The legendary ballet performance about the events of the Great french revolution considered one of the greatest successes of the Soviet musical theater. His first spectators, without making any allowance for theatrical conventions, stood up from their seats in a general impulse and sang Marseillaise along with the artists at the top of their voices. Recreated on our stage with respect for the style of the “golden age” of Soviet ballet, the vibrant and spectacular performance not only preserves the choreographic text and mise-en-scène of the original source, but also resurrects its revolutionary fervor. The large-scale historical-romantic fresco employs more than a hundred people - ballet dancers, mimance, choir - and in their very special way of existing on stage, dance and acting are fused into a single whole. A lively and energetic ballet, where the action develops rapidly and does not require additional explanation, continues to be a source of joy and faith in ideals.

Act one

Scene one
Summer 1792. Suburb of Marseille. Forest edge near the castle of the Marquis de Beauregard. Peasant Gaspard and his children emerge from the forest with a cart of brushwood: 18-year-old Zhanna and 9-year-old Jacques. Zhanna plays with Jacques. A boy jumps over bundles of brushwood he has laid out on the grass. The sound of a horn is heard - it is the marquis returning from hunting. Gaspard and the children, having collected their bundles, hurry to leave. But the Marquis de Beauregard and the huntsmen appear from the forest. De Beauregard is angry that the peasants are collecting firewood in his forest. The huntsmen overturn the cart with brushwood, and the Marquis orders the huntsmen to beat Gaspard. Jeanne tries to stand up for her father, then the Marquis takes a swing at her, but, hearing the sounds of a revolutionary song, he hastily hides in the castle.
A Marseille rebel detachment under the command of Philip appears with flags; they head to Paris to help the revolutionary people. The rebels help Gaspard and Jeanne set up the cart and collect the spilled brushwood. Jacques enthusiastically waves the revolutionary flag that one of the Marseilles gave him. At this time, the Marquis manages to escape from the castle through a secret door.
Peasants and peasant women arrive, they greet the soldiers of the Marseilles detachment. Philip encourages them to join the detachment. Gaspar and the children also join the rebels. Everyone is heading to Paris.

Scene two
Celebration in the royal palace. The ladies of the court and officers of the royal guard dance the sarabande.
The dance is over, and the master of ceremonies invites everyone to watch the performance of the court theater. Actress Diana Mireille and actor Antoine Mistral perform a sideshow, representing the heroes wounded by Cupid's arrow.
Enter King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. The officers make toasts of praise in honor of the king. The Marquis de Beauregard appears, having just arrived from Marseille. He shows and throws at the feet of the king the tricolor flag of the rebels with the inscription “Peace to the huts, war to the palaces!” and tramples him, then kisses the royal banner standing by the throne. The Marquis reads out a message he composed to the Prussians, in which Louis XVI should call on Prussia to send troops to France and end the revolution. Louis is asked to sign a document. The king hesitates, but Marie Antoinette convinces him to sign. The marquis and officers, in a fit of monarchical enthusiasm, swear to fulfill their duty to the king. Drawing their weapons, they enthusiastically salute the royal couple. The Queen expresses confidence in the devotion of those present. Louis is touched, he brings the handkerchief to his eyes.
The royal couple and most of the ladies of the court leave the hall. Lackeys bring in tables and toasts continue in honor of the monarchy. Fans of Diana Mireille invite the actors to take part in the celebration. Mireille is persuaded to dance something, she and Antoine improvise a short dance, which is enthusiastically received by the audience. The Marquis, already having difficulty standing, persistently invites Mireille to dance, she is forced to agree. She is disgusted by his rudeness, she would like to leave, but she cannot. Diana tries to stay close to Mistral, who is trying to distract de Beauregard, but the Marquis rudely pushes the actor away; several officers take Antoine to the table. The ladies quietly leave the hall. Finally, under a plausible pretext, Mireille also leaves, but the Marquis follows her.
The wine is having an increasing effect; some officers fall asleep right at their tables. Mistral notices the “Address to Prussia” forgotten on the table and at first mechanically, and then reads it with curiosity. The Marquis returns and notices the paper in Antoine's hands: unable to control himself, he grabs a pistol and shoots, mortally wounding the actor. The shot and fall of Mistral awaken several officers, they surround the Marquis and hastily take him away.
Mireille runs into the hall at the sound of a shot. Mistral's lifeless body lies in the middle of the hall, Mireille leans over him: “Is he alive?” - and then you need to call for help... But she is convinced that Antoine is dead. Suddenly she notices the paper clutched in his hand: she takes it and reads it. Outside the windows the approaching sounds of the Marseillaise can be heard. Mireille understands why Mistral was killed, and now she knows what to do. Having hidden the paper, she runs away from the palace.

Act two

Scene one
Night. A square in Paris where crowds of townspeople and armed detachments from the provinces, including Auvergnans and Basques, flock. The Parisians joyfully welcome the Marseille squad. A group of Basques stands out for their fierce readiness to fight, among them Teresa, an active participant in street protests and sans-culottes demonstrations in the capital. The appearance of Diana Mireille interrupts the dancing. She gives the crowd a scroll with the king’s address to the Prussians, and the people are convinced of the betrayal of the aristocracy.
“Carmagnola” sounds and the crowd dances. They hand out weapons. Philip calls for an assault on the Tuileries. With the revolutionary song “Ça ira” and unfurled tricolor banners, the crowd marches towards the royal palace.

Scene two
Crowds of armed people rush to storm the palace.
Tuileries Palace. The Marquis de Beauregard introduces soldiers of the Swiss Guard. At his command, the Swiss take their assigned positions. The gentlemen take the frightened ladies away. Suddenly the doors fly open and people rush into the inner chambers of the palace. Philippe encounters the Marquis de Beauregard. After a fierce fight, Philip knocks out the sword from the Marquis, who tries to shoot Philip with a pistol, but the crowd attacks him.
The Swiss, the last defenders of the king, are swept away. Basque Teresa runs in with a banner in her hands and falls, pierced by a bullet from one of the officers. The fight is over. The palace has been taken. The Basques, Philippe and Gaspard raise Teresa's body above their heads, the people bow their flags.

Act three
On the square near the former royal palace there is a celebration in honor of the capture of the Tuileries. The dances of the merry people are replaced by performances by actors from Parisian theaters. Diana Mireille, surrounded by girls in antique costumes, performs a dance with a tricolor flag, personifying the victory of the Revolution and Freedom. Dances-allegories of Equality and Brotherhood are performed. People shower the dancing Jeanne and Philip with flowers: it is also their wedding day.
“Carmagnola” sounds... As a symbol of freedom, the people carry Diana Mireille in their arms.

The drums of revolution are beating again in St. Petersburg in Mikhail Messerer’s absolutely perfect version of the ballet “The Flames of Paris,” created in 1932 by Vasily Vainonen, restored for Mikhailovsky. Recreating this ballet became the main and favorite concern of Mikhail Messerer, who today is the famous “defender” of the rich choreographic heritage of the USSR, who saved as much as possible possible quantity original choreography. But this is not a dry, academic act; what emerged is an impressive piece of work, remarkable in its energy and execution.

... "The Flames of Paris" - an active and energetic view of the Soviet man on the French revolution - was created in 1932 by Vasily Vainonen, and last year it was edited by Mikhail Messerer. The story is clearly told and lushly staged. Gorgeous sets and costumes by Vladimir Dmitriev create pictures that look like color illustrations from a history textbook. A clever blend of classicism old school and tasty character dance highlights impressive stylistic diversity. The pantomime is clear, but not at all affected, and the climactic accents are staged with convincing pathos.

Jeffrey Taylor, Sunday Express

Choreographer Mikhail Messerer, who incredibly accurately and skillfully recreated Vainonen's original production, managed to turn this unique museum piece into a true masterpiece of theatrical art.

This is a modern blockbuster, regardless of your political leanings. But, nevertheless, it is not at all simple, it is deep in terms of the actual choreography, and it is crystal clear in the moments of the show classical dance. Graceful and proud nobles in tall gray wigs perform the minuet in a lazy aristocratic manner. Then - crowds of people spin and twirl in rebellious folk dances, including an infectious dance in clogs and a dance with stamped - heart-stopping - steps. In a completely different style, like a monument to great Soviet artists, allegorical dance “Freedom” was staged<...>In palace scenes - polished classic XIX style century. The girls of the corps de ballet delicately arched their waists and lined up their arms, reminiscent of figures on Wedgwood china.

Whereas Ratmansky divided his ballet into two acts, Messerer returns to the original structure of three shorter acts, and this gives the performance a liveliness that drives the action forward energetically. Sometimes “Flames of Paris” even seems like “Don Quixote” on amphetamines. Each act has several memorable dances and each act ends with some memorable scene. Moreover, this is a rare ballet in which the action does not need explanation. "Flames of Paris" is a source of joy and an incredible victory for Mikhailovsky Theater. It can be added that this is also a double triumph for Mikhail Messerer: the remarkable quality of execution is reflected in the material itself and we must say a special “thank you” to Messerer as an unsurpassed teacher. His teaching talent is visible in the dance of all performers, but it is especially worth noting the coherence of the dance of the corps de ballet and male soloists.

Igor Stupnikov, Dancing Times

Mikhail Messerer's version of "The Flames of Paris" is a masterpiece of jewelry craftsmanship: all the surviving fragments of the ballet are welded together so closely that it is impossible to guess the existence of seams. New ballet- a rare pleasure for both the public and the dancers: all 140 people involved in the performance had their own role.

First of all, this is a triumph of the troupe as a whole, everyone and everything here is brilliant.<...>Court Baroque Revue<...>with a subtle feeling historical style contrapposto- softened elbows everywhere and a slightly tilted head - not to mention the elegant filigree of the feet.

The huge, colossal merit of Mikhail Messerer is that he pulled this ballet out of the mud of times (in last time it was danced at the Bolshoi in the sixties) as lively, cheerful and combative as it was invented by the author. Five years ago, when Alexei Ratmansky staged his play with the same name at the main theater of the country, he took only a few fragments of Vainonen’s choreography - and most importantly, changed the intonation of the performance. That ballet was about the inevitable loss (not of the revolution, but of a person - a noblewoman, newly invented by the choreographer, who sympathized with the revolutionaries, was awaiting the guillotine) and about how uncomfortable an individual is even in a festive crowd. It is not surprising that in that “Flame” the seams between dance and music were catastrophically diverged: Boris Asafiev composed his own score (albeit a very small one) for one story, Ratmansky told another.

For ballet practitioners, the value of “Flames of Paris” lies primarily in the choreography of Vasily Vainonen, the most talented of the choreographers of the era of socialist realism. And there is a pattern in the fact that the first attempt to resurrect the defunct ballet was made by the most talented choreographer of post-Soviet Russia, Alexei Ratmansky<...>However, due to the scarcity of material available to him, he was unable to reconstruct the historical performance, staging his own ballet instead, in which he installed 18 minutes of Vainonen’s choreography, preserved on film from 1953. And, I must admit, in the resulting counter-revolutionary ballet (the intellectual Ratmansky could not hide his horror at the terror of the rioting crowd), these were the best fragments. At the Mikhailovsky Theater, Mikhail Messerer took a different path, trying to reconstruct the historical original as completely as possible<...>Having taken on an openly propaganda ballet in which cowardly and vile aristocrats are plotting against the French people, calling on the Prussian army to defend the rotten monarchy, the experienced Messerer, of course, understood that many of the scenes today would look, to put it mildly, unconvincing. Therefore, he excluded the most odious scenes, such as the capture of the Marquis’s castle by rebel peasants, and at the same time condensed the pantomime episodes.<...>Actually, dances (classical and characteristic) are main merit choreographer: “Auvergne” and “Farandola” he managed to restore, and replaced the lost choreography with his own, so similar in style to the original that it is difficult to say with certainty what belongs to whom. For example, publicly available sources are silent about the safety of Winona’s allegory duet from the third act, performed by an actress Diana Mireille with an unnamed partner. Meanwhile, in the St. Petersburg performance, this excellent duet, replete with incredibly risky series of upper lifts in the spirit of the desperate 1930s, looks completely authentic.

Restoring a real antique is more expensive than a remake, but in fact it is clear that it is difficult to remember a three-act ballet in detail for half a century. Of course, some of the text was composed anew. At the same time, there are no seams between the new and the preserved (the same pas de deux, Basque dance, the textbook march of the rebel sans-culottes towards the audience). The feeling of complete authenticity is because the style is perfectly maintained.<...>Moreover, the spectacle turned out to be completely alive. And quality: the characters are worked out in detail, in detail. Both peasants in clogs and aristocrats in panniers and powdered wigs managed to make organic the pathos of this story about the Great French Revolution (the romantic elation is greatly contributed by the lush hand-drawn scenery based on sketches by Vladimir Dmitriev).

Not only the textbook pas de deux and Basque dance, but also the Marseille, Auvergne, flag dance and the court ballet scene - they have been brilliantly restored. The expanded pantomime, which in the early 1930s had not yet been killed in accordance with fashion, was reduced to a minimum by Messerer: modern viewer needs dynamism, and sacrificing even one dance from the kaleidoscope of Winona’s fantasy seems like a crime. The three-act ballet, although it retains its structure, is compressed to two and a half hours, the movement does not stop for a minute<...>The timeliness of the resumption does not raise questions - in the finale the hall is so furious that, it seems, only the rapid closing of the curtain does not allow the audience to rush to the square, where the two main heroines of the ballet rise in towering supports.

Aristocrats - what to take from them! - stupid and arrogant to the end. They look with horror at the revolutionary banner with the inscription in Russian: “Peace to the huts - war to the palaces” and beat the peaceful peasant with a whip, angering the people at the apogee of the uprising, while easily forgetting in the royal palace an important document that compromises them, the nobles. You can spend a lot of time trying to be witty about this, but Vainonen didn’t care about such absurdities. He thought in theatrical rather than historical categories and in no way intended to stylize anything. One should look for the logic of history and its accuracy here no more than to study Ancient Egypt based on the ballet "Pharaoh's Daughter".

The romance of the revolutionary struggle with its calls for freedom, equality and brotherhood turned out to be close to today's viewers. The public is probably tired of solving puzzles in the works artistic director ballet troupe Nacho Duato responded vividly to the events clearly and logically presented in the plot of “The Flames of Paris.” The play has beautiful scenery and costumes. The 140 participants on stage have the opportunity to show their talents in performing complex dance techniques and acting. “Dance in Character” has not become outdated at all, and has not ceased to be highly valued by the audience. That’s why the premiere of “The Flames of Paris” at the Mikhailovsky Theater was greeted by St. Petersburg audiences with genuine enthusiasm.

Based on a few surviving plastic phrases, Messerer Jr. is able to restore the farandole and carmagnola, and from the descriptions - the dance of Cupid, and you would not think that this is not a Winona text. Messerer, in love with “The Flames of Paris,” recreates the performance in a colorful and extremely expressive way. Vyacheslav Okunev worked on the historical scenery and luxurious costumes, relying on the primary sources of the artist Vladimir Dmitriev.

From the perspective of an esthete, a performance is like a well-made thing: well-cut and tightly sewn. With the exception of overly drawn-out video projections, where the banners of the opponents - royal and revolutionary - are fluttered in turn, there are no dramatic flaws in the ballet. The action briefly and clearly pronounces pantomime moments and, to the delight of the viewer, moves on to deliciously executed dances, wisely alternating their courtly, folklore and classical examples. Even the repeatedly condemned musical “cut” by Boris Asafiev, where the academician, without further ado, layered quotes from Grétry and Lully with his own simple themes, looks quite whole work- thanks to competent notes and thoughtful tempo, Mikhail Messerer and conductor Pavel Ovsyannikov manage to solve this difficult task.

Mike Dixon, Dance Europe

The superb production of Mikhail Messerer's The Flames of Paris at the Mikhailovsky Theater is an example of an excellent synthesis of narrative clarity and choreographic pace. This story remains vibrant and captivating throughout the three acts, which take place in the suburbs of Marseille, Versailles and the square in front of the Tuileries Palace.

The current hot summer has probably not yet reached its climax: a real fire is being prepared at the St. Petersburg Mikhailovsky Theater. Restored "Flames of Paris", a legendary performance Soviet era about the Great French Revolution, will be the last premiere of the Russian ballet season.

Anna Galaida, RBC daily
18.07.2013

The choreographer tells Belcanto.ru about the features of the Moscow “Don Quixote”, family legends and the legends of the Messerers, as well as the production ideas of “The Flame of Paris”.

I think that critics will quietly announce the “Stalinist style” and similar nonsense - we have a leaden darkness of ignorance over the history of ballet, especially the relatively recent one. The “Stalinist style” includes all the sweeping ballets of the 1930s, in whose monumental volume and festive decor a vague threat languishes. Just like in Stalin’s metro stations. Or in the Stalinist high-rise buildings, in which director Timur Bekmambetov correctly discerned something darkly gothic. The ballet, the subway and the high-rise buildings of the 1930s radiated such a self-satisfied, undeniable delight that any doubting person, once inside, immediately felt like a louse about to be combed out by a Soviet comb (as it soon did).

By a strange whim of fate, choreographer Alexei Ratmansky (“Flames of Paris” will become his last job as head Bolshoi Ballet) precisely from those people to whom complacency and indisputability are organically alien. What does “Flame of Paris” mean to him? soviet festival on the theme of the French Revolution? A mystery... But Ratmansky has long and firmly loved Soviet ballet, variations on Soviet themes occupy a prominent place in his portfolio of works, and in this love the nostalgic hiss and crackle of a gramophone needle are clearly distinguishable. The gramophone itself is at the dacha, and the dacha, for example, is in Peredelkino. The animal horror was gone. Tyranny as portrayed by Ratmansky is usually funny. And even sweet in her girlish stupidity. That’s why Ratmansky did a great job with “Bright Stream” (a Soviet collective farm comedy) and a bad job with “Bolt” (a Soviet production extravaganza).

And the critics will tell a joke together. How Nemirovich-Danchenko sat at the performance of “The Flames of Paris,” and the hard-working delegate nearby was still worried about why the citizens on stage were silent and whether this would continue to be the case. Nemirovich assured: alas - ballet! And then the citizens blasted the Marseillaise from the stage. “And you, dad, I see, this is also your first time in ballet,” the hard worker encouraged the laureate. From which it is at least clear that “The Flames of Paris” was partly the last gasp of the dying ballet avant-garde of the 1920s with its collages of songs, dances, screams and some “supremes”. However, he still did not survive his time. All that remained from him was a stunt pas de deux, hackneyed at all sorts of ballet competitions, and a couple of pseudo-folk dances. The probability of failure of a new Bolshoi Theater production (not a scandalous failure, but a quiet failure, like a washed-out bank sliding into a river) is 50%. It’s just that Alexey Ratmansky is such a choreographer, for whom everything he does is interesting: in terms of artistic quality, it’s still a fact of art, still with a large share of platinum. Even if they sing La Marseillaise.

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Ballet "Flames of Paris"

A brief history of the creation of the ballet

The ballet “Flames of Paris”, staged in 1932 on the stage of the Leningrad Opera and Ballet Theater. CM. Kirov, long time remained in the repertoire of the capital's theaters. In 1947, Asafiev created new edition ballet, where he made some cuts to the score and rearranged some numbers. But the musical dramaturgy of the ballet as a whole remained unchanged. Its genre can be defined as folk-heroic drama.

Playwright N. Volkov, artist V. Dmitriev and the composer himself participated in the creation of the script and libretto of the ballet. The authors chose the historical and social aspect of the interpretation of the plot, which determined a number of essential features of the work as a whole. The content is based on events from the history of the French Revolution in the early 90s of the 18th century: the capture of the Tuileries, participation in the revolutionary actions of Marseille sailors, revolutionary actions of peasants against their feudal rulers. Separate ones were also used plot motives, as well as images of some characters from historical novel F. Gras “Marseilles” (peasant Jeanne, commander of the Marseilles battalion).

While composing the ballet, Asafiev, in his words, worked “not only as a playwright-composer, but also as a musicologist, historian and theorist, and as a writer, not disdaining the methods of the modern historical novel.” The results of this method affected, in particular, the historical reliability of the series characters. “The Flames of Paris” features King Louis XVI, the daughter of a cooper, Barbara Paran (in the ballet, the peasant Jeanne), and the court actress Mirelle de Poitiers (in the ballet, she received the name Diana Mirel).

In accordance with the libretto, the musical dramaturgy of “The Flames of Paris” is based on the opposition of two musical spheres: the musical characteristics of the people and the aristocracy. The people are given the main place in the ballet. Three acts are devoted to his image - the first, third and fourth, and partly also the second act (its finale). The people are represented in a variety of different social groups that make up them. French peasants meet here - Jeanne's family; soldiers of revolutionary France and among them the commander of the Marseilles battalion - Philippe; actors of the court theater who act on the side of the people during events are Diana Mirel and Antoine Mistral. At the head of the camp of aristocrats, courtiers, and reactionary officers stood Louis XVI and the Marquis de Beauregard, the owner of vast estates.

The attention of the libretto authors is focused on the image historical events, due to which “Flames of Paris” has almost no individual musical characteristics at all. Personal destinies individual heroes occupy a subordinate place in it in the broad picture of the history of revolutionary France. Musical portraits actors are, as it were, replaced by their generalized characteristics as representatives of one or another socio-political force. The main opposition in ballet is the people and the aristocracy. The people are characterized in dance scenes of an effective type (the revolutionary actions of the people, their struggle) and a genre character (cheerful festive scenes at the end of the first act, the beginning of the third and in the second scene of the last act). Taken together, the composer creates a multifaceted musical characterization of the people as the collective hero of the work. In the depiction of the people main role play revolutionary song and dance themes. They sound at their most important points actions, and some of them run through the entire ballet and to a certain extent can be called leitmotifs that characterize the image revolutionary people. The same applies to depictions of the aristocratic world. And here the composer limits himself to a generalized musical characteristic royal court, aristocracy, officers. In depicting feudal-aristocratic France, Asafiev uses intonations and stylistic means of musical genres that became widespread in the aristocratic court life of royal France.