I'm steeling myself for my second encounter with Eifman's Tchaikovsky in a few weeks by reading Anthony Holden's fascinationg biography of the composer. After reading the following passage, I have suddenly decided that Eifman is the soul of restraint and rectitude, compared with what he might have done. As Holden describes, speaking of Tchaikovsy:
By late autumn [of 1875] he could again afford to be seen in high spirits, not least because of a visit to Moscow by Camille Saint-Saens -- a fellow composer of growing renown, but also a fellow homosexual with whom he established an immediate rapport. To his delight, he discovered that the Frenchman even shared his penchant for impersonating female dancers. A wide-eyed Nikolay Rubenstein, at the piano, was thus the sole witness of one of the unlikelier moments in the history of late nineteenth-century music, when Tchaikovsky and Saint-Saens teamed up to perform, on the edge of the [Moscow] Conservatoire concert hall, a short ballet entitled Pygmalion and Galatea.
There are, of course, no reviews of this particular Conservatoire performance. By Modest [Tchaikovsky]'s account, no doubt based on his brother's, thirty-five-year-old Tchaikovsky danced Pygmalion, while forty-year-old Saint-Saens undertook the role of Galatea with "rare dedication."
Ah, the things an inspired modern choreographer might do with such material.
[ March 11, 2002, 03:57 PM: Message edited by: Manhattnik ]