The Corsair

A passionate pirate Conrad rescues the enslaved Medora; he battles rivals, treachery and a corrupt pasha to be with her. With his fellow pirates, Conrad abducts Medora from a slave market to a secret grotto but will the lovers ultimately escape danger and find freedom together?

Despite having written over 40 operas, the ballets Giselle and The Corsair  remain Adolphe Adam’s best known works. Loosely based on Lord Byron’s 1814 poem of the same name, The Corsair is a swashbuckling adventure. For OperaVision’s first steam from Tallinn, Estonian National Ballet has entrusted the choreography to José Martinez, director of dance at the Paris Opera, who comments: ‘For me it was a ballet that I never danced myself and it was interested to try to do something that would be respectful of the tradition, not a new version of a classical ballet. I wanted to give The Corsair something unique, and at the same time preserve the lush and beauty of all these famous moments, like the magic garden or the big pas de deux, the pas d’esclaves. I put all these iconic parts at the centre of the ballet and round them I built my story.”

His fate, however, turns around quickly: a beautiful girl, Medora, who is held captive in the Seyd-Pasha’s harem and with whom Conrad falls in love, confronts him with a new challenge. The captain and his companions devise a plan to attack the harem. The brave man sets out on an exciting adventure to free his beloved girl and win her heart.

The original music is by Adolphe Charles Adam and some other composers as Cesare Pugni, Léo Delibes and Riccardo Drigo. With maestro Alexei Baklan, we underwent a major task to choose the musical parts which best illustrate my new dramaturgy. To give new focus on the romantic side of the story, we decided to add some extra music by Léo Delibes. 

Choreographically, I kept some of the traditional parts of the ballet and among them, of course, the Pas de trois between Medora, Conrad and the slave Ali, one of the most famous and frequently performed classical ballet fragments (as a pas de deux). It became popular among the audiences particularly when interpreted by the wonderful dancers, Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev. The spectators will also recognise some other traditional scenes from this ballet: Pas d'esclave and Le jardin animé. For me, these are iconic moments from Petipa, where dancers can show their technique and I built my story around these moments trying to merge all the pantomime scenes to give a new rhythm to the action. One very important thing for me is that all those ‘virtuosity moments’ are completely integrated into the dramaturgy and are part of the story.  Some other parts of the ballet are completely new, such as the ‘Slaves dance’ of the Bazar scene, the ‘Odalisques trio’, the ‘Pirates dances’ (in the Cave scene) and many others… 

I set out to give a lot of fluidity to all the movements, paying particular attention to arms. We cannot dance a classical ballet today in the same way as in the past; all the experience we have today dancing different styles (contemporary, neoclassical) can help us to treat classical ballet in a more natural and fluid way.

I have tried to give a new life to this ‘pirate love story’ and bring the audience onboard the corsairs’ ship - to sail with them to new adventures.