Mauro Bigonzetti, “Caravaggio”
State Ballet Berlin
Staatsoper Unter den Linden
Berlin
December 9, 2008
by Horst Koegler
copyright @ 2008 by Horst Koegler
From the ancient friezes of the Grotte de Lascaux through the paintings of contemporary abstract expressionists there runs an uninterrupted chain of art objects, paintings, sculptures and engravings that have inspired choreographers through the centuries. And since Diaghilev, just about one hundred years ago, visual artists of all kinds – including even architects – have become creative collaborators of dance-makers all over the world – to think only of Bakst, Picassso or Matisse as far as ballet is concerned or of Schlemmer and his Bauhaus colleagues through Rauschenberg, Warhol and Stella among the avantgardists. But while composers have occasionally been portrayed in ballets – most often this has happened to Tchaikovsky, but there have also been biographical ballets on Mozart and even Wagner – I remember hardly a danced portrait of one of the great painters – no Dürer, no Rembrandt, no Raphael – only those who have themselves concentrated on dance studies have occasionally been treated as subjects of ballets: Degas, of course, and Toulouse-Lautrec.
It is only recently that choreographers have discovered Caravaggio as an interesting subject for dance investigation – no doubt inspired by Derek Jarman´s film of several years ago which has become a cult object among fringe people. There has been a ballet on him by Liz King at the Vienna Volksoper - a choreographer who prefers to cultivate the outside regions of her profession -, but that seems to have flopped completely. Then came Jochen Ulrich´s “Caravaggio” at the Linz Municipal Theatre (Linz is the capital of Upper Austria) – he was one of the founders of the Cologne Dance Forum and has since become one of the more interesting modern choreographers. He has concentrated on the conflict between Caravaggio and his lover, whom he manslaughtered.
Now the Berlin State Ballet of Vladimir Malakhov announced a full-length “Caravaggio” ballet with himself as protagonist to open the 2008/9 season at the State Opera Unter den Linden, to be choreographed by Mauro Bigonzetti, with music, which his regular collaborator Bruno Moretti had assembled and orchestrated from the work of Claudio Monteverdi. Premiered on December 7, it turned out a highly controversial piece, with the majority of critics tearing it to pieces, while one advocate envisioned Malakhov on his path to conquer new pastures. My own reactions were rather mixed: beautiful pictures and scenes, arranged competently and danced brilliantly, but too loosely connected to add up to a complete whole, let alone a portrait of one of the most enigmatic painters of history.
For that was what Michelangelo Merisi, called Caravaggio after his family´s seat, who lived from 1571 through 1610, and who through the dramatic intensity of his paintings and his extreme contrasts of light and shadow has fascinated art lovers all over the globe. This and his strange assembly of characters, saints and prostitutes, ragazzi from the streets and cardinals, hoodlums and angelic youths, whom he has portrayed in devastating realism, his bisexuality and his always walking on a tightrope between prayer and crime, have contributed to his controversial reputation of an outcast.
Bigonzetti, at 48 today Italy´s leading choreographer, sees him as a revolutionary in his life and in his art, and though he does not want to retell the story of his life, he shows him as a person torn by the conflicts ranging in his innermost, and while not trying to let his pictures take on a life of their own, he himself seems to be present in the scenes he arranges. It is more the thoughts which he imagines, in his encounters with people, his simultaneous existence in two worlds – the real one and the one of his phantasy. It is not easy for the audience to differentiate between the two and it needs a thorough knowledge of his biography and of the iconography of his paintings to identify the actions and refer them to the subject of his paintings. The result is a vagueness which causes a feeling of unease for the spectator.
There is no lack of contrast in the succession of the single scenes: soli, pas de deux and trois and small ensembles are distributed between mass ensembles, and it is the last ones, especially when Bigonzetti concentrates on the exuberant boys, which communicate a feeling of joy and boisterousness and bustling life in the streets of Rome. On the other side Bigonzetti does not hesitate to show the more brutal aspects of life in the shadow of the mafia, even the two dominating female characters represent the split nature of the hero – there is the soft and tender and caring Polina Semionova as the muse of his spiritual and religious longings, and there is Beatrice Knop who by torturing him satisfies his more masochist desires. Red clothes in abundance obviously hint that he was not afraid of wading in blood. Times were cruel and there is no lack of torture and violence. Poor Malakhov at four-fifths nude, clothed with the tiniest of slips, so that he can fully display the play of his muscles – he looks like a brother of Saint Sebastien – suffers ecstatically the pains which are afflicted to him – but always cares that he does not violate the laws of beauty.
And that is the main problem of the ballet – apart from its loose structure – that it looks too beautiful, that Bigonzetti is too much of an aesthete to penetrate to the core of man´s cruelty. Ideally a ballet about Caravaggio might have been choreographed by a Pasolini type of personality – as a ballet noir. Instead Bigonzetti has chosen to paint it in pink. Actually I don´t know a choreographer who could do full justice to the monstrosities of Caravaggio´s nature – maybe that he should have studied the atrocities practised at Guantanamo.
Anyway the ballet offers a plethora of striking scenes, with splendid opportunities to parade the technical prowess of the company and its roster of first-class soloists - apart from those already mentioned Mikhail Kaniskin and Dmitry Semionov (he is the brother of Polina Semyonova), Elisa Carrillo Cabrera, Shoko Nakamura and Michael Banzhaf plus fabulous newcomer Leonard Jakovina, who gets involved in a pas de deux with Malakhov, oozing sex from all its pores.
Even if I found the piece finally disappointing because of its softening approach to such an outrageous subject, Bigonzetti´s professionalism and his musicality are beyond doubt, and I know of no other today Italian choreographer of comparable scope and vision.
Photos (c) E. Nawrath.
