Bolshoi's `The Bright Stream'---a "new" Shostakovich ballet---hits the screen

How you gonna keep ’em down on the collective farm after they’ve seen Moscow dancers?

Aficionados (or just casual fans) of Dmitri Shostakovich will not want to miss a rare chance to answer that burning question---to see and hear what is, in effect, a “brand new” ballet by the great Russian composer, performed by the Bolshoi.

Actually, there's no such thing as a casual Shostakovich fan. And there are only three such things as a Shostakovich ballet. The last (most lost) one is called “The Bright Stream.” He didn’t exactly write it from the grave. But he might as well have. This balletic sit-comedy about life on a collective farm, written in 1935, had them rolling in the aisles of Leningrad and Moscow---ever so briefly.

The clever story, co-written by choreographer Fyodor Lopukhov and Adrian Piotrovsky, has a brigade of Moscow artistes descending on a Podunk harvest festival to provide upscale entertainment for the local Bright Stream collective. Dreamy Zina recognizes the prima ballerina as her old pal from ballet school. Zina’s hubby Pyotr is smitten by the beautiful guest star, who proposes a joke: some slapstick cross-dressing to mock and thwart male lust. Fickle, faithless Pyotr eventually begs and gets forgiveness. Plucky Zina proves herself both a top-notch communist worker AND a top-notch twinkletoes. Bottom line: Country bumpkins have more to teach the city folk than vice versa.

With such a pleasant peasant plot and crowd-pleasing hijinx---and Shostakovich’s wonderfully danceable polkas, waltzes, simplified harmonies and rhythms---“Bright Stream” should have been a big hit. In fact, it originally was. When premiered in Leningrad in June 1935, every performance was sold out, and the critics raved, calling it the first major success of a truly unique Soviet ballet.

But when the production moved to Moscow, it was left to the less tender, more paranoid mercies of the Kremlin. Stalin, curiously enough, liked ballet and often slipped into performances of “Swan Lake” at the Bolshoi. But that truly Troglodytic balletomane was not amused by “Bright Stream.” Its primary offense seems to have been that it was composed by Shostakovich, whose great opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” Stalin had hated.

No one had yet formulated clear (let alone safe) guidelines for “socialist realism,” the one and only state-approved artistic style. Lopukhov thought putting farmers on pointe was “a stroke of politically correct genius,” but after the Moscow premiere, a Pravda editorial condemned him and Shostakovich for depicting comrade farmers as "sugary rubes from off a pre-revolutionary chocolate box."

Ludicrous today? Death warrant then. The ballet was withdrawn. Shostakovich’s previous two ballets, “The Golden Age” (1930) and “The Bolt” (1931), had also been banned shortly after their premieres but, of the three, “Bright Stream” and its creators fared worst. Librettist Piotrovsky was sent to a gulag and never heard from again. Choreographer Lopukhov---spared the gulag by the fact that his sister was married to famous economist John Maynard Keynes---was fired from the Bolshoi, his career over. Shostakovich and his music were hounded and attacked thereafter in the Soviet era. Most of his theatrical scores were banned, and he never wrote another ballet.

Had Shostakovich been given artistic freedom instead of repression, he may well have become one of the great ballet composers of the 20th century, as potentially important as Stravinsky. But he wasn’t and didn't.

This gorgeous reconstruction---restitution?---by the Bolshoi’s Alexei Ratmansky is the best we have ever had of it, with sumptuous costumes, terrific lighting and camerawork, and brilliant---often hilarious---dancing. The lush, fresh music must be heard---and the gigantic "collective cucumbers" and hairy-chested ballerinas in drag must be seen---to be believed.

No wonder Uncle Joe Stalin was almost (but sadly, not quite) apoplectic.

[END]

BARRY PARIS WOULD LIKE TO ACKNOWLEDGE AND THANK MR. CHARLES HENRY FOR THE FOLLOWING VALUABLE CLARIFICATION RE: THE PERFORMANCE OF SHOSTAKOVICH'S MUSIC IN THE SOVIET UNION, POST "BRIGHT STREAM":

"Shostakovich, along with many other Soviet artists and writers, was sent east, out of harm's way during World War II. His ballet music may not have been performed, but his wonderful chamber music and his great symphonies were. His 5th Symphony, which debuted in Leningrad on Nov. 21,1937, marked his rehabilitation under Stalin. The 6th Symphony debuted in 1939 and the 7th in 1942. Many other works were performed to great public acclaim. There is an excellent biography of Shostakovich by Elizabeth Wilson, full of quotes by his contemporaries. Another wonderful book is Dmitri Shostakovich's own `Testimony'---his memoirs."

---Charles Henry