Love and fate

After a 20-year break this ballet masterpiece again adorns the billboard of the Donetsk-based Solovianenko National Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet. It will be reminded that the famous novel of great French classic writer Victor Hugo already has many drama and ballet versions, and there are films based on this book in many countries. The music was written by Italian Cesare Pugni, who wrote a large-scale ballet La Esmeralda, but unlike Hugo’s novel, librettist Jules Perrot made emphasis on the personal drama. In Donetsk version the plot of the ballet has been reshaped by Iryna Hryn and production choreographer Yevhenia Khasianova, who removed the prolixities, secondary characters and changed the final. The classical story which tells how three people fell in love with Gypsy beauty Esmeralda, Quasimodo the hunchback, the cathedral archdeacon Claude Frollo and handsome Captain Phoebus, has acquired modern features, where the mysteries and vices, desires and pain, as well as hatred and love intertwine. The choreography demanded from the artistes a filigree performance of classical and modern dance. Three artists have worked on the set design (Serhii Rodzin, Yevhenii Balakai, and Hennadii Paniotov), Vladimir Vrublevsky is the production conductor, and Oksana Kubekina sewed the costumes. Besides the four major characters, Esmeralda (Iryna Komarenko), Quasimodo (Artem Alifanov), Claude Frollo (Denys Panchenko) and Phoebus (Maksym Valchyk), the character, which unites the whole action of the story, emerges at the very heart of Paris. It is the cathedral, whose stones remember prayers, tears of sorrow and joy, the supplication for help and miracle.

“The premiere of The Hunchback of Notre Dame proved that the audience loves the play and all the four performances enjoyed full houses,” Vadym PYSARIEV, the artistic director of the Donetsk-based Solovianenko Theater of Opera and Ballet told The Day. “The choreographer Yevhenia Khasianova interprets Hugo’s novel and Pugni’s music in a new way: the plot has become more dynamic, it has very interesting variations and duos. Quasimodo’s image was created by young premier Artem Alifanov. He is tall, and apart from the hump and complex makeup he proposed to put a lens in his eye, so the result was a monstrous bell-ringer. When he stands near slender Iryna Komarenko (Esmeralda), the leading dancer of our theater, their scenes are full of power and dramatic performance. The role of Captain Phoebus is a 100-percent hit of Maksym Valchyk, whereas the archdeacon of the cathedral Claude was very expressively played by young dancer Denys Panchenko, who has become a breakthrough for Donetsk admirers of Terpsichore. The lightened decorations do not weigh on the stage and give space for the director and actors. This play can be called our team’s creative luck and a European-scale production.”

“Our plot is focused on four sufferers, three men and one girl,” choreographer Yevhenia KHASIANOVA underlined. “We tried to focus on the ballet’s dramaturgy. Most importantly, I had the scores, because now this is a big problem. When we were staging Corsair, we found out that we needed to pay Harvard for the author’s scores, which is why many choreographers make music compilations for the plays, including combination of the music by several composers. In our production the story has a tragic ending, here I followed Hugo. I have been in Notre Dame de Paris a couple of times, and I have heard the story that Hugo saw the inscription ‘fate,’ which later was painted over, and which inspired the writer for writing this novel. I felt that there was a heavy aura. It is impossible to make good photos there. This is a cathedral adorned with chimeras and a kind of evil fate is hanging over the heroes. I want to make special mention of the dancers who performed the leading parts: Artem Alifanov (Quasimodo), Iryna Komarenko (Esmeralda), Maksym Valchyk (Phoebus), Denys Panchenko (Claude Frollo). Our lame hunchback does not walk, he dances, and Esmeralda is an extremely romantic and dramatic person. Quasimodo and Esmeralda have a very touching adagio in the last act, where he takes his beloved out of the gibbet. Claude’s role was fantastically played by Panchenko (Denys underwent practice at the Mariinsky Theater and this artiste has a big scenic future), and Maksym Valchyk (Phoebus) proved that he is the leading performer of the theater. It took three months to stage the production. At the same time part of the company was on tour in America, another part – in Japan. While the leading dancers were busy, the production crew and I were involved in the preparations. The complexity was in conveying the expressiveness of the feelings of main heroes and their passions as well as medieval atmosphere via simple means, and in my opinion the performers have successfully accomplished this task.”