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Scene from: The Stone Flower

Composer: Sergei Prokofiev
Conductor: Alexandre Viliumanis

The Stone Flower was Sergei Prokofiev's last ballet. Three years after the ballet's premiere, Leningrad's Kirov Ballet staged this revised three-act version, choreographed by Yuri Grigorovich. In the words of Grigorovich, the story concerns "the fate of the stone carver Danila who wishes to see the full power of the stone and show its beauty to the people. The creative urge which possesses Danila and the desire to create more perfect art is the leitmotif of the ballet".
Danila, who is in love with Katerina, desires to create a malachite vase that will be as simple and beautiful as a flower. While attempting to complete his task, Danila is led to the underground realm of the Queen of the Copper Mountain. Meanwhile, Katerina has to ward off the advances of Severyan, the ruthless bailiff. The Queen of the Copper Mountain intervenes and leads Severyan to his death. Danila, who has by now created a stone flower, attempts to leave the underground palace for his beloved Katerina, but the Queen of the Copper Mountain, in her jealousy, turns him to stone. In an emotional pas de trois between Danila and the two women who love him, Danila chooses Katerina and the strength of their love moves the Queen of the Copper Mountain to release Danila from her spell. The young lovers leave the mountain and return to the village with the secret of creating beauty from stone.
The Stone Flower is an expansive, earnest and lyrical ballet, an example of what Soviet critics used to call "fairy-tale realism". Its structure is more conventional than Prokofiev's earlier ballets, including Romeo and Juliet. Here, at the end of his life, he looked back on the rich Tchaikovsky-Glazunov tradition of late 19th century ballet, at the same time drawing on his own deep experience as a contemporary theatrical and cinematic composer. Recorded at the Maryinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, in 1991.

Cast: Katerina - Anna Polikarpova. Danila - Aleksandr Gulyaev. Severyan (a bailiff) - Genady Babanin, Queen Of The Copper Mountain - Tatiana Terekhova, Firefairy - Irina Chistyakova.






Catalogue: 9031764012

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