BALLET ET OPERA – To Go Further
Monkey costume
Ballet Les Bandar-Log, directed by George Skibine, music by Charles Koechlin, sets and costumes by Jacques Dupont.
Inspired by an episode from Rudyard Kipling’s famous Jungle Book, Les Bandar-Log depicts the troupe of monkeys that Mowgli encounters in the jungle.
Presented in 1969 at the Opéra Comique, the piece received a very mixed reception: half the audience applauded the dancers’ performances, particularly that of Bagheeraa, while the other half booed loudly—reactions that are far from unusual at the opera! In any case, this ballet and its costumes certainly didn’t leave anyone indifferent.
Dancer costume – tutu
Swan Lake, ballet by Vladimir Bourmeister, music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, sets and costumes by Dimitri Bouchène, conducted by Robert Plot.
Created by Dimitri Bouchène, 1960, Opéra Garnier.
Costumes made in the Paris Opera’s costume workshops and in the Marie Gromtseff atelier.
Swan Lake is one of the most famous ballets, but also one of the most frequently performed and therefore the most adapted. Here, two costumes echo each other. Both were used in productions of Bourmeister’s ballet version, created in 1953, 50 years after Petipa’s version, and nearly 80 years after the first version of the ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre in 1877.
Dancer’s costume – Man’s costume
Swan Lake, ballet by Vladimir Bourmeister, music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, sets by Roberto Platé, costumes by Tomio Mohri, conducted by Jonathan Darlongton and Vello Pähn.
Restaged by Patrice Bart at the Opéra Bastille in 1992.
Costumes made in the workshops of the Paris Opera.
This costume is worn by one of the dancers in Act III, notably in the Spanish dance scene.
Until then a principal dancer, Patrice Bart began the second half of his career as a choreographer and director with Swan Lake. For this ballet, he surrounded himself with some of the biggest names in French dance at the time: Marie-Claude Pietragalla and Patrick Dupond.
Dancer’s jumpsuit
Les Présages, a ballet created in 1933 under the direction of Léonide Massine, to the Symphony No. 5 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, choreography by Léonide Massine, sets and costumes by André Masson.
Revived at the Opéra Garnier in 1989.
A surrealist artist, André Masson (1896–1987) worked extensively in theater and opera, designing sets and costumes, as he did for this ballet. Other prominent figures in the art world also contributed to the creation of ballets and operas, such as Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Lacroix, and Max Ernst.
Fairy costume – opera singer’s costume
Obero, opera by Carl Maria von Weber, libretto by James Robinson Planché based on the poem by Wieland, first performed in London in 1826, choreography by Albert Aveline, Serge Lifar, and Harald Lander; directed by Maurice Lehmann, costumes by Jean-Denis Malclès, made in the workshops of Madame Turpin and Karinska.
Previously staged at the Opéra Garnier, 1954