Radio 4:  14.15 hrs on Thursday, 22 May 2008

  Frances Byrnes's play, An Unchoreographed World, explores a formative event in the life of the young Margot Fonteyn.
  In 1940 the dancer found herself trapped in Holland during the German invasion with her lover -
  the composer Constant Lambert - and the fledgeling Sadler's Wells Ballet.

  My head reels when I realise that 6 years later, as a teenager, I saw Fonteyn, Michael Somes and the Sadler's Wells  Ballet  in "Symphonic Variations"; my baptism of fire.   I've never been a great ballet enthusiast but easily surrender to the artistry, or simply listen to the music when the dancers start poncing around each other.   Frank Dunlop, director, was even more cynical.   He told me that it was all 'curtain calls and a rush to the Crush Bar'.!  But Margot Fonteyn is up there with the greats.

Thank you, t-p.    It is a pleasure to see you on the MB again.   

Indeed, the Fonteyn/Nureyev partnership at Covent Garden is now the stuff of legend.   There was a marked age difference between them but her Juliet to his Romeo in the Prokofiev score was absolutely timeless.   I also recall the magnetism of their work in Marguerite and Armand, directed by Frederick Ashton.    She was heartbreaking as Marguerite Gautier, based on the Dumas novel, the beautiful but fatally consumptive courtesan who renounces her aristocratic lover to preserve his reputation.   I seem to recall that the Liszt Sonata in B Minor was orchestrated by Humphrey Searle for the ballet and you are probably familiar with this work.

Incidentally, 'An Unchoreographed World' is not due for broadcast on Radio 4 until Thursday afternoon of next week, 22 May.

  Thank you again, t-p.       Let the dispirited phase find its own plateau and exit - it will!

  The important thing is to appreciate and value what you do know; and it must be
  gratifying to share your knowledge with others.

  You have the extra dimension of a performer's talent and this will always speak volumes when words
  are inadequate.

   Berlioz asks whether love or music can lift man to the sublimest heights.   'Love' he concludes 'cannot
   give an idea of music; music can give an idea of love.   But why separate them?   They are two wings
   of one soul.'

   Warmest best wishes,        Stanley   

Couldn't agree more about the Motion biography, Stanley. Highly recommended, and IMO easily the best thing Motion has yet written (certainly in comparison to his limp poetry and Larkin hagiography). <martle in combative critical mood>

Good listening.   A satisfying play set during an incongruous British Council sponsored tour of Sadler's Wells Ballet, in The Netherlands, during the phoney war - at least in the UK - in 1940.   A bit unsettling to remember the nightly air raids by the Luftwaffe which came to us later.    As an adolescent, I recall the sudden opening of bedroom doors; anxious voices urging me to get dressed, alongside the lugubrious wailing of the air raid sirens, warning us of an imminent raid.  The play got this right.   Indeed, the anxiety of the adults was more stress inducing than the outside noise of anti-aircraft, ack-ack retaliation.  An exploding bomb is more terryifying on a nearby house than cinema or TV can ever portray.   Watches were an unknown quantity for youngsters and I used to irritate my parents by frequently asking the time.   The ruse was simple.   If an air raid ended before midnight, school assembly was at 10.00 hrs but, if it extended beyond this, we didn't have to attend until the afternoon.

After this important scene-setting, the narrative concentrated on the emerging persona of an artist with a potential for  greatness.   Fonteyn was also 'living in sin' with composer Constant Lambert and it was clear that she already had the requisite 'poise' but the transformation from Peggy Hookham to Margot Fonteyn must have been a traumatic experience for a young woman who was more confident in a choreographed world.    Constant Lambert's maturity must have been valuable but it was evident that he was aware of being a passing phase in her life and he spoke about the 'evasions' in his own which made him neglect his own talent.     A great theme for Graham Greene, surely?   I keep imagining a post-war film with Dorothy Tutin and Trevor Howard; or Keira Knightley and Daniel Craig today.

Thank you, Frances Byrne and the R4 cast.

   
   Thank you, Ollie.   Like ole man river, I just keep rollin' along!     

       Yes, t-p, Margot Fonteyn was special.    Dame Ellen Terry spoke about  star quality as "that little something extra"; it cannot be defined but we know it when we see it.

   I always think about Fonteyn when I hear Beatrice's response to Don Pedro in Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing":         Act II, sc 1 -

                D.Pedro         Your silence most offends me, and to be merry best becomes you;
                                   for, out of the question, you were born in a merry hour.

               Beatrice         No, sure my lord, my mother cried; but then there was a star danced,
                                   and under that was I born.

                 
                                 

Many thanks for this "pointer", Stanley. It was a good play.


I found some more information about this production on the website of the Rudolf Nureyev Foundation:

http://www.nureyev.org/ballets/marguerite-and-armand-liszt-ashton-rudolf-nureyev


What a beautiful quotation, Stanley! Where did you find it? Somewhere in his letters? I seem to recall that they also have been translated into Dutch.


Thank you also for this one! The wisest thing I've read in ages.


Many thanks for this story, Stanley. I guess you already know that the German soldiers who attacked the Netherlands were being trained on Russian soil by the Red Army. I'll never trust a communist, "enlightened marxist", neo-marxist or any "progressive" anti-globalist for the rest of my life. Freedom, after all, is the greatest thing.