Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Tchaikovsky's Ballets combines analysis of the music of Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and Nutcracker with a description based on rare and not easily accessible documents of the first productions of these works in imperial Russia. Essential background concerning the ballet audience, the collaboration of composer and ballet-master, and Moscow in the 1860s leads into an account of the first production of Swan Lake in 1877. A discussion of the theatre reforms initiated by Ivan Vsevolozhsky, Director of the Imperial Theatres and Tchaikovsky's patron, prepares us for a study of the still-famous 1890 production of Sleeping Beauty, Tchaikovsky's first collaboration with the choreographer Marius Petipa. Professor Wiley then explains how Nutcracker, which followed two years after Sleeping Beauty, was seen by its producers and audiences in a much less favourable light in 1882 than it is now. The final chapter discusses the celebrated revival of Swan Lake in 1985 by Petipa and Leve Ivanov.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Exhaustive research and attention to minute detail are reflected in Wiley's amazing recounting of the original productions of Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and Nutcracker. Following consideration of the location and the sociocultural profile of its ballet audience, the author describes the initial productions with attention to the collaboration of the composer and ballet master, staging conventions and personalities, dancers and musicians, and the published critical response. Wiley discusses the music of each ballet, treating melody, tonality, thematic unity, and orchestration, as well as placing the composer within the complex structure of ballet production at that time. A wealth of supportive materials includes Tchaikovsky's scenarios, Petipa's scenarios and instructions to the composer, ballet master's plans and choreographic notations, metronome markings from a holograph score, and a thorough listing of source notes. Content, tone, and style make this work appeal primarily to dance and music historians and balletomanes. Theater and social historians will also benefit. Wiley's study should gain recognition rapidly as a definitive resource. Upper-division undergraduate and graduate readership.-R.G. Whaley, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

Kirkus Book Review

Drawing on documentary sources from the ""late imperial period,"" Wiley (Music, U. of Michigan) offers detailed histories of the first productions of Tchaikovsky's three great ballets--along with technical musical analysis of the scores. Throughout, there's an emphasis on context: an introductory chapter discusses the ballet audience, the standards for late-19th-century Russian ballet music (the emphasis on ""dansante"" melody, orchestration, timing): the traditional collaborative roles of balletmaster and ""specialist"" composer, and the prototype of La Bayadere (exotic setting, stage machinery, massed scenes, widely varied choreography). Then come close-up chapters on each ballet--the development of the libretto, the composer/choreographer composition, the casting and designing, the first-night reception (generous excerpts from reviews), the music itself. With Swan Lake, Wiley speculates on Wagnerian influences, on the collaboration between Tchaikovsky and balletmaster Reisinger (""it seems that the two men decided on a scenario and the type and placement of dances, then went their separate ways""), and on the reasons for the ballet's perhaps-exaggerated failure (to some extent Reisinger's ""ineptitude prompted the conclusion that Tchaikovsky was lacking as a ballet composer""); the musical analysis focuses on its ""carefully chosen tonalities""--the changes of key (fully diagrammed) that provide subliminal structure. After a bridging chapter on theater-reformer/librettist Vsevolozhsky and balletmaster Petipa, Wiley gives Sleeping Beauty--for him the greatest of the three (""never surpassed"" in the whole Tchaikovsky oeuvre)--even more minute examination: its thematic unity, sophisticated treatment of variation music, and ""metaphorical properties."" The Nutcracker receives less wholehearted appreciation: praise for the orchestration's ""special sound world,"" ambivalent reaction to the ""borrowed melodies"" and ""short-breathed"" numbers (dictated, in part, by the libretto). And finally, after appraising the revised version of Swan Lake made after Tchaikovsky's death (a general improvement, though ""one wonders whether he would have agreed to changes that sacrificed musical coherence to choreographic expediency""), Wiley sums up Tchaikovksy's ballet-music accomplishment: he ""took ballet music out of the hands of Minkus and delivered it into the hands of Stravinsky""--making ballet composition ""a fit occupation"" for serious composers, with enough authority to stand up to the previously imperious balletmaster. Despite the sometimes-pedantic minutiae and some murkiness in Wiley's more ambitious musico-thematic analysis: a valuable source for specialists from the ballet/ music worlds. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Roland John Wiley is at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.