Le bœuf sur le toit

This article is about the ballet composed by Darius Milhaud. For the cabaret in Paris, see Le Boeuf sur le Toit (cabaret).

Le bœuf sur le toit
Choreographed by	Jean Cocteau
Composed by	Darius Milhaud
Date of premiere	February 1920
Place of premiere	Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris
Setting	Brazil
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 (choros) 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 (Pantomime Farce) 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 men'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.)

The ballet gave its name to a celebrated Parisian cabaret-bar, Le Boeuf sur le Toit, which opened in 1921 and became a meeting-place for Cocteau and his associates.

Other Stagings

Milhaud's piece became a staple of the classical repertoire, but curiously there haven't been many stagings of the ballet itself. A TV staging was created by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and directed by Adrian Marthaler.

This Pantomime Farce was first staged by a Mime Company in 2004 when T. Daniel Productions (T. Daniel and Laurie Willets) produced, and directed, Jean Cocteau’s Le boeuf sur le toit as part of the first Contemporary French Theatre Festival, "Playing French", in Chicago organized by The French Cultural Services of the Consulate General of France in Chicago. In this production, Darius Milhaud’s Four Hand Piano Version of the music accompanied the pantomime.

Another staging took place in Montreal on February 25, 2009 as part of the Montreal Highlights Festival whose theme was the city of Paris. Unlike Cocteau's plot director Alexandre Marine shifted the action to a brothel, with the bawdy house transforming to a "hospital" with the arrival of the Policeman. The production featured Montreal's I Musici de Montréal Chamber Orchestra and featured students of Montreal's École nationale de cirque.

The music for the piece cycles through keys in this manner: C, Cm, Eb, Ebm, Gb, F#m, A, G, Gm, Bb, Bbm, Db, C#m, E, D, Dm, F, Fm, Ab, G#m, B. Some of the minor keys are not played, but each of the twelve tones of the scale is the tonic at some point in the piece.

External links

• 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.
• T. Daniel Productions' (T. Daniel and Laurie Willets) production of "Le boeuf sur le toit" with Darius Milhaud's Music
• Le bœuf sur le toit: Free scores at the International Music Score Library Project.