The play "The Legend of Love" is a magnificent ballet production by Yuri Grigorovich, a living classic of Russian choreography. According to critics, Grigorovich is one of the most outstanding choreographers in the world, and this production of his allows the viewer to fully recognize and enjoy his talent. Other famous ballets by Grigorovich include The Stone Flower, The Nutcracker, Spartacus, Ivan the Terrible and, of course, Romeo and Juliet.

Production history

The ballet The Legend of Love was first staged at the Mariinsky Theater (then the Kirov Leningrad Opera and Ballet Theatre) in 1961. The music for the ballet was written by the young Azerbaijani composer Arif Melikov. In Moscow, The Legend of Love was staged for the first time by the Bolshoi Theater four years later. From the moment of the premiere and until 1998, The Legend of Love was shown exactly 130 times at the Bolshoi Theater - after which the ballet was interrupted for 4 years and resumed again. Now it is again an integral part of the theater's repertoire, and again and again its shows are sold out.

About the ballet "The Legend of Love"

The libretto of "Legend" was created by the Turkish playwright Nazim Hikmet on the basis of his own play "Ferhad and Shirin" - a free retelling of the old Azerbaijani poem "Khosrov and Shirin", created in the 11th century. The fairy-tale story tells about Shirin, the younger sister of Queen Mehmen, and her lover, the artist Ferkhad. In order to save her sister, the queen is forced to lose her own beauty, which makes her hopes for Ferhad's love melt away. The envious queen tries to interfere with the happiness of the young, but Ferhad courageously undertakes to win the right to Shirin by a feat and find the water necessary for the people of the kingdom.

The choreographic language of Grigorovich and the music of Melikov, being innovative in their time, today look like a real living classic, a living cast of an era when new ideas and established traditions were successfully fused in ballet as never before. Complex movements, the alternation of swiftness and restraint - it is impossible to break away from the ballet until the very end.

Buy tickets for "Legend of Love"

Our agency offers tickets for the "Legend of Love" 2019 at affordable prices, without queues and overpayments. We have been working in the ticket market since 2006 and therefore we can offer our clients really favorable conditions and first-class service: door-to-door delivery of tickets in Moscow and St. Petersburg, detailed advice from managers on choosing seats, the ability to pay in various convenient ways.

"The Legend of Love" is one of those ballets that, thanks to its monumentality and perfection, is ideal for "entry" into the world of this art form. And at the same time, this is an imperishable classic that even sophisticated theatergoers are ready to revise again and again.

Anna Gordeeva. . "The Legend of Love" can be seen again in the Bolshoi ( News time, 04/26/2002). Tatyana Kuznetsova. . Both were shown at the Bolshoi Theater ( Kommersant, 04/26/2002). Maya Krylova. . The Return of the Oriental Ballet by Yuri Grigorovich ( NG, 26.04.2002). Leila Guchmazova. With an objective approach, one cannot understand why there is so much noise around the "Legend of Love" of the Bolshoi Theater ( MN time, 04/26/2002). Elena Ryumina. . The return of Yuri Grigorovich's play to the Bolshoi Theater ( Vedomosti, 26.04.2002). Elena Gubaidulina. ( Izvestia, 26.04.2002). Svetlana Naborshchikova. . "Legend of Love" returned to the Bolshoi Theater ( Novye Izvestiya, 04/26/2002). Olga Gerdt. . The "Legend of Love" was returned to the repertoire ( Newspaper, 26.04.2002). Natalia Zvenigorodskaya. . Yuri Grigorovich's performance awakened nostalgia for the golden age of our ballet ( Labor-7, 04/30/2002). Violetta Mainiece. . Grigorovich once again entered the same river ( Culture, 16-22.05.2002).

Legend of love. The Bolshoi Theatre. Press about the play

Newstime, April 26, 2002

Anna Gordeeva

well forgotten old

"The Legend of Love" can be seen again in the Bolshoi

“On Sunday, at the benefit performance of our ballet prima donna, Ms. Vazem, the ancient ballet was given for the first time since the resumption of Virgin of the Danube". That is, not on Sunday, but on Wednesday, the prima donna has nothing to do with it, and not at all the “Virgin of the Danube”, but the “Legend of Love”. But the current premiere of the Bolshoi Theater can easily provoke a ballet critic into the turn of the century before last. The then newspaper workaholics wrote not only premieres or visits of famous guest performers - every everyday performance in the morning there was a response in the press. And to review the "Legend" is only possible, talking about the actor's work already seen. Because it's not a premiere.

For the first time, Yuri Grigorovich staged a ballet to the music of Arif Melikov in 1961 at the Mariinsky (then Kirov) Theater. Four years later he moved the performance to the Bolshoi. Then, in the sixties, it was an event, a shock, a sexual revolution in ballet. Queen Mekhmene-Ban, who gave her beauty to the wandering sorcerer in exchange for the recovery of her sister, who forever covered her face with a scarf and hopelessly fell in love with the court artist, had erotic dreams, and she painfully arched into the “bridge”. The sister - Princess Shirin - who also drew attention to Ferkhad, without thinking twice, ran to him in the garden, and the duet, in which the dancer was raised upside down, and her legs opened up in the twine, made many guardians of morality hiss (the same pose "dreamed" and Mekhmene-Banu - as if the choreographer repeated the movement for those who did not believe their eyes). The social pathos placed in the third act of the performance (where Ferhad gives up both sisters for the sake of laying a water pipe in his native village) then ran through his eyes like quotations from leaders in decent scientific books.

The Legend of Love ran at the Bolshoi Theater for thirty-four years. The compositions changed (at the premiere, Plisetskaya was the queen, her sister was Natalya Bessmertnova, Ferhad was Maris Liepa). The country has changed. The concept of propriety. Ideas about ballet. Three and a half years ago, "Legend" was removed from the repertoire. Now they have returned - with the same scenery and costumes for Virsaladze, with the same performers that worked in the last season before the temporary resignation.

The role of Mekhmene Banu was played by Nadezhda Gracheva. The most reliable, stable and self-confident ballerina of the Bolshoi has one significant drawback: the heroines of noble blood in her performance are often so “forgotten” that it seems you meet them in a communal kitchen. And now - what a queen is there, a mixture of pride and longing! A simple Russian woman with an unsettled fate. The rigid graphics of haughty poses have lost their sharpness, all the lines have “floated” and become simpler. And only the crown number - fuete - was performed flawlessly. Anna Antonicheva, a ballerina restrained, closed, sometimes almost impassive, got the role of Princess Shirin. The high-born persons of Antonicheva usually succeed - but here Grigorovich staged not just a party for the princess, but a party for the princess-girl, the embodiment of spring, whose very naivete and clear beauty justifies the absolute ruthlessness of Mekhmene-Banu's fate. The whole role is radiance, fluttering, twitching of fingers. With Antonicheva, this comes out somewhat ponderous, each gesture is too emphasized and accentuated.

The eye rests only on Ferhad - Nikolai Tsiskaridze. The name of the ballet - "The Legend of Love" - ​​the artist understands in a peculiar way: his hero is not in love with either Mekhmene-Bana or Shirin. Tsiskaridze selflessly raises the ladies to the upper supports, unfolds them and quite carefully puts them in place - but there is not a drop of passion in these gymnastic exercises. When Ferkhad solos, all questions disappear: the artist is not in love with a specific woman, but with a dream he personally invented. Well, let it be across the whole plot - Ferhad's monologues are made at that technical level, when the plot becomes, in principle, not important. A circle of jumps around the stage in the chase episode - and an enthusiastic scream from the audience (and meanwhile, the lover, judging by the difference in pace, clearly left the girl he was running with somewhere halfway).

The absence of an ensemble, an internal connection between the artists, of course, undermines the performance. But whether the other team can play better is unknown. Still, for the tone of "Legend of Love" in the days of the first premiere, it was very important that feeling of discovery, sensation and overcoming the ban that all artists experienced forty years ago. And now only the lazy do not raise ballerinas upside down.

Kommersant, April 26, 2002

"Legend of Love" as the truth about ballet

In the Bolshoi they showed both

Yuri Grigorovich's ballet "The Legend of Love" returned to the stage of the Bolshoi Theater after a three-season absence with a triumph. According to Kommersant observer TATYANA KUZNETSOVA, this event is not so much cultural as ideological.

The ballet "The Legend of Love" has been on the stage of the Bolshoi since 1965 for exactly thirty years and three years. During this fantastic time, it faded, faded and somehow went out of fashion. Flashes of attention to him occurred about once every ten years - when a new generation of artists was introduced into the performance. But since none of the followers could compare with the titans who danced the "Legend" in the 60s, interest fell in the most natural way. Just as naturally (and not at all because of the persecution of the then artistic director Vasiliev against the repertoire of the disgraced Grigorovich), the performance itself fell out of the poster: either they prepared for the anniversary of the poet Pushkin, then for business trips abroad, then they staged Boris Eifman, George Balanchine and Pierre Lacotte (Pierre Lacotte ). And when the government changed and Yuri Grigorovich returned to the theater to resume his "Swan Lake", they decided at the same time to ask him to personally clean the "Legend" as well. The master and his assistants spent two months cleaning up the already dancing cast (for comparison: the unknown Balanchine was staged at the Bolshoi in three weeks). And now a completely ordinary repertoire event is presented as a great victory for the national ballet. Freshly rehearsed "Legend" really looked instructive.

First, it became clear why this "modern ballet" immediately after the premiere (in 1961 at the Kirov Theater) achieved recognition from the authorities, critics, and the public. The play by the Turk Nazim Hikmet, written in capitalist dungeons, set to music by the Azerbaijani Arif Melikov, was staged by Russian Yuri Grigorovich as a poem about the struggle between feeling and duty. Of course, duty won: the young man Ferhad rejected the love of Princess Shirin, so that, having crushed the mountain, he would get his native people drunk (after such an ideologically correct ballet, one could easily hand over the main theater of the country to the 38-year-old choreographer). The aesthetes of that time were captivated by the oriental "conventional" plasticity, hard directing, asceticism of set design and costumes (artist - Simon Virsaladze), seeing in all this an ideological rebuff to the hateful choreodrama. The mass audience also did not have to be re-educated: the ballet turned out to be narrative and generally accessible. The heroes opened their hearts to their loved ones, milking their left breasts and splashing out the invisible contents at the feet of their chosen one; with a ladle of outstretched fingers they scooped up "love" from under their feet and brought it to their mouths. In general, only a fool will not understand who is good here, who is bad and what is happening.

Secondly, it became obvious that the other five original ballets of the Soviet classic are tracing-paper "Legends of Love". The rigid scheme of the play (four protagonists, each with his own corps de ballet and his own monologue; a contrasting lyrical scene is attached to each massive shock scene) worked flawlessly and was capable of replication. A poor vocabulary also turned out to be sufficient: for a quarter of a century, Yuri Grigorovich transferred from performance to performance all these renverses, upper supports, big batmans, kneeling down - up to the characteristic gestures, the same as those of the Vizier, that of Crassus, that of Ivan the Terrible.

Thirdly, it became clear why Moscow artists have been dancing dirty for decades. The coarse grinding of Grigorovich's choreography, on which generations have grown up, does not require either distinct positions, or eversion, or sophistication - only strength and endurance. As well as a special pretentious frenzy (earlier it was called obsession), for which the distinctness of the dance is even harmful. The dancers have this very obsession - and you can not pay attention to clubfoot, broken pirouette, screwed up chen; but if it is not there, any performance by Yuri Grigorovich immediately turns into a primitive poster. Well, sort of like Vysotsky's songs, which can only be listened to in his own hysterical performance.

Today's artists (from corps de ballet to premieres) worked as diligently as they had never worked on any Balanchine, Eifman, and even more so on Lacotte. Skinned by tutors, brought up from infancy on the fact that the world has not yet created a better choreography, they performed the familiar Grigorovichevsky steps, like a high ritual. But it’s bad with the Vysotskys now - time has passed. Balletomanes can argue who is better - graceful Nikolai Tsiskaridze or athletic Dmitry Belogolovtsev, long-legged Anna Antonicheva or compact Marianna Ryzhkina, confident Nadezhda Gracheva or stunned Maria Allash. Everyone jumped, twirled, worried and, as best they could, tried to match the legendary predecessors. Only Gennady Yanin, who was not burdened with reverence, could revive his role: despite the frankly stunt nature of the party, his hunchbacked lame buffoon was dumbfounded, like an unexpected native of the underworld.

And still, "The Legend of Love" was doomed to success. The audience brought up on Grigorovich reacted to the performance like Pavlov's dog to the usual stimuli: circus upper support (in splits, "on a high chair") - applause, fouette - thunderous applause, jete en tournant at a fast pace two circles - ovation. As in a happy childhood, when the Soviet ballet was a support in a difficult hour, when, as the booklet says, "they knew how to win and be on horseback." And in order to feel like a horse again, you just need to return Grigorovich to the theater. He was put on a pedestal a year ago - after the resumption of "Swan Lake". Then it did not work out, the production turned out to be very unintelligible and boring. "Legend" is more suitable for raising the national spirit. And now the choreographer is again brought to the forefront with the star of the Hero of Socialist Labor on his lapel. The hall roars, flowers fly, the master imperiously drives the corps de ballet herd to the ramp. "Groundhog Day" some, by golly.

Nezavisimaya Gazeta, April 26, 2002

Maya Krylova

Harsh but fair

The return of Yuri Grigorovich's oriental ballet

The young choreographer Yuri Grigorovich staged The Legend of Love at the Bolshoi Theater four years after the premiere in Leningrad. When, many years later, the venerable Grigorovich was "left" from the Bolshoi Theater, the 1965 ballet was removed from the poster. Now restored again.

The components of the "Legend" are a libretto based on a play by the Turkish communist poet Nazim Hikmet, music by Arif Melikov, scenery (a dark fold in the form of a huge book) by Simon Virsaladze. Islam connoisseurs find hidden Sufi motifs that got into the ballet from the literary source - the poems of Navoi and Nizami. The events of the parable involve two queen sisters, one handsome architect, the idea of ​​justice and a rock that must be heroically broken through so that there is water in a medieval country.

This ascetic ballet-poster in the spirit and letter of the sixties is considered by many to be Grigorovich's best production. At the time of its creation, the performance shocked us with a dialectic of the "objective" fate of the people and the subjectivism of private lives, unprecedented in Stalin's ballet. No less striking was the almost dissident idea that a person's life depends on his own choice, and not on the laws of the historical process. But Grigorovich also pleased those who demanded "educational" art from artists: the universe is glorified in him, and the moral conflict between "I want" and "must" is resolved in favor of duty.

Apologists did not notice the small set of ballet vocabulary and were delighted that the choreographer had abolished the synonymy of the concepts of "ballet dramaturgy" and "plot", abundant everyday life and dances "on occasion", replacing them with streams of "generalizing" dances with choreographic leitmotifs. Only the lazy did not mention the Persian miniatures that inspired Grigorovich. Ballet experts discussed dancing gold, dancing dreams of water, and dancing royal wrath, all performed by a female corps de ballet. The audience gasped at the lyrical interludes-culminations, when the masses (wise men, mourners, jesters, warriors, desert dwellers, etc.), emotionally shaping the situation or mood, freeze in the dark, but the main characters, served by a "close-up" in the streams of the local of light, continue to act, projecting inner feelings outward in a dance. Grigorovich used here a fashionable European artistic technique: he built two streams of time, objective time and subjective time, the pace of which is regulated by the nuances of "I"-experiences. Of course, now all these innovations of thaw romanticism are long traditions. But the skillfully choreographed mass scenes-growths are still impressive: the procession of the first act and the famous chase of the second - the purest chronotope according to Bakhtin, time and space, revealing each other in a single plastic whole.

The task of the performers is to strictly follow the graphics of the plastic ornament, simple in dance, but intense in physical culture, and to observe Grigorovich's former ban on fussing with the physiognomy (almost no one observes). Gennady Yanin (Jester) and Mark Peretokin (Vizier) dance closest to the ideal. Nikolai Tsiskaridze (architect Ferkhad) in a conversation with me described the metamorphoses of his hero, from an artist who ended up as a masons, with the phrase: "It's like forcing a pianist to sculpt bricks." Nadezhda Gracheva (Queen Mekhmene-Banu) and Anna Antonicheva (her sister Shirin) portray what is supposed to be: a tigress and a gazelle. The soloists do not have the required plastic calligraphy, which is both elastic and flowing like Arabic letter script.

Today has made adjustments to the perception of the once innovative ballet. What was previously considered laconic and capacious in dance and scenography is now naive. However, picturesquely thrown up in the wrists of the hands, repeated power support and the ballet East without oriental flamboyance received the warm approval of the public. Our viewers have been brought up for decades on the harsh simplicity of Grigorovich. "Legend" for them is not some meandering opus of Forsyth or Neumeier, brimming with intellect.

	New stars in old scenes Photo by Sergey Isakov

MN time, April 26, 2002

Leyla Guchmazova

Myth and "Legend..."

With an objective approach, one cannot understand why there is so much noise around the "Legend of Love" of the Bolshoi Theater.

We will have to remember that the pioneer childhood was spent not on Balanchine and Forsythe, but on the living classics of the Soviet ballet Yuri Grigorovich and the works of critics with detailed hosannas to him. And also to forget what inheritance we refuse

The new "Legend ..." is not a premiere, it was danced in both major theaters, only in the Bolshoi it briefly fell out of the billboard. Therefore, the work on its resuscitation is not at all the one that the troupe faces when they remember Balanchine's "Symphony in C Major". The soloists love him for the chance to show off his acting talent (especially the groans of the unloved queen Mekhmene Banu) and were happy to dance the performance "on the side", and the corps de ballet in his benefit performance destroyed the chase scene, wanting to appear in the best light. In general, "Legend ...", like other works of thirty years of the only father of the Bolshoi Ballet, always remains an armored train on a siding.

Nevertheless, the stars of the Bolshoi - Nadezhda Gracheva, Anna Antonicheva and Nikolai Tsiskaridze "created for this role" - were not satisfied with the revelations and the quality of the performance was not overshadowed by the game. Disappointed even those who saw the great trinity of the first performers Plisetskaya - Bessmertnova - Liepa only in the recording. Unless the corps de ballet has revived: ballet masses love a strong hand, all the more familiar.

On the "Legend ..." young Grigorovich entered the Bolshoi Theater in 1965, as if on a white horse. Today it is easy to guess both the age of the performance and its time, which played a trick on it precisely because it was the purest avant-garde. Who would give odds to all the current masters of iron piles is the artist Simon Virsaladze: black box, exquisite light, revealed by the Koran as a universe of scenery. And the dance symphonism of Grigorovich, which was so zealously postulated and sung about, broke exactly into two parts. The first one is terribly annoying. Dancing streams of water and a dispossessed people are adequate to the norms of the Soviet ballet "to creatively comprehend the achievements of the classics", Mekhmene Banu's vision literally quotes the masterpiece appearance of shadows in Petipa's La Bayadère. The other half is what Grigorovich was recognized as talented and loved for, and now they honor merits and forgive. In the chase scene, he made us ignore the birth mutilation of the Soviet ballet: when the dance was obliged to "tell a story", and he, like a pure abstraction, protested, Grigorovich told the story precisely through the dance of masterfully built ballet masses. However, the plot of "Legends ..." fit perfectly into the official ideology, having danced the primacy of the personal over the public and duty over vocation. The romance of the Soviet sixties rested in duets and monologues, and the power of Grigorovich's ballet tyrants puzzled even then the most perspicacious.

The wit from the ballet forum decided that "Legend ..." is the answer of the Bolshoi Theater to skinheads. For readers of the "Culture" section, the relevance is different: Gitisov's friend, an "advanced" adherent of the choreographer Grigorovich, seems to me like Dima Olshansky. By and large, the question is not whether there was a boy, but what is meant by a boy. Of course, not "The Legend of Love", a masterpiece of Russian ballet of the 60s. And not the person of Yuri Grigorovich - there is no odiousness, since nine out of ten great ones living today have outlived their creative potential. The main question, and within the framework of the new personnel shake-up at the Bolshoi, is terribly relevant: does the renewed performance mean that it will be followed by a reconquista of the Soviet ballet, or is it a strategic ploy to keep the sheep-soloists safe and the wolves of Grigorovich’s “golden age” fed?

It seems that even the Bolshoi Theater does not know the answer.

Vedomosti, April 26, 2002

Elena Ryumina

big legend

The return of Yuri Grigorovich's play to the Bolshoi Theater

The anniversary of the creator of the ballet Yuri Grigorovich, which took place in January and was not celebrated at the Bolshoi Theater, could be an ideal occasion to turn the resumption of the performance into a political action - it was in such an atmosphere that Swan Lake was staged a year ago. But the return to the stage of the most perfect creation of the choreographer turned out to be an artistic event in the first place.

The living characters of the encyclopedia "Ballet", who filled the hall, turned into the entourage of the premiere. John Neumeier, a cult modern choreographer who heads the Hamburg Ballet, appeared in the royal box, which, in the context of the premiere, was interpreted as the most consistent and most successful Western student of Grigorovich. Neumeier's love for complex literary plots, his own system of views on the surrounding reality, provoking critics to call him a choreographer-philosopher, the director's ability to construct a composition and form an individual language for each character are evidence that he studied Grigorovich's performances long before his current visit to Moscow.

For Western choreographers, "The Legend of Love" became a textbook immediately after the premiere, which took place in 1961 at the Leningrad Opera and Ballet Theater named after Kirov. Then the appearance of the performance, created by 34-year-old choreographer Yuri Grigorovich based on Persian legends, not only recorded the birth of a talented master of composing dances: "The Legend of Love" finally discredited the idea of ​​​​Soviet choreographers to turn the ballet into a reproduction of "An actor's work on himself" with music and dance.

From time to time the performance is danced abroad even now - as a sophisticated exercise in the old style. In Russia, "The Legend of Love" for a quarter of a century remained not only the most modern, but also the most relevant ballet - one of the few performances in which everyone could dance their own legends about love. The greatest dancers of the Bolshoi Theater filled it with their energy.

The restored performance in the first minutes looks almost unfamiliar, although the corrections made by the choreographer are noticeable only to those who passed the text of "Legend" in the course of classical heritage at the choreographer's department. But the harsh cloth, lamps and wings of a huge book open on the stage, made by the artist Simon Virsaladze in the laconic style of the 60s, huge mass processions and the legendary trio of the main characters, duets and monologues created by Grigorovich, remained in their places. It's just that the current premiere recorded the long-awaited onset of new times and the transition of "Legend of Love" into the category of classics. It is not danced badly, but carefully, concentratedly and detachedly - like Petipa or Balanchine, putting into the text not emotional outbursts, but all professionalism and a sense of responsibility.

This does not kill the "Legend of Love" - ​​it simply takes on a new meaning, which distinguishes a masterpiece from a good performance. Staged at the height of the Khrushchev thaw, that "Legend" was a play about the artist Ferhad, who made his choice between personal feelings and duty to the people. Now, without changing the text, but having lost the oriental bliss, it has been transformed into a ballet about the great queen Mekhmene Banu (Nadezhda Gracheva), whose soul is corroded not so much by unrequited love as by unlimited power.

Izvestia, April 26, 2002

Elena Gubaidullina

The best ballet by Yuri Grigorovich has been resumed

"The Legend of Love" was born more than forty years ago at the Kirov (now the Mariinsky) Theater. Soon the ballet appeared at the Bolshoi and did not leave its posters for several decades. He entered all the anthologies and encyclopedias on the history of choreography and almost risked only remaining in history. At the Bolshoi Theatre, The Legend of Love was forgotten for four whole years (for the fleeting art of ballet, this is a long time). Luckily, we caught on in time. Yuri Grigorovich himself worked on the revival, restoring the performance with virtually no changes. The author of the music, the Azerbaijani composer Arif Melikov, came to the premiere. Behind the conductor's stand was Pavel Sorokin.

The audience warmly welcomed the returned "Legend". Applause began already during the action - the hall responded to the appearance of soloists, and to pompous mass scenes, and to the beauty of ornamental movements. Each act ended with a standing ovation, and the final bows lasted almost a quarter of an hour under the incessant "bravo". During one of the intermissions, I managed to talk to John Neumeier, who was present at the premiere. The enthusiastic head of the Hamburg Ballet admitted that Grigorovich's performance made a stunning impression on him.

The secret of the popularity of the "Legend of Love" lies in the paradoxical combination of majestic monumentality and entertaining intrigue. In the tense dramaturgy of the ballet, staged based on the play by Nazim Hikmet, there is a love triangle, and mysticism, and exciting chases, and feats. Nadezhda Gracheva (Mekhmene Banu), Anna Antonicheva (Shirin) and Nikolai Tsiskaridze (Ferkhad) somewhat dampened the pathos that was invariable in Soviet ballet. They preferred pure dance, ornate and complex, to passions and experiences. The languid curves of the body, the broken lines of the arms, the intricate jumps seemed like letters of Arabic script, as if descended from a giant tome.

Direct speech

Natalia BESSMERTNOVA, assistant choreographer, People's Artist of the USSR, the first performer of Shirin at the Bolshoi Theatre:

I am very glad that "The Legend of Love" is back on stage. Ballet is interesting for artists, and I hope for the audience as well. This is one of the most expensive performances for me, I really loved the role of Shirin. And now, when I worked with our ballerinas, I tried to convey to them what Yuri Nikolayevich demanded from us when he staged the performance. Everything is important in "Legend" - style, choreography, emotional intensity, expressiveness, and feelings that overwhelm the characters. The viewer must be captured by what is happening on the stage, must empathize, and not just watch the dances. I am satisfied with the performers. I would like to wish them success and even greater penetration into the images.

Novye Izvestia, April 26, 2002

Svetlana Naborshchikova

Grigorovich's lesson

"Legend of Love" returned to the Bolshoi Theater

In the early 60s, the drama of the same name by the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet went around many stages of the country. But only the ballet version of the play - the most conventional and farthest from the word - has survived to this day. She saw the light at the Mariinsky Theater, then, when Yuri Grigorovich received the position of chief choreographer of the main theater, she made her debut on the stage of the Bolshoi. After the departure of the choreographer, the ballet without the master's eye began to wither and eventually disappeared. Fortunately, not for long. Returning Grigorovich, having shown "Swan Lake", restored the "Legend of Love". The event is remarkable, because "Legend" is not only the master's best ballet, but, without exaggeration, one of the most significant performances of the past century. In the 41 years that have passed since the premiere, few works have appeared in the ballet world that can compete on equal terms with the magnificent creation of Grigorovich and his co-authors: librettist Hikmet, artist Simon Virsaladze, composer Arif Melikov.

The result of their commonwealth is stunning by the capacity of the content and the conciseness of the form. This is truly a composition of “one breath”, where, thanks to the harmony of artistic wills that complement and emphasize each other, the synthesis of drama, music, painting and dance takes on a complete and complete expression. It is no coincidence that the performance opens with a short overture of only five chords (the Bolshoi orchestra, conducted by Pavel Sorokin, for some reason hesitated to play the powerful fortissimo envisaged by Melikov): each, according to the composer, is dedicated to one of the directors (the fifth is Niyazi, conductor of the Leningrad premiere), who worked so amicably and with such dedication that the difference in age and titles was imperceptible.

The script, as befits an oriental legend, is simple and elegant. Queen Mekhmene Banu sacrifices her beauty to save her sister Shirin and loses her possible lover, the artist Ferkhad, who preferred Shirin. The lovers try to flee, but in vain. As a result, the sisters are doomed to loneliness, and Ferhad goes to the mountains to get water for the thirsty people. The story of the unquenched passion of the cruel ruler unfolds against the backdrop of the only scenery - an ancient manuscript, from the pages of which the heroes descend. The place of action is indicated by sparing details: painted cypresses and a stylized dome of a minaret - a palace garden, a motley ligature of a carpet - the queen's chambers. The flickering rays of hanging vase-lamps do not break the mysterious twilight (after it, the bright illumination of ceremonial processions seems even more dazzling). The contrasts of the stage atmosphere coincide with the emotional swings of the music: militant marches are replaced by scherzo interludes and dreary meditations. The composition of the gifted student of the Azerbaijani classic Kara Karaev honorably solves the main task of the ballet score: it does not pretend to leadership, does not overwhelm with its own concept, but dissolves in action, avoiding "undercurrents" and subtexts. The latter are enough in the direction of "Legends", according to which students-choreographers have long been learning the ability to create a tense pulse of alternation of episodes-frames, to properly use close-ups, internal monologues, influxes and other screenwriting techniques. The performance also teaches how to build “multi-tiered” culminations marked by musical and choreographic cohesion. The apex of the first act is especially good: the multidirectional royal procession. In the orchestral tutti of its finale, the participants - warriors, horsemen, nobles and standard-bearers - unite in an emphatically symmetrical formation, deliberately rigid after a whimsical play of rhythms and trajectories (strong and precise work of the male corps de ballet led by the charismatic Mark Peretokin - the Vizier).

Finally, "Legend" is an example of a dance performance through and through, but this is a separate topic. It is hard to imagine that once the question of the performance of the twine by a ballerina held upside down was decided at a high party level, and the prima of the Leningrad stage Natalya Dudinskaya stated that even if she had been begged to dance such a horror, she would still have refused. Today, "horror" - an exquisite combination of ornamentality ("oriental" hands with gracefully grouped fingers, finely trembling hands) and acrobatics (bridges, vertical splits, "boats", "candles") - looks very modern. And the choreographer's demand not to "trouble" with his face, not to play anything, completely trusting the expressiveness of the plastic drawing, is in full agreement with the current priority of form and lines.

Both nature in abundance released Nikolai Tsiskaridze. And although the artist demonstrates unique data with excessive generosity, you involuntarily accept his Ferhad, recklessly intoxicated with youth and passion. Moreover, the object of love - the gazelle girl Shirin (Anna Antonicheva) - deserves it. Nadezhda Gracheva (Mekhmene Banu), yielding to her partners in the beauty of her body, is not inclined to weave exquisite oriental patterns, emphasizing the self-contained static poses. The actress is smart and mature, she dances with emphatic graphic and, perhaps, more than others corresponds to the ascetic structure of the performance with its strictest economy of expressive means.

After The Legend, Grigorovich received an offer to make a new ballet for the Bolshoi. Perhaps Cinderella or The Master and Margarita. Will the next work be another lesson? Let's see.

Newspaper, April 26, 2002

Olga Gerdt

Big fed with oriental sweetness

"The Legend of Love" returned to the repertoire

In a good way, the performance should have been resumed a year ago - on the fortieth anniversary of the "Legend of Love". And not at the Bolshoi Theater, where it ran from 1965 to 1998, but at the Mariinsky Theater, where Legend was staged for the first time in 1961. Then the performance could be compared with another "oriental sweetness" of the Mariinsky stage - the ballet "The Fountain of Bakhchisaray". To understand, finally, by contrast, why contemporaries fell in love with "Legend" so much.

This performance is indeed a milestone, a turning point and a turning point. Firstly, the characters of the ballet drama stylized as the East spoke the same language for the first time. Not like before, when the main characters spoke in the language of classical dance, and the accompanying ones (representatives of various ethnic groups who danced at balls for tone and color) spoke in a characteristic language. For everyone - from the royal sisters, Mekhmene Banu and Shirin, to the last commoner - Grigorovich honestly, in the Bolshevik way, shared one vocabulary that imitates the bends and curlicues of the Arabic script. Without pretensions to historicism, he opened the "East" as a revived book illustration, quoting not the characters, but the masks of the folk drama. The characters of Nazim Hikmet's drama appeared from a theatrical screen installed by the artist Simon Virsaladze on the stage. The four main characters - Queen Mehmene Banu, Princess Shirin, Vizier and Ferhad, the court painter, were accompanied by their own retinue. The larger it is, the more tiered - the stronger the hero, the more power he has. More - the queen and the Vizier. In the first act, in the procession scene, the courtiers and warriors take the stage for so long that they seem endless, like a snake's tail. In the second, in the chase scene, like a boa constrictor around the victim, the capture rings around the fugitive lovers are narrowing. In the third, they form multi-figured cascades at the foot of the rock, which Ferhad is doomed to cut, extracting water.

Forty years later, it is clear that it was precisely this frontal, naive, poster-like opposition of the fragile duet of exiled lovers and the “power structures” pursuing them (Evil in Grigorovich always looks more attractive, spectacular and more erotic than Good) delighted the public no less than love duets, for the first time, without hesitation, they broadcast sugary oriental erotica through power acrobatics. But something else is also clear: if not just strong, but different and powerful performers for the four main characters are not in the theater, then there is no one to determine and maintain the power field of the performance. It simply atrophies. Secondly, if you do not understand that the physical ideal of the sixties, the physical culture of that time can neither be conserved, nor purely mechanically transferred to the year 2002, it is pointless to restore the "Legend". In the sixties and seventies, in order to destroy the cult of the celestial ballerina, it was enough to throw a veil over a woman of the East, put on a sports leotard, and make her stretch out on a twine.

This is not enough for today's artists. “Beauties, Komsomol members and athletes” at the same time they do not feel. And the tragedies of duality that fed Grigorovich and a whole generation of regal, but doomed to sacrifice beauty (like Mekhmene for the sake of Shirin), ballerinas, are completely unknown. Nadezhda Gracheva (Mekhmene Banu) conscientiously broadcasts the feelings and experiences of her heroine. But not the experience of the veiled generation. A different time, a different bodily culture, a different ratio of what is permitted and what is not permitted - cancel those small revolutions that turned the gymnastic achievements of ballerinas of past years into erotic revelations. Therefore, no matter how much Anna Antonicheva (Shirin) “clicks” in the air, like scissors, with long beautiful legs, it does not become sweeter.

Probably only Nikolai Tsiskaridze managed to convey the taste of the former "Legend". His Ferkhad - assertive, impetuous, collected and structured the performance that crumbled into fragments. True, rather around himself. The audience reacted to the hero's exits with a fanatical roar. However, she was favorable not only to Tsiskaridze, but also to all participants in the renewal. Probably because ballet fans are a special caste. They do not like changes and prefer the domestic joy of comparison - endless copies with the original source to moving forward. They will prefer to grumble that "it used to be better", but they will never agree to part forever with the deceased "legend".

The ballet, of course, gave them this little pleasure: how to feel the taste of halva by repeating the magic word a hundred times. A special honor was given to the hero of the holiday - Yuri Grigorovich, who during the intermission tried to enter the hall unnoticed, but was forced to retreat from the clack rushing towards him, like his Ferkhad, who was hiding from the chase of the palace retinue. Slava caught up with the maestro at the final applause. It is done. The management of the Bolshoi Theater now has to decide: what to do so that the resumption of the best performance of Grigorovich-Virsaladze does not look like a formal nod to ballet history.

Labor-7, April 30, 2002

Natalia Zvenigorodskaya

Forever Living "Legend"

Yuri Grigorovich's performance awakened nostalgia for the golden age of our ballet

In the Bolshoi again renewal. Following the "Swan Lake" Yuri Grigorovich restored the "Legend of Love". He first staged this ballet at the Kirov Theater forty-one years ago, and the Moscow premiere took place in April 1965.

They say there is no need to compare, look and judge what is today. But the action itself, the very fact of resumption, willy-nilly, makes us look back.

Although the best forces of the current Bolshoi - Grachev, Tsiskaridze, Antonichev, are employed in the performance, those who remember Bessmertnova, Plisetskaya, Timofeeva, Liepa in this ballet will sigh, and not even furtively.

Who argues, Nadezhda Gracheva is a super-class ballerina. In addition, she entered the time when, in addition to high technique, appeared in her dance both genuine drama and true feeling. But Plisetskaya or Timofeeva in the role of Mekhmene Ban had to somehow restrain, shorten the passionate temperament, obeying the epic form of the performance, and therefore this temperament broke through even more powerfully. Gracheva works to the limit, and the impression is weaker.

Anna Antonicheva is very nice. You can see how long and stubbornly they put her hands on her, how diligently she follows the prescribed pattern. And it's impossible not to look back. Do not remember Shirin - Natalia Bessmertnova. In the bizarre ornament of her movements, in the elongated lines of her weightless body, and what's there - in her wrists alone there was everything - both feeling and style.

A young man with the eyes of a wild chamois, Nikolai Tsiskaridze, as always, is fabulously beautiful. There is nothing surprising in the fact that the weary Eastern hermits fell in love with him both at once. And when Ferkhad crosses the stage in an irresistible impulse, you should take off with him ... but only a tricky thought in my head: Nikolai jumped well today.

This thought does not arise when minor characters are on the stage: the Vizier and the Jester. Whip, graphic art by Mark Peretokin. His emotions - seething molten metal - do not crush the forged pattern of movements.

The jester of Gennady Yanin is not one of the usual ballet jumping jesters. A sinister hunchback dressed in scarlet, he winds around the stage like a living torch. Charming, frightening... and yet more charming.

The scenery of Simon Virsaladze is still fascinating. They have a strict, non-vain beauty. Colors - black, white, lemon yellow, ashy. Still - the color of fireplace heat and a little sweaty gilding. Not a single random color in the costumes.

You can treat Grigorovich as you like. It is impossible to dispute the obvious - he is from a cohort of titans. This is especially clear today, in an era of lightness and transience. No, "Legend" will not deceive anyone - she is over forty, and this is undoubtedly. Undoubtedly, however, there is something else: the performance is still well-tailored and tightly sewn. The structure is thought out, built by the director to the smallest detail, and if its solidity and monumentality are outdated, then they cause more nostalgia than irritation. It seems that if there were artists today who were able not only technically, but also sensually to withstand the roles at the level of the first performers, there would not be that treacherous boredom that, no, no, but sneaked up at the premiere.

	Photo by Igor Zakharkin

Culture, May 16 - 22, 2002

Violetta Mainiece

Legend more than love

Grigorovich once again entered the same river

"Legend" (Melikov - Grigorovich - Virsaladze) is a strange ballet. Much has been left unsaid in it, unfinished since the moment it was staged. There was no religious theme at all, without which the East is not the East. I think that Virsaladze secretly grieved about this - for an intelligent Georgian, the religious roots of the culture of Turkey, Persia, and the East as a whole are obvious. And yet, the directors "dragged" a certain mysterious figure (a Sufi dervish doctor) into the ballet, calling her the Stranger. And then they deliberately cut off the "forbidden motive": under the Soviet regime, as you know, neither gods nor prophets existed. As well as oriental erotica, although the directors "cheated" the authorities here too - "Legend" is an extremely erotic ballet, although today even the choreographer himself for some reason forgot about it. But then one could speculate freely "about valor, about exploits, about glory", the pathos of which now causes an ironic smile.

Much has changed over the past decades, and some things have turned upside down. In a word, that - the old "Legend" - was in an unenviable position. Renewal brought her deepest contradictions to light. It has not been possible to overcome them.

"Legend" is undoubtedly a Russian-Soviet classic of the second half of the 20th century. Everything was rehearsed, at first it was performed smoothly and harmoniously, although formally.

And yet, with two performing teams that had danced "Legend" before, it seemed drawn out and monotonous. And above all, the orchestra under the baton of Pavel Sorokin is to blame. Dramatic contrasts are poorly revealed in music. There are also no precise semantic accents, the phrasing is leveled. The playing of the orchestra of artists does not inspire in any way. The choreography here is puzzling, and the music lulls you to sleep like a lullaby. So the poor fellows are tormented, waiting for the endless dances to end.

For the same reason, the trio of Mekhmene Banu, Shirin and Ferkhad also “failed”, amazingly mounted by the choreographer into the crowded, grandiose in scale and dynamics of the “Procession” or “Chasing” scenes, which once clearly demonstrated the power and hierarchy of oriental despotism. In the absence of a musical and choreographic crescendo in these compositions, the contrast conceived by the directors disappears, from which goosebumps ran through the body before.

Folk scenes seemed to be scanty, sluggish, "sewn with white threads". The people "suffer" for themselves, as it should be according to the text (you won't mind!), but with an indifferent look: they lifted the jugs, overturned them - you see, there is no life-giving moisture! No one is fascinated by some feats "in the name of ...". Gone are the days of courage and patriotism - why gouge a rock when there is water in the supermarket!

Grigorovich reacted to the demands of the time in his own way, imperceptibly taking away from Ferkhad his "tool of labor" - a hammer - and without loud declarations turning him from a stonemason or sculptor into an oriental poet. Now Ferhad appears from the "book" (meaning - a revived legend). And he goes into it at the end of the performance. He seemed to be given a different level of being from the very beginning. In the real world, the choreographer left Mekhmene Banu and Shirin doomed to loneliness, who did not pass the test of love...

Such "meaning shifts" play into the hands of the graceful, very oriental Nikolai Tsiskaridze, whose very appearance and dance in this ballet are a self-sufficient aesthetic phenomenon. It looks like exquisite old Persian miniatures in love - one of them depicts a young poet who, from an abundance of feelings, fell at the feet of his beloved. A simpler and nicer "real guy" was Dmitry Belogolovtsev's Ferhad, who, for lack of others, is doomed to pull the entire heroic repertoire of the theater in splendid isolation. He is more athletic, very diligently embodies all the requirements of the choreographer. But orientalism in any manifestation is not his element; Belogolovtsev is closer to, say, the urbanism of Balanchine's Agon.

The long-legged Shirin of Anna Antonicheva is beautiful in proportions, she is more dramatic in Marianna Ryzhkina. Mekhmene Banu Maria Allash has a "pointed oriental flavor", somewhat "blurred", as if reluctantly, she is danced by Nadezhda Gracheva. But there are no oriental queens, princesses, or mistresses on the stage. Just women, to varying degrees, experiencing the hardships of fate.

Staten Vizier, soundly danced by Mark Peretokin, but for some reason the psychological background of his passionately painful duet with the Tsaritsa has evaporated. Only three - the ascetic Stranger of Alexei Loparevich, the infernal Jester-Hunchback Gennady Yanin and the already mentioned Eastern poet Nikolai Tsiskaridze - intuitively "made their way" to the culture and beliefs of the Middle East, and especially Persia. In plastic, they are calligraphers and ornamentalists, in fact - symbolic characters of exquisite "Persian miniatures", permeated with mystical insights. They seem to point to the path that the choreographer could take, if desired, by composing a modern choreographic version of an ancient legend. The old ballet model, alas, has already outlived itself, and the new one, unfortunately, has not been created.

Having redone the finale and individual scenes, Grigorovich did not go for a major reconstruction of his own ballet, which, in order to "survive" in the current "emotional desert", in my opinion, needs to be cut, in a more concentrated (two-act?) form, to change the genre - Now the eastern mystery may be more effective than the psychological drama of everyday life. But "pulling out" such a colossus as "Legend" alone is an impossible task even for the most gifted performers.

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The Legend of Love at the Bolshoi Theater

The history of the creation of the ballet The Legend of Love is not quite common. The libretto for this work was written by the famous Turkish poet, playwright and public figure Nazim Hikmet. The libretto was written by Hikmet based on his own play Ferhad and Shirin, created in the 40s, when the playwright was imprisoned for political reasons. In his work, Hikmet was based on the poem of the classic of Persian poetry Nizami Ganjavi Khosrov and Shirin.

In 1958, the young Azerbaijani composer Arif Melikov began work on the ballet. The premiere took place on March 23, 1961 at the Kirov Theatre, directed by choreographer Yuri Grigorovich, set design created by Simon Virsaladze. In 1965 Yuri Grigorovich brought the ballet to the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre. Also performances were created in Baku, Novosibirsk and Prague. In 2014, the ballet The Legend of Love returned to the stage of the Bolshoi Theater in the original choreography.

The legend of love

The director of the wonderful play "The Legend of Love" is Y. Grigorovich, the music for it was written by A. Melikov. The noisy premiere took place at the Mariinsky Theater in 1961, and four years later the audience was able to see it already at the Bolshoi Theater. The performance stayed in the repertoire for thirty-four years, tickets for it never stayed at the theater box office for a long time. It repeatedly changed performers, the attitude towards the production itself also changed. At first it was recognized as almost a sexual revolution in the art of ballet, but over time it began to be perceived much more calmly.

An updated version of the performance was presented in 2014, the Bolshoi Theater again introduced it to its repertoire. A fairy tale story tells about the beautiful queen Mekhmene Banu, who sacrificed her beauty to save her sister's life. She is forced to hide her face under a veil, and suffer from love for Ferhad, a young artist. By ordering tickets for this wonderful production, viewers will be able to find out how this story ended.

The directors managed to create a wonderful performance, the audience will definitely appreciate the wonderful music, wonderful design and excellent performance of parts by the best soloists of the troupe.

Arif Melikov
The legend of love
Ballet in three acts 12+

Duration - 2 hours 50 minutes.
The performance comes with two intermissions.

Libretto by Nazim Hikmet and Yuri Grigorovich

Choreographer - Yuri Grigorovich
Set Designer: Simon Virsaladze
Lighting designer — Mikhail Sokolov
Conductor - Pavel Sorokin

MOSCOW, October 23 - RIA Novosti. One of the most famous and beloved by the public and ballet performers - "The Legend of Love" by Arif Melikov is returning to the repertoire of the Bolshoi Theater. The premiere of the new version will take place on October 23, the press service of the theater told RIA Novosti.

The performance first appeared on the stage of the Bolshoi in 1965. Then the main role of Mekhmene Banu was played by the brilliant Maya Plisetskaya, and the role of Ferhad was played by the famous Maris Liepa. Since 2009, "Legend" has not been shown at the Bolshoi. And now, in the 239th season, the ballet returns to the historical stage of the Bolshoi Theater in the choreography of Yuri Grigorovich and the scenery of Simon Virsaladze, which are restored according to the sketches of the artist.

"The Legend of Love" is the first ballet premiere of the season, - said the director general of the Bolshoi Theater Vladimir Urin the day before. – There are several very important layers of development in the work of the theater, and one of them is the preservation of the great heritage created by outstanding artists. "Legend" is one of the most interesting ballets by Grigorovich, which determined a lot in the development of Russian choreographic art. This is a masterpiece, which today has not lost either in style or in the choreography of its modernity. This is a ballet that should be on the historical stage of the Bolshoi Theater."

The "Legend of Love" by Melikov, written based on the play by Nazim Hikmet ", was created by the outstanding Russian choreographer Yuri Grigorovich half a century ago in 1961 on the stage of the Kirov, now the Mariinsky Theater, the ballet of which was then headed. His friend, the largest theater artist Simon Virsaladze, was a co-author. Together they created a masterpiece that became a ballet classic of the 20th century.After 4 years, this performance appeared at the Bolshoi Theater.But it was a new musical and choreographic version of the ballet.

For the Moscow production, which underwent some script changes, Melikov composed new musical fragments, and Grigorovich a new choreography. In the ballet, which tells how Queen Mekhmene Banu sacrificed her beauty for the sake of her beloved people - Shirin and Ferhad, the role of Mekhmene was performed by the now world-famous Maya Plisetskaya. Her partners were: the beautiful ballerina Natalya Bessmertnova (Shirin), and the inimitable Maris Liepa (Ferhad). Now among the performers are the leading soloists of the ballet troupe of the Bolshoi Theater - Svetlana Zakharova, Maria Alexandrova, Maria Allash, Nina Kaptsova, Ekaterina Shipulina, Maria Vinogradova, Anna Nikulina, Denis Rodkin, Vladislav Lantratov, Alexander Volchkov.

“The new edition, which we will present to the audience today, is, first of all, a new cast of performers,” said Grigorovich. “Young people are dancing today, this is already the 3rd or 4th generation of artists participating in ballet throughout its half-century history. I am glad that Svetlana Zakharova will perform in the main part of Mekhmene Banu, who will bring her understanding of this role and her own quality of dance."

Judging by the deafening applause and shouts of "bravo" the audience awarded the prima ballerina at the dress rehearsal, she succeeded in the role to the fullest.

“For me, “Legend” is a new interesting role and the happiness of working with Yuri Nikolayevich,” said Zakharova. love" looks absolutely modern today and will become an adornment of the repertoire of the Bolshoi Theatre".

Composer Arif Melikov, who was present at the dress rehearsal and will be at the premiere, wished all performers to be awarded with applause, which means success and recognition of the audience, for which all the creators of this ballet worked.

"The Legend of Love" is the 60s, this is our youth with Yuri Nikolayevich, with whom we have been friends all these years, and I am happy to see our brainchild again on the historical stage of the Bolshoi Theater, "said the composer.

On October 26, the Bolshoi Theater will open its new film season with a live broadcast of the ballet "The Legend of Love". Russian cinemas in the regions of Russia will show the recording of "Legends" on November 15 and 16.

The premiere of the ballet at the Bolshoi will be held with the support of VTB Bank. The bank's press service recalled that supporting premiere productions is a traditional practice in cooperation between the Bolshoi Theater and VTB, which has been a member of the Theatre's Board of Trustees since 2002, and also takes part in the activities of the Bolshoi Theater Fund non-profit organization.

VTB supported such premieres of the Bolshoi as The Sleeping Beauty, Ivan the Terrible, The Snow Maiden, Romeo and Juliet, Symphony in C, Tarantella, Tricorne, Cinderella, Onegin, " The Lady with the Camellias" and others.