A sleeper on the French Riviera

Tchaikovsky; The Sleeping Beauty; Kirov Orchestra St. Petersburg; Valery Gergiev, conducting

In the fall of 1991, during my first tour of duty on board the Crown Odyssey, we would anchor frequently off the coast of Villefranche-sur-mer in France. Villefranche is a lovely cove situated between Nice and Monte Carlo. The waters there are some of the deepest in the entire Mediterranean Sea. The comedy “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” takes place and was filmed in this exotic inlet.

The train depot wasn’t far from where we disembarked the tender service. I once took the train to Monte Carlo. It was a little too ritzy for me. I took a couple pictures and headed back. On another trip I went to the beautiful little commune of Eze, high atop a hill along the Alpes-Maritimes. Eze is famous for its view of the coast, art galleries and charming shops, hotels and restaurants.

I more regularly took the train in the other direction for the seven to eight minute ride to Nice. My friends and I found a quaint pizzeria where we could always grab lunch quickly and then make our normal rounds to art galleries, museums, and, for me, the CD store. On my first trip to Nice, while drinking in the ambience of the French Riviera on a walk along the beach, I spotted this sizeable classical CD shop across the boulevard.

Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty, Op. 66, was the first of many recordings that I picked up in this magical place. I had read a favorable review of this recording in a British classical music magazine and, when I saw it in the shop, I took it as a sign. Sleeping Beauty is one of three ballets to which Mr. Tchaikovsky wrote music; the other two being Swan Lake and The Nutcracker. Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker were written rather late, within the last three years of his life.

I’m going to stick my neck out here and come three feet short of asking, How hard can it be to write music to a ballet? Mr. Tchaikovsky certainly didn’t make it easy for himself. With intermissions, the score takes four hours to play. But I would like to make this point. With a symphony, a concerto, even with an opera, there is such a tradition of cohesion. Everything needs to relate. And everything needs to MEAN something. And does anybody remember when we developed a theme only when we had the time? Ever since Mr. Beethoven threw down the gauntlet of his fifth symphony with 35 minutes of music based entirely on four notes, there’s enormous pressure to unify the big songs. With a ballet, you need to tell a story. That’s it. Fine, you can have a main theme that you can sticky note here and there and play the hero’s theme once or twice to make the ladies swoon, but that’s just grandstanding.

I suspect that Mr. Tchaikovsky realized the opportunity for liberation from the restraints of thematic development here, chilled out, sat back, popped open a brewsky, drew his arrow, and shot at random targets of beautiful, romantic, Tchaikovsky-esque bullseyes. And I must say, fine shooting, Mr. Tchaikovsky.

Every once in a while, some crew member’s contract would be up and it’s time to go home and, over the course of maybe nine months on the job, they’ve probably padded a pretty nice home in their quarters. And they can’t take home everything. So, someone had a yard sale and I got a Sony disc-man for ten dollars that I could take, along with my headphones, up to the deck. After the dancing. After the show. After the buffet. Under a million stars. Just me and Sleeping Beauty. Nice!

Credits: To Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, a master of all genres of classical music; piano concerto, violin concerto, symphony, opera, overture, and ballet. Just to name a few. Whatever insecurities you harbored during your life, your music represents beauty, integrity, spirit and timelessness.