Tiresias (ballet)
Tiresias is a ballet in a prelude and three acts choreographed by
Background
The idea of a ballet on the subject of the Greek seer who changes sex was first considered by Lambert in the 1930s. Lambert started composing the score in Paris, but due to the distractions of other work he had to enlist assistance for the orchestration from younger colleagues, such as Robert Irving, Humphrey Searle, Gordon Jacob, Alan Rawsthorne and Elisabeth Lutyens.[2]
One of three ballets commissioned for the Festival of Britain, Lambert's score is roughly contemporary with French composer Francis Poulenc's short comic opera Les mamelles de Tirésias first performed at the Opéra-Comique in 1947, on a similar sex-change theme, based on Guillaume Apollinaire's surrealist text of 1917.[3]
The premiere was conducted by the composer and given in the presence of
Alan Rawsthorne's orchestral Improvisations on a Theme of Constant Lambert (1960) uses the opening fanfare from Tiresias as its theme.[7]
Original cast
- Tiresias (male) – Michael Somes
- Tiresias (female) – Margot Fonteyn
- Her lover – John Field
- Neophyte – Margaret Dale
- Snakes – Pauline Clayden, Brian Shaw[1]
- Zeus - Alfred Rodriguez
Synopsis
Tiresias enters on a scene of young girls engaged in vaulting over the horn of bull. After a solo and a dance for Tiresias and male corps de ballet, priestesses and a young virgin come on the scene. The Neophyte gives him a wand and departs. Tiresias spots two snakes copulating and in a rage he strikes the female snake with his staff and is thus changed into a woman.
Following a pastoral interlude, shepherds and shepherdesses enter and dance with Tiresias. Her lover appears, and they dance a climactic pas de deux. Then there is a bacchanale celebrating their happiness, at the end of which two snakes enters, engaged as before. Tiresias strikes the male snake with her staff, and is restored to his original self.
Another interlude transforms the scene to a palace courtyard where Zeus and Hera are arguing whether men or women get most pleasure in sex. Called to be judge Tiresias declares that women do, and Hera angrily blinds him, but Zeus bestows the gift of prophecy on Tiresias and he departs.[8]
Recordings
The first broadcast performance of Tiresias, using the score edited by John Abbott, took place on 8 November 1995
References
- ^ a b c Alexander Bland, The Royal Ballet: The First Fifty Years. London: Threshold Books, 1981, p286.
- ^ a b Motion, Andrew. The Lamberts: George, Constant & Kit, Chatto & Windus, London, 1986, p250-251.
- ^ Stephen Lloyd: Constant Lambert: Beyond the Rio Grande, Boydell Press, 2015
- ^ Reprinted in Buckle, Richard. Adventures of a Ballet Critic (1953)
- ^ Kavanagh J. Secret Muses: The Life of Frederick Ashton. Faber & Faber Ltd, London, 1996, p390-392.
- ^ New York Times, 17 September 1955, p 13
- ^ John M. Belcher. Notes to Naxos CD 8.555959 (1992)
- ^ David Vaughan, Frederick Ashton and His Ballets, revised edition (London: Dance Books, 1999), Synopsis p. 423.
- ^ BBC Genome Project
- ^ Foreman, L. Booklet essay accompanying Hyperion CDA67049. London, 1999.