Prokofiev quotes
Dance Open 2018: «Cinderella», Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo
Dance Open 2017: «Cinderella», Perm ballet
Dance Open 2016: «Romeo and Juliet», Perm ballet
Prokofiev and ballet. Love story for life
Dedicated to the 125th Anniversary of the composer
The relations between Sergei Prokofiev and ballet were not easy. His ballet music received controversial reviews from critics; in this area he experienced both thunderous defeats and breathtaking success, and he was often misunderstood. Nevertheless it did not stop him from coming back to ballet again and again, he left us incredible masterpieces and immortal Romeo and Juliet.
He first saw the ballet in 1900, when he was 9 years old. It was The Sleeping Beauty by Tchaikovsky and his impression was somehow mixed. By that time the young musician had already composed the opera called Giant, but he had not thought that writing music for ballet would become his fate.
Diaghilev ballets became the turning point for Prokofiev, he was mesmerized by Daphnis and Chloe by Ravel and The Firebird and Petrushka by Stravinsky. In conversations with Diaghilev first appear vague outlines of Scythian Suite, a ballet on Russian prehistoric theme where the atmosphere of the Scythian "barbarism" is recreated. The ballet was initiated by Diaghilev who had The Rite of Spring on his mind. Prokofiev’s first steps in ballet were made under the influence of the brilliant music of Stravinsky. One of his first successful attempts in ballet was The Tale of the Buffoon (between 1915 and 1920). Bearing in mind a cruel joke that played with him the weakness of the libretto of his previous work, this time Prokofiev himself creates the libretto and borrows a plot for the ballet from Russian fairy tales retold by Afanasyev. This vivid and witty ballet was filled with funny episodes in Russian folklore style.
The growing interest of the Western world to the Bolsheviks country was not left unnoticed by Diaghilev. He commissioned Prokofiev to make the ballet about the Soviet life. This is how the production with an intriguing title Le Pas d'Acier staged by Léonide Massine appeared. It consisted of several unrelated episodes: a train with speculators, commissars and papirosniks. The dancers showed the movements of machinery, machine tools and the noise of steam hammers. Unfortunately the performance that did not have a single plot was not successful neither in Paris nor in London.
Prokofiev had got the chance to demonstrate his unconventional talent several years later in The Prodigal Son, staged in 1929. The contrast scenes: bacchanalia at the feast and the morning after a riotous night, and then a picture of the return of the son to his father's home, that is full of sorrow and humility, produce a very strong impression. The music in the ballet mesmerized by its simplicity, warmth and nobility. After The Prodigal Son Prokofiev created a sublime lyrical On the Dnieper that anticipated his three main works - Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella and The Tale of the Stone Flower.
Soon after his return to the motherland in 1933, Prokofiev decided to create the ballet to Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo and Juliet. The idea was given by Sergei Radlov, a prominent Shakespeare scholar and artistic director of Kirov Theatre. The composer started working on the score while creating the libretto with Radlov and Adrian Piltrovsky, a well-known St. Petersburg theatre critic and playwright. In 1936 the first version of the ballet, that had an unusual happy ending, was presented to the Direction of the Bolshoi Theatre. Although they had in generally a positive impression on the music, a happy final was put under question. For the final version approved by the Bolshoi a tragic ending was created. At the same time controversial articles criticizing the music of Shostakovich for ballet were published and the direction of the Bolshoi decided not to take the risk of staging Prokofiev’s work. The same decision was taken by the Leningrad Choreography Academy. The ballet was finally premiered in 1938 in Brno, Czechoslovakia. One-act ballet with choreography by Ivo Psota was very-well received by the audience. After that the Soviet Union decided to stage this production promptly in Kirov Theatre.
The choreography for the ballet was made by Leonid Lavrovsky who had to go through the heated debates with the composer. Prokofiev initially did not want to put any changes to the ballet that he had created 4 years ago. Finally, another version of the ballet with several new dances and dramatic episodes was created. It was this version that became a summit of the Soviet ballet.
The main roles were taken by Galina Ulanova and Konstantin Sergeev. The role of Juliet became a hallmark for Ulianova, she was quoted saying "I could not start preparing the role of the Juliet with none of my students for quite a while. Parting with it for me meant the same as parting with a living person". Despite that in the beginning the ballerina could not get used to Prokofiev’s music and after the premiere she even joked "For never was a story of more woe than the music of Prokofiev in the ballet".
Prokofiev’s success in ballet was firmed with Cinderella, an amazing fairy tale made in 1941-44, in the midst of the war. Its way to the stage was not easy either. Maya Plisetskaya remembered that "Before the premiere of Cinderella the theatre was literally on fire. The music that sounded for the first time on earth was unusual. The orchestra, either from the idleness or from the wrong following to the Marxist dogma that the art belongs to the people nearly rebelled against Prokofiev. His scores used to be simplified and modified before in the walls of our theatre. The most notorious example is the Romeo modified by Boris Pogrebov, a musician from the orchestra, for the sake of clumsy and deaf dancers. "Louder, louder, we cannot hear a thing" – they were shouting from the stage… Prokofiev, who visited all the rehearsals, kept silence politely while trembling from anger. I felt pity for him. It was not easy to bear this, I guess".
Today, 125 years from the birth of Prokofiev and 63 years after his death, his ballets are not just alive, they became classics of the world ballet.
Read more: Prokofiev’s music in ballet
Prokofiev’s music in ballet
Prokofiev about himself:
I believe that a composer, just like a poet, sculptor or artist, should serve to people and nations.
Classic composer is a madman who is making works that his generation won’t understand.
The music gets simpler. I see how the new simplicity speaks not only about my own style, one can also find it in the works of other composers… It is, undoubtedly, the reaction on the extreme manifestations of modernism. I am evolving to the simplicity of forms, less difficult counterpoints and more melodic style, this is what I call “the new simplicity”
My inspiration does not benefit from the foreign air, for I am Russian and living in exile does not suit me.
I am indifferent to politics. I am a composer from start to finish. I am satisfied with any government that allows me to write music peacefully, that publishes everything that I am writing before the inks get dry and that performs any note coming out of my pen.
Dance Open 2018: «Cinderella», Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo
Dance Open 2017: «Cinderella», Perm ballet
Dance Open 2016: «Romeo and Juliet», Perm ballet
About Sergei Prokofiev
I reach for the Sun the most thanks to several geniuses that I have the honour to know. The Sun King once said “The Government is me”. You, my dear Prokofiev, could have said “The Sun is me”
His music is full of melodies, some of the parts of Le pas d'acier one can tell for the music of Mozart as if he could have lived today
Once upon a time on a sunny day I was walking down the Arbat when I saw a very unusual man. There was some challenging power about himself and he passed me by as a phenomenon. In bright yellow shoes, checkered, with red and orange tie. I could not help turning back – it was Prokofiev
To the chairman of the globe in music from the chairman of the globe in poetry. Mayakovsky to Prokofiev
This man, of course, knew all the terrible truth about his time, but he did not let it suppress him. It might be that the nature granted him with other principles and other benchmarks compared to the majority of people
The creative heritage of Prokofiev is something so harmonious that it is surprising how the 20th “spraint joints” century could have produced something like this… This sunlight was indestructible and Prokofiev carried it all the way through the troubles in life
The music was for him the all-absorbing substance, the meaning, the form of existence. Everything in the life of Prokofiev obeyed to its God. If many artists found an inspiration when confronted by the real life conflicts, Prokofiev seemed to have an autonomous “power system” and follow his internal sources rather than “ a nine-days wonder”
Prokofiev’s music can be more or less successful, or genius, but it is always pure. And then the purity is the ideal of real religion
Prokofiev, as a child, used to say all what was on his mind. He could always say something wrong. All depended on his attitude to a person. I remember my first performance of Myaskovsky’s sonata, to which the author came together with Prokofiev. Sonata had a fast final. After the performance Prokofiev came to me behind the stage and said delightfully: “You know, when you were playing low I could not hear a single note.” And then he saw my face. “But when you were playing on the upper strings, he continued, these were the diamonds!”
He had plenty of humour. Sometimes he made fun of the instruments.
When I was telling to Prokofiev the episodes (of Alexander Nevsky), the positions of characters, I could see him ticking the rhythms and it seemed to me that the music was conceived…
Prokofiev works like clock. The clock is not fast or slow. His accuracy in time derives from his accuracy in work. It is about the absolute accuracy of the musical image
Read more: Prokofiev quotes
