Revenge in Paris

When U.S. Dancer Ruth Page tried her lusty ballet Frankie and Johnny on the French last year, they gave her a bad time of it (TIME, May 22, 1950). The audience whistled in derision. Paris critics, unfamiliar with the story of Frankie and Johnny and completely out of step with Page's kidding treatment of it, scourged the ballet with such epithets as "catastrophe.'' "monstrous" and "unconsciously obscene." Last week Ruth Page was back with a new ballet. It was called Revanche (Revenge), and it was the hit of Paris.

Ruth Page got the idea for it five years ago. It was to be a spoofing treatment of Verdi's // Trovatore (Verdi's subtitle: "The Gypsy's Revenge"). But two years ago, she heard a rousing performance of Trovatore by the Metropolitan Opera, and "the first thing I knew, I was crying." She tore up her burlesque and designed a "serious" ballet, full of dramatic fire and intensity. In reducing Verdi's tortuously complicated, four-act opera to 52 minutes of dance, she "left out enough good music and plot to make three more ballets," but made the story of a gypsy out to avenge the burning of her mother compellingly clearer.

The first-night audience was on Page's side almost as soon as the curtain went up. She had engaged top Spanish Designer Antoni Clave to do the sets, and he had turned out some breathtaking ones in melodramatic black, blue and crimson. Then the Gypsy Azucena (Sonia Arova) lashed into a dance to Verdi's crackling Stride lavampa music, and Page and the dancers were in full command. In the Anvil Chorus, the dancers whirled with so much gusto that the crowd could hardly keep from stomping out the rhythm with them. Standout scene: Azucena's duet with Manrico, her foster-son and the instrument of her revenge against the aristocratic Di Luna family. The ballet, like the opera, ended in a flood of blood, with Azucena, Manrico and his sweetheart dying and the wicked Count di Luna going mad. The curtain came down with Azucena triumphant in her revenge-and, by proxy, Ruth Page triumphant in hers. The work got twelve curtain calls.

The critics rose handsomely to the occasion. Said L'Aurore: "The Revanche of Ruth Page is one of extravagance based on good taste." Le Figaro: "A beautiful spectacle." Franc-Tireur: "The choreography is so ingenious and so expressive that none of the sharp turnings of fortune in the drama escape us."

Said glowing Ruth Page: "I wrote the part [of Azucena] for myself. Now I'm dying to dance it."

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