LE LAC DES CYGNES.
Pantomime Ballet by M. Tchaikovsky.
Music by P. Tchaikovsky.
Dances and Scenes by M. Petipa.
Scenery and Costumes by C. Korovin and A. Golovin.
THE outstanding feature of “Le Lac des Cygnes” is undoubtedly the music of Tchaikovsky, which is worthy of something better. For this is a ballet which falls within the same category as “Le Pavillon d’Armide,” a survival of the formality of an earlier day. It has a story, and a good one; it is not, indeed, without dramatic passages; but mainly the ballet is a mere background for a number of isolated dances having little bearing on the real action. The “fairy tale” which forms its subject has been treated much as the classic tragedies, one imagines, were treated by Noverre towards the end of the eighteenth century. The dances are imposed upon it, rather than made the means of unfolding it. As a result “Le Lac des Cygnes,” regarded in its entirety, falls short of the level achieved in such a ballet as “L’Oiseau de Feu,” though in the matter of subject it has many points of familiarity with the latter. It lacks proportion: the drama is nugatory, and the spectator retains in memory rather a succession of dances, graceful, lively, and astonishing, than an impression of a coherent and progressive whole.
This is the more to be regretted since the music, when occasion serves, is splendidly dramatic. The occasions are only few, however, the real purpose of the story being to provide, as in “Le Pavillon d’Armide,” a court scene which can be made the appropriate setting of a series of dances. Certainly the poses of Karsavina and the ladies of the corps de ballet in their guise as swans of the enchanted lake, in the opening scene, and the astounding performance of Nijinsky in the court episode, go far to compensate the loss of unity, but such dramatic moments as do occur make the mostly protracted action seem very nearly tedious. Incidentally the ballet presents Nijinsky in the kind of rôle more definitely associated with Adolf Bolm, and it is interesting to note the emphasis which it lays upon the essential difference between the two artists. Bolm is an actor who can dance when occasion demands; Nijinsky, a dancer who seems almost ill at ease when constrained to limit his movements to the actor’s pedestrian paces. One would prefer to see the part of the Prince taken by Bolm, and an excuse found (as in “Le Pavillon d’Armide”) for Nijinsky’s appearance, in his true function as dancer, in the court scene.
The lake to which the title of the ballet refers is an enchanted mere, beside which a number of swans dance nightly by the light of the moon, in the semblance of young girls. The birds are the victims of the evil sorcery of a wicked genie of the place, from whose clutches they are powerless to escape. The opening scene discloses the wooded margin of the lake, the shining surface of which stretches before the eye to a dim further shore. The swans are seen upon the water, and while the orchestral prelude is in progress, they pass slowly across the gap in the trees, through which the shimmering lake is visible. At their head, more stately than her fellows, and distinguished by the tiny crown upon her head, swims the Queen Swan.