Ballet in one act staged in 1943 for the Ballets Russes de
Monte-Carlo by Igor Schwezoff, after the original 1927 full-length
ballet choreographed by Laschchilin and Tikhomirov for the Bolshoi
Ballet.
Music by Reinhold Gliere.
Decor by Boris Aronson.
Ballet Russe premiere: Cleveland, October 9, 1943.
"The ballet is set in a port in Kuomintang China in the 1920s;
the dancer Tao-Hoa is exploited by the vicious capitalist Li
Shan-fu, and gives her life to save the leader of the revolutionary
crowd of coolies from the bullet of an assassin. She thus paves the
way for the liberation of the Chinese people, and their Soviet
comrades. It was frequently revived in the U.S.S.R. (though not
recently), with the title changed to The Red Flower (to
avoid associations with opium) and often with new choreography;
e.g. Zakharov, for the Kirov Ballet, and Lavrovsky, for the Bolshoi
Ballet, both 1949".
Horst Koegler, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of
Ballet
"The season's closest thing to a hit was Igor Schwezoff's
one-act adaptation of The Red Poppy...a story about a
dancing-girl..who is oppressed by a villainous capitalist. However,
in response to wartime political conditions, Schwezoff made the
capitalist a Japanese bar owner, while Taia-Hoa's friends included
not only the Russian sailors of the original, but British and
American soldiers as well."
Jack Anderson, The One and Only: The Ballet Russe de Monte
Carlo
Below are various pictures and details of the scenery.