THE FIREBIRD

«The Firebird» was the first masterpiece created for Diaghilev’s enterprise. Based on a conflation of folk tales, it typified for the dazzled Paris audiences of 1910 an essential and irresistible «Russian» quality. The artful combination of magic, terror, an enchanted garden and a Tsar crowned before his people; the innovations of music and design; the splendour of Fokine’s danced spectacle made for rare theatrical excitement. And whatever the changes in taste over the years since then, «The Firebird» has retained its appeal: it speaks of a Holy Russia that has a powerful hold over our imaginations as a land of fantastic and mysterious legend.

The Royal Ballet’s staging of «The Firebird» was made in 1954 by Diaghilev's regisseur, Serge Grigoriev, and his wife Lubov Tchernicheva. The production was scrupulous, and it was enhanced by the fact that Tamara Karsavina, the original Firebird, coached Fonteyn in her role. With Michael Somes as Ivan - judging exactly the character’s naivete and nobility - and with Svetlana Beriosova an exquisitely beautiful (and Russian) Tsarevna, we saw how our national company might restore some of the lost splendour of the Ballets Russes. (Subsequent revivals of «Les Noces», «Les Biches» were further proof of this.)

The return of «The Firebird» to the repertory last week was disappointing, a routine and unthinking revival. After four decades, the spirit of the piece seemed lost. There was no magic in Kastchey’s garden at curtain rise: both lighting and set looked dingy. Company performances, with the exception of Fiona Chadwick’s Firebird, were lifeless. Kastchey’s horde had been rehearsed in «menace by numbers», and the group of Enchanted Princesses smirked relentlessly beneath their tangled locks.

That the ballet is not beyond redemption was proved on Wednesday night when Nina Ananiashvili made her debut as the Firebird. Despite an uninvolved production, Ananiashvili found in the choreography a central image which is the key to a role. Bolshoi training gave her reading a spaciousness of theatrical and dynamic effect, so that steps, phrases were burnished, glowed, and commanded the air. The bird’s emotions - pride, fear, pleading, her power over evil - were found in the movement, and grandly presented to us.

An essential nationalism in Fokine’s choreography was clear as never before with the Royal Ballet, and a central truth about «The Firebird» as an example of Russian art was reaffirmed. And, in poses of Ananiashvili’s head, we can see a passing resemblance to photographs of Karsavina’s dark-eyed beauty in this role. This was a true ballerina interpretation, of a kind the Royal Ballet no longer chooses to show us.