The Firebird

A danced tale by choreographer Michel Fokine with music by Igor Stravinsky, The Firebird premiered at the Paris Opera on June 25, 1910 performed by Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. “Ivan Tsarevich one day sees a marvellous bird, all gold and flames; he pursues it without being able to catch it, and only succeeds in plucking one of its glittering feathers, thus begins the libretto taken from traditional Russian tales”. But it is not the portrait of this bird that we are going to draw, nor is it the one George Balanchine made in 1949 based on this theme about the 1945 orchestral suite for the New York City Ballet. Stravinski qui tira trois suites de son ballet en 1910, 1919 et 1945, confiera à ce propos : « Je préfère la chorégraphie de Balanchine pour la version 1945 de la suite de l’Oiseau de feu à l’ensemble du ballet de Fokine et à la musique aussi : la musique du ballet complet est trop longue et de qualité inégale » ⁽¹⁾. Like Balanchine, we use the 1945 concert suite, Maurice Béjart, whose version I danced in 1979 at the Ballet du Rhin, having danced the shorter version from 1919 at the Paris Opera in 1970. A bird of hope, or a revolutionary icon guiding partisans wearing battledress, Béjart explained in his foreword, “Stravinsky, a Russian musician, Stravinsky, a revolutionary musician. […] The Firebird is the phoenix rising from its ashes. The poet, like the revolutionary, is a firebird” ⁽²⁾. For our part, we should remember that birds symbolise the connection between heaven and earth, even that the phoenix decaying to be reborn personifies the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of Christ in Christianity. For the rest, in his commentary on the score, the composer Reynaldo Hahn wrote in 1910, “a very pure, very strong breeze, coming from high above” ⁽³⁾. D’où la tentation de faire de l’Oiseau de feu un passeur de lumière portant au coeur des hommes la consolation et l’espoir, à l’image de François d’Assise, le saint poète de la nature qui conversait avec ses frères les oiseaux qu’ils soient beaux rayonnants d’une grande splendeur, ou bien simples moineaux.

Thierry Malandain, February 2021

⁽¹⁾ Memories and Commentaries by Igor Stravinsky, Robert Craft 1959, pg.33

⁽²⁾ Maurice Béjart, 1970 ⁽³⁾ Le Journal, 27 juin 1910

Thierry Malandain gives his version today. A delight. Russian folklore is no longer relevant – here it’s the elevation of the soul.

Les Echos, Philippe Noisette • 14 September 2021

Thierry Malandain (…) chose the 1945 concert suite for this new choreography of L’Oiseau de feu, the same one chosen by George Balanchine to whom he clearly pays tribute in this refined neoclassical choreography, extremely elegant in luminous costumes by Jorge Gallardo

Concertonet.com, Oivier Brunel • 14 septembre 2021

Malandain and Harriague, flamboyant each in their own way” (…) The former, with great delicacy and finesse, the latter with overflowing energy endowed with a theatrical sense of staging – they have corporal intelligence and dramaturgy in common.

Sud Ouest, Céline Musseau • 14 september 2021