The three Béla Bartók scores that inspire Hungarian State Opera’s Dancetriptych each have rich, complicated histories with Hungary’s national opera house. The company’s successful 1917 premiere of The Wooden Prince inspired them to finally mount the composer’s opera Bluebeard’s Castle the following year. Bartók’s Dance Suite was first heard on 19 November 1923 at a festival concert marking the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the metropolis of Budapest. It wasn’t until 1945 that it appeared in ballet form at the opera house, albeit in a roundly panned production. The Miraculous Mandarin (1924) finally made its company debut in 1945 after running into trouble with the censors in previous attempts to get it staged in 1931 and 1941.
The triple bill opened with a new production of Mandarin choreographed by Marianna Venekei, former company soloist and its current ballet master and répétiteur. Venekei herself danced the physically and psychologically demanding role of the Girl early in her career. On February 3 it was danced by Lea Földi who harrowingly conveyed the drug-addled prostitute’s ruthlessness and nihilism. Her desperation was signalled in one particularly virtuosic lift that required Földi to claw her way down the Mandarin’s (Iurii Kekalo) back, head first. A superlative, disturbing performance which left the dancer visibly shaken at her curtain call.
As Venekei states in the programme, Bartók’s score is prescriptive and carefully directs the narrative. Still, her interpretation differs considerably from László Seregi’s inevitably dated 1970 version which I saw, faithfully revived, at this theatre in 2017. With Venekei, we believe in the contemporaneity of these characters. A scrim with a city skyscraper motif opened and closed the action while the graduated physical set recalled a bleak urban rooftop. Its recognizably roughshod denizens wouldn’t look out of place on any present-day city streetscape.
As the three thugs, Majoros Balázs, Carlos Taravillo Mahillo and Yago Guerra were tough and menacing as the abusive trio who pimp out the Girl to a succession of men who are quickly dispatched after being robbed. Kekalo’s Mandarin was ever-present in Venekei’s conception, a sort of wandering ghost whose movements mirror those of the Girl’s to give them a visceral connection from the start. The Mandarin magically survives the thugs’ first two attempts to kill him, but after a truly disturbing, realistic hanging, it is the Girl who revives him thus establishing her true feelings, after which he dies. Devastated, her inexorable fate is sealed as she is pulled back under the descending cityscape scrim.
László Velekei’s The Wooden Prince premiered at the Hungarian National Ballet in 2023. As noted in the programme, he has resisted the “popular trend to reinterpret and rethink” and yet, still injects a “subtle criticism of our objectified world”. In fact, his choreography is almost of two worlds, very fluid and contemporary for the principals and sometimes mired in cliché for the small corps – witness a penchant for writhing bodies. Notwithstanding, there were still some striking effects, particularly at the start when Bartók’s primordial low strings inspire an undulating massing of the corps who, then like magic, suddenly pair off in a contrasting classical manner.
As the Fairy determined to keep the Prince and Princess apart, Jessica Carulla Leon was an ambiguous lurking presence. She puts a wedge between the couple by creating a “wooden” Prince with whom the Princess becomes infatuated. András Rónai perfectly captured the faux Prince’s awkwardness with his robotic moves, including some humorous references to hip hop. Lili Felméry’s Princess convincingly conveyed her rejection of status, first by discarding her jewels and then, in a pas de deux underpinned by a destabilising, Straussian Salome tremolo in the score, she takes off the Prince’s crown. This prompts a satisfying throwback to the earlier massed, undulating corps who surround the couple, united at last.
In his new version of Dance Suite, choreographer Kristóf Várnagy has aimed to include “tradition in the contemporary” and he largely succeeds. So, we see echoes of folk dance as the company of 12 dancers move in a circle, joining arms over shoulders. In a more classical style, three of the men are given a series of demanding attitude leaps and in the second movement, soloist Soobin Lee impresses in a beautiful, lyrical solo. With its stark grey backdrop, and crisp white, red-accented costumes inspired by those from the village of Buják, the overall aesthetic is very classic mid-century Balanchine.
A key element to the success of this programme was the contribution of the Hungarian State Opera Orchestra under Gergely Vajda. From the Mandarin’s spiky modernism, to the more lush harmonies of The Wooden Prince to the joyous folk-inspired sounds in Dance Suite, the musicians contributed a wealth of experience in this repertoire that would be hard to be matched anywhere else.
