I found this interesting pic of Mme. Alonso and Youskevitch in Massine's "Aleko". One can see the gorgeous Chagall's backdrops, which in the second link are shown in a recent exhibition in Japan. I was also wondering if this ballet is still performed somewhere, or if there's any comercially released product around.

1- Alonso/Youskevitch in "Aleko". http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/2669759.jpg...55A1E4F32AD3138

2-Marc Chagall's "Land in his Soul" exhibition in Japan. http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=htt...l%3Den%26sa%3DX

I don't think it's around anywhere today. It was a sort of visualization of Chagall's "village" paintings set to the Tchaikovsky Trio in a Minor. My teacher performed in it. He said it was very melodramatic and Chagall personally painted many of the costumes himself, making them very fragile.

Thank you Mel as usual for your helpful information. According to the article some of the driving forces behing those Chagall's backdrops were the loss of his beloved wife Bella and the destruction of his hometown, Vitebsk by the nazis, along with the feeling of living in a foreign country as an eternal exile .

Right. Chagall was in a bad way. He couldn't go home to Belarus, he couldn't go to Paris, he couldn't go to Spain, because as a Jew, he would have been handed over to the Nazis by collaborationists and fellow travelers. Massine was also on the lam from having associated with Socialists and Jews in the Ballets Russes. He used as a framework for the ballet the story of the same name by Alexander Pushkin. The good thing was that they both made it to the United States, where they could work together.

Ooh, I've seen the backdrop that they have at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. For a while, it was exhibited in the main entrance hall. It is really beautiful and vibrant. The backdrop always looked naggingly familiar, but it was only on my second or third time viewing it that I went to check who the artist was. It is identifiably Chagall, but because it was painted as a backdrop it is less detailed - less finicky, perhaps - than many of his paintings.