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By the middle of December the dispute was largely resolved and performances were complete. Nevertheless the dancing at the three performances I attended then was more ragged than usual so the disruption may still have had an impact.

‘Nutcracker’ is widely regarded as the quintessential Christmas ballet thanks to the festive party in Act 1 and the divertissements and Sugar Plum Fairy solo in Act 2. Yet not all productions are based on Ivanov’s 1892 creation. Unlike Peter Wright’s versions for the two Royal companies, other versions range from the camp to the cartoon caricature to the psychological. The Paris Opera performed the production that Nureyev had mounted for them over 20 years ago, his sixth and last version, which deviated from the approach he adopted for his production for the Royal, 18 years earlier. This is a gloomy version all round. The scenery was drab and even the Christmas tree lacked sparkle, without the magical growth to the inspiring swoop in the score so pivotal to traditional versions. The costumes were equally disappointing. Even in the Waltz of the Flowers the unwieldy costumes and wigs deflected from the brilliance of the music and choreography, whilst very visible zips in the costumes for the rats made their appearance ridiculous rather than frightening.

But the darkest aspect of the production is the interpretation of the story. Nureyev claimed that the libretto is based on the Alexandre Dumas adaptation, which is a sanitised version of Hoffmann’s tale. However, his approach veers to the Freudian since Clara falls in love with a father figure, her elderly godfather Drosselmeyer, who becomes transformed, in her dream, into the Nutcracker Prince. There is also a lot more aggression in the ballet than in traditional versions, despite the battle of the mice being unusually tame and tedious. The opening tableau, set outside Clara’s house, has a violent gang of youths threatening passers-by. In the party scene, Clara’s brother Fritz is not the sole aggressor, by cruelly taunting Clara and breaking the nutcracker doll, additionally all the other boys are disruptive. A third Freudian aspect is the emphasis on family tensions, not merely at the party but also in the nightmare scene at the start of act 2, where all the family members appear ominously as bats, wearing huge model heads representing exaggerated versions of their own faces and dance frantically. It is an approach more characteristic of Maguy Marin than Ivanov.

In principle, Nureyev’s Freudian perspective is an interesting approach to the ‘Nutcracker’. Tchaikovsky himself worried about the libretto’s weakness, dividing the ballet into two distinct sections- the party and the dream. So, reintroducing the key members of the family into the second part (different relatives join in the divertissements as well as in the bat scene), could have given the ballet more coherence and the Freudian approach could have made sense of themes and tensions inherent in the plot. Yet it doesn’t work. By introducing the family characters into the second act, Nureyev reduces the dance impact of the divertissements.
 

The most serious problem, though, is his choreography. Instead of reproducing what is left of Ivanov’s original choreography, he imposes his own steps, boringly repetitive, too fast and fussy. He never learned to simplify, to allow dance to breathe and flow, but packed in too many steps, betraying the mood and pulse of Tchaikovsky’s score. The result is choreography that is technically difficult yet often unattractive, in which only the very best dancers can shine. Unfortunately, at the performance I saw, the technical difficulties in the usually sublime pas de deux posed serious problems for the lead dancers, Melanie Hurel and Christophe Duquenne, standing in for Benjamin Pech. The partnering was little short of calamitous, with mistakes and misses so bad that they couldn’t cover up. Hurel, the stronger of the two and usually a competent dancer across a range of ballets, struggled even in her solos, whilst he had little elevation or style and was noisy. The dancing of the corps was uneven but the many students of the School danced their parts with gusto.

One of the best aspects of the performance was the quality of the music, albeit re-arranged by Nureyev. Interestingly, Tchaikovsky composed parts of the score in Paris, which is where he discovered the celesta mustel, deployed for the first time in the Sugar Plum solo. It was the Orchestra of the Paris Opera itself which played, instead of the Orchestre Colonne which usually accompanies the ballet, and conductor Kevin Rhodes revealed the rich colours of the score.

Like ‘The Nutcracker’, ‘Paquita’ is a two act Nineteenth century ballet which starts with a story, conveyed partly by mime, and which culminates in a lengthy divertissement in grand classical style. It is this final section with which we are familiar in Britain, as different companies have reproduced it, most notably the Samsova version for Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, which Birmingham Royal Ballet, the successor company, recently revived. Even this famous section of the ballet was not performed in Russia for 50 years, until Vinogradov revived it, and it was thought that the rest was lost. However, that master of ballet reconstruction, Pierre Lacotte, who had been taught by Russian ballerinas who had danced ‘Paquita’ before the Revolution, pieced it together from detailed notes of the production that he discovered. The Paris company first performed the full production in 2001, having performed Vinogradov’s suite for 20 years.

‘Paquita’, like so many ballets, has an unlikely plot – a beautiful gypsy girl, living in Napoleonic Spain, who saves a dashing French officer and eventually discovers that she comes from the same aristocratic family, enabling her to marry him. The structure of the ballet is unevenly balanced, a mixture of different parts and styles. The first act is not unlike a Bournonville ballet, a mixture of pantomime, pseudo-Spanish dance and classical variations, the second scene relying on hilarious cloak and dagger action. The ballet had originated in the late Romantic era, in 1846, but departs from the Romantic idiom. Petipa had produced and danced it the following year, to open his first season in Russia; but revised it significantly 35 years later, adding the divertissements and the grand pas de deux at the end as well as changing an earlier pas de trios to make it more classical and technically challenging.
 

Such a varied ballet requires versatile performers, with a strong classical technique, and both casts I saw fulfilled these criteria. Dorothee Gilbert, the newest etoile, danced with the most senior etoile, Manuel Legris, whilst the magnificent Marie-Agnes Gillot was partnered by Karl Paquette. The role of Paquita is particularly demanding but both Gilbert and Gillot had the stamina, dramatic conviction and charm to carry it off, and brilliantly tossed off the pirouettes, fouettes and jetes of the taxing grand pas de deux. Legris, as ever the epitome of the danseur noble, and Paquette partnered and danced well. In the first act the strenuous pas de trios was danced well at both performances, with Mathias Heymann,( who was so exceptional as Colas in ‘Fille’ in the summer, and who has recently won a major French prize for best male dancer) , excelling. The corps mostly danced well in the Spanish and Gypsy dances in scene one and the ball scene and did the classical variations of the grand pas in style.

So the performances of the two ballets varied in quality, perhaps not surprising given the industrial problems, and also the great number of performances of both ballets, especially ‘Nutcracker’ that were put on (Duquenne had to partner another ballerina, Nolwenn Daniel, as well as Hurel, so perhaps pressure and fatigue accounted for the lapse in his partnering; he has received more favourable reviews elsewhere). Perhaps the most remarkable point is that one company can mount such big productions simultaneously.