Never mind the merits of opera and theatre - there's an art form that trumps both. Charlotte Higgins
You can assert - as was done on these pages recently - that opera is the finest art form of all, leaving theatre, that pedestrian, wordbound form, raving to itself while opera floats heroically into the stratosphere on a top C.
It's true that theatre beats every other art form hands down for sheer tedium - when it tries. Some of the longest, ghastliest evenings of my life have been spent subjected to the spoken-word theatre; guilty of these nights of torture have been some of our most esteemed national institutions (step forward, the Royal Shakespeare Company).
Opera-goers are more fortunate. It's such an extraordinarily rich art form that it's difficult to completely mess up every single one of its elements. If the production or acting is objectionable, then the music may be wonderful. If the musical standards disappoint, then there's still a chance you are witnessing a piece of brilliant theatre.
An hour of poor spoken-word theatre, on the other hand, can be irredeemable: you can feel that whole tortured lifetimes of pain have passed in a mere evening.
Even so, there exists an art form that can floor opera with one flick of its gracefully pointed toe: ballet.
There is no other art form that is so highly evolved, sophisticated, sublime, where absolute discipline of technique is allied with grace, beauty, sensuality and pure emotion.
There are things that theatre excels at: the march of logic, the clash of argument, the drama of politics. You could try to create a ballet around the state of the railways or the Saville inquiry - but I think it best not attempted.
Opera, on the other hand, does passion like nothing else. To hear the Liebestod at the end of Tristan und Isolde, after five hours of emotional turmoil, is a bit like imbibing in one go the essence of all the heartbreaks, longings and ecstasies you have ever experienced.
But ballet - ballet is another world. Ballet is about limbs and bones and muscle, about flesh and skin. It is visceral. Ballet is about what it means to be human while the blood pumps through our veins; about the things that are too strange, dense and delicate to be strangulated by human speech or song.
You can compare Shakespeare's Othello to Verdi's Otello and find one or the other superior. So let's take Puccini's Manon Lescaut and MacMillan's Manon. You can keep your Puccini: I'd swap the whole opera to witness 10 minutes of Sylvie Guillem and Jonathan Cope dancing the first great pas de deux of Manon and Des Grieux. When I saw them do it at the Royal Ballet in February, Guillem took an earthwards plunge that could not more eloquently have conveyed her headlong descent into passion. Words could only have seemed a clumsy encumbrance.
It is true that stories from romantic and classical ballet tend to major on waif-like gels, hovering between childhood and adulthood, either copping it tragically, or luring men to their doom (or both). But one of the great advantages of ballet is its lack of literalism and its tendency towards abstraction. Despite the Royal Ballet's well-known acting skills I'm often inclined to mutter "let's just have some dancing" when there is a deal of storytelling going on. (MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet is, alas, guilty for me.) This abstraction of ballet, when it balances perfectly on a narrative framework, makes for art as refined and sophisticated as you can get. Giselle is as perfect a little jewel-like artwork as you could hope to find.
There's nothing more charming than ballet at its best - and charm, not to mention delicacy and grace, are hugely underrated virtues in art. I could bring you (more or less at random, from works recently staged in London) the sheer delight of watching Sylvia's leaping cohort of nymphs in the recent Royal Ballet staging of the eponymous Frederick Ashton ballet and Tamara Rojo's sexy little mermaid in Ashton's Ondine.
The charm and apparent delicacy comes, of course, at the cost of enormous discipline, physical effort and, quite often, pain. At a time when many in the theatre world are chasing the largely lost ideal of ensemble values, it's often overlooked that outfits like the Royal Ballet represent the real deal: a permanent company of extraordinarily talented individuals striving towards a collective perfection.
I am suffering withdrawal symptoms during the Royal's summer break. I hope to relieve the trauma with the Kirov's Swan Lake starring one of the greatest Odette/Odiles alive - Uliana Lopatkina, who has the most perfect arms I have ever seen. I'll also be going to the theatre and to the opera. And more often than I'd like, a little voice in my head will whisper: "I wish I were at the ballet."
· Charlotte Higgins is the Guardian's arts correspondent
It's true that theatre beats every other art form hands down for sheer tedium - when it tries. Some of the longest, ghastliest evenings of my life have been spent subjected to the spoken-word theatre; guilty of these nights of torture have been some of our most esteemed national institutions (step forward, the Royal Shakespeare Company).
Opera-goers are more fortunate. It's such an extraordinarily rich art form that it's difficult to completely mess up every single one of its elements. If the production or acting is objectionable, then the music may be wonderful. If the musical standards disappoint, then there's still a chance you are witnessing a piece of brilliant theatre.
An hour of poor spoken-word theatre, on the other hand, can be irredeemable: you can feel that whole tortured lifetimes of pain have passed in a mere evening.
Even so, there exists an art form that can floor opera with one flick of its gracefully pointed toe: ballet.
There is no other art form that is so highly evolved, sophisticated, sublime, where absolute discipline of technique is allied with grace, beauty, sensuality and pure emotion.
There are things that theatre excels at: the march of logic, the clash of argument, the drama of politics. You could try to create a ballet around the state of the railways or the Saville inquiry - but I think it best not attempted.
Opera, on the other hand, does passion like nothing else. To hear the Liebestod at the end of Tristan und Isolde, after five hours of emotional turmoil, is a bit like imbibing in one go the essence of all the heartbreaks, longings and ecstasies you have ever experienced.
But ballet - ballet is another world. Ballet is about limbs and bones and muscle, about flesh and skin. It is visceral. Ballet is about what it means to be human while the blood pumps through our veins; about the things that are too strange, dense and delicate to be strangulated by human speech or song.
You can compare Shakespeare's Othello to Verdi's Otello and find one or the other superior. So let's take Puccini's Manon Lescaut and MacMillan's Manon. You can keep your Puccini: I'd swap the whole opera to witness 10 minutes of Sylvie Guillem and Jonathan Cope dancing the first great pas de deux of Manon and Des Grieux. When I saw them do it at the Royal Ballet in February, Guillem took an earthwards plunge that could not more eloquently have conveyed her headlong descent into passion. Words could only have seemed a clumsy encumbrance.
It is true that stories from romantic and classical ballet tend to major on waif-like gels, hovering between childhood and adulthood, either copping it tragically, or luring men to their doom (or both). But one of the great advantages of ballet is its lack of literalism and its tendency towards abstraction. Despite the Royal Ballet's well-known acting skills I'm often inclined to mutter "let's just have some dancing" when there is a deal of storytelling going on. (MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet is, alas, guilty for me.) This abstraction of ballet, when it balances perfectly on a narrative framework, makes for art as refined and sophisticated as you can get. Giselle is as perfect a little jewel-like artwork as you could hope to find.
There's nothing more charming than ballet at its best - and charm, not to mention delicacy and grace, are hugely underrated virtues in art. I could bring you (more or less at random, from works recently staged in London) the sheer delight of watching Sylvia's leaping cohort of nymphs in the recent Royal Ballet staging of the eponymous Frederick Ashton ballet and Tamara Rojo's sexy little mermaid in Ashton's Ondine.
The charm and apparent delicacy comes, of course, at the cost of enormous discipline, physical effort and, quite often, pain. At a time when many in the theatre world are chasing the largely lost ideal of ensemble values, it's often overlooked that outfits like the Royal Ballet represent the real deal: a permanent company of extraordinarily talented individuals striving towards a collective perfection.
I am suffering withdrawal symptoms during the Royal's summer break. I hope to relieve the trauma with the Kirov's Swan Lake starring one of the greatest Odette/Odiles alive - Uliana Lopatkina, who has the most perfect arms I have ever seen. I'll also be going to the theatre and to the opera. And more often than I'd like, a little voice in my head will whisper: "I wish I were at the ballet."
· Charlotte Higgins is the Guardian's arts correspondent
© Guardian News & Media 2008
Published: 7/17/2005
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