The Australian Ballet Dances a Renovated Merry Widow

Natasha Kusen, Adam Bull and Amy Harris as guests at Chez Maxime in Act III of The Merry Widow. Photo: Jeff Busby. (N.B. Photos are from a different performance from that reviewed.)

The Merry Widow
a ballet in three acts
Sydney Opera House, Opera Theatre: 16 November 2011, 1.30 pm
continues in Sydney until 28 November

Choreography - Ronald Hynd
Scenario - Robert Helpmann
based on the operetta by Victor Léon and Leo Stein
Music - Franz Lehár, arranged and orchestrated by John Lanchbery
Décors - Desmond Heeley
Lighting design - Francis Croese

Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra
Conductor - Nicolette Fraillon

Hanna - Rachel Rawlins
Danilo - Robert Curran
Valencienne - Madeleine Eastoe
Camille - Andrew Killian
Baron Mirko Zeta the Pontevedrian Ambassador - Colin Peasley
Njegus - Matthew Donnelly
Kromow - Ben Davis
Pritschitsch - Andrew Wright
Maitre d' - Garry Stocks
Pontevedrian Dancer - Chengwu Gu
Ball Guests, Pontevedrian Dancers, Can-Can Girls, Chez Maxime Diners - Artists of the Australian Ballet

The Merry Widow as a ballet was invented by the Australian Ballet and it has their spirit written all over it: irreverence without sarcasm or cynicism, joie de vivre and any feelings of desperation generally surmountable. It was Robert Helpmann's brainchild, the Australian actor and dancer who got his launch in the 1930's in Ninette de Valois' Sadler's Wells company becoming a very fine dancer especially in the character and demi-character rôles and a legendary Shakespearean actor too. The idea to make the famous operetta into a ballet came in 1975 when Helpmann was the Artistic Director and the Australian Ballet was only 13 years old and in a bit of a financial pickle. The Merry Widow on the one hand was created to be popular and bring in some money from the box office and succeeded in this, but it was really a very ambitious and visionary idea for it was the company's first new full length ballet, a genre Ninette de Valois, speaking from experience, emphasized as very important for a growing company to undertake — in the full 'three act' ballet in the imperial Russian and earlier French tradition a company must tell a single story over an entire evening. The way Hynd, Heeley and Lanchbery went about putting the idea on the stage goes far beyond mere populism which they knew wouldn't have helped the young company at all.

The Merry Widow is often said to belong to Helpmann but Ronald Hynd and Desmond Heeley deserve credit for pulling off a creation of art so unified, harmonious and dramatic with so much detail through their ingenious choreography and designs. John Lanchbery was an important original collaborator too: according to the program he had only 40 minutes of music from the operetta to work with. From this he developed a high quality full length ballet score in Lehár's style, in many places composing music where repeats wouldn't do. Hynd and Heeley put much more into it artistically than would have been necessary for a cynical blockbuster and clearly they, perhaps with Helpmann's reminding them, knew that building a loyal audience through a well-maintained high reputation was more important to the company's financial health than near-term revenues (cf. Opera Australia of 2012!).  The board of the Australian Ballet to much controversy pushed Helpmann out of his directorship the year after The Merry Widow premièred, but obviously the company is in very good health now (financial and artistic) and The Merry Widow must be one of their most valuable assets.