Abstract
Few musicians of the twentieth century are as recognisable as Jacqueline du Pré. Her dazzling and distinctive talent, said to have enraptured audiences the world over, was overcome by a tragic diagnosis of MS. This sense of tragedy was all the more heightened by Du Pré’s famed physicality on the stage, leading critics to use all manner of analogies in describing her playing as a physical (and even sexual) experience. Her status as a musical celebrity, further intensified as she became one half of a classical music power couple, has led to numerous dramatic retellings and reimaginings of her biography, played out in film and TV, and now on stage. The most recent example of this fascination with Du Pré is the ballet The Cellist, Cathy Marston’s new work for the Royal Ballet, premiered in February 2020 to much critical acclaim. Its score, composed by Philip Feeney, features a cello soloist and interweaved repertoire extracts that have become so associated with Du Pré. Along with the characters of Barenboim, Du Pré, and her family, her 1673 Stradivarius cello is given a starring role in the form of Marcelino Sambé, a new take that makes this a distinctive contribution to media representations of Du Pré. This article examines the interactions across this complex web of musical representations of musical personae engrained in the cultural consciousness. It considers acts of musical performance, the musical instrument as living companion, and the representation of classical musical culture of the 1960s and 1970s, drawing attention to key features of Du Pré’s narrative re-presented in a new artistic form.
Highlights
The most recent example of this fascination with du Pré is the ballet The Cellist, Cathy Marston’s new work for the Royal Ballet, which premiered in February 2020 at the Royal Opera House (London) to much critical acclaim
Few cellists of the twentieth century were as recognisable as Jacqueline du Pré
The Cellist demonstrates the playing out of a creative tension by way of a narrative retelling of du Pré’s life, using some of the pre-existing music with which she became so memorably associated. The use of these pre-existing musical works in a dance setting opens up a range of intermedia possibilities throughout the ballet, including representing du Pré as both part of the world of classical music and as a performer who interacts with the score
Summary
Few cellists of the twentieth century were as recognisable as Jacqueline du Pré. Her dazzling and distinctive talent, widely reported as enrapturing audiences the world over (Wilson, 1999: 296–314), was characterised by an impassioned physicality in her performances that channelled an intense communicative power. The profound sense of a musical genius having exceptional talents snatched away prematurely has contributed to the creation of something of a du Pré ‘legend’: a story of vast musical gifts, enigmatic personality, and tragic intrigue.1 Such tragedy, twinned with her prominence in the popular media consciousness in mid-twentieth-century Britain and with the British musical establishment (see Wilson, 1999: 87), meant that the press covered her career (and subsequent illness) widely. The solo cellist is heard throughout the score, but is most prominent at scenes depicting musical performance and, as we shall see later, in representing the symbiotic musical and emotional relationship between du Pré and her instrument On stage, her 1673 Stradivarius cello is brought to life as the Instrument in a starring role in the form of Marcelino Sambé, along with the characters of the Conductor (Barenboim, danced by Matthew Ball), the Cellist (du Pré, danced by Lauren Cuthbertson) and her family.. It considers the ways the disciplinary partnership of music and dance combine to establish new layers of interpretive meaning and to represent classical music
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