The Philharmonia is marking this year’s Beethoven anniversary with a rare complete outing for The Creatures of Prometheus, Beethoven’s only ballet, first performed in Vienna in 1801. Their approach is novel. Footage of Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the score is interwoven with a narration by Gerard McBurney, drawn from the ballet’s synopsis, spoken by Stephen Fry, and illustrated with animations by Hillary Leben.
The ballet recasts classical myth as an Enlightenment parable of the humanitarian power of art. Prometheus steals fire from Olympus to bring his two Creatures (the first human beings) to life, but it is on Parnassus, the mountain sacred to Apollo as god of the arts, that the Creatures gradually learn the nature of emotion and feeling, shedding their first tears over a drama performed by Prometheus and the tragic muse Melpomene, and laughing at the antics of Pan and Thalia, the Muse of Comedy.
The score pivots between the lofty and the demotic in ways that sometimes echo Mozart’s The Magic Flute, as classical minuets and gavottes for the gods, muses and graces give way to popular dance forms before the Creatures usher in a new human era to music that Beethoven unforgettably reworked in the final movement of the Eroica Symphony. Salonen conducts it all with great panache and grace, and there’s some lovely playing: the instrumental solos that Beethoven allocates to the various characters – Apollo’s harp, Melpomene’s oboe, the Male Creature’s bassoon, and so on – are done with wonderful elegance.
Fry, meanwhile, has fun with McBurney’s engaging, erudite narration, while Leben’s animations have considerable wit and brilliance. Her big, blond Prometheus, funny as well as touching, is a bit of a practical joker as well as an anti-authoritarian rebel, while the gods are gently debunked. Orpheus, whose music could tame wild animals, is accompanied by a lyre-playing squirrel. Bacchus prances about in front of a group of line-dancing soldiers with only a bunch of grapes, rather than a fig leaf, to hide his modesty.
It’s entertaining and moving in equal measure, and hugely enjoyable.
• Watch on demand on the Philharmonia’s YouTube channel.
