DVD 10877 SWAN LAKE (Tchaikovsky)

Please read the other review very carefully.If you buy this you will not see anything familiar.Traditional costume and dancing are gone. The dancing that does remain is very exciting and well coordinated but not Swan Lake. Act I takes 45' but all the rest also takes about 45'. Depending on what other versions exist cuts thus run from 25' to 70 minutes. Buy this if you want to hear some of the familiar music with totally irrelevant, but great, dancing. Stay away if you want to know what Tchaikovsky and Petipa wanted.

When I first popped this into my player, my reaction was, "Oh, no, they're messing with Swan Lake again." It begins with a mercifully short prologue (black & white) set to new "music" and the action must be comprehensible only to it's perpetrator. Once this is over, color returns and the ballet begins. This is not your everyday Swan Lake. It has a new choreography, the costumes are very different, and if you began watching this without sound, it is doubtful that you would know what you were watching. In time, however, everything seems to fall into place and this becomes a magical new version of an old favorite. The dancing is terrific and is accompanied by a recording of the Tchaikovsky score by the St. Louis Orchestra under Leonard Slatkin. This is a studio performance; not with a live orchestra. The Slatkin recording was an ideal choice and the sound is blazingly reproduced here. Picture is excellent. Be prepared for something different and for an exciting show by the Monte Carlo forces.