The Houston Ballet takes on “The Shrew”

Publicity still for Houston Ballet's
production of The Taming of the Shrew

by Steve D. Matchett

The Houston Ballet performed The Taming of the Shrew June 9 – 19, 2011.  This comic ballet based on Shakespeare was premiered by the Stuttgart Ballet March 16, 1969 and has since entered the repertory of many of the world’s great ballet companies.  Houston Ballet’s staging of this work was outstanding and played to full houses during it’s run.

The Taming of the Shrew ballet is a brilliant and effective interpretation of the stage play and is very clever in the way it conveys it’s comic message.  The work combines the efforts of the brilliant choreographer, John Cranko (1927-1973), and the composer Kurt Heinz-Stolze (1926-1970).  The music for the ballet is strongly influenced by Stravinsky’s Pulcinella.  Like the Stravinsky work, the composer has relied on pre-existing music, namely that of Dominico Scarlatti (1685-1757).  Stravinsky’s work (premiered 1920) ushered in the master composer’s neoclassical period, and his work was based on music of Giovanni Pergolesi (1710-1736) and others.  We have to be careful when we say “based on” because both Stravinsky’s work and Heinz-Stolze’s music have transformed these Italianate pieces into something quite original. I define these works in a special category that I call "Re-Creations" (see Composer and Arranger). Heinz-Stolze clearly modeled his work on Stravinsky’s, using a very similar orchestra with one-to-a-part scoring in the winds.  The chamber orchestra Heinz-Stolze called for includes a few other instruments as well, notably piano and harpsichord.  Stravinsky also used harpsichord in his neoclassic operatic masterpiece The Rake’s Progress.  The instrument provides a wonderful flavor to the music, especially because it alludes to classical Mozartean era sources.  Heinz-Stolze was himself a pianist and harpsichordist and was well familiar with his source music by Scarlatti.

Much of the harmonic language that Heinz-Stolze uses is quite similar to Stravinsky, and the resemblance can be heard easily.  The frequent use of multi-meter also gives this piece it’s modern sensibilities, while at the same time giving a gentile feeling of the past.  This was the brilliance of the Neoclassical style in music, and Heniz-Stolze’s score follows this artistic course in first-class fashion.   In The Taming of the Shrew, music and choreography are matched perfectly in their sensibilities.

John Cranko had a brilliant choreographic career having worked with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet (which became the Royal Ballet), the Stuttgart Ballet and others.  He worked with composer Benjamin Britten for the original production of The Prince of the Pagodas in 1957.  His choreography for The Taming of the Shrew is a sensational combination of classical ballet and modern dance.  The work incorporates movements like pratfalls, wrestling holds (as an hilarious means of controlling the shrew, Katherina’s impetuousness), drunken swaggers, prancing, and many others.  There are wonderful corps numbers which are beautifully aligned. This is why this work functions so well on both the musical and dance levels, the music and the dance blend traditional modes with telltale modern ones.  As brilliant as the choreography is, one is never overwhelmed by a stage that is too busy to be fully absorbed.

Sadly both the composer and the choreographer did not live long after the original production of The Taming of the Shrew.  The composer died just months after the premiere.  A good audio recording of this work is not extant as far as I can tell from research.  This work deserves a quality recording and the Houston Ballet Orchestra would be the perfect ensemble to produce it.

I can’t say enough good things about the Houston Ballet, which is truly a world-class company.  Their repertory is a powerful combination of works from the classical ballet repertoire and many of the great ballets of the 20^th century, including Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and many others, as well as 21^st century pieces.  I was taken aback at how incredible their production of Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin was several years ago.  Ben Stevenson, their former artistic director, had created the production for Li Cunxin (see Mao’s Last Dancer).  The company toured with it and performed it at The Kennedy Center.  The orchestra performed the work with such precision and transparency that all the details of this difficult Expressionistic score could be heard.  I had never heard any recording of it played as well–the result of having perfected it through so many performances.  We could not be luckier to have this organization as part of our city’s cultural life!

© 2011 Steve D. Matchett