Le Corsaire
Корсар
chor. Jules Perrot (1858), Marius Petipa (1868, 1899)
recension: Aleksei Ratmansky and Yuri Burlaka (2007)

Bolshoi Ballet
11 March 2012 simulcast

A great deal of work was involved in launching this version of Le Corsaire. The creators of the ballet studied archive material at Moscow’s Aleksei Bakhrushin Central Theatre Museum and St. Petersburg State Theatre Library; with the assistance of the Paris Opera, the original score was retrieved from the Bibliothèque Nationale; the old costumes and sets were reproduced, while, having deciphered the original dance notation in the Harvard Theatre collection, Aleksei Ratmansky and Yuri Burlaka added dances of their own, their aim being in no way to sin against the spirit of that age when the last Petipa Corsaire loved, apparently drowned in shipwreck, but finally ended up safe and sound — the 1899 revival. [Bolshoi Theatre, edited]

The simulcast from Moscow was a tremendous experience — an impressively renewed great ballet of the 19c with Svetlana Lunkina (Medora), Ruslan Skvortsev (Conrad), and especially Artem Ovcharenko in the Grand pas des éventails (act III).
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