The Taming of the Shrew ballet inspired by the Shakespeare play. Music by Kurt-Heinz Stolze after Domenico Scarlatti. John Cranko choreography (created 1969) performed 2022 by the Stuttgart Ballet at the Stuttgart State Theatre. Stars Elisa Badenes (Katherina), Jason Reilly (Petruchio), Veronika Verterich (Bianca), Martí Fernández Paixà (Lucentio), Alessandro Giaquinto (Gremio), Fabio Adorisio (Hortensio), Angelina Zuccarini and Daiana Ruiz (Two Ladies of the Street), Rolando D’Alesio (Battista), and Matteo Crockard-Villa (Innkeeper/Priest). Wolfgang Heinz conducts the Orchestra of the State Theatre Stuttgart. Set and costume design by Elizabeth Dalton; artistic supervision by Reid Anderson. Disc includes an especially nice bonus extra with helpful discussion by members of the production team. Directed for TV by Michael Beyer. Released 2023, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: A+
This is a sparkingly new production of one of the rarest creatures in the garden of the arts—a comic classical ballet. It follows closely the basic structure of Shakespeare’s war of wits and barbed tongues. But how do you do this with artists who don’t speak and women on point? Well, with brilliant acting, clever staging and props, vaudeville-style physical comedy, and every other trick in the book including even a juggling act with a lute. It’s suitable for the entire family. But there are also serious undertones for everyone to mull over.
It seems that richest man in Padua had two daughters of marriageable age. The younger daughter, Bianca, was the prettier one, and she was also obedient to her widowed father:
Three suitors were eager to marry Bianca. On the left is Hortensio (Fabio Adorisio), a young and wealthy fop. On the right is Gremio (Alessandro Giaquinto) a wealthy widower himself. Center is Lucentio, a starving but handsome student at the university. It’s easy to remember Lucentio because he is handsome. I remember the fop by his black (dyed) hair. And the dirty old man has gray hair:
In Padua there was a custom that the older sister had to be married off before the younger sister could wed. Bianca’s older sister was Katherina (Elisa Badenes). She is the shrew, obedient to no one:
All 3 suitors ask father Battista (Rolando D’Alesio) for the hand of Bianca. “Forget it!” daddy says. But he says any of them can have Katherina:
Next below are two other characters who keep turning: the Ladies of the Street (Angelina Zuccarini and Daiana Ruiz):
The three suitors know a man about town with a reputation for bravery, wit, and daring exploits: Petruchio (Jason Reilly). It occurs to the suitors that Petruchio might be a good husband for the Shrew!
If you are good a math you already see we have 4 ladies and 4 men in this story who need a mate. Optimists say that Shakespeare mostly wrote two kinds of plays: tragedies, where everybody dies, and comedies, where everybody gets married. Pessimists say that Shakespeare feared marriage even more than death, and that all his plays are tragedies. Well, let the philosophers figure that out. Spoiler alert! In this comic story, everyone who wants to is going to get married!
Simple sets let the audience focus on a riot of actions by dancers in beautiful costumes using interesting props (rare for a ballet). Beyer gives us a beautiful video of the stars and the corps dances:
The show has many brief interludes for scenery changes. Beyer uses the interludes to give us charming still-life “paintings” :
The three suitors go to town to find Petruchio. The ladies of the street are with him at the tavern. They are stripping him of his clothes to satisfy his debts to them:
Strapped for coin, Petruchio agrees to woo Katherina. This turns out to be more fun than he expected:
Intrigued by a man as willful as she is, Katherine agrees to marry Petruchio. But on the wedding day he shows up late and drunk. For a wedding gift, he presents his bride a rabbit he shot for her to skin, clean, and cook:
Katherine is horrified, but she has to live up to her word:
And Petruchio has other tricks to play on his bride beginning with the honeymoon trip to his estate in the country:
Daddy has gotten rid of Katherine. Bianca turns her attention to the suitors. She decides to marry the handsome student. When Katherine and Petruchio return to Padua for the second wedding, everyone is astonished at how docile Katherine has become. You will have to buy the disc to find out what happens to the other lonely hearts in Padua. And Cranko leaves us with this question: Is it better to marry a kindred spirit or someone who happens to be beautiful?
I was especially happy to see this nice video from Michael Beyer. I have excoriated his work many times as being made for the DVD market rather than for us with our Blu-ray players and hi-def TVs. I think the industry is now trying harder to reach the Blu-ray fans. Because of the many interludes in this video, it would have been too tedious to “run the numbers” and figure the “pace” of the whole recording. So I checked three representative chapters. In a fast-moving narrative scene, Beyer’s pace ran about 4 seconds per video segment, which is way faster than we like. In another more typical segment, the pace was about 8 seconds per segment. And in a lyrical pas de duex at the end of the show, the pace was a magisterial 15+ seconds per segment. So over all, I think Beyer’s video looks about as good as feasible for the content of this ballet and there is no DVDitis. Grade: A+
John Cranko died in 1973, but he lives on at the Stuttgart Ballet. We now have recent Blu-ray recordings of his 3 big creations: Romeo and Juliet (1962), Onegin (1967), and Taming of the Shrew (1969). All star Elisa Badenes. They are something of museum pieces—even the artwork on their Blu-ray keepcases was designed to inspire nostalgia rather than excitement. But you get more than what the artwork promises, and all these titles belong in the media rooms of all ballet lovers. For a more modern, slick ballet about the taming, see La mégère apprivoisée (The Taming of the Shrew) by Jean-Christophe Maillot with music from Shostakovich.
Here’s a trailer:
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