Celine Gosselin
12 PM | Clark Hall Room 206 | 11030 Bellflower Road, Cleveland, OH 44106
We are haunted by Swan Lake. Even a century and a half after its composition, the ballet’s Gothic tale of the doppelgänger White and Black Swans, prince with Oedipal issues, and shape-shifting sorcerer continues to recycle in shadowy new forms. The lack of stable historical sources for the ballet’s libretto seems to have freed Swan Lake adaptors from concerns of fidelity to the ‘work,’ allowing them to grapple in ever more inventive ways with its primal Gothic materials, including its score. Modern reimaginings uncover new fears as well as grappling with perennial monsters, drawing our attention to the persistent importance of the Gothic as a form of social critique, psychological analysis, and political transformation.
In her talk Celine Gosselin, a PhD candidate in the Department of Music, focuses on John Neumeier’s Illusions – like Swan Lake (1975), which rearranges the 1895 Swan Lake score by Riccardo Drigo and interpolates two other pieces by Tchaikovsky (“Méditation” from Un souvenir d’un lieu cher and the Entr’acte from Act IV of Hamlet) to tell a story of repressed homosexuality most directly inspired by the life of King Ludwig II of Bavaria. This narrative closely resonates with Tchaikovsky’s own biography, allowing the entire ballet to function as both an arrangement of the composer’s works and a self-portrait. On top of this, Neumeier (an openly gay man) clearly uses the ballet as a response to the politics of his own moment, premiering it only six years after Germany decriminalized homosexual acts and in the midst of an international movement for LGBTQ rights.
An informal lunch will be provided.
Registration is requested. Register HERE.