A LIBRETTO FOR THE BALLET
1. Biographical overview
Olga Kuznetsova researches late 19th- and early 20th-century culture at the Russian Literature Institute in St. Petersburg, also known as the Pushkin House. She has authored over fifty works on the history of Russian symbolism and published the anthology The Poets of the Silver Age. Having written prefaces and commentaries for the recently issued memoirs of Georgy Ivanov, The Winters of St. Petersburg, and Alexander Blok’s poetry collection, Verses About the Beautiful Lady, she is currently contributing to the preparation of a twenty-volume complete edition of Blok’s works. With her research interests encompassing the interplay between the verbal and the visual—particularly literature and ballet—she has contributed to the publication of documents from the archives of ballet dancer and choreographer Nina Anisimova and ballet historian Lyubov Blok.
Ms. Kuznetsova is a professor at the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet, where she teaches Russian literary history alongside other philological disciplines and offers a course on the literary sources of ballet. In this role, she has supported choreography students in exploring new imagery and concepts for ballets while uncovering inspiring literary sources, which ultimately sparked her interest in ballet scenarios. In collaboration with choreographer Dmitry Pimonov, Ms. Kuznetsova wrote the libretto for the ballet Daphnis and Chloe, which premiered on the Primorsky stage of the Mariinsky Theater in Vladivostok. She also authored librettos for The Legend of the Nutcracker staged at the Pushkin Opera and Ballet Theater in Nizhny Novgorod and Genesis performed at the Maldybaev Kyrgyz Opera and Ballet Theater, while several more completed librettos and ballet concepts are awaiting their realization on stage.
Additionally, Ms. Kuznetsova writes texts for ballets staged at the Mariinsky Theater, including Petrushka, Yaroslavna, and Twelve.
2. How did it come about that you were offered a role in the Genesis project? And how did you respond to the proposal?
I was approached by a conductor, the former artistic director of the Nizhny Novgorod Opera and Ballet Theater, with whom I had collaborated before. He told me about the upcoming production of the Genesis ballet, which was to be conducted by Mikhail Kirchhoff, a former mentee of his at the Moscow Conservatory. He sent me a recording of Baruch Berliner’s symphonic poem, asking to recommend a choreographer.
The music, combined with the Biblical text resonating in various languages, left a profound impression on me. From the very beginning, I was fully aware that, unlike a novel or a fairy tale, a multidimensional sacred text cannot be directly adapted for the stage. Between the text of the Bible and its choreographic interpretation, there must be an intermediary in the form of a libretto. As a philologist, I was eager to take on this task and offered my services to the producer of the international project. I was delighted to meet Nachum Slutzker, a man full of enthusiasm and deeply passionate about his work. He understood right from the start that a libretto was essential, and I set to work.
3. Could you please tell us about your work on the libretto?
The work on a libretto begins with listening to the music again and again. Finally, audio impressions and sensations acquire a visual dimension in my mind, creating a sort of fantasy world. Virtual time and space emerge for the events to unfold. This time does not align with either real time or the duration of the music. It may be very dense or very sparse. In this virtual world, which, like a dream, follows its own rules, imagery is born. Influenced by the music and the demands of the choreographic interpretation, familiar biblical characters appeared in a new light.
I read and reread the biblical narrative of Creation, always keeping the potential stage production in mind. Then, I approached expert biblical interpretations and commentaries across different denominations and traditions, paying particular attention to the etymology of names. For example, the name “Adam” translates to “red ground,” referring to the material from which the first man’s body was made. I explored the four elements of the world, its primary substances, which seemed to be ideally suited for the “body of ballet”—corp de ballet. These were water and earth, darkness and light. Interacting dynamically, these elements were given tangible qualities, easily translatable into stage effects. Light and darkness were in stark confrontation. The flowing water spread across the earth, striving to cover its entire surface, until God separated the water from the dry land horizontally and the earth from the wet heavens vertically. But the struggle continued: the water, rushing from the heavens, threatened to flood the earth, while the earth prided itself that from its crumbling particles, which turned to dust and reformed, God created man. Yet, from that moment on, the earth would be doomed for what had transpired at the hands of humankind. This is the beginning of a dramatic action that could be conveyed through choreographic language. From this point, the motifs of earth and water, light and darkness, would weave through the actions of five biblical characters, bringing unity to the piece.
The challenge I encountered while creating the ballet’s libretto was balancing the verbal and the visual. Everything can be described though words, with the invisible world coming to life before our virtual gaze. However, attempting to depict spiritual beings on stage causes them to lose their sacred essence, resulting in desecration. Therefore, I decided to draw a line between the two realms of the ballet: the visible and the invisible. The playbill references God, the Serpent, and the Cherubim, encouraging the audience to reflect on these characters, subtly present on stage but never directly seen.
The five protagonists of this story—Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, and Noah—as portrayed by the soloists, were meant to go beyond their roles as biblical symbols, becoming relatable and understandable to the audience. Bodily movements have the power to convey a wide variety of human qualities. Thus, Adam is depicted as a slightly naïve first human exploring a new world; Eve is defined by feminine curiosity; Cain, the first child born of humans, claims the entire world by virtue of his birthright—until his brother arrives. An embodiment of the sacrificial element, Abel is doomed. Lastly, the stubborn Noah defies the humanity steeped in sin. The straightforward traits of these characters lend themselves to physical interpretation, drawing the protagonists closer to the audience and making them more comprehensible.
4.What challenges did you face and what creative insights did you gain while working on the libretto?
Creating a libretto is inextricably linked with creative discoveries one encounters while listening to music, studying the Bible and its interpretations, or composing the text. It is a prolonged journey of comprehension, where various thoughts surface and moments of inspiration arise. However, to be honest, not all ideas, assumptions, or insights can be brought to life, and finding a verbal equivalent for such revelations is not always possible.
My problems and complications are of my own making. The thing is, I always write two librettos. The first is for the choreographer. Vivid and engaging, it is meant to inspire their creativity. It provides detailed descriptions of the characters, their qualities and traits, and outlines plot development—in short, everything that takes place on stage should be reflected in this text, which is essentially a draft. This text is fluid and can easily be shortened or expanded if, for instance, the choreographer finds a particular scene to have “too much music.”
The second libretto is written after the production process is finalized. This is the text for the playbill. Everything written in the first version will now be seen by the audience on stage, and there is no need to duplicate or repeat it. Here, the author must show a certain degree of modesty and take a backseat, as the audience has come to enjoy the music, choreography, and scenography of the performance. The role of the libretto is to inform them without distracting from the spectacle, and ideally, to invite reflection and subjective interpretation of the performance.
5. Librettos are crafted for different types of dramatic performances set to music, such as operas, musicals, and ballets. Could you please clarify the distinction between them?
In an opera libretto, the text is written to complement the vocals and the inconspicuous yet integral acting. In a musical, we follow the plot through the lyrics, which are adapted to the vocals and accompanied by dance. Unlike these branches of art, ballet is wordless and nonverbal. It uses the human body as its primary tool for incarnating characters and imagery. The libretto must be crafted in such a way that the story it presents can be “recounted” through dance, expressive movements, pantomime, acting, and stage setting. In classical ballet, the cast is traditionally divided into three groups: soloists, coryphées, and the corps de ballet. Accordingly, the literary material must include plotlines and characters that can be portrayed through solo variations, dances performed by two or three coryphées, and the scenes danced by the corps de ballet.
6. Do you think the 21st century imposes new requirements on librettos, or does their form remain unchanged, still serving as a summary of the plot?
The 19th-century libretto described a sequence of events. The plot was essential, as it connected music to choreography and provided the audience with the necessary context. In the 20th century, on the one hand, novel forms of ballet performance evolved: modern dance emerged alongside plotless conceptual performances and reimagined classical ballets. All this required new libretto forms, with the conceptual method replacing descriptions. On the other hand, in the postmodern era, the educational function of art was replaced by a different type of creator-viewer interaction, one grounded in play, provocative strategies, and irony. This calls for a different approach to writing a libretto.
7.What personally resonated with you in the Genesis project? How does the main theme of the project, such as Creation, Man, Good and Evil, embodied in different stylistic genres—from symphonic poem and rock show to ballet—speak to you?
Primarily, I was interested in the invocation of the biblical text and the interpretation of its narratives across different art forms. The story of Creation, which the project recounts, is familiar to everyone to some extent. But in exploring how it has been viewed by different denominations across various eras, I discovered the infinite depth and transparency of this outwardly simple narrative, which suddenly took on new meanings that resonate with the current historical context. When working on the libretto, I saw these overly familiar images in a new light. First, Eve’s curiosity, which led her to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge and share it with Adam despite the threat of irreversible consequences, reminded me of the dangerous practices pursued in fields like nuclear physics and genetic engineering. The dark and enigmatic figure of Cain marks the fateful boundary: expelled from Paradise, humans are already mortal but no one has died so far, and no one has experienced death. Cain was the first to cross the line and spill blood, and to this day, humanity cannot stop this atrocious epidemic of killings—from domestic violence to the world wars. The image of Noah also takes on a different form. He is endowed with a strong will that enables him to go against the stream, resist the sinful ways of those around him, and stand as something distinct. In our age of information wars, the ability to listen to oneself may deliver one from succumbing to mass psychosis.
The Genesis project explores the biblical narrative through a broad spectrum of art forms, ranging from the symphonic poem, where musical interpretation intertwines with the sacred text, to the nonverbal language of the body, and finally to the rock show, which communicates in a contemporary, almost colloquial manner. All three media together form facets of a unified whole. The project remains open to embracing new forms of art, continually drawing us closer to the mystery of Creation.