Word: romeos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...home season. Because of the difficulty of shifting the Bolshoi's ponderous sets on the Met's antiquated stage, the company abandoned the idea of a repertory run. Its offering to the glittering opening-night crowd and for the next four performances: Sergei Prokofiev's gargantuan Romeo and Juliet, stretching on for 3½-hours...
Butterfly Under Glass. First done by the Bolshoi in 1946, Romeo and Juliet seems to Western eyes a curious dramatic anachronism, a bit like a brilliant butterfly under glass. As much emotion-laden pantomime as dance, it retraces virtually every twist and turn of Shakespeare's familiar plot in 13 scenes before a series of sumptuous but often ponderously literal sets. The heavily orchestrated score, boldly conducted without score by Conductor Yuri Faier (he is almost blind, can see only the dancers' silhouettes), is unabashedly romantic, gently moving in its lyric flights, occasionally distracting when the onstage movements...
...that, Romeo and Juliet is at times an exciting dance drama. The mass dueling scene between the Capulets (gorgeously decked out in Renaissance finery) and the peasant-supported Montagues (in modest, everyday clothes) is a marvel of rocketing energy and split-second timing. The carnival scenes give the Bolshoi's male dancers an opportunity to come bounding like handballs off the Met's stage in the high, open leaps that are their special glory...
...While Romeo and Juliet made shy love in the corner, a file of bare-chested men in pajama pants and motorcycling helmets marched on the stage to the martial roll of drums. Guns began to chatter, and Romeo toppled, a bullet in his heart. Orpheus appeared in slacks and V-necked shirt, turned to the audience with a bewildered...
...Orpheus (danced by Choreographer Béjart) was transformed by turns into a snarling tiger ("His loins," says the program, "are heavy with solitude"), an arm-flapping eagle, a scared rat ("His heart is full of holes, like a cheese"). In a later scene he encountered assorted characters, including Romeo and Venus, who stepped from a giant pearl shell in a flesh-colored leotard. At one point he joined Death in a game of cards, with Eurydice's midriff serving as table. The deafening last scene found Orpheus hanging by his heels from the flies...