Ekon Av Trumpeter – A Ballet In One Act

Ekon av Trumpeter or Echoes of Trumpets is a one-act ballet that was first performed by the Royal Swedish Ballet at the Royal Theatre in Stockholm on the 28th of September 1963. It was later revived for the London Festival Ballet at the London Coliseum on the 27th of April 1973. The entire ballet is about 25 minutes long.

It was choreographed by Tudor and the music was by Bohuslav Martinu (Fantaisies Symphoniques). The Scenery and costumes were done by Birger Bergling.

The cast of the first performance were:

Gerd Andersson

Catherine Ericson

Viveka Ljung

Kerstin Lust

Hervor Sjostrand

Kari Sylwan

Annette Wiedersheim-Paul

Merio Mengarelli

Jacques De Lisle

Eki Eriksson

Ulf Gadd

Nills Johansson

Nisse Winqvist

Richard Wold

and Svant Lindberg.

This was the article is from the New York Times Archives -:

“When Antony Tudor created a new work for the Royal Swedish Ballet in 1963, it was called “Ekon av Trumpeter,” which was translated into English as “Echoes of Trumpets.” But Tudor soon came to prefer “Echoing of Trumpets,” and it is under this title that the piece will be revived at the Metropolitan Opera House by American Ballet Theater, beginning on Tuesday. The British-born choreographer was associated with Ballet Theater from the troupe’s inception in 1940 to his death in 1987.

“Echoing of Trumpets” is a searing denunciation of war. The ballet’s inspiration was the wanton slaughter of the residents of Lidice, a Czechoslovak village that the Nazis destroyed in 1942 as an act of revenge following the murder of a German official. At the time, the bloodbath made international headlines and became a symbol of Hitlerian brutality.

In 1966, after Tudor had staged the American premiere of “Echoing of Trumpets” for a special performance by the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, I asked him during an interview why he preferred “echoing” to “echoes.” He answered, “The word has a more resonant quality about it, suggesting an on-going, rather than a finished, action.”

Violence, of course, refuses to go away. The Stockholm premiere of “Echoing of Trumpets” came during the cold war, when the world worried over nuclear annihilation. At the time of the Metropolitan Opera production and at the work’s first performance by Ballet Theater in 1967, the Vietnam War was raging. This spring, when “Echoing of Trumpets” returns to Ballet Theater’s repertory for the first time since then, audiences may well think of Bosnia.”

Ekon Av Trumpeter Synopsis

A man returns to a ruined village to seek his beloved.

He is then captured and executed. The girl dances a lament with his dead body.

These are the bones of the ballet. Its dramatic source is the destruction of the village of Lidice in Czechoslovakia during the Second World War as a reprisal for the assassination of Heydrich, Nazi governor of the country.

The program note for the London Festival Ballet staging of this stark work said that the ballet was ‘set at any place and at any time where civilization has left its imprint.’ And for civilization read, ironically, ‘war.’

Against the dull setting of a ruined bridge whose flat realism works remarkably well with the ballet’s manner, the horrifying incident of rape and murder and reprisal acquires a ritualistic significance.

Tudor’s dance language here is mainly classical, with some folk dance elements for the soldiers who have invaded and occupied the village where the action is set.

It is this stylization of tragedy that gives the work its special merit. The key section of the piece is the passage in which the woman mourns, in piercing imagery, over the dead body of her beloved, revealing depths of suffering and a wave of anger toward death.

To my disappointment, I searched and searched, but could not find any videos of the ballet Ekon av Trumpeter or any pictures.

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