Opus Arte Begins its Ashton “Collection”

from the Amazon.com Web page

This past September I wrote about a video release by Opus Arte presenting a program of three ballets choreographed by Frederic Ashton. At the beginning of this year, that recording was packaged along with two others as a set entitled The Frederick Ashton Collection: Volume One. Once again, the content has been released in both Blu-ray and DVD formats.

Each of the discs is a document of a single program at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. The one that I had previously discussed took place on June 7, 2017 and consisted of three ballets, “The Dream,” “Symphonic Variations,” and “Marguerite and Armand.” This is the most recent performance in the collection. The earliest was recorded on February 21, 2013 and documented a program entitled Ashton Celebration. It began with “La Valse” and concluded with an earlier version of “Marguerite and Armand.” Between these bookends were several shorter pieces, a setting of the “Meditation” music from Jules Massenet’s opera Thaïs, a choreographic interpretation of the waltz “Voices of Spring” by Johann Strauss II, originally created for the second act “entertainment” in a Royal Opera performance of Strauss’ operetta Die Fledermaus, and the two short ballets entitled “Monotones,” both setting orchestrations of piano music by Erik Satie. The remaining recording was made on January 28, 2016, beginning with “Rhapsody,” followed by the two-act The Two Pigeons.

I shall try not to repeat myself (at least not too much) where the 2017 recording is concerned; but I would like to approach the entire set in a slightly different manner, treating the narrative and abstract ballets as different categories. This is not to suggest that Ashton was better in one category than in the other. However, each of the two genres imposed different priorities; and Ashton clearly knew how to respect those priorities.

Where narrative is concerned, “The Dream” is definitely the leader of the pack, so to speak. Ashton clearly had a well-developed sense of literary technique; and, given that “The Dream” was created for a program to mark the 400th anniversary of the birth of William Shakespeare, Ashton’s understanding of what made A Midsummer Night’s Dream tick was as significant as the toolbox he brought to this particular project. The bottom line is that anyone who really knows this play will have no trouble hearing Shakespeare’s words echo in the mind when one observes many of the episodes that Ashton extracted to make this ballet. (Obviously, he did not try to account for every one of Shakespeare’s scenes.) For the record, the words that reverberate loudest in my own mind are those of Bottom after he awakes from the spell Puck has cast.

The other narrative selections are The Two Pigeons and “Marguerite and Armand.” While the latter is based on La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas, fils, most viewers will think more about Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La Traviata than about Dumas’ book. Indeed, Ashton “parses” the narrative into the same sequence of four scenes that one finds in Verdi, along with a “prologue” scene that basically depicts what Verdi’s opening prologue does.

However good the “fit” to Verdi may be, I fear that the ballet never hits the mark quite as well. This is because Ashton created it in 1963 for Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn. In other words the ballet was conceived as a “vanity piece” for the two Royal Ballet superstars of that time, who could probably sell out the house if they did nothing more than dance a Virginia reel. Furthermore, Ashton’s decision to set the ballet to Dudley Simpson’s orchestration of Franz Liszt B minor piano sonata basically took an overwrought narrative and “wrought” it even further with Liszt’s hypertrophied rhetoric. I have to confess that I was more shocked than surprised to discover that this ballet “made the cut” for the Ashton Celebration program; but that just made me less surprised to discover that it had been revived again in 2017!

The Two Pigeons, on the other hand, was a reworking of a nineteenth-century French ballet. The plot was conceived by choreographer Louis Mérante working with Henri de Régnier, and the music was composed by André Messager. The ballet was first performed at the Paris Opera on October 18, 1886.

The basic plot is that the aspiring artist Pépio leaves his fiancée (and primary model) Gourouli to run off with a band of gypsies, having been smitten by the voluptuous Djali. As might be guessed, he returns home sadder and wiser at the same time that two pigeons symbolically return to their nest. (I was a bit surprised, and definitely amused, to see real birds on the stage; and, as animals tend to do, they stole the final scene!) Clearly, this is not as “literary” as Shakespeare; but Ashton definitely finds ways to elevate his account of the scenario above the mundanity of it all.

Nevertheless, it is the abstract side of Ashton’s choreographic efforts that tend, more often than not, to hit the mark. I was particularly struck by how he was at his best when working with music that was structured in variations form. Most impressive was his treatment of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 43 “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.” I have discovered that there is no shortage of wit that Rachmaninoff packed into this piece that now enjoys warhorse status, and I never fail to be satisfied when both conductor and piano soloist recognize how much wit there is and articulate all of it clearly. Ashton seems to have appreciated this often-ignored aspect of the music well enough to put his own stamp of wit on the choreography he created. His treatment of César Frank’s “Symphonic Variations” is a bit more on the serious side. Nevertheless, within the elegance of his many different approaches to symmetry, there are more than a few moments that elicit a justified giggle or two.

The real belly laughs, however, are to be found in “Voices of Spring,” right where they belong in the context of the absurd Fledermaus plot line. Granted, those who laugh the heartiest will be those who have endured the insufferable “Spring Waters” from the repertoire of the Bolshoi Ballet. There are any number of gestures in “Voices of Spring” to make it clear that Ashton is getting even with the Russians on a movement-by-movement basis. However, even for those who do not get all of the fine details, the ballet is still a hoot.

On the more serious side, the Thaïs scene is pleasantly serene, if not deeply profound. The real challenge, however, arises in the two “Monotones” ballets. These demand the strictest possible attention to the different kinds of symmetry (as opposed to “Symphonic Variations,” in which the mere suggestion of symmetry is enough to breathe life into the choreography). Even the costuming for “Monotones” suggests that the dancers have been abstracted to machines with a limited number of movements that, in spite of those limitations, are intricately coordinated. If the symmetries are not precise, then almost all of the impact of the choreography is lost; and, unfortunately, precision did not seem to be a priority when this ballet was revived for that Ashton Celebration program.

Taken as a whole, this first volume is a generally satisfying profile of Ashton’s creativity as a choreographer. It leaves me wondering what will show up when the second volume is compiled. I have to confess that my curiosity is at its greatest for Cinderella. This was the ballet that New Yorker critic Winthrop Sargeant described as the story of two very droll old maids that happen to have a beautiful stepsister, who goes off and marries a prince. In the original version, Ashton himself was one of those droll old maids. (The other was Robert Helpmann.) I could do with being reminded of just how funny that ballet was!