Pictures at an exhibition
BalletThe ballet is based on the music of the same name piano pieces composed by Musorgskiy M.P. The premiere was in 1995.
Four various paints decide to create a beautiful picture of the world. They joyfully start creating the first canvas… A dwarf and jewellery… Images of a medieval castle with feud and unhappy love… A garden of Tjuilri with children playing under nannies’ care… Faceless creatures, who ruthlessly spread everything and everybody over the canvas, they are half-persons – half-machines (Bydlo)… Not-hatched chicks try to perform their first ballet… A rich Jew and a poor Jew… A crowd of many faces – visitors of Limoges market… These pictures changing each other with vivid images just disappoint the paints: all their creations turn out to be imperfect! The paints decide to portray themselves. But previous images – monsters become apparent through a fresh layer and impend over their creators...
Suddenly from nowhere, enraged Baba-Yaga starts chasing her hut on chicken legs…! And stately Russian beauties come finally from this fairy-tale hut. One can discern features of our four paints in them.
The paints make more intense strokes on the canvas. There are more than four of them now. A new picture grows, gets stronger turning into a hymn to beauty, wealth and heart of the Russian soul, and to the great future of the Russians.
Students from the 3rd to the 7th year as well as graduates take part in the ballet:
- 4 paints (the 6th and/or the 7th year);
- a Dwarf and 4 jewelleries (the 4th and/or the 5th year);
- 4 pairs of “the Middle Ages” (the 7th year and graduates);
- a girl, a boy (the 3rd and /or the 4th year), 2 nannies (the 6th year);
- 8 faceless creatures (Bydlo) (the 4th and the 5th year);
- 4 not-hatched chicks (the 3rd and the 4th year);
- a rich Jew and a poor Jew (the 6th and/or the 7th year);
- 2 market women (the 6th and/or the 7th year), 6 scamps (the 3rd – the 6th year);
- a Hut (the 6th and the 7th year), 4 Baba-Yagas (the 4th – the 6th year);
- 6 little paints (the 4th and/or the 5th year), a bell-ringer (the 7th year and graduates);
- Total: 51 characters.
…More than 120 years ago Musorgskiy attended an exhibition of pictures painted by his friend Gartman V. Being impressioned Modest Petrovich composed some piano pieces based on the subjects of the pictures combining these pieces into a single composition under the common name “Pictures at an exhibition”. Years went by. Piano pieces composed by Musorgskiy strayed more and more from their primary source – pictures of Gartman V. Everyone who heard this music imagined his own plots and images. The creators of the ballet for “Metamorphoses” studio – the arranger, choreographers, artists – created their version of pictures heard in the music by the great Russian composer.