Ballet in one act. Libretto by Menchert Lendel.
Premiere - 1926 in Cologne.
Characters: Girl, Old Cavalier, Student, Three Tramps, Mandarin.
In a studio apartment, in the attic of a house located in one of the alleys big city, a gang of bandits is lurking: three tramps and a beautiful prostitute. The girl reluctantly carries out the villains' order to lure someone from the street here so that they can rob the victim.
At the door leading to the stairs, an old gentleman appears, whom the girl lured with a wave of a silk scarf. The girl is flirting, flirting with a comical old man. The tramps jump out of the ambush, rob the old womanizer, and he himself is thrown into a hatch under the floor.
The girl is again sent to the balcony to look out for a new victim. A young student appears, an inexperienced teenager who went upstairs only to give back a handkerchief that had fallen from the balcony. The girl steals the wallet from the boy’s pocket, but it is, of course, empty.
The tramps grab the student and throw him out the door.
The girl liked the awkward student and would like to follow him, but her accomplices are holding her back.
“Business” is more important than idyll. The girl protests, is indignant, but still goes out onto the balcony and continues to search for the victim. But now fear is reflected on her face. What could she see below?
A tangerine appears on the threshold.
The girl backs away in fear from the monstrous, idol-like creature. She looks at the mysterious stranger with superstitious horror.
She seduces him and is in awe of him.
The Mandarin first sits in stone immobility on a chair, while the girl dances and tries to please him, and the ambush bandits incite her with signs. But passion flares up in the mandarin. Burning with desire, he pursues the girl, who runs away from him in horror.
The chase becomes more and more wild.
The tramps rise up in front of the mandarin, knock him down, but all in vain; the power of elemental passion cannot be drowned out.
The Mandarin shakes off his attackers, they pounce on him again, strangle him and then throw him into the hatch. But the hatch cover rises and a tangerine crawls out of the hole.
Staggering, he gets to his feet and again rushes towards the girl with wild passion. A box is thrown at him, a chair is smashed over his head, a knife is thrust into his back, but none of this can stop him.
The power of passion is invincible.
The mandarin is hanged from a window curtain cord, but he is still alive. His eyes look greedily at the girl.
Now even seasoned bandits tremble with fear of their victims.
They cut the rope on which the mandarin was hanged. Superhuman desire keeps him alive. Barely moving, he approaches the girl and hugs her.
Then he falls dead in her arms. Desire made him live. He could not die until his wish was fulfilled.
Bela Bartok
Libretto by M. Lengyel. Choreographer G. Strobach.
First performance: Cologne, City Opera House, 28 November 1926
Girl's room. One of the tramps searches and turns out his pockets: empty! The second one searches the table - the same result. Then the third gets out of bed, approaches the Girl, tells her to dress up and, looking out of the window, lure men. They will take care of the rest themselves. At first the Girl objects and resists, but, forced to obey, she stands by the window. She smiles at some man. Wasting no time, he climbs the stairs and knocks on the door. The tramps are hiding. An old womanizer enters. He makes funny gallant movements, indicating old-fashioned compliments, and approaches the girl. She busily asks about money, to which the guest responds with some maxim like “Happiness is not in money, it is important that feelings bloom!” The tramps come out of their hiding place and lower the gentleman down the stairs. Beside themselves with anger, they attack the Girl, reproaching her for wasting her time. This time she obediently stands at the window. And again the gentleman catches her smile. This is a young man, maybe a student. He flies up the stairs and, barely catching his breath, finds himself next to the Girl. But then he is shackled by shyness. The girl beckons him to her, hugs him and quietly searches his pockets. As you would expect - not a penny! But having started the dance in order to divert the Young Man’s attention from the “search,” the Girl suddenly experiences some kind of incomprehensible tenderness for him. Their dance becomes more and more passionate; no longer only the Boy, but also the Girl is seized by a sensual impulse. The shout of the tramps brings the dancing couple back to reality. In one minute the bandits deal with the young guest and send him out the door. The fierce three surround the Girl: “If the next guest is worthless, blame yourself!” She's at the window again. She looks around the street with an indifferent look, a lifeless smile on her face. Suddenly everything changes. Her eyes stare at some person in surprise, then horror; he comes closer and closer, the girl recoils from the window, but it’s too late. He noticed her. Heavy footsteps are heard - it's him climbing the stairs. The door opens, and on the threshold is the Mandarin. His rich, jeweled outfit hypnotizes the tramps who follow him. The Mandarin stands on the threshold in stony stillness. He seems to pay no attention to anything, not even the Girl. Huddled in a corner where she ran as soon as the Mandarin opened the door, the Ig Girl takes her frightened eyes off the strange guest. Her accomplices, with hasty gestures, tell her what to do; She understands what they want from her, she is lost. The Mandarin, still in the same stupor, takes two steps and the chair falls heavily. The girl stands in front of him helpless, indecisive. Finally she overcomes the feeling close to disgust and timidly begins to dance. The slow, sluggish dance gradually flares up and ends with a wild erotic dance. The Mandarin still sits completely motionless. Only his eyes live on his stone face. But when the Girl, suffocated in a frantic dance, sits on his lap, he begins to tremble. He tries to hug the Girl, she slips out of his hands, runs to the side and freezes like an animal, ready to jump. Inflamed, as if in delirium, the Mandarin pursues his victim. He stumbles and, falling, overtakes her. They are fighting. The whole trio rushes out of the ambush. The bandits rip off the Mandarin's jewelry and conspire to finish him off. They throw him on the bed and strangle him. Staggering from fatigue, with their arms dangling as if filled with lead, they disperse to the corners. Suddenly the Mandarin’s head shakes, his eyes slowly open, and his gaze, full of longing, turns to the Girl. Everyone freezes. Long pause. Having come to his senses, one of the bandits rips an ancient saber from the wall and inflicts several blows on a man in whom there is barely a glimmer of life. But all trials come to an end. And when the source of life in the Mandarin dries up, the Girl sinks to the floor, hugs the enchanted Mandarin and, lulling him, warming him with her warmth, sees him off on his last journey.
One act ballet.
Composer B. Bartok, screenwriter M. Lengyel, choreographer and artist Hans Strobach, conductor E. Senkar.
*Slums of a big city. In a large gloomy room, three bandits force a street girl to lure clients. She dances in front open window. The old rake appears. After his brief dance with the girl, bandits rob him. Not finding anything valuable on the old man, the bandits throw him out. The next client is a shy young man. Everything repeats itself, and again, not finding anything valuable in the pockets, the bandits drive the loser away.
The third to respond to the girl’s inviting dance is the Chinese Mandarin. A stranger from an alien world, he looks at his seductress with a frightening, motionless gaze. A girl with fear dances her mesmerizing dance in front of a stranger. Gradually, a monstrous passion engulfs the Mandarin. He chases the girl for a long time, trying in vain to hug her. Finally, three robbers emerge from their hiding place to finish off the dangerous stranger. After robbing the Mandarin, they try to kill him. They smother him with a pillow, but he revives and pursues the girl again. The bandits inflict fatal blows on the Mandarin with a knife, but again and again he rushes to the object of his unfulfilled passion. The brutal bandits hang the stranger on a lamp hook, but he is miraculously invulnerable again, as if enchanted. To the horror of the killers, he raises his head and passionately rushes towards the girl who has conquered him. The inhuman passion that flared up in the Chinese turns out to be stronger than death. Only after the girl embraces him in her arms and he knows the immeasurable joy of quenching his passion, the spell of immortality ceases to work. Bleeding, the Mandarin dies.
Hungarian composer Bela Bartok (1881-1945) is one of the most prominent musicians of the first half of the 20th century. He is the author of the opera Bluebeard's Castle, two ballets, three piano and two violin concertos, six string quartets, a number of symphonic works (Divertimento, Concerto for Orchestra, Music for String Percussion and Celesta) and many piano works. His works are still frequent guests of concert halls all over the world. The score of Bela Bartok's The Marvelous Mandarin, along with Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire and Alban Berg's Wozzeck, provides an example of a demonstrative break with romantic tradition in European music.
The libretto of the ballet belongs to the young Hungarian playwright Menhert Lengyel. It was composed under the influence of the tour of Sergei Diaghilev's ballet troupe in Budapest in 1912 and published in a magazine in 1917 as a plot for a one-act pantomime. The eerie fantasy of the plot interested Bartok, whose ballet “The Wooden Prince” was staged at the Budapest National Theater in the same 1917. The score of the new ballet was composed in as soon as possible: from October 1918 to May 1919. End of World War II, collapse Austro-Hungarian Empire, and then the communist revolution in Hungary and its suppression delayed the possibility of realizing Bartok's new work on stage. In addition, the ballet's dark plot and its music, full of dissonant sound complexes, mechanical rhythms and harsh timbral effects, confused the conservative musical community.
The score of the half-hour ballet represents a single symphonic whole without division into separate “numbers”. A short “dance of seduction”, repeated three times, grotesque dances of the first two gentlemen, a slow waltz of a girl and a frantic pursuit of the Mandarin, struck by inhuman passion - these are the actual dance fragments of the ballet. The rest of the action was supposed to be solved pantomime (in the list of Bartok’s works, “The Marvelous Mandarin” is called pantomime). In the most impressive episodes of music, the decisive role is played by the most energetic rhythm, fascinating stubborn assertiveness and whimsical play of sharp accents. The repeatedly hammering ostinato bass creates an almost hypnotizing backdrop to the action. At the same time, the music retains the specifically figurative nature of the action of the pantomime ballet. The music of “The Wonderful Mandarin” is extremely expressive and provides the choreographer with the opportunity to create a bright, memorable spectacular sequence.
In 1923-24, Bartok completed the orchestration of the ballet. The management of the Budapest Opera first decided to stage it, but then the ballet was rejected due to the “immorality of the plot” and the extreme novelty of the musical language. In 1926, the ballet “The Marvelous Mandarin” finally premiered at the Cologne Opera House. The initiative came from the famous conductor Jene Senkar, a Hungarian by nationality, at that time the chief conductor of the Cologne Theater. Unfortunately, almost no information has been preserved about the production itself. It is known that the main roles were performed by Wilma Aug (Prostitute) and Ernst Zeiller (Mandarin). But the scandal associated with this premiere is widely known. Already at the second performance, the respectable local public, shocked by both the plot and the music, staged an obstruction. The laughter and whistling of the conservatives, the cries of approval from the youth, made it difficult for the performance to end. The atmosphere was reminiscent of the 1913 Paris premiere of The Rite of Spring. But Cologne is not Paris! The next day the press attacked the author with a hail of mocking reproaches. Soon church and municipal authorities excluded the performance from the repertoire as “the embodiment of dangerous immorality.” Many years later, Senkar recalled this incident. The mayor of the city, Konrad Adenauer, summoned him and rudely reprimanded him for staging “such a weak ballet.” “You do not take into account the traditions of our city,” said the burgomaster. When the famous conductor said that this work was brilliant, and Bartok was the best composer of our time, then the future German Chancellor snapped: “Don’t talk nonsense, Mr. Senkar!” Senkar, in his 1956 memoirs, adds: “Time has proven that I was right.”
Unfortunately, the truth does not always come on time. During the composer’s lifetime, the ballet “The Marvelous Mandarin” was staged only once, and even then in fascist Italy (1942, Milan, choreographer A. Millos). Naturally, the author of the music, who is in exile in the USA, could not attend. But the number of performances of Bartók’s ballet after the end of World War II is difficult to accurately count. In the composer’s native Hungary, the ballet was staged many times: in Budapest (1945, 1956, choreographer D. Harangoso; in 1970, L. Sheregi), in Szeged (1949, D. Lorenz: 1963,1965, D. Harangoso), in Pecs (1965 , I. Eck). Among other productions, we note: “New York City Ballley” (1951, T. Bolender), London (1956, A. Rodriguez), Paris (1958, J. Charra), Prague (1964, L. Ogoun), Copenhagen (1967 , F. Flindt), “American Ballet Theater” (1971, W. Gadd with the participation of Natalia Makarova), La Scala (1980, R. Petit).
In Russia, Bartók's ballet was first performed in 1961 at the Bolshoi Theater staged by Leonid Lavrovsky under the title "Night City". The main roles were played by Nina Timofeeva and Maris Liepa. M. Liepa later recalled the peculiarities of this performance: “Critics at one time condemned the production of Night City, blaming Lavrovsky for deviating from the libretto of Bartok’s The Marvelous Mandarin. These were unfair, from my point of view, attacks, since the choreographer remained faithful to the music and idea. He only elevated it: not “passion is stronger than death,” but “love is stronger than death,” and therefore replaced the Mandarin with Youths. Lavrovsky had every right to such a reading of the ballet, taking into account, and quite rightly, the theater in which the ballet was staged, our morality and ethical principles.” At that time, “our morals” were stronger than copyrights!
Among other productions, the performance with the participation of Alla Osipenko and John Markovsky with choreography by Mai Murdmaa made a strong impression. The premiere took place in 1977 in the Leningrad troupe, which later became known as the Boris Eifman Ballet. And here the woman “gradually submits to the power of the stranger’s impulse, memorized poses give way to a free and sincere expression of feelings.”
In conclusion, a note about the unfortunate Russian-sounding title of Bartok's ballet. It is no coincidence that domestic ballet productions were called differently. The combination of words “Wonderful Mandarin” is associated with Christmas tree tangerines, Christmas miracles, but not with the miracle of the unquenched passion of a certain Chinese Mandarin. IN foreign names Ballet Mandarin is written with a capital letter as the name of a stage character. Perhaps the closest meaning would be to call the ballet “The Monstrous Mandarin” - it sounds scary and mysterious.
A. Degen, I. Stupnikov
"Wonderful Mandarin" "THE WONDERFUL MANDARIN"("A csodálatos mandarin"), one-act pantomime ballet. Comp. B. Bartok, stage. M. Lengyel. 28.2.1926, Opera, Cologne, ballet. X. Strobach, conductor E. Senkar; performers A. Aug and E. Zeiler. 1942, La Scala, Milan, ballet. A. Millos (in his tenure: 1945, Rome; 1954, Rio de Janeiro; 1955, Sao Paulo; 1957 and 1964, Florence; 1961, Cologne; 1972, Vienna). In Hungary: 9.12.1945, Hungarian opera t-r, Budapest, ballet. D. Harangozo, art. G. Olah; performers M. Otrubai, E. Vashhegyi. 1956, in the same place, ballet. same. 1970, in the same place, ballet. L. Sheregi. 1949, National t-r, Szeged, ballet. D. Lörinc. 1963 and 1965, in the same place, ballet. D. Harangozo. 1965, Pecs Ballet, ballet. I. Eck. In other countries (names of choreographers in brackets): New York (1951, New York City Ballet troupe, T. Bolender), Munich (1955, A. Carter), London (1956, Sadler's Wells Ballet troupe ", A. Rodriguez), Belgrade (1957, D. Parlic), Zurich (1957, Vashhegyi and V. Pastor), Amsterdam (1957, Dutch National Ballet, same ballet), Vienna (1958, E. Hanka ), Paris (1958, Balle de France troupe, J. Charra), Wuppertal (1958, E. Walter), Gdansk (1960, J. Yazynowna-Sobczak), Bratislava (1961, J. Zaiko), Ostrava (1961 , E. Gabzdil), Marseille (1962, J. Lazzini), Brussels (1964, ballet the same), Bonn (1964, G. Urbani), Prague (1964, New Prague Ballet troupe, L. Ogoun), Cluj ( 1965, Hungarian State Opera, S. Popescu), Cologne (1967, G. Furtwängler), Sarajevo (1967, F. Horvath), Copenhagen (1967, F. Flindt), Milan (1968, M. Pistoni), Buenos Aires (1968, O. Arais), Paris (1968, "Opera Comique", M. Spareblek), Bucharest (1969, O. Danowski), Poznan (1970, K. Drzewiecki), Berlin (1974, German State Opera , ballet the same), Prague (1970, J. Nemechek), Stockholm (1970, W. Gadd), Munich (1973, Sheregi), Bytom (1968, Z. Korytsky), Sofia (1975, A. Gavrilov). In the USSR compare 25.5.1961, Big t-r, Moscow (under the name "Night City"), ballet. L. M. Lavrovsky, art. V. F. Ryndin; performers N. V. Timofeeva, M. E. Liepa, V. A. Levashev. 1968, T-r "Estonia" (M. Murdmaa). 1973, Perm (N. N. Boyarchikov). 1977, Leningrad. ballet ensemble (Murdmaa).
In a gloomy slum on the outskirts of a big city, three bandits use their girlfriend as bait for rich passers-by. The first two victims - an old rake and a shy youth - do not bring money to the robbers; the third Chinese Mandarin, amazes them with its magical mystery. In vain he seeks the love of the frightened Girl, and the attempts of the bandits to deal with him are just as futile. Only after seeing the Girl’s reciprocal feeling, the Mandarin dies, bleeding from his wounds.
Lit.: Szabolcsi V., A csodáltos mandarin, in the book: Liszt Ferenc és Bartók Béla emlékére, Bdpst, 1955; Bartók repertorium. 19711975; Kortvélyes G., A modern technology, Bdpst, 1970.
B. M. Pappe.
Ballet. Encyclopedia. - M.:. Chief Editor Yu.N.Grigorovich. 1981 .
See what “Wonderful Mandarin” is in other dictionaries:
Bartok B.- (Bartуk) Bela (25 III 1881, Nagyszentmiklos, now Synnikolaul Mare, Romania 26 IX 1945, NY) Hung. composer, pianist, musicologist, folklorist and teacher. Born into the family of an agricultural director. schools and people teachers. From early... ... Music Encyclopedia
HUNGARIAN OPERA THEATER (Magyar Állami Operaház). It dates back to 1837, when the Pest Hungary was created. tr (from 1840 National), stood out as an opera house and received a new building in 1884. The first period of the existence of the ballet troupe was connected ... Ballet. Encyclopedia
HUNGARIAN BALLET. Prof. Ballet art has been known in the country since the 2nd half. 18th century, when in the palaces of the Austro-Hungarians. foreigners began to speak to the aristocracy. dancers (in 1772 J. J. Nover with his troupe; in 1794 S. Vigano and his wife M. Medina) ... Ballet. Encyclopedia
DANISH BALLET. Archaeological Excavations provide information about ritual dances. representations in Denmark dating back to the 9th-5th centuries. BC e. Surviving geographical name (e.g. Dansehøye dance hills) indicate that the dance was already... ... Ballet. Encyclopedia
FLINDT Flemming (b. 30.9.1936, Copenhagen), dated. artist, choreographer. In 194655 he studied at the Royal Date School. ballet with H. Lander and V. Volkova, since 1955 in this troupe (soloist since 1957; artistic director in 196678).... ... Ballet. Encyclopedia
VOBORNIK (Vobomik) Gustav (b. 13.3.1929, Strakonice), Czechoslovakian. artist and choreographer. Since 1948 in the Czechoslovak state. song and dance ensemble, since 1959 at the National. t re in Prague. In 1963 he graduated from the choreographer's department of the Academy of Arts in Prague. IN… … Ballet. Encyclopedia
PER OPERA AND BALLET THEATER of the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, academic. P.I. Tchaikovsky. Basic in 1878. Until the 2nd half. 1920s He staged only opera performances (with the participation of ballet dancers). The ballet troupe was organized in 1926. 1st... ... Ballet. Encyclopedia
Harangozo Gyula- Harangozó Gyula (19.4.1908, Budapest, ‒ 10.11.1974, ibid.), Hungarian ballet dancer, choreographer. In 1925–28 he studied at the ballet school with E. Brada. Since 1928 at the Budapest Opera and Ballet Theater. He made his debut in the party of the Governor... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia
Harangozo- (Harangozó) Gyula (19.4.1908, Budapest, 10.11.1974, ibid.), Hungarian ballet dancer, choreographer. In 1925 28 he studied at the ballet school with E. Brada. Since 1928 at the Budapest Opera and Ballet Theater. He made his debut in the role of the Governor (“Cocked Hat”... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia
Nikolay BARABANOV,
Scientific and methodological center
Central District education department,
Moscow
Wonderful mandarin
American dancer Todd Bolender as Mandarin
In relation to Bartók's two previous stage works, this score stands apart - in the degree of maturity, in the degree of extremely intense expression, in the strength of the tragic intensity, in the categoricalness with which the composer breaks with the refined sophistication of impressionism and comes close to the border beyond which the sphere begins atonal music, but nowhere, however, does it cross this border.
The libretto of the pantomime that captivated Bartok was written during the First World War by the fashionable “commercial” Hungarian playwright Menhert Lengyel, presumably commissioned by S. Diaghilev, whose ballet troupe toured Hungary in 1912, and published in the magazine “Nyugat” in 1917 .
In the big Apache den western city three tramps force a girl to lure passers-by to them. First, a shabby old womanizer and a young man arrive there, having no money with them, and the tramps throw them out into the street. The third turns out to be a Chinese mandarin, unknown to how he ended up in these places, whom the girl is trying to seduce. The girl's dance awakens passion in the mandarin, and he begins to frantically pursue her. The tramps rush at the stranger, take his money, and then try to kill him, but the victim cannot die until he receives the desired caresses from the girl.
Page of the manuscript of the clavier “The Wonderful Mandarin”
Lengyel's libretto presented the world of the capitalist city with its cruelty, flavored with a fair amount of eroticism combined with savage oriental exoticism. The girl, the most human character in the libretto, is surrounded by two types of barbarism, and her situation is so desperate that she wants to end the nightmare that surrounds her at any cost.
The characters in the libretto for ballet embodiment were ideal because of their extreme generality, and this gave Bartok the opportunity to write music that was also filled with enormous generalizing power. The musical characterization of the tramps - sons of the big city - is based on the monotonous clattering rhythms that open the pantomime, but it is more than a simple onomatopoeia of the noise of the street. The sounds of the trombone, at first reminiscent of car horns, turn out to be akin to the convulsive rhythms of the fairy-tale prince’s struggle with the forces of nature in Bartok’s previous ballet. But now it is a struggle for survival that knows no mercy for any of the characters. This sound formula runs through the entire work, and its persistent repetition evokes in the viewer and listener a feeling of doom for the ballet’s characters. Change for the better is possible only if there is some powerful force that will sweep away this creepy world from the face of the earth.
Scene from the play “The Wonderful Mandarin”.
Budapest National Theatre. 1960s The humanity of the Girl’s image is expressed in music in many ways, because the girl in the play communicates with all the characters inhabiting it. At first she is like the princess from The Wooden Prince, since the Old Cavalier who ended up in the brothel openly resembles a broken wooden doll
. Then she will be careful and tactful in a slow dance with an indecisive Youth, who arouses only a weak attraction in her. And then follows an initially uncertain waltz in front of the Mandarin, which develops into an ecstatic dance on the verge of madness. And this dance of the Girl will force the Mandarin to begin his uncontrollable barbaric dance-pursuit, the intonations of which, in some modification with stunning force, will be repeated by the chorus behind the stage at the moment when the Mandarin, in the last fit of passion, will reach out to the Girl after the bandits hang him from a lamppost pillar... By and large, there is no need to talk about any connection with ancient Hungarian music and poetry here, but in the form in which these connections appeared in Bartok's opera. A conscious break with the traditional major-minor system, polytonal effects leading to screaming dissonances, a free combination of archaic modes (the first theme of Mandarin is a sharply harmonized “Chinese” pentatonic scale), frequent changes of rhythmic pattern, complex polyrhythmic combinations of orchestral voices - all this “gives rise to the impression a rapidly boiling chaotic movement, a hellish mechanized whirlwind, as if sweeping away everything living and human in its path.”
Doll from the play “The Wonderful Mandarin”.
Budapest Musical Puppet Theater
All this shocks the listener. “The music at times is overwhelmed by raging streams of nervous and harsh sounds, a motley combination of compressed sound elements, in which the outlines of completed melodic phrases are occasionally captured. Sometimes a feeling of a certain hypertrophy of emphasized nervous images is created” (I. Nestyev). In this sense, the score of The Marvelous Mandarin can well be considered an example of European musical expressionism, generated by the shocks of the First World War. But the expressionism of ballet, with all its hyper-emotionality, sometimes turning into agitation, also contains a social principle, for with his work Bartok fiercely protests against scary world
cruelty and violence, against the dehumanization of man, against the moral foundations of contemporary society. That is why the premiere of the ballet, which took place in November 1926 in Germany on the stage of Cologne opera house
, turned into such a scandal that almost immediately the performance was removed from the repertoire as offending public morality. One of the prohibitors of ballet was the then burgomaster of Cologne, and in the post-war years the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Konrad Adenauer. And only after the triumphant premiere of Bartok’s ballet in Prague in 1927, he began to conquer the stages of the best theaters in the world.
