---
product_id: 9165577
title: "Stravinsky and the Ballets Russes: The Firebird/Le Sacre du Printemps"
price: "¥14917"
currency: JPY
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 7
url: https://www.desertcart.jp/products/9165577-stravinsky-and-the-ballets-russes-the-firebird-le-sacre-du
store_origin: JP
region: Japan
---

# Stravinsky and the Ballets Russes: The Firebird/Le Sacre du Printemps

**Price:** ¥14917
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- **What is this?** Stravinsky and the Ballets Russes: The Firebird/Le Sacre du Printemps
- **How much does it cost?** ¥14917 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.jp](https://www.desertcart.jp/products/9165577-stravinsky-and-the-ballets-russes-the-firebird-le-sacre-du)

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## Description

Stravinsky and the Ballets Russes: The Firebird/Le Sacre du Printemps

## Images

![Stravinsky and the Ballets Russes: The Firebird/Le Sacre du Printemps - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61S-QKE7zPL.jpg)
![Stravinsky and the Ballets Russes: The Firebird/Le Sacre du Printemps - Image 2](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71T7yxEIsUL.jpg)
![Stravinsky and the Ballets Russes: The Firebird/Le Sacre du Printemps - Image 3](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81E6yq8X+fL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    A resurrection to die for
  

*by J***F on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 22, 2014*

Most of us, I would guess, remember the first time we heard The Rite of Spring. For me, it was when my ninth-grade friend Steven Stucky (who would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2005) decided to introduce me to "classical" music by bringing over a Columbia LP by someone named Igor I'd never heard of, conducting a composition of his own, whose title was incomprehensible because I knew no French. The sounds that issued from my record player were even more incomprehensible. They were strange yet exciting, irresistible. Without realizing it, I was reliving for myself what the work's original audience had experienced in 1913 -- a game-changer. Life would no longer be the same.As did most of us, I would also guess, I continued over the following decades to think of "Le Sacre du printemps" as a concert composition for symphony orchestra. Oh sure, I read about the ballet. I just never thought about seeing it. Where would I?Lo these many years later, after watching "Stravinsky and the Ballets Russes" present its reconstruction of the piece as it was first delivered into the world, I will never again be able to think of "Le Sacre" as anything but a stage work.A fascinating, powerful, must-be-seen stage work.In an engrossing 30-minute interview, Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer describe the exhaustive research that went into their resurrecting Vaslav Nijinsky's original choreography and costumes for "Le Sacre" and the countless hours necessary to put it into performance. All of which would be merely academic were it not for that performance, preserved and presented here in vivid Blu-ray color and sound by the Mariinsky Orchestra and Ballet under Valery Gergiev's direction.That performance is beyond rendering with words because even after more than a century since its creation, "Le Sacre" still taps into the primitive, timeless, pre-verbal relationship that connects humanity with the Earth it inhabits. In one form or another -- whether religious or secular, Christian or pagan -- all cultures have presented this continuing progression of the seasons that moves from dying to renewal to dying because all cultures experience it.Time and time again in the Mariinsky's performance, for no objective reason I can explain, the conjunction of music and stage action sends shock waves through the body. It's that visceral. Never before, in all the times I've listened to "Le Sacre," did I understand how the music does depict the rite of spring, that annual rebirth of body and spirit without which we vanish. Nor did I understand so fully that this cycle of resurrection requires -- first and also last -- a death, a ritual sacrifice.This haunting vision will remain with me, and I am thankful for it."Le Sacre" is preceded by a dazzling Firebird in Michel Fokine's 1910 choreography and setting. Only 15 years separated the 1895 revival of Swan Lake from the Firebird, which in many ways plays off of Tchaikovsky's classic. Instead of white swans adrift in cool blue water, we have a red-orange creature of blazing heat in brilliant light, running and leaping all over the place. In the initial pas de deux after the prince has captured the Firebird (danced wonderfully by Ekaterina Kondaurova), Fokine's choreography mimics the gestures we are accustomed to seeing from the Swan Queen. Rather than a lake to drown in, we have sparks that fly to ignite romance and victory.Alone, this Firebird would be worth the price of admission. The staging of "Le Sacre" is priceless.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Firebird:  magnificent!  Rite:  good
  

*by W***N on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 20, 2010*

To start off, two great things in this DVD's favor:  It's in HD and Valery Gergiev is conducting.Firebird:  I believe I own a copy of every DVD of this ballet:  This one goes right to the top for some important reasons.  Gergiev:  I've always liked his cd of this music, and if anything his interpretation here is even more musical, more luminous, more coloristic here than on the cd. (!)  Worth buying for the audio portion alone.  Ekaterina Kondaurova as The Firebird:  Absolutely spell-binding.  You can see her dance some Forsythe on YouTube and she is a WOW as a Forsythe dancer, even better, I would say, than Sylvie Guillem (and that is saying something).  She's 5'8", over 6' en pointe, and that alone gives her a great stage presence--a commanding presence in this ballet especially where that commanding presence is almost a requirement.  And talk about expressive!: every part of her body, including the most mesmerizing arms and hands.  Leeann Benjamin--my now-second-favorite Firebird--says that this is the most difficult ballet to dance because there are so many jumps and you have to do them all while giving the impression somehow of a bird.  Kondaurova does just that.  (A special personal delight:  In the pas de deux between the Firebird and Ivan, at one point he carries her on his shoulder, during which, in all the other recordings, she does something which resembles the breast stroke and which looks silly to me.  Kondaurova manages to look fetchingly bird-like and not do this swim stroke at all.)  She dances with great amplitude, suppleness and clarity and makes great use of her arched Russian back. I could watch this DVD forever, I think, and never tire in the least of her dancing--it's that wonderful. Ilya Kuznetsov as Ivan:  Wow!  All other Ivans look rather pale beside his, including Liepa's.  Here's a role with no actual dancing in it (unless you consider partnering dancing)--I would think, a rather thankless role--but he gives to it unstintingly.  You can easily read all kinds of emotions appropriate to, and enhancing of, the drama in his face, his manner.  Bravo!  "There are no small parts,..."  I could go on, but you get the picture I am sure.Le Sacre du Printemps:  This is a reproduction--as best as can be in this time--of the original that caused such a sensation.  Very much an ensemble ballet, much like Les Noces.  Everything that is/was classical ballet was thrown out the window:  no pointe shoes, no figure-revealing costumes, no classical ballet vocabulary, and not even any turn-out (it's in fact all turn-IN instead)!  By-and-large the dancers do a good job of creating an atmosphere of a pagan rite, but for me, at least, it could still look MORE pagan, more primitive.  And The Chosen One, Alexandra Iosifidi, is tall (also) and is gorgeous, but to me never looks, while she is standing dead still or while she is dancing, that she is AFRAID.  (I would love to see the Joffrey make a DVD of their "Rite" (even without Gergiev) to see how it stacks up, as I have read great things about it.)  Of course, she is gorgeous and you can't get a more beautiful name than "Iosifidi".  Gergiev is once again magnificent.All-in-all, very highly recommended.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Enjoyed Firebird, Rite suffers bad camerawork. Good extras.
  

*by J***D on Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 28, 2013*

Hmm.I liked the Firebird. It's a bit childrens' panto, but the leading lady in her incandescent red dress is, well, incandescent. I can't criticise her dancing. Her mime/acting is very good indeed -- very clear, expressive, but not overplayed. And she's my kind of Firebird -- she doesn't freak out when a human turns up to dance with her, she's a bit wary at first but then she raises an eyebrow and finds out whether he can dance. She's a confident, self-possessed, modern gal. And I liked the head baddie, who was acting rather than dancing but did the pantomime villain very well. There's good work from Gergiev and the orchestra too.As a couple of other people said, there are too many close-ups and funky camera angles in Firebird. But only a few too many and they're not the end of the world. I thought the overhead was actually a rather good idea. Besides, it's not a documentary. So long as the dance works for the viewer, I don't mind whether it looks like the view from centre stalls.Rite, on the other hand, really does suffer from the zoomed-in camerawork. This one *is* somewhat a documetary, since I'm sure most of us are watching it partly out of intellectual curiosity to see what the fuss was about. The choreography is heavy on groups and patterns, and different things going on on different parts of the stage, and you just can't see what's going on for rather too much of the time. They should have put a camera in the first circle and locked the cameraman in a cupboard. I'd recommend the Joffrey version instead, even low-res YouTube, since you can see how the ballet works and why it was groundbreaking.Camerawork aside, I think maybe the original Nijinsky Rite is "radical" and "important" and "interesting" rather than brilliant choreography, but it ain't bad. Watching it I had the strangest memory of walking around the City or Paris modern art museum, which has a lot of work from this period. It's just how I expect an avant garde 1913 ballet about pagans to look. The costumes could be Sonia Delaunay.The BluRay includes a very interesting half hour interview with the two academics who restored the Rite. They talk about the history of the work, and it's impact, and the restoration they did. This is the best extra I've seen in a few years. The other short doc which is more focussed on Firebird is nice enough.Pretty good video and sound by BluRay standards -- 1080i60 for good motion, adequately sharp and free of noise, vibrant but not silly colour, not much encoder blocking in the shadows.

## Frequently Bought Together

- Stravinsky And The Ballet Russes: The Firebird/The Rite Of... [DVD] [2009] [NTSC]
- Romeo And Juliet: The Royal Ballet [DVD] [2009] [NTSC]

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*Product available on Desertcart Japan*
*Store origin: JP*
*Last updated: 2026-03-03*