The Fairy’s Kiss (complete ballet)

Scene 1: (Prologue) –

Scene 2: A Village Fête –

Scene 3: By the Mill –

    Pas de deux: Entrée – Adagio – Variation – Coda –

      Scena –

Scene 4 (Epilogue):    Berceuse of the Eternal Dwellings

Much of the music of The Fairy’s Kiss – or Le Baiser de la fée as the ballet was called when it was first performed at the Paris Opera House in 1928 – is familiar from the Divertimento the composer drew from it as a concert suite. Performances of the complete ballet score, on the other hand, are rare, even though Tchaikovsky’s genius for melody combines with Stravinsky’s flair for recreating other composers’ music in his own irresistibly stylish image to make it one of the most attractive of its kind.

The ballet was commissioned by Ida Rubinstein, a former member of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes who now had her own company in Paris with Bronislava Nijinska (Vaslav Nijinsky's sister) as choreographer. The idea that the score should be based on music by Tchaikovsky came, however, from Alexander Benois who, having worked alongside Stravinsky for the Ballets Russes – he designed Petrushka, which was dedicated to him – knew the composer very well. Stravinsky had already orchestrated two numbers for a Ballets Russes production of Sleeping Beauty and Benois no doubt felt that a Stravinsky ballet based on music by his favourite Russian composer could be even more successful than his Pergolesi ballet Pulcinella. Stravinsky readily agreed not only with the general idea but also with the suggestion that the Tchaikovsky material should be taken not from his orchestral music but from piano pieces and songs. He eventually chose a dozen piano pieces and five songs, linking them and developing them with music of his own which is so like Tchaikovsky’s that in some cases even Stravinsky himsefl had difficulty in working out which was which.

The subject of the ballet was left to the composer who, as he had with his first opera The Nightingale, turned to Hans Christian Andersen for inspiration. Alighting on The Ice Maiden, he retained its Swiss setting but simplified the story in such a way that it could be contained within four scenes and that Rubinstein would require only four principal dancers – a fairy, a young man, his fiancée, the child’s mother – together with the fairy’s attendant sprites, peasants, musicians at the fête and friends of the fiancée.

Scene 1

The events of the first scene, the Prologue or The Lullaby in the Storm, Stravinsky described as follows: A mother, lulling her child, struggles through the storm. The Fairy’s attendant sprites appear and pursue her. They separate her from the infant and carry him off. The Fairy herself appears. She approaches the child and enfolds him with her tenderness. Then she kisses him on the forehead and goes away. Now he is alone. Passing country folk find him, search vainly for his mother and, deeply distressed, take him with them.

The ballet begins with an icy-sounding allusion on two flutes to the Berceuse from Tchaikovsky’s Songs for Children the definitive version of which, with the melodic line much as Tchaikovsky wrote it, is presented by a solo flute as the curtain rises. The nearest the work has to a main theme, the Berceuse is passed round the woodwind section until the tempo accelerates for the episode in which, to music largely by Stravinsky himself, the sprites pursue the mother and child. The Berceuse is heard once more, on flute accompanied by tremolando strings, before the tempo accelerates again for material which leads, with increasing violence, to the dramatic fall of the curtain.

Scene 2

The second scene follows without a break. A peasant dance is in progress, with musicians on the stage. Among the dancers are a young man and his fiancée. The musicians and the crowd disperse and, his fiancée going away with them, the young man remains alone. The Fairy approaches him in the guise of a gypsy woman. She takes his hand and tells his fortune. Then she dances and, ever increasingly, subjects him to her will. She talks of his romance and promises him great happiness. Captivated by her words, he begs her to lead him to his fiancée.

A country dance for brass ensemble, from Tchaikovsky’s Humoresque for piano meets a poignant contrast in Stravinsky’s own, more intimate music for solo string quartet. The curtain rises to a new tune on trumpets and trombones, The Mujik plays the Harmonica, which alternates with the Humoresque on clarinets and yodelling flutes in the background. The waltz on clarinets comes from Tchaikovsky’s Nata Valse, which is developed, with more yodelling from a solo horn, until the musicians leave. The major inducement used by the Fairy to submit the young man to her will is a series of variants on the song Painfully and Sweetly.

Scene 3

The third scene, which again follows without a break, represents the turning point in the story. Guided by the Fairy the young man arrives at the mill, where he finds his fiancée among her friends playing games. The Fairy disappears. They all dance. The girl goes with her friends to put on her wedding veil. The young man is left alone. The Fairy appears wearing a wedding veil. The young man takes her for his bride. He goes towards her enraptured and addresses he in terms of warmest passion. Suddenly the Fairy throws off her veil. Dumbfounded, the young man realises his mistake. He tries to free himself but in vain: he is defenceless before the supernatural power of the Fairy. His resistance overcome, she holds him in her power. Now she will bear him away to a land beyond time and place, where she will again kiss him, this time on the sole of the foot.

Before the curtain rises on this eventful third scene there is a slow introduction, beginning with Stravinsky's equivalent to the Entracte symphonique from Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty and including an extended lyrical episode based on his Scherzo Humoristique at a much reduced tempo. The fiancée and her friends play their games to the accompaniment of another Tchaikovsky piano piece before the young man and the fiancée dance a Pas de Deux divided into four distinct sections. Their Entrée takes a waltz-time melody from a piano Nocturne and presents it mainly on violins; the Adagio features an amorous solo cello and decorative clarinet and flute with Stravinsky's own somewhat incongruous harp accompaniment; the Variation for two agile flutes is followed by a lively Coda as the fiancée and her friends disappear leaving the young man alone. At this point, after a short pause, the Fairy makes an ominous reappearance in a Scena based on Tchaikovsky's most famous song, None but the Lonely Heart which, gradually assuming a recognisable shape, rises to a passionate climax. As the curtain falls a    solo clarinet laments the young man's fate.

Scene 4

The Fairy’s attendant sprites group themselves in slow movements of great tranquillity before a wide décor representing the infinite space of the heavens. The Fairy and the young man appear on a ridge. She kisses him to the sound of her lullaby.

The last scene, an epilogue described by Stravinsky as the Berceuse of the Eternal Dwellings, recalls the main theme of the Prologue, the Berceuse, transformed into a woodwind chorale. With the entry of a solo horn the Fairy bestows her fateful kiss. The curtain falls and the work ends with the Berceuse transfigured, on woodwind and horns against a background of gently falling string arpeggios, into a vision of eternal serenity.

Gerald Larner © 2011