Ballet "Red Poppy": content, interesting facts, video, history

R. Glier ballet "Red Poppy"

"Red Poppy" ... This ballet was originally recognized as the most revolutionary performance in the history of Russian choreography. He was called a beautiful creation and even a masterpiece of Soviet ballet art. Undoubtedly, attractiveness and overwhelming success was largely predetermined by the talented work of its creators and, above all, the author of the music - the remarkable composer Reingold Moritsevich Glier. The work of the musician was equated with the achievement of the feat, because the composer, in his work based on the traditions of the Russian classical school, boldly filled the music of ballet with new content and skillfully linked it to modern life.

Summary of Glier's ballet "Red Poppy" and a lot of interesting facts about this piece read on our page.

Summary

China twenties of the last century. Large seaport, which ships come from many countries around the world. To one of the moorings moored the Soviet ship. In the port area under the supervision of the overseers are port loaders - coolies. Not far away is a restaurant, a favorite place of entertainment for European guests. To the doors of the restaurant, the coolie porters brought a palanquin, from which Tao Hoa comes out - a young but already well-known dancer. For all those present, she performs a welcome dance. A young man named Lee Shan-fu approaches the girl, he is considered the bridegroom of the young actress.

At that time, an incident occurred in the port area: one of the coolies, exhausted from fatigue, fell and dropped the load. The supervisors began to beat him with whips, forcing him to get up and continue working. Other workers stood up for the comrade, but the policemen who appeared appeared forced the coolies to retreat and ask for help from the crew of the Soviet ship. Upon learning of the incident, the port authority arrives at the scene of the incident. Hips offers the captain of the Soviet ship to solve the problem by force, but he receives an answer that the Englishman didn’t like at all. After that, the captain and the sailors assist the coolies in the unloading operations. Tao Hoa is closely watching everything that happens: she was struck by the decision and actions of the Soviet sailors. In a sign of delight, the dancer presents flowers to the captain, and in response she receives from him the most beautiful flower plucked out of the bouquet - a red poppy. Lee Shan-fu, who saw this scene, came up and hit his bride with a burst of jealousy. The captain interceded for the poor girl, than he made himself another enemy.

It is evening. Foreign sailors and coolies have fun and dance. Soviet sailors do not stand aside, they join the holidaymakers.

He is looking for Lee Shan-fu in the Kylin brigade; he wants to instruct him to organize an attempt on the captain of a Soviet ship. Unsuspecting Tao Hoa, meeting the captain, walking with the sailors along the quay, invites him to rest in the den. Lee Shang-fu, seeing the bride with his patron in the smoking room, to provoke a fight again raises her hand. The captain discards the jealous fiancé, but the accomplices of the villain swoop down on him with knives. Tao Hoa is blocking the captain, who whistles to the aid of calling his sailors. Everyone breaks up, a frightened girl smokes opium and falls asleep. In the dream, she is captured by a wide variety of fantastic visions.

Holiday in the house of Hips. Guests have fun dancing. Tao Hoa accidentally hears the conversation of the host and his fiancé. The Englishman and Lee Shan-fu agree to poison the captain, who along with the team was invited to this event. Everything should happen during the tea ceremony and she should give a drink with poison.

The commander and sailors from the Soviet ship come to the house of the port commander. The captain, upon seeing Tao Hoa, greets her in a friendly way, but the girl with a prayer asks him to leave the Englishman's house.

Everything is ready for the start of the tea ceremony. Hips explains to the captain that he, as the most respected guest, should be offered tea by the best dancer. Tao Hoa begins his dance and, trying to delay the fateful moment, delays his performance. Finally, when the cup is in the hands of the captain, and he is about to bring it to his lips, the girl tilts the dishes to prevent an attempt. Li Shan-fu, having seen that nothing happened to their plan again, is trying to shoot the captain, but the misfortune again persecutes the villain, and he misses.

The guests, frightened, scatter, and Tao Hoa, going out on the balcony, looks at how the Soviet ship has been anchored and headed for the open sea. She is glad that everything is so happily over and does not notice the enraged Lee Shan-fu. Blaming the girl in everything, he shoots and mortally wounds her. The Chinese revolutionaries, who had penetrated into the port chief's house, laid the lifeless Tao Hoa on a stretcher covered with red cloth. Waking up for a minute, the girl gives a red flower to the children around her - a gift from the captain.

A large red flower appears in the sky. The poor look to him as a symbol of liberation from foreign oppressors, and petals from red poppies fall on the dead body of Tao Hoa.

Interesting Facts

• The name of the ballet "Red Poppy" is associated with the main character, this is how the name Tao Hoa is translated from Chinese.
• For the first four years from the date of the premiere, the ballet Red Poppy was shown on the Bolshoi Theater stage more than three hundred times. In the history of choreographic performances, this is a kind of record.
• The success of the ballet was such that confectioneries began to produce sweets under the name "Red Poppy", and perfume and soap with the same name appeared in the stores.
• Ekaterina Vasilyevna Geltser, an outstanding ballerina of the first to perform the part of Tao Hoa, at the time of the premiere was 51 years old. She was called "the real owner of the Bolshoi Theater." Such a privileged position of the over-age actress was determined by the special location of the People’s Commissar of Education A.V. Lunacharsky. In addition, Geltser was the first ballet to receive the title of “folk”.
• After the premiere of the play, one of the spectators was asked how much he liked the ballet music? He replied that, because of the constant applause, I heard her badly.
• In 1955 a film was released on the screens - the ballet "Red Poppy" to the music of RM. Gliera, shot on Czechoslovak television directed by Pavel Blumenfeld.
• In the fifties, a delegation from China led by prominent politician Chen Boda was invited to visit the Bolshoi Theater, where they showed the Red Poppy ballet. Seeing the make-up artists on stage at the beginning of the performance, the guests from Celestial were offended by the fact that in the Soviet Union they are represented by such monsters. There was no limit to the outrage of the Chinese, and they were even ready to leave the theater, but the situation was resolved thanks to the skill of our diplomats. However, after the performance, the head of the delegation was dissatisfied with the fact that the performance about the Chinese “Red Poppy” cannot be called, since they associate this plant with opium - a destructive narcotic substance. After some time, the performance was renamed “Red Flower”, and soon it was completely removed from the repertoire of theaters, since there was a diplomatic conflict between the countries.
• Red poppy is a flower-symbol about which many beautiful legends were composed. In ancient Egypt, he symbolized youth and charm. In ancient Greece - fertility. In the East - happiness, love and joy. In China, success, beauty, rest and distance from the hustle and bustle were initially available, but then accessible women and brothels, and in the 19th century, when smoking the drug was very popular, it became associated with evil.

History of creation

The ballet "Red Poppy" is a difficult and rather interesting story. The October Revolution made fundamental changes in the life of our country. Social changes taking place in the state were vividly reflected in all types of art: writers and poets created works filled with revolutionary pathos. Dramatic theaters staged plays on contemporary themes. Even on the operatic stage significant transformations were noticeable, only ballet remained unaffected. The administrations of musical theaters have repeatedly called upon musicians and playwrights to create a choreographic performance on a contemporary theme, but all appeals of theatrical figures were ignored. Things reached the point that in 1925 the Bolshoi Theater announced a competition for the creation of such a ballet, but there was no response again. Composers waited for a proper libretto, and playwrights could not choose a plot. The matter again reached a dead end and at a meeting of the Bolshoi’s artistic council began to discuss disappointing results on the failed competition, when theater artist Mikhail Ivanovich Kurilko suddenly asked for the floor. Resenting about the current situation, he took out a newspaper and read a message about how a Soviet ship was brought in to a port in China that brought food to the workers of this eastern country. Kurilko explained to the bewildered members of the Arts Council that this is a wonderful plot for the ballet libretto and briefly outlined how he sees this performance on the stage. Interested in the participants of the meeting with his story, Mikhail Ivanovich immediately received an offer to write the literary basis of the play on the plot he proposed. This request is very embarrassing for the artist: yes, he had little experience, but only in remaking the libretto. The next day, Kurilko met at the theater with Elena Vasilyevna Geltser, who told about what happened at the Art Council meeting. Having come to the delight of what he heard, the outstanding ballerina persuaded Mikhail Ivanovich not to refuse the proposal and promised him all the help and support. Geltser immediately remembered his tour in China, enthusiastically telling about the culture and art of the ancient eastern country. The ballerina, infected with the idea of ​​staging the first Soviet play on a revolutionary theme, quickly found like-minded people and rallied them around herself. The music was assigned to write to Gliera, who enthusiastically set to work, as he himself was looking forward to this proposal. The composer, with great responsibility for everything he did, began to thoroughly study all the subtleties of classical dance, and besides that he thoroughly acquainted himself with Chinese folk music. All worked on the ballet with great enthusiasm. The performance was divided into three acts: in the second act, the ballet troupe director V.D. Tikhomirov, and in the first and last choreography, they entrusted the talented ballet dancer Lev Alexandrovich Laschilin.

Work on the "Red Poppy" was in full swing when the theater changed management. This was used by the opponents of the ballet, who did not admit that in the “temple of the arts” they would put the play on a plot from everyday life, and besides the theater scene was desecrated by some peasant dance. The fact is that in order to create a vivid image of the Soviet sailors, Kurilko asked Gliere to insert the sailor dance "Yablochko" at the end of the first act. The negatively-tuned administration suspended the rehearsals of the performance. However, a group of enthusiasts led by Geltser showed an unprecedented initiative and, with the support of journalist M. M. Amshinsky, began to hold meetings with the creators of the ballet “Red Poppy” with employees of Moscow factories and plants. At such events, the libretto was read, the ideological component of the performance was told, sketches of scenery were shown, Glier performed the musical numbers on the piano, and Geltser danced. In the end, the dance "Apple" was performed, always delighting the audience and the audience was asked a control question about whether to continue working on the ballet. After such conversations, the administrations of many enterprises began to release funds for the purchase of tickets for the workers for this performance and immediately informed the press about this. As a result of the work done, all obstacles were overcome, and the premiere, scheduled for the last day of the theater season on June 14, 1927, took place even without a run-through.

Productions

After the successful premiere, held in June 1927, the ballet "Red Poppy" constantly collected full halls. For two years on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater, he passed more than two hundred times. The press constantly published praise: the merits of the performance were noted, as well as the talented work of the authors and artists. A year and a half later, in January 1929, a ballet show was held at the Kirov Theater, but the Leningraders saw the performance perceptibly edited: not only choreography, but also the score of the work was significantly reworked. It should also be noted the premiere of "Red Poppy" in Kiev, held last fall of the same 1929. Its peculiarity was that the author of the ballet music, Reinhold Moritsevich Glier, stood behind the orchestral panel. It was his debut performance as a conductor of a musical performance. Soon, almost all the musical theaters of the USSR, which had ballet compositions, included the "Red Poppy" in their repertoire, and besides they began to prepare the ballet for staging in countries such as Bulgaria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania and the USA.

The next surge in the popularity of the play came in the fifties. In October 1949, the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed, and this significant event prompted musical theaters to resume the production of the play. The ballet again underwent significant changes, but this time even the libretto was edited and further choreography and score, respectively. The performance was so successful that the Bolshoi Theater showed it at the Green Theater of Gorky Park, which seats several thousand spectators, and was soon rewarded with a State Prize. Despite the popularity of the play, Glier again, for the fourth time, took up the remaking of the score, which he finished shortly before his death. The last version of the ballet, which changed its name to "Red Flower", was shown at the Bolshoi Theater in November 1957, but due to the changed political relations between the USSR and China, it survived only ten productions.

More than fifty years have passed and in 2010 the Red Poppy blossomed again, but this time it happened first in the Italian capital and then in Krasnoyarsk.

"Red poppy" - ballet, at one time specially created for a revolutionary theme, was an important stage in the history of Russian choreographic art. Despite the fact that more than eighty years have passed since its creation, it has not lost its artistic value, and this is indisputable, given the power of the impact it today has on the modern viewer.