Le Bœuf sur le toit

Infobox Ballet
name = Le Bœuf sur le toit


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choreographer = Jean Cocteau
composer = Darius Milhaud
based_on =
premiere = February 1920
place = Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris
ballet_company =
characters =
set designer = Raoul Dufy
setting = Brazil
created for =
genre = surrealist ballet
type = classical ballet

"Le Boeuf sur le toit", op. 58 (English title, "The Ox on the Roof: The Nothing-Doing Bar") is a surrealist ballet made on a score composed by Darius Milhaud which was in turn strongly influenced by Brazilian popular music. The title is that of an old Brazilian tango, one of close to 30 Brazilian tunes quoted in the composition. The piece was originally to have been the score of a silent Charlie Chaplin film ("Cinéma-fantaisie" for violin and piano.)

Its transformation into a ballet was the making of the piece, with a scenario by Jean Cocteau, stage designs by Raoul Dufy, and costumes by Guy-Pierre Fauconnet. There is no real story to speak of, but a sequence of scenes based on music inspired by Brazil, a country in which the composer spent two years during World War I. The stage set is that of a bar frequented by a number of characters: a bookmaker, a dwarf, a boxer, a woman dressed in man's clothing, a policeman who is decapitated by the blades of an overhead fan before he is revived, and a number of others. The first actors were in fact clowns from the Medrano circus, the Fratellini. The choreography was deliberately very slow, in marked contrast to the lively and joyful spirit of the music.

The premiere was given in February 1920 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and comprised, besides the ballet, "Adieu New York" by Georges Auric, "Cocardes" by Francis Poulenc and "Trois petites pièces montées" by Erik Satie.

The version for chamber orchestra was followed by another for piano duet, subtitled "Cinema Symphony on South American Airs" (its performance lasts about a quarter of an hour.) Jean Cocteau also opened a restaurant in Paris with the same name in 1922.

External links

* [http://daniellathompson.com/Texts/Le_Boeuf/boeuf_chronicles.htm The Boeuf chronicles—How the ox got on the roof: Darius Milhaud and the Brazilian sources of "Le Boeuf sur le Toit"] by Daniella Thompson.