It was certainly a night to remember. As Ramona put it, “It wasn’t a boring ballet”. That is was not. Monday is Ramona’s birthday and therefore I decided the take her out to the Mariinsky Theater for a ballet as a birthday gift. The Mariinsky is the Bolshoi Theater of St. Petersburg and is where the most prestigious ballet dancers perform.
Earlier in the week I had gone to the ticket office and looked to see what was playing. The choices for Saturday were an opera, which I will never allow myself to suffer through again and some boring ballet performance. Sunday’s line up featured a premier showing of a new ballet called The Magic Nut. It is a prequel or prologue to the story of the Nutcracker. My wife’s favorite ballet of all time is the Nutcracker, so I figure this was a no lose situation. Oh, how I was wrong.
Although the ballet had riveting backdrops, incredible costumes and even some lovely dances it lacked the classical ballet feel and style. First there was the synthesized music with every sound imaginable except for one that sounded like an instrument. One redeeming factor was the fact that the orchestra still played several pieces. Second, the audience was filled with kids (as this was supposed to be a children’s story), but the ballet had some very dark themes. Several rats from the rat kingdom were hung and there was a backdrop with a body parts hanging from torture devices. Then the characters also traveled to a kingdom of wine and women. I told Ramona that I wouldn’t let Timothy see this ballet until he was at least twelve. Lastly there was one character in particular, a frog, with unusually large mammary glands. As far as I remember for my school days, reptiles do not feed their young milk.
Ramona still kissed me at the end of it all and told me that she had a wonderful evening. The company was definitely worth even minute of the evening it was the entertainment that could have been better. Oh well, there is always next year. Maybe I should start by picking the ballet a bit earlier.
