Yuri Grigorovich's latest version of The Sleeping Beauty (his fifth) follows the Soviet traditions that discreetly downgraded monarchical and religious nuances in the dance formations in order to raise up the sheer prettiness and femininity of classical dancing, and is kind to the audience by being sliced into two long acts, which makes it feel shorter and tauter than the usual three-act deployment.įrigerio’s sets dominate my vision, the soaring white barley-sugar marble pillars wrapped in gilded ribbons, the glittering gold balustrades and finials, the eye-wateringly ostentatious gold fountain in front of an Italian rotunda, the huge wrought black and gold gateway. There's no place here for brambles and briars, cobwebs and dust. Why wouldn't it? Covent Garden's patrons like recognition too. I wonder if there has been a more political production since than this Bolshoi one, created to offer a disillusioned nation escapist theatrical luxury even in the straitened Putinist Russia of the 21st century, perhaps to translate homage to historic royal symbolism into a tribute to the great Bolshoi Theatre and Russian supremacy, and to once again show art’s gratitude to the super-wealthy patrons who like visible evidence of their influence. The first Sleeping Beauty was a piece of political art, flattering the Tsar Alexander III by implicitly comparing him to the legendary Sun King, Louis XIV of France, whose court was evoked in the first (St Petersburg) production. This production may be as significant for what it symbolises as the original 1890 one, both being displays of power and wealth. Evidently tens of millions of rubles have been spent on this production, and it doesn't intend to hide it. What do we see? Gold, gleaming gold, eye-blistering baroque gold, twirling round ivory barley-sugar twist columns that each, I’m told, required its own shipping container from Russia, all designed by the master of lavish majesty, Ezio Frigerio, who brought more restrained fabulousness to Rudolf Nureyev’s productions for Paris Opera Ballet and English National Ballet, and who designed Nureyev’s grave in Paris.
And it was reassigned to the veteran former Bolshoi director Yuri Grigorovich, by now in his mid-80s, whose followers had been, in part, Ratmansky’s downfall. This was also problematic, as three years earlier it had been promised to the then ballet director Alexei Ratmansky, who had soon afterwards resigned his job, wretched and miserable with the corrosive relationships within the theatre.
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