To open Ballet du Capitole’s 2024/2025 season, the first to be programmed by its new director, Beate Vollack, the company presented an enticing double bill of works composed by the great musical reformer of 18th century opera and ballet, Christoph Willibald Gluck. Conducted by Jordi Savall, no less, and with music played by his Le Concert des Nations, the programme consisted of two of Gluck’s rarely-performed ballets, Sémiramis and Don Juan, and promised, if nothing else, to be a glorious musical feast.
And so it proved. In the intimate auditorium of Toulouse’s attractive Théâtre du Capitole, Gluck’s music sounded wonderfully alive and elegant, with Savall drawing out the pace and drama of both scores with panache, as well as a clear sense of their dance rhythms. Ravishing the ear with Gluck’s beautiful music, the conductor must have been an inspiration to the musicians and choreographers working with him.
The ballets shown in this programme were originally composed in Vienna during the 1760s in collaboration with the choreographer Gasparo Angiolini and librettist Ranieri de’ Calzabigi, and they attempted to express dramatic situations in ballet more freely by better integrating dance episodes and mime scenes. The music is touchingly direct and sincere, and the stories of Sémiramis and Don Juan, with their moral dilemmas, would have been well known to audiences of the day. These tales were also familiar to those who came a bit later (just think of Mozart’s Don Giovanni or Rossini’s Semiramide), but I wondered if these ballets would strike the same kind of accord with the public of today, or might they seem old-fashioned. Perhaps.
For Sémiramis, in fact, choreographer Ángel Rodríguez dispensed with the story of the fabled Babylonian queen of ancient times altogether, offering instead a suite of dances without any connection to Gluck’s original plot. Dressed in simple burgundy costumes designed by Rosa Ana Chanza Hernández, the ensemble of dancers grouped together, lined-up, occasionally formed Nijinska-like tableaux, ran, jumped and turned in classically-based choreography with a contemporary twist. Periodically, lone dancers walked slowly across the back of the stage whilst others performed in front, and at other times the stage cleared for a duet, a trio or a solo. The choreography was musical and pleasant, but rarely surprising.
The dancers had poise and vigour, and performed beautifully – especially Natalia de Froberville, Kayo Nakazato, Jérémy Leydier and Philippe Solano – but I didn’t feel I discovered their true abilities as performing artists in Sémiramis. As the ballet was only 20-minutes long, Les Concert des Nations played the orchestral suite from Gluck’s opera Iphigénie en Aulide as a welcome prelude.