Martínez' Le Corsaire: a 21st-century ballet with a Romantic French flavour

Only few days after the premiere, José Carlos Martínez’ new Le Corsaire, created for Rome Opera Ballet, had been compelled to close. It was March 2020: the pandemic was stopping all the world and the Italian Government had decided to lock down the country. At last, two years later, the ballet has seen its rebirth, almost a new debut, on the stage of the Teatro Costanzi, and a warm and deserved success.

Martínez’ Le Corsaire is a new 21st-century ballet created in Romantic French style. It's somewhat similar to Manuel Legris’ Sylvia, currently on stage in Milan, with which it shares a tight, fluent narrative built on an extremely richly ballet vocabulary, whose range goes from the refined footwork of the Romantic era to the more expressive neoclassical movements, together with some virtuosic bravura moments and a little touch of lively character dance. All this gives the contemporary audience the flavour and the beauty of ballet, boldly and masterly performed. It should come as no surprise: Martínez, as Legris, is a former étoile of the Paris Opera Ballet and he deeply understands the reasons and the possibilities of development of the classic idiom in purity.

As there is no authoritative version of the original choreography of Le Corsaire and only some excerpts have remained fixed during the long and complicated life of the ballet (created by Joseph Mazilier in Paris in 1856 and later revived in Saint Petersburg by Petipa, to be maintained in the Soviet era with all the male dancing interpolations we know so well), Martínez has wisely decided to start from himself. Therefore, he has trimmed out all the excess of the tangled plot only vaguely inspired by Byron’s poem and focused his libretto on the love between the beautiful slave Medora and Conrad the Corsair and the betrayal he suffers by his fellow Birbanto, supported by the slave merchant Lankedem.

The setting is the exotic land of the dreamed Orient as the European artists invented it in the 19th century. This scenario offers to the choreographer the greatest possibility of inventing duels with gunshots, genuine and bold demi-caractère dances with some touches of wildness for the corsairs and their women (particularly well structured in patterns and steps), seductive smoothy dances for the odalisques, academic grand pas for the dream scene of the Enchanted Garden. Perfectly woven with those outlines are some much awaited traditional bravura pieces – the Pas d'Esclave for Lankedem and the slave Gulnara and the celebrated glorious duet here danced by Medora and Conrad himself; all the development of the story and choreography is coherent, no moment is out of context or simply to stop the show.

The homogeneity was given also by the careful choice of the musical pieces of the score from the eclectic potpourri of compositions with which Adolphe Adam's original score has been augmented over the passage of time. In fact, Martínez has come back to the French origins of the ballet, choosing mostly pieces from Adam plus Leo Délibes’ mellow music for the Enchanted Garden grand pas, following the musical edition by the conductor Alexei Baklan. That contributed to give to the ballet a specially dreamy exotic flavour, underlined also by the magnificent set and costumes by Francesco Zito, recalling the atmosphere evoked by the Orientalist painters. Rome Opera Ballet, directed by the former Paris Opera Ballet étoile Eleonora Abbagnato, is well improving in artistry and technical standard (in this case the male ensemble shined particularly) and the soloists show impressive theatrical personalities: Michele Satriano is the ambiguous and rude Birbanto and Walter Maimone the slimy Lankedem, while the Rome Opera Ballet étoile Susanna Salvi as Gulnara danced with refined technical assurance.

At the opening night, Medora and Conrad were performed by the guests Marianela Nuñez and Vadim Muntagirov from The Royal Ballet, both debuting in their roles. A dream couple of the ballet scene of today, they gave an amazing show of their breath-taking eminence. Nuñez masters the technique in such a way that any enchaînement, balancé, port de bras are eloquent and expressive in their essence: the incredible control of the dynamics embellishes the musicality of her dance but also gives wonderful chiaroscuros full of emotional meaning. Muntagirov’s elegant virtuosity and youthful boldness, expressed through the purest classic style, are a clear demonstration of how art of ballet is also in our time a never-ending source of physical and artistic discoveries and approaches.