Ronald Hynd is still waltzing with ‘Merry Widow’
Ronald Hynd’s “The Merry Widow” has amazing legs for a story ballet created in 1975.
Countless three-act productions from the 20th century have not endured, but “The Merry Widow,” based on Franz Lehár’s 1905 operetta, is still widely performed and popular. And no other choreographer seems to have felt the need to change or update it. If a major ballet company wants “The Merry Widow,” they call Hynd.
Charmingly British and dapper at 88, Hynd estimates “Widow” has been staged by 19 companies, and each has done several revivals. “So I just about know the steps by now,” he quips, flashing a wry grin.
In town overseeing final rehearsals for Houston Ballet’s latest revival, which begins Friday, he is thrilled that the company’s ballet masters all have “Widow” in their blood. Barbara Bears and Amy Fote performed the lead role of the rich Hanna Glawari during their years as Houston principals. Bears also danced the featured role of the younger Valencienne earlier in her career.
Steven Woodgate performed in “Widow” with the Australian Ballet and has taught Hynd’s choreography to six companies. And though principal ballet master Louise Lester never performed “Widow,” she and Hynd go way back: He plucked her from the Royal Ballet School and gave her her first job when he was directing the Munich Ballet, and later nudged her into coaching.
This makes for a very deep bench. “You’re very lucky,”
Hynd said. “The company is in wonderful shape.”
Hynd himself is a rarity, one of last of the early British school dancers who learned their art from Marie Rambert and Dame Ninette de Valois, alums of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes; and their choreographic protegé, Sir Frederick Ashton.
Remarkably, “Widow” was Hynd’s first full-length work, commissioned by the early Australian Ballet co-director Robert Helpmann (another stellar figure of ballet history) as that company’s first major creation.
Five years earlier, Helpmann had told Hynd he’d be calling because he liked a percussive one-act Hynd created for the Royal Ballet based on the mythological story of Paciphae, the queen of Crete who lusted after a bull and gave birth to the minotaur. “I thought, ‘How wonderful, he wants me to do this for the Australian Ballet,’ ” Hynd says. Five years passed before the phone finally rang. “I said, ‘Let me think, I’ll ring you back in five or 10 minutes; let me ponder it.’ ”
Hynd waited two minutes. Aside from the thrill of his first major commission, he loved Lehár’s music.
“When I was a kid, my brother used to play ‘The Merry Widow’ on the piano,” he says. “My mother always said that music made her cry. I can’t imagine how many times I’ve heard it — 2 million times! — I still get a lump in my throat. It’s most peculiar.”
More than comedy
Perhaps because of that, Hynd heard more in the score than a bubbly comedy. “I love to see people on the stage, people with emotional situations,” he says.
Lehár’s operetta spins a story about lost love recovered later in life — the kind of story we hear these days when old high school lovers reconnect after decades on Facebook, except this one involves politics and getting even.
“Widow” takes place at the turn of the 20th century, when the European aristocracy is waning. The little country of Pontevedro is nearly bankrupt and needs the money of Hanna, an ultra-rich widow who grew up there as a peasant and has come to Paris looking for love. Count Danilo, the country’s most eligible bachelor, had seduced and dumped her years ago and now needs to charm her for the country’s sake.
Hynd’s eyebrows lift, his brow furrows, and his voice lowers dramatically as he explains the situation. “She comes face to face with her heartthrob, her love of years ago. She’s thunderstruck but tries to play it cool because now she’s got the jewels and the cash. … So she’s in a terrible predicament. Her heart is crashing.”
Meanwhile, there’s Valencienne, a former Can-Can girl who has married an old baron for security but is in love with
the young French attaché Camille; Hanna sympathizes, and helps, but not without causing some confusion and jealousy.
“The operetta is usually just played for farce,” Hynd says, “and all those mixed relationships are lost. The music is so deep, so beautiful. I wanted just to concentrate on the heartache of all the characters who are with the wrong person, so you get more emotion. Of course, it is a comedy, but I have always tried to listen to it and go deeply into the psychological problems that these poor creatures have.”
The hankerchief that passes between Hanna and Danilo, bridging their past and present lives, was Helpmann’s idea. And Hynd credits Australian composer John Lanchberry with some of the ballet’s power.
“I tried to keep the music as near to the operetta as possible, but of course Lanchberry was a genius for twisting things to suit a libretto,” Hynd says. “The big ballroom waltz in the operetta is about 16 bars, played almost offstage as an entre-act for the widow. Jack turned it into a seven-minute waltz.”
Hynd also wanted to save that waltz for the end of the ballet, but Lanchberry teased it in Act 2 with just a tiny moment, when Hanna recaptures Danilo’s heart. When the waltz finally returns in its full glory, audiences are swept up as much as the characters in the joy.
Dramatic challenges
The Australian Ballet didn’t share Hynd’s masterpiece for 10 years, but in the meantime, Ben Stevenson — another Sadler’s Wells Theatre alum — became Houston Ballet’s director and hired his friend to create “Papillon” in 1979 and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” in 1988.
The company added “Widow” to its repertoire in 1995, the only Hynd ballet it still performs.
He can hardly believe he’s been doing “Widow” half of his life; a signature that has far outpaced his other ballets. “Each time someone calls I think, ‘Argh, I can’t do another ‘Merry Widow,’ ” he says. “But the moment I get in the studio, I love working on it … I immediately energize. It does a great deal for me.”
“Widow” presents dancers with extreme dramatic challenges. Hanna, in particular, must be “a glamorous, very sympathetic and wounded person,” Hynd says.
By chance, history’s first Hanna was Marilyn Jones, the mother of Houston Ballet artistic director Stanton Welch. Close behind her was the legendary Margot Fonteyn. “It wasn’t exactly her farewell, but it was the last big role she danced. She went for it, with a few slight adjustments,” Hynd says. “She came to Broadway, and they did it for a month, and she did every performance. That was stamina and guts.”
Technically, even the waltzing can be tough. “On a ballroom floor, it’s simple. But when you blow it up to balletic proportions, it can be quite difficult. You’ve got to move it, and each couple should have their love scene. It can be difficult if you don’t understand what it is: togetherness, dancing as one.”
He’s pleased with Houston’s current generation of Hannas, principal dancers Jessica Collado, Karina González, Yuriko Kajiya and Soo Youn Cho. “It’s so wonderful when you see someone who knows exactly what they should be and who they are. That’s really good; then I know we’ve got a ‘Merry Widow’ that’s going to speak, rather than just play it for laughs — although we do also play it for laughs because it’s a farcical situation. And the music is very light and upbeat.”
Because it offers great roles for mature dancers, “Widow” tends to be a celebratory, careercapping ballet. The last time Houston performed it, a few years ago, Mireille Hassenboehler was retiring. This time, principal Linnar Looris, who is leaving Houston to direct the Estonian National Ballet, will say his farewells during the run.
Hynd heads next to Toronto for its “Widow” revival — and the retirement of Xiao Nan Yu. “It’s not an easy whirl, but they seem to think it’s a good way to go out. In a nice white frock, with a bit of glitter,” he says.
But it’s never rote. Hynd often tweaks steps to suit the dancers, and he has slightly changed the ballet’s ending since its last Houston run, giving it a gentle #metoo edge. Rather than just waltzing blissfully as the curtain closes, Hanna and Danilo move closer to the audience, making gestures that suggest Hanna has won.
“It gives her another word,” Hynd says.
No wonder the world never ties of this “Widow.”