Ballet Scheherazade

Fue estrenado el 4 de junio de 1910 en el Theatre National de l’Opéra de Paris por los Ballets Rusos de Diaghilev.

El ballet en un acto de “Scheherazade” está basado en el cuento sobre Shakhriar y su hermano, de “Las Mil y Una Noches”.

El romance furtivo entre la favorita del harén y el esclavo de oro constituye el núcleo del ballet que Mikhail Fokine creó sobre la partitura de Rimsky-Korsakov, una Obra sinfónica de 1888, con Ida Rubinstein y Vaslav Nijinsky como Sherezade y su amante.

Argumento

El Sultán Shakhriar  está en su harén con su joven hermano Shahezman.

El Sultán ama profundamente a su favorita Zobeida, pero su hermano quiere hacerle comprender que todas las mujeres, incluso Zobeida, son infieles. Para comprobar su lealtad, los dos hombres anuncian que se van para asistir a una cacería.

Nada más marcharse, las mujeres sobornan al jefe de los eunucos para que abra las puertas del harén a los esclavos: el esclavo de oro se convertirá en el personaje central de una desenfadada orgía. El Sultán aparece de improviso y ordena a sus guardias que ejecuten a todos los presentes, con excepción de Zobeida.

El está dispuesto a perdonarla, pero su hermano le recuerda su deslealtad. Zobeida arrebata a un guardia su daga y se da muerte a los pies del Sultán.

Shéhérazade

Choreographic drama in one act

• Producer: Les Ballets Russes de Serge Diaghilev
• Premiere: 14 June 1910, Théâtre national de l’Opéra, Paris
• Costume design: Léon Bakst
• Costumier: Marie Muelle
• Scenery design: Léon Bakst
• Music: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
• Choreography: Michel Fokine
• Libretto: Léon Bakst and Michel Fokine, after the first tale of
• A thousand and one nights

Main characters: Zoebéide (Zoebeida), Zoebéide’s Favourite Slave, Shah Shahriar, King of the Indes, Shah Zeman, the Chief Eunuch, Odalisques, Almées (dancing girls)

The ballet is set in the harem of the Oriental palace of the Persian ruler, Shah Shahriar. Suspecting his wives of infidelity, the Shah and his brother, Shah Zeman, leave the palace on the pretence of a hunting expedition. As soon as the men leave, the women, lead by Shahriar’s favourite wife Zoebéide, persuade the Chief Eunuch to release their slave lovers. Shahriar and his brother return unexpectedly and burst in on the ensuing orgy. Enraged at his discovery, Shahriar orders his guards to kill the women and their lovers. Zoebéide pleads for mercy, but finding her husband unrelenting, she stabs herself in the heart and falls dead at his feet.

Schéhérazade created a sensation in the Ballets Russes’ 1910 season, its design by Bakst building on the powerful visual effects of his earlier Cléopâtre.

This dance drama was the first production completely devised by Diaghilev and his miriskusniki collaborators, bringing together vivid visual spectacle, powerful choreography and a re-orchestrated version of the 1888 symphonic suite that Rimsky-Korsakov had based on tales from The arabian nights. Bakst’s costumes are an imagined orientalist amalgam of Ottoman and Persian styles, pale and diaphanous silk harem pants for the almées contrasting with strongly coloured, embroidered and intricately structured silk and velvet costumes for the lead male characters. Bakst’s drawing for Shah Zeman is an earlier, more ornate, version of the Shah’s actual costume, accentuating the strong rhythms of the dancer’s body by depicting the fabrics and the skirt ornaments as moving and floating.

With gold body paint and bejewelled outfit, Nijinsky commanded the stage with his voluptuous and feline performance as Zoebéide’s favourite slave. Against the set’s emerald green walls and red carpets, the massed costumes of dancers in frenzied motion created a moving spectacle of colour intensifying towards the ballet’s orgiastic and violent climax.