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The Royal Ballet's Don Quixote, 2013


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Thank you very much for your interesting explanation, and I agree with you, I am also quite sure that some original orchestrations of some famous ballets have been beefed-up. Yes, I am totally sure of that. 

 

I have a question : when the Bolshoi came to the Covent Garden to dance Don Quixote the orchestra was the one of the Royal Opera House or it was the Bolshoi Orchestra? Which score did they use ?

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that's right janet, actually, it does not matter the orchestra, the thing is that everybody enjoys the Bolshoi Don Quixote, and a good reason for that, and that is my impression, is because the orchestration is wonderful, vivid, full of live.

I'm not saying the last don Q of the operahouse was not full of life, of course, not, BUT, I simply say that the orchestration could have been a Little bit more beefed-up as Wulff would say :-)

 

And actually, I wonder myself, if a score already exists, why is there the need to  have the same score returned to the original one when the " beefed-up" is well and willingly enough accepeted.

 

For example Vincenzo Bellini wrote  Norma for a Mezzo soprano voice, (Giuditta Pasta) , but that role end up to be sung by sopranos, and audiences seems to love that, they , I think , would not the other way around back, myself included.

 

so, I wonder why return to original scores when the beefed-up scores are good enough? 

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I think that the ballet world is pretty cavalier in its treatment both of original orchestra scores and choreography - at least for the 19th C ballets. Would it be considered acceptable to dish out the same treatment for Ashton, Balanchine or Cranko? I think not: all three of those choreographers have "guardians" that try to preserve the original integrity of their ballets. Some conductors have been known to "improve" details of orchestration of Beethoven symphonies, and Shakespeare's language has been simplified for TV - I followed a TV production of Lear once with the original text and was surprised to find how many changes had been made, not only cuts but the actual words. Are such practices really OK if they are willingly ( and sometimes unwittingly) accepted?

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