Bakst has done nothing more largely fine than the spacious temple in the desert by the Nile, the deep tawny grandeur of which, broad and simple, provides a proper setting for the splendid, gem-like brilliance of Cleopatra’s train. Here is enacted, against a background of choric dances that have more than a conventional significance, one of those fierce passionate episodes which the Russians so vividly present.
Beyond the tall columns which enclose the sacred precinct we see the desert sand and the waters of the Nile. Hither, as the dusk of an Eastern night is enveloping the scene, comes Ta-hor, a young princess, in quest of her lover Amoûn, to whom she has been promised by the high priest of the temple. She is first at the tryst, but in a moment Amoûn comes leaping to meet her. Thebow he carries in his hand seems symbolic of his manly youth and virile strength. The lusty vigour of his agile bounds, the impetuous onrush of his approach to his beloved, are eloquent of his careless abandon to the joy of life and love.
But their tender intercourse is broken by the entry of the high priest, who announces to them the approach of Cleopatra and her train. The great queen is come to accomplish a vow made to the deity of the temple, and already is at hand. Soon the head of the royal procession appears, and to the music of lutes and pipes there files into the precinct a glittering retinue.
Attended by slaves and guarded by soldiers, a large object, having the appearance of a painted sarcophagus, is borne in shoulder high, and set down with ceremony and care upon the temple pavement.
The doors of this strange litter are thrown open, revealing within what seems to be a mummy tightly swathed in voluminous