Swan Lake

Owned this video on tape and laserdisc. Wanted to have the convenience of the DVD. Reasonably good picture and sound, considering it was made from the same tape source as used for the previous versions and has not been remastered. Never get tired of watching Ms Makarova at the top of her game in this all-time classic ballet. Camera also registers her unrequited feelings for lead Anthony Dowell for added drama. Excellent production and now able to skip the laborious intros to each act.

A magnificent production despite my one caveat; namely, the irritating narrative that precedes each act. Most ballet lovers, I suspect, know the plot. I find this narrative obvious and intrusive, serving only as an interference, and distraction to what is the stunning confluence of music and choreography, not to mention the flawless execution and emotional depth of the soloists and corps.

I have watched many live and video performances of this ballet and this is the one version I find myself returning to time and time again. There is something so dramatically compelling about the way Makarova and Dowell interpret their roles that my attention is held in a way that perhaps more technically proficient renderings of the roles could not. Makarova and Dowell in the leads are ultimately the most satisfying interpretations I have yet witnessed. Makarova's dancing is a wonder to behold; her magisterial, liquid adagio dancing in the Act II grand pas deux was of course, a given. Makarova's dancing was possessed of a unique physicality, a way of moving that made it seem as though her arms and legs were radiating a plush and limitless stretch. One could almost see an energy field originating from the centre of her body and pulsing out through her arms and legs and emanating far beyond her head, hands and feet. There seemed to be a mysterious and boundless stretch to Makarova. Baryshnikov too, had this "mysterious stretch" in his dancing. And Makarova's hands, what magical and bewitching worlds can be conjured from a pair expressive arms and hands! Watch, at the coda of Act II when Makarova's Odette runs towards Dowell's Siegfried, and is caught in his arms and lifted high above his head. With a ripple of her arms, the well-timed arch of her back, neck and head, one could almost believe Odette would take flight right then. The moment is breathtaking and for that moment, time might as well have stopped. What has continued to surprise me is Makarova's Odile. In this act Makarova, physically, becomes a whole other creature. The same lambent grace is still there, the same palpable and mysterious stretch, but now her edges have sharpened and her dancing has taken on a hard, cold, obdurate quality. I will never forget her baleful expression when she first turns towards Prince Siegfried to present her hand for the very first time. This moment marks the beginning of the Act III "Black Swan" grand pas de deux, and what a spellbinding moment it is. The whole ballroom now shines with a hectic glitter and now begins the ultimate dance of deception. Unshakable bravura was never a hallmark of Makarova's dancing and I could quibble about her indifferent fouettes. I prefer instead to revel in the splendour of her dramatic interpretation. From start to finish, Makarova's Odile is a textbook example of how to enchant a Prince and an audience into believing completely, an evil magician's deception. Even as Makarova negotiates Odile's treacherous choreography, her conviction and her hold on her dramatic portrayal is so unwavering that by the end, the Prince is utterly destroyed. Makarova's Odile is so convincing that at the end of the pas de deux, the audience finds itself on its feet applauding not a ballerina, but for the total triumph of von Rothbart's diabolical creation. As an aside, Makarova's pique/chaine turns at the end of her solo are so fleet and so delicious that I never again want to see another dancer stumping her way through this same variation. I make special mention of Sir Fredrick Ashton's choreography in Act IV. There's a particularly lovely and effective sequence where in small groups, Odette ushers away her swan sisters and returns to a kneeling Siegfried, bends down slowly and deeply into an arabesque penche and bestows her forgiveness for Siegfried's unwitting betrayal. Almost no one does this "forgiveness and reconciliation" scene anymore. The overall production values of the Royal Ballet's "Swan Lake" are somewhat inconsistent, the stage sets and costumes look like they were taken out of cold storage and the dancing of the corps de ballet could benefit from a more pliant use of the back and arms. Natalia Makarova and Anthony Dowell's dancing are of a kind that informs an age. I search in vain for a young Makarova or a young Baryshnikov that would bring the same magic and transcendent artistry from which their legends were made.

I avoid ABT vs KIROV because it sounds too competitive. I merely want to say why the ABT production also deserves a five-star rating. A few months ago I bought a DVD of Swan Lake by The American Ballet Theatre even if I wasn't so sure whether Angel Corella would fit the role of Prince Siegfried; I was even less sure about Gillian Murphy because I never heard of her. To my surprise, Angel is terrific. He moves elegantly and his stage deportment and poses befit a prince despite his rather undersized stature. And Gillian Murphy, the moment she appears on the scene she is the incarnation of Natalia Makarova I don't mean she is the copy of her I mean they are of the same caliber. The ABT has excellent dancers; therefore, I need not spent time to elaborate on it. It is a very beautiful and interesting production. I had been suspecting that the Kirov production is the same one that I bought many years ago on layser disc format and indeed it is when I saw it yesterday afternoon a few hours after I received it from the mail, It was issued by Sony then. It is of course a very beautiful production and Yulia Makhalina is superb, Igor Zelensky is too. But to say that they are better dancers and or better actors than the ABT couple, I disagree. Let's put it this way, They have different style. They are all very good, they all belong to the best. Somehow, I still wish that Ethan Stiefel was in the lead role instead. I first discovered him in the film 'Center Stage'; besides being a fantastic dancer, he is also a good actor. I also have the ABT productions of LE CORSAIRE AND VIRTUOSITY=a mixed bill. From all these DVDs, to me Ethan is from top to bottom a princely image. The producer who wishes to produce the new ABT Sleeping Beauty should really cast him as the lead role. May be Paloma Herrera would make an ideal Aurora.

I purchased this DVD and that featuring Maya Pleitskaya to compare and contrast and boy, I sure got my money's worth and then some with those! This version of Swan Lake has absolutely beautiful staging and production values, wonderful photography, lighting and sound, beautiful costumes and fine choreography. It has some narration in it for those not familiar with the story, which was very nice. The only thing I wished it had was an audience. The recording seems like a recording of a dress rehearsal, not a performance, and it's amazing how much one misses that. It has a dead quality. I don't mean to say that the dancers and everyone else didn't appear to be giving their all, because I believe they did, but one did miss an audience to energize their performance. Yulia Makhalina is a very beautiful woman and a wonderful dancer, no question about it, and makes a very pleasing Odette/Odille. Igor Zelensky dances wonderfully and I appreciated his strength and fluidity but definitely no chemistry between he and Yulia. That killed it a little bit but still, it's a very fine performance. I would especially recommend this for a neophyte to the ballet.

This ballet is still available, and at a reasonable price through another vendor. Click here:...... Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake [DVD Video ].......Enjoy it. If you do not know Ananiashvili, by all means get to know her. If you are normal, you WILL fall in love with her, for sure. If you want to see her in a happier mood, get her and Fadeyechev in Don Quixote...... Léon Minkus: Don Quixote [DVD Video ].....(This is the later release of "DQ". An older release IS out of print and way overpriced.) I'll tell you just how common I am. I had to look up the spelling of common. Another thing is when I saw Nina's last name it looked a lot like the city I used to live in, Nashville, Tn. I thought to myself, now I should be able to remember her name, Ananiashvili sounds a lot like Nashville. Well anyway, it may surprise you to know that there are some Tennessee hillbillies who really do love classical music and do not care that much for the Grand Ole Opry style of music, not withstanding the fact that country and western music put "The Music City" on the map. I've just started my collection of classical ballet and cannot claim to be an expert but I'm learning. I now know how to pronounce fouette, and I think I know what they are. It's hard to believe just how beautiful they are when done by someone as good as Nina Ananiashvili. This DVD is filmed in front of an audience and it was plain to see there were no clips in the film to suggest that she might have had time to rest before she did them, or to do it over in case it wasn't quite right. I know that sort of thing takes place, because in "Don Quixote" Minkus - Don Quixote / Ananiashvili, Fadeyechev one can see that her fouettes were inserted later as there is no Don Quixote sitting in the chair behind her, as there should have been. The very next scene shows him seated in his chair with his sidekick Sancho. But no matter, she was just as beautiful in Don Quixote as she was in Swan Lake. When Nina is "in character", as when she is Odette, one can see that she is a very unhappy Swan-Maiden, and one can also see that she cannot lose that composure even when members of the audience are yelling and screaming their bravos. Except, that is, until she becomes Odile. Then there is a completely different Nina on the stage. A completely different personality. Saucy and mischievous and deliciously beautiful in her Black Swan outfit. Prince Siegfried isn't the only one who fell in love with her, I did too. Nina has the best balance when she is en pointe than any ballerina I have seen so far. I do not know what the pose is called (it's shown on the back cover of the keep case from Kultur). After she releases Fadeyechev's hand she holds her balance for an eternity before slowly slowly lowering her leg without a moment of imbalance until her foot is beside the other, (yes I meant to say slowly twice). I look at that over and over again, it's so remarkable. I lose my balance just trying to put my pants on unless I lean against something. Hey, I'm 77 years old. Even if this was a Japanese orchestra, it sounded very good to me, and it sounded just as good (to me) as the Kirov Theatre Orchestra, when they performed for their Swan Lake production with Yulia Makhalina and Igor Zelensky. Tchaikovsky, Petipa - Swan Lake / Kirov Ballet, Yulia Makhalina, Igor Zelensky Yulia is another gorgeous creature, by the way. You wont go wrong with owning both versions of Swan Lake, however both musical scores sounded identical (to me). You will also love to see her (Nina) kiss the little Japanese flower girl at the end when she is taking her bows. She is just wonderful. (Grand ole Opry is a registered trademark of WSM Radio) I think.

I'm a big fan of Maya Plisetskaya and was willing to buy anything that might present even portions of her fabulous dancing. I knew this was an incomplete ballet because it was only 88 minutes of a 3 hour ballet, but not only was it cut up, the music was not synchronized with the snippets of dance that were included. Different dances are popped into and out of and intercut with shots of audience members who were clearly pre-selected. There are very few of Maya's dances on screen and not one is shown in its entirety. I have to confess that I didn't watch the whole thing because it was making me tear my hair out after about 40 minutes. What a disappointment! Only buy it if you're interested in seeing Soviet society and not dance.

The 1990 film of Swan Lake starring Yulia Makhalina and Igor Zelensky and conducted by Viktor Fedotov is valuable for its superb performances, for presenting Swan Lake as it was staged during the years of the Soviet Union, and as a document of how effectively and thoroughly Stalin controlled ballet and film as propaganda for the state. Because this Swan Lake originates from what was then known as the Kirov Ballet in what was then was known as Leningrad, and because it is a film rather than a live performance, the dancing and orchestral execution score a perfect 10. With the retakes afforded by film and the downtime allowed between filming sessions, Makhalina has no trouble twirling off Odile's 32 fouettés, to cite but one obvious example. The absence of a live audience, however, results in uneasy silences when poses are held at the end of numbers -- silences that would ordinarily be filled by applause but which here leave an awkward void. This might bother some viewers more than others. What bothers me more is the production's so-called "happy" ending, made "traditional" during the Stalin era. The conclusion of the 1895 Petipa/Ivanov revival of Swan Lake -- the real traditional version -- ends with the suicides of both Odette and Siegfried. Having Siegfried and his Swan Queen instead live happily ever after is like having Romeo and Juliet miraculously come back to life. How did this new "traditional" ending for Swan Lake come about? Politics and ballet have been inextricably entwined in Russia since the Imperial Russian Ballet was established in St. Petersburg in the early 1700s. As Jennifer Homans says in "Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet" (2010), "classical ballet had always been a state-supported art whose purpose ... had been ... to promote and glorify kings and tsars." The Bolshevik Revolution's success, however, demanded that all things imperial be banished, and so the Imperial Russian Ballet required a new name. It was known as the Soviet Ballet; then, in the 1930s under Stalin, the Kirov. (In similar fashion, St. Petersburg was renamed Leningrad.) With the instincts of a shark, Stalin recognized it was more valuable that art be tamed, not banned -- as Plato wished in "The Republic" -- and used as a tool by the state to keep the masses contented. Artists were, as Stalin termed it, "engineers of the human soul." And those whose engineering went off course put targets on their backs. The terror Stalin brought down on composers such as Shostakovich for daring to compose music that thumbed its nose at the Party line and encouraged individual thought is widely documented in volumes devoted to that subject alone. Less well known in the Western world, perhaps, is Stalin's use of film and stage as propaganda. The Great Leader's manipulation of entertainment consumed by the public, and his puppet-mastery of those who produced it, make other propaganda machines of the time look like crude child's play. During the long nights of the Stalin era, a multitude of movies extolled the triumph of the good workers' state over the evil forces of individuality and "formalism." Any and all plot conflict was resolved with an enforced happy ending in which fairy tales became real. Because the public art form of ballet was the genre in which Russia dominated -- "the de facto official art of the Soviet state," as Homans says -- it came under special scrutiny and manipulation by Stalin and his henchmen. Therefore, a revised "happy" ending for Swan Lake became the new normal, presented in an idealistic glow in which reality turns into a fairy tale. This revisionist libretto of Swan Lake also required that the evil bird of prey Rothbart be defeated, thus unfortunately creating the inappropriately laughable "feather flop," as shown in the Kirov film. With one wing ripped off in his fight with Siegfried, Rothbart expires writhing on the stage like a fish on land gulping for air. In addition, we are plagued in this version of Swan Lake with the annoying jester slipped in by Alexander Gorsky in a 1901 Bolshoi production, supposedly to enliven some of the routine action. More's the pity. The Soviets' use of ballet for propaganda didn't cease with Stalin's death in 1953. When Khrushchev came to the United States in 1959, it was ballet with which he mocked the U.S. as inferior because it had nothing to match the excellence of state-supported ballet in the Soviet Union. Ballet, Khrushchev declared, "is our pride." This Kirov film of Swan Lake shows why.

オデット/オディール＝ナタリア・マカロワ ジークフリード＝アンソニー・ダウエル 主役二人もコールドもç' æ™'らã-い舞台でã-た。特にコールドは、動きが多彩で面白かったです。 マカロワのオデットはè...•ã‚‚背中もæŸ"らかく、ゆったりとã-た動きがとても美ã-かったです。 逆にオディールはきびきびã-た踊りで、別人のようでã-た。 個人的にはオデットのæ-¹ãŒã„いなと思いまã-た。 ダウエルはï¼"幕のãƒ'・ド・ドゥの回転がç' æ™'らã-かったです。 ã"れまで観た中で、一番オデットとジークフリードが愛ã-合ってたã‚"じゃないかと思います。 カーテンコールでマカロワがバラの花ã‚'一輪ダウエルに渡ã-て、ダウエルが マカロワの手にキスã-てるのがステキでã-た。 あと観客が投ã'た花束ã‚'指揮è€...がナイスキã!ƒ£ãƒƒãƒï¼å®¢å¸­ã‹ã‚‰ç¬'いが起ã"ってまã-た。 カーテンコールまで、見所いっぱいで私は満足でã-た。

I may not be an expert on Ballet, but I have quite a large collection of DVD's curtesy of Amazon, This Ballet is enchanting, The dancing is very well done and the stars make you feel their sincerety,All the swans gave good performances. The whole cast contributed to a well turned out show.You don't always want a technically danced perfect demonstration. Look at the faces of the dancers, I felt it was a good interpretation of a wonderful story.

E' la migliore edizione,di quante ne ho viste,del lago dei cigni. I ballerini sono magnifici attori,specialmente la HART.La struttura cromatica é caratterizzata da una splendida dominante celeste che rende lo spettacolo avvincente,da sogno. Consiglio questa edizione a tutti coloro che riescono ad astrarsi dalla realtà fino a sognare ad occhi aperti.

This performance shows the highest standard of Principal Dancers, Character Artists and Corps de Ballet. The sets and filming were so perfect for this way of viewing, both for full stage and close-up scenes. I particularly loved how the dance, lighting and facial expressions were so befitting the scenes, be it swans who remain serene but for the wicked smiling one summoned by the magician or dancers at Royal events in the castle ballroom scenes. All round superb version that will please all, be they dancers themselves or those who simply love ballet at its finest !

Precisamente este producto lo poseo en grabación en formato BETA de una emisión de TVE de 1984, y al hallar el DVD he mejorado mi videoteca. Muchas gracias