Robert Tanitch reviews Le Coq D’Or at London Coliseum.
Nikolai Rimsky- Korsakov’s rarely performed opera-ballet, deliberately silly and childish, is a pantomime romp for family audiences. It premiered in 1908, one year after his death, and is based on a fairy tale by Alexander Pushkin.
100 years ago it was thought too exhausting for the singers to have to sing and dance. So Mikhail Fokine came up with the idea that the singers should be seated on the side of the stage whilst centre stage a ballet company danced and mimed the story of King Dodon and a magical golden cockerel.
Rimsky-Korsakov’s widow objected strongly; but it was this production which Diaghilev brought to London in 1914. The present production by Andris Liepa, artistic director of Les Saison Russes du XX1eme Siecle, is an attempt to recreate that performance It is like watching a museum piece.
The colourful costumes and décor, based on Russian folk art, are a replica of the original designs by Natalia Goncharova. There is no surviving record of Fokine’s choreography. Gali Abaidulov’s choreography is mainly folk dancing.
The singers are in evening dress. The dancers and chorus (in serried ranks either side of the stage) are in costume. The grotesque comic characters look as if they have stepped out of a Russian fairy tale book; but they are never really funny. The satire, which worried the original censors, has long since been lost.
The second act seduction of King Dodon by the Queen of Shemankha should, surely, be a
glorious send‑up of everybody’s idea of exotic harem scene in the kitschy Scheherazade manner? The King is danced by Olg Fomin and sung by Alexander Tsilinko. The Queen is superbly sung by the elegant Olesya Titenko and danced by Natalia Saveliev.
The Golden Cockerel, a relation of the Firebird, is danced with vigour by Pavel Okunev.
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