| | |  | Musicals | Home » » » Tchaikovsky - Swan Lake | | | | | | | Product Details: | | | Actors:
| Valery Gergiev, Uliana Lopatkina, Danila Korsuntsev, Ilya Kuznetsov, Mariinsky Kirov Opera Ballet | | Format:
| Classical, NTSC, DTS Surround Sound, Widescreen | | Language:
| French | | Subtitle:
| English | | Number of Discs:
| 1 | | Studio:
| Decca | | Run Time:
| 128 minutes | | DVD Release Date:
| November 13, 2007 | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 7 reviews |
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| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
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 Why do people complain about this?!Feb 26, 2010
I was put off this production for some time, especially because of the negativity about Korsuntsev: "a cipher" hardly commends him, after all. But I decided to give the production a chance - especially since I found some elements of the La Scala/Bolle almost unendurable. Having just watched this Lopatkina/Korsuntsev production, I can only say that I'm glad that I bought it and that I will certainly watch it again. If we have to have a jester, I at least find this jester appealing and not an up-stager. I don't, in principle, mind a happy ending: I rather like the idea that love might conquer all, even for a few years of happiness in this life. And this production makes the happy ending work very well, I think. I have no problems with the Odette/Odile. Good heavens, how often does one get a chance to see someone of this calibre in the role, other than on film? There was a time, not so very long ago [at least for people of my age], when one could have gone a whole lifetime and *never* seen something like this. Now, we could watch four magnificent performances an evening, if we had the stamina, and spend all our time afterwards trying for one-up-manship in taste by tearing them all apart instead of reveling in the magic of a technology which makes such beauty available to all who want it. And as for Korsuntsev. . .well, I do apologize; but I find him very agreeable. True, I think there is one moment at the beginning of the Act 3 PDD, when he allows himself to become merely a partner to Odile, instead of Prince Seigfried; but it is a minor lapse - and he is a genuinely attentive partner. But overall I find him tall, elegant and handsome - besides the important point that the man can dance! It's true that he is not a Byronic personality who tears his way across the stage. Instead, this prince is a jovial, gentle, somewhat dreamy lad; and his passions - which he does indeed have - are expressed as tenderness. I don't know about you, but personally I could live with that sort of passion. Besides which, Korsuntsev is tall and elegant; and he knows how to use his long legs to make a kind of physical music. I go on so about him, because there was so much negativity about him in other reviews. Will you like this performance? Only you can decide. But I did and wanted to say so. Over to you!
Lopatkina is amazingSep 20, 2009
This is a well produced DVD from the Mariinsky Theatre, Kirov Ballet. It includes a nice booklet that describes the history of Swan Lake and gives a synopsis of the acts. The reason I purchased it was to get a good quality video of Ulyana Lopatkina. I had only seen some low quality clips of her on YouTube, but they were enough to stimulate my interest. Till now my interest in ballet was limited to The Nutcracker and Don Quixote, more or less holiday entertainments. Now, with this kind of production on DVD available I am interested to see more. The Kirov Ballet does not disappoint, it is a great company, and Lopatkina especially is amazing. She has grace, balance, and poise that are almost supernatural.
1 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Top QualityJan 19, 2009
I purchased this version because the lead Ballerina Uliana Lopatkina, the whole Imperial/Kirov/Mariinsky Ballet, and the conductor Valery Gergiev all have excellent reputations. I was surprised to find out that the person who impressed me the most was the Jester, Andrei Ivanov. He was not as graceful as the two leads in the ballet, but he was the most acrobatic. The two leads were fantastically elegant and graceful, and the swans had excellent coordination and worked extremely well as one unit.
I bought this as a Christmas gift to my younger sister, and we both loved watching it together. She took ballet when she was younger, and will be trying out for the dance team at her high school next year.
I don't have too much experience watching ballets (I more often watch the local groups, rather than DVDs of the top quality groups), but this whole DVD confirmed that the Kirov Ballet deserves it's reputation.
This was a very recent performance, but the interpretation is still traditional - there was no attempt to break any ground by trying out anything new here. They just did a flawless, timeless job.
2 of 3 found the following review helpful:
GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Jul 21, 2008
I have seen many times The Swan Lake, at the Bolshoi Theatre and in URSS in Leningrad before and S.Petersbourg later ,and abroad, this ballet, but the role danced by Uliana lopatkina, so mature and controlling her movements so perfectly , i have never seen before!!
38 of 43 found the following review helpful:
 Swan Lake Gergiev-styleNov 18, 2007
The last Swan Lake on video to come from the Kirov Ballet dated from 1990 (Now available on DVD as well). Among its assets were the intriguing, beautifully talented Yulia Makhalina, the young and brilliant Igor Zelensky, still on his way to become one of the greatest Russian dancers of his generation; it had magnificently pure soloists like Larissa Lezhnina and Veronika Ivanova in the supporting cast; it also had the incomparable Viktor Fedotov playing the score with authority and understanding like only he could; and the whole production was offered with a genuine sense of artistic direction.
Now, the Kirov is long since called the Mariinsky again, and the new Swan Lake released by Decca and filmed by the BBC in St Petersburg in 2006 is a very different affair. The production (now with different sets) is still the same old one by Konstantin Sergeyev from 1950, based on the definitive 1895 Petipa/Ivanov staging, and remains one of the most exemplary, straightforward readings of the ballet around.
The current leads are danced by Uliana Lopatkina and Danila Korsuntsev. Lopatkina is adulated in Russia and abroad, and her many fans will undoubtedly welcome this release featuring the ballerina in one of her few signature roles. For my money, the filming came too late and might have been a treasurable addition to any ballet collection some ten years earlier, when Lopatkina's performances still had freshness and spontaneity. In this recording she takes the role of Odette-Odile in her now characteristic uncompromising, towering manner, with every inch and feather calculated and controlled. Her plastique is gorgeous but studied in the extreme. Her plight is long-winded and frozen, hard and unmoving by its insistence on a certain spiritual quality which unfortunately doesn't stick to film. This is an Odette locked in her own world, relating to nobody else on stage, least of all the cardboard prince of Danila Korsuntsev. Her Odile is more attractive but again very measured and lacking in excitement as well as in seductive power.
In such presence Danila Korsuntsev doesn't stand a chance. He may be an adequate porteur with great physical qualities but his prince is a cipher who dances his few bits in the Black Swan pas de deux without any distinction or interest. That the Mariinsky considers a weak performance like this sufficient to be preserved for posterity, is a only sad reminder of the current lack of artistic direction.
The pas de trois as danced by Irina Golub, Ekaterina Osmolkina and Anton Korsakov is clean and very lightweight. Here too, there isn't a personality in sight, and everything is delivered without much purpose or concern. Andrei Ivanov's jester is obnoxious and anything but virtuosic. The only one who stands out is Ilya Kuznetsov portraying the evil Rothbart with panache and a genuine sense of drama.
The true star of this DVD remains the Mariinsky corps de ballet, immaculate in its lines and turning the lakeside scenes, beautifully rendered in this film into a miracle of plastical beauty, stylistic coherence and spatial grandeur. Likewise, the national dances in the ballroom Act still look totally right.
Curiously, this might be the first ballet DVD release which bills the conductor higher than any of the dancers. Decca doesn't leave any opportunity unused to remind us that this performance of Swan Lake is conducted by "the great Russian maestro Valery Gergiev" (it's always wonderful that the labels emphasize how brilliant their artists are). A great conductor he may be, but it's still a fact that accompanying a ballet performance is far from his defining moment. The characteristic Gergiev mannerisms can be found here aplenty (the attention to orchestral detail, if sometimes at the expense of the overall line, the unnecessary long final chords etc), yet, worse, his reading lacks all sense of theatricality and spirit, which is with Gergiev's opera background rather surprising. Even Tchaikovsky's big finale sounds rather understated. As could be expected, the booklet features a full-page portrait photo of Gergiev (except for the cover shot of the DVD-case and some thumbnail-shots in the booklet there is nothing comparable of Lopatkina or Korsuntsev) and again in the otherwise learned liner notes by Giannandrea Poesio about the genesis of the ballet we are reminded of how well Gergiev is supposed to understand Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. Some words about the dancers might have been appropriate, although Decca clearly doesn't consider them important enough. Be that is it may, Gergiev might have been better served with a studio recording of the full-length Tchaikovsky score, without the constrictions of accompanying a live performance. (And let the Decca marketing not fool you, the double-CD release of Gergiev's Swan Lake is exactly the same live recording as on the DVD).
The image quality (16:9 anamorphic widescreen) is excellent, although as a film of a ballet performance this will never go down as a model. There are too many cameras angles slicing up movements and bodies, too many close-ups and frames from the waist up, the central camera providing the overall stage view cuts off the feet, while the crane shots sweeping during the lakeside scenes among the swans are more annoying than revealing. The sound quality (PCM Stereo or DTS 5.1 surround) is first-rate although balance-wise the timpani and percussion should ideally have been more forward. Unfortunately, the editing has been too hasty (Irina Golub tripping in the Dance of the Little Swans, some wobbly endings of solos, Lopatkina floating in all directions during the fouettés, the model swans appearing a second time while in fact only the swan queen is appearing etc. could easily have been edited.)
Admirers of Lopatkina needn't hesitate, but to see a better focused Mariinsky Ballet and Swan Lake the older performance with Makhalina and Zelensky remains a clear first choice.
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