Résumés
Abstract
The early years of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet (RWB), the era of its founding director Gweneth Lloyd (1901–1993), remain a “dark age” because in 1954, all possessions of the company perished in a fire. Earlier attempts at writing the history of this institution, such as Max Wyman’s book The Royal Winnipeg Ballet: The First Forty Years (Toronto, Doubleday, 1978) and Jeff McKay and Patti Ross Milne’s documentary film 40 Years of One Night Stands (2008), suffer from a general neglect of the music used by the company. The RWB mounted several ballets to original music, typically by Canadian composers. Walter Kaufmann (1907–1984), a German-Jewish composer exiled after 1934, living in Canada from 1947, and appointed conductor of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra in 1948, received commissions for Visages, an abstract ballet for the company’s tenth anniversary in January 1949, and The Rose and the Ring, a “children’s Xmas ballet” (RWB), first performed in December of the same year. Creation, aesthetics, and reception of these ballets are evaluated on the basis of Kaufmann’s surviving autograph scores at Indiana University in Bloomington and of contemporaneous documents, especially press reviews and, in the case of Visages, a documentary film by the National Film Board of Canada, Ballet Festival (1949). Visages was immediately hailed as a major artistic achievement and remained a staple of the RWB’s repertory until the 1954 fire. The RWB showcased Visages at the Canadian Ballet Festivals in Toronto (1949) and Montréal (1950), drawing praise from renowned critic Anatole Chujoy, and regularly presented it on its tours, including one to Washington, D.C. (1954). Referring to Anna Blewchamp’s reconstruction to Lloyd’s ballet The Wise Virgins, which was also lost in the 1954 fire, chances for a revival of Visages are assessed.
Résumé
Les premières années du Royal Winnipeg Ballet (RWB), durant lesquelles il était dirigé par son fondateur Gweneth Lloyd (1901–1993), demeurent obscures du fait que tous les biens de la compagnie furent détruits par un incendie en 1954. Les tentatives de retracer l’histoire de cette institution – notamment dans l’ouvrage de Max Wyman intitulé The Royal Winnipeg Ballet : The First Forty Years (Doubleday, Toronto, 1978) et le documentaire de Jeff McKay et Patti Ross Milne, 40 Years of One Night Stands (2008) – souffrent d’une insuffisante prise en compte de la musique utilisée par la compagnie. Or, le RWB a monté plusieurs ballets sur une musique originale, généralement écrite par des compositeurs canadiens.
L’un de ces compositeurs est Walter Kaufmann (1907–1984), un Juif allemand qui avait quitté son pays en 1934 et qui a vécu au Canada à partir de 1947. Nommé directeur musical du Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra l’année suivante, il fut chargé d’écrire une partition pour Visages, un ballet abstrait présenté aux célébrations du dixième anniversaire de la compagnie, en janvier 1949, et pour The Rose and the Ring, un « ballet pour le Noël des enfants » (selon le RWB) qui fut créé en décembre de la même année.
L’étude de la genèse, de l’esthétique et de la réception par le public et la critique de ces deux ballets a pu être réalisée grâce à l’examen des partitions autographes conservées à l’Université de l’Indiana, à Bloomington, de documents contemporains, en particulier des revues de presse et, pour Visages, d’un documentaire de l’Office national du film du Canada, Ballet Festival (1949). Visages fut immédiatement salué comme une réussite artistique de premier plan et demeura un pilier du répertoire du RWB jusqu’à l’incendie de 1954. Le RWB présenta Visages aux Festivals du ballet canadien de Toronto (1949) et de Montréal (1950), suscitant les éloges du célèbre critique Anatole Chujoy, et le ballet fut dansé régulièrement régulièrement en tournée, notamment à Washington (1954). En se référant à la reconstitution en 1992 par Anna Blewchamp du ballet The Wise Virgins de Gweneth Lloyd, qui fut aussi détruit par les flammes en 1954, l’auteur évalue finalement les chances d’une reprise de Visages.
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Biographical note
Born in Stuttgart, Germany, Albrecht Gaub studied musicology, Slavic languages and literature at the University of Hamburg from 1988 to 1997. He received his Ph. D. in 1997 with a dissertation on the collaborative opera-ballet Mlada (1872) by Cui, Musorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, and Minkus. He taught at the University of Hamburg from 1997 to 1999. From 1999 to 2000, he was a postdoctoral fellow with a grant from the DAAD at McGill University in Montreal. From 2004 to 2011, he was music editor at A-R Editions in Middleton, Wisconsin. He is now a freelance editor and scholar specializing in the musical cultures of Russia and Canada. His publications are written in German, English, and Russian.
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