Lost Illusions
Choreography: Alexei Ratmansky
Bolshoi Ballet
New Stage, Moscow
April 24 & 25, 2011

Alexei Ratmansky has made a career out of rejuvenating fragments from ballet history, and Lost Illusions, his three-act ballet for the Bolshoi, is an old-fashioned novelty. Although it has a new score, new choreography and new designs – all welcome in an increasingly fossilised full-length narrative genre – its libretto was written for an eponymous ballet presented at the Mariinsky in 1935. The piece fell into oblivion after one season, and while Ratmansky’s production is a treasure trove of new roles for the Bolshoi’s dancers, it never quite convinces as a dramatic whole.

The story is deceptively simple. A young composer, Lucien, meets a ballerina, Coralie, who becomes his muse. Lured away by prospects of fame and money, however, he abandons her for her calculating rival, Florine, only to see his illusions, and Coralie’s, shattered. The 1930s libretto freely adapts what was a minor storyline in Honoré de Balzac’s novel, but in doing so it channels stock French characters who belong not in Balzac’s sharp satire of high society but in The Lady of the Camellias: the poor artist, the selfless heroine who depends on a patron. The result is a ballet juggling lyrical sweep and social grit, and struggling in the process to find a voice of its own. (…)

» Read the full review in the Financial Times

Natalia Osipova and Alexander Petukhov in Lost Illusions © Damir Yusupov/Bolshoi Theatre