Dance
L’enfant et les sortilèges
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Jiri Kylian's fantasy ballet for Nederlands Dans, based on Ravel's opera
Choreographer
Jiri Kylian
Performers
Dancers : Maryl Knoben, Roslyn Anderson, Stephen Sheriff, Leigh Matthews, James Vincent, Glen Eddy, Karin Heijninck, Michael Sanders, Pascale Mosselmans, Aryeh Woiner, Sabine Kupferberg, Jean-Yves Esquerre, Kirsten Debrock, Brigitte Martin, Christine Tanner, Karel Vadewghe, Joke Zijlstra, Gerald Tibbs, Jean-Louis Cabane, Catherine Allard, Nacho Duato, Teresina Mosco, Fiona Lummis, Philip Taylor
Orchestre National de Paris
Lorin Maazel (conductor)
RTF Chorus
Soloists
Françoise Ogéas, Jeanine Collard, Jeanne Berbié, Sylvaine Gilma Colette Herzog, Heinz Rehfuss, Camille Maurane and Michel Sénèchal
Design
John MacFarlane
Maurice Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges ('The Child and the Magic Spells') is an opera full of typically witty and sophisticated music, tinged with jazz and sparkling with well-polished themes. The grace and energy of Ravel's music is well suited to dance - he wrote many ballets and dance pieces - and so perhaps it's understandable that the Nederlands Dans Theater should have so successfully converted this opera into a ballet for this studio recording.
L'enfant is one of the few operas with a child in the main role. It was commissioned by Jacques Rouché, the then director of the Opéra de Paris, and based on a scenario by Colette (in which the central character is a girl, not a boy). The work received its enthusiastic premiere at the Paris's Opéra-Comique in February 1926.
The Nederlands Dans Theater is one of Europe's most exciting ballet companies, and the group's success owes a lot to their artistic director Jiri Kylian. He choreographed the work, and in a short introduction explains his thinking behind the dance conversion.
Ravel's opera is a surreal and bittersweet work: a brilliant evocation of the wonderment and innocence of childhood but also of its unthinking cruelty. Through highly original instrumental colour, Ravel creates an utterly convincing fantasy world that is both magical and sinister.
A bored and naughty boy defies his mother's request to do his homework. He is confined to his room and flies into a tantrum, taking his anger out on his surroundings. To his astonishment the victims of his temper - including the arm-chair, the clock, the crockery, the fire, the figures from the wallpaper, the arithmetic from his school books, the cat and most pitiful of all the Princess from his ripped up book of fairy stories - come to life and agree not to put up with him any longer.
The scene moves from the house to the moonlit garden where the trees and the animals, also victims of his thoughtless destructiveness, turn on him. Finding himself at their mercy, the boy is filled with remorse and fear. Finally, he is redeemed by an act of kindness in helping an injured squirrel. The animals see that he is capable of goodness and call for his mother to help him.
Jiri Kylian
Performers
Dancers : Maryl Knoben, Roslyn Anderson, Stephen Sheriff, Leigh Matthews, James Vincent, Glen Eddy, Karin Heijninck, Michael Sanders, Pascale Mosselmans, Aryeh Woiner, Sabine Kupferberg, Jean-Yves Esquerre, Kirsten Debrock, Brigitte Martin, Christine Tanner, Karel Vadewghe, Joke Zijlstra, Gerald Tibbs, Jean-Louis Cabane, Catherine Allard, Nacho Duato, Teresina Mosco, Fiona Lummis, Philip Taylor
Orchestre National de Paris
Lorin Maazel (conductor)
RTF Chorus
Soloists
Françoise Ogéas, Jeanine Collard, Jeanne Berbié, Sylvaine Gilma Colette Herzog, Heinz Rehfuss, Camille Maurane and Michel Sénèchal
Design
John MacFarlane
Maurice Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges ('The Child and the Magic Spells') is an opera full of typically witty and sophisticated music, tinged with jazz and sparkling with well-polished themes. The grace and energy of Ravel's music is well suited to dance - he wrote many ballets and dance pieces - and so perhaps it's understandable that the Nederlands Dans Theater should have so successfully converted this opera into a ballet for this studio recording.
L'enfant is one of the few operas with a child in the main role. It was commissioned by Jacques Rouché, the then director of the Opéra de Paris, and based on a scenario by Colette (in which the central character is a girl, not a boy). The work received its enthusiastic premiere at the Paris's Opéra-Comique in February 1926.
The Nederlands Dans Theater is one of Europe's most exciting ballet companies, and the group's success owes a lot to their artistic director Jiri Kylian. He choreographed the work, and in a short introduction explains his thinking behind the dance conversion.
Ravel's opera is a surreal and bittersweet work: a brilliant evocation of the wonderment and innocence of childhood but also of its unthinking cruelty. Through highly original instrumental colour, Ravel creates an utterly convincing fantasy world that is both magical and sinister.
A bored and naughty boy defies his mother's request to do his homework. He is confined to his room and flies into a tantrum, taking his anger out on his surroundings. To his astonishment the victims of his temper - including the arm-chair, the clock, the crockery, the fire, the figures from the wallpaper, the arithmetic from his school books, the cat and most pitiful of all the Princess from his ripped up book of fairy stories - come to life and agree not to put up with him any longer.
The scene moves from the house to the moonlit garden where the trees and the animals, also victims of his thoughtless destructiveness, turn on him. Finding himself at their mercy, the boy is filled with remorse and fear. Finally, he is redeemed by an act of kindness in helping an injured squirrel. The animals see that he is capable of goodness and call for his mother to help him.
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