Metropolitan Classical Ballet New & Reviews

Critics notebook
02:22 PM CDT on Sunday, April 24, 2005

Often-ignored ballet takes the stage

By MARGARET PUTNAM / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

Chalk it up to Marius Petipa for the 36 fouettés, the bravura leaps, the brilliant footwork and every other extravagance of classical ballet. Every gala depends on his works, although last week's TITAS show dwindled to one, Le Corsaire. Metropolitan Classical Ballet made up for the shortfall with two Petipa pas de deux, The Talisman and Don Quixote, and the entire second act of Raymonda.

Raymonda came late in Petipa's career, in 1898 when he was 80, and after he had created The Sleeping Beauty (1890), The Nutcracker (1892) and Swan Lake (1895).

It would be easy to attribute the endurance of those three masterpieces to Tchaikovsky's inspired music, but Alexander Glazunov's score for Raymonda is almost as magnificent. It's the improbable and complicated plot and lack of emotion that have left Raymonda to languish. Most ballet fans in the West know only George Balanchine's distilled Raymonda Variations.

The original three acts have undergone massive editing over the years to make the piece more credible. Even so, it seldom leaves Russia. So we have to thank Metropolitan Classical Ballet's co-artistic director, Alexander Vetrov, for bringing this bit of exotica back to life, with its swords, candelabra, reckless Saracen knight (Mr. Vetrov) and a diamond-crisp Raymonda (Olga Pavlova).

The atmosphere onstage Tuesday at Fort Worth's Bass Performance Hall was perfumed with an air of glittering unreality, amplified by stunning costumes, simple but effective sets and lighting that changed from cool washes of blue to puffs of white.