Dance Review by Clive Barnes

A RUSSIAN RARITY

 THE Bolshoi Opera, that mastodon of theatrical pachyderms, is being accused of many things during this brief New York season at the Metropolitan Opera House - its first in 17 years - but no one could call it lightweight. Or, more surprisingly, unadventurous.

After its kick - off with the world premiere of the new production of an admitted standard, «Eugene Onegin», the other two operas of the season are repertory rarities, almost repertory unknowns, Rimsky -Korsakov’s «Mlada» and Tchaikovsky’s «Maid of Orleans».

«Mlada» opening Friday night, with two more performances to come, tonight and tomorrow, is a jewel in the rough that was given with a flamboyant polish.

Rimsky himself called «Mlada» an «opera-ballet» and indeed much of the action is carried out in dance and pantomime. In this, as with its mythic Slav story, it stands somewhere between the composer’s better -known «Snow Maiden», «Sadko» and «The Golden Cockerel»...

Significantly, the central role of Mlada (or rather Mlada’s ghost, for she has been murdered by an envious prince and his daughter, Mlada’s rival for the hand of Prince Yaromir) is given to a ballerina rather than the mime that the composer specified - a ballerina who also portrays Cleopatra in the Egyptian mirage intended to confuse Yaromir...

The libretto... started out as a collaboration... of distinguished composers, but eventually Rimsky went it alone, but «Mlada» has never previously really been a success and the composer seems to have disliked it himself.

But there is gorgeous music here - which, together with the musical performance, I am leaving to my colleague to discuss - and now the Bolshoi has seized upon it as a theatrical extravaganza...

For the first two performances Mlada was played by the great ballerina Nina Ananiashvili, and her limpid and exquisite dancing both as Mlada and as Cleopatra (in the same musical episode famously used in Fokine's ballet «Cleopatre») was sensational in every sense.