MacMillan had first heard the song cycle-cum-symphony at the Royal Festival Hall, in what must have been an early concert in the Mahler revival. While de Valois endorsed the idea, David Webster, then Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House, remained unsure. He deferred to the board, which at the time had more opera and music lovers than balletomanes. But it was Sir Adrian Boult, a musical adviser to the Opera House, who (perhaps unwittingly) put the kibosh on the idea. The Rite of Spring - a masterpiece absolutely intended for dance, as they saw it - was offered as an alternative.
MacMillan followed the board's wishes - creating, in 1962, one of the most dazzling renditions of The Rite ever conceived - but the idea for his Mahler ballet would not go away. Once his Romeo and Juliet was up on its feet in 1965 (greeted with standing ovations across the Globe), MacMillan was able to seize his opportunity. If the Royal Opera House was not going to support a Mahler ballet, then he would create it elsewhere.
The choreographer John Cranko knew the board's music-based rejections well. His idea for a ballet on Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, danced to Tchaikovsky (though not the opera score), had been declined by Covent Garden. Now settled in Stuttgart as Artistic Director of the city's ballet company, he was finally able to create Onegin (which eventually entered The Royal Ballet's repertoire in 2001) and could extend an invitation to MacMillan. Song of the Earth was finally going to see the light of day.
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| Mahler's composing hut in Toblach (now Dobbiaco, Italy), where he wrote Das Lied von der Erde in 1908 |
The theme of the ballet is quite simple. A man and a woman; death takes the man; they both return to her and at the end of the ballet, we find that in death there is the promise of renewal.
The man and the woman beautifully parallel Mahler's solo voices, a contralto and a tenor. The presence of the third dancer expresses the settings' otherworldly quality. In Germany, that character was called 'Der Ewige', though he's now known as the Messenger of Death. Abstract, danced in Balanchine-esque 'practice dress' (an economic decision and then an artistic one), MacMillan's ballet is a masterpiece of austere emotion. The dichotomy between stasis and movement remains keen right through to the end. The gravity-free walk of the final bars (created on stage in Stuttgart) and the woman's painful but seamless move from a flat position to up on pointe, repeated time and time again, speak of the transition from one world to the next.
Those who know and love the Mahler will initially feel as Boult did when presented with the idea. Can you make Mahler move? MacMillan's white, grey and black abstraction offers a clear (if whispered) yes. Just as Mahler only gestures toward fundamental questions of mortality and waste, MacMillan's ballet remains oblique, distant and suffused in the haze of Mahler's 'Ewig... Ewig... Ewig...'
Since then, it has been cherished as one of the true masterpieces in the company's repertoire. Darcey Bussell decided on the work as her farewell to Covent Garden in 2007. And, as one of Monica Mason's great personal roles, she has included the ballet in her final season as Artistic Director. She recently chose the Christa Ludwig, Fritz Wunderlich recording, conducted by Otto Klemperer, as her castaway choice on Desert Island Discs. The ballet opens tonight at the Royal Opera House with Katharine Goeldner and Toby Spence as the vocal soloists. There are three casts of dancers, including Tamara Rojo, Carlos Acosta, Marianela Nuñez, Edward Watson and Rupert Pennefather. If you remain skeptical, prepare to be floored. Click here for more information.
